AI is the disrupter delivering the future of digital marketing. The main protagonists in the rise of AI, Google, joined us at Reload to show how their AI can work harder for online businesses.
The Reload summit, 2024’s taking place last September, brings speakers and experts from across eCommerce and beyond to bring the latest from the industry, sprinkled with the kind of insights and advice you need to get ahead online. With AI already revolutionising the way brands sell online, we invited Google’s Mahima Rastogi, Strategic Agency Manager and Dan Gordon, Strategics Partnerships Manager, who sit at the forefront of this technological paradigm shift to discuss what they see as an inflection point for this world-changing tech, and how brands can mobilise AI to their advantage.
How do you make sense of a shifting digital landscape, how do you protect yourself and your customers when it comes to privacy, and how do you make new technology mean something to your business? These questions are what every eCommerce business needs to be asking of themselves right now. As AI has rapidly evolved over the past 18 months, it has generated new opportunities for marketers and brands to evolve with it.
Right now, only half of CEOs actually see marketing as a growth driver, but at a time when CEOs are also under increasing pressure, it’s important to see marketing from a different angle, one of profit rather than cost, that can be transformed through an AI lens. Despite the changes brought on by AI, the role of marketers remains relatively unchanged, to drive profitable growth for brands and businesses with all the tools at their disposal.
What has shifted is how we grow. Marketers need to approach media strategies, customer journeys, and engagement whilst evolving with AI’s increasing role. We’ve moved on from asking what AI is, and now we should be looking for more ways to bring AI into our marketing efforts.
In the past year, there’s been a shift from understanding AI’s potential to figuring out how to incorporate it into our strategies. The focus has now moved on to leveraging AI tools to enhance customer experiences, drive efficiency, and improve performance across media strategies.
Shoppers are more unpredictable than ever, constantly developing more complex decision-making processes. Navigating this ‘messy middle’, the often convoluted path that shoppers take from browsing to basket. It’s no longer the linear process of Google search, reviews, and finishing the purchase. Now, with social media and the seamlessness between online and reality, shoppers are jumping between 5 or more touchpoints before making a decision.
It’s never been more important for brands to meet their audience wherever they are in their journey. You need to show up at every touchpoint, from research, review to buying and work harder to follow up for loyalty. Over 50% of daily Google searches are entirely new, generated by humans who are endlessly curious, and highlights two key insights: shoppers are well-informed and highly demanding, constantly seeking new information before making decisions.
All along these multiple touchpoints, shoppers are increasingly looking for personalisation. 66% of shoppers expect content and services tailored to their specific preferences. The obvious answer to brands is to use data to drive marketing decisions and personalisation.
Increasing personalisation is met with a demand for more privacy. Individuals do not want to sacrifice their personal privacy in exchange for content personalised around them. Bring tailored experiences where there is transparency and control over their data. Although, this will be a balancing act for marketers, with no equilibrium between privacy and personalisation.
It’s not just shoppers who are radically evolving, the pressure is being turned up for businesses too. The expectations placed on marketing departments have increased, with CEOs and CMOs demanding more from marketing efforts. Margins are under scrutiny, and marketing is often delegated as a ‘nice to have’, instead of an essential vehicle for growth.
As said earlier, AI presents a unique opportunity to shift marketing from a cost centre to a profit centre. By integrating AI into marketing strategies, brands can optimise their spending, improve targeting, and vastly improve their ROI. Automation and advanced analytics can enhance decision-making, streamline operations, and deliver better results as teams are freed to think creatively outside of tasks that can be performed by AI.
Google has been an AI-first company since 2016, remaining at the forefront of innovation in the AI field. As AI continues to evolve, Google is leveraging its massive scale and research capabilities to help businesses harness the power of AI. There’s over six products produced by Google that have 2 billion monthly active users and 15 products with more than 500 million monthly users, bringing a staggering scale to Google’s AI ecosystem.
AI’s integration into Google’s products have already enabled brands to focus on efficiency, targeting, and performance. Optimising campaigns with machine learning or enhancing customer experiences with AI-driven insights, Google’s AI tools offer a competitive edge for marketers looking to stay ahead in 2024, and way beyond.
AI, as Mahimai and Dan told us, is at an inflection point in digital marketing. Rapid acceleration, combined with an increasing demand for privacy in the AI ecosystem, is transforming the industry. This presents a challenge, but where there's a challenge there’s also opportunity, and marketers can ride the wave of new AI tools available to them to success. Mastering the 3 dynamics at play, personalisation, privacy, and AI integration isn’t easy, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.
With AI always on the move, you need an agency who can keep up. Visualsoft is constantly looking for new opportunities to meet the challenges AI brings, and can bring them to your business. Speak to our digital marketing team to start realising your online ambitions.
Stay up the date and register your interest for the 2025 Reload Summit here.