As marketers, we love the idea of “new” — creating, testing, learning about customers, and evolving approaches is what marketing is all about. And when it comes to innovation, AI is about as exciting as it gets.

A 2022 McKinsey survey found that AI adoption had more than doubled in the five years prior, owing greatly to AI’s ability to accelerate productivity in many areas of the business, including marketing. And with free, AI-powered ChatGPT making headlines almost daily, odds are that if your business isn’t dipping its toe into some form of AI yet, it may be soon.

But while marketing technologies take their quantum leap forward, marketing’s most basic principles — “know, like, and trust” — haven’t changed. So, the question for marketers is whether AI can advance those principles to a level that justifies the investment.

Where might AI be your best bet along the buyer’s journey? And where does human-to-human marketing drive a higher return?

In this first of three articles, we’ll look at ways that AI can help you support the “know” factor.

AI helps you know your customers.

AI-powered tools have been celebrated for years for their efficiency. They can analyze large amounts of data quickly and accurately, uncovering insights that human eyes might miss (or don’t have the time to find).

Applied in the marketing world, AI-powered sentiment analysis tools are one example of the powerful ways AI can help measure how customers feel about a brand. Compared with simple surveys or net promoter scores, AI’s capacity to comb through massive amounts of data in the form of ratings, reviews, and other social proof gives marketers a better, more well-rounded understanding of what makes customers happy or dissatisfied. Having this type of data on hand can help you generate more targeted campaigns that can potentially drive better results in less time.

AI helps your customers know you.

On the flip side, AI’s capacity for enhanced content marketing, chat, and customer support also makes it a great addition to your marketing arsenal. The current hype around ChatGPT (besides the fact that it’s free) largely centers on its off-the-charts ability to produce fast, relevant, exciting content based on user interest. It can research and curate content — essential for any content marketing strategy —and can even help you come up with your next best conversation starter on social media or forums.

The small print: When using AI-generated content, guard your reputation

AI’s potential for boosting engagement and increasing online traffic and interest (the “know” factor) seems endless. And many industry leaders predict a massive uptick in AI-generated content over the next several years. But as Gartner warns, AI can’t always discern fact from fiction, and the growing use of AI-generated content opens the door to inaccuracies and misinformation.

The bottom line: AI does not equal “absolute intelligence.”

As AI grows in sophistication, it looks better and better to stretched teams looking to focus less on ops and more on strategy. And AI likely has a role in your business and marketing mix.

But take note: While AI can collect and converse — to a fantastic degree — it doesn’t replace human wisdom. If you’re employing AI to help customers get to know your brand, be sure you have people in place to monitor and verify output as you would with any third party.

In our next blog, we’ll cover ways to use AI to advance the “Like” factor in your marketing strategy.

Meantime, if you’d like to learn more about how you can use AI platforms like ChatGPT in your marketing strategy, talk to one of our archers.

Best,