Does AI have potential in marketing?

Can AI aid marketers?

You might have heard of chat bots, virtual bank assistants, face recognition and machine translation on the news in recent months. With an ability to automate manual tasks and provide deeper insights into data, it looks like AI is here to stay in all aspects of our lives, with marketing being no exception!

However, in our data-driven marketing research report, we discovered that many marketers, across all sectors are seriously behind with data analysis skills, even at the most basic level.

Our research captured the views of over 250 managerial to c-level marketers across four industry sectors, revealing that two-fifths of marketers (40%) believe that a lack of data and analytical skills is preventing them from delivering effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategies.

Despite a lack of these skills, it is becoming more and more crucial for marketers to be able to capture and refine vast amounts of data which enables a better and deeper insight into customer behaviour which gives marketers the ability to predict what customers will need next and when they’re likely to need it. Marketers now have access to more data than ever before and the potential to use it has never been greater. However, with so much data available, it has never been more difficult to collate the information and predict customer behaviour.

Is AI ready to transform marketing?

In the past, marketers have used statistical techniques and data in order to generate insight and automate and optimise decisions. Although advanced modelling techniques such as neural nets have been available before, most people preferred to stick to straight forward approaches and so these techniques have not been heavily adopted in data. However, a few recent key developments mean that all of this is about to change.

AI is changing

The first change AI has seen is processing power. According to Moore’s law, computer processing power is set to double roughly every 18 months. A shift from CPUs (Central Processing Units) to GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) has also super-charged AI’s modelling capabilities. All of this means that it is now possible to train deep neural networks more than a thousand times faster than it was 10 years ago.

In addition, hardware designed specifically to accelerate deep learning is now being introduced to the market (for example, the Tensor Processing Units that Google has developed) and will drive further significant gains.

Algorithmic improvements have been made in AI which is a huge development and has played a part in pushing AI to the forefront. Algorithmic improvements such as ‘dropout’ and ‘rectified linear units’ mean that is it now possible to train better, deeper neural networks than ever before which radically improves their efficiency, significantly improving the performance of deep neural networks compared to linear models.

Lastly much more and richer data has become available over time which means more advanced techniques such as neural networks have become much more valuable due to their ability to exploit additional data in comparison to simpler approaches.

Using AI the easy way

New technology, such as Jaywing’s modelling software Archetype, allows marketers to unlock greater insights into customer behaviour. By accessing tools which create better performing models, brands have the ability to transform the way their CRM campaigns work, targeting personalised campaigns and content across all channels, reaching the people who are most likely to engage and the ability to amend strategies to focus retention activity or using insights from deep within data to eke out more profit than traditional techniques are able to. This allows you to focus your marketing activity in places where it’s going to be most effective.

Archetype is a unique tool which generates powerful predictive models of your own data. Where many other tools require detailed statistical and programme knowledge in order to produce effective models, Archetype has been designed to make producing machine learning models easy and accessible. Anyone with a good understanding of the business problem being modelled, and the data available can create great models – no statistics PhD required!

This tool gives brands the capacity to model almost any data set, whether it’s in pricing, product and channel propensity, customer value, marketing attribution, digital activity or a host of other fields. They help brands do more, in less time, with better results so that they can focus on what’s most important – their customers. Archetype is a significant advancement in the market and for which Jaywing has applied for a patent.

Leading the way for smarter marketing

AI and machine learning gives marketers the ability to quickly deliver sophisticated data-driven marketing, based on smart data insights, such as razor-sharp customer segmentation, predicting customer behaviour and delivering personalisation across all channels.

Modelling is not the only are of application of AI in marketing. Jaywing also provides AI-based tools such as Decision, an automated Pay Per Click tool which optimises campaign activity in real time, increasing and decreasing bid prices as the market fluctuates to keep you at the optimum point in the listings. And, we can work with you on a project basis to apply AI techniques to almost any business problem that can be improved with the addition of machine learning or AI.

Find out more about Jaywing’s AI predictive modelling software Archetype and AI Consultancy Services.