Why marketers need AI and predictive data analytics to stand out and stay ahead
As the saying goes: the only constant is change. It certainly applies to the tech marketing world.
New trends in marketing can often transform how companies decide to engage with audience, differentiate, drive results, and inform future direction. Today, we’re seeing artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics making an impact on marketing strategy and execution.
What we’ve seen is that these technologies are enabling the creation of innovative and data-driven marketing programs that support brand awareness and demand generation objectives, optimize operations for marketing departments, and deliver intelligence needed to win business.
In this blog post, we will share ways AI and data analytics redefining marketing excellence, as well as interesting tools on the market today.
Actionable data insights: The backbone of strategic decisions
Data analytics is the foundation for successful marketing programs, offering deep insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and trends, and empowering marketers to make informed decisions that optimize campaign effectiveness.
Analytics and analysis provide a granular understanding of the market, campaign effectiveness, and the ability to make informed decisions based on actionable insights. These insights inform every aspect of marketing strategy, from content creation to channel selection and timing of campaigns.
Marketers can identify what resonates with their audience, tailor messages accordingly, and continuously optimize programs for better outcome and relevancy in the market.
However, a common challenge for marketers is finding patterns and turning them into actionable insights in real time.
Merging of AI with data science
AI can turn raw data into valuable intelligence. Every business has a wealth of data, much of its potential untapped. By bringing together internal customer data sources and external channels such as websites, social media, and paid platforms, AI-driven analytics can reveal the full story.
Forbes had a great article that dives into the subject of the convergence of data science and AI and its necessity in modern marketing. Accordingly, where marketers will be able to see the revolutionary effect of AI-driven analytics is:
- tailored marketing using AI algorithms to identify customer preferences and personalize campaigns
- predictive analytics about market changes and audience behavior for more customer-focused communications and campaigns
- real-time decision making that aligns marketing strategies to market conditions
Deep understanding of your customer, the market, and emerging changes is critical to every facet of business, not just marketing. Prioritizing AI-driven analytics helps to secure long-term success.
Traditional and generative AI capabilities
What’s been described above is often referred to as “traditional AI” application. Bernard Marr lays it out quite clearly in his Forbes article, noting that we’re in the next frontier of AI with “generative AI”.
The difference he describes: “Traditional AI can analyze data and tell you what it sees, but generative AI can use that same data to create something entirely new.” And the two work together. An example he shares is how traditional AI can analyze customer behavior data and a generative AI can use that analysis to create personalized content.
New efficiencies and capabilities to captivate audiences
The impact of AI “finding” and “creating” can be seen externally and internally within marketing. AI has provided marketers new capabilities for:
- customer segmentation and personalization for better, more immediate customer experiences
- more targeted marketing strategies to reach desired audiences with the right messages
- forecasting future consumer behaviors
- crafting compelling narratives and content creation
For marketers, AI opens new avenues for creativity and innovation. We want new technology to help us by giving us the time to do the things we love most. For marketers, that often means reducing administration time and routine tasks in favor of pursuing strategic and creative endeavors.
Integrating AI into marketing operations for automation, content development, analysis, and personalization gives marketers that flexibility to get more creative, test new ideas, and innovate on the fly.
GenAI innovation in market today
We see marketing excellence requiring a blend of both traditional and generative AI.
Many tools and technologies marketers use today are incorporating AI features for new creation capabilities, efficiencies, and better insights. And there are many new GenAI tools entering the market since ChatGPT’s entrance on the scene seeking to solve marketers pain points.
These are a few tools we’ve come across (and in some cases used and integrated into our own marketing and client projects): Jasper AI, Drift, Grammarly, Lilli AI, Copilot.
While marketing tools have their place (and often we have too many), AI holds a lot of promise to captivate audiences and see better ROI.
We see AI and long-term success in B2B marketing inherently linked. If you’re interested in talking more about how we’re using AI and helping clients take advantage, please reach out.