Understanding text, images, and sounds is not a uniquely human prerogative anymore. Artificial intelligence is transforming virtually every business. 

AI's ability to derive data-driven insights is paving the road to better digital marketing. From the vast data analysis, marketers gain valuable consumer insights and change how they connect brands with their audiences. 

Why artificial intelligence cannot be separated from digital marketing anymore? AI transforms digital strategy with its ability to collect data, interpret it, apply, and then learn from it. The ability to use artificial intelligence to improve digital marketing strategies and precious customer insights for companies will advance because AI keeps growing and enhancing, and it is not going to slow down. 

For example, Amazon employs artificial intelligence to display only relevant products to customers based on previous searches, purchases, and views. As personalized experience is now most in demand, such a carefully tailored layout increases the probability that a shopper will make an initial purchase or become a repeat customer. 

Artificial intelligence allows digital marketing to achieve results that used to be impossible until AI got into the market. Whether you run your own company or work on a marketing team, the earning capacity of digital marketing has never been higher. Interested in how to apply cutting edge AI concepts to solve business challenges? Let's delve into and see.

1. Machine Learning in Digital Marketing

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence that teaches itself how to complete a process. For better results, the machine continually learns by comparing the data to find patterns and trends. Much quicker than any human could! Thus, when the computer receives new data, it updates the whole algorithm to reflect changing trends.

Machine learning exercises trillions of search queries and activity across millions of websites to calculate when people are close to buying and surface ads that will be more relevant and interesting to them now. Moreover, it can improve customer experience:

• Guide the shopping journey, making personalized product recommendations
• Prevent out-of-stock and provide alternatives if stock is low
• Provide customers with a 24/7 support

This hidden from human knowledge helps marketers to stay competitive. They put ML power and mastery as a foundation of digital marketing performance. If configured to fit specific business challenges, machine learning techniques in digital marketing can automate processes, reduce costs, and boost customer acquisition. But how exactly ML is shaping marketing strategies today? 

2. Customer Behavior 

Multiple drivers contribute to customers' decisions. To grasp the complexities of human intents, artificial intelligence extracts patterns from massive consumer data and provides insights to the marketing team. 

AI data analytics tools can tell what the customer is likely to do before they decide for themselves. When a business can anticipate the actions and buying behavior of a particular customer, it sends more targeted marketing messages and nurtures them through a buying funnel created to optimize sales. As a result, the right product is provided at the right time and gets the best chance of a transaction. 

Thus, you can leave the hard work for artificial intelligence - no manual lead scoring, sales page optimization, and retargeting leads. Instead, businesses can effectively reach target consumers through personalization across the whole customer journey and predictive modeling to achieve better outcomes at every interaction with the client. 

3. Chatbots

While everybody's asleep, let your chatbot do the work for you. According to Juniper Research, retail sales from chatbot-based interactions are forecast to almost double every year, reaching $112 billion by 2023. 

Available 24/7, friendly and patient chatbots are the new face of customer support. Businesses mainly use this type of artificial intelligence to give instant answers to some simple queries. However, chatbots not only automate responses to FAQs; they learn from customer responses to expand their knowledge base and improve the quality of their next reply. 

Chatbots attract customers with their handiness. They appear as a pop-up window on a dedicated website or across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Besides, customers can choose the language used by an AI virtual assistant, allowing a business to deliver localized customer service. And, of course, chatbots can respond to several requests from different customers at a time, so wait times are no longer a problem. 

A bright example is the beauty brand Sephora. This company was one of the first to implement artificial intelligence. It was a chatbot to give beauty advice, it helped consumers to narrow down choices, starting with checking on the customer's product preferences. 

This experiment was a success: chatbot proved to be very useful in the cosmetics industry. Certainly, when there is a mind-boggling number of options, it's hard to buy something without testing a product in person.  When Sephora gained insights from their chatbot and saw so much engagement from that practice that it’s since launched more chatbots on messenger. 

4. Content marketing 

Content has always been one of the crucial factors in any successful marketing model. So, can a machine write on its own and create engaging content from the outset? Definitely. AI already writes reports and news based on data and information, saving time and money for digital marketing reps. 

For instance, the Associated Press uses an intelligent tool called Wordsmith. This platform gives companies complete control over transforming data into insightful stories. 

Thanks to AI, marketers can discover what types of content are most effective for their target audience. Therefore, they can create and show the right content. 

Content curation is commonly used to make personalized content recommendations based on how visitors interact with your site. For example, we can recollect how Amazon displays "Customers who bought this item also bought" things as well as the Netflix recommendations system. Customers will necessarily spend more time on posts or products offered according to their behavior. 

5. Voice Search

Voice-empowered shopping is one of the most commonly discussed technology trends of the last few years. According to PR Newswire, voice shopping is going to increase 20 times and reach $40 billion by 2022.

With AI-powered innovations like Google Home, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, people have changed the way they perform searches. They often just press a button and say a voice command. 

This shift in semantics caused a change in the digital marketing landscape. It encouraged marketers to adapt the content and make it closer to the way users would verbally express themselves. 

Since users actually speak their searches instead of typing them, they follow more natural speech patterns. Besides, users are more likely to phrase queries as questions. So, apart from keywords, it is a good idea to use long-tail keywords. They are 3-5 words, conversational phrases, or questions people usually use to search.

Using these keywords in your content will better serve your readers and increase your chances of capturing the featured snippet. 

To get ahead of the game, businesses have to take these new standards of search trends into account - rethink and adapt their digital marketing efforts.

6. Computer Vision 

Users like to see content more than to read it - our minds process visual pictures faster than textual data. As computer vision technology has grown recently, it is entering the business, and the real consumer market is no surprise. According to a Market research store, the computer vision market is expanding at a rate of nearly 50% a year and is anticipated to reach $25 billion by 2023. 

Computer vision is a form of artificial intelligence that lets computers identify things and extract a high-level understanding of the visual world. It scans images and breaks down their contents into metadata. This data can then be stored, organized, and analyzed similarly to any other dataset. 

These capabilities allow us to recognize and identify image components, detect patterns, and, most importantly, respond with triggers like personalized suggestions, overlay virtual images, enable searchable image sets, and so on. 

Besides, in digital marketing, computer vision helps in creating content. Neural networks - Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) create hyper-realistic visual content, including videos, photos, and 3D models. This is the technology Snapchat and Instagram use to apply filters, leveraging computer vision to recognize parts of the face.

Bottom line

Artificial intelligence is taking over the world. Machine learning algorithms are empowering marketers to make sense of overwhelming amounts of data and deliver better customer experiences.

Since AI is gradually taking the guesswork out of the marketing process,  businesses can get the most out of their data and reach their audience with content and products.

AI can help build stronger marketing strategies, refine the customer journey, and change the way businesses attract, nurture, and convert prospects. Companies that do not adjust to artificial intelligence in the near future will be at a severe disadvantage within the next few years.

If you are passionate about AI but just dipping your toes into it, you are not alone. Lots of businesses have just started to adopt the forward-looking digital marketing vision.

A move towards harnessing the power of artificial intelligence will definitely be worth it. Epic breakthroughs will not be long in coming - you will understand your customers better and generate more revenue.

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