The world has been in a tizzy since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. Though briefly worried about a robot uprising, after using ChatGPT—and many other AI tools on the market—users have come to terms with just how useful this technology can be.
Businesses already utilize AI for everything from content optimization to ad copy to image generation. But AI isn’t gunning for our jobs. If anything, it makes marketing more enjoyable for brands and more effective for consumers. Everyone wins!
In reality, this technology is streamlining marketers’ workflows so they can create higher-quality work in less time. In fact, businesses are also blending AI with promotional product campaigns to combine the convenience and speed of technology with the efficacy of promotional products.
In this guide, we’ll break down how brands have been using AI for marketing, plus three tips to help you leverage AI for better promotional product campaigns.
The current state of AI and marketing
With features that cover everything from customer service to analytics, AI already has a hold on marketing. This technology can be used to save time, trim costs, and create better audience experiences.
Analytics
You can’t predict the future, but predictive analytics powered by AI is the next best thing to a crystal ball. AI excels at finicky, data-heavy tasks, so it’s a perfect fit for parsing through your company’s data.
More businesses are using AI-enabled analytics to predict what their customers want to see. Instead of waiting weeks for data insights, AI spots trends faster and with a greater degree of accuracy than human analysts.
Chatbots
Once upon a time, chatbots were very limited in what they could do. They could only pull canned answers from a database and couldn’t offer advanced help.
But thanks to the advancements in AI, marketers are using AI to answer customer queries just like a human would. This reduces your marketing team’s workload while giving customers the immediate answers they expect.
Content marketing
Content marketing requires a lot of time and effort, but AI tools give marketers a big leg up with keyword research, topic generation, and a lot more.
Right now, marketers are using AI tools for content marketing tasks like:
- Generating personalized topics
- Creating custom blog images
- Optimizing blog copy to rank better in search engines
Yes, you can ask an AI to write a blog or social media caption for you, but there’s a good chance that it will contain errors, use the wrong tone, or use inconsistent grammar. This is why so many marketers don’t use AI as a replacement but as a tool to speed up certain tasks.
A/B testing
A/B testing (also known as split testing) helps you test different webpage versions to see what your audience likes best.
Normally, you would only test two page variants at once, but AI makes it possible to test thousands of variants at one time. This means marketers can gather way more information about their audience’s preferences and fine-tune their landing pages in record time.
Ad optimization
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can get expensive, which is why so many marketers invest in AI-powered PPC tools. With the power of AI on their side, marketers dynamically optimize ad copy in real-time. Just plug in your target key performance metrics (KPIs), and an AI tool will optimize your campaigns to get as close to that standard as possible.
Blending AI with promotional products
As you can see, digital marketers have already fully embraced AI tools to speed up their workflows. But what about promotional products?
Promo products have a lot of staying power, but these campaigns largely happen offline. This is new territory for branded swag, but these are the three biggest trends in AI-driven promotional products right now.
1. Generating promotional product ideas
One of the most challenging parts of any promotional campaign is finding products your audience will love. Instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, let AI generate relevant suggestions for you.
Use AI to parse through your audience data and suggest products that fit your audience's needs, event goals, and budget. Then, always confer with your Boundless Brand Consultant armed with your new inspiration.
2. Personalization
Personalization is, hands down, the best way to delight your audience. Instead of giving everyone the same T-shirt, why not use AI to personalize everything for you?
Share your campaign ideas and parameters with the AI tool, then ask it to create clever slogans for each T-shirt based on the recipient’s:
- Initials
- Job title
- Home state
- Order history
Plug this data into a spreadsheet, and the AI will generate unique slogans for each item and each person on your list. The AI does the work for you, and we guarantee your attendees will be amazed that you personalized every single T-shirt.
3. Graphic design
Time is always a factor in promotional products, so the quicker you decide on a design, the faster you can order prototypes. AI design tools like Canva or Midjourney can’t replace human graphic designers, but they can certainly speed up the design ideation phase. You can even ask the AI tool to show you what your products will look like with a certain color or design.
You may need to tweak your prompts a few times, but the text-to-image generator should come up with a few good ideas. Once you have a rough idea, send it to a human graphic designer to flesh out the design for production.
Designing ‘AI’-mazing promotional products
We’re likely seeing the beginnings of the AI revolution. This technology helps brands and marketers stretch their resources to receive better results. If you haven’t tried it already, try combining AI with the one-two punch of promotional products.
AI is the next frontier of marketing, so it can be tough to pick the right tools and use cases for this new technology. Boundless is here to help you integrate AI tools into promotional products. With a technology-first approach, our team knows how to leverage tech to genuinely Inspire Brand Love™ moments. See how Boundless helps brands blend AI and promo—without the learning curve.
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