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Your marketing team’s ability to dream up a campaign—or, more accurately, type it up—and automatically create first drafts of copy, images, video, and audio, is no longer science fiction. Thanks to generative AI, marketing teams across all sorts of industries are transforming how they do business.
Two major characteristics of AI are a dramatically faster speed of execution and the substantial potential for deep personalization across four main media types: text, imagery, video, and audio.
Let’s take a look at each one.
AI Use Cases: Text
Businesses are using generative AI to greatly increase the number of channels in which they can be social with customers and the frequency with which they post in those channels. Businesses can maintain a stronger presence on platforms, such as Twitter and Meta, due to tools that help them draft engaging social copy. That is especially important for industries that are constantly evolving, such as fashion and tech.
Tools using generative AI for social copy include Copy.ai and Anyword.
Personalization, long a holy grail in marketing, hasn’t developed much further than differing H1s and hero images in landing pages, but generative AI tools can make personalization much deeper.
We all know that if customers feel you understand them and provide them tailored content that meets their needs, they are more likely to buy—but that’s been difficult to do. Now, tools such as Writer can transform written copy and deeply personalize it for specific audience segments using natural language commands, such as “Rewrite this copy so that it’s engaging to outdoor enthusiasts.”
On the SEO front, generative tech has given marketers a way to quickly draft content for long-tail keywords they might not have been gotten to for months. But it comes at a cost: The first wave of marketers to use AI for drafting SEO posts may have had their search rankings drop as a consequence of Google’s latest algorithm update in September, intended to penalize AI-generated content.
The second, more sophisticated wave is using AI tools more strategically—to accelerate the drafting process. The human inputs stats, quotes, and unique information into the post, and AI uses that data to draft an article. It’s a fivefold vs. an otherwise tenfold improvement in time, but it’s a process that helps marketers achieve the aim of both creating valuable content and getting that content discovered via search.
AI Use Cases: Images
Businesses are perpetually creating digital content to attract target consumers. One way to do so is to use AI-generated images in ads and marketing campaigns.
Using AI image generation tools, such as Midjourney and Rosebud.ai, marketers and creatives have the power to generate multiple iterations of the same ads for trial and error with target audiences.
It is powerful when an image catches a customer’s attention in that split-second scroll through social media feeds. After all, we’ve all bought something from a targeted ad that used the right content and imagery to seemingly meet our exact needs at that moment.
Many early adopters of AI tech are already using images created by generative AI to help them stand out when marketing their products and services. Heinz, for example, made a splash with one of its recent ad campaigns using OpenAI’s Dall-E-2 to conjure images of ketchup. The clever campaign highlighted the power of branding through imagery.
AI imagery will only become more crucial in the future as businesses look to create massive amounts of consumable content to sell their products. Personalization is the necessary touch to engage your audience, and it will require AI tools to speed up the creation of such content.
AI Use Cases: Video
Imagery and video go hand in hand in content creation. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of video marketing, and now we have AI-generated videos.
A business can use AI to create a video that showcases its products in a way that is engaging and visually appealing. Creating a video from scratch has usually been a time-consuming and expensive process. But by using AI, businesses can now create high-quality videos without having to invest a lot of time or money.
Two examples of available tools are Synthesia and Runway. Synthesia allows for video creation in minutes, claiming to save 80% of your team’s time, whereas Runway streamlines the editing process with “AI Magic Tools.”
Moreover, AI-generated videos can be highly personalized. AI tools are able to take data about customers and create videos that are specifically designed for them.
In a world where online consumers are bombarded with an endless stream of content, and businesses have only a few seconds to captivate and capture the audience’s attention, a personalized video can be a game-changer.
AI Use Cases: Audio
As we enter into a new era of digital marketing, it’s critical that we use all the tools at our disposal, and that now includes AI-generated voices.
Using AI-generated voices, we can create realistic, natural-sounding voices that can be used to create engaging, personalized experiences for our customers and prospects. Tools such as Wellsaid and Resemble.ai can convert text to speech in real time to create a compelling voiceover.
Imagine you’re a customer who’s just called into customer service. Rather than being greeted by a recorded message, you’re instead greeted by a friendly, human sounding AI-generated voice. Or imagine you’re browsing your Meta feed. You are more likely to stop and listen to an audio clip of a person talking about a product than you are to read a block of text. And when you are driving in your car, you are more likely to listen to a podcast than you are to read an article.
AI-generated voices make it possible for businesses to create more engaging and effective content in half the time. And that content can be used to market products or services in a way that feels more personal and human.
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Two things have become clear from the successful implementation of generative AI into business: First, marketers are initially hesitant, thinking the AI is not going to be good enough or that they will lose their jobs if it is; and second, AI in the hands of skilled practitioners—whether writers, photographers, or social media managers—is far more powerful than AI alone.
In future articles, I’ll cover ways that businesses can help their workforces adopt generative AI without the fear that often comes with it.
Other articles in this series: AI for Business and Marketing: What’s Possible (And What’s Not)
More Resources on AI Use Cases in Marketing
Marketing Automation: Seven Machine-Learning Use Cases
Why PR (And Marketing) Pros Need to Embrace Imperfect AI Writing Technology Now
Empowering B2B Marketing Teams With an AI Content Process: May Habib on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
