Introduction

I'm doing marketing for over 20 years, actually. I do it for others, I do it for my own company, and it's a passion.

The Importance of Marketing Strategy

So I did play with everything in terms of marketing and what I realized when I opened in 2017 Spin Ideas, what actually is missing when it comes to marketing is actually the strategy. And everyone gets scared when they hear the word strategy and they say, we don't need that actually. We need social media, we need content, we need things like that.

Understanding the Fundamentals

But what people don't understand is that if you don't have the basics, And that means you don't know who you are as a company, what makes you different. If you don't know who your audience is and what exactly triggers them, and you don't know where you're heading, everything is futile, actually.

It's a waste of energy and money, and you just end up competing and paying more money on Google Ads or Facebook Ads or LinkedIn or whatever you're doing. And this is why we end up paying huge amounts on advertising instead of actually going back to the basics. So that's actually the strategy, understanding what makes you different instead of actually going and copying what your competitor is doing just to show up in the environment.

The Significance of Basics in Marketing

So I decided to focus all my energy into that because I actually did a market research and went and spoke with a lot of companies and startups. And what I realized is what we are missing are the basics.

And once that you have the basics in place, you can use amazing technology to make your life easier and to create everything. And yeah, this is where I ended up, but played a little bit with everything.

The Role of Strategy in Marketing AI

And so something that really stuck with me from what you were saying is you're talking about strategy and not just copying everything on the Internet. Now, of course, when we start to look at generative AI, we are training it on large data sets that it's coming to a predictive language model of it's trying to predict which word should come next.

How do you see sort of the role of strategy in using LOMs or using ChatGPT to generate strategy versus where it maybe should or should not be assisting you when you're looking at it for use in a marketing workflow?

Adapting Market Trends to Company Personality

So there are several ways, but the main, of course, you need to know what is happening. on the market, right? What are the trends? What is happening?

But in the same time, you need to adapt that to your own, let's say, personality, company personality. So this is why what I said before, doing your basics and knowing what we do, for example, for a company, we define the DNA of the company.

Defining Company DNA and Keywords

What is the World Bank? Does anyone know what that means? the World Bank.

Basically, we define the keywords that represent the company. How do you want to be perceived? What words actually identify and really translate what the company does?

When you go on the website or on a social media of a company, you want to understand who that company is. What's the personality if you are making an analogy with the person? What's the personality of that company? What makes that company special?

What makes that more human, that company more human that you want to interact with them, right? What are the values of that company? So we do focus quite a lot on creating that and you create the word bank, those keywords that represent the company and help you connect with that company to understand what the company does.

Combining Data with Company Identity

And once that you have this data, the word bank, let's call it, and you have the massive data, you need to combine them and then you don't have problems. That makes it personalize it.

The Limitations of Generative AI in Strategy Creation

So I can deduce from that it's very rare for you to just go into, dear ChatGPT, please draft me a marketing strategy on the following things. If you don't actually give it sort of its framework, if you don't kind of train it, giving it a selection of words that it should be choosing from and it should be prioritizing from. So it's unlikely that it can just magically generate all the content you need and read your mind. It's impossible, in my perspective.

Actually, I have to admit, I never said create a full strategy. No, I never did that. But I do use it, and we do use it also for some clients on specific topics.

So we want to create an article, for example, and we... Or let's take... As an example, this event, for example, what we could do, we create the presentation of the event, like the description of the event. What can you expect? What is happening here?

Personalization vs. Automation in Content Creation

And how can you use that? Because you already use the keywords that identify your company. You use what is happening here. It's very personalized and human written. That's quite important to make sure you make that differentiation, especially with the latest Google updates. A lot of companies were hit by that.

What we can do afterwards, take that content, put it in JGPT, and say, I want, based on this one, create a newsletter or create some social media posts. And then you have that in five minutes, not even. You go over them, you make sure they are still in line, and you can use that.

So you start from something created from you, or you can actually, when you put the prompts, you make sure you have your keywords there, the one that identify your company. You create the text. But again, it's very important to go again over it and make sure we don't... JGPT tends to create text using very fancy words words that no one is using and if you start copy pasting everything then of course you're losing the personality or everything sounds the same and it's No one is connecting. Actually, if you really read that text, it makes no sense.

Content Generation and SEO in Digital Marketing

And so then getting into, of course, a lot of people are using this to expand their ability to get content just out there on the internet. I mean, we all know from SEO, it's like the more content you have, ideally, it's going to drive more traffic and make it more discoverable.

How are you finding that in the industry? Is that true? Is that content actually helping or... Is it maybe creating a bit more of a mess?

The Issue with SEO-Driven Content

I think I had so many fights with SEO companies. I have a big issue with the SEO companies that create content just to use the keywords. And here I want to make a differentiation between keywords for SEO reasons and the ones that I mentioned before for the World Bank.

1A lot of the companies, at least some of the ones I worked, they just create the same text, they say the same thing in three paragraphs, basically not saying anything, just rephrasing. And you're not providing any content, any value to the reader. So even if you direct traffic to your website, the reader in two seconds won't gonna leave because why would they stay there?

So from my point of view, what's the end goal? Just to get traffic to your website? or to get your client into a journey into a funnel. So depending where do you want to get you need to know how to create your content.

And if the purpose is just to get traffic to your website that let's be honest, no one wants only that because makes no sense. Don't do that. It's as simple as that.

1So the purpose for you as a company is to sell something to provide content to educate them or mostly this one right to take them into your funnel. So then you need to create content that makes sense for them. Of course you use the SEO, use the keywords, but it needs to make sense. And if you have the same content over and over and over again, what's the point?

Future of Content and Noise in the Market

And so with that in mind, you know, what do you think the future of sort of this content awareness is going to be? Is it just going to be more and more and more copious amounts making noise? Or do you think we are going to get into a period of refinement of some sort of which we realize, okay, yeah, it's great that we've made all this noise and maybe it's discoverable, maybe it's not, but we'll... Will we be able to cut through the noise, or do you think there's going to be too much of it in a way?

Well, it is too much at this point, actually. It is way too much. The Google update actually penalized a lot of websites that were created with AI. So all the content created there was basically AI, and it's a big scandal.

I presume everyone knows about that. So there's the way of maintaining that. It's very debatable. I'm not going to go there.

However, if you really want content that is written, I think you do need to put some human effort into it. And this is why you still have editors, copywriters. And it was a big discussion that copywriters creators are going to disappear.

That's not true. They will still be there, but they need to adapt. So AI is a tool. Like we heard, use it.

It makes your life easier. Why shouldn't you? But you do need to know how to program it to sound like your company, and you still need to go and oversee it. And you still need to do your homework, the basics before, so you know what to fit into that process.

So one doesn't replace the other. It's purely as a tool when we got the computers and we start using the computers to write or to present something. So one doesn't eliminate, but we need to keep in mind it's not replacing. It's just helping you making it smoother and easier.

Practical Applications of AI in Marketing Workflows

And so what was one of the first ways, like you mentioned, of course, obviously generating content is, but in your own workflow, what was one of the aha moments you had of which you used it to help you with a task that maybe, again, you were doing more manually before? Was there like a clear moment where you're like, okay, yeah, now I can see why this is really helpful?

AI Assistance in Large Project Documentation

For bigger projects, for example, when you apply, we did apply for some funding for different European projects. and you have to write huge amounts of paperwork. That definitely, that was the aha moment.

But once that you have, that again didn't replace the hard work because you do need to come up with the idea. You do need to understand the basics. You do need to understand what, why would they finance my project? So you do need to do the work and then you use the tools to write it properly and to have all the content.

We had that with an EU grant because I was doing an EU grant as well. We were writing it out a bit and I'm just like, oh, I'm going to be optimistic. Could you please write this section on like research? And yeah, it just starts, of course, because it's trade on large data sets.

It started pulling in random people who were now in the company of Mindstone that were doing research projects that had nothing to do with the business because it was the most plausible sounding thing is the answer to the question. And I think that that really echoes the point of which, yeah, it can help us kind of flush things out in the right tone of voice and find maybe different ways to say it or to make that text more accessible. But yeah, it is a tool at the end of the day.

The Necessity of Human Oversight in AI Tools

It's not a hammer and everything's a nail. You have to figure out sort of where is it going to be applied best and not see it necessarily as a complete shortcut for thinking, it sounds like. That doesn't work.

And it's also good for research, as you said, because, yeah, you don't have time to do huge research. So that's a great tool to just get the summary of everything that is out there. So definitely use it, but use it smartly.

Interactive Q&A Session on Marketing and AI

Does anybody have some questions or something they're interested in in terms of marketing and AI? If not.

For me, what usually works is I don't ask him to do something for me. I ask him to question if I did all the things I should have done. That's also a good way to use it, yeah.

Especially if you work alone or you're not a professional in marketing, then it's kind of a rubber duck. I can show you I've done all the steps. Like a sounding board. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I like that.

The Future of Skills in Marketing with AI

So which skills do you think will be left? We spoke before and I know you're into this topic more than I am for longer.

I don't know. I have no clue. Maybe you know. I don't know yet. I honestly don't know.

Yeah, I mean, it's, I think something that you said really does echo true in terms of like what skills will be left is it is strategy, you know, strategy, perspective, giving an interpretation to something like it is good at generating content and helping with some of those mundane tasks. But, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of when we look at like, I won't even bring up the question, what is creativity? Because that would be a whole other talk. But In terms of that framing, I can imagine that we will still need to have certain perspectives on what we think is creative or what that context is for that creative element. True.

And you're not eliminating humans and you're not eliminating creativity. It's, again, a tool to help you go over it and fine-tune it. Absolutely.

Adoption of AI in Marketing Practices

Other questions? Yes, and I was just curious because of your expertise in marketing also, do you see a lot of people who are already embracing these systems? AI, you mean? Yeah. Yes? Yeah.

I think everyone that I know is using it in one way or another. Okay. Is it like one specific platform? Is it usually ChatGPT or have you heard of others? Usually ChatGPT, some other ones, but ChatGPT, everyone is using it. I mean, as we saw also here, everyone seems to be using it here. Who has not? Well, no, I'm not going to single people out. As I started to go there, I was like, ooh, no, no, no, no, no. Let's not ask that question. Retract that back on human error.

Who is using Claude? Yeah, that isn't a much friendlier question. Thank you. Who is using Claude? Two, three.

So I think that is also something that's really important for education. It's a great question to bring up as well, is there are a lot of models out there beyond ChatGPT, and more and more we're seeing that different models are better for different things because of the way they're willing to follow instructions, follow instructions used lightly as a phrase there. But I think that is something that, again, the more that we have these conversations and have these forums to understand that, okay, ChatGPT kind of changed the way we look at things because all of a sudden these LOMs, which already existed prior to ChatGPT opening up, became accessible through that.

And I can imagine as well for marketing as well, that must have been one of the first fields that started to embrace these because it is a content generation field as well. Makes your life easier. Yeah. And it disrupts a lot of different processes and flows and things like that. And shortens the delivery time as well. Absolutely.

Conclusion

I think we're running a little short on time. Question. I think we have time for one more question.

So on the marketing side, it's all about communicating the value that the company can provide. What happens on the, like, do you see already a change on the other side in which VLMs help the customer figure out what it is like to read through the amount, the courteous amount of information that is out there? And what does that do to the marketing step? The other way around, when you're doing the research, you synthesize everything. So instead of spending so much time researching and seeing, you do it in a shorter period. So you're gaining time that you can utilize doing something else. So it works both ways, actually. And then what would that do to the marketing step? You have access to data quicker, and you can improve, and you can optimize, and you can just grow everything quicker. So, yeah. Makes sense.

All right. Thank you so much then. Thank you.