3 Ways AI Is Affecting How Businesses Grow Online
Technology has always altered the way companies do business. But never has it been more transformative than with the emergence of artificial intelligence that’s accessible to all. AI has disrupted the way companies do business online, driving innovation and change.
Those reluctant to implement AI capabilities into business practices are already falling behind. Some avoid it thinking it’s too complicated to use. Others fear AI is all about replacing human talent, but it’s not. It has become a user-friendly way to help humans work smarter, faster, and better.
As brands use digital technology to pass up the competition and breed success, AI will be pivotal to those efforts. Take a look at three ways AI is affecting how businesses are growing online.
1. It’s Boosting Content Strategies
Content is king in the world of digital marketing. The challenge lies in creating dynamic content that responds to the demands and whims of ever-changing search algorithms. AI can help, although perhaps not in the way you think.
Relying heavily on AI-generated content can come back to haunt you. Google policy may say it doesn’t penalize this content, but its bots do favor the human touch. That said, using AI to make your human-generated content better will give it an advantage.
You can bet good money that a results-driven growth strategy agency is keeping its creatives and SEO strategists on the payroll. For all its attributes, AI simply cannot replace this talent and know-how. However, those agencies are using AI to strategically inform the content it creates.
For example, teams use AI’s ability to gather and analyze huge amounts of data quickly to conduct keyword research. It’s a boon for creative brainstorming sessions and as a tool to organize topical outlines ripe for fleshing out. And to save a tremendous amount of research time, AI can provide statistics, quotes, and other vital information in an instant.
Creating content that will be rewarded by search engines rather than punished or ignored is an increasingly demanding task. But AI used as a tool to augment, not replace, talented human ingenuity, is helping agencies rise to the challenge.
2. It’s Enhancing the Customer Experience
It might seem that using AI to delight and engage customers is moving customer service in the wrong direction. After all, isn’t it better if humans, not chatbots, respond to customer questions on the website? Perhaps it can be, but if those humans have thick accents or don’t work nights, customers may prefer chatbots.
Remember, stellar CX depends on exceeding customer expectations. And those gaps between expectation and experience can drive customers away. AI can help businesses fill in those gaps and keep loyal customers on their side.
CX isn’t just one touchpoint but rather, a journey. And the more personal a business can make that journey for each customer, the better. AI can help CX staff know the customer’s history and make suggestions to sync with that customer’s language and intent. It can analyze issues and recommend solutions more likely to satisfy that individual.
AI can also assist CX teams with scale by triaging and routing calls. When contact volumes are high, well-designed chatbots and auto-messaging can help customers when humans aren’t available for chat. Many customers will get the information they need without live chat. Others will feel seen and heard until there’s an opening.
Maintaining engagement with customers across all your communication platforms can be unwieldy and repetitive. AI can keep conversations relevant and on topic with individual customers. Businesses that figure out how to use AI to increase, not decrease, personalization will provide loyalty-building CX.
3. It’s Being Used to Protect, Not Harm, Online Privacy
There is no doubt that AI has created issues with online privacy. It can make assumptions based on data that underrepresents certain groups of people and exacerbate algorithmic biases. And the huge amount of data it can cull can create greater risk of privacy breaches.
These fears are real, and consumers worry about them. In fact, 93% are concerned about online privacy, which means businesses must be as well. That’s why some are using AI to improve privacy measures and prevent cyberattacks. AI can be used to enforce permissions controls, automate threat detection, and monitor suspicious activity in real time, all the time.
Businesses can reap the rewards of all types of AI use. However, they also need to take responsibility for protecting their customers from its potential perils. That means reducing algorithmic bias by selecting representative data used to teach AI. It requires top-notch data hygiene where only necessary information is collected and secured. And data should remain always under the control of the user and require user consent.
The privacy dangers AI may pose are prompting companies to establish better privacy policies and practices. Moreover, consumer concerns are forcing them to be more transparent about how they use their data and how they’re protecting it. These are positive steps in a digital world, and AI is helping brands take them.
Get the AI Effect
AI has definitely delivered the butterfly effect in digital technology. There are risks to using it, but there’s also a tremendous potential for rewards. Informing content that keeps SERPs high, building CX that keeps customers loyal, and developing transparent data policies are three such benefits. As AI develops, it will need guardrails. But using it responsibly and wisely will give businesses wings.
