Generative AI in Marketing: Jump in the Sandbox

In today's ever-evolving marketing landscape, the integration of generative AI is proving to be a game-changer. Our team here at ServiceNow is deep in the trenches of what and how we can leverage GenAI to accelerate our go-to-market, help our partners market more efficiently, and leverage AI to be more strategic in allocating our own resources internally. Its transformative impact is palpable, revolutionizing how businesses approach personalization, content creation, and audience engagement. Rather than overshadowing human expertise, AI has the potential to augment and elevate the work of marketing experts in remarkable ways.  

In deep planning conversations with many partners, we hear them talk about pain points surrounding resource allocation, budgeting, and utilizing marketing capabilities. In the pursuit of cost-cutting, partners often either maintain a small marketing department or forgo one entirely. With budgets and resources becoming ever scarcer, marketing is often the first department to get hit with reductions, impacting our partner’s digital marketing capabilities, output, and bandwidth. So, you may ask, how can leveraging Generative AI help our partners solve some of their most pressing internal issues while not sacrificing accelerating pipeline growth? 

While AI excels at generating content based on patterns and data, marketing experts bring an indispensable depth of understanding and contextual insights. Together, they form a powerful combination: marketers create the foundation with anchor content infused with their deep knowledge and expertise, and AI can amplify their efforts to achieve unparalleled scale and efficiency in content creation.  

Imagine this: within minutes, AI can transform foundational content into a myriad of derivatives, spanning social media posts, translated versions, and promotional materials. This rapid content creation accelerates time-to-market, significantly reduces costs, and enables small marketing departments to increase their output, empowering businesses to stay agile in today's competitive landscape. 

The benefits continue beyond there. Organizations can foster deeper collaboration and drive true personalization by extending AI-generated content capabilities to partner ecosystems. Partners inject their unique perspectives and branding into the mix, enriching the content and resonating more authentically with their audiences in a very surgical, curated way, tailored with messaging and value propositions to precisely target the buyers and the decision makers within the customers that they need to reach.   

Additionally, as a global company that works with partners worldwide, AI can quickly and efficiently translate and localize our marketing content accurately. The task of connecting with audiences of different cultures and languages is not only crucial but one that many small marketing departments find impossible. What was once a 6-to-8-week process of adapting marketing content to resonate with global audiences can now be done in minutes with Generative AI, with some AI platforms being able to reach accuracy rates of 97% according to researcher Yu Yuxia’s journal Application of Translation Technology Based on AI in Translation Teaching. With the aid of marketing experts to apply their global understanding of cultural differences and nuances, AI as a translation tool can save marketing departments immense time and budget. 

The collaboration between marketing experts and generative AI represents the perfect marriage of human expertise and technological innovation. It's a partnership that unlocks limitless possibilities in marketing, enabling businesses to deliver impactful content and foster meaningful connections with their audience. 

As we navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape, one thing is clear—the future belongs to those who embrace AI's power while harnessing human expertise's invaluable contributions. Together, they form a force for innovation, redefining what's possible in marketing and driving toward a future full of exciting possibilities. 

With all the incredible use cases for generative AI in marketing, too many people are slow to realize these benefits. That’s why the best advice I can give you is to get in the sandbox with AI and play around. Learning the ins and outs of any platform will give you a better understanding of its uses, eliminate some of the misconceptions you may have about AI, and help build the essential skills needed to utilize this incredible tool. 

Personally, I’ve had a ton of fun with AI platforms. If you’ve ever taken a Zoom meeting with me, you will have seen the dream San Francisco office background that I built using AI tools. Beyond coming up with a perfect background I use AI to help summarize articles, consolidate meeting notes to ensure we have the right action plans, bring new perspectives to problems I’m stuck with, and even come up with creative recipes to cook at home. These projects have helped me learn to provide more effective prompting, understanding AI communication processes, and improving my AI literacy.  

So, what are you waiting for? Get ahead of the competition and experiment with the ways AI can support your personal and professional life. I would love to hear about the ways you are using AI in your own life! I learn a new use case for it every day!