It can be incredibly challenging to engage people today with the abundance of content vying for their attention and their expectations of speed, timeliness and personalization.
Consumers are increasingly turning to technology like generative AI for convenience and quick decision-making, as evidenced by Microsoft Advertising’s findings of accelerated purchase journeys and increased clickthrough rates. Businesses succeeding in this landscape prioritize delivering personalized value at the right moment in the purchase journey, leveraging human truths to break through the noise.
Marketers have an opportunity to elevate both creativity and their approach to meet people where they are, with hyper-personalized communications, in both message and creative format.
Generative AI is leveling the playing field, giving marketers the ability to understand, create and analyze with both speed and personalization. It can be a catalyst for transformation to accelerate creativity and save time throughout the marketing journey.
Here are three things you need to know to make that happen.
Unleash a new creative process
From early creative brainstorming to generating perfect images, generative AI democratizes the creative process. You can create everything from social posts to sound and snappy advertising copy that aligns with your brand voice, then, add the human touch to ensure it’s exactly right.
Generative AI can also recommend the best assets for your campaigns directly from your existing content pool or web presence instead of you searching for hours through files. It selects assets that are proven to resonate with target audiences, which further refines the relevance and impact of your marketing initiatives.
Microsoft Advertising also found that 64% of marketers are short on time. But the right tool can help. Copilot in the Microsoft Advertising platform gives you time back with Creative Studio: AI-powered content recommendations, personalized image generation and instantaneous answers to support-related questions. As these tools and processes become second nature, Microsoft Advertising learned this from early users about AI at work:
- 70% of Copilot users said they were more productive
- 85% said Copilot helps them get a first draft faster
- 29% said they were faster in tasks like searching, writing and summarizing
What could you do with the time you save?
Master “prompt engineering”
The secret sauce to effective AI creativity is “prompt engineering.” With properly detailed and formatted prompts, AI systems can generate custom text, images, music, graphics and even simulated, realistic conversations. Experimentation with different styles and tones helps reveal perfectly matched content for any audience.
Let’s take ad copy. Here’s the anatomy of an effective prompt and what a masterful prompt can deliver:
With that prompt, it only took 60 seconds to get this result:
- Fun Meets Function: Kids’ Shoes for Every Adventure!
- Bright Steps Ahead: Affordable Style for Little Feet!
- Cartoon Kicks: Cool Shoes, Happy Kids, Happy Wallet!
One significant aspect of this transformation is to prioritize inclusive prompts in business strategy, such as metaphors, words, feelings, dimensions of diversity and product features designed inclusively.
This strategy primes the process for ad content that speaks to people from different and/or unique backgrounds, fostering a deeper connections and boosting trust, loyalty and purchase intent (+23 points)—all top, valued indicators of future revenue growth. Inclusion matters for your business. It matters for the world.
Experiment, learn and play
Think of what normalizing generative AI at work could do for creative energy by boosting team productivity and morale.
In this sense, your magic number is 11. Microsoft Advertising’s research discovered an 11-minute tipping point when people start to see the time-saving value of AI, which leads to a change in habit. From scheduling posts to managing ad placements, the automation resulting from regular use of generative AI ultimately frees up your team for more creative brainstorming and less button-pushing.
This is a transformation that can’t be ignored. Marketing is ready to evolve, and generative AI can help marketers get smarter, experiment more quickly and deliver more personalized messaging to their audiences. The industry is ready to step up and respond to market dynamics and consumer behaviors.
Because it’s not just where marketers want to be. It’s where they need to be.
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With over 20 years of experience as a marketing executive in global, high-growth technology companies, Jennifer Kattula is a proven builder of brands, strategies, teams and people. She is currently the GM and CMO Microsoft Advertising, where she is focused on transforming from a search business to a powerful suite of end-to-end advertising solutions helping advertisers and publishers get the results they need to grow while tapping into new innovations like generative AI.
