AI-powered Marketing: How to ace your marketing career.

Read time: 4 minutes

A big thank you to our sponsor who keep this newsletter free to the readers.

Conversios has truly been one of the best plugins I have used for Shopify, Woo Commerce, and Magento for any kind of GA4, All pixels in one place, and product feed solution that too with Facebook Conversions API.

It is fast, convenient, it’s no-code, and built to help marketers and growing e-commerce businesses like you and mine.

They also have top-class customer support in case you need any help.

Use code APURV10 to get an additional 10% discount on the plugin. It is an investment that you will not regret making as it can truly help in lowering your CAC and increasing your RoAS. Check out all the integration and pricing options here and don’t forget to use the code on the checkout page.

Let’s get to the topic of the day:

Of all a company’s functions, marketing has perhaps the most to gain from artificial intelligence.

Marketing’s core activities are understanding customer needs, matching them to products and services, and persuading people to buy—capabilities that AI can dramatically enhance.

Marketing has seen shifts like these earlier too.

AI is probably the third major shift marketing is seeing in the last 10 years or so.

The first shift came with e-commerce, while e-commerce started in India in the late 2000s, it actually became mainstream with Flipkart.

Flipkart- what a story in the Indian e-commerce chapter.

Two average students from IIT Delhi, one who was so much into computer gaming that he took 5 years to complete his engineering- Binny Bansal and the other had the reputation of speaking less and being just another average student among 100s- Sachin Bansal went on to make history in Indian startup story.

We will cover Flipkart’s dramatic story at some other time, having read the story of Flipkart, I am not surprised that it will soon be released as a motion picture.

The second shift came when Technology entered marketing. The name given to this shift was- Martech.

The martech era brought much automation in marketing.

Here are the major differentiations between Pre-Martech, the Martech and now the AI era.

While AI has made inroads in marketing, I expect it to take on larger roles across the function in the coming years.

Given the technology’s enormous potential, it’s crucial for marketing professionals to understand the types of marketing AI applications available today and how they may evolve.

Role AI is playing today

Today AI is used by marketers for managing narrow tasks such as digital ad placement (also known as “programmatic buying”);

assist with broad tasks, like enhancing the accuracy of predictions (think sales forecasts); and

augment human efforts in structured tasks, such as customer service.

Firms are also employing AI at every stage of the customer journey.

When potential customers are in the “consideration” phase and researching a product, AI will target ads at them and can help guide their search.

AI also streamlines the sales process by using extremely detailed, user-specific data to serve them highly personalised products or services.

Later AI also assists in cross-selling or up-selling to users if the brand is making use of a recommendation engine.

These are some of the roles AI is already playing today. Yes, then of course there are chatbots like ChatGPT that are helping humans assist in broader tasks.

What you should do to be ready for the next phase of the AI revolution?

First things first, do not get lost. There is too much information bombardment happening in the name of AI and people are both fascinated and confused at the same time.

Think of your roles and responsibilities and think of the problem your business is solving.

These 2 are the core of what you do on a daily basis and the AI revolution has to make this process more efficient.

You do not have to reinvent yourself or your business because of AI.

You need to learn to make the right use of AI to solve customer needs better.

For ex., I see many posts today on Twitter, and LinkedIn of AI mavericks talking about top ChatGPT prompts that will give you shortcuts to write content, generate creatives etc.

I am not saying all of them are irrelevant but you have to understand how AI collects, collates data and shows results.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard are using already existing information available on the internet, collating it, making sense of the information and giving an output result depending on input provided by the user.

There are 2 fundamental challenges with this:

1. Not everything you see on the internet is true

2. Unique content, creativity and pitch of your solution will be missing in such content.

    

And this is where using AI-generated content is a problem as of date.

May be just may be this will be resolved in the coming years but the thought itself is distant as of now.

Hence, In my opinion, AI in marketing will be used in these two manners:

1. Standalone applications of AI

2. Integrated applications of AI

Standalone applications of AI-

As the name suggests these are isolated systems marketers will use to derive data/analytics/intelligence to better connect customer needs with products or services.

For example, when I was working with the Future group, one of the things we wanted to track was the number footfall that each Big Bazaar store generates.

Traditionally, you would have noticed whenever you enter a store, the security guard scribbles something in this register or clicks away at something that resembles a desk bell. This has been the way stores record footfalls.

For the longest time, this is how Customer Footfall used to be captured at stores, in the most basic, manual way.

The accuracy of the data, however, remained questionable as it was entirely dependent on the availability, rigour and diligence of this ‘manned’ endeavour.

That the result of this rudimentary exercise is somewhat flawed would be an understatement as it is more often than not subject to human error, negligence or sheer lack of motivation or tardiness, at times.

After all, there is no way the results can be verified or validated.

Recently an Indian eyewear brand- Lenskart came up with an AI/ML-led solution to solve this.

They invested in an AI video analytics startup- Tango eye.

Tango eye, a leading provider of computer vision technology, offers end-to-end video analytics solutions. Their AI and ML technology converts video data into actionable insights for improved efficiency, increased sales and security at retail storefronts with minimal manual intervention and zero room for error.

In a snapshot, this is how Tango Eye works with Lenskart:

Essentially, the Tango eye system uses Data sourcing from the video as a source, thereafter processes the image, video, store location etc. data with their own proprietary module, applies a layer of analytics with the help of certain Rule engines and finally through the web servers give the output in the form of insights.

Apart from the above example, Facebook messenger bots are also an example of a standalone task automation system. Since they help you to automate certain basic tasks and do not need to be integrated with any of your internal systems.

In the coming times, you will see many such standalone applications of AI being used by different brands.

AI is not limited to what you see at the front end today like ChatGPT or Bard or Midjourney.

There are businesses that are leveraging AI at a much deeper level, and you as a professional need to spend more time learning and understanding these deep systems and their use cases instead of limiting yourselves to ChatGPT prompts.

Integrated applications of AI-

Embedded within existing systems, these AI applications are often less visible than stand-alone ones to the customers, marketers, and salespeople who use them.

There are many examples of this. Knowingly or unknowingly you have used integrated applications of AI.

For ex., machine learning that makes split-second decisions about which digital ads to show users is built into ad platforms that handle the entire process of buying and placing ads.

Or your next Netflix show recommendation is another application of Integrated application of AI.

Netflix’s integrated machine learning has offered customers video recommendations for more than a decade; its selections simply appear in the menu of offerings viewers see when they go to the site.

If the recommendation engine were stand-alone, they would need to go to a dedicated app and request suggestions.

Programmatic digital ad buying, recommendation engines, CRM based task automation systems are all examples of integrated applications of AI.

If you are working in the e-commerce space, you should consider using a recommendation engine and CRM-based marketing automation, to begin with.

You need not build a recommendation engine if you are a small setup. Consider buying one. However, if you run into 100s of SKUs, and are a decent size organisation, you should consider building your own unique recommendation engine to serve users with the right product and the right content.

For most firms, getting started with Integrated applications of AI will make more sense till the time they build enough skill sets for AI and till the time they have enough customer and market data.

Finding, evaluating and implementing and standalone application of AI is a much deeper process and typically involves folks from other functions as well apart from marketing like product and technology teams.

Hope this gives you a broad view of How AI should be used by businesses and marketers.

We are still at an early stage of the AI revolution, as time passes we will see more simplified and deep use of AI across many functions of an organisation.

That’s it for today folks!

If you like today’s newsletter then you will love what I will cover in A to Z of SEO masterclass because one of the topics I will touch base on is How AI should be used for SEO. Apart from this, we will talk about the fundamentals, examples and bursting myths around SEO. This course is designed keeping non-coders, business owners and students in mind who want to get started in SEO.

If you are an experienced SEO professional, it is always good to brush up on the fundamentals and stay updated with How you can use AI in SEO to further advance your career.

I hope to meet you on 15th July for this masterclass.

In case you want a more detailed course on digital marketing- check out this 4-week course on A to Z of Digital marketing.

Till then, have an awesome Sunday ahead and reply to this email with a testimonial if you can. I will give an additional discount on A to Z of SEO masterclass for the best-written testimonial.

Your appreciation or feedback helps me to do better.

Cheers,

Apurv