To be a good marketer, understanding people and human behavior is essential. Knowing this and mastering it can present challenges, as marketers are also humans. And every person is prone to seeing the world through their own subjective lens. The irony is machines in the form of AI are helping humans fine-tune their perceptions.
With AI, marketers are improving their abilities to grasp, predict, and cater to audience behaviors. And as 2024 emerges, technology will keep driving trends that marketing professionals will want to stay on top of. This article will delve into four of them.
1. Predictive Analytics Become More Well-Rounded
Pop culture has played with the idea of knowing the future for decades. Choose your own adventure books and TV series playing with time travel or parallel universes are examples. If you know how specific choices will pan out, you’ll make the ones with the best outcomes, right? It’s a dilemma everyone’s up against, and marketers are no exception.
The difference is they’re attempting to predict which ad placement, lead-gen strategy, and creative campaign will drive the most revenue. When marketers’ choices don’t lead to desired results, there’s more skin in the game. It’s why predictive analytics have become a mainstay in the industry. But AI stands to take the practice of using data to make marketing-related decisions to the next level.
Platforms like Hawke AI leverage technology to analyze and outpace the competition. AI has enough power to combine insights, probable outcomes, and data from multiple sources. It can reveal what products your target audience craves, digital content opportunities, and gaps your competitors aren’t addressing. AI identifies where you’re losing your audience’s interest and ways to recapture it. The technology stands to amplify what predictive analytics can do today.
2. Personalized Product Recommendations Go Into Overdrive
Marketers and consumers are already seeing the trend of personalized product recommendations take hold. However, more companies will shift toward AI as the driving force behind its success in e-commerce. AI’s algorithms can step in as a pseudo salesperson, suggesting products based on a customer’s behaviors. The key is these algorithms tailor recommendations to the individual and update them in real time.
Online retailers like Amazon leverage AI to provide personalized digital shopping experiences, including product recommendations. The data backs the company’s decision to use the technology. It may be responsible for up to 31% of online store sales. Plus, personalized product suggestions boost the average number of sold items per cart by 68%. Conversion rates can also increase by 320%.
AI-backed product recommenders provide highly-targeted suggestions while increasing their accuracy. The technology extends the shopping experience by generating app notifications and emails with individualized content. It can recommend products and offer savings updates in real-time as each customer’s behavior shifts. The algorithm adjusts if someone grabs onto a new flavor at their favorite coffee. This week’s deal highlights the same to encourage a return.
3. Hybrid Content Creation Increases Audience Engagement
Digital content is what brings in leads. Yet, blogs and other online content must hit home with target audiences to convert. Marketers can brainstorm topics using keyword research and other tools to capture an audience’s interest. However, human writers have limited capacity when it comes to producing the content. In addition, keyword research and topic generators aren’t infallible.
You might find keyword phrases with high volume and low difficulty. It seems like the perfect match. But will the content you create around those keywords resonate with your target market and fully satisfy their search intent? It’s often a guess until the piece goes out into the digital world.
AI content creation tools streamline and refine the process, aiding marketers in their quest to produce higher-converting pieces. Simultaneously, brands are realizing the value of creating hybrid content. What 100% AI-produced pieces lack, humans can augment. By merging the range of AI and human-driven talent, content can better align with what audiences are looking for. As a result, companies will see a boost in conversion and engagement rates.
4. Email Campaigns Get a Facelift
On average, a person gets between 100 and 120 emails each day. Are they reading all of them? Probably not. More than likely, they’re only opening and skimming the most relevant ones. The rest end up in the virtual trash or become spam reports.
Email campaigns may be effective, but they’re only as good as your lists, subject lines, and content. Say your list is outdated and cluttered. Your team hasn’t gotten around to scrubbing it in a while. It’s also not segmented, containing duplicate contacts and inaccurate information. Sending emails to this list won’t be as effective as you’d like, even with compelling content.
But who has the time to constantly scrub, segment, and tweak lists? It’s a time-consuming, tedious task with enough work to justify a full-time position. That makes it perfect for AI. AI can increase the effectiveness of your emails by automating list clean-up activities. The technology can also personalize subject lines and other content while monitoring engagement levels.
Similar to hybrid content creation, AI serves as a partner to human-based email marketing teams. It ensures your brand is targeting the people most likely to convert with more powerful messages. At the same time, AI makes sure you’re not annoying the people who don’t want to hear from you. The technology can improve deliverability, reduce spam reports, cut down on unsubscribes, and enhance personalization.
AI Marketing Trends
AI is reshaping the digital marketing profession as the technology becomes more capable of replicating human intelligence. The benefits for marketers include improved strategies, competitive moves, and campaign outcomes. As 2024’s AI marketing trends play out, brands will need to embrace and experiment with them to come out ahead.