3 Key Trends for AI and Marketing in 2024

As we approach 2024, the popularity of generative AI will ultimately impact every sector of the economy. It is important to identify which sectors are most primed for the early adoption of AI and to consider the extent to which AI will fundamentally and rapidly transform these sectors.

Marketing is one of the sectors ripe to gain from artificial intelligence.

Why is that?

Marketing activities, such as understanding customer needs and monitoring their behaviors to provide them with the right offer at the right time across channels, can be significantly enhanced by AI.

With that in mind let’s focus on how AI will be leveraged to augment and assist future marketers in accomplishing their tasks with increased speed, efficiency, and scalability. This will be achieved by utilizing AI with human interaction, oversight, and approval processes.

With global spending on AI to reach nearly $200 Billion by 2025, here’s a look at key trends on the pivotal role of AI in marketing for 2024:

AI providers will help augment work. 

Every vendor will highlight how their products utilize AI and can benefit brands. We will see how their product’s version of agents, bots, and features help augment daily tasks.

Major technology corporations (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft) will maintain their aggressive approach toward investments and the introduction of new products and capabilities.

Riding on the Generative AI Hype, CDP Needs a New Definition in 2024

We can expect to see an influx of emerging start-ups that specialize in developing artificial intelligence solutions tailored to the specific needs of their clients. These start-ups leverage the existing platforms offered by the larger technology companies, enabling them to innovate and expand rapidly.

Marketing technology providers will also be aggressive in releasing the next wave of native features and capabilities, aiming to enhance the overall user experience for marketers.

Adoption will go beyond the hype. 

Organizations will start to effectively leverage AI beyond the initial hype of ChatGPT. AI will enhance work processes and decision-making across all areas of a business, ranging from customer-facing operations to administrative tasks.

With so much to choose from, organizations will start small with AI implementation with specific use cases and areas where AI can provide the most value.

Additionally, to address the talent gap and governance, organizations will invest time and effort into developing a strong AI culture within the organization, promoting a mindset that embraces AI technology by providing training and resources to employees.

Technology solution providers will adapt and innovate their services to help organizations maximize the potential of emerging AI products.

The crucial factor for companies will be to carefully assess whether to develop in-house solutions, procure from external sources, or outsource the required expertise. The expertise and experience of tech solution providers will prove invaluable in expediting the implementation process with their frameworks and tools to build a foundation to expand on.

Further, tech providers will bring domain expertise and data assets that will supplement enterprise data. This will help brands leap forward from legacy machine-learning models to purpose-built large knowledge models (LKMs) that use the power of neural nets large-language models (LLMs).

One of the key challenges will be selecting the appropriate AI provider or components and seamlessly integrating them into the overall solution. With a multitude of options available, there will likely be a wide-ranging marketplace with countless possibilities.

What will AI enable, and why consider it for marketing?

AI will solve the classic marketer’s problem of who, what, and when — day-to-day marketers’ functions that are time-consuming and inefficient.

Let’s look at three key areas:

1. Improve Customer Experience and Customer Satisfaction

Many brands are keenly focused on delivering a better customer experience, but the reality is that it is hard and time-consuming to deliver the right message at the right time at scale across channels.

Artificial intelligence’s exceptional abilities in data analysis and pattern recognition will revolutionize personalized marketing. By employing AI, brands will be able to analyze consumer behavior, preferences, and purchase history, allowing for tailored marketing strategies for each individual. This level of hyper-personalization will go beyond mere product recommendations and extend to personalized advertising, content, and even customer service interactions.

2. Employee Productivity

In the design process, AI will help create content like text, video, and images quickly with text-to-image capabilities. Further, marketing tools will have native features to create variants and speed up A/B testing.  AI assistants will complement, support, take the guesswork out, and provide suggested paths to utilize.

3. Operational Efficiencies

AI will streamline various marketing processes, from automated customer segmentation to predictive analytics for demand forecasting. This will lead to not only more targeted marketing campaigns but also substantial cost savings and improved ROI. Marketing assistants with chat-type natural language prompting will be everywhere to support marketers and make available their time for more advanced tasks.

In conclusion, the future of marketing is undoubtedly intertwined with AI.

More from Merkle in AI: AI-Powered Solutions Put “Journeyless Marketing” in Reach

As technology advances, AI will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping marketing strategies and campaigns.  It will automate repetitive tasks, freeing up marketers’ time to focus on strategic initiatives, and ultimately boosting efficiency and productivity. The time to get started on marketing with AI is now. Prepare yourself and be ready for exciting times ahead.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]