Is marketing a herculean task to do? If this question was asked 10 or 20 years ago, the answer would be a confident “no”. Because at that time businesses were heavily dependent on Posters, Pamphlets, Television Advertisements, Newspaper Advertisements, etc. The technology was not that developed during those days and promoting a product seemed to be a difficult task to do. But at present, marketing is not that much a tough ask. Today, each business has at least one web designing and development company to support them by building and maintaining an attractive website. Also, we have many platforms to perform marketing. Yes, Posters, TV ads, Newspaper Ads, etc. are still methods for performing marketing but more than that Social Media and Artificial Intelligence are a much easier way to do marketing than those methods. Marketing can be performed successfully without even falling into a sweat using these two inevitable methods.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Before going to Artificial Intelligence let’s go to Natural Intelligence. Yes, Natural Intelligence is the intelligence possessed by humans. Just imagine if all the activities done by humans are done by a machine/device. This is called Artificial Intelligence. John McCarthy, an American Computer Scientist is considered the father of Artificial Intelligence. According to John McCarthy, “Artificial Intelligence is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”. The aim of Artificial Intelligence is to create systems that think, learn, understand, and behave like humans. It is also called “Machine Intelligence”. Artificial Intelligence is having a great impact on the business world, especially in the area of marketing. The purpose of AI is to make human life easier, simplifying our daily tasks and helping us to be more productive. AI is active in almost all the devices that we use currently. Computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc. use AI for many purposes. In the latest computers and smartphones, we have a face recognition procedure, which is a part of AI. If we take the case of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, etc. AI also plays a major role there. In Facebook, if a security check is required, some images and videos are shown on the screen including the respective user’s, and the user has to verify it by selecting his/her images and videos from the given list. Hence AI is used in almost everything that we use at present. Not only in electronic devices AI can also be helpful for Education purposes, Marketing, Banking, etc. It is believed that AI will make a huge impact in the upcoming days.
Classification of AI
The 8 important subdivisions of AI are listed below:
- Knowledge Engineering: We have heard a lot about the words “knowledge” and “information”. Have you ever thought about the difference between these two words? Information is something that we get after analyzing anything. This information will only become knowledge if we learn and understand the same. This process of inserting knowledge into a computer or any other machine is called Knowledge Engineering.
- Machine Learning: Here the system collects information, understands that information, and learns the information on its own.
- Machine Perception: Here the machine is inculcated with its input to know the surroundings well and to behave accordingly.
- Neural Networks: Here the machine is developed to think and understand by itself.
- Natural Language Processing: Here the machine is set to adapt to its natural language and provide the output when something is asked to it.
- Data Mining: It is the process of selecting the required data from a long list of raw data using the machine. The data mining tools allow enterprises to predict future trends.
- Fuzzy Logic: In simple words, Fuzzy logic says that the developed machine can resemble a human being.
- Expert Systems: It is a computer system that collects the required information understands that information by itself and finally provides the desired output.
Role of AI in Marketing
AI plays a major role in marketing. Some of the important roles are listed below.
- Market Analysis: AI can deliver a market analysis for businesses, especially in the case of consumers. It can acquire data and create large data and get all the information required about the consumer. As a result of this, we can predict the habits of the consumers, and even predict what they want and when they want. Hence we can provide the product for the consumer at the correct time when he/she needs it. Market Analysis can also be done in case of sales so that we can decide on which product we have to invest more.
- Create Content: At present using AI, we cannot write blogs or any other large content. But let’s hope that in the coming future, it will be possible. But currently, AI can create recommendations that are really outstanding. As already mentioned in Market Analysis, AI knows everything about the consumer without even leaving a bit. So that it can behave according to the needs of the consumer and hence can create recommendations. For example, if a consumer is interested in a product, using AI we can recommend another product related to that product to the consumer which the consumer will have a great interest in.
- Searching for Information: If we need to know about something, we will straightly go to Google and will search. This was what occurred for a long time and yes even now. But as AI is growing, this trend is slowly changing. Virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana gained a high positive response from the people and are likely to dominate in the coming future and surely this will be an obstacle for Google. Yes, the current life is making people get everything through the simplest ways and yes people will move on according to simplicity and quality which AI provides the best. Also a special mention to SEO which played a crucial role in this change.
- Chatbot: Another service provided by AI is Chatbot. Actually, Chatbot is the short term as “Chat Robot” is it’s complete term. As the name indicates, Chatbot is a chat service that interacts through instant messaging, artificially replicating the patterns of human interactions. Most of the eCommerce Website Developing companies include chatbot as a feature for the website they build. Here computers inculcated with machine language and natural language interacts with the customer. If a customer has any doubts or issues regarding a product, then he/she can interact with Chatbot. It is the future of customer service. With Chatbot growing it’s roots, man to man customer care service will be slowly minimizing and there is a possibility of Chatbot dominating in the coming future.
Social Media in Marketing
We had already discussed the role of AI in marketing. Similar to AI, social media also plays a crucial role in marketing. Social media is very effective at present. People who are not active in social media will be very less. Due to its activeness, marketing will taste a sure success in social media no matter whether it is Facebook/ Whats App/ Instagram/ Twitter/YouTube. Advertisements are the key to success for any business in social media. On YouTube, if we watch any video, it is evident that at the start of the video or in the middle of the video, advertisements will come. That is a marketing technique to gain the attention of people.
On Facebook, companies create a page and post all the details about the company, it’s products, etc. so that people can view it and if willing can purchase the product. A similar procedure is done in the case of Instagram and Twitter. Even though online shopping companies have their own apps, they are also using social media as a platform for both advertising and interacting with the customer for a deal. Hence social media plays a significant role in marketing.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence will surely dominate the world in the upcoming days. The main reason for this is the facility and comfortability that it provides to humanity. Yes, the whole world will be redefined by AI in the coming days. Technology has developed in one way or another in each generation and the next is the AI revolution. Our universe has changed a lot compared to the past and let the coming revolution be a good one, human-friendly one, harmless and finally a beneficial one.