Dos and Don'ts of Using AI in Marketing

AI for marketing

As generative AI captivates the business world with its creative capabilities, two key areas emerge as immediate beneficiaries: marketing and software. Simplifying the long and tedious content creation processes with creative AI empowers marketing professionals. However, this does not mean that your marketing teams are now redundant, just as you still need experienced software teams.

So, how can we use AI for marketing, and what should we be mindful of?

In this article, I'll share the points that have been useful to me and that I pay attention to as a marketer who frequently uses AI.

Use AI for Inspiration, Write the Content Yourself

AI is getting better at writing content that feels human-made. However, most content it generates tends to be shallow and lacks personal experiences, making it generic. As someone who believes that a writer's perspective is essential for engaging readers, I find AI-generated content unsatisfactory. Therefore, I ask AI to create a draft by summarizing the topic and desired content, and then I write the content from scratch using this draft as research. Sometimes, I ask AI to suggest interesting topics and headlines.

Define Your Target Audience and Value Propositions Yourself, Verify with AI

It's crucial to know your ideal customers, segments, and personas, understand their needs, and create your value propositions. This requires comprehensive research and validation. AI can help gather information about these personas and provide deeper insights with notes you might not have considered. AI can also support creating question sets for surveys and focus groups. However, a good marketer's eye is still needed to decide which of these to use.

Use AI for Personalization, Determine the Messages Yourself

You know your personas, you’ve created value propositions, and the messages for each persona regarding the product are clear. Now, you need to reach this audience with personalized messages. Here, you can use AI to create content that ensures the right messages reach the right personas. However, always review before finalizing!

Write the Message Yourself, Adjust the Tone with AI

Your message might be too serious when you want it to be fun, or too didactic when that's not the goal. AI can help you choose the right words to adjust the style and tone of your message. This is especially useful when preparing content in a second language. You can provide the content and the desired tone, and ask AI to make it more "fun/serious/funny/didactic." You are free to use the parts you like and edit the rest yourself.

Use AI for Data Organization

AI is very effective in organizing complex notes and data, formatting them, and analyzing them. Use AI to convert notes from a client meeting into a "to-do list," assign tasks to individuals, check website errors and open issues for them, create project plans, and classify long Word documents into Excel files. Delegate these tedious tasks to AI, where your added value is minimal!

Use AI-Enabled Tools to Save Time

Many tools now come with AI integration, and choosing these platforms from the start is important. Platforms like Hubspot, Canva, G-Suite, and Wix accelerate work processes incredibly. You can easily perform tasks like preparing visuals in multiple sizes, translating websites into different languages quickly, and adapting ready-made templates for various content with the help of AI embedded in these tools. For example, adding a second language to a site used to take 3-4 weeks, but with AI, I completed it in 3 hours! Not sure if you've seen Canva’s new Magic Studio, but here’s the video: Magic Studio on YouTube.

Always Review AI Outputs

No matter what you do, never go live without reading and ensuring the completeness of the outputs! While this might not be necessary in the future, for now, it is essential to carefully check the work done.