Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to outsmart each other. Now it’s happening on our computers, too. In the most basic sense, artificial intelligence can provide knowledge to a device without it having to be programmed. Think of it like an algorithm without the code. While AI in digital marketing is making its break into the world, it is not as widely used as you think.
Oh, and don’t worry – AI won’t take your marketing job. Unless you refuse to use it to its full potential, that is. Don’t be fooled by AI hype. There are many uses for artificial intelligence in marketing, but few of them actually deliver the results you want. In most cases, AI simply isn’t intelligent enough to make decisions that are good for your customers, your business, or society as a whole. Here are a few of the pros and cons of AI in digital marketing.
Pros of AI in Digital Marketing
Efficiency
AI is much better at the dull and repetitive tasks that bog down our most valuable employees. That’s right, when it comes to automating your workflows, there’s no better way to save time and resources than with AI. With AI powering your admin tasks, you can get back to doing more high-value work that impacts the bottom line of your business.
Most businesses use email advertising, but using AI to automate it can help deliver more focused and relevant messages. For example, AI-powered chatbots can schedule emails to send at the most optimal time and even monitor customer behavior so that a business can learn how to better market itself by adapting messaging based on what its customers are responding to.
Hyper-Personalization
As stated, AI is great for understanding a personal customer’s data. What they’ve bought in the past can be great information to use when trying to sell to them in the future. AI can personalize your marketing tactics for each customer based on various factors, such as geographic location, past purchases, and browsing history. AI allows you to always have relevant content ready when customers need it.
This means that the age of generic messaging can be a thing of the past. Now, companies can deliver specific messages to relevant recipients. Now you know why your phone was giving you that advertisement for fedoras the other day.
Streamlined Marketing Efforts
In a world where everyone is trying to get you to buy their product, it’s important to know what your potential customers are reading and watching in order to know how best to reach them. There are some tech tools that can even allow companies to see prospective buyers that read an article about your product and take action.
These marketing tools can be great to carry out tasks that may be hard to find workers for as a small business. Things like translating audio and text to different languages, or expediting turnaround time for copywriting can benefit from AI intervention.
While all of these things are well and good, it doesn’t mean that AI tools will always work to the fullest extent. Yes, you can throw a concept into ChatGPT to have it spit out content, but who’s to say that the content is accurate – especially for your specific business? Does it know your branding? Your voice? Your personal mission? Human interaction is irreplaceable and definitely still needed in marketing.
Cons of AI in Digital Marketing
Necessary Human Intervention
AI is by no means self-aware, nor is it catered to your specific business practices. This would require someone (a human, perhaps) to program it to fit your style and voice. If a computer breaks, another computer cannot fit it. While it’s great to rely on computers to do most things, like hold data and deliver emails, AI cannot fix an external problem.
In another scenario, some problems are too much for a computer to handle. Negative feedback, personalized customer help, customer service issues, and more require the compassion and help of a real human person to intervene, which sometimes AI cannot do.
Chatting with Bots
Everyone hates a bot, right? Imagine all the times you’ve been on hold with the doctor’s office, screaming “OPERATOR” into the receiver just to be able to talk to a real person for five minutes. Robots can only go so far into a conversation – and this includes online interaction.
While chatbots can be great to get basic information, like a name, or an issue occurring, it’s hard for them to also give a solution to a problem. When customers experience running around in circles just to request assistance, you’ll be surprised how fast they turn on you. People want quick and immediate help, which computers sometimes cannot do.
Attack of the Clones
Although AI is still a shiny new toy to the regular world, you may have already begun to notice the difference between generated text versus a real human behind the words.
Algorithms are great for tracking numbers, clicks, and trending topics, but they struggle in unique speech and specified marketing campaigns. A computer cannot tell if a slogan is compelling – just if it fits the topic given to it. Leaving that kind of work up to a computer leaves no creative space for your actual human employees to intervene.
While, yes, AI-generated content is faster, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. Computers get their information from somewhere, right? Most of the time, that knowledge comes from other computers, things posted online, or concepts that have been successful in the past. AI doesn’t understand the concept of copyright or plagiarism, which can be detrimental to a business campaign. This can lead to repetitiveness, unoriginality, and overall bad ideas.
How To Incorporate AI and When To Use It Efficiently
Start Small
No one says you have to start using computers for every aspect of your business. If you’re looking to incorporate AI into your company, it’s best to start small. Try testing the waters with an email campaign, or generating Instagram captions. These are small things that you can test to see if it works for you. It also allows businesses to grasp a better understanding of how AI works and what it can be used for.
Balance Is Key
While AI can generate tasks and basic text, it’s always best to allow a real person to input their creative mark. Automation can lighten your load and save you a lot of time. But keep in mind that marketing automation works best when it complements human marketers. Don’t simply hand over all of your tasks to AI as soon as it becomes available. Instead, use AI to handle routine tasks while keeping more complex tasks in the hands of human advertisers.
Don’t Get Carried Away
Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in the past few years. There are dozens of different sites that can write text, create art, edit logos, and even make phone calls. While it all may seem like a dream come true, remember that computers were programmed by the human mind. They are only as smart as we allow them to be.
Studies show that even ChatGPT is slowly growing dumber. In an article by New York Magazine, people have noted that the responses of the website are just not what they used to be. One user stated, “To me, it feels like it’s started giving superficial responses and encouraging follow-up elsewhere”. Maybe it’s because ChatGPT users are running out of new ideas, or implementing things that require human interaction. Maybe the coding is just not what they thought it was. Relying on technology to do everything can become a one-way ticket to unoriginality.
Source: New York Magazine: Is ChatGPT Getting Dumber?
Start with Real People, Like Us!
AI is a great tool for smaller projects, like automatic emails or creating captions for social media. However, relying solely on computer-generated art and writing can actually slow your growth. It’s important to know when real talent is needed. Computers cannot replace the human brain (as much as they wish they could).
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