AI and Marketing – Opportunities, Challenges, Trends

The New Possibilities with Gen-AI & LLMs in marketing

Yet, we are increasingly seeing new ways of doing business with the clever use of Gen-AI. For example, beyond the typical narrative of automating processes with AI, we could use Gen-AI to turn a content product into a marketing funnel to generate high quality leads for our customers. What’s even more delightful is that the end user may not even need to pay for this service we provide through our AI agents because someone else is footing the billing – in some sense, innovative business models are likely to emerge where literarily everyone wins.

Making it happen: The AI-driven Marketing Ecosystem & Why it Fails

Most AI ecosystems would comprise the following players:

a.    The Operators – the domain experts and strategists who examine lots of data to design messages, campaigns, strategies that make their brands and products stand out, and stick around for a long time.

b.    The Access folks – people, entities or platforms that let us reach our customers. These could range from social platforms to distributors or owners of billboard or advertising spaces, physical or online.

c.     The Tech folks – essentially anyone who helps the Operators and Access folks to do their job right, fast, efficient, and in some cases, breakthrough into new opportunities.

Let’s look at two groups of users here:

Think of a big company with lots of money. They can easily use AI in their marketing because they can hire experts. They have Operators who create interesting campaigns, Access folks who help them reach people, and Tech experts who make sure everything works well. For them, using AI is simple and effective.

Now think of small businesses or individuals working alone. They are skilled and knowledgeable, but they don’t have the money to hire many tech experts. They also don’t know much about coding. This makes it hard for them to use AI quickly and easily. The lack of skills and money makes it tough for small businesses to adopt AI.

For AI to help with marketing, it should not only increase sales but also be easy and affordable for people who don’t have tech skills. This way, everyone can start using AI on their own.

That was the problem I faced when I wanted to create an expert tutor bot that ingests the textbooks that I have written in junior high Biology and can respond to my students 24/7. Let’s call it ASK BIO. To make that happen, I needed to engage an AI-for-education company to create this bot with the content in my textbook. And this is where it breaks down for me: first, it would cost me significantly as service fees to this company; then the company would want to share a significant amount of sales proceeds as the service fees quoted to me features a partner discount with revenue-sharing.

It just didn’t make financial sense to do it this way.

I was stuck.

With a dead-end in launching my own AI App as a non-techie, I started looking around for solutions that let the idiots in tech design, build and launch their AI Apps. It has to be so easy to use and can let me do so in minutes. And if I am lazy enough, perhaps even lets me do away with prompting.

More and more, we are seeing platforms that allow AI to do the coding. For example, Cursor AI helps users by providing intelligent code completion and suggestions, making it easier for developers to write code. But then I stumbled upon Estha (https://estha.ai), a no-code AI App builder platform that does so much more for those who can’t code at all.

Estha is designed for people like me – those with lots of knowledge and ideas but little to no coding experience. It means I can now bring my vision to life without needing a whole team of tech experts. Estha’s drag-and-drop platform that lets me design, build, and launch interactive AI apps in minutes. I don’t need to write a single line of code. Imagine creating a custom AI tutor, sales assistant, or customer service bot just by dragging and linking elements on a screen. It’s that simple.

One of the standout features of Estha is the choice of many Large Language Models (LLMs). I can pick the one that best suits my needs, making my AI app truly bespoke. But what really makes Estha special is its ability to create exclusive knowledge bases unique to my content and expertise.

What impressed me most was the low-friction onboarding — I describe my intent, and Estha proposes a design. I can then tweak it as needed, making the whole process smooth and accessible.

For educators, this is a game-changer. Each teacher can launch their own AI-powered tutor app, tailored to their curriculum. For small businesses, it means one can create lead-generation bots or customer support agents without breaking the bank. Law firms can deploy proprietary analysis agents, and companies can have personalized virtual assistants, all while keeping their data secure.

I decided to invest in this company and wrote them the first check before jumping in to be a co-founder. Investing in Estha as a tool that democratizes AI, empowering anyone with ideas to leverage this powerful technology for success – a no brainer for me.


So where are we now with AI for marketing?

In short, things are better, but still not profoundly spectacular. AI can do many things, but it is nowhere near where we think it can be. But then this space is moving so quickly and we should not come back to check in on what’s the latest develop at least once every two months.

This space is still starting to heat up, and for those of us who get in on the action now, we will be in for a heck of a ride!



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