Marketers across the world are looking out for innovative methods and approaches to attract their target audience. However, the fast-evolving digital marketing landscape is making it ever challenging for marketers to achieve desired results.
The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
If you haven’t heard already, AI marketing has become essential for businesses looking to break into the digital marketing landscape. Artificial intelligence in marketing drives its value by leveraging the customers’ data and its powerful analytical capabilities to predict customers’ next move, in order to enhance the customers’ journey.
The fast-paced developments in artificial intelligence technology along with various other subdomains like machine learning, deep learning, and others are opening up new opportunities for businesses to put technology into play and attract more customers. Artificial Intelligence when putting into play for marketing needs can help in the development of a comprehensive and unique marketing strategy by analyzing the customers’ behavior and coming up with creative ideas to attract nurture and convert prospects.
For businesses who aren’t much into the technical aspects of AI, the role of AI in marketing may seem like straight out of science fiction, where the technology is capable of making intelligent decisions; many times better than humans. Nonetheless, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies have matured greatly in the past many years and are being put to work across all shapes and sizes of businesses across the world. it is expected that global businesses will be spending over USD 50 billion on AI platforms by 2021; clearly highlighting the significance of the technology and its potential impacts for business needs.
Here we have come up with some impressive case studies where AI has been successfully implemented by businesses to take over their marketing functions.
Magnolia Market
Magnolia Market is known for its exceptional customer service experience for its brick-and-mortar shop. The vision of the business is to inspire people to own their space and to be able to achieve their goal, they have created an astounding brand experience.
Now, as the next rational step to expand the business, Magnolia decided to put up their e-commerce operations to bring the same exceptional experience to customers. To be able to achieve this feat, the company partnered with Shopify Plus to develop an advanced augmented reality app, which enables customers to view 3D rendering of the products and choose them for their home. The augmented reality is helping Magnolia to display their products in the highest photo-realism, setting them apart from all other competitors and giving them the competitive advantage to drive the growth.
Chase
Chase Bank has partnered with a leading marketing and technology company Persado to implement Artificial Intelligence into their marketing creatives.
Over the course of its working with the Persado, the bank figured out that implementing machine learning into the copywriting needs for the services help them to create more human-friendly creatives for marketing purpose, which perform better with customers.
Chase Bank is the first business to implement machine learning for large scale copywriting needs and now more brands are thinking to implement the technology. According to Persado, the company is already offering its services to various clients across different industries from hospitality to retail and finance.
Starbucks
Many leading global brands are integrating predictive analytics into their marketing functions to be able to understand customers’ needs better and deliver them a more personalized experience. According to Aberdeen, predictive analytics is helping businesses to boost their organic revenue by over 20%, in comparison to 12% for companies that aren’t using predictive analysis.
One of the biggest examples of predictive analytics potential is Starbucks, which has successfully implemented the technology to improve its customer services. The company has implemented predictive analytics for which it collected and analyzed customers’ data through mobile apps and loyalty cards.
By implementing the technology, Starbucks was able to significantly improve their level of personalized services offered to customers. The technology was able to store the purchase history details including the order type and time of the day. This data is then analyzed by predictive analytics that helps the company to generate highly personalized marketing messages and recommendations to customers, which helps to increase the value of the order by customers.
Alibaba
The Chinese retail giant Alibaba is no stranger when it comes to implementing technology to improve the customer experience. The retail giant has now opened its latest venture “FashionAI” that is meant to enhance the retail experience for customers by leveraging the Artificial Intelligence.
The products offered on “FashionAI” comes with intelligent tags which are able to detect the touch. The store is also equipped with smart mirrors that display the details of the items picked by the customers, as well as, give suggestions for supplementary products. In the future, the store will be integrated with a virtual wardrobe, to allow customers’ to go through the items which they tried on physically.
Nike
Nike is yet another global brand that is continuously increasing its customer experience by integrating technology. The company has been enabling its customers to design their custom sneakers with the “Nike Maker’s experience”. The experience enables customers to create a completely customized design for themselves including the graphics and colors they prefer. This feat is achieved by the company through augmented reality and projection systems. Once the customers are done designing their unique sneakers, they are made available in only 90 minutes.
The brilliant technology-driven tactic not only helped Nike to further improve the sales for the company, but it also enables Nike to collect customers’ data and know more about customer preferences. The data collected is then processed through the advanced machine learning algorithms to come up with better and more interactive designs for future products, as well as, create more personalized marketing messages.
BMW
The leading car manufacturer in the world BMW is yet another global brand that is leveraging on the power and unique capabilities of Artificial Intelligence to create innovative products and offer personalized customer experience.
The car manufacturing giant has launched its AI-enhanced sports car product, which is specifically meant to attract technology and car fanatics who want individuality. This technology-enabled car is able to recognize the driver preferences including the driving style and then automatically modify the systems and cabin to give drivers a unique driving experience.
BMW has also put in the market an intelligent personal assistant (much like virtual assistants), which can communicate with drivers. The assistant is able to predict travel routes, deliver alerts and notifications, as well as, integrate with other apps, to offer customers a unique driving experience.
The latest pull of BMW to integrate futuristic technology into their car systems is to attract more customers who are increasingly looking for advanced technologies in their cars. This is further established by a survey conducted by Cox Automotive that concluded that car enthusiasts today are willing to sacrifice colors and brands for the latest technology.
Conclusion
These are some of the prominent case studies of how Artificial Intelligence is driving up the market for leading global brands. Over the years, powerful analytics technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, and others have made a significant impact on all types and sizes of businesses; enabling them to create more personalized, and innovative marketing strategies to drive sales. And this is only the beginning, there’s much more we can expect to see in the future.
Muhammad Imran is a digital technologist and marketing specialist who likes to experiment with the futuristic and disruptive technologies and predict how these technologies will transform consumer trends. His areas of interest include technology, market behavior, digital marketing, futuristic scenarios, and financial landscape.