June 7, 2019

Machine Learning 101: How to make ML work for you

June 7, 2019

Machine Learning 101: How to make ML work for you

Machine Learning 101: How to make ML work for you

One of the biggest buzzwords in marketing right now is Machine Learning. Sounds cool, right? You’d be surprised just how cool it actually is when you dig a little deeper and discover the amazing benefits it has for marketers.So without further ado, here’s everything a marketer needs to know about Machine Learning in order to optimise your campaigns. What is Machine Learning?Problem: Consumer expectations are constantly growing. Nowadays, a blanket strategy that serves everyone won’t cut it. They’re after more personalised, relevant and assistive experiences and our job as marketers is to give it to them.Solution: It’s simple. Machine Learning (ML) that can keep up with these demands. ML has become an invaluable tool, helping marketers create smarter customer segmentations, deliver more relevant creative campaigns and measure performance more effectively.Don’t believe us? Believe the other 85% executives who believe AI and ML will allow their companies to obtain a competitive advantage. Out the gate, it looks impressive. But let’s get into the definition.At its core, ML is a way to quickly label and analyse huge data sets. Sure, you can do this on your own, but a machine helps do it faster and on an infinitely larger scale.In fact, 66% of marketing leaders agree automation and ML will enable their team to focus on more strategic marketing activities - and we can see why. For marketers, ML can be game-changing technology. That is, if it’s optimised and implemented correctly.

What are the benefits?ML powers better marketing, plain and simple. Here are some of the ways ML can help optimise your campaign, and ultimately, help your business:Audience discoveryML can help you identify your most valuable customers. Let’s say you’re trying to market your app and your primary goal is to get it in the hands of long-term, paying users. But you’re finding users aren’t opening the app that often after initial download…Don’t worry because you’re not alone. That’s right - 37% of app installs remain in use after 7 days. So how can you find the right audience?ML can sort and analyse sources to help you learn which users are most valuable to your app and help you get the most out of your budget by only showing ads to users who are most likely to download and use your app.CreativeWant to quickly serve the right message for every moment? Now you can with custom creative brought to you by ML.Today’s consumers expect brands to deliver assistive, highly relevant experiences - and that goes for ads too.Whether an ad is relevant or not has a huge impact on a user’s decision to buy. In fact, 91% of smartphone users brought or plan to buy something after seeing an ad that they described as relevant.ML is helping marketers deliver unique and tailored creative to customers. For example, responsive search ads mix and match multiple headlines and descriptions to find the best possible combination for a user, simplifying the ad creation process and delivering stronger results.OptimisationFinding the right customers in key moments is crucial. And ML puts the right bid within reach.With people searching more frequently and with more specificity, it’s more important than ever to land the right bid at search auctions.It also means landing the right bid is harder, as a growing surplus of data creates more complexity for marketers to set bids based on each user’s content.Fortunately there are products to help you automate this process. Take Smart Bidding for instance. Smart Bidding uses ML to analyse millions of signals and make adjustments in real time. All you have to do is this:

  1. Choose a strategy designed to achieve your company’s specific goal
  2. Then, Smart Bidding factors a wide range of signals about the intent and context of every search

MeasurementA data-driven measurement strategy can help you unlock customer intent and ML unlocks the true value of each step on the path to purchase.Let’s say before making a purchase on your site, a user decided to do some more searching, shopped around, or clicked on a few of your ads across platforms or devices.Typically, credit for a conversion is given to the last ad a customer clicked. But how can you be sure the last click is the most valuable?Today’s consumers are interacting with brands across a growing number of screens and channels, making it difficult to identify which parts of your marketing strategy is working.Data-driven attribution uses ML algorithms to analyse the clicks across your search ads. By comparing the click paths of consumers who purchased your products to those who didn’t, the data-driven attribution model identifies patterns among clicks leading to conversions. And, maybe even more important, identifies the most valuable touchpoints across your consumers’ journey.What I need to do as a marketerML is changing the way marketers drive results for their customers and brands. But there’s still a significant gap between those who are just talking about ML and those who are actually taking action. You want to join that second group.ML gives you a chance to make your mark, get ahead of your competitors and drive real results. Here are a few ways you can embrace ML:Stop reacting and start predictingSuccessful business performance today relies on brands being able to predict what customers might need at every stage of their purchase journey. By harnessing the power of ML and automation, brands can do just that.With ML, KPIs can have data inputs that help train algorithms to anticipate opportunities for growth. People can’t tell you exactly what they might want next, so you need to take cues from past actions to predict future intentions.Get a more holistic view of your customersBusiness success today relies on your ability to have a current and integrated view of your customers. Only then can you develop meaningful relationships with them and deliver long-term brand growth - and ML allows you do just that.Do more with your dataML allows you to see your KPI data in greater detail. This leads to:

  • Increased knowledge sharing and transparency
  • Smarter, data-driven decisions that achieve corporate-wide goals

To stay ahead of the competition, you need to give your team the tools needed to make the best decisions. And today, that means automation and ML.Become a leader, not a follower with Bang Digital. Machine Learning is rapidly changing the way we do business and marketing is leading the way. Get in touch to discuss now.