Everyone is getting excited about the potential impact of AI in ecommerce, and rightly so. Those who take the necessary steps to accurately capture data and use it strategically will unleash its power to Augment Innovation. But in the race to implement AI, many businesses will fail to put these foundations in place, and will ultimately Accelerate Ineffectiveness.
AI: Accelerating Ineffectiveness
Something like 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the past 2 years and it’s on an exponential trajectory. In theory, this creates a plethora of opportunities as we gather more information about customers, their behaviours, and the impact of different marketing activities. However, the truth of the matter is that there hasn’t been a corresponding explosion of data management, so very few businesses can actually leverage what they have gathered.
Poor quality data, or a poor understanding of even good quality data, leads to poor decision-making, but the evolving digital landscape has made it harder and harder to accurately track the various customer touchpoints which influence a purchase (ignoring anything inherently untrackable, such as offline interactions). Given that McKinsey research suggests only 62% of businesses have a solid digital foundation, this suggests that around a third of ecommerce companies are likely to be in this boat.
Nevertheless, the knowledge that there’s more data available has driven many businesses to demand ever more metrics in their reporting, regardless of whether these are the right things to measure, and this has generally served to muddy the waters rather than empowering better decision making. Without making fundamental changes to their structures and processes, these businesses will be setting AI up to fail: it will generally arrive at the same conclusions, just faster.
AI: Augmenting Innovation
Much will be said about how AI can synthesise data to plug gaps, how it can speed up decision making, and how it can unearth nuggets from the data that would previously have been hidden. All of this is true, and will lead to efficiencies which will positively impact the bottom line (assuming you get those solid foundations in place). But this constant focus on efficiency misses a bigger opportunity with AI, namely how to make your marketing more effective.
This is where I believe AI will give better marketers an edge. The processes will be the same, but the thinking will be enhanced by having access to deeper research and analysis than ever before, which in turn will open up untapped possibilities.
None of this should be new (although I’d be willing to put good money on it being new for a surprisingly large cohort), but using AI to supplement your marketing team’s unique insight into your business will enhance both your planning and execution. By placing human elements at the core of this process you’ll guarantee that it truly reflects your proposition, while incorporating AI into the mix will give additional security and scalability to your efforts.
Why is this important?
Conversations around AI have naturally tended towards efficiency, but that does the technology a disservice. In the not-too-distant future, AI for efficiency’s sake will be table stakes, with almost every ecommerce business having similar tools at their disposal. But those marketers who build a solid, human-first strategy augmented by AI will be more effective and more efficient, ultimately enabling them to outstrip their competition and deliver profitable growth.