Artificial intelligence is streamlining and expanding marketing efforts by automating tasks and powering new tools that fundamentally change the customer experience, both in-person and online.
The post 7 Top AI Marketing Trends (2024): What’s Hot and Worth Watching appeared first on eWEEK.
AI marketing trends for 2024 demonstrate the dramatic impact of artificial intelligence on the field, affecting everything from how companies are listed in search engine results pages to how customers interact with their products using augmented reality in brick-and-mortar stores. AI technologies are making marketing efforts faster and more efficient, generating content and automating tasks to streamline workloads and reach new audiences. The number of AI solutions dedicated to marketing is also on the rise, giving marketers new tools with new capabilities. Here are the top seven AI marketing trends worth watching in 2024.
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A “zero-click search” is when a user queries a search engine but doesn’t click on any of the organic search results, instead obtaining the information from elsewhere on the search engine results page (SERP). These other sources might include snippets—short responses displayed above organic results—or other SERP features that let users view maps, book reservations, or purchase items without ever leaving the page.
Google recently trialed its new search generative experience (SGE), which provides an AI-assisted overview of query responses. These new SERP summaries rank AI material over other results, followed by sponsored results, Google’s own suggestions, and organic content. While SGE is still in an experimental stage, it’s being tested in more than 120 countries and is being billed—for better or for worse—as the future of search.
Businesses that rely on search results to reach their audiences need to understand the impact of SGE and adjust their methods accordingly. To remain visible on Google’s SERP:
Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 have transformed conversational AI’s ability to comprehend context, generate coherent replies, and emulate human speech patterns, leading to more natural and engaging human interactions with chatbots. Marketing specialists can use LLMs to create chatbots and virtual assistants capable of conversations that closely mimic human communication, increasing user engagement and satisfaction.
Because LLMs can handle complicated queries, provide tailored suggestions, and respond to user demands quickly, they result in a more seamless experience. Chatbots driven by LLMs can also help businesses provide round-the-clock customer care, guaranteeing that consumers receive rapid replies and increasing overall satisfaction. Gartner predicts that the usage of conversational AI solutions will increase by 24 percent by 2024, with a significant focus on customer-facing solutions, including 24/7 support chatbots.
Experimenting with the creation and training of chatbots to improve client interactions can help you stay ahead of the curve. Remember, human monitoring is required to ensure they function successfully and appropriately. Here are some steps to get started:
Retailers are increasingly using augmented reality (AR) to change the way customers interact with their products, considerably improving the overall customer experience. Using AR, customers can try on outfits, accessories, and cosmetics virtually, resulting in an immersive and entertaining purchase experience. It also allows buyers to envision products in different surroundings by superimposing digital information on the actual world, allowing for more informed purchasing decisions for items like furniture, home décor, and clothes.
According to Threekit, 61 percent of customers choose stores that provide a variety of AR experiences. AR adoption benefits both consumers and sellers by reducing return rates and personalizing the shopping experience to individual preferences, driving engagement. Additionally, AR can lead to cost savings for retailers by attracting tech-savvy consumers and creating memorable interactions, thereby reducing marketing costs.
AR technology can be implemented in a variety of ways to help improve your product offerings. To get started:
Using computer generated imagery (CGI) to create visual content using computer graphics and 3D modeling techniques is opening up a wide range of marketing opportunities by enabling firms to promote products and tell stories in appealing ways. CGI lets marketers create hyperrealistic product renderings with precise representations of everything from smartphones to luxury watches to provide interactive virtual experiences for customers such as virtual try-ons for fashion products or room representations for furniture, improving the online buying experience.
In addition, CGI feeds creative storytelling pathways, allowing marketers to create visually spectacular storylines through animated shorts and immersive 360-degree experiences to deepen brand communication. CGI content’s dynamic visuals and interactive elements catch public attention and enhance brand memorability, leaving a lasting impression on consumers. According to Threekit, consumer preferences align with the adoption of CGI experiences, with 61 percent expressing a preference for retailers providing AR and VR experiences.
Investing in CGI technology and skills can help your marketing initiatives succeed, but the bar to entry can be high. Collaborating with skilled CGI artists or firms is the quickest way. Here are some other steps to help you get started:
AI-powered email automation can help marketers segment lists, customize content, and automate triggers based on user behavior, increasing the efficacy of email marketing efforts. Marketers can use powerful AI authoring tools to create dynamic email sequences that adapt to individual preferences, optimizing send timings and frequency to increase engagement while reducing unsubscribes.
Popular systems provide extensive functionality for personalized communication. As organizations prioritize individualized communication, AI-powered email marketing is projected to gain traction, highlighting its influence on client connections. AI’s predictive analytics abilities let marketers anticipate customer requirements and preferences to offer relevant information at an appropriate time.
Start by assessing your existing email workflow to find pain spots and potential for automation. Choose a reputable AI-powered email platform such as MailChimp, Klaviyo, or Drip, and make sure it corresponds with your company objectives. Here’s how to get started:
As AI evolves, advertisers are prioritizing the creation of highly relevant and personalized advertising material to capture viewers’ attention. AI-driven campaign evaluation looks at data from past efforts to help marketers produce personalized content that connects with their target demographics and is tuned to consumer interactions.
AI can retarget consumers with suitable offers based on their past interactions, improving ad placement and boosting conversion. AI-driven bidding algorithms change bids in real-time to optimize conversions while staying under budget. Establishing a feedback loop enables ongoing changes in ad content and targeting settings depending on performance indicators.
To optimize AI-driven ad targeting, look beyond campaign KPIs and dig deeper into individual data points such as conversion rates and audience demographics as follows:
Predictive analytics is essential for fine-tuning marketing tactics, allocating resources, and accurately forecasting market movements. Predictive models can provide valuable insights for campaign optimization by examining historical data to help segment audiences, target content production, and select the right communications channels. In addition, predictive analytics helps with resource allocation by guiding budget distribution, optimizing the workforce, and controlling inventories based on projected demand patterns.
Predictive models estimate market trends to allow for more proactive decisions in sales, demand forecasting, and price strategy. Enhanced by AI, predictive skills are constantly evolving, resulting in such breakthroughs as tailored product suggestions, churn prediction, and customer lifetime value assessment. Statistical research emphasizes the importance of predictive analytics, indicating that organizations adept in its usage are nearly three times more likely to succeed in revenue development, whereas tailored methods are driven by predictive models that can create substantial revenue increases of up to 15 percent.
To effectively use predictive analytics:
AI is transforming the way marketers work in numerous ways, and corporations like Mastercard, Zara, Sephora, and ClickUp are using it to make the best of their marketing strategies and deliver great results.
Mastercard uses social media data analytics to improve business strategies. Recently, the company tested its new AI-powered social listening tool, Digital Engine, to analyze billions of online conversations to identify emerging microtrends and popular travel and entertainment topics. As a result, the company saw a 37 percent increase in click-through rates (CTR), a 43 percent increase in engagement, and a 29 percent reduction in cost per engagement. Mastercard uses social listening intelligence not only for insights but also to shape ideation, product development, brand engagement, reputation tracing, and customer behavior and preferences.
Zara produces over 450 million items per year. The company uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to make merchandising decisions, personalize customer experiences, and manage its supply chain. With the help of AI, Zara is able to identify appropriate styles, colors, sizes, and types of fittings that their customers prefer by analyzing customer data preferences. In collaboration with Jetlore, an AI consumer behavior analysis and predictive analysis platform, Zara is able to personalize customer experience based on shopping data and make more educated business decisions that let it produce more styles, colors, and sizes that customers prefer.
French makeup brand Sephora has been using conversational AI chatbot technology to provide a more personalized and informative customer experience. Based on data collected from the chatbot, Sephora realized that customers are overwhelmed by the number of products it has to offer, making it difficult to find specific items they need. As a result, Sephora launched an interactive quiz to help identify which products to show customers first. Sephora’s chatbot can also provide lipstick shade personalization—an AI color match assistant incorporated into the chatbot gives product suggestions based on customer input.
Needing to optimize 500 blogs for SEO purposes and create more SEO-based content for better organic search traffic, ClickUp turned to SurferSEO’s content editor and used its Content Intelligence features to provide various topics of relevance to its target audience. The company was able to develop a content calendar to produce these blogs and improve rankings on the search engine results page. With the help of this Content Intelligence, ClickUp optimized 130 articles and published 150 more, boosting organic traffic by 85 percent.
AI has drastically revolutionized the job market in the marketing field, changing how professionals approach their jobs by increasing efficiency, giving data-driven insights, and encouraging strategic thinking and creativity. By automating tedious processes like data input, lead generation, and social media posting, AI lets marketing specialists focus more on creative strategy. AI-powered technologies also create individualized content, optimize headlines, and identify the best distribution channels, allowing for more scalable content creation.
AI’s predictive analytics and better audience segmentation allow marketing specialists to anticipate customer behavior, optimize campaigns, and provide tailored experiences that increase engagement and conversions. Instead of replacing marketing specialists, AI supplements their experiences by recommending ideal methods and fostering creativity. Using AI technologies like chatbots and recommendation engines ultimately allows marketers to achieve more, innovate, and drive strategic outcomes.
Content creation production in marketing has sped up the entire process by using different AI content creation tools such as content writing, media creation, and music creation. It allows content creators to elevate their creativity with the help of these AI tools. This doesn’t mean that these AI content creation tools will replace them—it will just help bring their ideas to life.
Ethical AI in marketing supports the responsible and transparent use of artificial intelligence technologies, which is critical for retaining consumer trust and adhering to legislation. Consumers want brands to handle their data in a responsible and transparent manner, and ethical practices in AI assist in creating and maintaining confidence. Brands that value ethical AI not only build great customer interactions but also ensure that their marketing methods comply with privacy rules such as GDPR and CCPA.
AI has had a positive impact on marketing specialists, with scores of AI tools designed specifically for their field. It can help automate and optimize their jobs, allowing them to focus more on the human side of things such as negotiation, strategizing, and editing certain content to fit the company’s brand voice. AI still needs humans to deliver the best results.
The future of marketing in the age of AI promises great transformation, with AI-driven personalization improving customer engagement by facilitating tailored experiences through precise customer segmentation, predictive analytics, and dynamic content optimization. AI delivers real-time analysis and decision-making to help marketing specialists manage resources more effectively and respond to market developments more dynamically. As the integration of AI further empowers marketing specialists, businesses worldwide will increasingly use AI tools that accelerate efficiency and effectiveness.
Read our guide to the strategies, tools, and best practices for using AI in content marketing to learn more about how organizations can deploy this powerful new technology to automate work and better engage customers.
The post 7 Top AI Marketing Trends (2024): What’s Hot and Worth Watching appeared first on eWEEK.
