Editor's Note: Nick Rojas is a freelance journalist who has written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, and Yahoo. Today he joins us to discuss how AI is changing the way that businesses acquire customers, and how to use it.
Every company needs new customers to grow, and anyone running a business knows that it takes time and planning to attract them. However, thanks to the growth of artificial intelligence, customer acquisition is getting a little bit easier.
AI is advancing and isn’t expected to slow down anytime soon: between this year and 2022, the AI market is expected to grow 62 percent, by a value of $16.06 billion. Marketers and businesses are wisely taking notice and implementing AI into their customer acquisition strategies.
With the right methods in place, AI can revolutionize your acquisition funnel, saving you time and money in the process. Let’s take a look at how this can be done.
Chatbots
Chatbots are a hot trend in tech marketing circles. You’ve probably interacted with them numerous times, even if you didn’t realize it.
Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Alexa are all chatbots. You may find this confusing, since chatbots are usually thought of in very narrow terms. In reality, any AI which interacts with customers using natural human speech can be thought of as a ‘chatbot’.
So why are they such a big deal for customer acquisition? It’s simple: chatbots simplify the user experience and enhance customer support.
Simplified Experience
Consumers are more likely to buy your products if you remove barriers to entry. To remove those barriers, you need to facilitate an environment where moving from acquisition to decision is painless.
This is exactly what chatbots accomplish. Take for instance bots that live on Facebook Messenger, allowing customers to ask questions and buy products on-the-fly. If consumers become interested in your business through a social media page, they can do research and make a decision without ever leaving the application.
In this case, the chatbot enables your customers to act on a whim, moving them seamlessly from curiosity to a product purchase. In the long-run, ease of use and access streamlines your funnel, leading to more sales and consumer interest.
Customer Support
Chatbot customer support helps retain customers that you’ve already done business with, and thereby improves your brand reputation, which can attract new customers in turn.
AI allows companies to offer versatile 24/7 support to their customers. If a problem arises while your staff is away, your chatbot is always ready.
Advances in Artificial Intelligence enable chat bots to gather information about a problem, offer solutions, and also transfer the problem to a human when it’s too complex. Simple issues can be resolved on-the-spot without intervention, leaving the most important problems for your personnel to handle, with all the pertinent information collected and ready for review.
No matter how a problem is resolved, customer support chatbots enhance the customer experience while saving time and money.
Predict Consumer Behavior
Attracting new customers means understanding consumer wants and needs. AI helps this process by predicting consumer behavior on the basis of existing information.
Artificial intelligence is routinely used by companies like Salesforce to mine and process large data sets of customer information such as preferences, shopping habits, and comments left on your social media pages. Using a process called semantic analysis, AI can understand human context and intelligently guess how a person feels about a product or service based on their interactions with your company.
You can then use this information to tailor marketing strategies that target new customers. Essentially, the AI gives you a list of your product’s greatest strengths and weaknesses relative to your audience.
Is your product getting lots of views on social media? Then you should capitalize on social media.
Is your idea unique to a specific market? Then hit that niche with your advertising.
Chatbots and predictive behavior analysis streamline your customer acquisition process while also saving you time and money. As Artificial Intelligence continues to revolutionize online customer acquisition, the best time to get started is now!
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