What does cutting-edge marketing technology look like in action? It’s not as sci-fi as you might expect — at least on the surface. In fact, it’s as easy as reading a sentence.

Our latest Moment of Clarity dives into the world of Natural Language Processing.

(Video transcript)

Hi I'm Keri Witman and this is your moment of Clarity.

Natural language processing tools are AI tools that allow computers to analyze, understand, and generate human speech. As opposed to traditional programs that treat text as a sequence of symbols, natural language processing tools perceive the hierarchal structure of the language- words, sentences, phrases- and the ideas that the structure is conveying.

Natural language processing programs have been taught to understand human speech as it's typically spoken, and allows them to understand the intent or sentiment behind the words being conveyed. 

This is the tech behind voice activated tools like Siri and Alexa, but also has implications in search. Most of the recent search engine algorithm updates have included more powerful natural language processing tools resulting in much better search results. 

Another function of natural language processing involves sentiment analysis, which identifies the emotions and attitudes and intent behind the words being used, which in marketing can be pretty powerful stuff and can provide very great consumer insights. 

Social listening and competitive analysis tools employ this tactic to translate the intent behind content on social platforms and turn that into actionable insights.

Chatbots provide the experience of a live chat without the investment rely heavily on natural language processing.  the chatbots allow the consumer to engage in a conversation within the message box and get answers delivered by a computer versus a live person, but still feel like they're chatting with a live person. 

Tune in next time and we'll talk about artificial intelligence and marketing automation.