How Our Marketing Agency is Embracing AI with Curiosity and Caution

The marketing landscape has evolved over the years, but nothing has rocked the boat quite like the advent of AI tools. 

In late 2022 and early 2023, we found ourselves at the cusp of an era where AI wasn’t just a buzzword, nor was it a toy or research tool—anyone can now pay around $20 a month for their own personal, high-quality, trainable assistant. After testing and experimenting, we have adopted a wide variety of AI tools in order to make our own work more effective. AI tools are now a part of our everyday work.

So, what is AI, really?

Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term for any computer system designed to mimic human intelligence in performing tasks. Think: Writing computer code, writing blogs, creating spreadsheets, researching answers to questions, summarizing information, and reformatting text.

If you own a business or manage a medical practice, you might have heard about AI and felt a bit wary, and rightfully so. Why all of the hype, all of a sudden? How much will it cost before you see returns? How long will it take to learn yet another new tool? We asked the same questions and found that when approached with a balance of curiosity and skepticism, AI can be a useful tool to help your business thrive. At Cake, we treat AI as a tool to assist us, not replace us.

AI-powered tools can help you stay ahead of the competition—it’s just another business decision to approach with a discerning eye.

Concerns about AI

Even though we feel that AI should complement human efforts, not replace them, we are well aware that the companies building AI tools may not share that same view. Some of the companies and leaders behind our favorite AI tools openly endorse the idea that technology should replace labor in the wider marketplace of all businesses, as part of the “creative destruction” of one good idea replacing another. The idea that businesses must exist using technology that is designed to dehumanize our daily interactions, cause harm, or redistribute resources so that only a handful of investors control and charge for technology that handles all of human work—well, that’s hard for us to swallow.

We are careful to be transparent about our use of AI and invite human oversight to maintain our same standards of quality and ethical standards. We run content generated with AI help through plagiarism and AI detectors to ensure originality on both counts. When we are using AI for copywriting, our own writers maintain full control of the text before and after any AI tool provides assistance.

We are also aware of the environmental impacts of the growing demand for larger and larger warehouses that use water and energy resources to power the AI tools we easily access from our laptops and phones. We believe it is important to apply AI mindfully, where it is useful, but we are not trying to adopt new AI tools gratuitously, i.e. in instances where human intelligence can provide a higher-quality result in the same amount of time.

In the U.S. medical space, HIPAA, copyright law, FTC guidelines and other rules still apply. You should first evaluate how an AI tool will use your own data before signing up. In the case of customer information you should be particularly careful before deploying an AI tool that can access those records.

The marketers at Cake are committed to continuously learning, and we encourage the same for our clients! Researching the AI-powered tools available to you can help you stay ahead of the competition or help you improve a pain point in your own business.

Benefits of AI tools

Tech giants and corporations may have been the first to incorporate AI into their business model, but it’s just as useful for small to medium-sized businesses, too:

• AI can handle repetitive tasks like scheduling patient appointments, managing your inventory, and sending reminders to free up your time to focus on those things that AI can’t replace, like in-person customer interactions.
• AI-powered chatbots can answer common customer questions and provide customer support 24/7. When used appropriately, this can enhance the customer’s experience and theoretically provide more time for you to handle complex inquiries.
• AI can analyze customer info to help you understand data like customer purchasing patterns and trend predictions to help you make informed decisions without as much time spent crunching numbers.

Thoughtful applications of AI can save you time (remember, “time is money”) and help your business grow and cut costs in the long run.

Practical applications of Chat GPT

One of the most accessible, easy-to-use AI tools out there is Chat GPT, which continues to release updates that significantly enhance its accuracy and versatility. At Cake, we use Chat GPT to assist with a variety of tasks, including content outlining, writing first drafts, and coding for web development.

If you’ve not yet used ChatGPT, we suggest starting with simple research questions, or asking it to summarize a long document or Youtube video. Then take the answers provided and ask it to go farther, to produce something you think you can use.

Which AI tools are you using? Share your thoughts in the comments below!