How to Get Your Agency Ready to Use AI

Want to give your marketing agency a competitive edge with AI technology? Wondering how to find the people and choose the AI tools that are best suited to your needs?

In this article, you’ll discover a framework for integrating AI tools and technology into your agency’s processes.

Why Your Agency Must Reckon With AI

We all understand that automation technology has and will continue to disrupt entire industries. Yet even savvy marketing agencies risk falling behind the curve if leadership downplays impending Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts on operations and culture.

According to marketing expert Katie Robbert, complacency today sets the stage for potential displacement tomorrow. As CEO of Trust Insights, a management agency specializing in AI, marketing, and organizational behavior, Katie operates on the frontlines of helping marketing and advertising firms evolve through complex change management initiatives.

With AI infiltrating client deliverables and workflows in ever-expanding ways, she outlines pragmatic steps agencies must take now to assimilate solutions while fortifying human capabilities.

Katie co-founded Trust Insights alongside partner Christopher Penn when their specialized AI skill sets outgrew the traditional digital marketing services offered by their former agency employer. With Chris already actively utilizing AI in client work over seven years ago and Katie managing teams eager to work on cutting-edge projects, the pair opted to take a risk and launch their own company.

Their timing aligned with a major acquisition of their prior agency and a noticeable shift in its direction. This convergence of factors provided the impetus to exit and establish a business focused on the AI capabilities larger agencies were just beginning to dabble in.

#1: Align the Use of AI With Business Outcomes

In Katie's assessment, the common digital transformation framework harbors one fundamental flaw: overemphasizing technology at people's expense. She argues such lopsided emphasis generally yields lackluster ROI and poor adoption rates when underlying processes or team dynamics go overlooked.

Katie instead employs her own “5 P's” model designed to align transformation initiatives with desired business outcomes. The framework encompasses:

Purpose: What concrete problems do emerging technologies help you solve? How do resulting capabilities reinforce your overall strategic goals?

People: Which stakeholders influence rollout success? How do you address fears or skill deficits surrounding imminent tooling changes?

Process: Which workflows and decision trees stand to improve most? Where might enhancements conflict with your legacy protocols or reporting needs?

Platforms: With critical information and workflow gaps defined, which technical solutions reliably address your priority needs with minimal customization required?

Performance: What key metrics and service level agreements help you quantify program success and value generation?

This approach helps ensure that when you implement changes, you choose technology that improves your business, fits your needs, and plays to your staff's strengths.

#2: Understand How AI Functions

So, what exactly constitutes AI? Demystifying the often vaguely invoked concept of AI, Katie firmly debunks sentient robots roaming conference halls. She instead characterizes AI through her FOG acronym, representing:

Find: pinpoint meaningful data patterns and relationships

Organize: classify, label, and contextualize datasets

Generate: produce novel content or discerning insights through statistical modeling

In other words, effective AI requires quality data to uncover meaningful patterns and insights. Though some natural language outputs seem eerily conversational today, you should view AI as complex mathematical modeling, not embryonic robots.

Current generative AI powers applications like chatbots and creative tools for crafting images, videos, and written content on demand. These self-directed systems operate “smarter” the more quality data input and feedback (not life experience) accumulated over time. So, fears of inadvertently birthing HAL 9000 or SkyNet run counter to reality—though reasonable safeguards around data sharing always warrant consideration.

#3: Address Widely-Held Misconceptions About AI

Katie acknowledges widespread concerns, especially among content producers, of AI automating jobs. A common myth is that sophisticated AI will definitely displace masses of marketing jobs within years.

The reality is that instead of wholly replacing roles, AI will likely enhance them, provided staff understand its principles and limitations. For example, AI can efficiently generate article drafts but still requires human refinement before publication. Courts have ruled that content made by software belongs to the software creator, not whoever uses the content. So, you have to cite AI systems when using them to generate content.

However, teams that don't learn basic AI skills could see their roles become obsolete as automation takes over tasks they currently do manually. Contextually-aware AI assistants capable of suggesting creative content themes or revenue-optimized campaign parameters promise immense productivity upside with proper oversight.

Another common myth is that if you or your agency does not adopt AI capabilities, you risk falling behind the times. While many marketers feel this pressure, Katie argues technology should always serve defined purposes, not distract from your core business goals. Just because AI enables new functionalities doesn't mean they inherently benefit a company or its customers.

Prioritizing people and process needs ahead of AI platforms prevents shiny object syndrome.

Allocating a budget for experimental tools “just because” while struggling with profitability or staff burnout puts the cart well before the horse. You should define clear success metrics around efficiency gains or revenue uplift before any AI test drives.

#4: Choose How to Adopt the Power of AI in Your Marketing Agency

So, exactly how might AI prove indispensably useful in marketing contexts today? Katie offers several compelling examples spanning client work at Trust Insights:

• Eliminating tedious tasks: AI propels efficiencies by automating repetitive manual processes. At Trust Insights, AI-based speech-to-text and natural language processing tools like Otter create transcripts used to efficiently repurpose video, audio, and webinar content into text assets. Then, generative writing tools like ChatGPT easily convert speech-to-text files into unique blog articles or social media posts without added human effort.
• Informing strategy: AI plays an integral role in strategic initiatives by quickly processing large volumes of data. For example, when exploring top marketing podcasts to analyze, Katie leverages multiple AI interfaces to generate lists, identify patterns, and summarize competitive intelligence.
• Enhanced offerings: Katie notes even agencies like public relations firms face disruption to their fee structures if they're billing significant hourly fees for press releases and similar documents producible in seconds through AI. Basing prices on the value provided, rather than time spent, will help you avoid conflicts when AI starts handling tasks that used to require manual work.

And these examples merely scratch the surface of what AI can unlock for you and your business. With a forward-thinking strategy and focused leadership, AI promotes greater innovation and efficiency simultaneously across a myriad of applications.

Create a Future-Ready Marketing Strategy 

Katie lays out clear advice on how an agency might formulate an AI strategy:

• Audit existing systems and processes to pinpoint opportunities for enhancement or automation. Does your business have enough repeatable processes to bring in AI?
• Assess overall data quality and availability to power AI tools dependent on substantial, accurate datasets.
• Evaluate whether affordable third-party solutions sufficiently address AI-defined needs or if custom development works better.
• Ensure resulting AI capabilities directly reinforce business offerings. For example, Chris created an algorithm that would curate playlists for people's birthdays. While a fun idea, Katie asked how it would serve Trust Insights—it didn't, so it was shelved. 

#5: Prepare Your Agency Team to Embrace AI

Regardless of specialty, Katie believes that all marketers should share a basic understanding of mainstream AI tools as they permeate workflows. Employers will likely expect conversational knowledge around tools like ChatGPT. Similarly, hands-on familiarity with tools like DALL-E for generated images may eventually become a standard competency.

Preparing Teams for Change

Katie correlates AI success less with hard skills than underrated traits like intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and tenacity.

As barriers to basic AI usage keep dropping, she views a willingness to continually question and learn as more pivotal than technical expertise. She notes that even non-technical staff can meaningfully use tools like ChatGPT for content ideation or lead list generation following some quick tutorials.

Katie believes you should treat AI introductions like any other technology project: figure out how AI could benefit or enhance your business processes first before choosing tools in a vacuum. Marketers should focus more on understanding the implications of AI-managed processes than mastering complex programming.

AI holds transformative potential for marketing agencies nimble enough to embrace it. While fueling greater efficiency and performance when thoughtfully implemented, it also necessitates careful change management. 

Using Katie's “5 P's” model and other frameworks as guides, agency leaders can start mapping pragmatic paths to AI assimilation tailored to their unique business goals. Equipped with a proper understanding of associated risks and limitations, marketing professionals of all skill levels will learn how best to harness AI as a driver of innovation rather than a distraction.

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