AI startups solve marketing problems

At the American Marketing Association's Summer conference on Friday, three excellent Boston startups demonstrated how AI can add value in marketing. 4 key themes came up, and below I illustrate each theme with how the pitched startups handled it.

1) Key is working backwards from the customer problem: what exactly are you solving for?

Homescore was born out of the founder’s frustration with buying a home in the Boston area. He should have started comparing and contrasting houses much earlier in the process, before becoming locked into 1 place and learning the negatives too late.

Popsmash knows users don’t like long surveys, but many love completing short fun ones on social media. How can you leverage this to learn about their product preferences over time and personalize your marketing messages?

Cactivate knows small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners have little time and can’t afford to pay an agency. 62% of SMBs lose money on marketing! Cactivate's ‘agency-in-a-box’ service asks just 3 questions and proposes a marketing plan, which the owner can simply approve or reject

2) Where does AI come into the picture? ?

Based on the home buyer’s risk profile and interests, Homescore leverages AI to create dynamic visuals of the main homebuying themes. First-time buyers often have no idea what questions to ask, so the typical prompts for genAI are not productive. Once a visual raises the user’s curiosity, they can tap into it to unlock further insights in a prompt setting.

Popsmash extrapolates user preferences from a quick survey on social, on topics like ‘which coffee cream flavor is best for romance book clubs?’ AI then translates these preferences into personalized emails. For instance, when a user answers ‘My mom’ to the question ‘Who would you most like to go out on a walk with?’, the AI system remembers that, come Mother’s Day, that user may like certain gifts.

?

Cactivate starts from the available budget and CAC the business desires and then uses AI to design a multi-channel marketing plan. Because it is not owned by a publisher, it will and can propose to spend less in a particular channel. AI comes up with the detailed plan the user can approve, executes the plan and optimizes the campaigns along the way.

?Where do humans come (back) in?

Homescore is clear it does not replace the buyer’s agent but works in tandem, enabling the agent to better serve the buyer’s needs.

Popsmash users check whether the personalization would be welcomed or perceived as cringe by the consumers.

Cactivate allows users to amend the proposed plans and dig deeper into the assumptions going into the AI.

?

What’s next?

After the startup pitches, we turned to roundtables combining managers with academic to discuss the future of AI. A few key ideas came up:

• Matching college student candidates with colleges;
• Consolidating/Integrating data and reporting?with insights;
• Simplifying patient healthcare;
• Minimizing?creative creation risks;
• Increasing?inclusion by lowering thresholds;
• Use synthetic noses to replicate scent;
• Change management

All in all, we were delighted to see dozens of managers share ideas with dozens of academics. This is exactly why we founded the AI Special Interest Group at AMA. Please check out our activities and become a member!