Introduction
AI changed digital marketing for the better within a short period of time.
Nowadays, marketing professionals are using artificial intelligence to find content ideas, create drafts, analyze data, design visual elements, automate repetitive tasks, personalize communication and support conversations with customers. As a result, marketing became more productive and, in many cases, more efficient.
There is 1 thing that many businesses fail to consider.
AI is simply a tool that helps with marketing
Giving an AI a prompt and publishing its output doesn’t immediately result in a marketing success. In fact, there is no marketing strategy behind it at all.
A good marketing strategy is always focused on specific customers, addresses their problems, defines the brand’s position, differentiates it from competitors, sets marketing goals and decides which channels to use. While AI can help with some of these points, humans are ultimately responsible for most of them.
The future of marketing doesn’t have to be about AIs replacing humans;
it’s rather about the best ways of combining automation and human efforts.
AI Can Generate, But Humans Need to Decide
Strategy Still Needs Human Thinking
Marketing has a business objective as a starting point.
You have to understand:
What are we trying to do?
It could be anything from:
- Generating qualified leads
- Driving online sales
- Building brand awareness
- Gaining presence in a new market
- Launching a new service
- Improving customer retention
AI can help you think through various options, but it won’t necessarily understand the nuances, constraints and strategic goals of your own business.
A marketing strategy is all about connecting the dots between:
Business Goal → Audience → Positioning → Message → Channel → Action → Measurement
Humans need to think though these strategic choices.
Knowing Your Customer Is More Than Just Information
AI excels at crunching numbers.
Customers are so much more than their purchasing patterns.
They have feelings, desires, pain points, hopes, dreams, cultural influences, biases, and motivations.
One example of this is customer behavior at a certain point in the buying cycle.
A spreadsheet might show you that people are abandoning your checkout page.
A human is needed to understand why this might be happening.
Are they confused by the pricing?
Do they not trust you?
Are they put off by the design?
Are they not interested in what you’re offering?
Brand Voice Cannot Be Fully Automated
AI can mimic writing styles.
But you need more than just an assortment of word patterns when it comes to your brand voice.
It is built with brand personality, values, positioning, audience, experience, culture, and a feeling of togetherness.
If everyone uses AI tools to create content marketing, every business will sound similar.
Marketers must utilize AI as a tool to enhance their content creation rather than replacing their brand voice and personality.
With the assistance of artificial intelligence, creators can develop content faster.
However, humans must ensure that the brand message still sounds the same.
Creativity Requires More Than Generation
AI can generate numerous ideas.
But quantity does not equal quality in this case.
To develop a successful marketing campaign, one needs to combine unlikely ideas, be knowledgeable about the market, observe people for inspiration, and provide a new outlook on the brand.
For instance, an AI tool can provide an idea for an Instagram marketing campaign about digital marketing.
But a human should determine what exactly to do: what is the topic of the campaign? What customers are targeted? How can one encourage people to participate? What makes the marketing campaign remarkable?
With the help of artificial intelligence, creators can explore uncharted territories to find inspiration.
But humans should bring creativity and vision to the table.
AI Doesn’t Know Your Business as Well as You Do
An AI tool can provide relevant information about the industry as it is programmed to collect and structure data.
But it does not know the inner workings of the business as well as the employees do.
The people in the company are aware of the following points:
The reason for the company’s foundation
Customers’ major complaints
The most and least profitable services
Unique value propositions that set the company apart from competitors
The main concerns from salespeople
The most important customers to focus on
What the brand is not supposed to become
This information is crucial for the development of a successful marketing strategy, and it should be used as the basis for marketing campaign creation.
AI Handles
Speed, scale & insights
Human Handles
Strategy, context & judgment
Human Judgment Matters When Making Decisions
Not all of the recommendations that an AI tool produces should be undertaken.
The AI can make mistakes.
It can misinterpret information, provide wrong information, leave out key details or confidently offer something that is not appropriate for your business.
That is why human judgment is so important.
Before publishing or using any recommendation provided by an AI tool, consider:
- Is what the AI recommends accurate?
- Is it appropriate?
- Does it meet our criteria?
- Does it have our brand voice?
- Is the recommendation something that makes sense?
- Can it cause any misunderstandings?
- Is it something we actually want to implement?
- Does it achieve our business objective?
The recommendation should then be edited, modified and approved.
Marketing Needs Emotional Intelligence
Some marketing decisions are not purely rational.
They are emotional.
For example, you might need advice on:
- How to respond to a dissatisfied customer
- How to handle a PR crisis
- What to do if a campaign goes wrong
- How to communicate a difficult message
- How to respond to a controversial issue
The correct course of action in these cases is not always straightforward.
It often requires a degree of empathy, understanding and sensitivity.
An AI can help you to come up with a response, but it is better if humans make the final decision on what to say and how to say it.
The Best Marketing Strategy Uses AI Where It Makes Sense
The point of using AI should not be to use it in as many areas as possible, but to make the most of it wherever it is appropriate.
You should think about utilizing it for:
- Research and collating information
- Content support (outlining)
- Data analysis
- Automation
- Personalization
- Testing and optimization
While you can leave some marketing and administrative tasks to the AI, it is better to keep overall marketing strategy, brand building, creative direction, customer understanding, human supervision, ethical oversight and quality control in the hands of humans.
The New Marketing Workflow
Rather than
Human → AI → Publish
perhaps we should be building a stronger process:
Goal → Human Strategy → AI Assistance → Human Review → Launch → Measure → Optimize
And in doing so we ensure that the AI plays its part, but isn’t the strategy itself.
Human Strategy + AI Assistance
From business goals to continuous growth
Business Goal
Set a clear objective before building the campaign.
Audience & Intent
Discover what your audience needs, wants and searches for.
Human Strategy
Use experience, creativity and context to shape the direction.
AI Assistance
Use AI to speed up research, ideas, content and analysis.
Human Judgment
Check accuracy, relevance, brand voice and strategic fit.
Campaign
Put the strategy into action across the right channels.
Results
Track performance, engagement, leads and conversions.
Improve & Repeat
Learn from the data, refine the strategy and repeat.
Measure → Learn → Optimize → Launch Again
Why Human Thinking Will Still Matter
As AI becomes more capable, human thought is not necessarily less valuable.
In fact, in many ways, it is becoming more valuable.
The ability to create something unique becomes more valuable when creation becomes easier,
the ability to ask good questions becomes more valuable when data analysis becomes faster,
the ability to differentiate your brand from the rest becomes more important when everyone has access to the same AI tools
and
the ability to connect as humans becomes a competitive advantage when everything else can be automated.
The companies that will benefit most from AI may not be the ones that automate as much as possible, but the ones that know what to automate, and what not to, and what humans are better at than machines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can AI replace a digital marketing strategy?
Not at all. However, AI can contribute significantly to various aspects of a marketing strategy, such as business goals, customer analysis, positioning, channel selection, and decision-making. One should not rely solely on AI’s suggestions and options but instead make informed choices by letting the technology do its job.
What should marketers use AI for?
Research, ideation, creation, analysis, automation, personalization, and other repetitive tasks are examples of how AI can be applied in marketing, but each organization must identify the most relevant applications for its specific needs and goals. The critical point is to ensure that the technology serves the purpose of increasing efficiency while maintaining human expertise and judgment.
Why is human creativity so important in AI marketing?
Although AI can generate multiple creative options, human input is required to ensure that the ideas are effective and relevant to the target audience. It is necessary to keep in mind that successful marketing campaigns rely not only on a compelling offer but also on the aesthetic appeal and uniqueness of the presentation.
Can AI understand the customers?
Although AI can analyze numerous insights about the target audience, such as reviews, conversations, and behaviors, human judgment is required to understand the context and intent behind the data. Therefore, it is crucial not to be misled by the information provided by AI and pay attention to customers’ concerns, motivations, and behaviors.
How can businesses utilize AI and humans in marketing?
The key to effective AI application in marketing is to let the technology do the tedious work while humans make the important decisions. AI can assist in ideation, creation, research, and analysis, whereas humans should concentrate on strategy development, brand-building, creative direction, and customer care. In addition, a balanced marketing operation may consider the Strategy → AI → Humans → Launch → Analysis framework.
What is the failure of businesses when using AI for marketing?
A frequent error is to consider AI-generated content and strategy suggestions as sufficient and complete while neglecting the role of human expertise and judgment. As a result, companies risk creating irrelevant and ineffective marketing content and campaigns.
Conclusion
AI has become an integral part of modern day digital marketing but should not be mistaken for an overarching marketing strategy.
A sound marketing strategy always starts with an understanding of the business, audience, marketplace and the challenges that need to be solved.
AI can help in speeding up the research process, generating ideas, analyzing the data, automating the mundane and accelerating the entire process but it is for the humans to decide what, why and how.
The real advantage of the future lies not in choosing between the two but in combining the strengths of both.
AI offers speed and scale while humans offer strategy and creativity.
The combination of the two can lead to faster process without compromising on individualization, greater automation without being depersonalized and more data driven without being analytical.
The future of marketing calls for amplifying the best human thinking with the power of AI.