John Wanamaker, the pioneer in marketing coined the phrase, “ Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half". How the "half" moves over a period of time with the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Digital Marketing (DM) space is something to watch out for in next few years.

Humans are different from others for their ability to think and respond based on individual intelligence. AI deals with making computers intelligent who can think on its own and respond like humans based on self-learning and improve from experience. It is going to change the way we live for the better and transform the way we interact with the world. From digital assistants to self-driving cars to cancer detection, AI is revolutionizing all the industries one by one.

Marketing, one of the prominent functions for any business, is all about understanding customers what they look for, what they dream about, how they react etc. Digitalization has already taken the traditional marketing to the next level by leveraging the digital platforms and technologies. Similarly, digital marketers are now looking for a massive technological disruption to significantly improve the performance of digital channels and marketing efforts. AI is considered to be the next wave to disrupt this space and will position DM as one of the most effective ways to reach the targeted customers.

Let's look at various ways in which AI can help reshape the future of DM Reaching the Right Customer: AI will help to determine right customers by segmentation based on demographics and will ensure companies reach the right person, at the right time and at the right place. It can be used to learn who is likely to engage, and convert visitors to customers through intelligent learning ensuring the best combination of content, relevance and communication.

Predict Customer's Next Move: Companies strategize huge budgets to help predict customers or their behaviors but the results still remain elusive. As the behavior and profile change rapidly, it is vital to know what, where and when the customers are going to buy next. So, it is imperative to leverage AI to predict the customer behavior by correlating characteristics, buying patterns and anticipated behaviors.

Personalized Content: Content is the king for a digital marketer. With an increased focus on personalized messages, using data such as online searches, buying behavior, interests in specific products, demographics, and search history, AI based content campaigns can greatly enhance ROI.

Text to Voice Shift: Around 30-40 percent of the online searches are now voice based and strategies should change to identify the intent behind the conversations. AI technology like NLP can be used to recognize and design the content based on the intent.
Augmented Reality:AR along with AI will provide customers an option to feel the product before they buy it. This will enable a reduced sales cycle and increase sales. Predictive campaigns powered by AI can reduce customer research on a product and enable quicker decision making.

Image & Text Recognition: Social media platform is a huge source of images and content such as tweets, posts and hashtags that represent the customer profile better than ever. AI can leverage it to understand consumer behaviors, buying patterns, derive customer sentiment and drive conclusions.

Decision Making: AI can analyze huge amount of data to identify issues and improvement areas which will gradually help digital marketing strategists to make better, robust and prompt decisions. The real game-changer will be how AI predicts what is working and what is not and provide intelligence on next steps by analyzing all the digital touch points.

Ads Optimization: AI can be used to evaluate and recommend ads over multiple channels and improve content depending on user sentiment and preferences for the business to invest their marketing dollars better, optimize the budget split across channels to maximize ROI and help expand new strategies for future targeting and cost-effective touch points.

AI Powered Chatbot: Chatbots will make the job of sales agents easier than before and can engage with customers 24x7 providing a very pleasant experience. They will respond to customer queries politely, reduce the waiting time, can remember all previous interactions and can optimize it making each interaction meaningful.

Audience Insights: AI can analyze trillions of search activities across millions of websites to help figure out when customers are close to buying, understand their purchase intent and surface ads that will be more relevant to them.
A/B Testing: AI will help enhance the overall efficiency of the A/B testing platform to identify changes and to learn which version attracts more clicks, which layout converts visitors to customer’s better, impact of new features to user experience etc.

Personalized Websites: Customers love customized offers and services. AI can provide personalized experience by analyzing location, past interaction, demographics, etc. and recommend content that would spark the individual's interest and make it easier for search engines to under-stand the context. This will improve user engagement drastically while ensuring higher conversion rates.

The Path Ahead
AI will progress beyond selecting the right content and design to deliver to the right person, over the right channel, at the right time to actually having a two-way conversation with the customers real-time. Deep Learning, automation, and ample variants of AI will provide a variety of marketing choices and digital marketers & promoters must embrace and accept the strength of the AI to enhance their plans and marketing techniques. Artificial Intelligence will trans-form how Digital Marketing is done today, with its ability to change and manage in real-time, both customers and digital marketers would definitely be on the winning side in this digital war.