14. AI in sales and marketing: Finding the perfect balance between technology and human touch

Introduction

Are you a bit sceptical about using AI in your sales and marketing strategies? The radical shift in the workplace happening at the moment that some are saying is the next industrial revolution. Others are scared or concerned. Real Artificial Intelligence has arrived and it’s taking the world of content production by storm.

While AI can work wonders, it's crucial to strike a balance between technology and human interaction. Sure, AI can automate repetitive tasks, analyse customer data, and optimise your marketing campaigns, but nothing can replace genuine human connection.

In this podcast, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber will dive deep into the world of AI in sales and marketing. We'll explore the impact that AI is having on the sales and marketing industry, how it can be used to save time now, and where it still has it’s pitfalls.

So let's find the perfect harmony between cutting-edge technology and the age-old art of human interaction. 

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Episode Transcript

There's a radical shift that's happening in the workplace at the moment that some are saying is going to be the next industrial revolution. Others are scared or concerned. Real artificial intelligence has arrived and it's taking the world of content production by storm. Whether you believe that AI is a pariah or the next marketing messiah, it's with us now and it's here to stay. So in this episode, we take a closer look at the impact that AI is having on the society. sales and marketing industry, how it can be used to save time now and where it still has its pitfalls. So let's embark on a journey of discovery to uncover the secrets that lie within the intersection of human ingenuity and the transformative force of AI. Let's start the show. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia. I'm your host, Simon Harvey, and I'm joined as usual by my co host, Daniel Kleeber. Hi there, Daniel.

Hi Simon, and hello listeners. It's good to be here again.

So Daniel, uh, today we're going to do something a little bit different. Uh, you know, over the last couple of seasons, we've spent quite a bit of time diving into the details of how to use story to clearly communicate what your business does, and also we've looked at how your product solves that problem. But for the next couple of episodes, we're going to do a bit shorter season here, and we're going to take a step to the side slightly now. And instead of looking purely at story, we're going to look at the world of sales and marketing and how they're rapidly changing and being taken over by AI, artificial intelligence. So, as you know, Daniel, I run my regular coaching sessions with customers, and over the last few weeks, I've just seen this massive influx of questions, um, and concerns, I guess, as well from marketing leaders and business leaders generally, you know, they're asking me where they should use AI. What they could do with it, uh, or even whether their job's still going to exist in a couple of years time. So I thought that for the next couple of episodes, what would be worth our while doing is really taking a deeper dive into this fascinating world of AI and just really looking to see how it's going to transform our industry.

Yes. It's amazing how things have already started to change. I mean, just think about how long it used to take to write the content for a blog post or set up an automation. And now, with AI, things that used to take hours or days can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

Yeah, I think the speed that AI has grabbed everyone's attention is just... Quite amazing. If I go back and look at Facebook, for example, they launched back in 2004. And I think that's a pretty popular site that had a fairly rapid launch. Um, it took them in fact, just 10 months to reach a million users. That was pretty much unheard of back then. On the other hand though, when you look at ChatGPT, it's just ridiculous to achieve that same one million user milestone. It took them just five days. Um, so no wonder people are taking notice and they're concerned about how this is suddenly going to impact our business and the change that it's going to make. Well,

that's quite impressive. But what's also impressive is the number of AI platforms that have emerged in recent months. It feels like there's a new one every week. It sure does, yeah. It's both exciting and overwhelming. Everywhere I hear conversations about AI and we feel like we should already be implementing these platforms or we'll be

missing out. Yeah, I think you're right in there. I think a lot of people do feel like if they don't do something they're going to miss out. But on the other side it is, it's exciting and overwhelming at the same time. You know, AI I think is really becoming much more accessible now. And I know I'm really keen to explore what we can do with it here in Demodia. Um, so I'm sure that other listeners are keen to as well. Um, that said though, before we go too much further, I know you've sort of taken on Daniel, the, the reins when it comes to AI within the company here. So maybe we could use some of that knowledge and you could start maybe by giving us a quick explanation of exactly what is generative AI. And, you know, particularly from my perspective, what does the generative part actually mean in there?

Good question, Sam. What sets generative AI apart from previous forms of AI is its ability to create new and original content, especially in unstructured forms like text and images. That's what the generative part refers to. Yeah, that

makes sense. Yep. Mm

hmm. AI technology has come a long way, and there are now models that can learn from vast amounts of data and generate pretty reasonable content spanning numerous formats and domains of expertise.

So, why do you think then, Daniel, that AI has really suddenly taken the world by storm?

Well, I think generative AI has a fairly significant advantage. Previous deep learning models were designed and optimized to perform well at specific tasks. The most impressive thing about generative AI models is that they are designed to perform multiple functions. They learn patterns from the reams of training data they are fed, and they can create some quite impressive

content. Yeah, I think that really is a game changer. It's definitely going to be. So, going back to your real world use cases. I think pretty much everybody listening to this will have heard of ChatGPT, you know, we mentioned it earlier inside there with its million plus users or million users within the first couple of days, but what else is out there and you know, what else should we be watching for and how can we use it then? Let's start

with the one everyone knows, ChatGPT. This isn't the original generative AI tool for marketing, but it's the one we're all most familiar with. ChatGPT is great for creating simple marketing content. Think about things like blog posts, social media content, or emails. It's also a really powerful tool that we can all use for generating

ideas. Yeah, I know I've found it's a fantastic way to kick start the creative process, particularly when I'm suffering from a creative block. The ideas that it comes up with aren't necessarily perfect, but what it can do is get rid of that horrible feeling of having that blank sheet of paper sat in front of you and you've got no idea what to put on it. You know, at least it gives you something to get started with.

Exactly. So, for example, if you're looking to create a blog post, all you need to do is provide ChatGPT with a brief or an outline of the topic you want to cover, and it will then go away and generate a reasonably well written draft for you to start working with. You should never take this as final copy, but it gives you something to refine and edit. The same goes for social media content and emails. It really is an incredible resource for any of our listeners who want to streamline their content creation process.

So that's ChatGPT then, um, what else is that's out there maybe that our listeners should be aware

of? Um, there's another similar tool that has been out there for a while too, and it's called Jasper. For those that haven't seen it before, um, Jasper is great for crafting landing pages and PPC copy, but it's also amazing for pretty much anything where you need to write copy. The main difference with Jasper is that It has been specifically created for the marketing industry. It uses various back end AI models, including GPT 4, but it has been trained with using a number of marketing specific templates so that it better understands the types of content that us marketers might want to create. For example, your LinkedIn bio, uh, PPC advert, an SEO optimized product description. and so on.

So yeah, Jasper is something I have heard of before, but I must say I haven't had a chance to play with it at all yet. So it's going to be interesting really, I think, over the next couple of years, or maybe even less time than that, to just watch how these text based content creation tools just really evolve and take off. So something else that you mentioned earlier was that one of the key things with generative Is that it's not just limited to creating textual copy. I can't remember what it's called now, but I was reading about a tool the other day that would create, um, short videos using AI. I think it might've been you that was telling me about it even there. Can you remember the one that I mean?

Yes. I think I know what you mean. Um, there are several different ones out there, but one of the more interesting ones is

Synthesia. Oh, that could be the one. Yeah. Yeah. Mm

hmm. With this. You can upload a script for your video and select a virtual actor, and then you can generate realistic looking and also realistic sounding videos without the need for actors, video equipment, or editing skills. It's an efficient and cost effective way to create engaging videos that captivate your audience on social media.

You know, you talked about video there. I guess the other side of this then is creating still images using AI, and that's something I have done a little bit of digging into myself. Uh, so I know Adobe is in the process of introducing a new AI image generation tool that's codenamed Firefly. Is that something that you've come across before?

Um, not yet, but I think I've heard of it before. Yeah,

so it's still in beta version at the moment. Uh, and I had a chance to play with it the other day and I must say it's really quite impressive. So with the Firefly product that they're working on at the moment, you can create photorealistic images or more illustrative style artwork. And you literally, you just give it a phrase, you know, create me an image of a butterfly sitting on a leaf or something like that, and it will create you some fantastic images. Yeah, my tests, the photo style images definitely still have some way to go. They still look a little bit artificial. But if you ask it for something more artistic, you know, more illustrative in style, the results that it comes out with I found were absolutely stunning. It's quite unbelievable. Speaking of Adobe, um, the other AI offering that they're working at the moment is in the podcast space. And this is actually something that we're using from time to time with this podcast. So they've basically created a bunch of tools, or are in the process of creating a bunch of tools for creating and editing podcasts. Um, the main tool that they're working on, um, that's basically an AI tool that you can capture and Create a transcript of a recording and then it allows you to edit it just by editing the text of that transcript. So, you edit the text and it will seamlessly edit the underlying audio file and come out with something that sounds really great. And I think that's going to be pretty cool and that will certainly change, you know, how we go about editing programs like this, for example. Unfortunately, that's only available to, uh, to beta users at the moment, but you can apply online. One thing that you can test out for yourself now, though, if you want is on podcast. adobe. com. If you go there, you'll find a couple of great tools for cleaning up your audio. So, again, one of these ones uses AI to make recordings sound like they were created in a professional studio, even if they were recorded with some tiny little tinny, um, you know, headphone microphone in an echoey room or a cafe or something. So that basically strips out all that background noise and makes it a nice sort of warm feeling, warm sound to the actual voiceover inside there. And if you listen back to a couple of our episodes in the past where we've got guest interviewers, experts that have come in, the results that it comes back with are really quite impressive. You know, it makes them sound as if they really are inside the studio. So yeah, if anyone's interested and wants to try those for themselves, I will put a link along with other tools that we're talking about today into the show notes, I think, and then you can just go in there and find that for yourself.

Actually, um, before you move off of that completely, the other one that is worth mentioning in that space is DALI. It's another tool from the OpenAI team that brought us ChatGPT. In this case, though, it's also for image generation. Going back to content production again, the other tool that we use a lot Internally is Deeple. Yeah,

of course it is, of course. Yeah, for those that haven't come across Deeple before, it's an AI powered version of Google Translate, basically. Uh, and we use it extensively internally for doing first draft translations of content. So... Unlike Google Translate, instead of doing literal translations, what DeepL does is it uses AI to develop more natural sounding translations. And then users can tweak those translations, provide alternate recommendations, etc. And they're fed back into that training algorithm. So ultimately, what you end up with is something that sounds much more like natural written or spoken content from a particular language, using the constructs and the terms and the words that they would use in that language versus in the original language. Which, from my perspective, I'd say that from German to English particularly, I don't think I've come across anything better than that yet. It really is that good. That said, nothing is perfect. So where do we go from here, Daniel? What are some of the things maybe that we need to be wary of? Well, Simon,

all technology has its limitations and I think it's worthwhile spending a couple of minutes to look at where you should and shouldn't use AI to support your marketing. The first thing that I would say is something that we've already touched on several times before. It's important to remember that the AI is your content assistant and not your content writer. Relying solely on AI for lengthy content like blog posts is not recommended. You need to review and edit any output generated by AI tools. You're the experts in your space, so as well as checking it through for basic grammar issues, Make sure you add in something unique that only a human that knows your industry could add.

Yeah, I think that's definitely something to be very wary of. You know, as you rightly said inside there, you're the only person that knows your space, so use that and add value. Um, what I'd recommend to people is... Tell your audience something that the AI doesn't know, you know, add in your expertise in there, add a point of view, give an opinion, those sorts of things. You know, AI can't do that just yet. Um, another point that I think listeners need to be aware of is that AI knows what's created by AI. You know, just try this for yourself, create some text inside ChatGPT, for example, or any of these other AI tools, and then go into ChatGPT and ask it, was this created by an AI? You know, it's got a pretty good feeling of what is AI generated, you know, it'll give you a ranking back to say, you know, it's a 90 percent chance this was AI generated. So, my warning inside there, to me, if AIs know what was created by an AI, the question really is, how long is it going to be before Google starts to use those signals in its ranking algorithm, you know? My feeling is that Google is going to start to prioritize human generated content versus AI generated content inside there. You know, it's always looking for ways of giving us the best information. So just something to be aware of if you're starting to use AI tools, don't rely on them too heavily and don't flood your blog with AI generated content just because you can. Another

thing to watch out for is biases and general inaccuracies. Ensure that you thoroughly read the content to make sure it is correct and aligns with your goals and values. Again, you might not be the writer, but you are still the editor. I

think you're absolutely right there. You're not the writer, but you're the editor now. And I've got to say, I think if I was a freelance copywriter that was creating average copy for low costs, then I would be worried at this point in time. I really do see this as being one of the biggest short term changes that AI is going to introduce into our space. You don't need to pay somebody any longer to create average copy. You know, AI can do that for you. And your job now doesn't become the writer of that basic copy. Your job becomes being a skilled editor, you know, somebody that knows how to create a great story and how to tell that within the context of your industry.

Let's see. Whatever happens though, we all need to consider investing in training our employees to ensure that they have the necessary skills to work effectively with AI. As with everything, the final solution will be about finding the right balance between AI, And human efforts.

Yep. I think you're absolutely spot on there. The right solution is going to be creating that right mix. So I think the AI is definitely something that we as sales and marketers should be aware of and not afraid of. So I think we're drawing to a close with that now, Daniel, thanks very much for your thoughts and your input. And I look forward to carrying on this conversation in the next couple of weeks.

No problem, Simon. It was a

pleasure. So I really do think that AI will be the next industrial revolution. You know, we've seen in the past how society has used tools to simplify and automate repetitive activities, and this really is nothing different. You know, most writers or designers take inspiration from content and images that already exist. Very little of what we see or read is absolutely new. The difference between an average writer though and a great one is that the great writer can take that initial idea and turn it into something way more. You know, they put something unique of themselves into it. And that's what AI allows us to do more of. You know, we don't need to spend time doing the basic stuff. Our effort can be spent creating masterpieces. So if you're having problems identifying what AI tools and practices would work best for you, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to demodia. com to hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your sales and marketing, giving you an easier way to grow your business. So for your action today, it's simple. I want you to go away and test out at least one of the tools that we've discussed today. You know, I don't expect you to create a perfect piece of polished content. What I want you to do is to just become familiar with the tools that are out there so that you can start to consider what they could be used for in your business and start to understand when's the right time to introduce them. It's going to be scary to hand over the reins and let somebody or something else do the things that you've done for years by yourself. But as history has proven, change is inevitable, so we can't stop it. And those that adapt the fastest will be the ones that grow the fastest. That's all for today's episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast. Thanks for listening and don't forget to bookmark and share the podcast and leave your comments in the feedback. We love to hear what you want to know about and how we're helping your business succeed. See you next time.