Artificial Intelligence & Marketing

Well everyone, it seems that the future is here. No flying cars just yet but that doesn’t change the fact that artificial intelligence has now become a part of marketing. Strange times we live in, now right?! Seriously though, AI is becoming more important for the improvement of marketing and real-time engagement. Think about the chat box that helps you when you have a question on a website. This is AI but this isn’t all it’s doing now. Now it’s helping brands predict future behavior. But how does it do that. Well, AI creates real time models by using algorithms from reading data on recent trends on the internet. It also helps predict patterns this way through huge amounts of data to see consumer behaviors as well as their interests. It does so with a data analytics system that operates in real-time as well. Blowing our minds over here! This brings us to the last point of pattern recognition. It uses the data about demographics, browsing behaviors and purchases. It can group people into segments that tend to have similar behaviors.

To be honest AI sounds scary. We all go to that place in Terminator where the machines have taken over but once you begin to understand the benefits and how it truly works it seems a whole lot less scary. We found this information to be very useful and are intrigued on how it can propel the marketing industry in the future. To read more on how AI is changing the industry check out this Quantcast blog that dives a little deeper than we did.

Cost Effectiveness of UGC Marketing & Advertising

To source or not to source? That is the question! We all know the many benefits of sourced content advertising in terms of brand authenticity, loyalty, customer engagement, etc. But what about the pricing of this type of marketing over traditional forms of marketing? When we say traditional we mean production team, actors, studio. You get it. The whole nine. Traditional forms of marketing tend to be more polished and present mostly information about a product. It can also be very time consuming where user generated content marketing has a much faster turnaround time. Of course, like all businesses, there is always going to be a budget involved for every single advertising campaign that they do. Statistics show that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional and will generate 3x’s as many leads (Demand Metric Report). Also, the risk of traditional marketing forms is in the fact that the brand won’t know the end result or its impact it will have with their consumers. Whereas, sourcing user generated content that is already made, the brand will already know what the emotion the clips incite and how it may fit the final edits. Already knowing the emotional response will also give the brand insight as to how how it will impact their audience before it even goes into market. Often times, these agencies will come in well under project budget utilizing a sourced content agency such as Locomotive. Of course, it’s not feasible to use sourced content for every single ad campaign. However, it is extremely beneficial to blend a mix of traditional and content marketing together in order to get the best use of a company’s advertising budget.