Marketers Underwhelmed by AI Efficiency Gains

This Week

• Marketers underwhelmed by AI gains

• The most promising AI startups of 2024

• Accelerating AI-driven marketing maturity

• How to go viral on YouTube

• Tool of the week: Descript

• Get great at AI with Superintelligent

The State of AI Marketing Results

MKT1 ran a survey to determine what AI workflows marketers use daily, weekly, or monthly—and which workflows they’ve tried and stopped or never tried at all. 

They found that:

• Content creation and copywriting is the most popular use case.

• Marketers aren’t successfully incorporating AI into growth marketing, product marketing, and creative workflows compared to content marketing workflows.

• Marketers are trying and quickly abandoning tools that don’t deliver or aren’t trying tools for certain workflows at all.

Here’s a snapshot of the full results:

The MKT1 team argues that marketers aren’t getting the most out of AI because they’re focused too much on copywriting.

Their advice?

Marketers need to expand the number and variety of use cases for their AI collaborations.

For all the recommendations and workflows visit the MKT1 newsletter.

The Most Promising AI Startups of 2024

CB Insights just launched the 8th annual AI 100 — a ranking of the 100 most promising private AI companies in the world.

Here are highlights from the 2024 group:

• 16 countries represented, from the US to South Africa

• 30+ categories of solutions, from foundation models to humanoids

• 68% early-stage startups building virtual worlds, autonomous factories, language models for under-represented languages, and more

• 68% of the list is early-stage or has not raised outside equity

• Sakana AI has the highest valuation per employee, at $67M

• Midjourney, an image generation platform that has not raised any outside equity, is one of the leading AI 100 winners by revenue, with $200M in ARR.

Get all the details in the CB Insights report here. 

Accelerating AI-Driven Marketing Maturity

With the rapid emergence of generative AI, cloud computing, and omnichannel engagement, BCG thinks it's more challenging for companies to improve their marketing maturity. 

BCG identified what they are calling the essential capabilities companies need to develop their marketing maturity, including embedding data, conducting full-funnel marketing, and delivering technology-enhanced experiences.

These capabilities (once considered “nice to haves”) are now table stakes. As BCG says, if you don’t have them, you should hurry and acquire them. 

They are:

• User identification

• Integrated planning

• Test and learn culture 

• Data enrichment and monetization

• Targeting audiences and data sources

By prioritizing these areas, brands can unlock the full potential of AI-driven marketing and elevate their efforts.

Read the full report at BCG.

How to Go Viral on YouTube

YouTube is an incredible way to reach millions of people. If your video goes viral, you can skyrocket your viewers overnight. But a tiny percentage of videos end up climbing that high. While virality is often a matter of luck, some common threads exist between top videos on the platform. 

Descript editor Ramdy shares some tried and true techniques to increase the odds of going viral on YouTube.

His six tips for going viral are:

1. Collaborate with influencers

2. Engage with viewers 

3. Lean on current events

4. Create a strong hook

5. Repurpose long videos into YouTube Shorts

6. Cross-promote on social media

Watch the video at YouTube (of course).

Tool of the Week: AI Video Production

Now that you know the strategies and tactics for going viral, you need a tool to help. Look no further than Descript’s YouTube Editor. 

It comes complete with AI features to speed up your video production workflow, including:

• Automated video transcription 

• Good Clips to find the best clips to repurpose 

• AI Voices to fix mistakes in your audio without re-recording

• Eye Contact to readjust your gaze if you weren’t looking into the camera

• Green Screen to replace your background with an image or video

Website: https://www.descript.com/

Price: Free, or $24/month for the Pro license

G2 rating: 4.6

Get Great at AI with Superintelligent

Superintelligent's interactive video lessons help you learn and use Al tools for a whole range of tasks. They claim to have the largest and most comprehensive collection of AI how-to videos, with step-by-step instructions and hands-on interaction lessons. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I found a lot of video tutorials to pick from inside the platform. 

You can sign up for $20/month at Superintelligent.

News

Read AI, a meeting analytics platform intended to automate the scheduling, email, and messages to centralize and simplify their knowledge sources, has raised $21M at a $120M valuation. The round was led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from Madrona Venture Group.

Salesforce is in talks to buy Informatica. The deal would be Salesforce’s largest since it bought Slack in 2021 for $28 billion. It would also mark a return to form for the company, once known for its acquisitions. If the Informatica deal goes through, it would be Salesforce's 75th business purchased.

Social media management company Hootsuite will acquire Talkwalker, an AI-powered social analytics platform. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it’s expected to close in 2Q 2024.