How will artificial intelligence change marketing as we know it?
More importantly, how can you and your organization benefit from those changes?
We asked eight AI experts to predict the future potential of artificial intelligence in marketing.
Here’s what they said.
1. Marketing Will Become Data Science
Marketing is becoming data science. AI can solve the old problem of ‘not knowing which 50percent of my marketing does work.’ By analyzing the vast amount of data that is now available to marketers, combining it with other data that they typically don’t have access to and applying machine learning, AI can help marketers understand how their campaigns and actions work like never before. And even better: it can provide insights on how to amplify results.” — Guillaume Decugis (@gdecugis), Cofounder and CEO, Scoop.it
2. AI Will Cut Through the Noise
“A few years ago I was a VC at OpenView Venture Partners looking at big data investments. It became clear that there's an overabundance of information but a shortage of attention. AI in marketing helps better target messages so that the right information reaches the right person in the right time. It's a necessity because we're all drowning in noise.” — Aki Balogh, CEO, MarketMuse
3. Lookalike Modeling and Lead Scoring Will Get a Whole Lot Smarter
“Lookalike modelling is one application for account-based marketing. It’s where you find a target account that has become a customer or has converted to an opportunity, and use that as a seed for an artificial intelligence algorithm to find other similar companies for a sales or marketing team to target.
“Another application for artificial intelligence in marketing is to use collaborative filtering. These are the algorithms Amazon uses to recommend products based on what other users have purchased. In the B2B marketing world, similar algorithms can be used to recommend content or offers to buyers, based on what’s worked well for similar users.
“Lead scoring and account prioritization is another avenue: we can use machine learning to learn which leads have purchased in the past, and then prioritize other similar leads.
“Another area is using natural language generation to automatically repurpose content by creating similar content that has the same core message but different wording.” — Pawan Deshpande (@TweetsFromPawan), CEO, Curata
4. AI Will Tell You Which Channels Work—and Which Don’t
“There is a tremendous opportunity for marketing AI on the brink of the adjacent possible right now.
“Web-based performance marketers are faced with a challenge that is insurmountable without AI. For example: given 10 acquisition channels, 15 varieties of CTAs, three broad categories of browsing device, four distinct customer personas, a $20,000 a month program budget, and a goal of sustained 10% month-over-month growth, which subset of marketing campaigns should I fund?
“In a modern marketing operation, the sheer complexity and variety of signals is way outside the grasp of a human mind. In the next five to 10 years, there will be a machine learning company whose platform sits on top of Google Analytics and derives valuable strategic insight from the underlying data, including directional guidance on which channels to tune, which to divest and which to accelerate.” — Ryan Buckley (@rbucks), CEO, Scripted
5. Marketing Jobs Will Become Way More Human
“I believe that marketing presents one of the most natural and powerful applications of AI. If you look at what marketing does at its core—collect and analyze data, understand people, campaigns, branding, PR, creative—much of this can be done by technology. It can be done better, faster, at scale, automated and smarter than by humans.
“2017 will be the year where a great marketer focuses on the true human strengths in her field—superior creativity, intuition, strategy and management. She’ll do so on the basis of a strong AI stack that provides the insights, automation, learning, smarts and flexibility to elevate her job to a whole new level.” — Andre Konig (@AndreMKonig), Cofounder, Opentopic
6. AI Will Enable Hyper-Personalized Communications...
“We are building a future in which hyper personalized and interactive communications are defined, created and delivered at the hands of intelligent communications and marketing engines.
“Continued scientific advancements in machine-based linguistic comprehension and artificial intelligence capabilities are enabling the automation of tasks that are typically managed by people. As a result, the role of the individual will change to that of a maestro conducting a symphony.
“Exploiting billions of disparate data points, well beyond the functional capability of the human brain, artificial intelligence advancements in the enterprise of ‘creativity’ are deepening.
“The marketer’s paradigm will change to a position where people will provide a machine with a set of inputs based on a problem or objective, and the AI engine will create the marketing and communications campaign across all of its facets from asset and message creation all the way to intelligent distribution.” — Kerri Henneberry, Marketing Director, Atomic Reach
7. ...And Eliminate Manual Communications and Processes
“From a marketer’s perspective, the ability to eliminate steps in the process of communication is going to be a key component for leveraging AI. So is the ability to eliminate the guesswork, manual processes and curation of content with personalized experiences.” — Dheeraj Sareen (@Dheeraj_Sareen), Director of Partnerships, Boomtrain
8. AI Will Predict How Customers Want to Interact with Your Brand
“The future potential of artificial intelligence in marketing is to create a totally responsive experience for the user which includes the early engagement through to sale and customer support. With a unified approach that brings together data, content and channels, marketers will be able to predict how an individual wants to interact with a brand and deliver experiences that provide the greatest value for both the consumer and the brand.” — Tom Gerace (@tomgerace), CEO, Skyword