Category Archives: Social Media

The Promise and Pitfalls of AI in Marketing: Navigating the Path to Success

Explore the promise of AI in marketing, as well as the potential pitfalls

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized various industries, and marketing is no exception. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, uncover patterns, and automate processes, AI has the potential to transform marketing strategies, enhance customer experiences, and drive business growth. However, like any powerful tool, AI also comes with its own set of challenges and potential pitfalls. In this blog post, we will explore the promise of AI in marketing, as well as the potential pitfalls to navigate on the path to success.

The Promise of AI in Marketing

  1. Data-Driven Insights: AI has the capability to analyze massive amounts of data in real-time, providing marketers with valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. By leveraging AI-powered analytics tools, marketers can uncover hidden patterns, identify audience segments, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their marketing strategies. The promise of AI lies in its ability to extract actionable insights from complex data sets, enabling marketers to personalize their messaging, target specific audiences, and deliver relevant content.
  2. Enhanced Customer Experiences: AI technologies, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, enable personalized and real-time interactions with customers. These AI-powered tools can provide instant responses to inquiries, offer product recommendations based on customer preferences, and deliver personalized content across various touchpoints. By leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences, marketers can foster stronger relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and drive loyalty.
  3. Automation and Efficiency: AI can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing up marketers to focus on strategic initiatives. From automating email campaigns to optimizing ad targeting and personalization, AI can streamline marketing operations, improve efficiency, and save valuable time and resources. Automated processes powered by AI algorithms can also lead to faster and more accurate data analysis, campaign optimization, and decision-making.
  4. Predictive Analytics and Forecasting: AI’s predictive capabilities can help marketers anticipate customer behavior, market trends, and potential outcomes. By analyzing historical data and identifying patterns, AI algorithms can provide valuable predictions and forecasts. This enables marketers to allocate resources effectively, optimize inventory, and make strategic decisions that have a positive impact on ROI.

The Pitfalls to Navigate

  1. Data Privacy and Ethical Concerns: As AI relies heavily on data collection and analysis, concerns around data privacy and ethical use of customer information arise. Marketers must ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations and implement robust security measures to protect customer data. Transparent data practices and clear consent mechanisms are essential to maintain trust with customers and avoid potential pitfalls associated with data breaches or misuse.
  2. Bias and Fairness: AI algorithms are trained on historical data, and if that data contains biases, it can perpetuate those biases in marketing campaigns. This can result in unfair targeting, exclusion, or discrimination. Marketers must be aware of potential biases within AI systems, continually monitor and evaluate their algorithms, and ensure fairness and inclusivity in their marketing efforts.
  3. Lack of Human Touch: While AI offers automation and efficiency, there is a risk of losing the human touch in marketing. Customers still value personal connections and authentic interactions. Marketers should strike a balance between leveraging AI technologies and maintaining human engagement. Incorporating personalization strategies and empathetic customer service alongside AI-driven automation can help mitigate this pitfall.
  4. Overreliance on AI: Relying solely on AI without human oversight and intervention can lead to missed opportunities and misinterpretation of data. Marketers should remember that AI is a tool to augment their capabilities, not replace them entirely. Human expertise, creativity, and intuition are still critical in strategic decision-making, interpreting results, and understanding the nuances of customer behavior that AI may overlook.
  5. Complexity and Implementation Challenges: Implementing AI technologies can be complex and require specialized skills and resources. Marketers may face challenges in integrating AI systems with existing infrastructure, managing and interpreting large datasets, and ensuring seamless integration across various marketing channels. Careful planning, adequate training, and collaboration between marketing and IT teams are crucial to successfully navigate the implementation process.
AI holds immense promise for marketers, offering data-driven insights, enhanced customer experiences, automation, and predictive capabilities

AI holds immense promise for marketers, offering data-driven insights, enhanced customer experiences, automation, and predictive capabilities. However, navigating the path to success requires awareness of potential pitfalls. Addressing data privacy concerns, mitigating biases, maintaining human engagement, avoiding overreliance on AI, and managing implementation challenges are key to harnessing the full potential of AI in marketing. By leveraging AI responsibly, marketers can unlock new opportunities, gain a competitive edge, and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly AI-driven marketing landscape.

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How Periscope Can Help Your Business

SurePayroll recently created an infographic about Periscope. It showcases the recent history and importance of live streaming, how to create an account and use the app, and why it’s important for businesses to use live streaming.

You’ve likely heard of Periscope, the app owned by Twitter that lets users share and see live video streams on their mobile devices. Every day, 350,000 hours of video is streamed, and Periscope alone has 1.9 million daily active users. This app and others like it have transformed social media sharing.

To get started, create an account with your Twitter account or phone number (in order to get the most out of the social aspect of this platform, most experts recommend using your Twitter handle).

Within the app, besides creating your own live stream, you can see a list of the people your account follows who are currently broadcasting, as well as a list of broadcasts your account attended in the last day—which you can replay. You can also view a global list of live public broadcasts and where they’re located.

Businesses should use Periscope to their advantage.

Create your community, post how-to videos and product demos, share industry news, build your mailing lists, and take your followers behind the scenes.

Periscope offers an intimate way for viewers to watch, comment, share, and interact with your live content. For more details on using Periscope, check out the infographic below.

Click to Enlarge Image

Peer into Periscope: How Periscope Can Help Your Business

50 Mind Blowing Facts Most Digital Marketers Don’t Know

Marc Howard lives and breathes digital growth strategies and shows other digital entrepreneurs and small-medium sized business owners how to grow their online business, generate more traffic and turn visitors into leads. He shares the strategy and the mindset at http://whenyouliveinthenow.com. He published this insightful post about a year ago but it remains timeless.

50 Mind Blowing Facts Most Digital Marketers Don’t Know

Do you consider yourself to be one of those in-the-know digital marketers? Are you just starting as a freelancer or entrepreneur that’s looking for a bit of insight or do you consider yourself already an expert?

Well some of the facts below may be a major awakening. No matter what your area of expertise you may be amazed by some of the stats below.

The one thing that you will notice however in each of these facts is that they are full of opportunity to either improve your existing marketing strategy or seek out a new channel (hint: using a video to promote your product or service is on the rise this year like never before).

The Power of Video for Content Marketing

  1. The average human attention span is 8 seconds. The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. Source: Wikipedia
  2. Our brains process images 60x faster than text. Change-up your text-to-image ratios and choose images that tell your story. Source:3M Corporation
  3. 80% of your online visitors will watch a video while 20% will actually read content. Source: Digital Sherpa
  4. 75% Of Users Visit The Marketer’s Website After Viewing A Video. Source: Digital Sherpa
  5. 45% Of Viewers Will Stop Watching A Video After 1 Minute & 60% By 2 Minutes. Source: Insivia
  6. Videos Increase People’s Understanding Of Your Product Or Service by 74%. Source: Digital Sherpa
  7. Using video on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%. Source: Unbounce.com
  8. Up to 60% of all email recipients regularly turn off images. Source: MarketingLand.com
  9. Your Website Is 50 Times More Likely To Appear On The First Page Of A Search Engine Results Page If It Includes Video. Source: Digital Sherpa
  10. Adding video to your email campaigns can increase click rate by 300%. Host your video online and create a thumbnail play button for your email. Source: Wistia
  11. Website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. Source: Digital Sherpa

How To Leverage Social Media

  1. Facebook post with photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs. Source: KISSMetrics
  2. Facebook posts with questions get 100% more comments. Source: KISSMetrics
  3. Tweets that specifically ask followers to “retweet” receive 12x more retweet rates than those who do not. Source: BufferApp
  4. 16% of marketers plan to increase efforts on Pinterest in 2015. Source: Business2Community.com
  5. Twitter users follow a median of 6 brands on Twitter, looking for things like interesting and fun content, news and updates, discounts and promos and more. Source: BufferApp
  6. Content that is greater than 1500 words on average receives 68.1% more tweets. Source: QuickSprout
  7. By using just 3 hashtags, brands can gain a 110% increase in likes on their Instagram posts. Source: Pigora
  8. By using just 3 hashtags, brands can gain a 180% increase in likes on their Instagram posts. Source: Pigora

A Blog Is No Longer a “Nice to Have”

  1. Blogs give sites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. Source: NewsCred.com
  2. Companies that blog 15+ times per month get 5x more traffic than companies that don’t blog. Source: Hubspot
  3. Companies with an active blog report 97% more leads. Source: Content+
  4. 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles over ads. Source: Content+
  5. Articles with images get 94% more views than those without.Source: Content+
  6. 57% of companies have acquired customers via their blog. Source: Content+
  7. Content creation ranked as the single most effective SEO tactic by 53%. Source: MarketingSherpa
  8. 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone. Source: convinceandconvert.com

If You’re Not Doing Mobile You Will Be Left Behind

  1. 71% of global users access social media through mobile devices. Source: Search Engine Journal
  2. 92% of mobile shopping app users want to be alerted if retailers are having sales. Source: Latitude Research
  3. About 60 percent of all Internet activity in the U.S. originates from mobile devices, and about half of total Internet traffic flows through mobile apps. Source: Internet Marketing Association
  4. Mobile revenue is projected to reach $700 billion by 2017, increasing by more than 300%. Source: VentureBeat
  5. By 2017, mobile devices will make up 87 percent of the total sales of Internet-enabled technology. Source: LanderApp

It Pays to Do Email Marketing–Literally

  1. The average open rate for welcome emails is a whopping 50% making them 86% more effective than email newsletters. (An automated welcome is a no brainer.) Source: Marketing Sherpa
  2. 51% of email is opened on a mobile device. (Design for the smallest screen first then you responsive design templates to ensure emails look great on any screen size.) Source: Litmus
  3. Nurtured leads make 47% more purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Create an automated series that delivers content to your subscriber over time and it will pay off.) Source: The Annuitas Group
  4. 58% of adults check email first thing in the morning. (Try sending your emails early in the day–you might see an uptick of opens). Source: Ezanga
  5. People check their email up to 150x a day. Make sure your call-to-action is clear. Source: kpcb.com
  6. Eye tracking data shows that viewers look to the same part of the screen where images of people are looking. That’s exactly where to want to put your call-to-action. Source: The Brain Lady Blog
  7. Email is nearly 40x better than Facebook or Twitter at acquiring customers. Source: McKinsey & Company
  8. You have just 3-4 seconds to grab your reader’s attention and interest them enough to open and read your email. Source: Litmus
  9. 64% of decision makers read emails via mobile device. Source: EmailExpert.org
  10. Using marketing automation can increase conversion rates by up to 50%. Source: Aberdeen Group
  11. If an email doesn’t display correctly, 71.2% will delete it immediately.Source: BlueHornet

Now That We “Google” Everything Search Engine Marketing Is Taking Over

  1. In 2015, search engine marketing (SEM) will continue to capture the largest share of online spend at 47%, or about 14% of the firm’s total marketing budget 2014. Source: Business2Community.com
  2. Mobile search ads will be $12.85 billion in 2015, over 50% of the search market. Source: Heidi Cohen
  3. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Source: Imforza
  4. Search is the No. 1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300 percent. Source: Search Engine Journal
  5. The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has. Source: QuickSprout
  6. 60% of all organic clicks go to the organic top 3 search results. Source: Business2Community.com
  7. 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. Source: Search Engine Watch

Of the tips above which one stood out the most and how might you tweak your digital marketing strategy based on it? Or do you have one even more mind blowing?

Good Selling!