Artificial Intelligence (AI) And The Revolution Of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the core of every ecommerce business. It’s used to bring in sales, increase brand awareness, and reach new customers.
However, today’s market is saturated, and e-commerce businesses must work hard to beat the competition. Not only that—they should also keep track of the latest technology trends and implement marketing techniques accordingly.
One of the latest technological innovations that can revolutionize digital marketing is artificial intelligence (AI). Let’s see how.
Crucial Issues With Today’s Marketing Channels
At the moment, digital marketing seems somewhat straightforward. E-commerce businesses can hire a marketer or create a team that will manage social networks, handle paid ads, hire influencers, and deals with other promotions. Still, several critical issues are arising that e-commerce stores are having trouble with.
- Businesses Miss Customer-Centric Approach – Being customer-oriented should be the goal of every business. Still, many business owners pass on this idea and remain focused on themselves, their ROI, and their products. As a result, customer personalization remains vague, and companies often decide to deal with it later. Unfortunately, this is a huge mistake. In today’s world, customers know how much they deserve and don’t like being treated as piggy banks. Without a customer-centric approach, businesses miss on creating a loyal customer base and gaining a competitive edge over rivals.
- There Are Problems With Big Data – E-commerce store owners know how essential collecting data about customers is in regards to successful marketing campaigns. Collecting customer data also improves customer experience and should, thus, increase revenue. Unfortunately, businesses are often faced with big data analytics challenges. This makes them miss out on important information that can further help them manage behavioral marketing.
In the words of American consultant and author Geoffrey Moore:
Without big data, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway.
Geoffrey Moore, Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
- Content Creation Issues Are Real – The fact remains that there’s no digital marketing without content. Content is crucial for improving brand awareness, boosting rankings, and generating interest. Content that’s most commonly used in digital marketing includes blog posts, articles, social updates, tweets, videos, presentations, and ebooks. Still, sometimes businesses don’t know which content can bring the most benefits. They struggle with analyzing target audiences’ reactions to what they share and may try to cover it all in one go instead of remaining focused on what works best.
- Paid Ads Aren’t Always Straightforward – Some e-commerce store owners often believe that since they already have a store, people will come, but usually via paid ads. Therefore, they think that paid ads are a safe way to attract customers fast. However, marketers should always think of new ways to optimize ads if they want to do this successfully. Another aspect to consider is a landing page. For the best marketing results, landing pages must be formatted properly and work on all devices. Still, many businesses decide to use their homepage as a landing page, but that’s not always the best solution.
- Poor Email Optimization – One of the best ways of promoting products includes email marketing. With it, e-commerce businesses can directly approach a customer and have higher conversion rates. Emails also improve relationships with leads and can be used for future, present, and past customers.
Unfortunately, the average opening rate of emails is sometimes extremely low. So much so that the average retail opening rate is only about 13%. The same goes for click-through rates. The average email CTR across all industries is 2.65%, which drastically affects sales.
StartupBonsai, Email Marketing Statistics
- Best Practices With AI Solutions – Luckily, today’s technology can be used in digital marketing to sort out almost all issues stated above. AI and machine learning can be used in several ways to improve personalization, optimization, and content creation. Here’s how.
- AI for Better Personalization – Those e-commerce businesses that keep track of the latest trends know that AI can be used to improve personalization as soon as the customer lands on the page. Not all users are the same, and with AI, brands can do the following:
- Display personalized content across devices
- Offer a product or a service based on location
- Provide recommendations based on previous searches and keywords
- Change website content based on the visitor
- Use AI for sentiment analysis
The best example of e-commerce personalization is Amazon Personalize, which allows developers to create apps using machine learning technology just like Amazon.
- Powerful Tools for Big Data Analysis – In order to create a customer-centric strategy, businesses should work on collecting, analyzing, and filtering valid customer information. With AI, data collection and analyses can be more straightforward. For example, the right AI tool can determine what kind of products are purchased the most, what pages are viewed the most, and similar. AI can track the entire customer journey and offer the right solution to improve sales. For example, with Google Analytics, marketers can view customer behavior on a website.
- Online AI Platforms for Content Creation – AI can solve the two most common issues with content—speeding up content creation and analyzing customer reaction to the content. When it comes to content creation, there are multiple AI tools available online to help marketers come up with branded images for social posts, headlines for articles, or even write a blog post or create a promotional video. On the other hand, AI-powered software can help marketers analyze more than just demographics. It can monitor customer behavior and social media engagement. Some examples include Sprout Social, Cortex, Linkfluence Radarly, and so on.
- AI Can Simplify Online Promotions – At the moment, Facebook and many other platforms provide AI tools to help marketers manage their ads with ease. That means that ads won’t go to waste. On the one hand, marketers have access to all kinds of information that makes ad optimization easier. On the other hand, Facebook uses AI to deliver those ads right to the target audience. Additionally, the landing page plays a vital role besides the ads. Designing the best possible landing page can make a huge difference. AI can help with two crucial components of a remarkable landing page—personalization and design.
- AI for Email Optimization – Since email marketing is crucial for online businesses, AI can improve how emails are created. What’s more, AI can be used to send quality emails and increase revenue while being cost-effective. At the moment, AI-powered tools can:
- Write email subject lines
- Send personalized emails
- Improve email campaigns
- Optimize email send times
- Organize email lists
- Automate newsletters
This optimization can increase the opening and click-through rates and lead to more sales. Additionally, AI chatbots can be used in messaging apps, complement email campaigns, and deliver the ultimate personalized experience.
Digital marketing is a crucial part of every business’s success. Still, e-commerce stores have more and more competition to beat, and on that path, marketers may face several challenges. For example, creating content can become exhausting, and dealing with big data might seem impossible.
Luckily, today, many AI-powered tools out there help marketers optimize their campaigns and businesses generate revenue. From improved emails to simple online promotions, AI has the power to change how digital marketing is done. The best thing about it—it’s only a few clicks away.
Disclosure: Martech Zone has an Amazon affiliate link in this article.