Brands need to start embracing a human + machine approach to marketing and sales. It’s the only way to thrive in the coming age of AI.
That’s the key insight from Leo Tenenblat, Chief Product Officer at Drift, in his talk at the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON) 2021.
Tenenblat argues that to sell better today, you must let machines do what they do best—and allow humans to be more human.
He says there are three big ways to do that…
PS - Have you heard about the world’s leading marketing AI conference? Click here to see the incredible programming planned for MAICON 2022.
1. Be customer-centric vs. business-centric
It doesn’t matter if you’re B2B or B2C, customers expect the same treatment.
They demand your website/service be always available. They expect a personalized experience. And the vast majority (75%) prefer self-service or remote interactions.
Too many companies fail to acknowledge this truth. They focus on how AI can make their business better, rather than asking the question: “How can AI make my customer’s experience better?”
2. Conversational AI is the perfect gateway into smarter personalization
Conversational AI, in the form of smart chatbots and intelligent agents, allows brands to offer a personalized experience at scale.
Conversational AI collects data about consumers in a non-intrusive way. That data tells you more about their preferences, which in turn allows the AI to offer greater personalization. Over time, conversational AI learns from more and more data, so it can improve its responses—delighting customers further.
That makes conversational the perfect gateway to smarter personalization company-wide—and it scales as you get better and better at personalization.
3. Humans need to evolve with AI
As AI is increasingly adopted in companies, human marketers need to evolve. AI frees up humans to work on higher-value tasks. Marketers will increasingly need to be proficient in training AI systems and doing the things that these systems aren’t good at.
In the case of conversational AI, Tenenblat says marketers are already becoming AI Conversation Designers. Humans understand consumer questions, then pair them with answers to start training AI systems.
The machine takes what the human has done, and improves and scales it. The human takes what the machine does, and learns from it to train the machine even further.
It’s a different role from the one most marketers have today, requiring a different set of skills—and marketers will need to adapt accordingly to this new reality.
PS - Have you heard about the world’s leading marketing AI conference? Click here to see the incredible programming planned for MAICON 2022.
Mike Kaput
As Chief Content Officer, Mike Kaput uses content marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing technology to grow and scale traffic, leads, and revenue for Marketing AI Institute. Mike is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business (Matt Holt Books, 2022). See Mike's full bio.