Now that artificial intelligence is leading tech developments, marketers are keen to experiment with it for various use cases. Progress might seem slow compared with the initial surge of martech, but it’s growing steadily.
Marketers are now at a point where their AI skills are reaching the intermediate or even the advanced levels, with most indicating that they use intelligent automation for at least some of their marketing tasks.
One of the major markers of the adoption of AI in marketing is the use of it at every stage in the marketing funnel. Today, most marketers use AI in just one or some parts of their sales funnel. Automated posting and segmentation are already well understood, and the rise of Generative AI Marketing is leading to more adoption for content generation. Clearly, there is far more that AI can deliver.
AI to Maximize Awareness
Building Audience Personas
AI is valuable in developing audience personas for the top of the digital marketing funnel. Personas guide everything from messaging to targeting parameters, and identifying personas who are a good fit for your product or service is crucial for building effective marketing campaigns.
AI helps build personas that align deeply with audience interests, pain points and behaviors, insights unattainable through manual processes by analyzing large datasets like:
- Social media trends
- Comments and demographics
- Customer behavior patterns
AI-Powered Video Content Creation
AI also impacts video content creation - social media video is a powerful top-of-funnel tool but it takes time to produce. AI can help shorten that process.
Content creators are increasingly using AI for video ideation and preproduction planning, which has greatly enhanced their ability to capture attention and engage audiences early on.
Leveraging AI in these initial stages, enables marketers to collaborate with creators more efficiently but also ensure that the content produced resonates with target audiences from the get-go. This approach helps brands build awareness through high-quality, well-planned content that stands out in crowded digital spaces.
AI to Accelerate Consideration
There’s also a role for AI in the consideration stage, primarily to enable personalization on a mass scale. At this point, prospects are comparing different options and weighing their choices. They need the right content at the right time to guide their decision-making. Customized content recommendations keep people engaged for longer and raise the chances of conversion.
Personalized Content Recommendations
A key tactic to keep prospects engaged and guide their choices is presenting the most relevant and persuasive customized content, such as:
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Product comparisons
This content is delivered based on their unique interests and behaviors. AI enhances this tactic by instantly analyzing vast amounts of customer data, such as:
- Browsing and purchase history
- Click-through rates
- Time spent on specific pages
In addition, AI can be used to access both public and private data sources to generate content and offers in the moment to further enhance the engagement.
It’s a use case that holds true in both B2B and B2C marketing. Consumers and corporate buyers alike need content that’s relevant to their needs and concerns, but it’s difficult to achieve this using manual analysis and processes.
AI’s ability to analyze massive amounts of customer data instantaneously makes this tactic not only scalable but also more effective. It delivers the right message to the right customer at the right time.
AI in Marketing Helps Increase Conversions
Lead Nurturing Automation
Lead nurturing is an essential tactic for any marketing strategy, but it’s often fraught with challenges. Knowing the right moment to reach out to each lead and identifying the content that will resonate with them the most are both considerable challenges.
AI-powered automation can streamline the process and ensure that leads don’t get dropped along the way.
Personalized Deal Acceleration
Personalization is also important in this phase. AI can provide insights and recommendations based on past behavior and preferences to help accelerate the deal cycle.
In the conversion phase, AI can automate outreach after an event. Sales automation tools with AI bots can automate outreach to people who may not be qualified prospects. This can help nurture them until they’re ready and showing signs of interest, protecting the time and productivity of your sales resources.
AI to Drive Customer Loyalty
Predictive Churn Analysis
Finally, AI-powered predictive analysis can deliver the insights that marketers need to direct customer retention strategies at the people who need them most.
By applying AI predictive churn analysis, businesses are now able to crunch massive datasets about customer behavior to reveal the patterns that lead to churn and take targeted action.
AI is able to quickly analyze such metrics as:
- Login frequency
- Feature usage patterns
- Support ticket history
- Survey responses
- Interaction times
AI models can be trained to recognize patterns that historically lead to customer churn. Businesses may then initiate personalized retention strategies such as:
- Reaching out to understand customer concerns
- Offering tailored solutions
- Providing incentives like discounts or feature upgrades
The Growing Influence of AI in Marketing
The impact of AI in marketing is undeniable. As AI use cases continue to increase, we’ll see marketers finding more imaginative ways to apply it effectively for:
- Lead generation
- Lead nurture and conversion
- Customer retention
While it’s certainly still recommended to keep humans in the loop, it seems that today, every corner of the marketing process can benefit from the introduction of AI.