According to Constellation Research, businesses across all sectors will spend more than $100 billion per year on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies by 2025, up from a mere $2 billion in 2015. The marketing industry will be no exception.
How Marketers Can Start Integrating AI in Their Work
Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise for making marketing more intelligent, efficient, consumer-friendly, and, ultimately, more effective. Smart marketers are developing, partnering to build, or integrating AI into their tech stacks to get better at what they do. To get started leveraging AI in your marketing efforts, it’s important to first confirm your policies regarding the handling of consumer data, transparency, and control. Consumers should be able to interact with connected devices — from web browsers to mobile phones to voice assistants — knowing that their data is being used in transparent ways, in a manner consistent with their preferences and expectations. Then, make sure that your data is actionable, for example by using a unique, common identifier for individual consumers across all of your company’s various channels and touchpoints. Finally, be sure to choose the right AI partner. Be sure to choose a partner that has true AI, not simply rules-based decisioning, which is impossible to scale for the volume of data and combinations of interactions that marketers are managing today. In addition, be sure to choose partners with real experience addressing your particular use cases and working with your existing technology partners. Finally, as with any vendor relationship, be sure to check on your partner’s ethical and philopshical approach to AI, as this is still an emerging technology that demands thoughtful guardrails to produce effective results in a responsible manner.