Insights: How are marketers utilizing AI?
Amidst the ever-evolving marketing narrative, the spotlight is on artificial intelligence (AI), igniting discussions about its game-changing potential. The question arises:
What sets this apart from the continuous waves of change we've navigated before?
A closer examination reveals that the excitement about AI in marketing comes from its ability to transform how we approach our work rather than replacing human professionals.
You’re asking it, and we’re here to answer it:
Are we shying away from using AI in our work?
No.
Are we using AI to do all our work?
Absolutely not.
So, to put an end to the boundless wondering, we asked four of our very own Advancers to explain how AI shows up in their daily life.
Sari Venäläinen, CEO
Uses AI for:
- Recording and summarizing meetings
- Content idea generation, writing, and proofreading
- Converting text to audio
- Generating and documenting memos
- Collecting and analyzing large amounts of information to identify key points
How do you see AI impacting the marketing industry today?
"There have been significant disruptions that have changed the way we work, but the fundamental principles of marketing remain the same.
However, trust has become a major concern.
With an overload of information available, it's difficult to determine who or what to trust. This is where your brand becomes crucial, as it establishes your credibility and reflects your reliability.
AI is also impacting our lives in many ways, and it's important to remember that AI is just a tool.
While there are many benchmarks and ideas on the internet that AI can work with, human creativity and thinking are still something it cannot replicate.
However, AI can be very useful in gathering large amounts of information and finding the key points in it. With so much data and information available, the challenge is how to combine and summarize it.
AI is adept at handling this task, which then allows us to focus on analysis and its outcomes."
What are the key factors to consider while using AI tools?
"AI can be compared to the ethics of using a hammer. Just as one uses a hammer to get a job done without causing any harm, AI should be used with the same intention.
It is important to take measures to prevent harm. For instance, when using AI, one must not utilize any sensitive or customer data."
What advice do you have for marketers who are just starting to explore AI tools?
"I have two answers:
- Start with something that brings you joy, like an image generator.
- As they say, AI won’t steal your job. It’s the people who’ve learned how to use AI who will. If you want to remain relevant in your job, you need to understand the tools. I’d be happy if AI took some of my daily work, like creating presentation decks and cleaning up meeting notes, and left the best part to me — strategic and creative thinking. "
What advice would you give to a new marketer starting in today's industry?
"An understanding of business strategy is essential, not only in marketing but also in sharpening your soft skills for effective communication with your audience.
For example, how do you make your audience feel an emotion when talking to them?
Tools can only do so much."
What kind of analogy would you use to describe AI?
"A personal assistant — the Jarvis to Tony Stark."
Charlotte Jaakola, Chief Customer Officer
Uses AI for:
- Meeting transcription and simplifying post-meeting processes
- Analyzing industry benchmarks and historical marketing strategies in customer research
- Improving documentation
- Improving writing processes, particularly for voice-typing
How do you use AI, and how can marketers better utilize it in their work?
"AI is very helpful when it comes to writing. I use it for our Slack communication and especially for transcribing meetings or memos.
For instance, I record what I want to say and use AI to transcribe it instead of typing the words myself. Afterwards, I can edit it as needed. This saves me a lot of time because typing takes much longer.
There are many other ways we could use AI technology. For example, we could use it for customer research to better understand their needs and preferences.
I’m not saying that we should rely solely on AI for analysis, but rather use it as a tool to help us do things better and faster than we are doing now.
Another example would be utilizing AI in customer research documentation so we don’t always need to work from scratch."
How else do you see AI showing up in the marketing industry?
"Perhaps the most talked-about topic is the role of AI in content creation. While AI can help create content, human input is still crucial to writing the prompts and ensuring uniqueness.
Moreover, AI can also significantly influence marketing strategies. During my walk, I came up with a scenario: what if we could input old marketing strategies, previous datasets, and industry benchmarks to see what kind of strategy AI would develop?
I wondered if AI would be able to discover new insights and patterns that humans may have missed. For example:
- Discover the channels that work best for a business.
- Figure out advertising costs for some industries.
- Develop a better strategy than we currently have.
This could potentially revolutionize the way we approach marketing strategies.
I don’t know the answer to this question, but it would be super interesting to see the comparison between an entirely human-made strategy and an AI-generated strategy."
What should marketers be mindful of when using AI?
"We need to be cautious about the data we feed into AI tools. It's crucial that we don't use any customer data or sensitive information. We should also understand how AI uses the data in its machine-learning process.
It's not wise to depend entirely on AI; we must discover our own methods to utilize it effectively and create value."
What kind of analogy would you use to describe AI?
"I would say it’s like your Google calendar. It keeps you sane when and helps you stay organized. It’s better than a paper calendar in many ways. But you’ll still have to keep it in check."
Clément René, Content Marketing Strategist
Uses AI for:
- Brainstorming and idea generation
- Image and content generation
- SEO keyword research ideas
- Overcoming creative blocks
How do you use AI, and what was your experience with it?
"When I find myself struggling to come up with new ideas, I turn to AI for help. It feels like having a trustworthy sidekick by my side, ready to assist me whenever I need it.
AI's powerful ideation capabilities allow me to ask it to generate fresh concepts, which saves me time and energy. Instead of starting from scratch, I can use AI's suggestions as a foundation to build upon, allowing me to focus on refining and improving the ideas rather than doing the heavy lifting of creating them from scratch.
My first impression was that this thing is amazing. It tells a story that makes sense based on what I asked. However, when it comes to sourcing or verifying information, I prefer to do it myself. I don't fully trust AI yet to do this for me because I am not confident in how it sources information.
AI is a good storyteller. But it’s not a truth-teller."
Why should marketers use AI?
"Many marketers don't prioritize distribution, which means they miss out on opportunities to spend time on other important tasks.
People often want quick results, and this is especially true in content marketing.
As a result, marketers tend to focus on producing more and more content instead of promoting the content they've already created.
This approach can lead to a flood of mediocre content, particularly when AI is used to produce content quickly. It's important to take the time to promote your best content rather than constantly moving on to the next project.
If you take a step back, outsourcing the heavy lifting to AI means you can use more of your time to think about:
WHERE to take this content before you start working on it?
WHY do you need this content?
HOW can you optimize your content?"
What's your biggest takeaway from using AI?
"It is often believed that AI is capable of doing anything. But in reality, there are patterns in AI-generated content that make it obvious that a machine produced it.
However, this also means that if we take the time to create high-quality content that stands out from the rest, it will be noticeable in contrast to the abundance of AI-generated content."
What kind of analogy would you use to describe AI?
"AI is like your robot vacuum cleaner. It’s really helpful, it saves time, and it’s better than nothing. But it still has a lot of blind spots that you need to clean up manually afterward."
When AI goes beyond the marketing realm
As we delve deeper into how AI is transforming marketing, it's important to also consider the potential advantages it can offer beyond marketing.
AI has opened up endless possibilities for businesses to enhance their operations, streamline processes, and improve overall efficiency, from personalized customer experiences to predictive analytics.
As a bonus, we spoke with our Head of Sales to learn about the different ways AI can help sales representatives improve their productivity and engage with customers more effectively.
Akseli Matila, Head of Sales
Uses AI for:
- Research
- Proofreading
- Notetaking
How do you use AI, and what’s your biggest learning from a sales perspective?
"For research purposes, or even for sparring, when I need some help in building sales cases.
One crucial aspect of sales is the effectiveness of copywriting, particularly in emails sent to customers and prospects. For example, I use Grammarly for proofreading to ensure my emails are clear, concise, and easy to read and reply to.
I have noticed that I am receiving a lot of cold outreach lately, and most of them are obviously generated by AI. While some of these outreaches are personalized, others are not.
Prospective clients are bombarded with emails, and there is so much noise around that it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out."
What are your thoughts on the current fuss around AI?
"The way people search for things on the internet is changing, and this is also changing the way people interact online. Relying solely on search engine optimization (SEO) can become difficult for businesses in the future.
I think companies need to be more experimental and creative in finding new ways to reach out to their audience and establish their brand."
What kind of analogy would you use to describe AI?
"It’s like driving a car. You still need to know what you’re doing."
AI means significant change
But that's no longer news. So what have we learned so far?
AI is here to stay and is increasingly seen as a powerful tool that can automate and enhance tasks like content generation, data analysis, and customer research, thereby freeing up our time to focus on strategy and creative thinking.
However, it’s important to exercise caution and use AI ethically while understanding that it cannot replicate the nuanced, strategic thinking that successful marketing (or sales, or any function, for that matter) entails.
As for the future of marketing, it’s vital to strike a balance between leveraging AI for efficiency and maintaining human ingenuity.
If there’s one thing we can take away from this:
AI should be considered an assistant, not a replacement, in the creative process.
