AI isn’t new, and Gina von Esmarch, CEO, Adesso Associates shares her views on how easy it is for marketers to flip the switch and focus on for gaining marketing traction and creating customer impact success.

Gina von Esmarch, CEO, Adesso Associates, is no stranger to tech, having spent the majority of her career in B2B marketing for enterprise tech firms. “A lot of tech can be very difficult to the general consumer to grasp, but if you put technology into something that consumers already understand, like sports, you can change up the story and increase engagement.”. “A lot of tech can be very boring to the general consumer, but if you put technology into something that consumers already understand, like sports, you can change up the story.”

Whether it’s new acquisitions or customer retention, Gina has done it all with organizations of all sizes. “With enterprises, you can do it at scale, in a very automated fashion with these emerging technologies. Whether it’s predictive analytics, machine learning or real-time AI, we don’t think about it as much as we used to.”

Adopting new marketing technologies is nothing new for marketers, regardless of industries, company sizes or target audiences. And in Gina’s view, while there will always be some risks in taking a leap, marketing has to weigh out these risks and not at the expense of hurting their brands. In exploring AI, Gina suggested several top domains where marketers can look into – embedded in products, customer engagement, post completion, knowledge assistance, automation in IT, content marketing (including localization), and product design and simulations.

AI for the uninitiated

Photo by Alex Knight

For companies looking into AI or generative AI, Gina believes that larger enterprises have the capability to impact how smaller businesses can adopt and use AI responsibly. With the scale and resources available, enterprises can work to distill these learnings down in a way that can be adopted by smaller businesses that may not be able to test and learn at scale. “AI can elevate marketing, in its current state and in the future,” added Gina. The rapid adoption of AI for enterprises, is likened to early days of the industrial revolution. “It’s similar to when computers were coming out. People were suddenly afraid of losing their jobs. So the same thing now, it just continues to happen, it’s not anything new, but it’s the disruptive trend that kind of creates anxiety.”

The anxiety about AI goes beyond job losses. With AI scams on the rise, consumers’ trust is shaken, which also opens up an opportunity for businesses to address this directly with their customers. Gina suggested that taking a responsible approach to AI can also help build credibility with consumers.

One way of doing so, is to ensure that consumers are fully aware that generative AI is in play – for example, creating AI-generated copy or assets at scale with a good cadence. One such technology company that Gina was working with, included watermarks on assets that are AI-generated. While businesses may have to pay a price to remove such watermarks, Gina thought that this was a way for customers to identify what is real and what isn’t.

“Nobody is trying to dupe anybody. If you trust in a company, you also want to trust in their ethos, when it comes down to their AI, how it’s generated and how it’s utilized, and how AI works with your data. How do you trust a company that has been bad with their data or AI?” By labeling what is AI-generated for customer engagement, this adds a level of transparency and authenticity to the customer experience.

Delivering a connected, authentic CX with AI

Technology, after all, is just a vehicle to connect brands to customers. According to Gina, clear communication is a core element of an authentic customer experience. Even if it is developed and delivered via AI, the messaging has to be concise and clear. “Clear is kind. If you communicate your principle clearly, your audience will not struggle to understand you. With AI, if you can clearly determine that for your audience, then I think it would be a positive experience.”

Part of building out a successful customer experience is understanding how to communicate value propositions throughout the teams – this includes marketing to frontliner such as sales and customer service. Gina recommended looking diagnostically at the different parts of what makes for a good customer experience, starting with data, looking at market movements, and cross-sharing these findings with the relevant stakeholders to align on the bigger picture.

“ChatGPT is the new shiny object that has captivated people, and opened the door for bigger data conversations, and in that you can start to talk about the build.”

Getting good learnings, and not just the tools

Photo by Anete Lusina

While there isn’t a clear definition of “how many tools are the right set” for a martech stack, Gina shared that a good gauge may be around eight to fifteen tools, but it all depends on the customer journey that marketers are looking to craft. Switching from tool to tool without providing ample time for maturity and familiarity can be detrimental to the marketing organization and its goals.

“You’ve got to see best practices, assess the tools, and talk to different lines of businesses within the company to see what they think. Technology can become obsolete quickly, and soon run into its end-of-life support. So the practitioner, whether it’s the go-to-market person, or CMO, must figure out how to factor these elements into consideration.”

Besides speaking to internal customers, she recommends anyone involved in building out the customer experience piece to undertake customer service roles, or working with the public. This can help marketers understand how they want to be treated as customers.