The job of a marketer involves a wide range of tasks, from writing advertising copy and press releases to forecasting customer demand and formulating strategies. Modern electronic assistants with artificial intelligence make it possible to simplify the work of the marketing department and shift some of the tasks to them. Chatbots can automate processes, create texts, work with visuals, collect and analyse information.
But it is not enough to just make a quick enquiry and go on holiday. We need to learn how to interact with AI to make it a real assistant. In fact, a chatbot is another member of the department. You don’t have to pay it a salary or pay taxes on it, but you are responsible for training it.
Advantages of AI How to use modern technologies at work
Here are some tools that the marketing department can use.
Content plan
The artificial neural network can suggest ideas for blog posts and social networks. To do this, the chatbot must be given a clear request. For example, a hotel in Moscow wants to attract guests not only through direct sales and stories about rooms and services. So it publishes ideas on its social networks about how to spend time in Moscow other than walking around Red Square and the Arbat. The artificial neural network will suggest where to go, what to see, what excursions to take, how to spend the weekend, and so on.
You can also ask the chatbot what engaging mechanics might be of interest to subscribers of travel companies and hotels. The AI will create interactive polls, quizzes and games to engage the audience and keep their attention. The SMM department only needs to edit and publish the engaging content.
Texts for articles, features, news, releases, advertising
The AI network can now produce text at the level of a novice stock market copywriter. But it can also be used to create an article outline to hand over to an experienced writer. If you need simple and short material, a chatbot will do the job. Of course, you still need an editor to finalise the text, but it is still faster than writing each text manually, especially if there is no full-time copywriter in the department.
The AI will be able to personalise the text of advertising campaigns based on data about customer preferences and behaviour. AI will also take care of collecting this information.
Thanks to the impressive database, the AI will free the marketer from updating descriptions of hotel rooms, tours, guides, hotel services and other advertising copy.
ChatGPT is trained to generate headers and meta descriptions for HTML pages. The neural network will output search terms, sort and distribute them by query. This will help speed up the work of the SEO department. For example, employees of a travel company will no longer have to spend hundreds of hours filling in description tags for each page of all the hotels in Turkey that are available to customers. Or they can ask the chatbot what words are most often found in searches for ‘hotel in the Moscow region’. ChatGPT’s most popular queries included: spa hotel, resort, family holiday, business trip, pool, parking. These words will help not only SEO specialists, but also targetologists to create relevant themes.
Data analysis
A marketer can use AI to analyse data about advertising campaigns and determine the most effective channels, platforms and advertising strategies.
ChatGPT can generate and test marketing hypotheses and ideas. For example, AI will generate multiple variations of titles, copy and design for A/B testing to determine the most effective ways to attract customers. And the marketer will implement and put them into practice.
The artificial intelligence will also analyse the market and compile a list of competitors. AI will study the information field and provide a list of bloggers and journalists who often write about the right topic. These can then be targeted for advertising integration in the future.
Gathering information
AI can monitor new trends in the hotel industry, collect reviews on the website and forums, search engines and social networks. The marketer will quickly understand the strengths and weaknesses of the company based on the information received and suggest marketing strategies.
For example, AI will tell you why consumers love or hate your competitors in their reviews. This allows you to create a unique offer for your customers and stand out from the crowd of similar services.
Routine automation
In 2021, Hubspot conducted a study and found that the average marketer spends a third of their working time on repetitive tasks: writing and sending letters, drafting technical specifications for subordinates and other departments, writing reports, systematising data. AI can allow you to do less routine work and focus on creative ideas, and even help solve a problem - it is quite capable of replacing colleagues in brainstorming.
If you train AI on frequently asked questions from tourists, the chatbot will be able to provide quick and clear answers on the website or social networks, for example about the weather at a certain time of year, the availability of kettles in rooms, the opening hours of the hotel restaurant, the rules for using the gym or pool. This will improve the quality of service provided, as the customer will get an immediate answer instead of waiting for a specialist to be free to tell you how warm the sea is in Greece in October. The bot will be able to be online 24 hours a day and communicate in different languages.
Artificial intelligence can automate the routine tasks of other departments in the hotel industry: processing inquiries, booking rooms, sending confirmations and reviews to customers. In addition, the neural network is able to collect information about guests to better identify their needs in the future: gender, age, geographical location, type of services ordered.
Predicting customer demand and behaviour
A marketer can use artificial neural networks to analyse data to predict demand for rooms, tours or other services at different times of the year to determine optimal pricing strategies. For example, to find out which excursions are more popular in Moscow in winter, which cottages are in high demand in Karelia in summer, how often tourists buy charter flights.
Artificial intelligence will analyse customer behaviour and preferences. For example, it will tell you which accommodation options are most interesting to tourists, what they expect from the service. AI can segment customers by geography and tell you which services tourists from different cities use more often, including transfers, weekday and weekend accommodation, booking excursions, using conference rooms, buying online guides, etc. A marketer can use this data to predict demand for hotel services, highlighting the preferences of specific audiences that use certain offerings.
Working with images
AI can recognise and classify images and search for specific scenes and objects. This is useful for automating large numbers of visualisations, such as sorting or indexing photos or videos.
AI can also create unique images: pictures, illustrations, designs. This helps to work with advertising, websites and social networks, both English-speaking and Russian-speaking. Several free neural networks working with visualisations have already appeared in our country.
Finished images can be edited and improved without the use of third-party tools. AI can work with light and colour correction, cut images, remove unnecessary elements.
AI problems. How to solve them
Despite the huge benefits of artificial intelligence, it is still a new technology and you need to learn how to interact with it to get the result you want. You need to know what difficulties to expect so that AI-based services are not just a crutch that a disabled person relies on, but a fully-fledged universal ‘car’. Fortunately, they can all be overcome.
Unreliable information and fact-checking
Artificial neural networks can produce good material, but they can make a lot of mistakes. For example, providing unverified quotes, uploading outdated statistics or research. This will be difficult to detect without knowledge of the field. Chatbots, especially foreign ones, may not have full information about Russian culture and current Russian reality. Therefore, all information received from neural networks should be checked for reliability.
Fact-checking is an obligatory part of the work, especially in the process of creating texts. To do this, you need either a marketer who used to write articles, so he will notice a mistake, or a hired editor who will check the meaning and mistakes for the AI. At the same time, the AI can handle short text formats and work with information without outside help.
"Cheap" texts and editing
Chatbots can already replace copywriters at a rate of 300 rubles per article. However, this makes no sense: ChatGPT will write a text with a lot of unnecessary information, little sense, endless introductory constructions and repetitions. To solve this problem, you’ll either need the services of an editor or use AI as an assistant rather than an executor. In the first case, a professional will remove the excess, ask questions of the company’s representatives, add expertise and texture, and turn the blank into the necessary article.
In the second case, you should not rely entirely on the chatbot - it is better to use it as an auxiliary tool. For example, a marketer can save the time spent formulating a brief for a copywriter by asking a chatbot to structure an article on the desired topic and pass the result on to the writer.
Vague information and a clear task
Formulating a clear task is an important skill for a marketer when working with both neural networks and authors. Neither a copywriter nor a chatGPT can cope with a vague task such as ‘Write an article about the advantages of a holiday in Moscow’. It is necessary to specify what kind of advantages we are talking about: historical and cultural heritage, vibrant nightlife, ample shopping opportunities, a large number of parks, restaurants, excursions, etc.
You should also specify what you need to mention in the article, for example, a hotel chain that is conveniently located near the main attractions. It does not hurt to note the style of writing and the amount of material. This is the minimum requirement for both a copywriter and an AI.
Neural networks are able to recognise a request even if there are typos. However, the main key to success in working with AI is to have a clearly formulated task, which makes it clear why the text is needed, who will read it and what effect it should have.
Will AI replace marketing departments?
Simplifying work
The main advantage of neural networks is that they save time and make work easier. A marketer can send the right request to a chatbot and get a ready answer in a few seconds, instead of spending hours analysing a huge number of reviews, hotel and room information, details about attractions and customer needs. The main thing is to remember to formulate the request clearly and check the result.
AI is much faster and better at finding information than a human, but it is not yet as good at writing text. Without editing, they will look more like an expert’s personal blog on social networks than a full-blown press release for the top media. There will be no spelling mistakes in the neural network’s texts, but the logic of the narrative and the texture may be lame. There will be no spelling mistakes in the text of the neural network, but the logic of the narrative and the texture may not be there.
Which specialists will be needed?
The neural network will not replace the entire marketing department, at least not in the near future. Specialists will still be needed to formulate queries, verify and use the data received. For now, AI is a good tool, not a full replacement. The present and future of chatbots is the automation of routine tasks and the generation of creative ideas under human control.
Perhaps the neural network will replace inexperienced specialists or marketing assistants who are only trusted with running social networks and collecting information. AI can handle these tasks. At the same time, the number of experienced specialists and experts who can be entrusted with more global tasks will increase.
AI will not take away a marketer’s job, but it will allow them to generate and implement more ideas, communicate more, engage in non-standard tasks and spend less time on processes that can be entrusted to modern technologies. Cars did not replace people’s legs, but allowed them to move faster.
The emergence of new specialities
In Russia, there are already vacancies for specialists who can create, work with and train chatbots. Yandex, for example, recently announced a massive recruitment of AI trainers - editors who will train the neural network to distinguish good text from bad.
Travel companies may have employees who will create and train chatbots to communicate with customers, answering questions, sending letters, booking services and so on.
In addition, there will continue to be a need for specialists who can train entire marketing departments to simplify routine tasks. Editors who review and improve AI texts will still be relevant.
