Today, AI technology like Sophia has never been more popular. However, AI doesn’t even begin to end with robots, which is great news for marketers. It is becoming a very popular way to generate leads. You can use AI at practically every marketing process stage. There are platforms and tools that support users in finding and establishing their target audience, composing emails, and more.
This article informs about the pros and cons of adopting AI for your marketing goals and purposes. We’ll start with the pros of AI in marketing.
Eliminate Human Error
From simple blunders to lapses in concentration, human beings are prone to errors. AI is immune to these types of mistakes.
Improve Website Conversion
Today, moving users along their buyer journey is the ultimate goal of marketing. Being permanently linked to every other system, such as inventory and analytics, a good AI chatbot is uniquely positioned to help you achieve this. Thus, AI can deliver an experience that is truly seamless. Your leads could be asking basic questions about a topic, compare solutions, and schedule a demo as part of the same experience. AI can process the whole purchase in some cases.
Responsive Customer Experience
Every time AI interacts with a customer, it gets smarter. Human beings do as well, but not as fast. We don’t learn something from each and every interaction with a customer. AI does not reflect on past experiences to consider adjusting the way it approaches problems, unlike us. This is why AI can deliver even more customized experiences and constantly improve its ability to achieve sales and other forms of conversion. The average human customer service representative often offers less personalization than AI could.
Enable Conversational Content Marketing
Conversational content marketing is a way to achieve conversion faster than ever before. Thanks to conversations with chatbots that take place in real time, customers develop a connection to brands or companies much faster. AI succeeds in creating an experience that is truly authentic. In 2020, you can program chatbots with content to reflect your company’s tone and style, which will enable you to display your brand’s personality better.
Improve Upselling and Cross-Selling Options
Sometimes, finding ways to add value is hard even for a professional sales rep. It’s much harder to sell to a new customer than to a current one. How is it possible to speed the process up, if at all? AI has instant access to a customer’s full buying history and can decipher the meanings in different patterns. It is easier to move the customer along the path to cross-sells. While upsells are still harder, AI can propel users to the content they’ll need to decide what their best options are. The only prerequisites are that the AI have enough data to crunch and maybe some simple rules established by tech pros.
Save Lots of Money
According to data of Business Insider, 85% of customer interactions will transpire without the need of a human in 2021. We can’t deny that cost savings are a major issue for most brands. If you’re going to spend money on choosing, implementing, and learning a solution, it needs to ensure returns. If you employ AI, you won’t need a plethora of customer service representatives accepting all the chat requests that come in. You might need fewer sales and marketing employees in general. Particularly for startups, the lower headcount can make a huge difference in terms of cost savings.
Using AI to eliminate trivial, time-consuming tasks will make time available to marketing and sales experts to work on more important issues. What is more, AI tools make it possible to collect vast amounts of information. This would be impossible to achieve manually and so would sorting and analyzing all the data. If you use AI, you can make better and faster decisions based on accurate data in real time.
Be More Productive
AI is definitely the right strategy to level the playing field and give established competitors a run for their money. It will let you take a hands-off approach to data processing, thereby leveraging more productivity out of every minute spent in the office or working from home. A totally hands-off approach won’t be possible. However, it’s hard to overstate how convenient AI is despite its downsides, which we’ll get to shortly. It becomes easier to relate and process problems in any area of expertise. You’ll be able to browse a few quick reports that make sense of almost all aspects rather than manually combing through hundreds of chats with customers.
Cons of AI in Marketing
The first and probably most important downside of AI is that it is not immune to failure. AI algorithms are functional assuming they’ve been tested and run on a sufficient amount of relevant and accurate info. Unfortunately, they can also go wrong, generating misleading responses. This is a worst-case scenario, but it’s definitely possible.
One of the things that make us human is our propensity to grow and change. Because of the risks and threats AI poses, industry leaders like Elon Musk have suggested regulating AI.
AI is Still Not Developed Enough
AI still needs actual human beings to function. It’s capable of achieving only a fraction of the tasks needed without help from experienced professionals. If you rely on AI alone, you aren’t going to achieve much compared to if you used a team applying AI to its fullest potential.
The decisions AI can make are only logical. You’d think that’s a pro and it definitely can be, but when it is a con, it’s one of the worst. We need only recall the aftermath Uber found itself facing when the victims of a shooting and hostage situation in Sydney tried to leave the area using the company’s vehicles. Uber works with an AI tool that sets rates on the basis of supply and demand. Rates skyrocketed in this situation and the industry giant got really bad press.
The Bottom Line
In marketing, use of AI is a winning bet unless you don’t plan to integrate it into a comprehensive marketing and sales strategy. Today, AI is not perfect by anyone’s standards, but it’s getting better and it’s here to stay.
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