AI Marketing: The Game Changing Precision for Brands Seeking to Master Marketing and Multiply Clients
Summary:
*For those who don’t have the time, here’s a TLDR summary for you 🙂
AI Marketing Transformation: Traditional marketing tactics are losing effectiveness in the digital age. AI marketing offers a solution by delving into customer behavior and needs for deeper connections.
What is AI Marketing: “The use of artificial intelligence to improve decision-making in marketing strategies.” Artificial intelligence can analyze large data, predict trends, personalize content, and automate tasks, leading to more efficient and targeted campaigns.
Relevance is Key To Effective Marketing: Most marketing fails because it lacks relevance to the audience. AI helps by providing deep market insights, allowing for content that resonates and engages consumers effectively.
Advantages of AI: AI brings speed, precision, and consistency to marketing efforts in a way that humans can’t. It is cost-effective for businesses of all sizes and enhances human connections by personalizing customer interactions.
Your Implementation Strategy: Businesses can leverage AI for market research, content creation, customer service, and predictive analytics, regardless of their size, to stay competitive and grow their client base.
What Is AI Marketing?
Many people start what they think of as unique offers, trying to get clients online. Yet more and more campaigns are gathering digital dust rather than generating leads.
It's not for the lack of effort or quality in their services. And the traditional marketing tactics they’re employing are not flawed. They've worked for years and still do, to a certain extent.
But the digital landscape is shifting, and old tactics that used to work, no longer do.
The game has changed.
It's no longer about reaching out, being visible, or being ’omnipresent’. It's about reaching deep into the psyche of your potential clients. To understand their behaviors and anticipate their needs. It’s about deep connection.
This is why many online entrepreneurs struggle. They post, network, and chat on social media, chatgroups, and forums every day. But their connection is only on the surface level. They put the focus on themselves rather than the clients.
Marketing is not simply a matter of ‘putting yourself out there’.
In this article, we'll explore what ‘AI Marketing’ is and the big problem it solves. We'll look at how small, medium, and micro service-based businesses can use this rapidly evolving technology. You can play a game that, until now, has been accessible only to the largest multi-national corporations.
By the end of this article, I hope you can understand that if you’re an online entrepreneur, you should definitely look into leveraging AI marketing in whatever capacity that you can while we’re still in the early days of this fast growing industry.
Why Your Marketing Feels Like A Shot in the Dark
I once heard Elon Musk talk about how it's pointless to describe a tool without first talking about the problem that the tool solves. So first, lets talk about the problem that most people face in their marketing attempt. Only then can we understand the difference between ‘marketing’ and ‘AI marketing’.
If you’re suffering from the symptoms that I described at the start of this article, the problem is not the channels you're using. It's also not the effort you're putting in. It's the lack of relevance in your communications.
Relentless streams of information bombard consumers. They see it everywhere and all at once, every time they open their messaging app or social media.
Every day, people encounter more content than they can ever finish consuming.
People posting about their life. People using their social media platform to their unselfish causes or personal agendas. People trying to get clients.
Promotions keep coming in their inboxes, messengers, chatgroups, forums, and social media feeds. Each claiming to be solution to all their problems. Everyone is competing for attention.
In such a world, how can anyone read everything? But that’s a rhetorical question - they can’t.
The only logical behavior to expect is the fast-scanning, rapid-scrolling, finger-flicking, mute-button-pressing behavior we’ve come to call “low attention span”.
In such a world, how can we ever expect a few randomly thought up, spontaneously written posts to work?
That’s also a rhetorical - we can’t.
This is even worse because many gurus and coaches preach adding more online content. Many people follow this advice. Paradoxically, AI is making it easier to create new content.
As more and more content get released in the net, search engines and algorithms are forced to get even smarter so that they can serve up better content to searchers and surfers. Consumers will get even more discerning - fingers flicking even faster.
Like cream rising, eventually only the best content will get eyeballs. The rest will fade into obscurity. The bar for what makes 'great content' will rise higher and higher.
The age of the ‘being everywhere’, ‘post everything’, spray-and-pray approach is over. And it will never come back.
But the good news is that, us being human, we’re wired to detect patterns. Things which are either dangerous or helpful to us gets noticed sooner.
This is why fake news spread like wildfire, and those ‘life hack’ videos go viral. We’re wired to detect whatever we subconsciously value highly. This applies to conspiracy theories, short fiction, and cooking hacks.
So here's the truth:
If your content, offer, or promotion doesn’t relate to what your audience values, it will be ignored.
Relevancy is what cuts through all that noise, capturing attention and compelling action. It's the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Without it, the most sophisticated funnels and diligent efforts are pointless.
In short, relevancy is key. If you don’t have it, your marketing won’t work.
Why Most Marketing Fail To Be Relevant And Why Large Corporations Include AI Data Analytics Into Their Decision Making
We must understand and accept that “relevancy” is not decided by us, but by the market. Just because we think that something is relevant to the market, doesn’t that mean it is.
In many ways, the prioritization of ‘self-opinion’ over ‘market opinion’ is the downfall of many otherwise talented and well meaning entrepreneurs.
I often encounter people sharing the famous quotes:
“People don't know what they want until you show it to them.” - Steve Jobs
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
They took these quotes by two famous entrepreneurs as a ticket to ignore market feedback. They relied on their own assumptions and hoped for the best.
But they are missing something. Both of these legendary entrepreneurs already understood their market before making these quotes.
Here’s another quote by Steve Jobs:
‘Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.’
On the surface level, Steve Jobs may appear to dismiss market research.
He doesn’t rely on traditional ways of market research. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own process for understanding his market.
Traditional market research is expensive and cumbersome. It involves many manual surveys and focus groups where people are paid to sit in a room. They are shown prototypes and asked questions to assess their reactions to it.
They were archaic, and highly inefficient. This was why he said,
“You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
Apple sell products - expensive ones at that. The process involves many steps: ideation, design, prototyping, approval, and many tiny steps in between. All this must happen before the big launch.
Put market research in the mix, and you’ll see exactly why Steve Jobs said what he said.
Instead, Apple:
Collect and analyze data about consumers' preferences, behaviors, and trends.
Collect feedback from customers through social media, customer service interactions, product reviews, and feedback forms.
Do competitive analysis to understand where competitors are successful at, and where they are failing.
Analyze the sales and performance data of products to help them understand what's popular and what's not.
Keep an eye on technology and lifestyle trends to anticipate what consumers might want in the future.
Conduct user experience research. It helps them understand how users interact with their products and what improvements can be made.
All these actions create insights. The insights influence future product developments and marketing strategies. This is how Steve Jobs ‘figure out what they're going to want before they do.’
The aspiring entrepreneurs who often quote Steve Jobs barely do any of these.
They create products that matter to them. Then, they go around trying to convince the market that they need it.
My main client base is made up of coaches, trainers, and consultants. In my day-to-day work, I meet many people who rely only their instincts to guide their marketing direction.
And this is exactly why 99.9% of them never get much traction online and have to rely solely on referrals alone.
Funnily enough, the 0.1% that succeed by pure chance go around crediting their progress to the law of attraction, manifestation, NLP, or whatever school of thought they belong to.
Confirmation bias is a scary, scary, thing.
Failed marketing relies on broad assumptions. This leads to boring, generic campaigns that don’t engage.
Successful marketing rely on deep market insights that strikes deep into consumer psyche.
It is this necessity for deep market insights that has driven big brands such as Amazon, Facebook, and Spotify into incorporating AI into their business.
Defining AI Marketing
AI marketing: “The use of artificial intelligence to improve decision-making in marketing strategies.”
AI marketing refers to the application of artificial intelligence technologies in the field of marketing.
It can analyze data, predict trends, personalize content, and automate marketing tasks. This industry is new compared to others, and the world is still exploring all the possible applications in this field.
Current applications of AI in marketing include:
Data Analysis: AI algorithms can process and analyze vast amounts of data much faster and more accurately than humans. This allows marketers to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends.
Predictive Analytics: AI can predict future customer behavior based on historical data. Predicting which customers are likely to make a purchase, what products they might be interested in, and when they are likely to buy.
Personalization: AI enables highly personalized marketing efforts. AI can analyze individual customer data. It can help create customized messages, product recommendations, and experiences for each customer.
Customer Segmentation: AI can segment customers more effectively based on a variety of factors. These factors include buying behavior, demographics, and engagement level. This allows for more targeted marketing campaigns.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: These AI-driven tools can interact with customers in real-time. They provide customer service, answer queries, and even assist in the shopping process.
Content Generation: AI tools can generate content like email texts, social media posts, or blog articles. The content can be tailored to specific audiences and objectives.
Ad Targeting and Optimization: AI algorithms can optimize advertising campaigns. They ensure ads are shown to the right audience at the right time, and through the right channels. This improves the efficiency of ad spend.
Email Marketing: AI can optimize email marketing campaigns. It can personalize email content. It can also determine the best times to send emails to maximize open and click-through rates.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): AI can analyze search trends and patterns. This helps optimize website content and improve search engine rankings.
By using AI, marketers can achieve greater efficiency and more precise targeting. They can also improve customer experience and ultimately get better results from their marketing efforts. AI is a technology that can drive strategic decision-making and innovation in the field of marketing.
Speed, Precision, And Consistency: AI's Power to Speak Directly to Your Market…And What It Can Do That Humans Can’t
What if I tell you that using AI can make your brand - and you - more human? And help you be faster, more precise in your marketing, and more consistent?
In this section, I will share the three main advantages of AI Marketing. They are: Consistency, Cost Effectiveness, and Enhancing Human Connection.
Speed, Precision, And Consistency
The traditional way of extracting market insights are slow, cumbersome, and expensive. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews and just some of the things that people use. Just imagine, all that effort is just for a brand to connect more deeply with their potential clients.
No wonder Steve Jobs don’t rely on it.
There are other avenues more efficient and arguably more effective. See, the surest way of knowing what people want is to take a look at what they buy and what they say.
People vote with their money and their time. The more they spend on an area of interest, the more we can surmise that they’re invested in that topic.
Before the internet, a big business would have to do all the cumbersome stuff. This included surveys, focus groups, and interviews.
After the internet, a lot of data is accessible online. It is available in forums, search engines, social media, and the online tools and apps we love to use.
In private servers, sensitive data such as customer personal information, purchase records, website search history, cart selection and more are stored, ready to be used to extract profitable insights for the company.
All that data. Just hanging around. All it takes is for a new form of department to emerge to turn all these raw data into cash.
That’s why data analysts are hired; jewelers, cutting and polishing raw diamonds into gems.
The marketing department uses these insights to inform their next campaign. They use them to craft their message and build their offers. This assures the highest chances of success.
But for all their vaunted abilities, data analysts are still human. Prone to inefficiencies. The human elements will always be present, regardless of an employee's caliber. These include life circumstances, mental blocks, mood changes, sick days, and the like. All combine to effect the speed, precision, and consistency of the operation.
AI suffers no such weakness.
Today, large corporations hire data analysts along with custom-built AI tools to get the latest and most accurate market insights to inform their business decisions.
Cost Effectiveness
Hiring data analysts and collecting all this data is too expensive for small to medium enterprises.
However, AI models are now pre-trained on large amounts of existing data. As a result, market research is essentially democratized.
Services like https://crawlq.ai allow anyone to pay a small monthly fee to access profitable market insights. These insights can help grow a business.
Will this match the level of AI analytics employed by large corporations? No.
Hell no.
But unless a business is operating in the 8-9 figures, it’s more than good enough. It is certainly better, less expensive, and more profitable than running a marketing campaign with zero research.
In the past, without access to large data we’d need to do manual surveys, focus groups and the like. It is expensive to spend time and opportunity costs on all these things before building a product.
But with AI, you can delve into the depths of your consumers’ behavior. It uncovers patterns and preferences invisible to the naked eye. This costs next to nothing, compared to traditional methods.
The cost effectiveness for market research doesn’t just stop there. It also extends to all aspects of your marketing arm.
Accurate market insights increase engagement, open rates, appointments, and conversions. They also reduce ad costs, time, and effort spent on campaigns.
Enhancing Human Connection
Many people seem to fear the possibility that using AI will cause us to lose human connection. But I argue that using AI can actually help us increase connection and be more human.
Did you notice? Everything we’ve covered so far in this article, especially when I was speaking of relevance and market research, is related to connection.
My first argument is related to human nature.
Humans care more about advancing their own beliefs, perspectives, and agenda. Humans tend to do this rather than trying to understand the alternatives.
So far, we've discussed everything. Especially data analysis and market research. All of it has been about helping you understand and connect with your market.
You can try this experiment: the next time you see a comment on your post, email, or message that you don’t understand or that upsets you, feed the whole text to an AI (like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Grok, etc.). Ask the AI to explain what the person meant. And to draft a reply.
You will be amazed at how easily you can manage your emotion once you understand why the person on the other side says what they said. All the potential explanation appears when you see past your own perspectives.
The truth is that people only buy when they can connect with your brand. But what do most businesses do is they try to convince. They try to convert. They weren’t trying to understand, or empathize.
You are just another number that they have to push through and get to the next person. And ironically, such attitude is counter to what would work: deep understanding and connection.
You can only market effectively when you are capable of empathizing deeply with your market’s problems.
My second argument of how AI can enhance human connection is on the market-facing side.
Think of the last time you had a bad experience as a customer or client. Don’t you feel that many humans are a lot more ‘robotic’ than AI?
A customer with food allergies communicates their dietary restrictions to the waiter. But the waiter appears indifferent. They say they understand even though they don’t. And they fail to convey the information to the kitchen.
A hotel guest arrives late, exhausted from a long journey. They find that their room reservation is not in the system. Despite showing their booking confirmation, the receptionist shows little concern. She insists that no rooms are available without attempting to find a solution.
A passenger misses a connecting flight due to a delay caused by the airline. The customer service desk is dismissive and unapologetic. They make no effort to understand the inconvenience caused. They offer no assistance in rebooking or compensating for the missed connection.
A customer calls their service provider about a billing error. The call center representative is uninterested and does not actively listen. As a result, they lack understanding of the issue. They then provide scripted responses and do not resolve the problem.
A patient in a hospital is experiencing pain and communicates its to the nursing staff. However, the staff is dismissive. They attribute the pain to routine recovery without proper assessment. Later, the patient found out there was a misdiagnosis of their condition. This means they need more medical treatment.
The reason all of this happens is simply because of human nature. It costs energy and time to understand and to care about other human beings.
This is further complicated by the ‘other’ elements of an individual. These include their personal agendas, beliefs, values, and emotions they’re feeling at the time. If staff members are distracted, having a bad day, or simply dislike the person they're serving, it takes more energy to remain professional.
I am by no means excusing bad customer service. I'm using these examples to show how AI can humanize the brand experience.
AI has limitless energy and consistency to cater to, personalize, and serve multitudes of humans at once. It will never get tired, moody, or dislike the person they're serving.
Incorporating AI on the customer-facing side of your brand will enhance your connection with both existing and prospective clients.
How To Implement AI To Grow Your Business
AI is not a game that only large multi-national corporations can play. The many AI products on the market have made AI technology accessible to everyone. It will become even more available as time goes by.
It would be a lot easier to start now, rather than waiting until it becomes an industry standard. Otherwise, you'll be left playing catch-up.
If you’re just starting out or having trouble connecting with your market, you can use a low-cost AI tool, such as GPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, CrawlIQ, or any tool, for market research.
You can also use the tools to help you write better. It can help you research, brainstorm, and even offer feedback. As an example, this article has been written with a lot of assistance from AI. Could you tell?
When you encounter negative feedback or sticky situations, you can use AI as a brainstorm partner. You can strategize how to approach that situation. It could be an unhappy client, disgruntled employee, or conflicts with partners. Helping you be more human. You may also choose to let the AI draft a diplomatic response to that situation. This would remove highly charged negative emotions from the equation.
When you’re scaling fast, having to serve large numbers of people at once, you may choose to implement AI chatbots for customer service or even front end sales. Train the AI on your data and it will handle all the front end conversations, saving you time and energy.
You can also use AI-enhanced CRM systems to predict customer needs, personalize communication, and streamline sales. Salesforce and HubSpot offer AI features in their CRM systems that can help with lead scoring, predictive analytics, and more.
At higher levels, businesses can subscribe to AI-powered business intelligence tools. Examples include Tableau and Microsoft BI. These platforms use AI to analyze large amounts of data and provide insights that can help you make better business decisions.
Businesses ready to take the plunge into deeper waters can use advanced AI analytics. They uncover patterns and predictions not visible to the human eye. This is what I was speaking about earlier; IBM Watson and Google Cloud AI provide powerful tools for deep data analysis. At this point, you'd hire or train data scientists to work with these advanced tools. They'll extract actionable insights that can transform your business strategy.
At the top tier - highest level of AI implementation, businesses may develop custom AI solutions. They use these to solve various in-house challenges. This can give a competitive edge by addressing challenges unique to their business. This would usually involve working with AI consulting firms or building an in-house team of AI experts.
How I Use AI To Help Grow My Clients’ Businesses
For most people, at least half the items on the list I provided are not accessible or practical to try. I myself use only the top 3 items.
Yet even so the results have been extraordinary. This speaks to the fact that most people are still not leveraging AI for their businesses. If you start now, you will create an advantage for yourself.
I wouldn’t want to leave you without some form of actionable steps that you can take to grow your own business. So, here's a rough demonstration of a step-by-step process. This is how I personally help my clients as an AI brand strategist.
Start by selecting an AI. I personally use bettergpt.chat with a direct OpenAI API key.
I feed the AI an interview transcript I did with a client. I ask it to create a narrative and an origin story based on the Hero’s Journey framework.
We take a look at all the avenues that we can claim based on the origin story. Then, I ask the AI to brainstorm a list of profitable markets for the client.
We select one from the list, and ask it to brainstorm potential avatars for this market.
We select an avatar and ask the AI to simulate that personality. Then, we begin asking it good quality questions.
From there, we derive the primary pain point (Point A). And we identify the ideal dream outcome (Point B).
We brainstorm with the AI to uncover the unique mechanisms of the client's expertise. This helps us find out what makes the client unique.
We ask the AI what are all the perceived obstacles that the avatar might face going from Point A to Point B.
We further brainstorm with the AI. Using the Point A, Point B, and perceived obstacles to create an ‘irresistible offer’. Or as Alex Hormozi put it, “Offers so good people feel stupid saying no to.”
After that, we use the AI to generate lead magnets and content topics to create topical authority.
I'd use all the insights we've gathered. I'd feed them to the AI and generate the remaining marketing assets. This includes email sequences, lead magnets, blog content, and social media posts for the whole year.
My clients would then use these assets on their social media. This would help them immediately start building authority. I would consult them for the whole year as they apply these assets. I would give feedback and help them pivot where necessary.
If you’re unfamiliar with specific terminologies like ‘Origin Story’, ‘Lead Magnet’, ‘Unique Mechanism’, etc., go to my website felixtay.com to learn more. You can also visit my website to understand how I help my clients.
Conclusion
If you’re struggling to scale, your marketing needs to evolve. It needs to become smarter, more intuitive, and more individualized. At the same time, it needs to be more cost-effective and time-effective.
Everything I mention is not speculative. They’re stuff that’s already out there. And yet, AI technology is just in its infancy.
If we’re seeing such wonders at this early stage...as AI continue to revolutionize the business landscape, what new, unimaginable applications might appear? What innovations might we witness that will help bring businesses closer to their ideal audience?
I am excited to find out.
AI is not a tool for lazy people; it's a tool for committed entrepreneurs to grow their business.
It is a key to unlocking a new realm of possibilities. Each message feels like a one-on-one conversation, and every campaign strikes a chord. To hone in on what truly matters to your audience, speak to their specific situation, and offer solutions that feel tailor-made for them.
That's the kind of relevance that transforms passive observers into active participants and loyal customers.
As we enter the AI era, AI's advanced analytics and predictive capabilities will continue to revolutionize the way businesses understand and engage with their target audience. Helping us connect. Helping us be more human. At scale.
It is a big misconception that AI is ‘impersonal’ and ‘cold’. The truth is, AI empowers you to create warmer, more human interactions. It provides the insights needed to connect on an individual level.
AI is not replacing the human touch in marketing; it's amplifying it.
Automating your marketing processes frees you to truly and deeply connect. You're no longer casting a wide net and hoping for the best. You're using a smart, precision approach to market. Speaking directly to the heart of your client's needs and desires.
By embracing AI, you're not just keeping up with the times; you're setting the pace. You're marketing in a way that's not only efficient but also empathetic. You're resonating with your clients on a personal level and driving engagement like never before.
This is the future of marketing, and it's within your grasp.
