MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Digital Marketing
By Elena Ferrarin
Meadowlands Magazine Contributor
A2B Marketing is incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) by using ChatGPT, a chatbot whose free research preview launched in late November, said company co-owners Joe Moran and Anthony Forte.
ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, generates human-like responses based on prompts provided by users. Moran and Forte use the chatbot to get rough, preliminary marketing content that they edit and refine for their clients.
“We might have to ask two or three questions before we get a mashup of what we are looking to say,” Forte said of ChatGPT. “Overall, I think it does a very good job.”
AI & Social Media
AI also has helped marketing agencies by making search engines and social media platforms more effective in reaching their desired audiences, said Ron Simoncini, president of Axiom Communications.
Nowadays, clients demand a full range of presence on social media, Simoncini said.
Businesses must have a presence on Facebook and Instagram, and, based on their audience demographics, also on Instagram and Twitter, he said. Some businesses also are doing very well on Snapchat, he added.
Social media marketing has evolved from a focus on photos and images to a major spotlight on storytelling through video reels, Forte and Moran said.
“You absolutely need to conform to what these platforms are doing if you want to stay on top of the game,” Forte said.
Facebook advertising is a good platform to reach older adults while TikTok is best for younger audiences, they said. The latter already has attracted all the major consumer brands, they added.
Simoncini said that businesses with widespread name recognition are having success marketing themselves on the navigation app Waze, while smaller businesses can cut costs by marketing directly to consumers on platforms like eBay, Amazon, YouTube, Etsy and Groupon.
Each platform demands its own unique type of marketing, and increasingly there are partnerships between conventional marketing firms that target traditional media, and firms that specialize in online and social media marketing, Simoncini said.
“We have to develop creative (content) that is pointed at those audiences through those platforms,” he said.
The Influencer Impact
A new element in marketing is the role played by influencers in selling products, as well as services like travel and tourism.
“More and more money is being allocated to influencers and third-party endorsements. That’s become a very common practice, whereas before it was viewed as a superficial way to market,” Simoncini said.
Influencers can be very effective at spreading the word to advertise products, Moran and Forte said. The cost of hiring them varies greatly based on their experience and the size of their social media following. Up-and-coming influencers can charge $1,000 to $15,000, while widely known influencers can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach their millions of followers, Forte and Moran said.
Simoncini said he doesn’t put a lot of stock on website interactivity features. Customers simply want the fastest, most efficient route to learn about a product and purchase it, and don’t want to be bogged down by extra steps, he said.
“I don’t believe people really want to have that much dialogue with their supplier,” he said. “If they are able to buy it online, they love that. If they have to go to a store for it, they want to know where the store is. But that’s not interactivity — that’s information.”
Forte said that interactive features on websites are great to sell products that consumers can customize to their needs and taste. For example, customers love being able to pick colors and materials online for their building projects.
“People enjoy doing stuff like that, especially if it’s a larger-ticket item. It’s always fun to look at all the options online,” he said.
Chatbots, Digital Ads & Tracking
On the other hand, automated chat features on websites tend to be frustrating for customers, who much prefer chatting with human beings, Forte and Moran agreed. One of their clients had positive results by offering human chat during peak website traffic hours, when customers are more likely to use the feature, Forte said.
As more people are “cutting the cord” and opting for streaming instead of cable or satellite providers, digital advertising has proven to be excellent at targeting specific audiences based on demographics and psychographics, Forte said. The latter is the study of consumers based on their interests and activities.
A new trend in digital marketing consists of tracking ad effectiveness based on users’ online activity on a single IP address, Forte said.
“Everybody is a two-screen nation now,” he said. “You are watching YouTube on your TV screen and have an iPad or iPhone in your hands. If your phone is on the same IP address that the TV is streaming on, companies will know that you looked for Nike sneakers after watching a Nike commercial, for example.”
However, newer privacy regulations are making that somewhat more difficult to track, Forte added.
In the end, it’s all about what the client is looking for.
“You have to figure out exactly what their goals are and their KPIs (key performance indicators) to figure out what digital platform is better for them,” Moran said. “They all have pros and cons.”
