Written by Ron Cohen – Founder and CEO at iBrid.io
As artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of people’s lives, businesses are using its power in many ways. These include improving workflow, automating tasks and gaining valuable insights about their customers. According to a Salesforce survey, nearly half (51 percent) of marketers rely on AI to further their work. The study also shows that the number will likely increase by 27 percent by 2019.
SMBs Using AI in Marketing
Small-medium businesses (SMBs) are currently embracing the chance to set bigger marketing goals and achieve more through AI. The technology is helping them deliver smarter, predictive and more personalized customer experiences. They also get to stay abreast with the trends in their respective industries and have an edge over their competitors.
SMB marketers can benefit from AI applications just as the marketers for other big companies do. However, they need to cultivate a culture of consistently using these applications. AI applications are crucial in transforming and enhancing the way SMBs create content, conduct tiring tasks and analyze data as discussed below.
- Finding the Right Prospects for Products or Services
Before the adoption of AI in marketing, businesses of all sizes spent lots of energy and resources to find the right prospects for their offerings. Today, businesses including small-medium ones can personalize the experiences their customers get from their offerings. They manage to do this because AI applications are helping them to effectively focus on audience segments when planning their marketing campaigns. The applications help them reach more customers with the right offer at the right time.
2. Enhancing Proactive Interactions
With an emphasis on productivity, SMBs can use AI to foster proactive interactions with their target audiences. The technology helps them use their marketing campaigns as tools for engaging with potential customers. If a consumer is engaged in a conversation, he or she are more likely to buy the product or service. The interaction itself needs to be as interactive as possible to increase the impressions it gets.
3. Data Generation
AI applications have been a powerful force in the analysis of consumer data ever since marketers started using them. Computer software are becoming better in the automation of common human senses such as hearing and sight. This factor has made AI to rapidly move from data analysis to data generation while helping businesses automate and realize multi-channel interactions with customers.
4. Transforming SMB Marketers to Proactive Planners
SMB marketers need to be as proactive as possible to help scale their enterprises. They can rely on the enhanced analytics provided by AI when effectively planning and executing campaigns in different areas. These include tracking, keyword tagging, and segmentation.
5. Assisting in Content Creation
Content creation is an activity largely based on human intelligence. However, AI applications are changing the way content is created, without eliminating the role that marketers play in the process. AI tools enable marketers to generate content automatically on simple topics such as sports reports and stock updates. More AI applications that can generate better and precise content are under development to help marketers from different sizes of businesses.
Final Thoughts
AI is a crucial game-changer when it comes to small-medium business marketing. The ability to work smarter and automate marketing activities enables SMBs save time and money, and focus on building true relationships with their target customers.
About Guest Contributor: Ron Cohen is the founder and CEO of iBrid.io, a Smart Marketing Platform tailored for SMBs needs.
