Marketing AI

As I think about last week's Marketing AI MAICON conference that I attended last week, I actually think back to two old technology stories from the 1980s that I think are relevant. What in the world can the 1980s teach us about what's to come in AI?

1. Who remembers the Sony Walkman? It was a wildly popular music player that seemingly was on everyone's hip around that time. Sony probably thought they'd sell them forever -- until Steve Jobs improved on the concept of mobile music with the iPod. His lesson (and the lesson for AI): if you don't invent a better way to do something, even if it makes what you're doing now obsolete, someone else will do it to you.
2. My father-in-law said he'd never use an ATM machine when they first were introduced. Designed by banks to automate the teller position, we all were sure the days of bank tellers were over. Today, though, the banking industry employs 40% MORE tellers today than before ATMs came on the scene. Their jobs simply transitioned from dispensing cash to more of a customer service/upselling role.

In other words, Marketing AI tools have gotten to the point where they're robust and mature enough to build our lead generation and sales strategies around. Put aside the dire sensationalist predictions about AI replacing 95% of what marketers do. AI will shift what a good marketer brings to the table, not replace it. So let's get to work.

AI Fits As a Solution Perfectly in the B2B Marketing Landscape

Marketing AI tools are far more than the latest bright, shiny object to chase. In truth, it fits perfectly as a solution to some of the roadblocks facing B2B marketers today:

• Buyers prefer to visit websites that give them instant answers.
• They want to buy without talking to a salesperson.
• 84% of B2B sales begin with a referral, and 90% are influenced by peer recommendations.
• Your salespeople will never really do prospecting, and it's time to stop asking them to: it takes 18 phone calls on average today to connect with a prospect, and only 2% of those rare calls convert to a meeting. It's far too costly to use internal salespeople for cold outbound prospecting.
• Purchases are made by sales teams of 10+ who need to be surrounded by marketing messages.
• Pipeline Plateau is real – marketers need tools that create path to revenue, not just path to pipeline.
• People are suffering from decision fatigue – Harvard study says managers are making 10X more decisions than just 3 years ago!

So, how can Marketing AI tools address these issues? Here's what I saw at the conference.

• It's time to stop talking about ChatGPT's ability to generate text from a good prompt. Marketing AI sophistication has moved far beyond that. That's so 2023!
• AI has moved from ChatGPT to Bots to actual "agents" that beginning in 2025 will actually take action on tasks in multi-modal ways (text, image, video, charts, voice, etc.). True story: these bots will not just talk to you conversationally, but they will read your facial "micro-expressions" and change what they say to you based on emotions YOU'RE showing!
• Traction comes from AI tools that aren't just cool, but save time, improve the product, or provide analytical insights that answer Why analytical questions, not just "what."

GGC's "AI Suite"

We're starting to work with companies to roll out a GGC "AI Suite" of tools that promises to be both ever-changing as well as transformative for B2B marketers. Our initial offering will focus on a variety of platforms:

• Knowledgebase Web Chatbot to keep visitors on your site longer and make it less likely they'll search a competitor for answers.
• AI Salesbot chat tool placed in front of interconnected marketing, CRM and ERP databases to make detailed sales reporting and analysis available to anyone who can type a prompt – no admin-level knowledge of Salesforce, PowerBI or other analytical tools needed.
• "Connie Content" Writerbot that can generate copy based on your own personas, Voice of Customer, competitive advantages, battle cards, sales scripts, grammar/style guides, and more.
• Chat-tool driven appointment-setting prompts
• Avatar-based videos for producing large amounts of product/training videos at scale
• AI-driven chat-based product selectors
• AI search
• Future – outbound-dialer appointment-setter agents
• Future – AI-driven instant page optimization with hundreds of variables

A few other observations from the conference:

• Build or Buy? There's a plethora of tools available from thousands of companies. The "Martech 5000" tracker of martech tools just published is now 14,000+ with a 28% YoY growth rate. With that level of market innovation out there, while it may be tempting to think you need to build your own bots and tools, we'd encourage clients to use off-the-shelf tools that already exist as a way to accelerate their own AI rollouts.
• Virtual Influencers. Here's a "mind grenade" to blow your mind: there are virtual influencers/AI bots that exist TODAY that have millions of followers, mostly in Asia. They're on their way here.
• Question for Marketers. I wonder: with all the AI agents we're going to see starting in 2025, and all the conversations we'll have with bots instead of real people, will there be a backlash against so much automation in favor of companies that have a human front end?
• Companies need to quickly develop AI policies to provide guidelines to employes about what information to share publicly, along with training on how to use these tools. Remember that all those financial spreadsheets you're uploading on ChatGPT are "ingested" for public consumption! One presenter noted that 70% of people are using ChatGPT without telling their bosses, so the exposure here is significant.

Marketing AI tools are no threat, they're the most significant change to digital marketing since marketing became digital with the Internet. Bill Gates even said AI is the most significant technical innovation he's seen since the first time he ever saw a personal computer.

AI will certainly separate marketers into two groups, thinkers and thunkers, as one speaker noted. Marketers need to automate the "thunkwork," and look for employees – and agencies – who can work alongside them as thinkers.

We'll be discussing Marketing AI in more detail and previewing GGC's "AI Suite" at our upcoming LinkedIn webinar, October 9 at 2 p.m. EST. Register here to see the tools.