Marketing Dojo #70: 🤖 Bot-tomless Potential🚀
New use-cases for AI chatbots, the slow content era begins, marketing's role across customer sizes and more.
Hello and welcome to the 70th issue of the Marketing Dojo!
Today is World Emoji Day 🌍🎉. Emojis are undoubtedly among the most successful Japanese exports, with over 10 billion emojis exchanged daily 😲.
17th July is the date that features Apple's original iCal emoji 📅 and hence was chosen to celebrate World Emoji Day. Interesting, right? 🤔
Anyway, here's what we will cover in today's edition:
📊 Gartner’s AI opportunity radar
✍️ Not writing for the algorithm
🔍 Understanding friction
🦓 A zoo slide for marketing strategy
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With that, let's dive right in!
Bot-tom Line: Spectrum of Use Cases for AI-ChatBots.
Generative AI chatbots, powered by large language models (LLMs), offer substantial improvements over traditional rule-based chatbots. They can engage in more human-like, contextually relevant dialogues, understand and respond to nuanced and multi-faceted questions, and, more importantly, create personalized customer experiences.
The early experiments come with risks. For instance, Air Canada's chatbot offered customers incorrect offers, leading to a legal case and an out-of-court settlement.
AI chatbots also have use cases beyond customer-facing interactions. For example, Shopify's AI assistant supports its merchants, and Target's AI assistant aims to improve the productivity of its retail staff. These AI chatbots assist partners or employees rather than end customers.
Gartner's AI Opportunity Radar provides a structured approach to AI adoption, helping organizations map out use cases and assess associated risks.
AI adoption for an improved customer experience isn't limited to just customer-facing chatbots. As Gartner's AI Opportunity Radar indicates, there is potential to develop a range of AI use cases depending on your organization's focus—productivity, cautious AI adoption for customer interactions, or fully embracing AI.
The Case For Slowing Down.
Here's a hypothesis: The marketing industry is entering its slow content era.
The interview "What Happened When British GQ Stopped Trying to 'Feed the Algorithm'" offers a refreshing look at content creation from British GQ's strategy leader. For a while, GQ participated in the same rat race as everyone else in the publication industry:
Producing lots of short-form news
Churning out quick fashion updates
Attracting audiences who came for one trending piece and left without engaging further
High churn and constant re-recruitment of audiences
Creating content is a costly and time-consuming process. By slowing down, GQ pursued an alternative strategy.
The results: While GQ's active audience size has shrunk by 25% over the past couple of years, its decline is less than that of its main competitors. Moreover, the average number of minutes spent per person is the highest in this category.
Constantly feeding the algorithm with short news cycles is exhausting. The rise of Large Language Models has only accelerated the demand for fast content. However, I suspect many brands and publishers will follow British GQ's lead and step off the hamster wheel to enjoy the benefits of slow content.
Podcast Recommendation: Friction 101.
What will help your business grow? A kick-ass promotion? An intriguing website? Or a mind-blowing product?
The truth is that even the best products with great marketing often don't achieve the success they deserve.
One reason? They ignore the importance of friction.
In The Hidden Brain's latest podcast, "The Obstacles You Don't See," psychologist Shankar Vedantam and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management professor Loran Nordgren discuss the role of friction in customer growth.
Nordgren explains that there are four types of friction:
The Path of Least Resistance: Humans naturally gravitate toward options that require the least effort. Even small obstacles can significantly impact someone's likelihood of adopting a new idea.
Inertia: People prefer what is familiar, even if a new option is objectively better. The more significant the change, the stronger the inertia.
Emotional Friction: Even when people are motivated to try something new, they may be held back by fear, anxiety, or other negative emotions.
Reactance: People have a fundamental need for autonomy and resist change that feels like a restriction on their freedom. When people feel pressured to change, they often push back, even if it is in their best interest. Remember the debate around COVID-19 vaccines?
The episode discusses real-world examples of dealing with each friction type, ranging from the University of Chicago's application process to Tinder's user experience design.
Identifying and eliminating friction is crucial for driving your company's growth or gaining acceptance for your ideas at work.
This episode is one of the most interesting and information-dense conversations of recent times. You're sure to find insights that hit close to home.
A Zookeeper’s Guide To Customer Acquisition.
There are all kinds of customers—big, small, and varying in number. Based on this information, the marketing team’s role and setup will differ wildly.
In one of my roles, we often referred to the “zoo slide” framework.
This zoo slide clarifies the kind of customer you are after and the role that the marketing team can play in acquisition.
If the customers you are chasing are elephants -
They are big customers who come with a big ticket size per transaction.
A handful of these customers will ensure your company remains profitable
Typically have a long, complex sales cycle with key account management support from the sales team.
The marketing team is likely to focus its attention on Account-based marketing.
Outbound > Inbound
If the customers you are chasing are gazelles -
These are many in number, nimble & agile
Unprofitable if managed through a key account strategy due to low ticket size
Customer acquisition requires a marketing-led full funnel experience & a robust self-serve option (e.g. E-commerce)
Inbound > Outbound
So, are your customers an elephant or a gazelle?
Short Stuff:
Google dropped the idea of acquiring Hubspot. (The biggest deal of 2024 that was not to be)
Amazon expands ad offerings to non-Amazon sellers. (A 30th birthday gift from Amazon).
X’s active user growth stalls. (Where’s the surprise).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this week’s newsletter or found something interesting, please give me a like ❤️ or drop a comment🗨️. Your support helps drive the newsletter's discoverability.
Once again, thank you for your time. See you in your inbox next Wednesday.
Regards,
Garima Mamgain
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