Marketing made easy with algorithmic learning

The future of marketing is robotic.

Associate Professor Richi Nayak, a program leader with QUT’s Centre for Data Science, has combined artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data to develop a prototype of data-driven marketing platform called Robotic Marketer.

“The platform will revolutionise the way companies look at developing marketing plans and strategies,” Nayak said.

“Robotic Marketer empowers companies to generate a strategy within a few minutes, instead of spending hours of manual effort.”

A sophisticated system

Dr Nayak and her team worked with Australian company Marketing Eye to design and develop a platform that recommends purpose-driven marketing activities based on past report analyses, and company and competitor profiles.

“Robotic Marketer is the first integrated one-stop system that can recommend strategies based on input from a client,” Nayak said.

“Existing systems are limited in their functionality and can only help the client with part of their strategy development,” Nayak said.

“We wanted to create a platform that could automatically recommend more holistic marketing actions. For example, how a company can increase its social media profile on specific platforms, identify relevant events, or which trade shows and publications can be targeted for advertising.”

Dr Nayak developed a novel system of automated task allocation within Robotic Marketer’s server to streamline the information-gathering process, allowing the platform to complete multiple simultaneous requests and retrieve large amounts of data, which it then translates into consumer-friendly output.

“As a system, it’s sophisticated enough to cover all bases, including automatic competitor identification, SEO, marketing strategy report generation, and adapting to changed market scenarios,” said Nayak.

“What used to take an individual marketing professional 40 hours to complete can now be done in 7 hours.

“Robotic Marketer takes around three hours to generate the strategies automatically, plus an additional four hours of editing and consulting as a marketing professional finalises the output strategy report.”

A partnership for the future

For Marketing Eye, the prototype has opened doors to a world of possibilities for their business.

“QUT was able to expertly bring together all facets of the marketing mix,” said Mellissah Smith, founder of Marketing Eye.

“They’ve combined machine learning, artificial intelligence and data in new and exciting ways. We haven’t seen this before in marketing strategy development, and we’re excited to see how it can improve our business model.”

Robotic Marketer is designed to be easy for clients to use, while still housing a powerful machine-learning system in the back end. Streamlined functionality between front and back end data repositories mean that accessing output is simple for non-technical users.

“The Robotic Marketer prototype was pivotal in getting the company where it is today,” said Smith.

“We’ve now built an enterprise-level automated marketing strategy technology platform. The system is globally aligned, robust and scalable, thanks to the obstacles the QUT team pushed through during early production.”

Nayak sees this technology as vital for the future of marketing practice.

“More than 70 per cent of marketing functions will be automated by 2030. We already see this in social media, content management, marketing automation and customer relationship management,” said Nayak.

“With further advancements in deep learning technology, more AI systems like Robotic Marketer will emerge across the industry.”

More information

See more research at QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty

Connect with QUT’s Centre for Data Science

Contact Dr Richi Nayak

Published on medium.com by QUT Science & Engineering