Co-Founder and CEO of healthy person Inc., an initiative to provide better preventive healthcare to those who need it most.
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Over the past few decades, we have seen impressive technological developments. However, nothing is more exciting or has the potential to transform life as we know it than machine learning (ML).
Machine learning, the branch of artificial intelligence that describes applications that learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed, now accounts for the lion’s share of AI funding.
Machines that get smarter over time may seem like science fiction, but they are reality. In today’s fast-paced and competitive world, ML can be the difference between standing still or leapfrogging your competition.
At FitPeo, we utilize machine learning in several areas of our business. Based on our experience, let’s take a look at how entrepreneurs are using machine learning to help their businesses.
1. Leverage consumer data for better insights
Companies today collect vast amounts of customer data. This includes basic data such as email address, IP address, age, gender, etc. But it also includes interaction data such as site visits, user traffic, engagement (post likes, shares, replies), click-through rates and conversions, and behavioral data such as subscription details, previous purchases, devices and average order value.
Machine learning applications can analyze this data to find insights that you can leverage for more targeted and engaging marketing campaigns and better product ideas. For example, you might discover a whole new group of consumers who use your product in a way you didn’t expect. Armed with this information, you can start targeting this new customer segment.
2. AI-Driven Marketing
Marketing experts recommend that small businesses should spend 7%-8% of their gross revenue on marketing. That’s a big portion, and you want to make sure you spend that money wisely. Also, you don’t want your marketing obligations to keep you from other urgent or important tasks.
Automated marketing tools can do most of the heavy lifting by selecting and analyzing keywords, searching for suitable content topics, automating posts on social networks, and sending regular emails. Some AI tools can also create engaging ads for each user, so your content is more likely to resonate and reach the right people at the right time.
3. Enhanced decision-making for stronger business plans
Developing an effective business plan requires an understanding of current market trends and your target customer base, as well as a deep understanding of the problems you hope to solve with your product or service. Machine learning can speed up and simplify this research by analyzing market and consumer data and giving you the best recommendations.
4. Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is a powerful and increasingly popular marketing tool that allows companies to understand customer sentiment. By understanding how customers feel about your brand or products, you can enhance the customer experience and improve customer service.
Machine learning tools can analyze thousands of data points across social media channels, comments and responses to content to gauge customer sentiment. This enables you to quickly respond to customer needs, intent and preferences and gain an edge over your competitors.
5. Automate routine tasks
Repetitive, rule-based tasks can take up a lot of time when done manually. These tasks include invoice creation and processing, backing up data, and responding to simple customer inquiries. Fortunately, most of the tedious work today can be handled by intelligent robots. Intelligent ML-powered bots get better over time, finding new ways to be more efficient and work less.
6. Customer Service Chatbots
Gone are the days when chatbots were clumsy, unresponsive, and honestly neither smart nor helpful. Today, conversational AI chatbots can mimic human interactions, delivering intelligent, helpful, and natural-sounding responses. These conversational AI chatbots leverage machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to facilitate fast and personalized customer service anytime, anywhere, without programming responses.
7. Internet Security
We live in a world where a cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds, and by 2025, cybercrime is expected to cost $10.5 trillion annually. Many small businesses mistakenly believe that they are too small to be targeted by hackers, but this is wrong. Cybercriminals can make just as much money targeting many small businesses, which often have weaker security defenses, than one large one.
ML-powered cybersecurity applications analyze patterns and spot anomalies, so you can catch cyberattacks before they become a problem. They can also automatically scan for updates and patches and install them to protect your system from vulnerabilities.
8. Sales Forecast
Sales forecasting is the process of estimating sales revenue for a specific time period. This is an essential activity for any entrepreneur as it helps you make informed decisions on everything from marketing efforts, staffing and inventory to new product lines.
The key to a good sales forecast is accuracy. Machine learning tools use historical and real-time data to make highly accurate predictions about consumer behavior. These tools predict which days, weeks, and months of the year will bring in the highest sales. They can also analyze the positive and negative effects of holiday effects (special days).
9. Price optimization
Deciding how to price your product or service is one of the most important decisions an entrepreneur makes, and it can be challenging. Entrepreneurs must be aware of price sensitivity (how price changes will affect customers’ decisions).
Traditionally, businesses have had to rely on surveys to understand people’s willingness to pay at different scales. Today, data-driven models can provide dynamic smart pricing. These machine learning algorithms ensure that you always price your products appropriately for your target audience and market.
wrap up
Machine learning tools are getting more advanced and less expensive every year. Today, a simple Google search can find machine learning-based tools for almost any business use case. However, it’s always a good idea to do some shopping around to see which tools will best meet your needs now and in the future.
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