How is AI affecting marketing?

It is a question that’s increasingly coming up when we give talks, attend shows, or just chat to potential clients. The fast rise of apps like ChatGPT, alongside a wide range of other AI-driven marketing aids, means that no professional marketer can just dismiss AI as a ‘fad’. Instead, we need to ask ourselves where it can be most useful, and how it can best help our clients achieve their goals.

This is a big question – you will be aware of all the debates on regulating AI, and of how quickly AI technology is evolving. We’re not aiming to answer the big AI questions here – just give our thoughts on why it matters and how we can make the best use of it.

For us, there are two main considerations:

1. How can we use AI ethically to improve processes and information?
2. How can we ensure that marketing remains a human-to-human interaction in the right places?

It’s also important to understand that, while big brands like Netflix or Amazon can leverage AI to manage a whole range of hyper-personalised processes and interactions, most businesses are SME operations with smaller markets and smaller budgets. These businesses need to evaluate AI in the same way as they would any other investment – is it going to deliver the return on investment they are looking for?

This leads to our first consideration.

How can we use AI ethically to improve processes?

Our argument is that AI has huge potential as a tool that works alongside marketing teams to improve results. Used properly, it shouldn’t replace the expertise and experience that professional marketers have. Instead, it should be used to make their lives easier, allowing them to concentrate on strategy, execution and support.

AI can help here in a number of ways:

• Faster segmentation and analysis of customer data
• Suggesting targeted sales offering
• Modelling behaviours across multiple channels
• Highlighting patterns of behaviour
• Supporting customer experience
• Automating content updates across channels
• Suggesting content themes, structures or opportunities

In fact, a report by McKinsey in 2023 said:

“Additionally, gen AI can optimise marketing strategies through A/B testing of various elements such as page layouts, ad copy, and SEO strategies, leveraging predictive analytics and data-driven recommendations to ensure maximum return on investment. These actions can continue through the customer journey, with gen AI automating lead-nurturing campaigns based on evolving customer patterns.”

Again, McKinsey is talking to bigger companies here – those that deal with massive volumes of customer and online data. But the general point is sound – if you bring in AI for certain processes, you can improve data quality, gain deeper insights, move faster and work smarter than you did before.

Finally, it’s important to use AI authentically. Make sure that the way you automate your processes, target your audience and retain their data matches both your company values and your legal obligations.

Management Professor, Clark Boyd, said: “AI is a tool, it’s a technology. It’s as useful as the person putting it to work.” Which leads us to our second question.

How can we ensure that marketing remains a human-to-human interaction in the right places?

We can see that AI has real potential to improve the information you use to build and refine your marketing strategy. It can also help you to move faster – dropping approaches that aren’t working, and doing more of what is.

But people still strive for human interaction. In fact, the more that we experience AI in our lives, the more we want to be sure that there’s a person behind the message.

Customer chatbots are a good example of this. Even with generative AI, there are times when you just want to speak to someone who can help you. You want a chance to describe your problem properly, so that someone understands.

Customer service operations use chatbots because they can often answer most standard questions. Today, they can answer more complex questions too – but there is still mostly a phone number to call. Companies reduce their costs by using chatbots. They provide a good customer service option for most things. But there’s still a human there when you need one.

This human-to-human element will not only remain important – it will become more important as AI becomes further adopted. Customers want to interact with a brand that has people behind it – not a brand that sounds like everyone else. They still want your personal tone of voice, your business story, and the things that make you different from the competition.

Do we use AI today?

At Padua Communications, we use elements of AI today – not to produce strategy, content or design, but to help with research, structure and data analysis. AI only works well when it has intelligent prompts and direction from the people using it, so it works best when it is one of the many tools we use as part of our strategic marketing approach.

We see AI as an opportunity. Harnessed properly by marketing professionals who can use it to speed up and improve processes, without removing the critical human element, we believe it can bring significant value to our work – and to the results we get for our clients.

So, more of the same good stuff as we have been doing since we started in 2009 but now even faster and more efficient.

Contact us to find out how AI can be implemented into your workflow safely and efficiently – or for some more strategic marketing, content and communications advice.