I’ve been blogging about marketing for a few years now, and it’s about time I address the 2000-lb robot elephant in the room Using AI in marketing for your small business.
The two schools of thought we hear about regarding AI are that A) it will take all of our jobs and make us obsolete, or B) it will never be able to replace us. The truth is probably somewhere in between, including when using AI in your small business marketing.
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI
I would never use AI to create content. When it does, it’s clunky and nothing you’d enjoy reading, but there are some places where AI can assist you in your marketing and other business efforts.
But before we get into the dos and don’ts, let’s get one thing clear…
Using AI In Marketing Isn’t New
When you think about it, AI has been a part of marketing for a while. What is Google’s algorithm if not AI, and what search engine optimization if not learning to interact with it?
From that point of view, SEO is a perfect example of balancing catering to AI while not becoming a slave to it…and still catering to readers. And there are more ways the emergence of SEO parallels the beginning of the current AI revolution.
As I once wrote about in a Halloween blog on small business marketing horror stories, when people first figured out certain things that helped web pages rank, they used that knowledge to trick Google (et al.) with black hat tricks like keyword stuffing.
It wasn’t long before the algorithm caught up with (and penalized) these bad actors. While people still try to trick Google today, it’s never long before Google catches up. It’s like trying to beat the house. The house always wins.
But there’s an inherent issue with that phrasing. You shouldn’t ever try to beat Google at all. You should understand it and work with it to create better blogs. Google doesn’t penalize you to be mean or tricky. The algorithm’s (and, by extension, Google’s) entire goal is to deliver helpful information to the people looking for it.
The same should be true of you and your marketing team.
So, as a marketer, I think about how clients can use AI for and against my existing clients and implement it in ways that may be helpful but keep it away from places where it won’t.
Places to Avoid Using AI in Marketing
We’ll start with where you should refrain from using AI.
Creating Content
The first rule I would give you about using AI in marketing is this: Don’t use AI as a writer. Chat GPT, Google Bard, and the many other language models we’re collectively referring to as generative AI is incredible. You can have a conversation with any of them and learn something new. But that doesn’t mean you can trust it with everything.
While there are people out there trying to skimp on paying skilled writers and marketers by asking AI to generate blogs or social media posts, the quality simply isn’t there.
The content it creates lacks a certain substance. AI can answer questions, but its answers come out like a robot wrote them. Will that change eventually? Most sources are saying no.
AI will probably get better at generating the content, but there will likely always be a need for those who are skilled with words and speak with their own style.
At POP, we specialize in helping you find your voice and then create material in it (branding).
That said, it’s funny asking ChatGPT to respond to every question as if it’s Star Wars’ C3PO, but you wouldn’t trust it to write the next sequel.
Factual Information
AI still makes mistakes. I asked Google’s Bard where I could find information about local businesses in Roanoke County, and it directed me to web pages that didn’t exist. Other studies have found that, like people, sometimes, when AI doesn’t know an answer, it makes one up! Keep this in mind when using AI in your marketing.
Tasks Where AI Can Assist
After reading what I wrote in the previous section, you may think I’m an AI naysayer and don’t see a place for it in marketing. But that’s not entirely the truth. There are many places where AI can assist your marketing and your business in general. Below, I’ll name a few, but you’re really only limited by your creativity.
Research (with a Caveat)
AI is excellent for research. I often use it as a jumping-off point for where to start on a new subject. However, as I mentioned earlier, AI doesn’t always get it right, so once you learn a little something, check it out for yourself. Bard even has a “Google it” tool.
Proofreading
We’ve been using AI in our proofreading for as long as we’ve had spell check! But with the improvement of grammar-checking tools like those in Google and Microsoft Suites, as well as Grammarly, AI proofreading is better than ever!
With that said, nothing replaces a human editor! Grammarly and the other tools still make mistakes, so don’t follow all their suggestions mindlessly. Still, they’re a great tool for checking a first draft.
Outlines
Feeling stuck? AI can help you generate ideas or outlines. You don’t need to stick with its suggestions, but they might give your brain the structure it needs to be creative. It’s the perfect way to use AI in marketing where tech meets creativity.
Playing Devil’s Advocate
Once you’ve created something, you can ask AI to poke holes in your thinking. It’s especially useful if you’re working on something persuasive. Ask ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool to read your material and argue with you.
Its answers aren’t always stellar, but they can help sharpen your arguments.
Other Places for Using AI in Marketing
This isn’t strictly marketing-related, but the place where I’ve found the most success in using AI is tech support. When I can’t figure out why something isn’t working, I tell Chat GPT what is happening and what I’ve already tried, and it helps me to find the problem. It’s much quicker than Googling answers or watching people explain every possible solution on YouTube!
Will AI Replace Marketers?
At this point, it’s hard to believe that AI could fully replace human marketers, as much as business owners in others industries might like it. AI can’t write at the same quality as a human marketer.
What AI can do is make marketing easier, especially the less creative and more repetitive tasks. It’s also great for helping you to think through a problem and see it from a different perspective. Using AI in marketing can be okay if you do it right.
It can also be fun to ask a computer to talk like Yoda.
