Since I strongly believe that personality is what makes content “alive,” I’ve been pretty skeptical about using AI in marketing. Today I decided to take a pass at using AI to generate some content about something simple…but I’d like to show you how you can get the best of both worlds: with a little AI, and little running commentary about it. Why not?

The part in quotations was written by Chat GPT when prompted with “how to use AI in marketing”. I’ve added my comments in highlighted italics below.

“Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) in marketing can significantly enhance your marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and help you make data-driven decisions. Here are several ways to leverage AI in marketing:

1. Customer Segmentation:
   • Use AI to analyze customer data and segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, interests, and other factors.
   • Create personalized marketing campaigns for each segment, delivering content and offers tailored to their preferences.
   • I assume you’d need to at least collect and input all this data first, or use data supplied by your Google Analytics. It’s going to take an expert to set this up. I assume part two would only be a first pass, and you’d want to review any content or offers before sending.
2. Predictive Analytics:
   • Utilize AI to forecast customer behavior and trends. Predictive analytics can help you identify potential leads, churn risks, and sales opportunities.
   • Adjust your marketing strategies based on these predictions to maximize ROI.
   • I’m not sure about this one. It might be based on general trends, not specific customers.
3. Content Personalization:
   • Implement AI-powered recommendation engines to deliver personalized content and product recommendations to website visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers.
   • Personalization can increase engagement and conversion rates.
   • This might indicate a whole new way of website programming…like instead of providing set content, maybe we’re just auto-generating content based on what the user wants. But if every website did that, how would any of them be unique?
4. Chatbots and Virtual Assistants:
   • Integrate AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants into your website and messaging apps to provide instant customer support and answer common queries.
   • They can also collect data and qualify leads for your sales team.
   • Well, I’ve never experienced a good chatbot, at least until a human operator jumps in the chatbot. I would far rather have actual live leads responded to with an experienced human.
5. Natural Language Processing (NLP):
   • Use NLP to analyze social media conversations, reviews, and customer feedback to gain insights into customer sentiment and preferences.
   • Tailor your marketing messages and product development based on this feedback.
   • We used software for this in the past, and if you have a super active social media presence, this kind of thing can save you time. Most businesses will still need human monitoring to decide what to do about a bad review, though.
6. Email Marketing:
   • Optimize email campaigns with AI for subject line and content suggestions.
   • Segment your email list based on AI-driven analysis to send more relevant emails.
   • This is really irritating. So much spam, now pretending to be from a real human. If you must make your first sales interaction by email, it should be very specific and well thought-out. You might use it to create several versions of your e-newsletter though.
7. Marketing Automation:
   • Implement AI-driven marketing automation tools to streamline repetitive tasks such as lead nurturing, follow-ups, and lead scoring.
   • Improve the efficiency of your marketing operations.
   • It’s odd that sales tasks as considered “repetitive tasks” – I would think that the first inklink a customer has that they’re dealing with a robot would spell the end of a relationship. And I don’t think any salesperson would want an AI scoring their odds of success on an account.
8. Ad Campaign Optimization:
   • Use AI to optimize online advertising campaigns by adjusting bidding strategies, targeting, and ad creatives in real-time.
   • Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads offer AI-driven features for campaign optimization.
   • Now here’s a good use of AI, which can probably get better results than humans can. I think these are already part of the Google Ads and Facebook Ads platforms. That said, they are probably optimized to make Google and Facebook more money as well, so would probably keep telling you to increase your bids and buy more ads, right?
9. Social Media Management:
   • AI tools can help you schedule social media posts at optimal times, analyze performance metrics, and identify trending topics for content creation.
   • Automate social media tasks for consistency and efficiency.
   • Another good use of AI, at least in scheduling and analyzing performance. I wonder if it tells all the accounts around the world to schedule things at the same peak times – which eventually exaggerates the peaks, creating content overload? And as to trending topics, would these also become crowded topics? And in time, if everybody is using AI for social media, is it even going to be worth reading? Many platforms have lost a lot of popularity due to crowding of ads and fake content.
10. Data Analytics and Insights:
    • Leverage AI to analyze vast amounts of marketing data and extract actionable insights.
    • Identify patterns and trends to make informed decisions and refine your marketing strategies.
    • Yes, might as well use the data. However, most of that data is already in Google Analytics – and few people use it now. Perhaps you’d need to give your AI access to your Google Analytics, and it will help people make sense of it?
11. SEO and Content Creation:
    • AI-driven tools can assist in keyword research, content optimization, and even generate content.
    • Improve your website’s visibility in search engine results pages.
    • This is one I’d like to try. But you have to wonder, if AI is being used to out-smart Google (which no doubt also uses AI), will they eventually cancel each other out?
12. A/B Testing and Optimization:
    • Use AI to conduct A/B tests more efficiently and quickly by analyzing data in real-time.
    • Optimize website elements, email campaigns, and landing pages for better conversion rates.
    • This also seems like a good application of AI. If you’re testing A/B, and find A is better, then you’d want to see if you can get a new B to beat it. So some human creativity would be ideal in this scenario too.
13. Voice Search Optimization:
    • With the rise of voice-activated devices and assistants, optimize your content and website for voice search queries.
    • Yes, this is part of SEO, so should be helpful. Then you can go through and tighten up your content into nicer sound bites…unless the AI does this automatically. But you’d still want to check it to make sure no important content is lost or garbled.
14. Competitive Analysis:
    • AI can help you monitor and analyze your competitors’ strategies, pricing, and performance to stay ahead in the market.
    • To the extent that competitors are done online, this could be helpful, especially if competitors have large e-commerce websites.
15. Fraud Detection:
    • Implement AI-based fraud detection systems to protect your marketing campaigns from ad fraud and click fraud.
    • I love this idea; I would hope that Google Ads is doing this, but maybe they aren’t, or aren’t doing so well enough. You don’t need robots clicking on your ads, you need real prospects!

To effectively use AI in marketing, it’s crucial to select the right AI tools and platforms, integrate them into your existing marketing technology stack, and continually analyze their performance to make improvements. Additionally, ensure compliance with data privacy regulations and ethical use of AI in your marketing efforts.”

So that’s my little review of using AI in marketing today. There’s definitely potential there – if used right, and not used everywhere, for everything. After all, how can we have any fun personalizing our businesses, if we give all that opportunity away? But when it comes to analyzing reams of data and making sense of it, AI has my vote.

And if you ever want to check in with this blog, I assure you, it won’t be written by an AI, unless like this blog, I am using it to clearly make a point! It’ll have our bold, colourful Tenato personality all over it.

And if you’d like to speak to a real human, contact us today.