5 Ways to Use Artificial Intelligence to Spur Business Growth

To truly appreciate the impact of Artificial Intelligence in business, you only need to look at Alibaba and Amazon. Alibaba, the online retail giant which currently sells more than eBay and Amazon combined, has AI to thank for much of its success. The company heavily relies on AI, especially language processing, to generate product descriptions. While other platforms require sellers to create the descriptions manually, sellers on Alibaba can spend that time on more productive business areas as the AI bots handle the descriptions. It’s a strategy that saves the company millions of dollars annually.

If the Alibaba story doesn’t move you, then consider Amazon. Amazon is the most popular online retail store in North America, mostly thanks to AI. With their voice assistant Alexa, for instance, Amazon completely changed the rules of online retail. They now process millions of orders generated through Alexa.

Additionally, did you know that Amazon uses AI to process shipments? Before you even make the order, they already know the shipment destination.

Moreover, the company now uses AI to predict consumer shopping patterns and can confidently recommend a product before it clicks in your head that you need it. These tactics have helped the company significantly increase sales volumes over the last few years.

Five Ways You Too Can Leverage AI to Accelerate Business Growth

You can also begin using artificial intelligence to close more sales generally boost your business growth. The following are a few easy-to-implement tips to consider;

• Use AI to build accurate personas 

The value of customer personas in digital business is well established. Personas help companies better target their marketing. They allow you to write better product descriptions, write better blogs, and identify better marketing channels.

AI-backed tools can now build accurate personas to take your marketing to the next level. They do so by analyzing millions of data points – which you can’t do personally. AI tools can also dig deeper into the details, such as the tone and emotion of the target audience, by monitoring each customer’s browsing and purchase history. It’s what Amazon does, and so can you.

• Use AI for a better ad campaign

Advertising is currently one of the most effective forms of marketing. According to various studies, you’re guaranteed a return on investment of around $2 for every $1 spent. A few businesses even make more. However, two issues make advertising extremely challenging – targeting and bidding.

AI can help with both areas. As we’ve already seen, AI, through machine learning, can better capture the needs of your target audience, leading to better product copies. Concerning bidding, a few AI tools now exist that can predict optimal bidding spots for increased conversions. Motorcycle brand, Albert, was able to increase its sales by 2930% this way.

• Use AI to boost your social media presence

Businesses are just realizing the importance of social media presence. Even if you don’t advertise on social platforms, you can use them to keep in touch with your fans and build a community. Social media also gives you a platform to expand your market. You can use the networks to reach out to people in other states or even countries.

Currently, the best social media AI tools are geared toward sentiment analysis. They are designed to help businesses understand their audience’s mood and, therefore, create content that perfectly matches the situation. Also, you can use AI to find the best social media influencers. IBM is one of the brands that have used AI (in this case, Watson) to discover influencers.

• Use AI to find patterns in big data

The easiest way to understand big data is to ask yourself how much data you store in your business computing devices (including the PC, laptop, external drive, smartphone, camera, etc.). For most businesses, it runs into gigabytes. Now, think about how difficult it can be to extract meaningful information from that pile of information! Not an easy task, right?

Artificial intelligence tools make the work a lot easier by analyzing millions of data points per second. Take an example of Walmart. Walmart has more than 250 million unique website visits every month, leading to enormous amounts of collected data. To process all this data, the company now uses HANA, an in-memory data analysis tool that quickly brings the essential data to the forefront.  

• Use AI to improve customer experiences 

You’re likely aware that this is a customer experience market. It’s no longer about the prices you can offer or the quality of your products – but the enjoyability of the entire experience. The former two are still decisive, but with a lot more options to pick from, consumers are choosing to do business with companies that offer the best shopping experience

Artificial intelligence tools such as chatbots, AR, and VR can play a big role in boosting customer experience. Chatbots make it easier for the customer to communicate with you while the immersive thrill generated through AR and VR provides an even greater online shopping experience. Lowes is one of the brands that have used bots to terrific effect.

Bonus Point: Use AI for informed hiring 

A company is only as good as its workforce. Get the right employees are you’re half the way to success. The wrong hire, meanwhile, is extremely costly. In the end, that single bad hire can intoxicate your entire workforce, derailing all your growth plans.

Artificial intelligence can help you make the right hires. A new breed of AI tools now allows hiring departments to evaluate the applicant’s performance using emotional cues. Some of these tools can even schedule and conduct a live interview on your behalf, with high accuracy.

Two companies that currently use such tools include Dunkin Donuts and Unilever. In Unilever’s case, they use HireVue, an app that captures and analyzes audio and video input from interviews to provide the human recruiters with recommendations. The company says it’s been a massive success.

Are You Ready to Go?

There are several other ways you can use artificial intelligence to close more sales and boost your growth, with fraud prevention and preventive maintenance coming to mind. The question is how bad you want it. If you feel you’re ready to take the next step, get in touch with NIX Solutions, and we’ll help you make the leap.