There’s a good chance the term artificial intelligence (AI) conjures images of talking robots or droids like C-3P0, but the reality looks much less glamorous than that. In fact, there’s a good chance you’re already using some form of AI without even realizing it.
Thanks to several innovative software companies, this technology is now easier to access than ever before. AI technology can be used to increase sales, optimize your marketing efforts, bolster your customer support experience, and even improve your content creation processes.
AI tools are excellent for handling simple, repetitive tasks like editing, sourcing resources, or answering simple questions. They don’t replace the need for human team members, but they can support your team by taking over basic tasks that would otherwise consume a lot of time.
HubSpot predicted that in 2022 brands would begin to leverage AI and automation more than ever. So, if you’re wondering how to incorporate AI into your pet business, here are a few simple suggestions.
- Increase sales using predictive analytics
Predictive marketing is the practice of using historical data to make predictions about what will occur in the future. Often this is done by humans who spend time analyzing data and making projections manually, but there are all kinds of analytics tools these days that can do this for you.
You see this practice at work every day– Netflix uses it to suggest what you might like to watch next, Spotify uses it to curate playlists for you, and Amazon uses it to recommend products you ought to purchase. You can use this type of technology within your pet business too.
Predictive analytics will help you better understand consumer behaviour, optimize your ad spend, and qualify or prioritize leads. This data can reveal website traffic, engagement, conversion rates, and sales trends helping you determine what types of content convert best, when is the best time to post, and more. You can use insights from predictive analytics to adjust and optimize your existing marketing efforts and increase your ROI.
There are several different predictive analytics tools on the market these days, including SAP Analytics Cloud, RapidMiner, and more. The best option for you will depend on your goals and your budget.
- Improve your customer experience using chatbots
Chatbots are an AI-powered tool that enables you to provide an immediate touchpoint for your customers. They use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to contextualize customer inquiries based on keywords and provide helpful responses.
You can use chatbots on your website, or they can integrate with SMS text, social media and messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. There are many different ways you might use a chatbot, depending on your business’s priorities.
Customer Support
A customer support chatbot can help solve problems by connecting customers with the information they need. Many customer support requests are simple questions that don’t require a tailored response from a team member. For instance, a customer might contact support to learn about your pet brand’s return policy. Chatbots can identify frequently asked questions like this one and provide templated answers or direct customers to a relevant support article.
Research shows that many consumers find chatbots helpful for assisting with customer support issues. They appreciate the quick response times, and in many cases, they never need to interact with a human. Well-designed bots reduce your volume of customer support requests, enabling your team to focus on helping individuals with more complex problems.
Lead Generation
Placing a chatbot on your homepage or sales pages can help guide visitors toward making a purchase. The chatbot will greet a customer, just as a sales associate would if they walked into a brick and mortar store, making a positive impression and opening the door to communication.
Program the bot to ask leading questions to help you learn about prospective customers or have it direct website visitors to the precise information they’re looking for so you can nurture and warm up leads without expending any human effort.
- Speed up content creation with AI writing assistants
AI writing assistants can help speed up your content creation process by assisting with topic ideation, structure, spellcheck, and editing. Even though AI writing assistants aren’t sophisticated enough to create a complete, ready-to-publish piece of content, they work wonders for polishing and optimizing your drafts.
Tools like Surfer SEO and HubSpot can help you capitalize on keywords and NLP phrases relevant to your content. They can also analyze your competitors, suggest content ideas, and offer tips for how to improve your existing content.
Content generation tools like Rtyr and Jasper can help you create drafts for social media posts, product descriptions, sales pages, etc. These tools aren’t capable of generating original ideas, but if you’re in a hurry to create content, they can help develop rough drafts that you can shape and refine. They are especially handy for creating short-form content like social media captions and product descriptions because these types of content adhere to a specific format that the tool can follow closely.
Grammarly is a powerful tool for polishing your written content, whether emails, blog posts or social media captions. Grammarly can help catch spelling and grammatical errors and sense the tone and emotion used in your writing. It’s fantastic for teams because it enables you to create settings specific to your brand voice. That way, the editor can help ensure every piece of content created for your pet brand matches the established preferences. This is a powerful and efficient way to ensure your content remains consistent, even if you have several writers on staff.
AI content assistants don’t replace human writers and editors, but they are incredibly powerful for speeding up content creation, maintaining consistency, and improving content optimization and performance.
The Bottom Line
Incorporating AI-powered tools into your pet business can do wonders for improving efficiency and performance. They can take simple tasks off your team’s shoulders, leaving them room to focus on more impactful work. Plus, AI tools can help you optimize and improve your marketing content, strategy, and processes, leading to increased ROI. This technology is becoming increasingly powerful and popular. If you haven’t started experimenting with it yet, now is the time!
