Two-thirds of marketers investing in AI report a positive ROI—43% said they saw twofold ROI and 22% saw threefold ROI—per a May 2023 survey by Botco.ai. Here’s a breakdown of how generative AI can help brands and retailers connect with customers throughout their buying journeys, based on intel from a recent Meet the Analyst Webinar.

Boost brand awareness

Generative AI (GenA() can reshape the buyer’s journey from the start by attracting potential customers, molding content to their needs, and fostering a faster connection between the buyer and the brand.

• Offer personalized content to resonate with specific buyers.
• Help brainstorm content themes for marketing collateral.
• Optimize content based on distinct criteria, and compare the copy to competitors to fill in any gaps.
• Generate keywords based on criteria such as search volume or trends to drive traffic to a brand’s website.

Case study: Allstate​​. Despite working with highly regulated companies like Allstate, marketing firm BrandMuscle uses AI to create content to connect with customers at the awareness stage. While it can be challenging to quickly generate AI-powered content that both meets customer expectations and adheres to compliance standards, BrandMuscle has found this can be done via text-based content creation, digital ads, and real-time optimization based on third-party data.

Increase engagement

Marketers can leverage AI to help customers make informed buying decisions, moving them closer toward purchase.

• Provide relevant descriptions to specific buyers based on their consumption behavior, like prioritizing sustainability versus technical features.
• Deliver personalized recommendations according to prospective buyers’ budgets and other preferences.
• Repurpose content to make it more relevant to a customer. This might look like extracting the most useful info from a white paper and changing the tone to present it in a blog format.
• Create copy and images that can be used for retargeting display ads.

Case study: Rippler Group. Rippler, which provides growth marketing expertise to B2B tech startups, uses the conversational marketing platform Gong to extract buyer questions from its customer relationship management platform and uses ChatGPT to categorize these questions, enhance conversations, and target buying needs.

Accelerate conversion rates

Brands can leverage AI to speed up buyers’ decision-making process and ultimately increase conversion rates.

• Provide real-time customer support and display useful information such as order status updates.
• Suggest promotional products in a buyer’s budget.
• Assist sales associates with real-time insights and suggestions during customer interactions.
• Follow up with customers who have abandoned their shopping carts and recommend related products.

Case study: Tapestry. The parent company of major fashion brands like Kate Spade, Tapestry uses Persado’s generative AI solution Dynamic Motivation. Using third-party data, it personalizes marketing copy based on which words and phrases perform well with specific buyers and adapts customers’ cart checkout experience to their browsing behavior and preferences.

“GenAI-driven personalized paths can reduce cart abandonment and deliver a 3% to 5% increase in ecommerce revenues,” our analyst Kelsey Voss said on a recent Meet the Analyst Webinar.

Improve retention rates

AI can improve customer satisfaction, which can ultimately increase retention.

• Resolve customer pain points in their preferred language and offer solutions that more closely match customers’ needs based on their purchasing history and past conversations with customer service.
• Offer additional products for upselling and cross-selling.
• Simplify customer support with swarming, a collaborative-based approach to resolution, rather than a traditional tiered escalation. Use a large language model to summarize technical jargon and make a topic easier for customers to understand.
• Offer chat functions from company data, giving customers an interface to get specific answers from a company’s database.

Case study: Arm. Acrolinx is an AI platform that uses a unique linguistic analytics engine to read content and provide immediate suggestions for improvement. Software design company Arm has leveraged Acrolinx to refresh long technical manuals with outdated copy, helping its technical writers publish long-form manuals in a style, tone, and language that is easy for customers to read.

Foster brand advocacy

AI can build customer loyalty, retain long-term revenue growth, and convert customers into advocates.

• Share user content such as positive reviews and craft social media content that encourages customers to engage with the brand.
• Offer personalized incentives based on product reviews and customer service conversations.
• Reward returning customers who are likely to revisit the brand by offering them loyalty points or product discounts.
• Mitigate customer service challenges with personalized solutions, such as an apology email or a voucher.
• Improve relationships using AI to alert customer service teams when a customer has a positive experience so they can reward them.

Case study: The Coca-Cola Co. Coca-Cola promoted brand advocacy when it launched an AI platform with DALL-E 2 and GPT-4, where artists could submit original work with Coke-branded elements for the chance to be featured on Coca-Cola’s digital billboards in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus.

Watch the full webinar.

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