Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic now among professionals in every industry, but especially marketing, as it has many practical uses in this area. Generative AI tools can assist a marketing team of any size, whether that’s two people or 200. The keyword here is assist. Since the major boom of generative AI tools like Chat GPT and Bard made a splash in the marketing and advertising scene earlier this year, our team has experimented with using them as part of our marketing toolkit to inform our thinking and improve our processes. What we’ve discovered is AI can do a number of cool things, but it’s no replacement for the wisdom and insight of a live, human employee. It can, however, serve as an extra set of hands, so to speak.
According to Hubspot’s 2023 State of Generative AI Report:
Our team has found additional ways to use AI in their roles to increase efficiency. Here we’ve detailed a few of them, plus additional perspectives on how generative AI can help us better serve our clients and ourselves.
GOOD FOR AN EXTRA SET OF (ROBOT) HANDS
With so many tasks on marketers’ plates, we can always use another set of hands to take on some of the workload. Cue AI platforms. Angie Escobar, an Account Director on our Planning + Integration team, says she has been taking advantage of AI as a sort of personal assistant.
“I have been using AI for some time now. I kind of use it like a marketing assistant because I think it’s an incredible tool to help marketers get to the final output more efficiently,” she says. “In our case as a marketing agency, it saves time and costs for our clients.”
It is important to note, however, that we don’t use generative AI tools to produce deliverables. These tools are simply that – tools to help us expand our knowledge, get a new perspective and find new ways to help us better serve our clients. Our team incorporates AI in a way that supports our processes but doesn’t drive them – for example, using it as a research tool, a thought starter or sometimes even a thought organizer.
Time is money, as they say, so any time we can find a way to streamline our processes and be more efficient with our time and our clients’ dollar is a win in our book. For example, using AI for research purposes can extend the capability of traditional search engines. No more sifting through pages of results to find the information you need.
GET A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON AN UNFAMILIAR TOPIC
Using AI for research purposes is a common theme among our team. Traditional search engines have been king since their creation, but over time, AI tools could give sites like Google a run for their money.
Our Associate Creative Director Ryann Flynn said she’s been pleased with how AI platforms analyze and process information in a way that makes sense, without requiring the heavy browsing and sorting through information that comes with search engine use.
“Google is just like ‘here are results on the topic you asked for.’ With Chat GPT, because of the prompts and learning how to write better prompts with the AI, the information it produces is more relevant to the problem you’re looking to solve,” she says.
Generative AI can also be helpful when trying to break down a complicated topic to make it easier to understand. Samantha Neer, our Digital Ad Ops Manager, says she has used it to help her put conversations about her projects into laymen’s terms for clients or others who aren’t as familiar with the lingo.
“We are doing a lot of back-end, technical work on campaign builds, so it can be hard to communicate certain aspects in a broken-down way to those that aren't in the space,” she says. “I've used AI to help me simplify that language since I've found it usually has comprehensive and straight forward answers.”
STREAMLINE STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
We’ve also found AI to be a quick, effective way to brief our new business teams, especially for proposals on less familiar topics. It’s a helpful tool for gathering and compiling information in a way that makes it easy to use.
Ryann said she recently found herself turning to AI to research and create audience profiles for two different audience segments – one in the restaurant sector and one in the airline industry – where she didn’t have a lot of personal experience to draw from.
“I used Chat GPT to help me understand the mindset of chefs and restaurant owners or pilots and airline agency top brass since I don’t know any of these types of people personally,” she says. “Chat GPT was really great and helped me to understand the struggles those people face and also identify their needs and interests to help us get insights that we could base our strategy for those proposals on.”
For Angie, strategy development is a big part of her role at the agency. As she’s planning a client’s marketing strategy, part of her job is to research customer insights and sentiment to get a sense of the industry vertical as well as the attitudes and perceptions of customers in that industry. She says AI has been a huge help in this area.
“AI helps me sort through and organize insights on consumers after I’ve gathered them,” she says, “And then I use that info to help build customer journeys and customer mind maps, which are tools that are necessary for developing successful marketing strategies. We always vet the information with the clients, but AI helps us create those strategy building blocks more efficiently.”
IDEATION WITH A SIDE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Tools like Chat GPT are also great for overcoming mental blocks during content creation. Writer’s block is a real issue that plagues writers in any field, including marketers, and our team is no exception. AI is a great place to look to get thought starters that help you out of that rut. But the keyword here is start. Angie says the true quality in content comes from the expertise and knowledge of the industry and client that only real, live human marketers possess.
“I’ve noticed that, even when using specific prompts, Chat GPT responses can sound like a robot wrote them. The ideas Chat GPT produces definitely need a human element and touch before they can be included in a piece of content,” Angie says. “AI is just the jumping off point to get you started. It will help you generate ideas, not a fully fleshed out piece of content.”
When using generative AI, we take extra care to never enter client confidential or sensitive information into these tools. Therefore, when we do receive outputs, it still takes manpower from the team to make those results work for the client. Our team members, after all, are the keepers of the client relationships and knowledge that, when implemented correctly, pack a punch in terms of audience impact.
SEO is another area that we’ve found can benefit from generative AI. Our Search Manager Conner Burleson says he uses Chat GPT to brainstorm ideas and strengthen outputs for keywords.
“I’ll input a query into ChatGPT and review the results it provides and use them as a guide to create new potential keywords,” he says. “I also use keyword planner on Google Ads as a starting point, which provides keyword ideas based off a webpage or example keywords provided. It also includes query totals for a given period, including year-over-year performance and change.”
The bottom line is, we’ve found that generative AI is a great place to get started. Then that’s where we as marketers continue to work with the material until it is consistent with our brand or our clients’ brand content and aligns with company goals.
PROMPT WELL AND TAKE RESULTS WITHA GRAIN OF SALT
Agriculture is an intricate industry with its own set of buzzwords and key phrases. The AI tools available today don’t always have all the information they need to navigate that language. By feeding the program well-crafted and informed prompts, you’ll get closer to producing the outcomes you’re looking for.
As you experiment with prompts, keep these four elements tips from Christopher Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist of Trust Insights, in mind:
If you need more guidance, check out his AI prompt cheat sheet.
If there’s something you don’t like in the information the AI has provided, change it! ChatGPT and similar programs have the knowledge, but marketers have the wisdom, and we know what’s best for our clients or business. These tools aren’t at a place where most marketers – including us – are comfortable using the results as is in a deliverable. At R+K, we also make sure to turn off our chat history so our prompts and searches are not being used to train the technology.
Because generative AI is a new innovation, changes are being made almost on a daily basis. There are still flaws in these programs. AI is not at a place yet where we are able to plug in prompts and use the results as they are. Be mindful that AI may not always provide information that is real or accurate.
“I know it’s not 100% accurate, so if I do use any data from AI, I ask it to cite its sources, then I check out those sources to confirm,” Angie says.
REMAIN CURIOUS, FLEXIBLE AND OPEN MINDED
It’s difficult to put into words everything that is possible through generative AI. It’s an innovation that’s changing from day to day; what we know about it today could be old news in a week when new discoveries are uncovered. What we’ve learned as we navigate this new realm is to be open to learning about new options, but since things are changing so fast, it’s best not to be committed to a single way of using AI in our marketing efforts. Flexibility is key.
AI is impacting every industry, not just marketing and advertising. Check out our blog post on how farmers have been using AI-powered tools to improve efficiency on their farms.
If you would like more information or would like to chat with us, drop us a note.