Say “AI” around a marketing person right now and you’ll get one of two reactions: a shudder or a slew of ideas.
If you’re working with a marketing agency or digital marketing consultant, they should be steeped in AI (or at east actively steeping). They should be using AI to make their job more efficient. And they should be helping you (yes, even you, nonprofits and small businesses!) incorporate AI into your marketing processes.
Why?
Because AI isn’t a trend. It’s here. It’s been here. It’s taken many a copywriter’s job, and it’s not going away. I remember having this conversation with medical associations about social media back in 2008. It’s the same conversation marketing folks were having with their organizations about websites in the 1990s. This is the new frontier. Buckle up! Here’s how Flicker Media is using AI in marketing, communications, and brand work.
AI Tools for Design, Layout, and Branding
Let’s start with one example of AI that you’re probably already using: AI-powered design tools. If you’re using Canva to lay out your social media graphics or gala invitations, you’re using AI. If you’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Gamma or Microsoft 365 Copilot, you’re using AI. See? Not so scary! There’s no question that tools like Canva can speed up design work and aid nonprofits and small businesses working on tight budgets.
You can also use AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT to incorporate color theory into your design and branding. For example, if you type “What are good colors for a school logo design?” into ChatGPT, you’ll learn that blue symbolizes prestige and excellence, green symbolizes growth and learning, and purple symbolizes leadership and creativity.
Take it a step further and you can chat with AI tools to narrow down tagline ideas, find symbols related to your business that could be used in designing logo marks, and search for fonts that connect to the feeling of your work.
All of that said, I would absolutely not use AI for your company logo design. For one thing, you don’t know how many other people it’s feeding that design to, which makes it tough to demonstrate originality and be able to copyright the image. Use it for ideas. Don’t use it for final product.
Copywriting and Content Marketing
That’s a good segue to the next use of AI. Yes, AI took hours of paid work away from us marketers who used to sit all day typing up blog posts and e-newsletters. On the other hand, it created efficiencies so we don’t have to spend our days doing those things (see: Grammarly for much faster AI-powered copyediting). Now we can use our time to get more strategic.
Multiple AI tools exist to help you discover keywords and search terms people are actually typing into Google. Instead of just spitting out blog posts to keep your blog active, you can find blog topics people really need, which better positions you to get traffic that potentially leads to new revenue. SEO marketing used to be painfully manual. AI is speeding things up.
You can also use AI tools like ChatGPT for audience segmentation. For example, if you type, “What do military spouses need to know about household budgeting” into ChatGPT, you’ll find that a blog post about household budgeting can now become much more targeted and of interest to military spouses. Per ChatGPT, they will need to consider things like military pay structure, PCS moves, and financial power of attorney during a deployment.
I do not, however, recommend using AI to fully write your content with no humans touching it at all. It will be generic. Full stop.
I also don’t recommend doing all of your audience research in AI. Crafting audience personas also involves real-life conversations, surveys, and analysis, all better performed by humans at this time.
Social Listening and Analytics
Wonder why no one is coming to your fundraising events anymore? Can’t seem to find topics that connect with younger donors? It’s time to do some social listening.
At one time, social media listening was all manual. We needed to become secret shoppers or lurkers on social media, trying to hear and see what people were saying about our organization, why they no longer want to support it or what would make them donate. These practices can help you uncover a reputation issue (e.g., everyone is bashing you on Facebook and you had no idea) or a customer service issue that is keeping you from new revenue. They can also reveal what your audience wants to talk about (think trending topics on X or common themes in national news media). AI-powered tools like Sprout Social or Meltwater can spit out this kind of information in minutes. Then you can spend your time making decisions or strategies around the information, rather than gathering all the evidence yourself.
The same is true of analytics. If you want to know the ROI of your marketing efforts or whether your KPIs meet benchmarks, you can speed all of this up with AI.
How to implement AI with a limited budget
You have a few choices when it comes to adopting some AI practices like using it for faster print layout or social listening.
You can:
Soooooo, coffee anyone?
Additional reading: How to Choose a Consultant or Brand Agency
Review: What are the top 5 AI tools for marketing?
My current faves/most-used:
If you’re working with a marketing agency or digital marketing consultant, they should be steeped in AI (or at east actively steeping). They should be using AI to make their job more efficient. And they should be helping you (yes, even you, nonprofits and small businesses!) incorporate AI into your marketing processes.
Why?
Because AI isn’t a trend. It’s here. It’s been here. It’s taken many a copywriter’s job, and it’s not going away. I remember having this conversation with medical associations about social media back in 2008. It’s the same conversation marketing folks were having with their organizations about websites in the 1990s. This is the new frontier. Buckle up! Here’s how Flicker Media is using AI in marketing, communications, and brand work.
AI Tools for Design, Layout, and Branding
Let’s start with one example of AI that you’re probably already using: AI-powered design tools. If you’re using Canva to lay out your social media graphics or gala invitations, you’re using AI. If you’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Gamma or Microsoft 365 Copilot, you’re using AI. See? Not so scary! There’s no question that tools like Canva can speed up design work and aid nonprofits and small businesses working on tight budgets.
You can also use AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT to incorporate color theory into your design and branding. For example, if you type “What are good colors for a school logo design?” into ChatGPT, you’ll learn that blue symbolizes prestige and excellence, green symbolizes growth and learning, and purple symbolizes leadership and creativity.
Take it a step further and you can chat with AI tools to narrow down tagline ideas, find symbols related to your business that could be used in designing logo marks, and search for fonts that connect to the feeling of your work.
All of that said, I would absolutely not use AI for your company logo design. For one thing, you don’t know how many other people it’s feeding that design to, which makes it tough to demonstrate originality and be able to copyright the image. Use it for ideas. Don’t use it for final product.
Copywriting and Content Marketing
That’s a good segue to the next use of AI. Yes, AI took hours of paid work away from us marketers who used to sit all day typing up blog posts and e-newsletters. On the other hand, it created efficiencies so we don’t have to spend our days doing those things (see: Grammarly for much faster AI-powered copyediting). Now we can use our time to get more strategic.
Multiple AI tools exist to help you discover keywords and search terms people are actually typing into Google. Instead of just spitting out blog posts to keep your blog active, you can find blog topics people really need, which better positions you to get traffic that potentially leads to new revenue. SEO marketing used to be painfully manual. AI is speeding things up.
You can also use AI tools like ChatGPT for audience segmentation. For example, if you type, “What do military spouses need to know about household budgeting” into ChatGPT, you’ll find that a blog post about household budgeting can now become much more targeted and of interest to military spouses. Per ChatGPT, they will need to consider things like military pay structure, PCS moves, and financial power of attorney during a deployment.
I do not, however, recommend using AI to fully write your content with no humans touching it at all. It will be generic. Full stop.
I also don’t recommend doing all of your audience research in AI. Crafting audience personas also involves real-life conversations, surveys, and analysis, all better performed by humans at this time.
Social Listening and Analytics
Wonder why no one is coming to your fundraising events anymore? Can’t seem to find topics that connect with younger donors? It’s time to do some social listening.
At one time, social media listening was all manual. We needed to become secret shoppers or lurkers on social media, trying to hear and see what people were saying about our organization, why they no longer want to support it or what would make them donate. These practices can help you uncover a reputation issue (e.g., everyone is bashing you on Facebook and you had no idea) or a customer service issue that is keeping you from new revenue. They can also reveal what your audience wants to talk about (think trending topics on X or common themes in national news media). AI-powered tools like Sprout Social or Meltwater can spit out this kind of information in minutes. Then you can spend your time making decisions or strategies around the information, rather than gathering all the evidence yourself.
The same is true of analytics. If you want to know the ROI of your marketing efforts or whether your KPIs meet benchmarks, you can speed all of this up with AI.
How to implement AI with a limited budget
You have a few choices when it comes to adopting some AI practices like using it for faster print layout or social listening.
You can:
- Farm it out to your neighbor’s high school kid because “that will be cheap and he’s young so he’ll get this stuff.”
- Add it to your plate. I mean, you’re not busy, right?
- Let an agency or consultant set you up for success.
Soooooo, coffee anyone?
Additional reading: How to Choose a Consultant or Brand Agency
Review: What are the top 5 AI tools for marketing?
My current faves/most-used:
- Canva for Nonprofits
- ChatGPT
- Gamma
- Meltwater
- Grammarly