To quote the old Verizon ads, “Can you hear me now?” If the question is posed to Alexa, then the answer is of course an emphatic “yes.” Data gathering and privacy rights aside, the role of Alexa succinctly showcases how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, which begs the question, “why isn’t AI being used more regularly in content marketing?”
Artificial Intelligence And The Social Landscape
Now, more than ever, content marketers have a host of tools available at their fingertips. These tools are all designed to help them connect with more than 2.7 billion active social media users. However, the challenge is not in knowing what tools to use, but discovering how AI can instead be leveraged to maximize results. In fact, AI can readily be used to enhance the consumer journey, nurture leads, and turn prospects into loyal brand ambassadors. What’s more, it is predicted that by 2021 businesses throughout the globe will spend an estimated $57 billion on AI platforms. With these statistics in mind, let’s take a moment to explore how AI can successfully help businesses navigate the social landscape.
AI Creates More Accurate Buyer Personas
Social media has succinctly shrunk the world to the size of a stone’s throw (metaphorically speaking). In fact, as the world has shrunk, so too has the acceptable margin of error for knowing your customers. In other words, it’s no longer enough to know basic information about your customer. Instead, you must be able to create personalized experiences that customers expect each and every time that they interact with your business. However, you are only human, which means that analyzing copious amounts of customer data for tens of thousands of customers (and let’s not forget about the prospects) is a seemingly impossible task. Fortunately, AI is here to help you automatically collect, analyze, and apply customer data. This incredible marketing tool has consistently delivered an estimated 171 percent increase in marketing generated revenue simply by helping businesses create the most accurate buyer personas. In fact, AI generated buyer personas more readily capture the essence of their intended customers. AI’s ability to provide a heightened level of personalization is especially important when it comes time to provide exceptional customer service.
AI Improves Customer Service And Social Engagement
According to the 2018 Salesforce State of Marketing, 52 percent of consumers will change brands if the business fails to offer personalized communications. The good news is that once again AI is here to help. AI has the unique ability to provide real time intelligent messaging that can enhance the entire engagement and customer service experience. To date, retail, healthcare, finance, and e-commerce are just a few of the industries that are leveraging the power of AI to complete the following customer centric tasks.
- Automatically send push notifications to prospects regarding big events.
- Qualify interest of new prospects.
- Capture and nurture leads.
- Record sales and book service appointments for existing customers.
- Check product inventory in real time for customers (and sales representatives).
- Deliver relevant marketing content to prospects at the right time, on the right platform, and at the right stage of their unique buyer’s journey.
Deliver Customer Centric Marketing Content
At the end of the day, one of the main functions of AI tools is to analyze incredibly large amounts of data so that marketing departments can deliver customer centric content. With the help of AI, content marketers will be able to understand the forest for the tree, as well as the tree itself. In other words, AI will help businesses understand the unique needs and expectations of both customers and prospects. Through data and segmentation, AI helps content marketers understand:
- Who the audience is.
- What type of content they consume.
- Where the audience is (including what platform is preferred).
- When the audience consumes content marketing materials.
- Why the audience is consuming your content.
By understanding the above components, you can more successfully create customer centric content that resonates strongly with your intended audience.
Remove The Guesswork From Content Marketing
In conclusion, AI takes the guesswork out of content marketing. It is an incredibly helpful tool that will give you the competitive edge you need to deliver a personalized experience each time a customer or prospect interacts with your brand. The only thing left to say is a hearty, “thank you” to any Alexa who is currently reading this post out loud; without your help, AI wouldn’t have made it into our daily lives, nor would it have been so readily staged to enhance our content marketing efforts.
Laura P has written 4,000+ articles, blog posts, product reviews, press releases, and website content for a multitude of clients. In the past 7 years, she has developed written, marketing, video, and web content for clients in the real estate, information technology, restaurant, auto, retail, equine sales, oil and gas, and public relations industries. Laura is highly proficient in SEO optimization, particularly in real estate and retail industries. She ghost wrote IT white papers, government contract task orders, RFIs, and RFPs that resulted in millions of dollars won. She has 7-years of experience working with and interviewing olympic athletes, small-business owners, CEOs, SMEs, and entrepreneurs on complex topics. As a professional writer, Laura strives to create content that is both meaningful and relatable to her readers.
