AI marketing, or the process of using artificial intelligence to deliver marketing messages, allows brands to target content and increase their advertising ROI. Machines and data can work together to help brands discover the audiences most receptive to their advertising. This strategy can help brands increase sales both online and in the aisle by allowing them to deliver content when it’s needed most.

Programmatic marketing is much more intuitive today. It can adapt based on the device the consumer uses, their location, and their own specific details. This flexibility reduces costs of digital ad spend, while also ensuring marketing leads to conversion. Brands can even leverage it as consumers are in the shopping aisle to help products stand out on the shelf.

How Machine Learning Is Impacting Advertising

The internet and cloud storage drove many technological advances in retail marketing, including AI. Data from millions of customer interactions, questions, searches, and responses are widely available for analysis and use. The challenge comes in parsing this data in an intelligent and timely way. Machine learning is the process of training computers to think like humans using this data. AI marketing leverages this in product, audience, and campaign selection.

Unilever is one of the most notable brands that has expanded its marketing efforts through the power of data. The company amassed a dataset from the interactions of one billion people thanks to their broad consumer base. Through this data, they were able to capitalize on marketing trends and respond to consumer desires proactively. By effectively using this information, they didn’t just cater to customer behavior. They predicted it.

The brand discovered a trend with the words “ice cream for breakfast,” and this led them to make a breakthrough with a new product release. The company capitalized on this trending phrase by offering a line of Ben & Jerry’s breakfast flavored ice creams, which were a big hit. Analyzing data and leveraging machine learning helped the brand discover a trend before it caught on in the market.

Machine learning makes it possible to discover more about customers and provide personalized experiences. It can also enhance programmatic and mobile-based marketing campaigns by offering more intuitive messages.

AI Marketing Enhancements in Programmatic and Mobile Marketing

AI isn’t just about using big data to determine consumer marketing trends. It also enhances the customer experience on an individual level. There are many ways that AI works to provide messages explicitly designed for the consumer.

• Shopping apps: Shopkick makes use of consumer data to deliver timely messages as they shop, which improves sales likelihood by encouraging product interaction. This technology works via a consumer app and in-store beacons that provide location information and deliver deals based on those details.
• Remarketing: Consumers who’ve visited a brand’s website before are prime prospects for sales. Remarketing allows brands to track these individuals and deliver targeted messages to them on major search engines and social media sites. These ads are highly customizable and can be used to provide product deals which will most appeal to that individual based on their search history on the company’s site.
• Intelligent search engines: Search engines like Google and Bing have grown far more intuitive based on the individual searcher. Consumers who search for a specific product, as an example, will receive localized listings automatically without needing to add in geographic data. In some cases, they can receive predictive search suggestions when they begin asking their question, making the process of finding the required information much faster.
• Chatbot customer service: Chatbots can take consumers much further through their problems now than they could in the past. Before, such chatbots were only appropriate for the basic triage of consumer issues. Now, they can get these consumers closer to resolution by using the data modeled from other customer interactions.
• Programmatic ad delivery: Ad buying is simplified for marketers with the ability to focus on particular consumers using publicly available information. Through these details, brands can time and deliver messages to consumers most likely to make a purchase.

AI can help brands increase their connections with consumers by making it easier to discover information about them. Through mobile and programmatic campaigns, brands can increase their sales and establish broader brand awareness. Machine learning will continue to offer brands new opportunities to leverage the power of data in marketing.

AI can help brands increase their connections with consumers by making it easier to discover information about them.

The potential of AI marketing is tough to quantify as we’re still in the early stages of development. By using data and the ability of machines to glean context from it, brands can create much more effective marketing campaigns which cater to consumer interests. The customer experience is enhanced, and the brand relationship solidified. Brands should consider how they can leverage AI in their marketing efforts to target audiences, create campaigns, and research new product potential.

Shopkick works with our partners to reach the right consumers at the right time with our intuitive shopping app. To get more information on becoming a partner, contact us.

Image courtesy of Panuwat Phimpha