As a fractional chief marketing officer (FCMO) and career advertising agency strategist, I see plenty of opportunities for AI-based tools to strengthen the development of marketing strategies. I use AI daily for the clients I work with.
But it isn’t a magic button that delivers:
- A great brand position,
- Compelling messaging that motivates buyers,
- The correct tactics in the exact channels to reach those buyers,
- A solution to the adage: “50% of marketing spend is wasted, but I don’t know which 50!” (BTW, I think this is an outdated view, anyway.)
So where does AI provide value to marketers?
AI is a versatile tool — but you need to wield it.
AI is a great tool, like a power saw for a builder or an iMac for a graphic designer. But the same tools in the hands of lousy carpenters or designers will never deliver good results.
I’ve used AI to quickly write strong customer personas for target buyers. But when I’ve asked for insights about those buyers to inform a motivating value proposition or campaign proposition, the results weren’t usable. My human intelligence (HI) was needed to provide direction.
I’ve also used AI to recommend lead-generation activities for a service-based client. Eight of the ten provided results were generic, but two suggestions were novel and useful.
Decades ago, my younger self may have accepted every suggestion the AI offered — but my experienced self has a more critical and educated filter. This filter is necessary to best guide and evaluate results from AI tools.
How can AI elevate your marketing game?
- It’s a boon for content generation, whether you’re creating newsletters or social media posts, brochure copy or video scripts.
- Using AI to transcribe meeting recordings, provide minutes, or identify action items is a great time saver.
- Casting a (robotic) eye over websites to improve SEO with keyword recommendations is easy.
- Enhancing customer experiences using chatbots to handle routine inquiries has improved since last year.
- Extracting key insights and trends from complex reports can save hours.
- Analyzing customer behavior, preferences, engagement patterns, etc. focuses your marketing efforts.
- And more!
What’s the takeaway?
The big win here is that AI can do a lot of the time-consuming work so you can spend more time making informed decisions, thinking deeply, and adding value to your marketing strategy and business activities.
As you accomplish more and better things (with AI and HI firing on all cylinders), the result will be a more productive, agile, and effective marketing team. But I caution against believing AI is infallible and can do everything you need.
Putting it to use efficiently for your business is the challenge. Because at the end of the day, it is a very powerful saw — that needs to be in the right hands.
This blog post is AI assisted.
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Blair Burchill , Strategy Director + Fractional CMO
Blair has 25+ years experience in advertising agencies from Ottawa to Brisbane to London. His experience transcends consumer brands from airlines and lottery operations in Australia, to petroleum and fast food in the UK, to government and public utilities here in Ottawa. His aim is always to find a point of difference for a brand that is based on an inherent truth, and bring it to life with campaigns in targeted media channels from traditional to digital and social. In addition, Blair spent over two years on the client side as the national director of marketing for a Cisco UC provider in Australia, working on B2B lead generation campaigns. His interests are advertising, rugby and summer.