Choose Wisely: The Right AI Can Transform Your Business

Until recently, most conversations about how to use AI for business have revolved around using AI to do regular business operations more efficiently. The capabilities of AI, however, extend far beyond simply increasing efficiency. AI is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have for businesses. In marketing alone, AI includes new applications—like LighthousePE, a marketing automation platform for mobile apps—that can transform your business and help create customers for life. AI’s transformative capabilities allow you to better understand your audience’s needs and motivations. It can improve communication with your customers and drive desired behaviors. None of that can happen, however, without reframing your thinking about AI.

AI That Supplements vs. AI That Transforms

If supplemental AI is the new way of doing business, transformative AI is the approach that will set your business apart. Think of it this way: supplementary AI might automate a coffee shop rewards program wherein the customer receives a free drink after ten purchases. However, AI could transform the same coffee shop by randomizing the reward. This “slot machine effect,” as I call it, is the act of randomizing rewards so that their appeal is more enticing. Customers remain engaged longer when they don’t know when the next reward will arrive. Smaller, randomized rewards are more valuable than an expected payout. AI that supplements is powerful, but AI that transforms is unstoppable.

Preparing Your Business for Transformative AI

Adopting transformative AI for your business requires a paradigm shift. Accordingly, your business should take the following steps to prepare:

Evaluate what’s possible: Considering all the AIs that are out there, which ones make the most sense for your company? Where would AI have the greatest impact?

Learn prompt engineering: Compared to the Google search paradigm most marketers are used to, prompt engineering requires a different way of thinking. Its purpose is to teach the AI. Most prompts are long and descriptive to help you get the outcome you want from the AI, but there are different kinds of prompts. For example, thought sequencing uses short prompts to teach the AI what you want by refining the search as you go.

Start small: It is best not to try to incorporate a lot of AIs all at once. Start small by selecting a process or two that you can use to gain efficiency or help create a new service. Once that is mastered, you can look to other areas where AI can be beneficial.

Examples of Transformative AI

Not only can you employ AI to execute your marketing strategies more efficiently, but your business can use AI to reinvigorate every step of your customer journey. Mobile app functionality, market research, and data analysis are just three areas where AI can truly transform your marketing efforts.

Mobile App AI

Mobile apps are the single best communication channel brands have to reach their customers. People have an average of eighty apps on their phones—the majority from brands—and businesses can almost always reach their customers with push notifications. LighthousePE uses AI to create and deliver unique personalized offers on a one-to-one basis at scale. Every communication is relevant to the individual customer.

Task Efficiency

Using AI for task efficiency may seem supplemental at first, but it can become transformative. For example, one of my software engineers uses an AI to write the repetitive code for the basic functionality in a website. Of course, he still has to analyze everything the AI creates—after all, it can hallucinate. It can get things wrong. And you should not discount human evaluation. Nevertheless, the AI saves my software engineer about 20 percent of his time—time that can be applied to higher thinking or more critical code writing. Simply put, using AI to increase efficiency can affect how your business operates long-term.

Data Analysis and Reporting

AI can process, visualize, and consolidate vast amounts of data to create insightful reports and dashboards. It can find correlations between different data sets and provide recommendations on what to do next. In short, AI can analyze all the data that you’re collecting and provide you with valuable insights that were previously unrealized.

Transform Your Business with AI

Today, there are AI opportunities within every facet of business, but don’t let that overwhelm you. Begin by reframing your approach to AI; think beyond supplemental AI and lean into the ways AI can transform the way you do business. Unrealized possibilities await.

If you would like to learn more, contact me at [email protected] or book a time to speak here.