2023 has seen the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing, but it begs the question… how can businesses utilise it? If you work in marketing, you probably already use AI but don’t realise it. If you personalise emails or use a social media scheduler which optimises for time or A/B testing, there is some level of AI input in all of these processes. AI can help to streamline your marketing and sales processes and uses the data you (or the platform) already hold to improve engagement levels.
So, how else can we use AI? Towards the end of 2022, ChatGPT-4 entered the marketing arena. As it’s only been around for less than a year, businesses and professionals are still learning how to use it. ChatGPT and similar AI technology are currently being utilised as a chat function for customer enquiries, content generation and research. These technologies are fantastic platforms to use to save time. However, faith in AI is low, with only 19% of US adults thinking it will improve productivity in the workplace[1], so, is it worth it?
AI can’t be relied on for all content creation. However, marketeers need to learn how to work with it. It can be an excellent tool for all sorts of content, including idea generation, ad copy, social media captions and website content. It can help to cut down the time you spend as a marketing professional coming up with ideas. It is important to note, however, that this should be used for ideas only and not the final content piece because the content may be heavily plagiarised and not bespoke to your tone of voice[2]. Some people may feel using AI in this way is cost-ineffective. However, the editing process is critical. This is where you inject it with creativity and passion, the things that AI cannot do.
AI is already used in the UK by around 15% of all businesses or 432,000 companies (not limited to language processing like ChatGPT)[3]. This number is likely to increase in the coming year to streamline processes. It’s essential to learn as much as possible about AI now and how you can work with it instead of against it. Adoption of AI in media, advertising and sales is lower than in legal, it/telecoms, and finance/accounting industries, but most of the sector are planning or currently using AI[4] - as we know, the marketing sphere is changing constantly and to be the best marketing professional you can you have to learn to work with new tools.
So, what’s next? It’s hard to tell, but as we can see from the stats, AI will likely become a part of our everyday lives. If you want to learn more about AI and how you can integrate it into your marketing strategy, take a look at our fact sheet.
[1] https://ddiy.co/ai-writing-statistics/
[2] https://fenti.co.uk/blog/pros-and-cons-of-using-ai-content-writing/
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-activity-in-uk-businesses/ai-activity-in-uk-businesses-executive-summary
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-activity-in-uk-businesses/ai-activity-in-uk-businesses-executive-summary
