Modern Marketing Using AI

1. Brand Equity: The North Star of Marketing Success

Brand equity is the incremental value (say, goodwill or financial value) that a customer attributes to a product purely due to its brand.

Brand equity is crucial for business success. It represents the additional value customers perceive in a product or service due to its brand name. This intangible asset can lead to:

• Higher price premiums
• Increased customer loyalty
• Greater market share
• Enhanced brand extension opportunities

Maximizing brand equity should be the ultimate goal of marketing efforts. It's achieved through consistent delivery of value, effective communication, and creating positive associations in customers' minds. Brand equity acts as a buffer during economic downturns and provides a competitive advantage in crowded markets.

2. The Brand Journey: From Identity to Resonance

A brand journey exists in the mind of your customer and progresses through his/her development from a potential prospect to a paying customer to a fan.

The brand journey is a psychological progression in the customer's mind. It typically involves six stages:

1. Brand Identity
2. Brand Awareness
3. Brand Credibility
4. Brand Engagement
5. Brand Receptivity
6. Brand Resonance

Each stage builds upon the previous one, gradually strengthening the relationship between the brand and the customer. Success requires alignment across marketing, sales, and customer success functions. These teams must work together to create a seamless experience that guides customers through each stage of the journey.

3. Validating Your Brand: Market Research and Product-Market Fit

Validation should be front and center of mind when designing your product and brand plan.

Product validation is crucial before investing heavily in branding and marketing. It involves:

• Assumption mapping: Listing hypotheses about target customers, their needs, and willingness to pay
• Assumption validation: Conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups to test hypotheses
• Result analysis: Comparing findings with initial assumptions and refining the product concept

Tools and techniques for validation include:

• Online surveys (e.g., Google Forms, SurveyMonkey)
• AI-powered analytics (e.g., Lexalytics for sentiment analysis)
• Video interviews (e.g., UserTesting for remote user feedback)

The goal is to ensure product-market fit and identify the most promising customer segments before committing resources to brand development.

4. Brand Identity: Positioning and Marketing Mix Strategies

Brand identity formulation is a relatively manual process, but extremely important. It is equivalent to cleaning the house and dressing up before you invite guests over.

Brand identity forms the foundation of all marketing efforts. It involves two key strategies:

1. Tier-I Strategy:

   • Segmentation
   • Targeting
   • Differentiation
   • Positioning

2. Tier-II Strategy (Marketing Mix):

   • Product
   • Price
   • Place
   • Promotion

Developing a strong brand identity requires careful consideration of target audience preferences, competitive landscape, and the unique value proposition of the product or service. It should be authentic, consistent, and aligned with the overall business strategy.

5. Building Brand Awareness: Web Presence and Social Media Mastery

In the first stage of building brand awareness, the objective is to achieve the following three milestones: Make the brand visible to the target audience and their influencers, Increase brand recognition where people recognize the brand when they see any of its elements or extensions, Increase positive brand recall where the brand is top of mind every time people think of anything related to the context the brand operates in or stands for.

Creating a strong online presence is essential in the digital age. Key components include:

• Website development: User-friendly design, SEO optimization, clear messaging
• Social media strategy: Platform selection based on target audience, consistent content creation
• Content marketing: Blogs, videos, infographics to provide value and establish authority

Leveraging AI tools can enhance brand awareness efforts:

• Automated content creation (e.g., GPT-3 for blog posts)
• Social media scheduling and analytics (e.g., Hootsuite, Buffer)
• Personalized ad targeting (e.g., Facebook Ads Manager)

The goal is to make the brand easily discoverable and memorable for the target audience across multiple touchpoints.

6. Operational Alignment: Automating Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success

Operational alignment is needed to learn from the past, manage the present, and prepare for the future.

Integrating technology is crucial for efficient operations across marketing, sales, and customer success. Key elements include:

• Central system (e.g., CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot)
• Software customizations to fit specific business needs
• Insights reporting through Business Intelligence tools
• Advanced supporting tech (e.g., AI-powered chatbots, predictive analytics)

Avoiding stack fatigue is important:

• Carefully evaluate new tools before adoption
• Ensure integration with existing systems
• Provide adequate training for team members

The objective is to create a seamless flow of information and automate repetitive tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategy and high-value activities.

7. Engaging Customers: Direct and Indirect Strategies

Engagement is about facilitating the customer interaction with a brand and ensuring the subsequent sale.

Direct engagement strategies include:

• Personalized experiences (e.g., tailored product recommendations)
• Real-time conversations (e.g., live chat support)
• Timed triggers (e.g., abandoned cart emails)
• Email marketing campaigns

Indirect engagement involves:

• Partner marketing: Collaborating with complementary brands
• Affiliate marketing: Incentivizing third parties to promote the brand

Leveraging AI can enhance engagement:

• Chatbots for 24/7 customer support
• Predictive analytics for personalized offers
• Automated email segmentation and targeting

The goal is to create multiple touchpoints for customer interaction, increasing the likelihood of conversion and long-term loyalty.

8. Selling Strategies: Consultative Approaches in the AI Era

Consultative selling, particularly B2B, is not simply a matter of walk-in and talk. Besides the time it takes to set an appointment, it also requires some homework.

Modern selling approaches focus on understanding customer needs and providing tailored solutions. Key elements include:

• Thorough research on prospects and their industries
• Active listening and asking insightful questions
• Demonstrating expertise and providing value beyond the product

AI-powered tools are transforming sales processes:

• Lead scoring and prioritization
• Automated meeting scheduling
• Real-time conversation analysis and coaching

The objective is to position the salesperson as a trusted advisor, moving beyond transactional relationships to create long-term partnerships.

9. Customer Onboarding: The Gateway to Loyalty

Onboarding is the process of familiarizing and helping your customer realize the value of your brand and its offerings.

Effective onboarding is crucial for customer retention and success. Key components include:

• Clear communication of product value and features
• Step-by-step guidance for initial setup and use
• Personalized training and support

Leveraging technology can enhance the onboarding experience:

• Interactive product tutorials (e.g., WalkMe)
• Automated email sequences with tips and best practices
• Customer success platforms for tracking progress and identifying potential issues

The goal is to ensure customers quickly realize the value of the product, increasing the likelihood of long-term adoption and loyalty.

10. Brand Receptivity: Turning Customers into Advocates

Brand receptivity is important because it helps build loyalty between your brand and its customers. After all, feeling heard and appreciated always makes people happy.

Creating brand receptivity involves:

• Active listening to customer feedback
• Timely resolution of issues and concerns
• Personalized communication and experiences

Strategies for increasing receptivity:

• Regular check-ins and satisfaction surveys
• Loyalty programs with meaningful rewards
• Exclusive access to new features or products

Leveraging AI can enhance receptivity efforts:

• Sentiment analysis of customer feedback
• Predictive analytics for identifying at-risk customers
• Automated personalization of communication

The objective is to create a two-way relationship where customers feel valued and invested in the brand's success.

11. Achieving Brand Resonance: Creating Lasting Emotional Connections

Brand resonance is the state of maximum brand equity, a stage at which loyal customers become fans and are nearly ensured of staying with a brand over time.

Brand resonance is achieved when customers develop a deep, emotional connection with the brand. Four key ways to create resonance:

1. Create cherished memories
2. Establish rituals associated with the brand
3. Align with a resonant mission
4. Develop a brand personality that reflects customer aspirations

Examples of resonant brands:

• Apple: Reflects innovation and creativity
• Harley-Davidson: Embodies freedom and rebellion
• Coca-Cola: Associated with happiness and togetherness

The goal is to become an integral part of customers' lives and identities, creating a bond that goes beyond rational product benefits.

12. Preparing for the AI Era: Adapting Marketing Roles and Skills

Already, AI tools can gather external market and company information on a prospect, analyze it, predict sales outcomes, aid the sales conversation and in some simpler and shorter sales cycles, even carry out the conversation on its own.

AI is transforming marketing, sales, and customer success roles. To stay relevant, professionals must:

• Develop strategic thinking skills
• Focus on tasks requiring emotional intelligence and creativity
• Learn to work alongside AI tools, leveraging their capabilities

Key areas for upskilling:

• Data analysis and interpretation
• AI and machine learning fundamentals
• Ethical considerations in AI-driven marketing

Assessing AI job threat:

• Evaluate the level of repetition and data-driven decision-making in current roles
• Identify opportunities to add value through human insight and creativity
• Continuously adapt and learn new technologies

The objective is to evolve with the changing landscape, focusing on high-value tasks that AI cannot easily replicate.

Last updated: July 21, 2024