The Rise of AI in Marketing: What You Need to Know

Asen Marketing

Business Tips 04/10/2024

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ can be pretty ambiguous. Are we talking about a chatbot or killer robots from the future? In simplest terms, AI is a computer system that can do tasks that historically only humans could do—things like reasoning, making decisions, creating content, and solving problems.

Already, AI can do most of the core tasks marketers do. But don’t panic! AI is not about to replace skilled humans. Think of it as an assistant that can help you generate ideas or improve efficiency when needed.

For marketers, market strategy, ideation and content development are at the heart of what we do. Outsourcing that to an emerging AI application is not a definite solution and may not even be an ethical approach. What’s more, copyright law on AI-created content is far from clear. Anything you create with AI may not legally be yours to use.

The key to using AI effectively and ethically is remembering that it is an aid, not a human replacement. It can offer lists of suggestions to get ideas going, but it can’t write a campaign. It can process data and see gaps in the market, but it can’t tell you what to do with that information. AI has the potential for misuse, but if we learn to use it well, it will be a huge asset to the industry.

Exploring Major Trends

From Microsoft’s adaptation of GPT into Copilot to Google’s development of the Gemini LLM, nearly all of the major players in tech are using AI — and it’s having a huge impact on marketing.

People have already started using generative AI tools like GPT and Gemini as their go-to search before a search engine, which completely rewrites the book on SEO.
In the past year, a surge of AI-generated written content flooded the internet, taking full advantage of SEO best practices. But that might soon change with Google’s recent updates to their search features designed to filter out AI spam.
Chatbots are becoming advanced to the point where customers don’t have to navigate websites, but instead have a conversation about what they are seeking.
Machine customers are also an emerging issue: according to some estimates, by 2027, 50% of people in advanced economies will have personal AI assistants to make purchases for them. Marketers won’t be selling to humans, but to AI.

These are seismic shifts in the marketing landscape. Just like marketers had to adapt to the internet in the 1990s, we’ve got to understand these new tools.

The Marketer’s AI Toolbox

Dozens of marketing applications are under development that try to take full advantage of AI’s capabilities. While the quality and reliability of these apps can be hit or miss, it’s important to stay on top of how AI impacts the industry. From a broad perspective, we can break AI tools into a few categories:

Design, Photo, & Video Content

In less than five years, AI-created images have evolved from blurry outlines to photoreal pictures. Companies like Adobe are integrating AI into their software, creating tools that let users generate images from scratch that they can edit as needed.

Copy & Blogs

AI communication through text has shaken things up the most, with dozens of marketing tools developed in the past few years based on large language models (LLMs). ChatGPT is the most widely used right now, given it’s been around the longest. Even in its raw form, the LLM behind it can write solid copy when given the right prompts.

In the past year, companies have built on existing LLMs to make applications designed for marketing. They range from content creation and ideation tools to editing services, but they all can process, create, and understand massive amounts of text almost instantly.

Strategic Marketing Planning

AI’s decision-making capabilities are used in tools that can help with account targeting and prioritization, as well as data analysis. AI still can’t see all the factors and use judgment like a human, but it can take data and present logical conclusions about it.

Social Media Management

If you’ve been on LinkedIn or Facebook recently, you’ve probably been asked if you want AI to help you write a post. AI is ready to reshape social media at a core level. While some tools are integrated, others focus on ideation and content creation, and some aim to use the DM (direct message) aspect of social media for conversational AI marketing.

Can AI Make High-Quality Content?

Yes. And also, no. The truth is that the quality of AI-created content and decision-making varies a lot. The problems with AI are often tied to the lack of intuitive human understanding.

To give a real-world example, a marketing writer asked AI tools for an exciting and unique approach to discussing an underground utility product. The AI suggested that the product might be used to discover an ancient alien civilization underground. Exciting and unique? Yes. Appropriate for a utility company’s marketing? Not so much.

This is why humans need to be the ultimate decision-makers.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

AI is making a huge impact on marketing, but it’s not a universal solution. A human must offer specific and detailed instructions for AI to succeed in small-scale situations. For ethical and copyright-conscious use, a marketer needs to be the core creator of content — only using AI as a springboard for ideas and organization.

AI assists at a speed and scale that could hardly have been imagined ten years ago, and if we use it well, it will continue to benefit us in the future. At Asen, we’re excited to see how this technology continues to be used going forward.