Feeling left behind with AI marketing? 3 reasons not to panic.
Everyone else is talking about AI. Every conference you go to the agenda is dominated by AI - all of the exciting tools you could and should be using, the opportunities and the wonderful examples of work that other companies have done. But you’re barely managing to deliver the day-to-day, trying to implement your plan in the face of ever-increasing business expectations and resource constraints. You’re feeling confused, worried about the future and like the only marketing leader not maximising AI!
You're not alone.
AI is undoubtedly here to stay. It will, and is already, bringing game-changing opportunities to do marketing better and more efficiently across an ever-growing remit including writing, creative, analysis and research. It can help us maximise our precious resources and even help us predict the future!
But AI as a concept is incredibly vast and its evolving all the time, with new tools and ideas arriving daily. It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed, anxious about what will happen and that you're being left behind. Whilst you can't and shouldn’t put your head in the sand, here are 3 reasons why I think you also shouldn’t panic and a suggested way forward.
1). AI won’t take our jobs.
However, a marketer who knows how to use AI might!
Marketing is about storytelling and building connections with customers. Customers want personalised, relevant experiences and not a one-size-fits-all approach. Because of this, creativity, authenticity, and the human element will always be essential to success. You must understand your audience and have a clear brand and message before you even consider getting into the AI space. Granted, maybe AI can then help you get that message out faster, but if we become too reliant on AI, then our content won’t stand out or be unique enough to create customer connections. And when AI goes wrong, trust between your business and its customers will quickly get broken.
Rather than taking over our jobs, AI will create space for human marketers to do more of the meaningful things that AI cannot do. For example, talking to customers, collaborating better with teams, teaching each other, focusing on leadership, and taking more time to think and in turn innovate.
2). It’s still early days.
It’s worth understanding that we’re still in a phase where the information being generated by AI isn’t that great and there are still many concerns over security.
As a fun little task, I asked ChatGPT to give me 5 facts about myself. Here’s what came back…
Position: Graham Ord is the Chief Marketing Officer at Aon in the United Kingdom - Not anymore!
Experience: He has over 25 years of experience in marketing, working across various industries including insurance and professional services – Not quite, its 22 years!
Recognition: He was a key contributor to Aon's marketing strategy that won the "Best Corporate Marketing Team" at the Insurance Marketing & PR Awards – Er… although I'm sure it would have been well deserved I don’t remember winning this award and if we did I certainly wasn't involved!
Education: Graham holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Leeds and an MBA from Warwick Business School – Nope, I didn’t go to either of these establishments!
Public Speaking: He is a frequent speaker at industry events, sharing insights on marketing trends and strategies – Frequent is certainly pushing the truth, especially speaking - must do better here!
So, all 5 facts that came back were incorrect to varying degrees!
Remember that ChatGPT is a language generator and not a fact generator. If it can’t find the answer it will make stuff up. If you're drafting an article for example, it can create a solid first draft at best, but this will still need to be reviewed and it's outputs vetted by a human marketer. If not, you are risking putting more rubbish out into the system!
Its still a little bit like the wild west when it comes to accuracy, plagiarism, and security. As AI advances, the processes and systems that govern it will surely develop and catch up and the necessary fail safes will be brought in. However, until then its still very new and immature and so, whilst there are many fears and unknowns, it’s certainly not to late to start exploring.
3). Reframe your thinking.
Don’t lead with AI. Instead think about your growth objectives, what you are trying to achieve or what challenge you need to solve. Maybe there is a way AI can help you overcome the challenges that are specific to your business? But maybe there isn’t. Your focus should remain on the things that will make the biggest impact for your business. And that might be something much more foundational to which AI isn't the immediate solution, for example your strategy isn't right, your distribution channels aren't working, you have skill gaps in the team or your data is rubbish. Don’t get distracted by shiny new tools. I’ll guess you already have some technology that you’re not making the most of and your business won’t thank you for investing in more!
Stay focused on your day job as a marketer to drive growth for your business. Using technological advances to help make our working lives easier is not a new thing. In that sense AI is no different, and so should be used in a way that augments our existing skills and tools and expands what we’re already doing so we can do it better and more efficiently. But it’s just another tool in your toolkit and it won’t always be appropriate for every challenge.
How to move forward
You may already feel like you have a good grasp of AI, you’re using it and are seeing the benefits. Great! However, despite the volume of noise in the market, very few marketers will be feeling confident. Things are evolving very rapidly, and we don’t yet know what the 3 or 4 things are that we will find AI truly useful for marketing in the long-term.
So, if you’re feeling like how I described – left behind, confused, anxious about the future of marketing with AI in it – my recommendation is to be curious. Be courageous and start to play with it but also be patient and kind to yourself. This is new and we’re all learning together.
You do need to be experimenting with it and thinking about it. As you do, you will start to learn how it could be useful to you. You aren’t expected to be an expert but if you bury your head in the sand, you will get left behind. So, step forward slowly and cautiously but do step forward! Who knows where it might take you.