AI and ML for Digital Marketing

As the most talked about technology in recent years, it is of little wonder that the attention around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) is being directed towards digital marketing. With more customers engaging in the online marketplace across Southeast Asia, it’s more important than ever for businesses to accurately predict—rather than respond to—what consumers need and want throughout the purchasing journey. Yet, while the amount of information now available is colossal, it is the issue of how such data is processed and interpreted in order to access its inherent value that is key. AI and ML have the potential to solve these problems and enable businesses to make better data-based marketing decisions. Here’s how:

Content Creation

Digital marketers have long noted the benefits of creating valuable content, however within that, there are far more possibilities to unpack. AI and ML are helping organisations save time and resources with their ability to generate reports and news articles from the data and information that they possess. By using templates to enter data and keywords, they are able to create unique and engaging content which reads just as if a human wrote it. This is by no means a distant fantasy—several online news publications are already seeing success in using AI to generate articles, which, in turn, is having a positive effect on the click-through rates of links to their website.

Personalised content is key to consumer engagement. AI enables multi-layered systems that create messages automatically by personalising them according to every customer depending on their personal behavioural standards, buying history, and even location. By using search history data, you can automatically provide customers with content most relevant to them, and by driving your audience to targeted articles and adverts of specific interest to them, you can more easily lead them into making a purchase.

Integrating Insights

AI is also a fantastic tool for integrating various datasets from multiple platforms, including websites, social media, and mobile apps. The more information available, the better your targeting and customisation can become. The technology we have now has the ability to merge data across channels making it possible to automate processes and produce a more holistic view, enabling you to make smarter, data-driven marketing decisions.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics is the use of data, algorithms, and machine-learning techniques to identify probabilities based on data history. It can be used in many ways to enhance your marketing outcomes, including calculating the optimal price that will prompt conversion, who is likely to become a customer, and whether or not they are likely to purchase again. Predictive analytics alters marketing from reactive to proactive and thus refines your ability to identify strong leads and increase sales while concurrently reducing the burden on time and resources.

User Experience

With the use of algorithms, we are able to personalise web experiences. AI has the capacity to produce website displays customised to the user. By collecting data—like location, demographic, device type, and how the user interacted with the site— from even a single visit, personalised web content can be produced in real time. Enhancing user experience is what keeps the audience engaged and coming back for more—the more time they spend on a site, the more likely you will be to make a sale.

Chatbots

Another way AI is advancing digital marketing is the introduction of chatbots. Like UX, chatbots are a great way to improve customer experience. Offering the ability for both existing and prospective customers to communicate with your business 24/7, chatbots are a quick way to enrich the user experience of your website. They also store the data they receive, meaning their value isn’t limited to the customer service that they provide. While chatbots can easily provide answers to frequently asked questions, their real power lies in their ability to answer open-ended questions. Advances in AI and ML are making this possible, with chatbots bring increasingly capable of generating lightning-fast, intuitive responses.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are allowing digital marketers across Asia to do more with the seemingly endless amount of data that they collect. However, using AI and ML doesn’t simply support marketers in the use of the information available to them—it also contributes to productivity, efficiency, profitability, and can ultimately lead to the development of a successful long-term marketing strategy.