Want to turn your marketing programs into absolute winners? Below are 5 ways AI can strengthen your marketing output.
Mastering AI can turn your marketing program into an absolute winner that generates revenue opportunities and builds a brand for your company. That’s why marketers should not wait for AI to enter their work environment, rather they should seek it and become the harbingers of change. Here are five ways AI can strengthen your marketing output.
But first, in the spirit of this article, I asked ChatGPT about how AI can help marketers in the future. Ironically, it offered a few commonsense tips:
- Embrace change: Be open to change, be open to new ways of doing things, and be willing to adapt to new technologies.
- Be a problem solver: Seek out areas where AI can be used to improve the work processes and bring those solutions to the company.
- Be proactive: Don’t wait for AI to come to you, actively seek out ways to use it in your work and position yourself as an AI-savvy professional.
These make sense given that the AI revolution has been moving forward for some time. It is becoming a seismic game changer like the steam engine, electricity, computing technology, and the Internet. It’s the difference between horsepower and electric vehicles.
On a marketing-specific level, given how AI saves time, optimizes output, and reduces error, improving one’s work with these tools only makes sense. Slow adoption of AI only ignores the obvious and creates risk, rendering marketing efforts obsolete. Get on board and lead the change rather than get left behind.
1) Master Predictive and Competitive Analytics
Using AI to harness data to predict customer behavior and understand competitive actions has been one of the first areas of entry in marketing. To recap, these analytics help marketing leadership and campaign managers make better decisions.
Whether that’s selecting which markets to enter, combatting, and besting the competition, determining pricing strategy, understanding which tactics and incentives best compel customers, and much more, analytics make sense of the incredible amounts of data.
Don’t settle for what AI-powered marketing tools offer as standard reports. Marketers are needed to steer the output beyond standard AI-generated reports. The value of a cookie-cutter report to an entity is limited. The ability to tie analytical relevance to a particular strategy and desired outcomes is invaluable. Work with your data science team or vendor to train the tool for better outcomes.
2) Optimize Your Efforts
From timing to targeting and everything in between, optimize your marketing campaigns today. Google Analytics launched in 2005, and in the 18 years since then, a wide plethora of analytics options have launched from native app usage and tools like Hootsuite and Hot Jar to AI-powered marketing CRMs and custom AI implementations.
If you are not optimizing every aspect of your marketing campaigns with analytics, then you’ve resigned to mediocrity or worse. Measurement is the baseline, and multivariant testing to build and strengthen is the secret sauce of champions here. Begin with understanding what works and become a master by learning to deploy data-fueled micro-campaigns that are optimized for buyers in real-time.
I have a friend who works at one of the top digital political advertising agencies in Washington, DC. His agency deploys multivariant content on a daily basis, optimizing and selecting campaign content throughout the day based on response. Some strong content can last days and even weeks, other content dies almost immediately. Almost real-time data delivers superior outcomes for their candidates.
3) Create Better Content Faster and Cheaper
AI tools can be an incredible source of ideas, content generation, and optimization for a marketing organization. Harnessing those tools as a content generator just makes sense. It will make you faster and better.
For example, using ChatGPT as an idea source probably saved me a half hour of time building this article. Then consider Grammarly’s impact on the editing time for this article. Finally, Midjourney allows me to create original imagery for the article.
AI tools shaved 1/3 of the time off my normal 3-hour article create-to-publish time. Or using a rate of $150 an hour, and that’s $150 saved. If that time is reapplied to content creation, using AI tools I can write three articles for the price of two.
In addition, combined with predictive and real-time analytics, content generation can better meet the target audience’s needs with more relevant and contextual content. That targeting can nurture leads by meeting prospect needs based on where they are in their sales cycle.
Finally, AI can create more advanced forms of content. Generative AI can create voiceovers, images, animations, videos, and virtual reality.
As the tools become more prevalent, the barriers to using them – both input methods and cost — will lower, and they will become much more prevalent.Do you want to lead your industry and beat your competitors with content generation, or fall behind them?
4) Automate Everything You Can
Automate marketing tasks that revolve around data collection, processing, correction, and sharing. Just about everything that is repeated frequently can be automated. Automating tasks and processes increase efficiency, and they make you a valuable asset to your company.
For example, once you build your analytics report, automate sending your daily or weekly reports out to internal customers the way they want it. You can automate alerts and transaction announcements via your stakeholders’ preferred channels, whether traditional or in-application.
Here is a creative example. As a photographer hobbyist, when I edit a photo shoot after the shot selection is complete, I make one edit in Adobe Lightroom, usually using some of its suggested corrections and masking tools, then I apply it to all the other photos. From there, edits are usually incremental at most, sometimes they are not needed at all. This equates to massive time savings, usually to the tune of 50-75%.
The opportunities to automate tasks and processes are infinite. Really, it comes down to is a solution already available, and if not, do the cost benefits make it a worthwhile investment for the company. Most large companies have increasingly mature analytics organizations that weigh and implement use cases based on value to the organization. Consider reaching out to them and finding out the best way to get your automation implemented.
5) Collaborate with Colleagues
As noted, working with AI experts, data scientists, and other colleagues and professionals to optimize outcomes and streamline tasks just makes sense. You are building a stronger network inside the company and becoming useful to your colleagues. Further, the company will come to see you and the marketing team as an asset leading the modernization effort.
There is an old saying, it is hard to fall out of bed if you stay in the middle of it. Putting your marketing team in the midst of AI efforts that make and save money while making the company more productive is just smart.
A Final Word: Change Management Is More than Just Adoption
Just because evolving towards AI automation, content creation, and other tools makes sense, doesn’t mean everyone in the company will welcome change. Bringing this change to your enterprise requires change management. Most successful enterprises start with small implementations, learning how to make AI work, then showing the benefits.
With your efforts, you’ll need to show tangible outcomes. Illustrate the cost benefits, the amount of time you have saved, and the increased quality of the work. Business cases can be made, but they must be illustrated and balanced against the risks.
Keep in mind, too, there may be irrational fears and hesitancy about AI in play. Right or wrong, you’ll need to work through those, too. Successful projects with tangible outcomes are hard to ignore. Advocate and win with success.
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