Can AI alone transform insights and marketing strategies?
Editor’s note: Indie Blackwell is commercial advisor at software development firm Jishi, and co-founder of the Women In Research (WIRe) Accelerate program.
With an increasing number of marketers using AI, synthetic data and segmentation for market research, the question is: Are they using it the right way? After all, with data analysis and research topping the list of popular AI use cases right now, columnist Mark Ritson has written about the “grand new era of automation.”
Indeed, the use of AI can offer speed, cost-efficiency and accuracy – thereby freeing up insights professionals to delve into deeper insights and storytelling. “The implications are enormous,” he says. “The era of AI marketing has begun.”
Headlines, however, can be misleading or somewhat simplistic. It is not AI in isolation that is ushering in a new era of consumer insights at scale. It is a combination of tools and techniques that yields the best results. These are tools that insights professionals need to embrace and merge into their working practices as they evolve.
Driving customer engagement with AI
With the holiday season coming up, businesses that have started to leverage AI in the most effective ways will stand to benefit by generating truly personalized strategies, which helps drive engagement and connection. This can speed up so many processes, while also lowering costs, enabling key insights to be reached faster.
Hyper-personalization requires the use of a range of advanced technologies and sophisticated data analytics to tailor content and experiences to individuals based on unique interests, preferences, behaviors and demographics. It goes beyond traditional profiling methods. It’s about crafting a truly bespoke experience or offer that narrows in on the psychometric sentiments of the consumer.
Traditionally, however, marketers have relied on somewhat simplistic customer segmentations based on criteria such as past purchases or demographics, and data that is outdated by the time it is analyzed. Personas are never static – behaviors and preferences change, often in the moment.
Here’s where AI can, and should, come in. To achieve hyper-personalization, we need to leverage advanced algorithms and machine learning to analyze vast data sets at scale and in real time. We also need to look beyond the holy grail of first-party data. Yet again, there is a need to question the status quo, and to go beyond convention. Businesses must look further than first-, second- and third-party data and incorporate valuable zero-party data that captures not just demographic information but also shifting behaviors, choices and motivations.
Armed with this data, harnessed and orchestrated via a sophisticated and multilayered technology framework, insights professionals can analyze interactions as they unfold, leveraging psychometric, behavioral and zero-party data alongside AI not only to understand but also to predict.
Fortunately, as marketers continue to prepare for the impact of cookie deprecation, there has been increasing interest in zero-party data; information that consumers willingly share in exchange for specific benefits. This approach also has the benefit of reducing dependence on walled gardens and often expensive, unreliable, external data sources. Investment in quality data can pay dividends across multiple business functions.
Digital twin technology, AI and marketing research
Brands are also investing in digital twin technology. This can enable organizations to simulate real situations and make better decisions. Indeed, a digital twin of a customer is a powerful tool that can transform insights and marketing strategies. They are already all around us. For example, look at Google Maps, which links real-time data on traffic to help us plan our journeys in-the-moment.
Digital twin technologies can revolutionize our ability to cater to customer needs, especially when combined with behavioral and psychometric data. They remain in sync, through each interaction, with algorithms continuously updating based on new learnings.
In this way, AI, layered with other technologies and techniques, can provide a cornerstone for advertisers to unlock truly hyper-personalized strategies and tactics, in a privacy-safe way. At ESOMAR Congress 2024, the overarching theme of “Mind, Myth, Machine” spoke to the power of innovation, technology and human ingenuity, and the conversation constantly returned to the ways in which AI is affecting our sector and the applications of it within many use cases.
It is an exciting time, and we are starting to see businesses combine machine learning and psychology to tap into previously inaccessible insights and gather disruptive and authentic learnings. Today it is possible to delve into intricate behaviors, choices, motivations, fears and goals and to uncover previously hidden links, such as a luxury car buyer’s preference for seafood or a health insurance customer’s love for DIY.
Hyper-personalized, contextual approaches and real-time consumer modeling are now within reach. We are at a transformative moment and inflection point that goes far beyond the confines of ChatGPT and previous limitations of digesting and analyzing vast quantities of unstructured data. Layering breakthrough technologies can enable us to turbocharge growth through real emotional engagement and connections as we move beyond the status quo.
From the use of AI and digital twin technology to zero-party data, brands need a new approach to drive differentiated experiences and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive world. As the holiday season once again rolls in, brands that leverage a modern-day combination of machine learning, AI, psychometrics and behavioral data stand to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Harnessing deeper insights
Businesses need transformational business intelligence to thrive. Employing a combination of zero-party data, AI and digital twin technologies can harness deeper insights.
While many are looking to AI to automate the most mundane processes, we must not forget that it can do so much more. Harnessing its potential requires thinking beyond the confines of what has so far been deemed possible.
As we leverage a combination of the latest technologies to develop a system that constantly iterates, in recognition of the fact that there is no single, fixed “truth” when it comes to human behavior, it is now possible to serve customers with confidence through hyper-personalization and a fulfilling customer experience. We’re only at the start, with much – accelerated – change still to come.