COOLEST TOOL IN THE BOX

Artificial intelligence is a useful tool in any marketing toolbox, but does it replace the human element?

By Mike Killeen

From typewriters to computers to the Internet, Carrie Karki has seen a lot of changes in marketing. The president and founder of WhiteBox Marketing in St. Cloud is seeing another technology revolution that is changing the way her company — and other marketing agencies — are doing business. “This industry is constantly changing,” Karki said. “You’re always going to have to stay up on the latest software. Its technology, and it’s everywhere. But you have to be smart with it and not lose your core.”

The rapidly expanding area of artificial intelligence is becoming a powerful partner to marketers, bringing key words, chatbots and search engine optimization (SEO) into play more clearly. “It’s great to have continued technologies and efficiencies, but we want to ensure that technology doesn’t overcome personalization and custom content,” Karki said. “While those tools are great for research, ideas and some efficiencies, quality and personalized content will remain our focus and our value.”

HOW ARE AGENCIES USING AI?

“The primary use case has been content generation, as seen by the success of platforms like Jasper.ai,” said Erin Perry, chief strategy officer at DAYTA Marketing in St. Cloud. AI stands for artificial intelligence. “Content can mean anything from generating blogs and social posts and website copy to generating advertising

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copy or SEO-optimized meta descriptions, usually — hopefully — with human oversight and review to fact-check and ensure it's consistent with brand tone.”

AI is also proving to be a useful tool for web developers. “AI can be a faster way to figure out how to develop certain functionalities — what maybe took a few hours of research previously can be generated in a few minutes,” Perry said. As with other forms of AI, it still requires human oversight to implement and understand the functionality.

“Everybody is playing with it and trying to figure out how to use it and determine just how exactly it is going to affect the Web moving forward,” according to Scott Sandbakken, developer and SEO strategist at WhiteBox

The origins of artificial intelligence (AI) date to the early 1930s and British logician and computer pioneer Alan Turing (left). He described a computing machine with the ability to remember infinite amounts of information, and a scanner that could recall the information through a program of instructions also stored on the machine. This was known as the Turing machine, and is essentially the basis for all modern computers. Today, AI plays a role in improving efficiencies, generating content, increasing productivity, and reducing human error, among many other things. Regardless of the industry you operate in, chances are you interact with AI on a daily basis. It is the future of computing, and businesses are learning how to integrate it into daily operations. (See "Intelligent Numbers" on page 39.)

Marketing. “That’s up in the air right now, but it’s definitely a cool tool,” he said.

Another way AI is being used is in SEO, which is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility in search engines when people search for products you sell, services you provide or information on topics in which you have deep expertise and/ or experience, according to Search Engine Land website.

“Just having good content on your site isn’t necessarily going to be enough to get you looked at,” Sandbakken said. “You have to have social cues from incoming links, traffic has to go to your site, and you have to be seen as an authority in your industry.” Sandbakken notes that while there are tools that make keyword research and writing for SEO easier, it’s still important to have that human touch. He also references tools like ChatGPT that read existing content on the internet and rehash it into a different document. “Marketers have to make sure to bring in new content, new ideas, so that we really add something to the conversation.”

“Another interesting emerging use case is interactive chat,” DAYTA’s Perry said. “While marketers have been able to approximate AI chat for many years now, we're starting to see this get a lot more robust as tools like ChatGPT can scan your website and help serve up answers to your audience.” Perry expects to see a lot of growth in this area.

The Human Touch

At DAYTA, Perry and her team are testing the use of AI to generate baseline ideas for content, but always with a heavy helping of human touch. “Our real value to our clients is that we help them be strategic in their marketing versus mass-producing marketing assets that have no business impact,” Perry said. “AI is good at the latter, but isn't ‘strategic.’ We would like to get to the point where we can help our customers harness AI in their own organizations to make marketing and sales more efficient.”

“I would say AI goes in the resources category for content creators,” said Rachael Witt, creative director and lead copywriter at WhiteBox Marketing. “There’s no replacement for a writer’s unique voice, which allows us to connect with our audiences in meaningful ways.” Witt believes AI tools can prove useful for getting started with a project, but a personalized touch is still necessary.

Sandbakken said he saw a similar trend when Wix — a platform that allows people to create a website for free — was introduced. “You could build your own website, and a lot of people built their own websites. But it’s just not the same as an agency doing it. An agency can custom design a user experience and add those details that really give you a polished product,” he said. “It’s the same thing with AI and content. You can create some content with it, but if you want a quality polished product, you need to have a writer.”

“AI can generate a lot of ideation very quickly,” Perry said. “Humans hit writer's block, we get stuck in ruts, and AI gives you a very fast way to come up with alternatives.”

The Future Of Ai

AI’s contribution in the immediate future will be content generation — but not necessarily good content, according to Perry. “It’s easier and faster than ever to generate content that’s relevant, factual and grammatically correct,” she said, “but not unique, or especially interesting. The result will likely be a massive increase in content creation, followed by a correction to unique content that’s higher effort, less automatable, but provides actual value — entertainment or educational or both — to the customer.” Agencies should jump past using AI to churn out content, Perry said, and get to a point where AI is integrated into ideation, but not driving content creation.

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AI is still in its infancy, she added. While major companies like Google are working with it, most smaller local companies will need to wait a few years before it becomes truly useful. “I don't think we're seeing the full advantages that we will in another few years when it comes to more advanced agency work like data analysis, research, or automated recommendations,” Perry said. “At this point in AI’s life cycle, the main benefit to an agency is going to be speed.”