Business leaders expect to spend more on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology — and most feel it will help them make decisions, according to The 2023 State Of Social Media, a study from Sprout Social, conducted by the Harris Poll.  

Of the companies surveyed, 30% predict they will significantly increase their investments in AI and ML, and 56% say they will increase them somewhat.

The most useful marketing applications are: 

• Behavioral segmentation to identify and trigger specific customer segments based on behavior patterns — 49%
  
• Predict analytics to forecast future customer behavior — 45%
  
• Dynamic pricing to optimize pricing based on real-time data and demand — 45% 
  
• Sentiment analysis to understand customer feedback and respond to issues in real-time — 44% 
  
• Content recommendation engines to personalize content and improvement engagement — 44% 
  
• Image recognition to identify and analyze visual content — 43% 
  
• Natural language processing to improve customer interactions with chatbots — 41% 
  
• Voice search optimization to improve search rankings and customer experiences for voice search — 40%

In addition, 97% agree that AI and ML will enable companies to more efficiently analyze social media data, 49% strongly so. But there are challenges, including: 

• Insufficient training and development for business leaders to acquire the necessary skills to effectively implement AI and ML — 39% 
  
• Limited organizational experience with AI and ML — 37% 
  
• Lack of understanding among business leaders about how AI and ML work — 36% 
  
• Resistance to change among business leaders who are not yet ready to embrace the use of AI and ML — 35% 
  
• Lack of the right talent to facilitate the adoption/implementation of AI and ML — 32%
  
• Lack of quality data to feed into AI and ML algorithms — 32% 
  
• Limited financial resources available to support the implementation of AI and ML — 31% 
  
• Not having the appropriate infrastructure to implement AI and ML — 25%  

Despite those issues, 94% are confident that their company could successfully adopt AI and ML technology for marketing, and 94% are comfortable in integrating it into day-to-day work. Moreover, 93% claim familiarity with applications in non-marketing functions. 

And. 86% agree that these technologies are critical for long-term business success.

Meanwhile, 80% of businesses expect to increase their social media budgets over the next three years, while 79% will boost their marketing budgets in that period of time.  

Social media helps companies with these tasks:

• Building brand reputation and loyalty — 94% 
  
• Improving competitive positioning — 92% 
  
• Gaining a better understanding of our customers — 91%
  
• Practicing future trends — 89% 
  
• Moving business forward with reduced budgets — 76%  

The Harris Poll surveyed 778 social media marketing, customer care and communications professionals in U.S. and UK businesses from March 13 to March 27, 2023. 

The chief marketing application is behavioral segmentation, Sprout Social reports.