Marketing with AI provides endless applications to users. The word ‘phenomenon’ doesn’t even begin to describe what we’ve seen in the AI space this year. AI has dominated the conversation in pretty much every industry since the meteoric rise of programs like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney in 2022. Hailed as the next digital revolution, generative AI is rewriting the future – literally. But it’s not just a tool for lazy students or time-stretched journalists – generative AI could be the next big thing when it comes to developing marketing campaigns.
But, as with many new technologies, AI tools have attracted as much criticism as they have praise. What, for some, seems like a game-changing way of saving time, cutting costs, and expanding ideas, for others seems like a career death sentence. While we can’t make any promises about an industry moving so quickly, there are a few ways that we can work with AI today to enhance the creative and marketing processes.
Nurturing the right skills
As a recent report from LinkedIn shared, Software Development, Data Analysis, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) all rank in the top ten most in-demand hard skills today. As for the most in-demand skills for marketing overall, Social Media, Marketing Strategy, and Customer Service topped the list, signaling the need for marketers to become omnichannel strategy experts.
As the above skills grow in importance, particularly in a strained labor market, finding the right tools to augment tasks and educate employees will be vital – and this is where AI fits in. In our recent survey of 700+ marketing professionals in 22 countries, generative AI was the most important consumer trend with nearly 60% of all respondents listing it. So how can marketers embrace AI to power their programs and prop up their people?
Uniting AI and human intelligence
By utilizing AI-driven tools in a safe and collaborative way, marketers can nurture the skills most important to them and save time on tasks that aren’t as important. Take the creative process, for example, marketers often brainstorm to come up with new and exciting ideas, but then must use time-consuming and repetitive processes to create mock-ups, build research reports, test campaigns, and ultimately bring these ideas to fruition.
AI language tools can vastly reduce research time, searching for information, compiling sources, and offering marketers the best and most concise kickoff point for creative brainstorming. AI algorithms can also generate mock-ups or designs, allowing marketers to envision and present their desired campaign faster.
AI can also glean valuable insights from target audiences, filtering big data down to its essentials to help personalize and optimize campaigns. In addition, using AI chatbots helps to automate customer service, giving human marketers more time to dedicate to the creative process.
While it may be a cliché, it’s true that we’re not competing against AI, we’re competing against those who already use it. Neglecting to realize its benefits is a surefire way of falling behind the competition. But human emotion is vital in creating compelling content that resonates with an audience, as well as identifying any potential misinformation that AI can spread. And with the output of AI tools dependent on clear and often multiple well-worded prompts, we’re far from seeing a full-blown AI invasion of the industry.
Rather, by embracing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence, marketers can streamline workflows, enhance creativity, and drive better results. Remember, there’s no ‘I’ in the team, but there might just be an ‘AI’ – metaphorically, of course.
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