How can AI reboot engineering and manufacturing marketing?

With the emergence and embedding of Industry 4.0, more and more engineering and manufacturing businesses are becoming aware of the impact of artificial intelligence on production efficiency and resource management.

But what about the power of AI to enhance – and in some cases, transform – marketing efforts in the engineering and manufacturing sector?

AI can be harnessed to help businesses optimise marketing activities and enhance their relationships with customers.

Here, we explore the AI tools are available to engineering and manufacturing marketers – and what they can help businesses to achieve.

Getting chatty – and streamlining customer service

AI-powered chatbots can be a useful addition to e-commerce enabled websites – especially those with more complex ordering processes. They can help buyers to navigate the purchasing process more rapidly and provide answers to common product queries, as well as capturing new leads.

Chatbots that are customisable enough to handle technical information, and integrate into CRM systems, should be the top of the list for manufacturing and engineering companies.

Want some examples? HubSpot Chatbot Builder is referred to by Forbes as “the most user-friendly chatbot builder”, while Intercom has been labelled the “best chatbot for customisation” and Drift as the “best for sales”. For SalesForce users, SalesForce Einstein is available, and there are plenty of other options available.

Looking ahead

In any manufacturing or engineering company, marketing teams need to work closely with production departments and product managers on the timing and targeting of marketing campaigns. Peaks and troughs in customer demand, be they seasonal or influenced by economic trends, should be taken into account – as should the company’s supply chain constraints.

AI-driven analytics platforms can help businesses to predict demand and forecast consumer and sales trends, by analysing large sets of data and utilising machine learning. This can help to both optimise production planning and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing activities. Marketing teams will be supported in targeting the right audiences at the right times.

Examples of these powerful tools include Blue Yonder, H2O.ai, RapidMiner and SAP Integrated Business Planning.

Taking CRM to the next level

With more manufacturing and engineering companies embracing sophisticated CRM systems (rather than relying on Excel spreadsheets) there is an opportunity for them to harness the capabilities of AI to enhance marketing efforts.

When integrated into CRM systems, AI can optimise customer interactions, automate routine tasks, and provide data-driven insights.

For example, AI can help to create precise customer segments which are based on behaviour patterns, demographics and preferences: this can provide the information to shape laser-focused marketing campaigns.

Customer data can be analysed to predict behaviour, such as future purchases or upsell opportunities.

Another advantage is automated lead scoring: AI can rank and prioritise leads based on their likelihood to convert, enabling businesses to focus on high-potential prospects.

Examples of AI enabled CRM systems include Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI, Salesforce Einstein and Breeze (Hubspot’s AI platform).

Listening to the market

It’s vital for businesses to know how their brands, products and services are perceived in their target markets. Equally, it’s important that they know how their competitors are perceived.

This insight can be fed back into marketing strategies and can help to shape future campaigns… which brings us to social media monitoring and sentiment analysis tools.

Social media monitoring software enables marketers to monitor their brand, competitors, or industry on social medic channels, tracking brand mentions, relevant hashtags and keywords and engagement. Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Sprout Social and Meltwater are some popular options.

Sentiment analysis takes things one step further. Here, natural language processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning are used to analyse and classify opinions, emotions, or attitudes within text, giving users a deeper insight into perceptions of brand, products and services.

Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Sprout Social and Meltwater are some popular options which combine both social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.

Doing your research

Conducting market research can be a labour intensive and lengthy process. AI tools, however, can streamline market research and provide the information marketers need to make data-driven decisions.

AI powered platforms can help engineering and manufacturing companies gain a better understanding of their competitors, gain deeper customer insights and identify trends.

Kompyte and Klue, for example, track and analyse competitors, platforms such as SurveyMonkey Genius and Qualtrics leverage AI to improve customer surveys, and platforms including TrendWatching and Gartner provide up to date information on industry trends.

Bringing AI to marketing automation

Many manufacturers use e-mail marketing to upsell, reach new customers, promote new product launches and drive further engagement with their target markets.

AI can make this easier and streamline the process. AI tools can automate campaigns to target specific audiences, bringing more speed and efficiency to e-marketing, support businesses with customer segmentation, and provide data-driven insights to measure marketing effectiveness.

This approach can also be applied to social media campaigns and digital advertising campaigns too.

Through AI, content can be personalised and the timing, tone and format of marketing messages can be optimised.

For manufacturers with large but complex target markets, these are major advantages.

Platforms such as Salesforce Pardot (billed as ‘smarter marketing automation), HubSpot’s Marketing Hub and Adobe’s Marketo Engage all use AI to enhance marketing automation.

Optimising SEO with AI

With ever more competition to stay ahead in the Google rankings race, AI-driven SEO platforms can give manufacturing and engineering companies an edge.

These platforms can help businesses to identify high-value keywords, analyse their websites’ performance, and suggest content improvements in line with SEO strategies.

They even use machine learning to predict changes in search engine algorithms, so that content strategies can be optimised accordingly.

Tools such as Surfer SEO, Semrush, MarketMuse and BrightEdge all open up a range of new possibilities for marketers keen to improve SEO.

Sharpening up content

Clearly, engineering and manufacturing companies can generate a great deal of technical content based on their product and service capabilities, R&D and data. And much of this will be bespoke.

However, AI tools such as Jasper and Writesonic can generate ‘on brand’ optimised content to support the creation of blog posts, product descriptions and technical documents.

In addition, they can use AI to identify keywords and topics that resonate with target audiences.

Like support in introducing AI tools to your business? Interested in knowing more about new frontiers in marketing? We’re here to help. Contact us here or call us on 0345 075 5955.