10 Commandments for AI-Assisted Social Media Marketers

Marketers have readily adopted various tech-enabled means and tools to increase brand awareness and find the right target audiences for their clients.

But what if I told you that embracing AI-powered tools in Social Media (and implementing them correctly) will enhance every single customer's journey, thereby retaining much more of them, for much longer?

Think about your favorite products: Netflix which gives us personalized movie choices, Amazon, etc., all are AI-powered in order to give us a highly personalized user experience.

Bonus: AI tools are now relatively cheaper, making it easy for small and medium scale businesses to implement.

So, without further delay - read this to learn before you leap and make optimum utilization of AI in social media marketing.

Here are the 10 Commandments for AI-assisted social media marketers:

1. Smart Ad-Targeting using Programmatic Advertising

 Why not let AI predictive analysis determine who to and when to target potential customers for your products rather than following the retroactive approach. This can be done using Programmatic Advertising where real-time data of user’s likes, preferences, location, an active time during the day, intent to buy, etc are analyzed and the most relevant ad is posted to them through a bidding process. This increases the better chances of conversion and engagement. You can now invest more in potentially higher-value customers by adjusting various bidding strategies boosting the efficiency of their campaigns. 

Example: As per thebestmedia.com, Audi with the launch of luxury SUV, the Q2 created a programmatic ad campaign and this led to an average conversion rate four times higher than those bought using traditional methods.

2. Focus on Personalized Content

 AI demand has increased due to its ability to publish personalized interest-based ads for each individual customer. Marketers should explore new dimensions of marketing with a data-driven approach. For eg: When we browse Netflix or similar platforms you will notice every time the content displayed is matching your interests and likes. This is because of the AI algorithms which work in the background of this app making it more user-friendly and engaging. Marketers can boost their Revenue and ROI by improving content relevancy. 

Example: Spotify’s gives you personalized music playlist for every individual by analyzing their taste and favorites and was able to reach 40 million people in its first year and the number has grown many folds now as every week it lists new music as per its user’s likes.

3. Be Available 24/7 365 days 

Handling inquiries and queries only during business hours is an old-fashioned thing. Missing an opportunity is giving that opportunity to your competitors. Hence it’s vital to attend every inquiry no matter what time it is posted. Dedicated resources can sometimes lead to errors and unavailability. Fortunately, with artificial intelligence chatbot powered by Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, you can create a 24/7 online presence for initial support and queries no matter the day or time. This will hold your prospect from a competitor and later attend them personally at your office time to share more product details. 

Example: Mobile Monkey-Facebook Messenger Marketing Solution can take the contact lists and send chat blasts with auto-replies to promote your products. The 2018 State of Chatbot report from Salesforce tells 69% of the customers to prefer instant communication using Chatbots with brands.

4. Automate regular tasks

 Smart marketers are moving today’s smart AI tools to automate repetitive and tedious daily tasks. Updating the onboard and future customers about offers and deals is an everyday thing now with companies trying to lure their audience to strike a deal. AI tools can be your savior for email marketing. Your team can spend quality time and effort in more productive zones than to spends hours analyzing what to send to whom.

Example: Gmail has recently launched a Smart Compose solution that employs AI to learn typing habits of a user and automatically finish their sentences for them. Such tools should definitely be used to save lots of valuable business time.

5. Identify disengaged customers at the right time 

Don’t waste your time assuming why customers are losing interest in your products, rather use AI to identify such customers and send them offers and discounts to keep them engaged. AI tools can lower your churn rates by understanding ratings and feedback and can identify future action on the product by the customer. This gives room for the brands to handle the situation at an early stage than to wait and lose the customer.

Example: American Express uses AI-based Machine Learning technologies to do analytics and predict potential fraud and identify customers at the highest risk and accordingly take proactive action.

6. Optimize and empower your search results

No doubt companies are using past data to analyze the user behavior but what they learn from the data is vital. Producing relevant results and recommendations in real-time based on things like user location, search history will result in better customer engagement. 

Example: Post the introduction of RankBrain, by Google in 2015, many e-commerce websites like Amazon have incorporated AI into their search engines for smart product search. Users can now get similar product suggestions, auto-correct spelling mistakes to help get the right product they are looking for.

7. Embrace Visual Search and Image recognition 

Visual search is changing the search landscape with platforms like Pinterest, Bing, and Google already using it. It uses smart image recognition and analysis to find results that are visually like the image. Marketers should definitely expand their search options using this for improving merchandising and furnishing personalized shopping experience, especially for the retail and e-commerce customers.

Example: Pinterest has ‘Shop the look’ pins for advertisers to list fashion and users can use it to shop specific items from the image. Pinterest Lens has around 600 million searches every month, and this figure is growing exponentially ever since the technology was launched. Google’s Google Lens has a ‘Style Match feature’ which will furnish the search results against the image snapped.

8. Practice Social Listening and monitor conversations around your brand

AI can study what customers are talking about their brand on various social platforms, review boards, blogs, etc and know if there are any complaints or issues with regards to their products and handle them before its widespread. 

Example: Post like “If you love your skin, Pls don’t buy it ever!!!” #FakeFarenessCream #SideEffects. 

This post is an alert to the brand and reaching the customer instantly, understand and resolving the issue will stop to further escalate the negative impact. AI can also sense purchase interest by a potential buyer by analyzing their interaction over the web.

Example: A post saying — “Apple iPhone 7 worth a try?” Or “Clicked my selfie with friend’s Oppo F11, so amazing selfies that I now desire to buy one…”. Such posts are your potential buyers who can be easily converted by a personalized discount offer.

9. Charge the right price at the right time

 AI powdered Machine Learning can help to determine an accurate price for your products based on demand and competition. Talk about Amazon, Airbnb or Uber, they all have leveraged dynamic pricing and have built multibillion-dollar businesses. Marketers can get dynamic pricing based on factors like how much customer is willing to pay, response to offers and deals, price Vs quality comparison, etc. It can also compare the real-time prices of competitors to analyze if the pricing is too high or too low. Dynamic pricing is worth investing and it can transform companies’ fate like never before.

Example: Airbnb has built its high-end dynamic pricing system considering various factors like market demand, location, time to buy, etc. It helps property owners to quote the best price It takes into.

10. Utilize Voice Search to maximize the value of AI

Talk about Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri we all know them by all, and their use is rapidly increasing. More and more marketers are considering using voice search campaigns to capture more customers and now emphasizing the importance of semantics. With more than one billion voice searches happening each month, it is surely worth considering for companies and agencies as a new source of revenue. Marketers should carefully assess all the voice search requests for actionable insight.

Let’s check out some statistics to understand the power Voice-Based search:

- As per Gartner — About 30% of all searches will be done without a screen by 2020. 
- As per Statista- Up to January 2019, 45% of US millennials say they regularly use voice search for shopping. 
- As per Search Engine Journal — 76% of people who have smart speakers use voice search for “local” searches once weekly. 
- As per BrightLocal- 51% of consumers use voice search to find local restaurants.

Hence there is no looking back, utilizing AI in this field will only lead to increased profits.

These were just 10 pointers but there are many, and every business and marketer should explore more about AI and optimize its implementation in Social Media Marketing. Imagine a world where you no longer have to use any physical device, yet you can see and workaround. Online campaigns will be managed automatically, Emails, Posts will be composed and sent to relevant users. Businesses constantly improve their strategy as per data insight and grow exponentially. With AI, all this is not far to achieve. What is currently available is just a glimpse, but AI has much more than this to offer. So begin utilizing artificial intelligence into your social media marketing strategy today to be ahead in the race and shine in the future.

By Bibin Ponnachan, Digital Marketing Strategist, Braincities Lab

References:

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/08/chatbot-statistics.html

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/foreign-exchange/articles/payment-services-fraud-detection-using-AI/

https://newsroom.pinterest.com/en/post/celebrating-one-year-of-pinterest-lens

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-predicts-a-virtual-world-of-exponential-change/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/990350/millennials-use-voice-assisted-shopping-usa/

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/new-study-reveals-what-people-are-buying-through-voice-assistants/287277/

https://www.brightlocal.com/research/voice-search-for-local-business-study/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/10/30/the-amazing-ways-spotify-uses-big-data-ai-and-machine-learning-to-drive-business-success/#730b4ea74bd2