Whether you’ve tried out writing prompts on Chat GPT, experimented with Chatbots built on natural language processing (NLP), or relied on tools that help personalize content based on online data, you’ve used AI. It’s become such a constant in the solutions and tools we use daily to strengthen our marketing and targeting that you may not even realize when you’re using it.
AI is not all robots and automatic responses, and the possibilities of AI in marketing (and life!) are expanding daily. It’s going to change the game for marketers, but we’re not worried about it taking our jobs. However, the ability to leverage AI for deeper and more efficient work is going to become critical — as long as you couple it with an understanding that it is a tool, not a crutch, and human expertise is still necessary to steer the ship.
What is AI?
AI is machine learning that takes data and behavior insights, then analyzes these together to come up with a desired result, whether that’s an answer to a question in ChatGPT, a human-like conversation via a customer service chatbot, or performing a task that you’ve asked your Alexa.
Within the broad category of AI, there are three types of artificial intelligence for three different use cases.
- Regression uses data to predict an outcome or variable. Think about all those times you’ve scrolled through Zillow and looked at the estimated price on a home. Regression was used to take various data points about that house and arrive at that price.
- Classification uses machine learning to sort and categorize data. For example, it could be as simple as your Gmail deciding if an email is spam or not spam, or it could be used to decide whether a customer is at risk of churning.
- Generation uses data and learning to create something based on a prompt. Generative AI is the one that’s rocking the world with its ability to write, draw, and design. This is when you ask an AI tool to generate an image of a Gen Z female wearing a black t-shirt and going to a concert.
Here’s What AI Looks Like in Marketing
When you think about AI’s strengths — the ability to sort and classify data, analyze customer performance, and generate content from essentially thin air — it’s clear why this could be a huge asset to marketers.
Particularly on teams where there’s always more work to do than there are resources, AI provides the ability to give yourself a starting off point. It can draw up an outline or sort and categorize data in a way that increases efficiency. A savvy marketer can take that foundation and build on it, working better, faster, and smarter. A company that is using AI the right way won’t replace their team with AI, but rather they’ll empower them with it.
This isn’t slashing your marketing team and relying on generative AI to churn out dozens of blog posts a month or SEO keywords and meta data. This is leveraging AI for basic tasks like research and initial brainstorming, giving your team the time and ability to dive in on creative projects, big ideas, and strategy. AI is going to let the most progressive companies pull even farther ahead of the pack.
How Marketers Can Use AI
According to PWC, “AI-driven marketing is set to drive 45% of the total global economy by 2030.” What does that mean for marketers? The possibilities are endless, but let’s take a look at 12 implementation ideas.
- Extraction
You probably don’t have time to read hundreds, if not thousands of blog posts and tweets trying to find the right keywords for your next piece of content. Luckily, that’s something AI language models can extract.
- Summarization
Want to get the highlights from that hour-long webinar you missed? There are AI tools like Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai that can summarize main points quickly.
- Rewriting
You can ask tools like ChatGPT to rewrite an email or even a blog post in a different tone. Take something written formally and turn it into an approachable, casual piece of content.
- Question-answering
Think of generative AI the same way you would ask Google, “What are the top ten martech tools in 2023?” except, instead of a list of links answering the question, the generative AI tool actually gives you the answer.
- Social Listening
AI can not only track keywords in social listening, it can also help you figure out what you should be tracking. Then, it can provide insights on conversations that are happening on social media and what your customers — and your competitors — might be thinking and talking about right now. This is the backbone of a proactive loyalty, retention, and engagement strategy.
- Content Generation
Based on the social listening results, you can determine what types of content your audience is most interested in, and you can also use those results to generate content ideas and copy that a marketer can then adapt to add a human touch.
- Automation
With AI, everything can be automated from responses to customer inquiries to sending emails at the times they’re most likely to be opened. It can automate data analysis over multiple email campaigns or data acquisition strategies.
- SEO
You can use AI generation to optimize content for search engines, conduct research on keywords that will bring the right audience to your website, and track and analyze competitors’ website traffic.
- Prototyping
If you have a basic sketch and existing design components, you can ask an AI design tool to create prototypes from that sketch. In some cases, the tools can even produce code to create that design. Similar to content generation, it gives the human a jumping off point that can then be refined.
- A/B Design Testing
Once you have prototypes in place, you can use AI to analyze A/B testing conducted with users on those designs to find the one that resonates best with your audience. This will give you data to back up the design choices and justify where you decide to spend time and resources on building.
- Creating Graphics in Multiple Languages and Sizes
One of the most time consuming parts of a designer’s job is taking the design they already made and recreating it in various languages and sizes. AI can take the master version and apply any parameters to it for additional versions.
- 3D VR Designs
VR is an incredibly complicated endeavor for even the most talented designer, but AI is going to open up the ability to do more faster. A designer could come up with one design and use AI to generate other alternatives quickly. They can then choose the best one to move forward with, rather than spending an enormous amount of time on each one.
Leveraging AI to Increase Business ROI
AI is going to change the game for businesses and marketers across content creation, customer engagement, audience targeting, product development, and more. It will help build a deeper understanding of customers and what will resonate with them, while also giving marketers insights into not only why customers buy, but also anticipating which customers could be in danger of churning. From acquisition through engagement through growth and retention, AI levels up a marketer’s ability across all channels — if they understand how to use it and humanize it.
It’s no coincidence that a Deloitte Global Survey listed three of the top five ways that companies are using AI now are focused on marketing, including enhancing existing products and services, creating new products and services, and enhancing relationships with customers. But that doesn’t mean AI will replace marketers or turn them into AI babysitters.
Instead, it’s going to give marketers greater ability to do their jobs better, faster, and with a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of their own customers and audience. It will automate the things that either take too much time or simply never get done because they’re beyond one human’s capability and give more time for deep, creative strategy work, like this blog post. Which, by the way, was written by a human, not Chat GPT 🙂
If you’re interested in discussing AI more don’t hesitate to reach out to me, Hannah, VP of Red Thinking. You can send me an email at hannah@redthinkingllc.com. Let’s chat!
