The Impact of Machine Learning on Digital Marketing

Marketing and technology in the current times have become deeply interwoven with each other that too in a very short span of time. Marketing as a field is experiencing change at an unprecedented rate nearly every day, those who have embraced it are moving ahead and those who haven’t yet, are definitely going to lag behind. It’s true that marketers need not be tech experts but having some idea shall definitely help you in getting a hang of all steps you will have to undertake to improve and continuously improve your digital marketing campaigns. Digital marketing is all about innovation, personalization, automation, and creativity…..but to maintain a rhythm you need to invest money, therefore having a basic understanding of these tools shall help you in making better investment decisions.

(P.C.- Cardinal Path)

Let’s see how in some ways Machine Learning can influence your digital marketing initiatives:

1. Optimized PPC campaigns- With the introduction of multiple ML-powered improvements in the Google ads, the complexity and scope of PPC (Pay per click) has grown to abound. Marketers are able to get more out of their ad spend with the implementation of predictive click-through rates, ad rotation optimization, and in-market optimization. PPC campaigns can be made more productive, impactful, and useful where with the help of Machine Learning you can do Smart bidding. The impact of ML on PPC campaigns can be aplenty for instance;

• You can analyze queries at the search query level itself instead of keyword level
• Adjust bids as per every auction, thus unburdening the auction managers time
• Study user behavior for determining the bid amount
• Collect information from various data sources like location, a device to aid you in bidding better, etc.

2. Optimized Advertising- Digital marketing has a huge chunk comprised of advertising, which results in a huge part of the budget flowing through that channel. Traditional campaign optimizations were based on factors like the timing of the advertisement, the space inventory to be bought, the duration of the campaign, the choice of the advertisement channel, etc.

       At the end of the day, like all the manual processes this process is affected by human errors and limitations, thus using ML can substantially improve the performance of your existing advertising campaigns. Even Google employs Machine learning technology to automate bids, this yields optimized conversions and helps in saving time as well as improve the ROI.

3. Eye-catching Website design and UX features- A factor for digital marketers which they can’t afford to overlook is that of website designing. Web designing forms a pivot for a successful digital marketing campaign, and if not done properly, can be a cause of major concern for them. It’s here that ML tools act as a lifesaver, it collates all the data related to user preferences, A/B tests, webpage heat maps, etc. How is it practical? Because of this simple reason, you can design a customized webpage based on this information rather than relying on a designers’ whim. Hence, you get an amazing webpage as a result wherein you incorporate both the components, i.e. Analytical and creative…thus, giving you an edge against your competitors.

4. Enhanced and productive customer service- Efficient and effective customer service is indicative of a successful business, which shows that the business is directly connected with its customers and aware of their needs. The faster and responsive your customer care, the better shall be the interest of your audience towards you, this fact is highlighted in the research, which mentioned that 79% of people prefer live chats, because of instant response. Chatbots are highly powerful ML-backed tools, if used in a targeted manner, the benefits they offer are many, for instance, they are active 24*7, offer zero-wait time to customers, can route complex problems to the designated human, have an ever-expanding database, etc.

Chatbots aren’t primarily used for customer services but are assisting brands with outbound marketing where they aid in sending follow-up messages to customers. For instance, they can announce the arrival of new launches of products or introduction of services, as well as share discounts and coupon deals, which help in driving up user engagement. The data collected by chat-bots through continuous customer engagements’ provides valuable insights to marketers regarding customer mindset and behavior, thus helping them in growing their business.

Machine Learning has been a boon to mankind, in ways that we didn’t imagine a couple of years ago. ML-based tools help people save time by not working on repetitive or clerical tasks, rather they can focus on further enhancing their business output and results. Here, as marketers, you can focus on developing well-thought strategies rather than operations, because if the former is good the latter shall be great. So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and embrace the change, because this change has the power to catapult your business to astounding heights.