Embracing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

One of the most significant trends shaping the future of digital marketing is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. AI and ML have the potential to revolutionize how agencies approach marketing strategies, analytics, and customer interactions.

AI-driven algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data in real-time, helping agencies make data-driven decisions, optimize ad campaigns, and personalize content for target audiences. Machine learning algorithms can also identify patterns and trends that humans might overlook, enhancing the effectiveness of marketing strategies.

Chatbots and virtual assistants powered by AI are becoming increasingly popular in providing real-time customer support and assistance. These technologies can handle routine queries, freeing up human resources for more complex tasks and improving the overall customer experience.

Digital marketing agencies that embrace AI and ML are poised to gain a competitive edge in delivering more efficient, data-driven, and personalized marketing solutions.

Enhanced Data Privacy and Compliance

In the wake of data breaches and growing concerns about privacy, the future of digital marketing will undoubtedly involve a greater focus on data protection and compliance. The implementation of stricter regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), has forced agencies to reassess their data collection and usage practices.

Agencies are adapting by being more transparent about data collection and providing clear opt-in/opt-out options for users. They are also investing in robust cybersecurity measures to safeguard customer data from breaches and cyberattacks.

Furthermore, agencies are staying up-to-date with evolving privacy regulations to ensure that their marketing practices comply with the law. Failure to do so can result in hefty fines and damage to a brand’s reputation.

In the future, agencies that prioritize data privacy and compliance will earn the trust of consumers and maintain a competitive advantage.

Content Continues to Reign

Content marketing remains at the core of digital marketing strategies, and its importance is only set to grow in the future. However, the way agencies approach content creation and distribution is evolving.

Video content, in particular, is gaining prominence. With the rise of platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, short-form video content is becoming increasingly popular. Agencies are adapting by creating engaging and concise video content to capture the attention of their target audience.

Live streaming is another trend that agencies are embracing. Live video allows for real-time interaction with the audience, fostering a sense of authenticity and engagement. Agencies are using live streams for product launches, Q&A sessions, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into their operations.

In addition to traditional written content, agencies are also exploring interactive content formats such as quizzes, polls, and interactive infographics. These formats provide users with a more engaging and immersive experience, increasing the chances of content being shared and going viral.

The key to successful content marketing in the future lies in understanding the preferences of the target audience and delivering content in formats they find most appealing.

Voice Search and Conversational Marketing

The rise of voice-activated devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home has ushered in a new era of search and marketing. Voice search is changing the way consumers interact with digital devices and search engines, and agencies are adapting to this shift.

Optimizing content for voice search requires a different approach than traditional SEO. Agencies are now focusing on creating content that answers natural language queries and adopting conversational marketing strategies. This involves using chatbots, voice assistants, and messaging apps to engage with customers in real-time conversations.

Conversational marketing enables agencies to provide personalized recommendations and support, leading to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction. As voice search continues to gain popularity, agencies that master conversational marketing will have a competitive advantage.

The Power of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has been a successful strategy for many brands in recent years, and it’s expected to remain a significant part of digital marketing in the future. Agencies are adapting by refining their influencer selection process and developing long-term partnerships with influencers who align with their brand values.

Micro and nano influencers, with smaller but highly engaged followings, are gaining prominence. These influencers often have more authentic connections with their audiences, making them valuable assets for agencies seeking to reach niche markets.

In addition to traditional social media influencers, agencies are also exploring opportunities in the gaming and esports industry, where influencers have large and dedicated fan bases.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

The adoption of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies is set to transform the digital marketing landscape. Agencies are beginning to explore how these immersive technologies can be leveraged to create unique and engaging brand experiences.

AR allows consumers to interact with products in a virtual environment. For example, furniture retailers can use AR to enable customers to visualize how a piece of furniture would look in their home before making a purchase. Agencies are also using AR for location-based marketing, providing users with real-time information about nearby stores and promotions.

VR, on the other hand, offers entirely immersive experiences. Brands can create virtual showrooms, product demos, or even virtual events that allow consumers to engage with their products and services in a virtual space. Agencies that harness the power of AR and VR can differentiate themselves by delivering memorable and interactive brand experiences.

Agile Marketing and Data-Driven Decision-Making

The pace of change in the digital marketing landscape necessitates a more agile approach. Agile marketing involves adapting strategies and tactics quickly based on real-time data and market feedback. Agencies are adopting agile methodologies to respond rapidly to shifting consumer behaviors and emerging trends.

Data-driven decision-making is at the core of agile marketing. Agencies are investing in advanced analytics tools and dashboards that provide real-time insights into campaign performance. This allows them to make informed decisions and optimize marketing efforts on the fly.

Agile marketing also involves cross-functional teams that collaborate closely, enabling faster execution of campaigns and the ability to pivot when necessary. Agencies that embrace agility and data-driven decision-making will be better equipped to thrive in the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape.

Social Commerce

Social media platforms have evolved from mere marketing channels to full-fledged e-commerce platforms. Agencies are adapting by integrating social commerce strategies into their digital marketing efforts.

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook now offer features that allow users to shop directly from posts and stories. Agencies are leveraging these features to create seamless shopping experiences for consumers, reducing friction in the path to purchase.

In addition to traditional e-commerce, agencies are also exploring social commerce in the form of livestream shopping, where influencers and brands showcase products in real-time, allowing viewers to make purchases instantly.

The future of digital marketing will see social commerce playing an increasingly significant role, blurring the lines between social media and online shopping.

Personalization and Customer Experience

Personalization is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity in digital marketing. Consumers expect tailored experiences, and agencies are adapting by harnessing data to create highly personalized marketing campaigns.

Email marketing, for example, is becoming more personalized with dynamic content that adapts to the recipient’s behavior and preferences. Website personalization, driven by AI algorithms, ensures that users see content and product recommendations that are relevant to them.

Chatbots and AI-powered customer service tools are also contributing to a more personalized customer experience. These technologies can provide instant responses to customer queries and offer personalized recommendations based on past interactions.

Agencies that excel in personalization and customer experience will build stronger relationships with customers, leading to increased loyalty and higher customer lifetime value.

Sustainability and Ethical Marketing

As consumers become more environmentally and socially conscious, agencies are adapting by incorporating sustainability and ethical marketing into their strategies. Brands that align themselves with values such as sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility are resonating with consumers.

Agencies are helping brands communicate their commitment to these values through marketing campaigns and transparent business practices. Sustainability initiatives, such as reducing carbon footprints and using eco-friendly packaging, are being highlighted in marketing materials.

Ethical marketing also involves taking a stand on social issues and supporting causes that align with the brand’s values. Agencies that champion sustainability and ethical marketing will not only attract conscious consumers but also contribute to positive social and environmental change.

Conclusion

The future of digital marketing promises exciting opportunities and challenges for agencies. To thrive in this dynamic landscape, agencies must adapt to emerging technologies, changing consumer behavior, and evolving regulations. Embracing artificial intelligence, enhancing data privacy, creating engaging content, and harnessing the power of influencers are just some of the strategies agencies are using to stay ahead.

Moreover, voice search, augmented reality, and social commerce are reshaping how agencies approach digital marketing. Agile marketing, personalization, and a commitment to sustainability and ethical marketing will also play vital roles in agencies’ success.

In this rapidly evolving field, agencies that remain flexible, data-driven, and customer-centric will not only survive but thrive in the future of digital marketing. The ability to innovate, experiment, and adapt to new trends will be the hallmark of successful digital marketing agencies in the years to come.

The post The Future of Digital Marketing: How Agencies Are Adapting appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to the details shared in a statement emailed to MMW, customer churn is a major global economic issue in the telecom industry and operators must address it.

If not properly managed, churn leads to significant loss of revenue and blocks the growth of all operators. Economic loss caused by churn is twofold. Firstly, operators lose any future revenue that a churned customer would provide and secondly, all marketing funds used to acquire the customer in the first place are lost.

We’re told that Sicap AI Engine predicts and identifies churn-prone subscribers, by combining customer-related big data, statistical and analytical techniques and self-learning neuronal networks.

The AI Engine makes use of customer data provided by Sicap’s device and SIM management platforms, as well as operators’ other internal and external data sources.

Before the AI Engine is deployed, its neuronal network system is trained by using an operator’s historic data. To increase the prediction accuracy over time, the training is continued using the operator’s actual data.

The solution provides a churn prediction list including potential causes for churn and subscriber segments, based on their likelihood to churn within certain confidence intervals. The results are then used to automatically engage customers with targeted and personalized incentive programmes and offers, depending on the segment the subscriber belongs to. Accurate targeting results in more relevant offers, and prevents customers from churning.

“When properly adapted with a mobile operator’s device, SIM and other data, our predictive churn reduction solution has the potential to save our customers tens of millions of euro annually by targeting the right customers, with the right incentives, at the right moment,” says Markus Doetsch, the CEO of Sicap. “Our aim is to begin with several churn reduction pilot projects with selected operator customers over the next few months.” Doetsch concludes.

The post Sicap Taps Artificial Intelligence To Reduce Telecom Churn appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from James Ramey, CEO of DeviceBits.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), has evolved the standards of daily living. Consumers today use the latest devices for their needs, and this wouldn’t be possible without various industries developing apps and platforms using AI technology. This constant development of technology is leaving an impression that it will be able to take over key jobs, yet when you view AI in a more positive light, as what it has achieved for many customer care systems, it serves as the answer to potentially creating more jobs.

Today, the customer service industry is realizing the pressure of providing fast and efficient service to customers. But is it enough? This question often leads to brands turning to AI for assistance. A familiar tool powered by AI that many consumers see via webpages and social platforms is the Chatbot. Aside from Chatbots, AI can work by directing complicated questions to live agents who are available to take on complex matters. AI and live human agents work together to create a quick and positive experience for consumers.

How do consumers feel about AI taking up the role in automation and jobs? In a recent article by Harvard Business Review, numerous studies were conducted in finding out the thoughts of consumers. One side believed as much as 47% of jobs would become automated by the year 2033, and one side said only 4% of jobs would be lost to AI by 2020. Safe to say not everyone believes AI will take away many jobs for Americans, but mostly AI will be (and already is) the tech companion today’s large companies utilize for tech-to-tech tasks.

We can’t disregard that AI technologies are poised to replace a few customer care positions at the “tier-one” level. Tier-one positions usually cover first-response queries, such as those offshore customer care centers. However, because of the limit on needing live agents for tier-one positions, “tier-two” positions will grow, which is where we need live agents for the complex questions customers have.

With the amount of general questions asked by customers to live agents, it makes sense for companies to create AI-based self-service materials so customers don’t have to make a call. With downloadable self-support materials and online support from chatbots, this cuts back the need for tier-one agents. Not stating all tier-one jobs should be replaced by machines, but if a large company would like to limit their tier-one positions and expand their tier-two department, using AI will be beneficial. The world is moving quickly with the latest tech devices and software, and consumers will be asking advanced questions to be able to enjoy their devices.

There is also another side of the discussion of AI being able to create more jobs. AI can aid in expanding the need for live agents to take care of complex matters, but AI can also be used by live agents in customer service. It’s the smart assistant for live agents when they encounter complex questions.

Live agents will be able to access online materials powered by AI to aid them in their customer interactions. Combining AI with a live agent’s personal customer interactions is a great example of how AI is here for positive, successful customer engagements.

With more companies adopting AI into their customer care plans, knowledge of other technological advancements are becoming the standards of the workforce. Companies will be looking for those who are familiar and can work in technical fields, specifically AI. Will this mean AI is changing job descriptions and taking away simple jobs? Not necessarily, simple task jobs that don’t require AI will still be available. If anything, the advancement of AI will create jobs across many industries for companies seeking employees in IT and similar departments.

The post More Human Jobs Powered By Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The report, a survey of more than 100 marketing leaders including CMOs from prominent retail brands headquartered in the U.S. and U.K., explores plans and priorities for marketing investment this year.

The findings indicate that 86% of retail marketing leadership have planned to invest in AI/machine learning solutions in 2017.

The majority of respondents (47%) are looking to spend up to $50 million on AI, but a quarter are budgeting as much as $100 million. For marketing leaders surveyed, effective customer engagement is expected to be the primary benefit of implementing AI, where “engagement” is considered foremost as a driver of revenue (37%) and to a much lesser extent, brand awareness (13%).

Retail marketers look to improve engagement by providing more relevant experiences but continue to struggle with personalization. On a scale of 0 to 4, with 0 as least effective and 4 as most effective, marketers find that they could do a better job with personalization techniques: tailoring product recommendations (2.85); segmentation (2.53); offer personalization (2.49); and personalizing content (2.13).

“Most major retailers have more data than they know what to do with or have the capacity to process. AI and machine learning allow marketers to generate insights for sure, but the key is to leverage the machine towards a particular purpose, and to one that actually drives results,” said Ryan Deutsch, SVP of Global Customer Success at Persado.

The post Retail CMOs to Invest Record Sum in AI This Year appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to a statement emailed to MMW, the challenge was organized by Microsoft Research (MSR) for a workshop at ICCV 2017, the world’s premier international computer vision event.

Researchers at MSR published the first MS-Celeb-1M dataset, comprising images of real-life celebrities, in June 2016 to encourage the development of advanced facial recognition technologies. At the same time, they launched the first MS-Celeb-1M facial recognition challenge. Participants in the challenge are tasked with using a dataset provided by MSR as training data to develop an image recognition system capable of recognizing one million celebrities.

The facial recognition technology utilized by the OrionStar team in this challenge will have real-world applications for Cheetah Mobile products, including facial recognition software, robotics and mobile apps, the statement reads.

OrionStar’s facial recognition technology is already being used in Cheetah Mobile’s Live.me social live broadcasting app.

The post OrionStar Wins Challenge with Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

On Monday, Automic shared its predictions and drew attention to the key trends and disruptors that will impact global organizations next year, including using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve automation, implementing multi-channel strategies and responding to cross-channel customer demands.

Among the projections made are:

• Real-time execution will hit its stride in 2014 and touch nearly every facet of the IT landscape. Cloud control and big data digestion have also lost their novelty, but not their endurance. With heightened customer demands for market defining technologies, next generation strategies such as virtualization, Cloud, and mobile high transactional models means that organizations will continue to juggle more real-time processing than ever before.
• The CIO Becoming the Chief AI Officer: Formerly known as a topic for science fiction, AI will become an integral part of daily automation and solutions for everyday business. For example, Cloud AI offering scaling will be based on a set of rules determined by the CIO that trigger when traffic spikes or server resource usage increases. With the CIO managing the resource automation during peak seasons, they will also become the AI officer spearheading all business and technology needs.
•  Unraveling Mobile IT: Across industries, particularly retail and financial services, routine changes and new functionalities are creating cumbersome, unsustainable environments costing enterprises time, patience and their bottom line. Multi-channel and multi-platform approaches will become streamlined, cohesive powerhouses, harmonizing disjointed business systems to reap the tangible benefits for both the enterprise and the consumer.

“Ultimately, the question all organizations will ask themselves in the next year is, ‘How can we avoid redundancies in our business, while making the most of our time?'” says Craig Beddis, Chief Marketing Officer for Automic. “With every checked box is an earnest, but tedious, approach and IT delivery paradigms should be simplified, sleek and uncomplicated. Businesses should build the risk out of their systems, and realize that it’s what’s under the hood that truly impacts demand – it also holds the key to the next generation of innovation.”

The post Real-time Data Projected to Play Major Role in 2014 Enterprise Strategy appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.