You can see it everywhere if you know where to look. Marketing AI has gone from a curiosity and a pipe dream to something that’s quite real and growing fast. If you’re not paying attention to what’s happening in the marketing AI space, and considering AI purchases for your next budget, you could find yourself at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Just like the introduction of the internet and smartphones changed the way that marketers do their jobs completely, AI is poised to do the same again. Businesses are going all-in on the technology. As this article from Forbes shows:
- 84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018.
- 75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than 10%.
- 3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and services by more than 10%.
According to IDC in a press release, spending on AI will grow to $19.1 billion this year, which is over 50% growth from 2017. It is estimated that it will continue to compound at a high rate as adoption continues. While the enterprise is expected to do the lion’s share of that spending due to their existing large data sets and ability to capitalize on early technologies, some startups are focusing on AI applications for SMBs as well.
Even if AI is out of your business’ price range right now, there is bound to be something that comes along soon as this niche matures. It will likely be some sort of AI-as-a-service using the public data sets generated by the web at first, and then grow from there.
Where do I interact with AI?
Currently, the most visible forms of AI, besides the predictive keyboard in your smart phone, are in customer support portals and chatbots. Unlike past technologies like phone menus, the ubiquity of texting and chat in our lives makes these interfaces very natural to use. These services take the burdens off of customer support staff, technical staff, schedulers, and even recruiters so they can focus on more difficult issues.
Recommendation engines are also getting an AI boost. Hotel and flight companies are looking at it to set prices on-the-fly to match demand and supply. It’s even getting used for loss prevention. Any business task that can be taught to a computer or ran more efficiently than a human probably has an AI researcher tackling the problem.
That includes marketing as well, like with CONCURED. Our goal is to help content marketers know what topics their audiences are interested in at real-time speed. That allows content creators to stop guessing what to write about next and know what pieces will truly drive traffic. Additionally, we help companies discover content gaps that their competition could be using to steal away traffic and market share.
AI is also helping with traditional marketing tactics like lead scoring. For instance, it can help tune the scoring of lead activity to create a more accurate rubric and increase the quality of leads before they go to sales. AI can also analyze digital marketing consumption patterns to decide which pieces of content might interest a lead at a particular point in the funnel, along with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
From our own sales, we know that the demand for AI is accelerating. It shows significant improvements over previous marketing methods. Just like mobile marketing was once seen as a novelty and is now a fundamental part of the marketing mix, we think over the next 2-4 years AI will reach that breakpoint of mass adoption. If you are not preparing yourself by either leveraging AI currently or keeping an eye on trends and products so you can choose the right solution, you will get left behind.
To find out more about how AI and CONCURED can help you take your content marketing to the next level, click on this link.