February 26, 2024

Generative AI is taming the complexity of modern marketing

Julia Parker

Marketing complexity is at an all time high. Customers frequent more channels now than ever–and the digital world has become increasingly noisy as a result. Businesses are more focused on improving personalization in order to stand out from the crowd, but narrowing content down for individual buyers across so many channels has previously seemed an impossible task.

This begs the question: How do marketers navigate a world where personalization matters more than ever, the number of channels to reach customers continues to grow, and the tools available today fail to live up to their promises of simplification, automation, and personalization?

Exploring digital marketing complexity in a new era

This complexity begins with what GrowthLoop co-Founder Chris Sell calls the “death of the cookie stack.” In the past, marketing technology has centered around anonymous web activity tracking. Brands would use this data to personalize the web experience for users, and then re-target those site visitors through display ads. As Google plans to fully deprecate third-party cookies in 2024, organizations must pivot to other forms of data for personalization efforts.

With the retirement of third-party cookies, marketers must rely on first party data (and a robust strategy for activating that data) as customer demand for personalization remains high. Marketers know that in order to be successful in an over-saturated, noisy market, understanding customers is mandatory.

“Personalization is not a new concept, yet we have not cracked the nut on personalization.” - Rahul Todkar, Tripadvisor

This perfect storm of the retirement of third party cookies, an unwavering need for personalization, and the failure of current marketing tools to host a single customer profile has resulted in marketers searching for new methods. Adding additional complexity is the number of vendors in the market which claim to deliver a comprehensive set of tools geared at “getting personalization right.”

With the rise of the data cloud, many teams are beginning to work toward a single universal data layer for the organization like BigQuery, which provides organizations full ownership of their customer data and a single, trusted view of the customer.

Why more businesses are investing in data access for marketing teams

Many innovative brands that have invested in data warehouses like Google Cloud BigQuery as their universal data layer are enlisting the help of vendors to unlock access to the single view of the customer for business users to self-serve.

Two of these organizations are Tripadvisor and the Boston Red Sox, which have both opted for composable technology that gives marketers access to comprehensive customer data–and the tools to use that data to drive successful, personalized marketing campaigns.

Brian Shield, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Boston Red Sox spoke to the recent rise in data analytics investments and described the ability to democratize the data across groups in an organization as the “next obvious, logical evolution.” By granting marketers access to this data–without the technical knowledge that was previously required to access it–organizations like the Red Sox can now harness both the data needed to deliver results-producing personalization and the efficiency benefits of generative AI. Rahul Todkar, Head of Data at Tripadvisor spoke to the value of simplifying access to data across the organization. This democratization of data finally opens the door for marketers to easily align delivered experiences with customer expectations.

The challenges that arise with increased campaign efficiency–and how generative AI can solve them

As marketing teams begin to experiment with personalized campaigns upon their newly unlocked unified customer data, complications can arise.

“There have been a lot of investments in data. Disparate data stacks have come together and there is a lot more you can do with data… But if you can’t create the creative, what good is that to marketers?” - Vishal Sood, Typeface

With new tools giving marketers access to the data and functionality to run an increased number of campaigns across a number of channels (sometimes 100+ campaigns at a time), creative teams can struggle to keep up with demand–introducing a significant bottleneck while marketers wait for creatives.

In preparing a generative AI-powered solution for this gap, Typeface discovered that two trends have emerged across businesses when creating content:

“The brand loop” - CMO’s will hire an agency to create on-brand content, but there are typically limitations to the amount of content that can be produced and the speed at which it is delivered.
“The velocity loop” - Marketers will generate content independent of an agency or creative team in order to maintain velocity. However, this content can end up not being on-brand.

With the combination of data access and activation in GrowthLoop and AI-generated content from Typeface, marketers can now move at the speed of the “velocity loop”–while maintaining the same on-brand quality as the “brand loop.”

Entering the next phase with gen AI: Cross-channel journeys with highly personalized content

When building content across paid media, email, and web experiences, brands may use a different tone of voice to address customers or prospects. We believe one of generative AI’s most transformative improvements will be seen in cross-channel journey orchestration. Now, not only can marketers generate personalized content and orchestrate tailored touch points across platforms–this new integrated solution can tailor content to match a brand’s tone across various channels.

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“It’s not just content for different audiences or individuals. It’s content by channel, by audience.” - Yasmeen Ahmad, Google Cloud

With GrowthLoop, marketers can easily segment their customers and build highly personalized experiences across the channel-specific tools they already know and love. The addition of tailored content will only increase the success (and speed of creation) of these campaigns.