How can marketers get up to speed on artificial intelligence?
Sure, you could Google the topic and read some articles, but there’s a big problem with that approach:
You might get the wrong information.
There’s so much hype around AI right now that everyone is publishing about it. But few have actually applied artificial intelligence to their businesses.
If you rely on subpar information, you’ll probably get subpar results when you try to understand and apply AI.
So we created a brief guide to help you get up to speed on AI the right way.
It’s based on our years of experience using AI in marketing.
It’ll walk you through what to learn, where to learn it and in what order to learn it. And we’ll keep it brief so you get only the most important links.
There are 3 sections to this post. We encourage you to skip to the topics you’re interested in:
- What Is Artificial Intelligence? Why Does It Matter?
- Common AI Misconceptions
- How to Start Using AI in Marketing and Business
1. What Is Artificial Intelligence? Why Does It Matter?
First, let’s get a high-level view of what AI is and why you should care about it. This post is a great place to start:
As you can see, artificial intelligence is a suite of technologies with different names and uses, like machine learning and natural language generation.
You’ll see AI terminology a lot, so use this post to learn what these words and phrases mean:
Once you understand basic AI terms, it’s good to understand why these technologies are so important.
This post is a great overview of what AI means for marketers:
Now, it’s time to understand AI’s full potential—and why it has everyone so excited.
This last post is a long but necessary read on how truly transformative AI can be.
Though we don’t agree with all the article’s conclusions, we haven’t found a better summary of AI’s potential:
- The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence (Wait But Why)
2. Common AI Misconceptions
Like we mentioned, there’s a ton of hype out there about AI.
This hype leads to inaccuracies and misconceptions about the technology.
These can be misleading to people learning about AI, and prevent them from truly understanding AI or applying it profitably to their businesses.
This next series of resources are ones that dispel big myths you might hear about AI.
First up, read this piece to understand common AI misconceptions:
Next, this post will help you understand some of the limitations of AI in marketing today:
Finally, you’ll want to understand three key points about AI to combat any hype you hear about it:
3. How to Start Using AI in Marketing and Business
Now that we’ve curbed some of the hype, let’s dive into the very real ways you can use AI in marketing and business.
To get your feet wet, take a look at these examples of how real brands use AI:
If you’re a marketing agency serving brands, you may also want to read this post:
Once you understand AI’s potential, it’s time to start experimenting with the technology.
To start, you need to ask yourself some big questions:
Expert advice also helps streamline AI implementation:
Finally, here are several ways to use AI for a variety of marketing functions starting today:
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.