Can AI Drive Deeper Customer Insights?

Author

Tahnee Perry
August 30, 2023

This Week

  • Feature article: AI and customer insights

  • AI tools for you: Market research platforms

  • Case study: Brex

  • Around the Web: Decoding consumers

  • Amusing: HAL-9000 as Alexa

  • Career Cheat: Staying ahead

Can AI Drive Deeper Customer Insights?

As a marketer or founder, you know the importance of in-depth market research to build a successful brand. In today's world, market research is more important than ever, as consumers have a plethora of options.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help you stay ahead of the competition by better understanding your customers' needs and preferences. But how, exactly?

Here’s the short version:

  1. Data analysis and insight generation 

  2. Predictive analytics for forecasting consumer behavior

  3. Automation of time-consuming tasks

  4. Facial, vocal, and sentiment coding for emotional analysis

For the long version, read on at Medium.

AI-Powered Research Platforms

To leverage the power of AI in your market research, there are a number of AI-powered platforms you can adopt. They offer a range of tools and features to streamline the research process and generate deeper customer insights. Here are a few to get you started:

Pollfish gives you access to targeted audiences for your surveys. Through its network of mobile apps and websites, Pollfish allows you to collect insights and feedback to inform your market strategies. G2 rating: 4.4.

  • Pollfish starts at $95 a month for 1- 5 question surveys that include 100 survey completes.

Poll the People is an OpenAI-powered tool that helps you analyze a variety of outputs, such as which design resonates with users through word clouds, audience demographics, and data. G2 rating: 4.5.

  • Poll the People offers a free access plan for $1 per response. Or you can sign up for the Plus plan at $50 per month, which gives you 500 responses per study at 10 studies a month.

MonkeyLearn is an AI-powered text analysis platform that allows you to extract insights from large volumes of text data. It automates sentiment analysis, topic categorization, and entity recognition tasks, helping you understand customer feedback, reviews, and social media conversations more effectively. G2 rating: 4.

  • MonkeyLearn starts at $99 per month for 10,000 text classifications.

Pecan uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms powered by OpenAI’s GPT language models to analyze large volumes of unstructured data, such as customer feedback, social media posts, and online reviews. G2 rating: 4.8.

  • Pecan starts at $50 monthly for two seats and four training models monthly. You've got 14 days to give it a try before you commit.

Hume.ai offers advanced vocal identification through AI-powered analysis of speech patterns and characteristics. Hume claims it can accurately identify and distinguish speakers in audio recordings, facilitating tasks such as transcription, analysis, and content organization. Want to see it in action? Check out this video from Daniel Pikl. Currently no G2 rating.

  • Hume offers up to 100 minutes of audio/video analysis for free. Pricing is tier-based after that.

Disrupting the Credit Card Game  

How Brex Catapulted to $12.3B Valuation

Brex, tagged as the anti-Amex, has an estimated $400M revenue, is growing 67% year-over-year, and is completing $17.5B in transactions. It was valued at $12.3B or a 31x multiple in October 2022 and now boasts 50,000+ customers — 40% of which are U.S. startups.

Source: Y Combinator

Their stratospheric growth comes in part from understanding the unique pain points of their customers. After noticing early-stage startups’ difficulties obtaining credit cards, founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschithey launched Brex in January 2017. Brex is one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the industry.

You can find a complete teardown of their marketing strategy and tactics at Funnel Teardowns.

Cracking the Code of Consumer Behavior

Effective marketers recognize that individuals are more than just data points. They delve into emotions, interests, and motivations – known as psychographics – to create truly useful personas.

Utilizing psychographics gives you more nuanced insights into your audience and helps you tailor content that’s more likely to convert. And now, with the power of AI, capturing and analyzing these psychographics is faster and more efficient.

Lex Willis at No Good Agency wrote a great blog on the topic. Check it out here.

If HAL-9000 was Alexa

An amusing reminder that AI can go wrong in so many annoying ways. Watch the video on YouTube.

Staying Ahead in an AI-Paced World

It can feel exhausting keeping up in today's AI-fueled world. New tools, new strategies and tactics, ferocious competition - it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But staying up-to-date is essential if you want a successful startup career today.

Matthew Link has some personal tips for keeping pace:

  1. Make learning a habit

  2. Follow the thought leaders

  3. Subscribe to relevant content

  4. Network with other AI-interested folks

  5. Get hands-on experience with AI tech and tools

  6. Understand how AI applies to your industry

  7. Embrace change

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