The future of influence: Are AI Avatars the key to deeper brand engagement?
By Toshendra Sharma, Co founder & CEO Kamoto.AI.
Marketing is a combination of advertising, selling, delivering, and in general creating a buzz about the product or service being offered. However, things that were traditionally very simple and, in the face, have now become layered and require a multi-pronged approach. Though technology has played a key role in steering the new age marketing techniques, jargon like influence marketing, affiliate marketing, and brand management, have become the oft-resorted approach by organisations to promote their products.
Influence marketing has emerged as the most often-used tool. Here a person, or a voice that has the power to influence the ideologies, thought process, and buying decisions is roped in to advocate the products. Most of the time, these are people of prominence like a celebrity or experts like doctors, or social media content creators with a high number of followers. These experts endorsing a product or service resonates highly with the target audience. However, they are expensive, and it becomes difficult to create a pool of influencers for long term. Like other fields, Artificial Intelligence has seeped in here as well.
AI Avatars are certainly the next big thing happening in the influencer market. They pave the way for the brands to craft a new mode of engagement that not only brings authenticity but also next-level personalization. AI avatars are emerging as companions to customers when it comes to understanding the offerings, seeking recommendations, or searching for advice. Brands are tapping into creating AI brand ambassadors that will help in fostering deeper connections with customers.
The incorporation of AI avatars into marketing has helped brands to forge enhanced customer relationships. Customers find it easy to interact with an AI companion as there is no fear of judgment. It makes it easier for the brands to offer round-the-clock assistance with AI bots, making the experience more accessible to the customers. AI avatars are also becoming companions to the customer in the form of assistants, guides, advisors, and much more.
With the AI avatars as the promotion partners, brands get to expand the reach of their offerings to a wider audience. The AI also removes the language barrier and thus helps brands reach customers from different geographies and regions. The AI avatars also help brands to establish their identity globally by reaching diverse audiences as it is easier for them to communicate in multiple languages, compared to a human influencer.
AI avatars/bots are capable of having transparent, clear, and focused conversations with customers, thereby helping the brands to establish and maintain transparency and authenticity. The AI bots can be trained per the brand’s values and principles and thus help in creating a trusted bond between the brand and its customers, leading to brand authenticity.
AI technology has helped brands to get a closer look into customer behavior and preferences. AI avatars help in extracting specific information from the customers that eventually help the brands forge well-suited strategies to optimize their market. The insights also help brands optimising their offerings and target customers more effectively. AI technology on the other hand can be utilised to get real-time analytics,
and insights on performance, thus enabling accurate measurement of the success of the campaign. Such data-driven branding can help to leverage the metrics such as click-through rates, engagement, and conversions and ultimately hit the bull’s eye. Even as the future of influencer marketing belongs to these AI-based avatars, we can ensure deeper brand management through personalised interaction with consumers, which has a deeper impact, always.
