How can marketing start using AI?

As mentioned in a previous post, I have been sceptical of AI. To use it, you give away information – data that is going to be used to identify you. It is a personal concern that became commercial paranoia.

However, spending time with it and getting to better understand the ways that it can be meaningful has helped transform my relationship with it. These are the steps that I have taken to getting started with AI in my business.

1. Edit your text

2. Generate text

More than just editing text, it turns out AI can generate text pretty well too! I took a document that I have been writing for a while, but not yet been able to define how its contents could be used, and submitted it to AI. The prompt was something like: “Based on the attached document, keeping much of the content as my words, create a workbook…” and I listed a set of criteria that I had thought of AND I invited AI to include suggestions for content that would help make the workbook more engaging. 

Minutes later, AI presents a 12 page full colour, impressively formatted work book with a structure that clearly showed the content, had visual representations of the insights, and featured participatory activities to help reinforce learning. While it was far better than I could have achieved using Word, there were mistakes that needed correcting. A round of editing the content helped refine it.

AI remains fallible

3. Research content ideas

A key part of my content creation service is about researching the needs of the content for the end-user and for SEO / AEO opportunities. While Search Console gives great insight, just relying on one data source can limit the impact of a piece of content.

AI can research across multiple sources quicker than you.

Using the prompt, and I paraphrase, “I am targeting the keywords [I inserted the targeted words] for an article for this company with [and I explained the intention]. What additional keywords would help me better compete with [insert competitors]?”.

More than suggesting additional keywords, the response indicated themes that would create reader engagement and even proposed a structure that would accommodate my keywords and its keywords together. I had a blue print for writing! The result was a more effective article than what I would have created as a first iteration.

4. Create images

Something I like about being in marketing is that I get to use words creatively. One word can change the atmosphere of an article promoting a healthcare product. Another words triggers an emotional response to the benefits of a business service.

Being able to articulate well is the key to generating effective AI results.

This post’s header image is generated by AI. There are many free tools that allow the creation of imagery. Describe the scene and it will deliver!

5. Make sense of data

I was staring a Google Analytics view and cross-referencing this with a report from another part of the website and was just not seeing the source of the problem. I knew there was an issue, but I could not work out what I needed to find. A meeting with an acquaintance encouraged me to use AI in a different way – not Generative, as in the use-cases above, but analytically.

Equipped with two data exports, I uploaded them with a report explaining the issue and asking it, AI, to identify what was wrong and what the issue was. More than identifying the answer, AI was able to illustrate the key data that helped reveal the problem and even offered ideas to help solve the underlying causes.

In small businesses, AI can be like a silent partner to help bring fresh thinking.

Getting started with AI in marketing

Getting started with AI in marketing is an inevitability. I have even recently had conversations where business owners have believed that the website is merely an online window; real business happens person-to-person. The time for head in the sand positioning around AI has passed; small business can easily access AI capabilities and, with a little hand-holding begin to make great gains with it.