Editor’s note: The two pieces from Think with Google and Digiday discuss two perspectives on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and marketing.
Forward-thinking companies are using machine learning tools to supercharge their marketing. These early adopters take advantage of the technology’s ability to streamline data, unlock user insights, and engage users in highly relevant ways. In fact, 85% of executives believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage (The Boston Consulting Group).
Marketers still have to excavate piles of data to answer their most pressing questions:
Faced with all of this data—and the ever-growing ways to parse it—it’s becoming difficult for marketers to know exactly how to get the best return on every dollar invested. According to McKinsey & Company, across all occupations in the U.S. economy, one third of the time spent in the workplace involves collecting and processing data.
The time and resources spent on digging through data means less time devoted to high-level tasks such as refining the marketing strategy or improving the product experience. By analyzing millions of data points in real time and making smart, optimized decisions to improve business performance, machine learning enables marketers to do more at scale—and frees up time to focus on more strategic tasks.
It also simplifies the marketing process. You determine the business objectives you want to achieve, you define your qualified audience—for instance, gamers who are likely to reach level 10 of your game or shoppers who are likely to spend more than $50 a month in your app—then you let the system figure out where and how to reach and engage the relevant prospects.
Although machine learning is streamlining the marketing process, people still play a critical role. Machine learning is only as good as the information you feed it. It’s incumbent on marketers and agencies to access the right data, identify the most critical business objectives—such as customer lifetime value—and continuously optimize the end-to-end customer journey.
Spero, J. (2017, November). How Machine Learning Is Changing the Game for App Marketers. Think with Google.
Spero, J. (2017, November). How Machine Learning Is Changing the Game for App Marketers. Think with Google.