It is no secret that AI can save marketers and creative teams a lot of time, although it might not always produce the most accurate and factual content. Furthermore, it most definitely doesn’t always sound ‘human’. Still, it is pretty impressive considering AI’s very humble beginnings in marketing automation and streamlining workflows to where it is today. Leveraging AI algorithms and language processing technology, AI can generate content that is written, visual or auditory in nature, and as time continues, issues like information accuracy and facts, tone, brand voice, SEO compatibility will all be corrected, and seamlessly. The year 2020 marked the initial release of Chat GTP, and today we work on a GTP-4o engine with its 155 Verbal IQ. That’s pretty smart by any human standards.
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The years ahead are likely to bring rapid growth with sophisticated and user-friendly, specialized AI systems. AI technologies will become completely integrated and a central part of both personal and professional spaces. If this is to be believed, then it is only natural to expect that AI will be humanized to an extent that makes it seamless to distinguish and differentiate.
Humanization is critical for creating and sustaining authentic, meaningful customer experiences and acceptance. AI interactions that lack emotional intelligence and personal connections alienate social beings like people. AI needs to adapt its tone, communication, and messaging, including empathy and understanding, to match customer sentiments and make the transaction relatable and accepted. After all, all the automation in the world and even the most seamless and effective automation with crafting narratives (storytelling) that reflect common values or shared experiences cannot bridge the gap between human authenticity and machine automation.
But LLMs are only one side of Artificial Intelligence technologies that have the power to disrupt nearly every industry. In 5 years, every space from healthcare to movie production will be impacted by LLMs, AI Infrastructure, Horizontal AI and Vertical AI.
Mind-Boggling Statistics
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The global AI market is valued (in Nov 2024) at over $196 billion
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AI industry value is projected to increase by more than 13x over the next 6 years
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The US AI market is forecast to reach $299.64 billion by 2026
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The AI market is expanding at a CAGR of 38.1% between 2022 and 2030
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By 2025, as many as 97 million people will work in the AI space
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AI market size is expected to grow by at least 120% year-over-year
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83% of companies claim that AI is a top priority in their business plans
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Netflix makes $1 billion annually from automated personalized recommendations
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48% of businesses use some form of AI to utilize big data effectively
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38% of medical providers use computers as part of their diagnoses
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By 2030, the global AI market is expected to reach $1.81 trillion
Clearly, at a macro level, the AI market offers incredible promise and profitability for businesses, employees, and customers. For brands, marketers, and customers, the learning curve is steep with lots of expectations, surprises and unknowns.
What should a brand’s AI strategy be?
We’ve always stated that the role of marketing (from a communication standpoint) is to reduce the friction between what companies have to sell and what customers want to buy. Therefore, any marketing-related AI strategy should reduce friction, anticipate, analyze, and course-correct on the fly. What that further boils down to is leveraging AI to have a deeper understanding of customers and their buying behavior; provide personalized targeting, messaging, and experiences at scale; automate repetitive tasks; and offer real-time optimization of campaigns to increase customer engagement and maximize conversions.
Defining Outcomes with AI
Customer’s Lifecycle with AI
4 steps towards creating an effective, humanized AI Marketing Strategy
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Customer Centricity over everything - the goal is to humanize AI so that customers feel comfortable interacting, engaging, and remaining loyal. Prioritize human interaction across all touchpoints, be it offline, online or instore.
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Tell Engaging Stories—Customers like stories, especially ones they can connect with emotionally. Storytelling remains one of the most powerful tools for marketers to build brand awareness, trust, and loyalty.
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Spark Creativity - AI offers marketers a way to jumpstart the mind, inspire creativity and generate new ideas. Use it to forge new topics and alternative routes.
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Be Transparent - Tell your customers how you use AI, how their information is improving their experience with the brand, and how you protect and secure their information
4 steps towards implementing an AI-driven Marketing Strategy
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Assessment of current strategy - what are the current objectives, target audiences, channels, tactics etc? Identify what is missing or gaps in the strategy.
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Identify areas of integrating AI - Is there a gap in Content creation (ex Copywriting, blogs, video scripts, creative writing), Content Personalization (ex Email marketing, Web content), Visual Content (ex image or graphic generation, design, video production, presentation design), Social Media (ex engagement tools, content scheduling, optimization, trend analysis), Data & Analytics (ex customer analysis, SEO optimization, performance analytics etc.), Interactive Content (ex chatbots, virtual assistants, games and simulations, AR and VR experiences etc.), Branding and Marketing (ex advertising copy generation, storytelling, campaign analysis), Specialized and technical content, Translation and localization, Content Moderation (ex community guideline enforcement, spam detection), Entertainment (ex composing music, creating art, producing media, creating, editing and analyzing scripts etc.), and Knowledge Management.
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Choosing AI tools and training the team - Which tools best suit your needs, budget, scaling, training etc? How will the tool improve targeting and personalization, competitive advantages (like automation, and streamlining processes) and cost savings? How will it enhance marketing ROI, and improve customer experiences and satisfaction?
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Track, Measure and Optimize - Tracking metrics like engagement, conversion rate, customer satisfaction etc. Understand to what level of data quality the tool(s) provides. Capture and analyze as much data as possible to uncover key customer insights, behaviors and preferences.
How can brands humanize their AI content?
Industry reports in 2024 estimate that of the 88% of marketers who use AI, 93% use it to create content. That’s not only a lot of content but a lot of machine-sounding content that might not be compelling or authentic enough to captivate customers and convert interest into sales. It’s a lot of activity with limited outcomes to show for all the time and effort. The keys to humanizing AI content is to humanize the tone, understand and include the nuances of expression, have contextual adaptability, maintain a consistent brand voice, support SEO and finally evade human AI detection.
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Humanizing AI. AI-generated content is fine even for the first few rounds of a draft but falls short on various human elements. Content created with AI has no personality because AI has no default persona to write from. Hence, it’s written by no one for no one. Defining a personality for AI to use as a filter gives it a human-like foundation. Additionally, defining in detail, for whom the content is being written adds an additional humanization layer to the generated content. Most often, generated content is written in a passive voice. Sentences that are written by people tend to vary in length (i.e. number of words), using varying complexity, flow, humor, cultural references, and rhetorical questions, and tailored to the audience.
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Removing the fog. Generated content tends to add a lot of “fog,” that is, it complicates the sentence, adds words and jargon that make it long-winded, and does not add any value. For example -
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Remove Repetition. Generated content tends to have a lot of repeated phrases and inaccurate facts that erode credibility and trust with customers.
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Eliminate Verbosity. Generated content comes with a lot of verbiage; it lacks the personal touch that comes with sharing personal stories, anecdotes, human creativity, insights, colloquial phrases, etc.
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Off Brand. Generated content does not incorporate or adhere to brand guidelines (for example, Tone of Voice, Target Audiences, Keywords, etc.). This can result in communication being completely off-brand and may alienate customers.
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Fake and Plagiarized. Generated content does not fact-check and do plagiarism checks by default. This means that generated content might not only be untrue or plagiarized, but also used out of context. Use the generated content as the base content for your article to overcome writer’s block, create storylines, spark new ideas and produce thought starters.
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Good Quality. Generated content works well with SEO and, therefore, helps with page ranking because the algorithms understand the content. However, it is not necessarily high-quality content that readers want to read or what Google prioritizes as unique and good-quality content (i.e. Experience, Expertise, Authoritative, and Trustworthy).
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Vocabulary. Generative AI tools like to use predefined words and phrases that automatically get flagged as AI text. Below is a small sample of phrases to give marketers like yourself an insight into how AI detection generative content tools work and therefore, phrases to avoid.
Examples of Brand's Humanizing AI
Netflix Recommendations
Netflix Consumer Insights
Netflix Research in Machine Learning
Spotify Wrapped
Amazon Alexa’s Voice Interactions
Coca Cola - Secret Santa 2024
Adida Driving Customer Loyalty with Google AI
Adida Driving Impact with Apps
Open AI's GPT-4o News
Conclusion
It is needless to state that customers value personalization and appreciate the convenience that AI brings to their tasks and lives. But it should also be acknowledged that customers value authentic human interactions as they help build rapport and connections. Customers who feel heard, understood, and valued are more likely to build stronger and longer-lasting bonds with brands than those who maintain transactional and functional engagement. As more businesses incorporate AI into their customer-facing touchpoints, customers are increasingly demanding more transparency about their data storage, data usage, and security. AI plays a considerable role in the future of marketing, building customer trust and fostering meaningful customer engagement. Marketers who find the balanced blend of AI technology, creativity, and emotional intelligence will undoubtedly benefit the most from their money, time, and efforts, as they will efficiently thread the customer authenticity needle with humanized AI.
Related Reading: Blending AI's efficiency with human emotional intelligence, Overcome the Generational barrier and Connect with Customers, Navigating Local Customs and diverse Cultures, Leveraging Activism for Loyalty, Creating Communities to drive purpose and growth, Marketing Truths in a World of Cynicism, Performance Marketing for Effectiveness, Packaging Designs that Sell, The Power of Music in Campaigns, Negotiation Strategies for any situation, Augmented Reality Marketing, How to Sell with Emotions, Crafting Your Customer Journey Map Masterpiece, Public Relations that Works, Immersive Customer Experiences with Experiential Marketing,