Artificial intelligence is taking over marketing

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for decades. I won’t bore you with its long history, which is nicely summarized in this article. It has even had an important role in the marketing industry for many years (for example, predictive analytics is used in many advertising platforms). But what has been causing a storm lately is the use of synthetic AI to create many marketing innovations. Largely because technology is more accessible and easier to use than ever before. I feel this industry is on the cusp of a major turning point and you better learn what’s going on in this space or you might get left behind.

Industry research

There was a great industry study completed in March 2023 by Botco.ai, a general AI cloud conversational communications company. They surveyed 1,000 marketing professionals across more than 16 different industries and company sizes from 1 to 5000+ employees. The results were interesting—they learned that 73% of respondents used synthetic AI to help create text, images, videos, or other content. That’s a weighted average of B2B companies with a 78% adoption rate and B2C companies with a 65% usage rate (I would have guessed that backwards). Given that I am among the 17% not using AI materially today, I think I need to learn more here and fast to stay competitive with my peers.

Content produced by creative AI

Content generated by general AI is wide-ranging. Survey respondents said they are using it for the following: email copy (44%), social media copy (42%), social media images (39%), customer chatbots (37 %), website images (36%), content SEO (35%), blog post copy (33%), and marketing/sales collateral (33%). The basic reasons for using general AI are: (i) you can improve your marketing performance (58%); (ii) you can improve your creative variations (50%); (iii) more cost-effective than traditional advertising methods (50%); and (iv) it is a materially faster creative cycle (47%). I would add the benefits of better personalizing content to the exact user, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach to your marketing promotions.

And to be clear, AI-generated content is across all forms of advertising: text, images, videos, coding, etc. It is revolutionizing almost everything a graphic designer, designer, or designer can do. The copywriter or website developer used to do it for you. For example, check out this corporate video produced for my Restaurant Furniture Plus business using Synthesia’s AI technology. It is created in minutes from a simple copy and paste of About Us on our website without the involvement of human or professional agents. That’s awesome (and scary if this life-like technology isn’t used in positive ways).

Most used innovative AI tools

According to survey respondents, these are the technologies most used by marketers. ChatGPT (55%) gives human-like text. Copy.ai (42%) for natural language processing. Jasper.ai (35%) for copywriting. Peppertype.ai (29%) for copying entire articles. Lensa (28%) for image editing. DALL-E (25%) to create text to image. MidJourney (24%) to create text to image. I’m sure there are many other apps to test out, but these are the ones that today’s early adopters are using. I’ve personally played with a few of these. I will summarize my experience as text-based solutions are a lot more impressive in terms of producing high-quality output than image-based solutions, understanding that we are still in the early stages in the process of learning and technological advancement here.

How to prepare… and what happens if you don’t

First, it’s time to accept the simple fact that you need creative AI and you can’t ignore it. It won’t go away. So slowly but steadily, immerse yourself in some (or all) of the above tools—how they work and what they can offer. And if you’re working with a marketing agency, make sure that agency also understands all the advancements (if your agency isn’t currently using AI to improve campaigns, it probably already is). time to look for a new agent).

The consequences of inaction will be swift: you jump on board or prepare to eat the dust of other AI leaders – you’ll essentially be entering a marketing war with one arm tied behind your back. Performance will suffer (including lower engagement rates compared to competitors), as will profits.

What does all this mean?

Hopefully you have a better understanding of all the advancements happening in the world of marketing today. Can AI replace your human team? Not completely. I think it will make people more physically efficient and you may need fewer people than before, but you still need people to drive strategy and control quality, to protect your brand. Surname. For example, if the AI-generated copy will annoy Google and hurt your search rankings, someone will need to review that content and make sure it follows all the rules. Google rules. So think of AI as an augmentation built for speed and efficiency, not a complete replacement for humans. You will still need to engage your marketing agency or marketing team, but they will do their work in materially different and perhaps better ways.

Every decade or so, the marketing industry seems to go through a period of rapid innovation. It seems like we’re in the “early stages” of this most recent revolution, and I’m excited to see how these AI technologies improve from here as well as the additional AI advances that we will see in the coming years. It’s time to lace up your boots and buckle up, because this is going to be one hell of a ride! Good luck trying these technologies out for yourself.

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George Deeb is a Partner at Red Rocket Joint Venture and author of 101 Lessons for Starting a Business – Entrepreneur’s Handbook.

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