Marketing in the age of AI

Many of us were introduced to the world of Artificial Intelligence by James Cameron through Terminator. Since then the concept was more or less developing in labs. Since 2016, AI started gaining momentum and popularity, now it is a hot topic in the business world & everyone is discussing on how artificial intelligence is going to bring big changes in the day to day functioning of organizations and its activities. 

Among the various fields that are going to get affected, the fields that are  directly related to offering customer experience will see the most disruptive changes. The role of AI in marketing will be how well the organizations are going to adapt AI concepts to improvise the customer experience. Offering a better customer experience need not be an entirely new application or method, it can simultaneously be a small change that reduces the time and effort of the user. 

The age of Predictive Marketing

A time when data is the most valuable resource and all our activities are monitored and recorded online we can be rest assured that we are in an age of   predictive marketing. One attribute of AI that is going to make a big impact for brands are Data Mining. It is assumed that daily nearly 4 billion Facebook messages are posted and google processes more than 5.5 billion search results.
This amounts of a big amount of data. In-depth analysis of such data will be crucial for behavioral forecasting and this eventually help the brands to do segmentation of customers. Closely understanding the needs and wants of customers will help the brands to fine tune their offering accordingly. Along with reducing the workload this will also increase the work of marketers, as more time is required for strategy building and campaign planning. How fast and how close you understand the possible needs of your potential customer will differentiate the success one brand from another. Thus the coming age will see more of Geo-targeting, voice search, automated content creation and personalized offerings. 

Certainly an ecosystem that can suggest us things before we initiate the request will be a curious one to deal with.

Image source:Freepik

Challanges in Digital Marketing 2018

Earlier this year, a report published by one of the leading advertising intelligence company says that the digital advertising spends by two of the biggest advertisers P&G and Unilever dropped nearly by 40% and 60% respectively. Major reasons for this was the issues raised in terms of Fraud, wastage & lack of transparency the brands observed in the digital space. 

As new technologies & methods are evolving in the digital arena, the challenges for the technology providers will also increase to convince the brands to follow the new methods smoothly. Along with the technological transformation challenges, the brands will also have to face the challenges in the customer front.  

Reaching out to Millennial -  Millennial's are the most diverse generation with the shortest attention span and with different purchasing habits. You can easily reach out to them through online but difficult to get them on board. 
They search a lot before making a buying decision or trusting a brand but are good brand followers. Brands need to adopt a different media mix if they want to target the Millennials. The role of influencer's will be vital for this age group. Keeping social media in mind, brands need to develop a network of influencer's & peer groups through which they can position their products convincingly to this group.

Relevant content in all formats - Content marketing caught the attention of marketers since the last couple of years and everyone started developing contents for the customers. Indeed there started the real problem for marketers. Now the contents are available everywhere & in such a market how you will gain popularity with your content. This is were brands should think about need based contents. Content in all formats whether its written, videos or infographics should be prepared considering the knowledge level of your customers. One more format of content which will matter to brands will be User generated content (UGC). Considering nearly 40% of the shoppers are currently online and majority of them spend a good amount of time in reviews and comments before reaching the final decision making stage. UGC is something which the brands need to focus on. Thus, content marketing is not just about preparing & distributing relevant contents but it should also be considered as a vital tool for customer engagement and brand promotion.

Reading the data right - We are in the age of 4G and will soon move to 5G. Along with speed comes the increase in the volume of data consumption. The future for digital marketing will also consist how the brands are going to interpret the data's. Right interpretation will help them for right customer profiling which will help for right product offering which eventually will lead to increase in sales and revenue generation. The coming years will also witness companies investing in getting right resources in these fields. 

Even though many consider AI, Chatbot etc as the challenges, i wish to consider them as opportunities. These are the technological advancement in which the brands will invest for a better user experience & customer service. 

Digital Marketing beyond Google

The year 2000 started not just as a new year but the year after the Y2K also heard and experienced new terms such as AdWords, search optimisations, page ranking, content targeting etc. Google introduced marketers to a new world with immense possibilities and a platform to make and offer things more personal. Thus began the new age of digital advertising. Today google alone controls 11 to 12% of total media spend globally. And in India, the digital advertising share is expected to be more than 12% of the total marketing budget. But over these years, like in any field, diversification and innovation started reflecting in Online marketing also. Today digital marketing is not just Google. Along with google, marketers are now experimenting other channels such as content marketing, native ads, social media marketing, Omni-channel marketing etc. But many brands, particularly in India are still considering google ads as the primary resource to reach out to its prospects. They need to understand that rather than pushing the pop-up ads to the customers you need to be more responsible and should give value to customers. 2015 was the year when brands and agencies noticed a downfall in the CTR of ads. The same year witnessed the growth of adblockers and increase in the spend on mobile. This is the same period when growth was witnessed in Native ads and sponsored contents. Brands now started to position their offering as informative content to the prospects. They started to explain the need and benefits of the product and what prospect is missing by not having them. Even the success of your social media campaigns depends on the quality of your contents. 

The future of digital marketing is expected to bring an addition in terms of wearable technology, AR & VR into the marketing plan of brands. So if you want to stay ahead of your competitors you need to realise that your customers are everywhere not just on Google. 

Marketing Lesson from Kabali

Whether you are a Thaliva fan or not, you can't escape from the Kabali storm that hit the country during the last weekend. I have never seen such a hype for a Rajanikanth film or for any other film in this country. Along with many things, the movie also displayed the role a proper 360 degree marketing campaign can have on the viewers or to its end customers. 

Brand association with movies are not new but this time, the makers of Kabali tried something new by having a tie up with an international airline. The initial curiosity about the movie was not that encouraging. But as the movie date was announced the Super Star power started showing its effect. Other brands also joined by releasing special coins, SIM card, ad campaign etc. 
In case of Rajnikanth, even the jokes will work in his favour. The hype picked its pace in the last 5 to 7 days where corporates in the state and nearby state declared holidays on the releasing date. Social media trolls on the "holiday concept" went viral in the last 48 hours. News channels, music channels, print and online started to play its role for Kabali. News about the midnight first-day screening, leak about the introduction video etc added to the curiosity. 

For me, the biggest learning from Kabali was the role of Content Marketing. How the contents are transformed into NEWS. Knowingly or Unknowingly we followed or got exposed to the news which otherwise intentionally we wouldn't have read. Thus we were a part of a well-strategised marketing plan or rather Kabali Effect.

Even the biggies need to do ads

In a country like India, no matter how big your brand is; you need to keep the consumer remind about yourself. I was curious to see Google and iPhone doing TVC during the on going T20 world cup. Irrespective of whether you are a user or not both these brands are now very much familiar with the audience. Google campaign was with an overlay of cricket showing a family including a kid in the first ad and couple of shoppers in the second situation. The iPhone ad was focusing particularly on a feature called Live photos co-promoted by two well known telecom providers. Both the brands were utilizing the popularity and reach of cricket among all age groups in India. By spending atleast 10 cr for a 10 sec slot during the match, either they are aggressively spending the remaining marketing budget left in this fiscal or they are expecting a drop in the sale which they are trying to restrict through the campaign. 

What ever be the actual scenario, this shows that concentrating only in a particular ad medium is not sufficient if you are aiming for a wide reach and acceptance in a diversified country like India. 

A Brand mascot and a Brand ambassador

Having a good product is not enough today to taste success in the market. All elements in the Marketing mix should fall  at the right place at the right time. One such aspect is the brand mascot or some times the brand ambassador that you select. There are brands which continued with the same mascot for multiple campaigns and stick to them for years. At the same time some brands were forced to bring back their successful mascot after trying to replace them for a new campaign. Brand also stick with their ambassador for multiple campaigns, a non celebrity is bought in and established overnight. The new Airtel Girl is one such example. Airtel through the campaign successfully launched their 4G as well as Sasha Chettri. Their second campaign that launched during the ICC world cup was the continuation of the first campaign with the same person upon the concept of wide network even on remote locations. The case of Vodafone was curious with their pug. After moving from Hutch to Vodafone as a part of their rebranding initiative they stopped the "You & I" concept with the dog in 2008. The influence of the pug in the mind of the viewers was so much that the brand was forced to reintroduce him later.  

Nirma girl & Parle G kid was so popular for ages that even without the brand name people will relate the mascots with the brands. Onida from 1983 to 2010 used its famous Devil for promoting them even during the stiff competition from LG during the early 2000. The big difference between a mascot and an ambassador is that, an ambassador is normally an individual and every good & bad aspects of him/her will effect the brand. Where as once a mascot is established you can take them for years and they will always be young in the mind of the customers or viewers. 

The trend called Social Media Marketing

New dimensions of marketing emerged with the growth of technology and of its end users. Since 2000, the growth of smartphones played a major role in deciding the way brands started communicating with its customers. Platforms such as google plus, linkedin, facebook, skype, twitter etc helped in the emergence of a new division called as Social Media Marketing. Over these years brands started realising the effective use of these platforms in getting much along with its customers and prospects. Initially Social media was a communication model which started with orkut & myspace and they were used mostly among the friend’s circles. Then, as the size of the group increased and features in the offering by new platforms became dynamic these platforms lost its charm. The new platforms along with them bought the importance of one more aspects i.e. Content Marketing. Valuable & relevant contents were shared with the customers which helped the brands to build brand awareness & thus create brand loyalty in an indirect way. The trend of social media has grown so much so that it is now an eminent part of any marketing plan. With over 2 billion smartphone users in the world social media is the most cost-effective method to connect with your customers and to promote your business. Also, when every individual is accessing more than 1 social app. in their Smartphone the importance of Content marketing or Viral marketing also gains its share.