By: Shehzad Bhanji, Head of Global Client Services: Marketing, Brand and Communications EMEAT & SEA, QNB Group

As the digitization of financial services increases in popularity, so does the need for artificial intelligence (AI) in both marketing and services. While financial institutions may feel that their niche is outside mainstream trends, AI is not one to sleep on. AI increases your marketing scope and marketability, which can put any financial institution above its competitors. It allows companies to increase client engagement with enhanced customer experience, through personalization at scale.

An effective strategy is to use AI to personalize each aspect of customer engagement; acquisition, retention, growth, and advocacy. Financial marketers who will be successful are those who leverage big data analytics including machine learning and AI to understand the needs of consumers to provide a personalized experience through targeted communication that is delivered in real-time based on needs. 

 




The Evolution of the 4 Ps of Marketing:

How AI could revitalize marketing relating to all 4 Ps of marketing?

  • Product: The offered products and services need to be versatile, solve the client’s needs, and be recognizable as the solution to their needs—the more customizable, the better.
  • Place: The more digital channels you offer, the easier it will be to pick up on consumer engagement, the better consumers will discover your products.
  • Price: Offer a range of prices to your market to profit from the most demographics as possible.
  • Promotion: Use of instant offers customized to the interest and needs of the consumer.

Will AI take over digital marketing?

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and artificial intelligence is the next big game-changer. AI marketing automation holds the potential to completely revolutionize the way marketers manage their marketing campaigns, develop personalized content, and increase customer interaction.

Up until now, financial services organizations have used digital marketing tactics to try and reach consumers that were scattered around the web. Today, it’s possible to use AI applications to reach a user with a highly targeted advertisement at the precise moment when their consumer behavior indicates that they are most likely to be interested in your product or service. Those actionable insights represent the promise of AI. Now the question is, how should financial services marketers take advantage of it?

The first and most obvious step is for companies to use an AI platform to better understand their customer journey and increase personalization. It’s all about understanding the customer and their needs. Everything is becoming more personalized and the cost of marketing is getting lower.

The Potential of AI in Financial Marketing:

AI can help you boost your marketing strategy. The following describes how to supercharge your impact with greater precision through data collection, data analytics, the ability to predict consumer behavior, and micro-market through personalization. 

Data Collection

While the consumer base is increasingly reclaiming data privacy, AI still can use data collection of customers to pinpoint what message your customers want and how they recognize it through purchase. Facebook marketers, for example, have had to pivot their marketing as Facebook has restricted its third-party data sharing. As a result, it may be harder to get third-party data. 

With CRM and AI combined, businesses can now understand the consumers’ behavioral information – what product you will buy, how much do you ideally spend on products, which site you browse often, and more. This practice allows companies to create an effective marketing strategy to increase leads and conversions.

Data Analytics

Now that you have used AI to collect data on your clients, what will you do with it? AI data analytics takes the information you have collected and quickly processes the information to fill out the consumer profile. Not only is this done much faster than human employees can do it, but it is also error-free (with correct programming, that is). 

Using such insights, marketers will not only be able to hone in to allow micro-marketing: the generation of individualized marketing campaigns, but also leading to incremental leads and conversions.

Machine Learning to Predict Consumer Behavior

All successful businesses try to predict consumer needs and then present the solution to them in ways they think the consumer will recognize. This strategy requires companies to have excellent reach and response to consumer behaviors, as they perform a sort of “call-and-response” dance. 

AI introduces machine learning to predict consumer behavior. Instead of taking months or years to do a “call and response” with the consumer base, it can make predictions in real-time based on consumer data across platforms. Machine learning can analyze consumer data to the point where they can accurately predict what products, brands, and purchases any given consumer will make, and it does it quickly.

Personalization of Products

Machine learning allows companies to hand the right marketing pitch to each client based on individual consumer behavior. Netflix does this with personalized movie recommendations. For example, if a Netflix binger watches more romantic comedies than other films, Netflix will use a movie image that focuses on the love interest, even if the movie is part of the Sci-FI genre. Conversely, they may use the image of a comedian to make a movie appeal to comedy fans, even if the movie is an action movie. This may seem like a lot of customization, but Netflix only needs six movie covers per feature film to customize to various interests. 

Financial marketers can do the same thing. While they aren’t selling romance, action, or comedy, they are appealing to customer personalities. Some prefer a numbers-driven, logical approach; others prefer emotional appeal through story-telling. 

The Bottom Line:  

It’s a brave new world out there. AI marketing tools, big data, and machine learning are becoming part of our everyday lives. And it’s taking over marketing as we know it. This begs the question, as AI technology grows and evolves – are financial services marketers ready to reshape their marketing strategy?