INBOX INSIGHTS, May 29, 2024: Do Customers Want AI, Data is Everywhere - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: Do Customers Want AI, Data is Everywhere (5/29) :: View in browser

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Do Your Customers Want You to Use AI?

You’ve probably heard people say, “AI will do this, those skills are going to be irrelevant.”

Last weekend, I had a conversation with a good friend, and she was telling me that her guests were praising the food she had cooked. They talked about the quality and the taste. She let them know that instead of purchasing the products at a well-known, allegedly organic grocery store, she opted to purchase her goods from a small business where things were hand-cut and hand made.

This isn’t a new thing – the opposition between small business and big chain stores. But it’s even more important now, especially with generative AI.

Those same people who tell you that AI can do the jobs that were once done by humans are right. Those jobs can be done by AI. That doesn’t mean that people want it or will buy it.

There are industries, like marketing, where using AI makes a lot of sense. Process development and optimization with AI mean that you can do more meaningful work. You can spend your time building relationships and creating engaging content. You can dig deep and get to know your audience.

So this begs the (now) age-old question: will AI make it better?

In some cases, yes. It will optimize what you’re doing. We were talking with an educational institution earlier this week and there were a lot of opportunities to use AI. It would enhance data organization and search for their members, allowing them to more quickly access much-needed resources.

But in the case of a butcher shop, AI might enhance ordering, but not the product. In 2017, it was publicly announced that Amazon had acquired Whole Foods. The original mission and vision of Whole Foods was to fit in and become part of the community. Each store was unique to its neighborhood, and they carried products local to those regions. Today, with Amazon at the helm, there is less customization and more mass production. What the consumer sees is that quality has gone down, and there is nothing unique or special about the items being carried anymore.

In 2024, there have been 25 product recalls, according to the USDA. There are about 70 recalls on average per year. When you look at where the recalls came from, they aren’t generally small businesses. They are the companies with large factories that are mass producing products. They rely on process automation and AI to execute the majority of their businesses.

What does that mean for you? Among all the conversations about AI taking over, there’s still a need for non-AI skills. There’s still a demand for handcrafted products. That includes what you create as a marketer.

Talk to your audience. Find out what they value. It comes back to understanding your Ideal Customer Profile, which ironically, you can create using AI. But, regardless of how you arrive at your results, understanding your customer will drive whether and where you integrate AI into your business.

Before you bring AI into everything, make sure you know who your customer is and what they value. Use this insight as your guideline for where the use of AI makes sense and where it could hurt your customers.

Are you tuned in to what your customers want? Reach out and tell me, or come join the conversation in our Free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris explore the human side of adopting Agile and prompt engineering. Learn how to build trust within your team and address anxieties surrounding AI and automation. Discover strategies for fostering open communication and encouraging ownership among team members, even those hesitant about adopting new technologies. Finally, understand how aligning individual purposes with company goals is crucial for successful implementation of Agile and AI initiatives.

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

Last time on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Livestream, we walked through analytics for sales. Catch the episode replay here!

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In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s revisit an important reminder that resurfaced during my travels this month.

What is data? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.”

To be clear, data is more than just numbers. It’s anything that can be used for reference and analysis.

That pile of sticky notes on your CEO’s desk? Disorderly though it may be, that’s data. The whiteboard in the conference room filled with scrawled annotations and arrows everywhere? That’s data. The YouTube video you just watched? That’s data too.

In the era of generative AI and large multimodal models, everything and anything is data. At the recent workshop I did in Los Angeles, I pointed my phone at a street in the city and asked GPT-4-Omni to identify the major architectural styles. It did so quite capably, and returned a summarized pile of data about the neighborhood:

If you were an architect or an engineer building in this neighborhood, it’d be helpful to send someone to the neighborhood and perform this analysis to know what kinds of designs might go well with the remainder of the block.

Photos. Video. Audio. Text. Wherever you are, whatever devices you have, you’re surrounded by data, and with today’s AI models, much of it is usable in some way. Depending on your purpose, you probably have all the data you need – if you recognize that the data is sitting in front of you, like these client notes from 2016:

That pile of notes you took at that event a while back? Feed it to a multimodal model and ask it to recognize and transcribe your handwriting. Data that was locked away is suddenly available to you again.

You likely have all the data you need. You just need to remember that you have it, and unlock it with the power of AI.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

Are you a member of our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 3000+ like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today. Members also receive sneak peeks of upcoming data, credible third-party studies we find and like, and much more. Join today!

Imagine a world where your marketing strategies are supercharged by the most cutting-edge technology available – Generative AI. Generative AI has the potential to save you incredible amounts of time and money, and you have the opportunity to be at the forefront. Get up to speed on using generative AI in your business in a thoughtful way with our new offering, Generative AI for Marketers, which comes in two flavors, workshops and a course.

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