AI arrived in a big way – how can AI be used in marketing?

Artificial intelligence expands your thinking and creativity

AI tools can be used in a variety of ways to help you plan your marketing:

• Analytics: AI collects, analyses, and visualises data on customers, competitors, and market trends, thus helping to create customer profiles and forecasts, for example.
• Content creation: creating targeted and personalised content for marketing campaigns.
• Social media: AI tools monitor and analyse data from social media.
• Market research: AI helps collect and analyse data on markets, competitors, customers, and trends.
• Websites: AI facilitates website design, content production, search engine optimisation, and monitoring.
• Marketing campaigns: AI can be used to create effective marketing campaigns by targeting, personalising, and automating activities.

The above is just a fraction of what AI can be used for. In practice, there is no area of marketing where AI cannot be used.

AI and machine learning are revolutionising marketing by enabling the delivery of more personalised and targeted content and offers, significantly improving the user experience. AI can be used to create targeted versions of the same marketing content for dozens, if not hundreds, of different audiences. This means that marketers can better understand the preferences, needs, and behaviours of their target audience. This information can then be used to tailor content and offers to make them more personalised, improving the user experience and increasing engagement.

AI can analyse large amounts of data and detect patterns and trends in behaviour. This enables more accurate prediction of how individual users will respond to different marketing activities. Marketers will be able to use these predictions to design digital campaigns, thus increasing the effectiveness of digital campaigns.

In addition, content production using AI is faster and more efficient. AI can automate many content production processes by generating text, images, and videos quickly and efficiently based on the information it learns from different sources.

Artificial intelligence tools make work more efficient

Today’s AI tools are excellent tools for content creation and offer a wide range of possibilities for marketing. ChatGPT, for example, is a powerful tool for creating blog posts, articles, product catalogues, guides, newsletters, social media content, etc. I want to emphasise the word ‘tool’ because it is important to check, edit, and improve the text produced, as AI is not flawless and can produce inconsistent or incorrect content. Grammatically, in particular, Finnish content is not yet sufficiently advanced. It is also worth noting that the free version of ChatGPT does not have access to data beyond 2021. The paid version has access to real-time data, so the information is more reliable.

AI can also be used to improve marketing analytics and reporting. It can help analyse large amounts of data quickly and provide more accurate reports to help businesses understand their customers and make better marketing decisions.

AI can be used to create marketing strategies and budget calculations by entering the necessary data. However, it is important to remember that at least the data entered in the free version will be available to everyone, so it is a good idea to think twice about what information you provide to ChatGPT. It is safe, however, to ask ChatGPT what the elements of a successful campaign plan are.

AI can’t fully substitute creative work and expertise, as it is not capable of high-level creative thinking. It can therefore be said that AI enhances creativity and is an excellent tool for planning processes. Operational work itself may be reduced with the help of AI, but expertise and strategic work will be emphasized.

The challenges and risks of AI

Let’s talk for a moment about the risks and challenges involved in the use of AI. AI needs a large amount of data to function effectively. The data also needs to be accurate and unbiased, as incorrect data can lead to wrong conclusions and policies. AI tools do not necessarily provide truthful data, as AI uses the data it is fed and taught. Users need to be highly source-critical and media-literate when using AI to obtain information.

Furthermore, AI is not able to understand emotions and needs in the same way as humans, which means that it may provide inappropriate content or content that is too generic and impersonal. Impersonal content can lead to a company not being able to differentiate itself from its competitors or to a message that does not appeal to the intended target group. As I mentioned earlier, AI-generated content requires customization and fine-tuning.

The importance of data security also needs to be highlighted in the use of AI. If misused, AI can cause security problems for customers and businesses alike. As a cautionary example, Samsung engineers leaked confidential information to ChatGPT on at least three separate occasions while reviewing and optimising confidential source code and converting meeting recordings into notes. All this information is now available to ChatGPT. A good rule of thumb is: if you don’t pay for the service with money, you pay for it with data.

The future of AI in marketing and business

In summary, AI has huge potential in marketing. For example, it can be used to speed up processes, improve efficiency, create personalised content, and harness greater creativity. Instead of what AI can do, we should consider what it cannot do. AI is changing the way marketing works and opening up new opportunities.

AI will not take jobs away from companies that are willing and able to use it as a new tool. If this has not yet been done, it is high time that companies also drew up guidelines for the use of AI – in which situations it can and cannot be used.

AI will shape the labour market in ways we cannot yet predict. New AI tools are being released all the time, and more and more information is emerging about their functions. But the fact is that marketing agencies and other professional services companies will not survive in the market without a strong use of AI. A marketer who can make use of AI and related technologies will also be highly valued in the job market.