With all the chatter about ChatGPT and other chatbots that use large language model processing, it can seem like artificial intelligence involves brand-new tools – and that can make AI seem intimidating. But in reality, AI is already part of the marketer’s toolkit – and in many different ways. From collecting and analyzing data to inform your digital marketing strategy in real-time to optimizing SEO, machine learning already drives strategy for many e-commerce businesses. But instead of utilizing only standalone tools that focus on just one question or problem, a future-looking marketing plan integrates AI across functions.

How is AI Transforming E-Commerce?

Whether you’re selling in a marketplace or directly to consumers, your e-commerce business is impacted by AI – even if you’re not using it yourself.

• Internet sales are increasingly shifting from websites to Amazon, Walmart, and other marketplaces, and these marketplaces use complex algorithms to show customers’ products, make recommendations for other products they might want, and encourage them to convert to a sale.
• Google and other search engines also use algorithms to analyze metadata and content to determine your business’s ranking on their search engine result pages (SERPs) – and generative AIs like ChatGPT are already disrupting search.
• As new businesses enter the market, they can leverage data analysis and AI to determine what product categories are the most profitable and quickly bring to market new, innovative products, often at lower prices, to sell to an established customer base.
• And your competitors are analyzing available data to craft marketing campaigns that will target your high-value customers and convince them to buy from them instead.

How To Design an AI Strategy?

To design an effective AI marketing strategy, consider your high-value customers’ priorities and determine what AI tools can best help you meet their needs effectively and efficiently – and help you convert their browsing into sales. Customers want to easily find relevant products and information through search, and they expect ads and social media engagement to be personalized. But they also want to choose what data to share, when, and with whom – and laws and regulations are catching up with their expectations.

With all that in mind, here are some key ways to integrate AI into your digital marketing plan:

Collect and Analyze Data

With the pivot to first-party data that respects user privacy, it’s more important than ever to have a firm grasp on what data your business currently gathers, what data it could access, and what an analysis could teach you about your customers. AI can help you understand past data and predict future trends.

Optimize Ads

Reaching new customers is all about discoverability, and paid ads like Google’s Performance Max can help your business target potential customers who are similar to your existing high-value customers. Effective ad buys are ones that are informed by past data, and AI can help your business determine what traits your current customers possess, identify new customers who match the same profile, and tailor a marketing campaign to meet those new customers where they are in the digital ecosystem.

Automate Common Processes

Whether you’re deciding how much to spend on an ad buy, which platform to run that ad on, or what segment of your customer base to target, decision-making takes time. By using AI tools to automate tasks and processes, including analyses that influence decision-making and social media campaigns, your business can be sure that your digital strategy is rooted in data and can react quickly to changes in the market.

Create Versatile Content

ChatGPT and other LLMs are already making waves when it comes to content, and for good reason. Marketing campaigns require a vast number of assets, from website and email copy to blog posts and social captions, and marketplace product listings require relevant, up-to-date metadata that might vary somewhat from site to site. Using LLMs to develop first drafts of assets around common themes can save your business time and money – as long as you assess the quality and accuracy of your materials.

Personalize Customer Outreach

Use chatbots for customer service and to offer potential buyers information to encourage purchase. Exploit your data – and your AI content tools – to create targeted campaigns and determine which customer segments and personas should receive what messaging, on what platforms, and for what products. And craft an AI social media approach that gathers data to inform strategy, from monitoring posts to learning about competitors to spotting discontent or reputation issues for your own brand and handling them quickly.

How Can NetElixir Help?

NetElixir is a future-first digital marketing firm, which means we started leveraging AI long before it went mainstream. We’ve invested over five years in LXRInsights, our proprietary, AI-powered digital marketing platform, and we are ready to help you find your niche, gain valuable, actionable insights into customer behavior, and stay ahead of changing trends.

At NetElixir, we know that a culture of experimentation is the key to a competitive advantage. By learning about your high-value customers and constantly developing and refining new ways to connect with them, you assure your business’s future success. LXRInsights will revolutionize your customer acquisition and engagement strategy by identifying your current and potential high-value customers and empowering your business to target, engage, and win them through more efficient and effective campaigns. ChatGPT integrates with LXRInsights to enable scaled content optimization that will reach the right customers where they’re shopping.

Ready to learn more? LXRInsights can be implemented as a standalone product, an add-on with your existing in-house or external agency, or as part of NetElixir’s full-service e-commerce solutions packages. Get started with LXRInsights today!

Further Reading

• Google Marketing Live Recap: A Digital Marketer’s Perspective
• A Beginner’s Guide to Local SEO
• Social Media Marketing Tips

The post What is AI Marketing? appeared first on NetElixir.

Professor Wind founded the Wharton Think Tank. He has authored or co-authored and edited 30 books and has received four major marketing awards. Professor Wind sits on the advisory board of the Lauder Institute. He co-founded the Reichmann University, the first private non-profit university Israel, and he is working closely with Amelia, an enterprise conversational AI company. His most recent book, Transformation in Times of Crisis, has been a big hit, and it was terrific to have him with us to connect the key principles highlighted in the book with the evolution of and opportunities afforded by generative and conversational AI.

What is a Culture of Experimentation?

A culture of experimentation is an environment that encourages people to come up with new ideas and test them out, where failure is not only tolerated but celebrated. When team members take risks in this kind of culture, they are rewarded for these efforts – even when they fail. Professor Wind shared his “great belief” that the “only way to learn and grow and succeed is by continuously experimenting”. Without a culture of experimentation, companies are unable to grow and address new challenges.

Why is Experimentation Important in Innovation?

Experimentation isn’t just important when it comes to innovation – it’s the foundation on which innovation is built. By developing new ideas, testing them, failing, and starting over again, your company can rapidly explore potential new avenues and evaluate which will be most effective. History has shown us that countless inventions have come about through R&D efforts were people were seeking to solve entirely different problems, and your business can benefit in ways you can’t predict from experimentation. Professor Wind noted that a culture of experimentation offers companies a competitive advantage, and isn’t that what a successful digital strategy is all about?

How Can Companies Foster a Culture of Experimentation?

Creating a strong culture of any kind involves buy-in from leadership, consistent reinforcement, and ongoing commitment. There are several actions you can take to help your company foster a culture of experimentation.

• Set the tone. A forward-thinking CEO can set the tone for the entire company by encouraging people to explore new ideas, measure their results, and learn from their failures as much as from their successes.
• Engage your team. Companies innovate best when all employees are empowered to experiment and are made aware of the changing landscape. Companies can draw on the experience and inspiration of their entire team, heightening the likelihood of developing new and exciting solutions.
• Make experimentation easy. Give your team the tools and the time to try new things and test different ideas. If your employees have access to what they need to experiment and the go ahead to do it, they will be empowered to innovate.
• Build a framework. By setting standards for how experiments will be run and how they will be evaluated, and developing ethical guidelines for your employees to follow, you ensure that you’ll recognize success when it happens and be able to capitalize on it.
• Celebrate and reward all efforts. By showcasing all emerging proposals and experiments, not just the successful ones, companies demonstrate to their employees that failure is a part of every innovative endeavor.

What is the Role of AI in Experimentation and Innovation?

Generative AI is based on large language models that analyze and draw from enormous datasets. These algorithms, when fed specific directions or questions, can produce responses and recommendations instantly based on what they’ve learned from those datasets. While the information provided requires validation against other available data and the systems need to be regulated – AI is only as intelligent and accurate as the datasets it pulls from – Professor Wind hailed generative AI as a new and exciting opportunity for innovation and testing. He suggested that companies examine their current experiments and investigate what augmentation is possible through the incorporation of generative AI solutions.

“The number of ideas and the number of experiments you can design exponentially go up,” he said, “because of the help of generative AI and conversational AI. …[Y]ou are able to identify new opportunities for questions, or maybe the new problems, the new questions, or [the] new areas” for explosive growth, all because of generative AI.

How Can AI Support New Marketing Approaches?

Digital marketing is in a time of transition, and companies must shift their focus to be “customer-centered”, Professor Wind shared, with an orientation to stakeholders instead of only to shareholders. He advised that the “company’s responsibility is not only for maximizing shareholder value but also addressing the needs of customers, employees, [and] society in general.” AI can help companies to do both.

Generative and conversational AI offer us, Professor Wind said, the ability to “analyze data [with] that much greater detail and accuracy… [and] to customize [and] personalize the message.” Marketers should  pivot from a focus on customer segments to an approach tailored to the person being targeted. Professor Wind shared that the industry has begun to describe this as a “pilot look”, where the generative AI serves as the user’s co-pilot and “enriches the set of tools that every one of us have”, allowing us to be more efficient and create more effective messages. The future of digital marketing is personal, and AI can get your business that much closer to your customers. 

Want to Learn More? Contact NetElixir.

Are you an AI-first CEO? Download our checklist, Illuminating the Path to Marketing Excellence, for eight recommendations that will jumpstart your company’s AI adoption.

Our NetElixir AI and experimentation experts are ready to help your company explore new avenues for digital marketing, and we can help you develop tools and frameworks that will set your team on the right path to experimentation. 

Leverage our proprietary AI-powered digital marketing platform, LXRInsights. We meticulously engineered our AI-powered digital marketing platform for one reason: to help e-commerce brands significantly boost paid media revenue at the same spend by precisely targeting, engaging, and winning high-value customers. Start today.

Additional Resources:

• How To Optimize SEO For Future AI-Driven Search Engines
• A NetElixir and ChatGPT Conversation: How Generative AI Is Disrupting Search
• Search Marketing Redefined

The post Creating A Culture Of Experimentation appeared first on NetElixir.

At its core, social media connects people to one another. As a marketing tool, social media helps brands connect with and target current and potential customers. Nearly 92% of U.S. marketers in companies with more than 100 employees use social media as part of their marketing strategy, according to Statista. But just because it’s easier to engage with customers does not mean that engagement is always easy. Your social media strategy has a lot of variables to balance and goals to meet to be effective. 

Amid all the digital noise, how can brands make their content and channels stand out? Beyond the usual elements of understanding the nuances of each platform, posting consistently, and finding the right hashtags, an effective social media strategy should authentically communicate your brand’s story. 

Humanize Your Brand

People join social media to engage with others, to stay informed, and to be inspired. So, get to know your audience. Understand their wants, needs, and expectations and then build a specific social media strategy around those points. Know that audiences across different platforms may have different needs. Leverage industry data and trends and your performance across channels for a baseline of what your customers respond to and need.

But don’t just guess at what your customers want; allow them to speak for themselves and tell you what they expect from your brand and how their overall experience can be improved. Ask questions on a live stream, share polls and surveys, and listen to their comments and questions. Having a Q&A session with the social media manager that gives your customers a face behind the posts can further humanize your brand. Your customers will feel included in the brand’s overall story and you’ll be able to tailor your social media experience directly to what the customer wants and expects. 

Consumers today react positively to transparent, genuine, and raw marketing campaigns. It’s ok for videos to not be perfectly polished, professionally-edited pieces. Instead, share a quick story of office life, show some behind-the-scenes of making your products, and make your content casual. Staged perfectionism does not work — and often, customers can see through that, anyway.

Just as you aim to humanize your brand, add some personalization to your outreach to humanize your individual customers. Don’t just copy and paste automated messages when replying to comments or DMs. When responding to an inquiry, start by addressing the questioner directly, such as “Hi Jen!” or “That’s great feedback, Jen, thank you! We will pass this to the rest of our team.” Good brands remember people and treat them as individuals who are all part of the same community. 

Build a Raging Online Community

Yes, the keyword there is raging. The ideal scenario of any social media strategy is to have your brand’s supporters become your mouthpiece to boast about you on your behalf and do free advertising for you. To work toward that ideal, you need a raging online community that is in love with your products and services and who are willing to become brand ambassadors of their own accord. 

This community can be fostered by taking your brand beyond simply a sales and revenue focus. Remain true to your values and brand voice, communicate honestly, and take responsibility for your actions.

Create a strong relationship between your brand and your followers.

Partner with influencers who can share your brand story from a different angle and leverage their own community followings. Put together a brand ambassador program to reward loyal customers. A strong community relies on constant day-to-day communication from a solid social media team that replies to DMs, posts, comments, tags, and reposts. Your team should also be open to receiving honest feedback from it’s most loyal followers. 

Offer value to your customers.

This means value beyond simply selling and promoting your products and services. Value can come from sharing knowledge about your industry, tips and tricks, and inspiring quotes, for example. Avoid aggressive sales posts. Share resources and knowledge that will empower others. 

Remember when you asked your customers what they needed? A product that specifically addresses a customer’s needs offers tremendous value. This new product can be branded around a social media campaign that lets customers know your company worked hard to address their specific concerns. This shows your brand listens and cares about your customers.

Share attention-grabbing content.

While content is an important element of your social media strategy, this point comes last for a reason. Often, brands tend to put content first, but without conveying real values and maintaining a strong relationship, good content alone will not carry your social media strategy.

Don’t post just for the likes. Skip shocking and click-bait content. Post real brand updates that adhere to your brand’s values and the likes and engagement will come organically over time. Share original images and videos that showcase your team, while updating your followers on the day-to-day office shenanigans (whether remote or in-person) to show off what makes your team and company great. This builds a sense of familiarity and shows your company culture. Plus people trust other people more than they trust companies: ResearchGate reports that photos that feature faces are 38% more likely to receive likes and 32% more likely to receive comments on Instagram. Sharing original content shows customers who your brand really is, so don’t copy the competition. You can be inspired by what your competitors are doing, but ensure your individual pieces align with your own brand story.

Additionally, incorporate user-generated content into your strategy. Businesswire found that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to consider UGC authentic compared to brand-generated content. This further contributes to your raging online community, as people love to see themselves acknowledged by the brands they care about.

By building a raging online community, you can tap into the best type of social advertising around. While paid social media advertising like Facebook and Instagram ads help support your revenue goals and influencers diversify your content, word-of-mouth advertising and peer reviews go a long way into boosting your brand’s reputation. Nothing can top authentic, organic, unfiltered content from a trusted peer or friend.

Putting Together Your Social Media Strategy

Social media is a strong tool to have in your marketing portfolio. The diversity of channels and experiences social media offers, as well as the ability to meaningfully engage with customers and authentically share your brand’s journey, is crucial to your overall growth strategy. 

NetElixir’s social media experts can help you create and execute your social media strategy and create a holistic plan that unifies your paid and organic social media approach. Contact NetElixir now.

For extra insights, download our 10 best practices to optimize your organic social media guide to ensure your channels have a strong foundation for growth!

Read More on Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

• Social Media Trends for 2021 and Beyond
• 9 Search, Social, and Amazon Trends for 2021
• Using Data to Guide Your Content

The post Crafting an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy appeared first on NetElixir.

The pandemic accelerated digitization on a global scale, but it also humanized us, as we collectively adjusted to virtual workspaces and events. Our deeper connection to technology – and the rapid improvements of that technology – allowed us to easily create better dialogue, send e-greetings, increase engagement, and shop online like never before. We online shopped live never before. 

But you don’t have to be reminded of that – we all went through it. During this period where we take some time to reflect on our challenges and accomplishments, NetElixir wanted to share our key learnings from working with over 100 retails brands this pandemic holiday season, with some insights from our Founder and CEO, Udayan Bose, into the non-tangibles and the non-digital things we learned this year.

A Note on 2020 from NetElixir’s CEO

I am sure we will forever remember 2020. Unfortunately, given the magnitude of what we have had to deal with during the pandemic, there are residual effects that we expect to roll into 2021. I will also remember 2020 for how much it taught us all. Here’s some of what 2020 taught me: 

• Humility: Matters that may have been considered important felt trivial as the pandemic swept through the world.
• The importance of Prioritization: The pandemic forced us to prioritize what’s important for us.
• We are who we are (the importance of authenticity): The Zoom calls brought our co-workers, clients, partners, and prospects inside our homes. Since every communication was through Zoom, people saw us as we were, not what we wanted to show them. And, this, in my opinion, was one of the biggest positives of continued remote work. It helped humanize our professional relationships. Suddenly it wasn’t a vendor-client or a partner-partner conversation – it was a conversation between two people – a person to person conversation.
• Adaptability: We had to react quickly to the ever-evolving eCommerce landscape, to meet clients and customers where they were, and seize opportunities as they arose. Indecision was costly. Agility and adaptability will continue to be crucial to success in the future.
• It is NOT about me. It is about YOU: The pandemic amplified the importance of a fundamental business truth – every interaction with internal and external customers is always about them and not us. Asking “how can we help” is fundamental to fully understanding and meeting the needs and expectations of others. We need to provide solutions to problems customers are dealing with directly, not what we think they are dealing with. 
• The Importance of Positive Momentum: As a result of numerous initiatives that we undertook, at a very rapid pace to proactively meet the challenges of the pandemic head-on, we emerged stronger together. We kept building on our positive momentum to do better, learn from both what went wrong and what went right, and progress onto the next thing.
• Leaders are everywhere: People just need an opportunity to have their leadership skills blossom. Establishing an environment of continuous experimentation and open innovation and communication inspires everyone to do better, reach higher, and create something bigger than themselves. New leaders help organizations grow further and faster.
• The Importance of taking a pause to self-reflect: Burnout is real. Taking planned breaks from work and slowing down occasionally is important to be able to recharge and tackle a problem with fresher insights. Spending some “me time” is crucial to maintaining the work-from-home flow, while keeping us mentally and physically healthy and capable.
• Thankfulness is an incredible energizer: There is so much to be thankful for this year, I don’t even know where to start. I will just share my favorite quote that I think defines the importance of being thankful:

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. – Melody Beattie

2020 will soon become history. While we can’t really control the unfortunate loss the pandemic has caused, we can definitely look back on the lessons that we have learned and how we have grown as a human being in 2020. 

From the NetElixir family to yours, we wish you a very happy and healthy New Years!

The post NetElixir’s Farewell to 2020 appeared first on NetElixir.