If there’s one thing that artificial intelligence excels in, it’s sifting through hoards of data and spotting patterns. Given the amount of consumer behaviour data available and easily accessible online, it’s wholly unsurprising that AI has been harnessed to make accurate predictions around consumer trends, their motivations, needs and preferences.
The use of AI in predicting consumer behaviour has revolutionised marketing and business. Let’s explore how Artificial Intelligence is applied in business, and the AI and machine learning tools you can use to level up your marketing and business strategies.
Uses of AI in business to predict what consumers want
Great marketing is about placing your business in the path of the people who legitimately want or need your products or services. Finding the right people is a lot easier with the help of AI.
Targeted advertising
Sponsored posts on Instagram, Google ads, those Amazon recommendations, they’re all based on your prior behaviour and interaction with various websites and apps.
In 2021, your ad spending definitely shouldn’t be based on educated guesswork.
With Google Ads, the process is baked right in. Choose which types of targeting to use in your campaign. Google Ads lists these examples of how they can target different audiences:
- In-market
Quite literally, who is in the market for products and services similar to your own? They have either browsed sites like yours or have recently made a similar purchase and may still be interested in similar products. - Custom audiences
With this option, you do half the work by researching the likes and interests of your ideal buyer persona. Type in keywords and phrases that your customers would want to engage with, and add URLs for sites with content related to the interests of your typical or ideal customers. - Remarketing
This targets users that have already interacted with your brand online by clicking on one of your ads, watching one of your videos or visiting your website. - Similar audiences
Google Ads expands your audience by exploring the likes and interests of your existing audience and then targets people with a similar profile.
This is just one of the ways Google uses AI for targeted ads. More recently, Google released responsive search ads to optimise the relevance of your ads. Gone are the days of manually A/B testing your Google Ads, as of 2018, you can simply add in up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines and Google’s machine learning technology automates the process of deciphering which combination is most effective with which audience type.
Google is not the only platform to use AI technology to optimise targeted ads. Pattern89 uses historical ad data to predict which combination of copy and imagery will perform the best before you upload them to social media and Google, reducing your ad spend and increasing revenue.
Email marketing
When a notification pops up that you’ve received an email, when are you most likely to read and respond to them? There are some general rules, for example, people tend to open their emails at 10 am after arriving for work, or during their lunch break at about 1 pm. But this varies heavily depending on your audience.
Clerk.io is an example of a tool that uses predictive AI technology to automate email flows. It uses thousands of data points to automatically determine when and what to send and to whom.
There are also AI tools that help you personalise the content of your email marketing. Rasa.io uses AI to track what content readers most respond to and then use that information to adapt what’s included in their next newsletter.
Build authentic relationships
It seems paradoxical that Artificial Intelligence can be used to enhance human-to-human interaction, but that’s exactly what marketers are discovering with the Symanto Insights Platform. Their Natural Language Processing technology identifies personality traits and communication preferences in any piece of writing online.
Pull qualitative data from your social media pages or review sites to find out whether your customers are emotionally or rationally driven. Discover whether they prefer sharing their experiences and giving recommendations, or if their preferred communication style is more informative.
Use this information to inform your messaging across all communication channels to enable you to better connect with your audience.
Step into the age of AI
It’s no new revelation that AI can give you the edge on your marketing and business strategies. The use of Artificial Intelligence in predicting consumer behaviour and optimising marketing strategies is nothing new in 2021. But now AI is more accessible than ever, and as more and more businesses harness these new technologies, the question will soon be not whether you’re using AI, but which AI tools your business is using.
