How does AI Support Marketing?

This post will probably end up as a string of confessions related to Marketing, AI and the way that AI supports marketing. So, here is the first. 

I was dejected by AI and against using it. 

I know that a company that I have worked for has lost work because of AI. My services can be replaced by AI. Copywriting? Yes, Gemini, Clause and all the others can generate new content that will be stuffed with keywords. 

Data analysis? Yes. Google Analytics will respond to queries and generate insights from your website. 

Devise marketing strategies? Yes, prompt AI to “create a marketing strategy for selling [product description] to [insert ideal customer profile]” and you’ll get not just a list of objectives but additional thinking that helps shape what you do and how you go about it. 

This makes me and every other former Head of Marketing / Marketing Director that is now self-employed, redundant. 

I have spent a while believing this and, following a coffee shop meeting, a kick up the bum and a client saying that they are using AI to build a website instead of my services, I accept it doesn’t.

Confession 2: I have enjoyed learning the use of generative AI. 

Generative AI is only as good as the prompt it is given; analytical AI needs to be fed well-structured data and given context for the analysis. Ask the right question and AI with give you a meaningful and useful response. 

This means that when you know what you are talking about, you get from AI something really rather good. Take the image above; a family member that I have known since he was born, couldn’t tell that the image on the right wasn’t actually me. 

As Michael Porter said a long while back, and I paraphrase, the application of technology is only good as the underlying strategy. If you have a good understanding of the foundations and principles of marketing, the use of AI allows you to deliver more efficiently and more creatively. This is awesome news for marketers. 

Confession 3: this website’s logo, colour palette, homepage images and format were all created using AI.  

My initial dabbling into the world of AI was to create documents; I am a writer and needed to test what AI could do against what I would do. Seeing this go well, I used AI to create imagery. Then video – and wow! What you can do with video is astonishing.  And, finally, biting the bullet and trusting my company’s entire online presence to AI.

Reassuringly, AI did not get everything right.

The coding experience was fascinating. Some of my consultancy work includes writing specifications – for websites, for CRMS or for Customer Experience journey mapping. This experience helped with creating a spec for AI to work with. While I am using the first logo created and the first visual layout AI created, I am using the second website code created. The first crashed the website which required the roll back to a previous version. I went back to AI – it ran a debug, found and corrected the issue. Insanely, AI apologised and presented the corrected version, the version that is here now. 

How does AI support Marketing?

AI is supporting marketing through delivering creative solutions quickly, more cost effectively and with bringing thinking that is not achievable from just one or two people. BUT only when the user is able to ask the right question – which takes someone who is experienced enough to know what they don’t know.