Published on: December 18, 2023
Introduction
Adopting any new technology can take time, especially when the technology is complex. The explosion of artificial intelligence tools has already changed how most marketing teams operate, but there are several factors preventing marketers from fully embracing AI.
AI Usage Today: By the Numbers
Across all industries, the AI revolution is expected to continue to expand and grow, with experts predicting that nearly 100% of all organizations will use AI to some extent by 2025 – less than two years from now.
At the same time, the impact of the AI software market is expected to reach between $13 and $150 trillion by the same year, according to some forecasts.
These are staggering figures that reveal how pervasive AI technology is about to become. With far-reaching effects on every industry, one of the key sectors impacted by AI is the field of marketing.
How Marketers Are Already Using AI
As the majority of marketing agencies already rely on AI and automation to varying degrees, let’s explore the top ways marketers are utilizing AI tools and technology today.
Content Creation
48% of marketing businesses use AI for content creation. This makes content creation one of the most common use cases for AI at present.
More than half of marketers use AI to generate new written content, making minor manual adjustments before publishing.
This can include blog articles and website content, but also social media copy, CTAs for landing pages, or even product descriptions.
Marketers using AI tools to create new content can save an average of three hours per piece of content – three hours that can instead be applied to research, outreach, strategy planning, and creative brainstorming.
AI content creation tools like HubSpot’s content assistant, ChatSpot, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT respond to prompts, generating images and/or new written content almost instantly to meet marketers’ needs, tailoring outputs to create the appropriate tone and messages.
Data Analysis and Reporting
AI tools provide valuable support for data analysis and reporting tasks for marketers, with 45% of them using AI tools to analyze data and generate reports.
Given AI’s ability to rapidly process vast amounts of data, it can identify customer behavior patterns and analyze market trends.
Conducting Research
Research can be time-consuming, and obtaining results is not always easy. This might be why 45% of marketing professionals use AI for research purposes.
AI can sift through unrelated results to provide answers to very specific queries, saving massive amounts of time.
AI tools can also categorize responses into different groups, focusing on the results that provide the most insight into various aspects of a complex issue. This ability can enhance the research process, providing much deeper coverage for staff. However, AI-supported research goes beyond mere market research.
In addition to utilizing AI’s market research capabilities, 32% of marketing employees use AI for learning and skill development. In fact, AI may be revolutionizing the education sector, encouraging students of all ages to engage in a more personalized and responsive way to gain skills.
AI can provide tailored feedback and help employees track their learning journeys with progress charts and analytics, offering concrete interactive examples to help staff learn skills more effectively and quickly.
Why
Have Some Marketers Not Invested in Artificial Intelligence Yet?
A recent study from Gartner showed that 63% of marketing leaders have already invested in artificial intelligence or plan to do so within the next 24 months. Therefore, only 37% of marketers remain who have not yet invested in artificial intelligence.
With so many powerful capabilities to enhance communication and increase efficiency, why have these marketers chosen not to adopt AI tools yet?
According to the same study, the main reasons for hesitation relate to uncertainty about the accuracy of results provided by AI tools, potential inherent biases exhibited by AI software, and over-reliance on AI technology.
Even our own survey supports this stance, with 76% of participants stating that we should use artificial intelligence/automation in marketing, but not to the point of relying on it.
Although skepticism is always warranted during the early stages of a new product or service, it is worth taking a closer look at each of these three reasons that hinder marketers from adopting artificial intelligence.
1. They Fear Incorrect Results and Inaccurate Information
The primary concern expressed by marketers when it comes to artificial intelligence is their fear that AI tools may provide inaccurate information.
This concern about accuracy is reasonably justified – our data shows that nearly 50% of marketers using generative AI tools say they have received results from AI tools that contain information they know is inaccurate.
Our more detailed research revealed that only 27% of marketers using AI feel completely confident in their ability to identify incorrect results generated by AI tools.
As AI technologies continue to develop, there is a reasonable chance that some results produced by AI tools may vary, and developers are working on improving these outcomes.
2. They Are Concerned About the Underlying Biases of AI Tools
Some of the most attention-grabbing headlines regarding the early results from the public release of AI tools have highlighted the concerning biases exhibited by these tools.
Machine learning bias or AI bias occurs as a result of biases that may exist among their developers, whether they are aware of them or not.
As AI developers and engineers program the algorithms that run AI tools, they are essentially teaching AI machines what they are looking for and how to identify different types of data.
When this developer has an unconscious bias, the AI may be imbued with that bias, assumption, or even prejudice.
For example, a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce showed that AI facial recognition tools are frequently misidentified for people with darker skin tones, which can lead to wrongful arrests and other consequences. New AI tools, such as automatic portrait generators, still suffer from bias as well.
3. Marketers Are Concerned About Becoming Dependent on AI
Some marketing professionals express concerns about becoming overly dependent on AI tools and automation.
The fear is that the more we rely on AI skills for content creation, strategy planning, research, and more, the less capable we become of completing those tasks ourselves.
Fortunately, AI does not completely replace the creativity and capability of human employees. Rather, AI provides tools and capabilities to help make routine tasks and content creation more efficient and productive.
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The administrative and research assistant saves marketers time to focus on improving their unique skills. Getting started with artificial intelligence
Getting Started with Artificial Intelligence
If you haven’t joined the campaign yet, or are still unsure how your content can benefit from these innovations, try these ways to use generative artificial intelligence:
- Rely on AI for keyword suggestions and demographic analysis, improving the targeting profiles for your marketing campaigns.
- Use AI to create or repurpose content, using tools like HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant to rewrite paragraphs.
- Allow AI to help you identify competitors in your field and provide actionable insights on how to surpass them.
- Let AI find gaps and errors in your current content.
These are some simple (and useful) ways to integrate AI into your workflow if you are interested yet hesitant to make the leap.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence
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