Before we dive into the Visa and Analytics Partners strategic partnership, let’s take a look at AI for marketing in general.
What does AI do for marketing and business?
You’ve probably already come across AI, either as a consumer or with tools you use at your business. Chatbots are one popular example. But when it comes to marketing, the primary benefits of AI come in the form of better data analysis, recommendations, and content generation.Data Analysis
AI is great at analyzing nearly endless amounts of data - including customer data. It can take information such as past purchases, demographics, and other information to create detailed market segments that can help you target ads or email blasts to specific groups interested in specific things. Being able to craft more specific ads for those groups can help increase conversion rates vs. trying to appeal to everyone more generically. And since AI can also help predict sales trends based on past data and customer buying patterns, it can help you more accurately plan inventory. In credit card processing, it has also been used effectively for enhanced fraud protection and lower cost debit card routing.Recommendations
Since AI uses “machine learning” techniques to refine its understanding of searches or past purchases over time, it can help make personalized recommendations or more accurately target advertising to your customers. If you’ve seen “Suggested For You” or “You Might Also Like” sections of ecommerce sites, you could be seeing AI personalized recommendations at work. AI tools can also make it easier to do tried-and-true marketing techniques such as A / B testing to determine which ads, web copy, or other marketing content appeals more to your customers.Content Generation
While AI still has some flaws when it comes to content generation, it has made huge strides in the last few years. These days, you can use it for newsletters, website copy, social media posts, email blasts, product descriptions, ads, and customer letters. AI can quickly create a wide variety of content and revise based on your prompts. Even if you prefer to put your own touch on it, AI can save you time by creating the first draft that you edit. Just be sure to review anything AI-generated carefully for factual inaccuracies and don’t use it for anything that you claim as original content. Read: AI in Credit Card ProcessingAI Tools
While most people have heard of ChatGPT, there are multiple other AI-powered tools designed specifically for marketing and content generation. Tools like Jasper and Phrasee claim to create consistent marketing copy that matches your brand across digital marketing campaigns and offers a range of different options. Additionally, Google has said that it plans to offer AI-powered tools to offer greater insight into ads. Intuit, maker of QuickBooks, has also stated it plans to offer AI tools to help businesses make smarter marketing decisions through better data. It plans to give businesses a competitive advantage by recommending optimal times to target customers through ads and personalized content. If you’re considering AI tools for your business, start by determining what aspects of marketing you’d like help with and then checking out companies that specialized in those specific areas.Visa AI Marketing with Analytics Partners
The partnership is designed to combine broad spending insights with AI-based marketing and analytics. The companies say the goal is to help businesses make more informed decisions and ultimately improve their return on advertising spend. They intend to improve existing tools and develop new ones to help customers grow their businesses. Your business can expect to benefit from marketing spend optimization tools, analyzing how effective your advertising campaigns actually are. With that data, you can determine which channels are the most effective and continue investing marketing dollars in those ones while ending investment in lower-performing channels. You may even be able to do that real-time, looking at data during a marketing campaign and making adjustments on the fly. Additionally, the partnership is expected to help businesses better understand trends in their industry overall, comparison to competitors, and seasonal swings.AI Marketing in Practice
But what does that all look like in practice? Let’s say your small business has a brick-and-mortar location but also sells online through your website. To try to increase sales, you begin running ads online, but haven’t seen much of an upswing in sales. You know the ads aren’t working, but you’re not clear if it’s the channel(s) you’re using, the content, or something else. You can start by uploading your campaign data into the Analytic Partners’ platform. That platform will then cross-reference Visa’s consumer transaction data and find out where and when transactions happened, which campaigns seemed to drive them, and which of your consumer segments responded the most positively to your ads. The tool can then show you the return on investment (ROI) per marketing channel and suggest an optimal mix of channels for your next ad campaign based on your goals. Depending on what your data says, you’ll have a better roadmap for where to spend your marketing dollars. For example, if the data tells you that Instagram ads perform better than Facebook ads, you’ll know that spending on Instagram will lead to higher return on investment.Costs
Specific pricing for the Visa and Analytics Partners platform isn't mentioned in the press release from Visa. Pricing avaiable online for Analytics Partners is all over the board, with some reporting a few hundred dollars for out-of-the-box solutions and others reporting thousands for custom solutions. It's unclear what it will cost for new users. Have you signed up with Analytics Partners and can share rough ideas of costs? Let us know in the comments!Can’t I just figure this out myself?
In most cases, yes. Marketing platforms and ad campaigns have dashboards and reporting tools to show you the same information that AI software is working with. However, it can be a slower, more manual process to do it yourself. You may need to cross-reference data from multiple sources to get the same information that the AI tools can provide effortlessly. Another difference for the Visa and Analytics Partners solution is the ability to access Visa’s transaction data across many different businesses. When you look through your business’s data, you don’t see sales for your industry or region. Visa does have that data though. While it gets anonymized, that data can be used in conjunction with your own to help make decisions beyond just your current trends. The Visa and Analytics Partners solution provides that information to you. Are you using AI marketing tools at your business? What do you like or dislike? Let us know in the comments!
Ben Dwyer
Ben Dwyer began his career in the processing industry in 2003 on the sales floor for a Connecticut‐based processor. As he learned more about the inner‐workings of the industry, rampant unethical practices, and lack of assistance available to businesses, he cut ties with his employer and started a blog where he could post accurate information about credit card processing. As the blog gained in popularity, Ben began directly assisting merchants in their search for a processor. Ben believes in empowering businesses by providing access to fair, competitive pricing, accurate information, and continued support. His dedication to transparency and education has made CardFellow a staunch small business advocate in the credit card processing industry.
