The question is not ‘whether’ AI will provide value to your team, but ‘where.’ Here are some key areas and functions to examine.
Is your marketing staff getting bored of hearing about artificial intelligence? To some extent, we are. It’s part of the hype cycle for any new technology.
Marketers are today surrounded by AI. It’s coming from every angle. Most importantly, the launch of ChatGPT made AI available to virtually anybody who wished to utilize it.
However, ChatGPT is not the only AI game in town. There are now several AI-powered technologies available to marketers to assist them increase productivity, automating repetitive processes, analyzing data, and so on.
Fortunately for marketers and other business users, software providers quickly incorporate AI into their existing systems. That implies that adopting AI will involve less tool tearing replacement and budget pleading than other new technologies.
Infusing AI into apps implies that the AI assistants and co-pilots we see today will likely become a standard feature of our martech platforms in the future. There is also a possibility of consolidation in the AI area, as well as the continuous development of tools built expressly for businesses such as marketing. It is all part of the technological lifetime.
Marketers already have plenty of AI solutions to choose from, whether as separate applications or as functionality in their existing stack. The AI-powered tools your team uses are determined by the task at hand and the resources available to them.
Where possible, we’ve linked vendor references in this article to video samples of the AI capabilities incorporated into their products.
The Benefits of AI for Marketing Organizations
According to a poll conducted by The Conference Board and Ragan Communications, 68% of marketers use AI “sometimes” in their everyday jobs. It’s no surprise. Many marketers liken themselves to “Swiss Army knives” because they can switch between tasks, such as working with data and generating content. That means routinely relying on a variety of AI-powered tools and services to help get things done.
At a high level, working with AI will aid your marketing team in three ways:
- Increased efficiency.
- Better targeting.
- Improved ROI.
Marketing Copywriting with Artificial Intelligence
Many marketers write text for advertisements, social media, email, and other channels regularly. Each of these approaches has unique criteria in terms of duration, tone, and purpose. Creating a good concept, iterating through multiple variations, and implementing the winners to each strategy or channel takes time. An AI-powered tool, such as ChatGPT or Jasper, can be useful.
Many of the AI technologies that assist marketers in creating content behave similarly to therapists, especially when it comes to coming up with a great concept. Simply tell the bot about your product, who you are targeting, the tone of the message, and any character or word limits. At the very least, these resources will help you in getting started.
It’s also helpful to inform generative AI technologies of their involvement in the prompt. Begin your question with “You are a copywriter for a B2B marketing team…” to help the bot understand its function in your workflow. Then include information about the target audience, the offer, and the action you want readers to do (download, call, apply, etc.).
Generative AI technologies will allow you to iterate quicker, open up new testing opportunities, and, most significantly, save time. However, be mindful that the bot may take liberties with the facts you provide, so carefully study the content it produces to ensure it is not making claims you cannot support or generating product features that do not exist.
Responses from generative AI technologies can be rather formulaic. If you observe that all of your LinkedIn posts generated by generative AI technologies have the same structure, modify your prompt and offer specific guidelines for suggesting a new format.
Data Analysis with Artificial Intelligence
Today’s marketers are flooded with data. It is the outcome of campaign tracking, lead generation reports, email marketing efforts, and website forms. It is mostly ineffective without tools to assist your staff in making sense of the data.
Equally challenging is the time required to analyze massive datasets. The time it takes to acquire insights is time lost not putting those insights to use. As previously indicated, artificial intelligence will help your marketing staff automate many time-consuming manual processes. Data analysis is another example of how AI may be used as an accelerator.
ChatGPT is a generative AI tool capable of producing data analysis. However, ChatGPT is a text-based application, so all inputs and outputs will be in text format. Fortunately for marketers like you, AI is making its way to platforms where you store and analyze data.
Tableau launched Tableau Pulse in early 2024 to make AI-driven capabilities more accessible to users, even those with little expertise in data visualization tools and AI.
Microsoft is incorporating AI-powered features into its Power BI and Excel tools to make sophisticated analysis easier for consumers.
Looker, developed by Google, aids in the conversion of huge datasets into simple visual reports and dashboards.
Your existing data analytics tools are probably your best chance to discover AI-infused functionality. Your team is already familiar with these technologies, so before you make a business case for shiny new objects, check your vendor’s roadmap to see what’s available in-house now or coming soon.
Other Uses of AI in Marketing
AI is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the marketing stack. In addition to the instances given above, you can discover AI capabilities that help marketers with:
Graphic Design
AI-powered picture production and modification is gaining popularity. Popular platforms such as Canva have integrated AI capability that assists marketers with some design jobs while freeing up valuable professional design resources for other important projects.
Software Integrations
Need to link many data sources in your marketing stack? Marketers have long relied on solutions like Zapier to seamlessly link apps. As MarTech writer Milt Hwang illustrated, Zapier’s AI-enhanced user interface makes these connections as simple as telling the tools what you want them to do.
Customer Experience
The disadvantage of many CRM solutions is that data enters but rarely exits as often as it should. AI will help to alter this since we will no longer rely on people to know what is in the CRM. Salesforce’s Einstein AI is converting CRM data into hyper-personalized experiences.
Where will Artificial Intelligence have a Major Influence on Your Team?
Your team’s final use of AI will be based on where it needs resources and which procedures are taking up the most time. We might all benefit from speedier insights, and if your team lacks analytics ability, AI may assist fill the need. The same is true for content development or design work.
Marketing leaders must grasp how their teams use artificial intelligence. Previously, the emergence of cloud-based apps resulted in “shadow IT,” in which teams and individuals added applications on their own, quicker than the IT organization and information security teams could keep up.
Don’t let AI usage develop in the shadows, increasing danger. Accept its use and turn it into a strategic advantage.