Smart marketers set the rules before AI makes the decision | MarTech

With all the hype surrounding AI, it should come as no surprise that I’ve encountered many less tech-savvy marketing team members who think AI does everything now. However, there are limitations to its capabilities, and wise marketers will combine AI’s capabilities with their existing technology to – as the mechanic’s motto dictates – use the right tool for the right job.

Let’s start by distinguishing between AI and automation, which are often confused because they share capabilities that are similar.

Automation is like an if/then statement. It allows people to set conditions that, if met, tell a platform to behave in a certain way. It’s the technological way of telling the cashiers in a store: if there are three or more people waiting in line, pick up the intercom and call for additional cashiers.

Dig deeper: the free AI tool that uncovers gaps in your site’s messaging

A marketing example might be a paid search campaign where spend cannot exceed $100 per day. How exactly you would do this varies by platform, but you can set instructions to monitor daily spend every hour and, if it ever reaches or exceeds $100, pause the campaign and alert you. Once activated, you no longer need to check platform spend every hour as the automation handles this and takes action if the spend causes a response. Marketers have been using these types of automations for quite some time.

Fake human intelligence versus real human insight

However, AI is different because we ask it to demonstrate fake human intelligence and make decisions for us. In the search campaign example, we use automation to pause the campaign and notify us when spend exceeds a threshold, but we can use AI to determine that threshold based on historical data or to reallocate channel spend as it assesses real-time performance.

These examples show how automation and AI can work together, but you may not want to let them run wild. Many platforms offer AI-powered automation that allows you to run an entire campaign with very little human intervention. The only problem I’ve run into is that it can quickly become apparent that AI merely mimics human intelligence and doesn’t use it.

I won’t repeat my recent article on AI biased decision-making (you can read it here), but there are very real dangers in letting AI take care of everything for you. Smart marketers will find the middle ground where we can use AI to make these decisions while automating the checks and balances.

Dig deeper: AI is paying off for B2B marketing. For B2B marketers? Not so much.

Back to our search campaign: an example could be that we give AI more freedom to decide on search terms and landing pages. However, we may create automated notifications if the conversion rate falls below a threshold or the cost per conversion exceeds another threshold. This will prompt you to call on your authentic human intelligence to assess the situation and possibly make adjustments before things get too out of hand.

Once you have this type of system in place, one person can potentially manage many more campaigns than before, demonstrating the biggest benefit of this setup: increased efficiency and accuracy for the organization. Alternatively, there may be things you didn’t do (as often) before because they were more of a ‘nice to have’ than a requirement, but now we humans have the time back to manage these campaigns effectively when supported by technology. When used properly, technology supports us so we can get out of the mundane and start discovering where we can really make a difference.

The bottom line

Ultimately, the real power of AI and automation lies not in replacing marketers, but in amplifying what we do best. When AI and automation tools are carefully combined and guided by human oversight, they create a system that is both efficient and resilient. By applying the right level of control, marketers can avoid the pitfalls of over-reliance on AI, while still benefiting from its speed and analytical power. The end goal is to make technology work for us, allowing human intelligence to focus on strategy, creativity and judgment where it matters most.