In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, Generative AI (Gen AI) tools like ChatGPT have been a hot topic. And while for many, this powerful tool is predominantly being used to support content creation, the capabilities of Gen AI for marketing teams go far beyond this, and could mark a major shift in how marketers access and use their data. However, for marketers to unlock its full potential, they need to master a crucial set of skills.
Gen AI may possess remarkable capabilities, but it relies heavily on human guidance to properly define tasks and execute outcomes. In this article, we’ll explore what skills marketers need to develop to effectively integrate Gen AI into their strategies.
What Can Gen AI Do for Marketers?
Gen AI offers invaluable support to marketers across many areas of their work. Here's a concise overview:
- Buyer engagement: Gen AI can enhance buyer engagement through personalized content tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. Analyzing vast datasets, it crafts marketing messages and recommendations, fostering stronger connections and increasing relevance for each potential buyer.
- Employee productivity: Gen AI can automate repetitive tasks, liberating marketers to focus on more complex and creative aspects of their roles.
- Content generation: Gen AI can autonomously create content, forming a foundation that requires human refinement for brand alignment and strategic goals.
- Data analysis and interpretation: It excels at processing extensive datasets, providing marketers with insights crucial for strategic decision-making.
For more info on how Gen AI can support your data strategy, check out our blog, 6 Data Challenges That Generative AI Could Help Solve for Marketers.
What skills do marketing teams need to get the most out of Gen AI?
To harness the true potential of Gen AI, marketers must develop a set of skills that can be categorized into two key phases: briefing (beginning) and execution (end). These bookend skills ensure effective collaboration between humans and AI throughout the marketing process.
Beginning Skills:
- 1. Building Hypotheses:
- Explanation: The ability to formulate hypotheses is essential for guiding Gen AI in its decision-making process. Marketers need to craft well-defined hypotheses for the AI to test and analyze.
- Example: Developing hypotheses to understand the impact of different marketing channels on customer engagement.
- 2. Evaluating brand messaging:
- Explanation: To maintain brand consistency, marketers must evaluate and refine the messaging generated by Gen AI. This ensures that the content aligns with the brand identity and resonates with the target audience.
- Example: Aligning AI-generated content with the brand's tone and style guidelines.
- 3. Conducting market research:
- Explanation: Understanding customer needs and preferences is crucial for effective marketing. Marketers should be skilled in conducting customer research to guide Gen AI in creating content that resonates with the audience.
- Example: Analyzing customer reviews and feedback for insights.
- 4. Identifying customer pain points:
- Explanation: Identifying and addressing consumer pain points is a skill that aids Gen AI in tailoring marketing strategies to meet customer needs. This involves understanding the challenges and concerns of the target audience.
- Example: Identifying common complaints or issues through customer service interactions.
- 5. Defining performance metrics:
- Explanation: The ability to define and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial. Marketers must set clear metrics that align with their overall marketing objectives, guiding Gen AI towards measurable goals.
- Example: Establishing metrics such as conversion rates and customer acquisition costs.
- 6. Data quality checks:
- Explanation: Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of data is paramount. Marketers must possess the skill to assess and verify data quality, preventing Gen AI from drawing conclusions based on flawed information.
- Example: Scrutinizing data sources and eliminating inconsistencies before analysis.
- 7. Identifying opportunities:
- Explanation: Marketers must possess a strategic vision to identify growth opportunities within the data analyzed by Gen AI. This involves recognizing patterns, trends, and potential areas for improvement.
- Example: Identifying untapped markets based on customer behavior data.
End Skills:
- 8. Prompting Generative AI:
- Explanation: Marketers should possess the skill to prompt and guide generative AI, ensuring it produces content aligned with specific objectives and strategies.
- Example: Providing clear instructions for AI to generate social media content for an upcoming campaign.
- 9. Data storytelling:
- Explanation: Marketers need to showcase the insights derived from Gen AI's analysis with data storytelling, whether that’s in a report or a dashboard, it needs to tell a compelling story to effectively drive action.
- Example: Developing dashboards to track key performance metrics and campaign effectiveness, and drive data-driven decisions.
- 10. Iteration:
- Explanation: Marketers need to conduct tests, analyze results, and iterate based on insights provided by Gen AI.
- Example: A/B testing different email subject lines to determine which one resonates better with the target audience.
- 11. Executing strategy:
- Explanation: The final step involves executing the marketing strategy based on insights provided by Gen AI and making informed decisions to achieve organizational goals.
- Example: Implementing targeted advertising strategies based on audience behavior data.
Cutting Out the Busy Work to Make Space for Creativity:
Gen AI represents a huge opportunity for the world of marketing. The full potential for this powerful tool goes far beyond copywriting. By shouldering the burden of these more technical, mundane tasks, like collecting, cleaning, and analyzing data, generative AI can free up marketing teams to focus on more creative pursuits where they can add value.
In our recent Now, Next, Future series with the LinkedIn B2B Institute, Fabio de Barnardi, VP of Business Development at Adverity, emphasizes the importance of leveraging Gen AI to eliminate mundane tasks and unleash human creativity. He notes, "Gen AI can write content, but you still need a human to make sure that the content is on brand and then ticks all the boxes."
Fabio envisions a future where Gen AI supports marketers, allowing them more creative freedom, stating, "I have hope for Gen AI that people will still be able to carve out a meaningful role and use technology to make their lives easier, without stepping away from the responsibility and the innate creativity that we have as humans."
By eliminating the mundane aspects of work, technology empowers individuals to flourish in their roles. But to truly unlock the potential of Gen AI, marketers need to now focus on developing a different skill set. Only then can marketers lean on Gen AI to cut out the busy work and create more space for strategic thinking and creativity.