The digital revolution of the previous several decades has big brought changes into every corner of the business landscape and touched the lives of almost every person on the planet. Marketing is one of the fields that had seen the greatest transformation, transitioning away from a rigidly centralized model relying on mass media campaigns towards a level of personalization that would be inconceivable until very just a few years ago.
A few recent technological developments have intensified this process and created ideal conditions for the evolution of marketing theory and practice. The rise of social networks as shared online spaces where individuals go to connect with people, brands, and experiences has decentralized the media and leveled the playing field for companies of all sizes and orientations. At the same time, the rapid advance of deep learning algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence makes it possible to automate communication with numerous users in a very realistic manner.
The synergy between these two tech paradigms is immense, especially in the marketing segment. Here are some of the fundamental facts about this highly intriguing combination and its potential benefits for early adopters.
Key Characteristics of Social Media Marketing
Traditional media marketing follows a top-down structure, with the same messages repeatedly pushed through all channels in an attempt to create a consistent brand image. In stark contrast, on social media relationships are built one conversation at a time, gradually accumulating to produce a mass effect. The budgets of social media campaigns can be much smaller, as marketers only pay for the messages that were actually delivered to users. Yet the activation value and conversion rates of such campaigns can match or exceed far more expensive promotional strategies. This is mostly due to the possibility of fine-grained personalization, facilitated by the abundance of data available in the online environment. Social media promotion is inherently less formalized, more flexible, and better suited for a two-way exchange where the needs of the consumer can be appreciated.
Using AI for Communication with Humans
Some of the latest AI models have an impressive capacity to converse with humans and an ability to improve their performance simply by analyzing the outcomes of their previous attempts. When trained for linguistic tasks, they can successfully interpret the semantic content of the messages as well as the underlying sentiments and intentions. They can also formulate meaningful responses and maintain the flow of natural conversation. The goal is not to trick the participants in the conversation to think they are interacting with a real person, but rather to provide a personalized one-on-one experience in situations where it would be difficult to deploy a human. AI-powered tools are increasingly used for the automation of very complex or time-consuming activities, including in the marketing sphere.
How Smart Chat Bots Amplify Social Media Presence?
The modern generation of chatbots incorporates some of the principles of AI design explained above, which makes them perfectly suited for social media communication. Chatbots can instantly respond to as many inquiries as needed while at the same time collecting and analyzing data about the users sending those requests. Since many social networks such as Facebook or Twitter already have direct messaging applications embedded into their platforms, deploying social messaging bots to automate the flow of messages is very straightforward. Images, links, call-to-action buttons, and other interactive elements can be included in the chat, helping to facilitate user actions that lead to preferred outcomes. In this way, a simple conversational bot can dramatically alter the public image of the company, contribute to an increase in sales, or accomplish any other objective for which it was programmed.
