Boosting productivity is a big goal for most organizations, but figuring out how to turn that productivity into revenue can be tricky. These days, many businesses are turning to AI for a leg up, and marketers in particular are bullish on the tech with 98% of all marketers surveyed by the Marketing AI Institute affirming they are personally using AI in some way (per the 2023 State of Marketing AI Report).
By strategically implementing AI, you can streamline operations, make better decisions, and ultimately drive more revenue. In this blog post, I'll break down where to use AI in your organization to enhance productivity and how these efforts can translate into increased revenue. Plus, I'll share some relevant examples for marketers, including a case study from Lifemind.ai, to help you get started!
"Competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business for distributed digital and AI innovation" A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024. McKinsey Quarterly, March 2024.
Where to Use AI to Increase Productivity
1. Automating Routine Tasks
One of the quickest wins with AI is automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. This lets your team focus on more strategic and creative activities, boosting overall efficiency and productivity.
This is the clear focus for most marketers today, with 77% of marketers saying that "reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks is the top outcome they want to achieve with AI. This is also the top desired outcome among AI decision-makers and the C-suite" (per the Marketing AI Institute's 2023 State of Marketing AI Report).
At Asana, marketers created a content creator and campaign brief bot to align messaging and brand guidelines across the company. You might also use AI to automate email marketing campaigns with tools like Mailchimp's AI-powered automation, which handles behavioral segmentation, content generation, and scheduling. This saves time and makes campaigns more targeted and effective, leading to higher open rates and conversions. Other productivity tools include Slidesai.io for outlining and prepping engaging slideware, and Otter.ai for taking meeting notes with summarized action items.
With numerous productivity tools available, it's essential to follow best practices in change management to ensure tools meet organizational needs and can be effectively scaled for maximum benefit. Kotter's 8-step change model is one of my favorites!
2. Enhancing Customer Support
AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants can handle a large volume of customer inquiries, providing quick and accurate responses. This reduces the workload on human support teams and ensures that customers receive timely assistance, enhancing overall satisfaction.
AI chatbots on websites can engage with visitors in real-time, answering questions, providing product recommendations, and even processing orders. By improving the customer experience, businesses can increase their conversion rates and drive more sales. Companies could also stop recruiting new agents and use savings found through attrition for financial gain. See Help Scout for a list of the 11 Best Customer Support Tools for 2024.
3. Data Analysis and Insights
AI can analyze vast amounts of data much faster and more accurately than humans. By leveraging AI for data analysis, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and operational inefficiencies. These insights can inform better decision-making and strategy development.
Lifemind uses AI to group customers into distinct worldview segments, using a proprietary map of 189 worldview markets encoded Into 41K zip codes. By understanding the values and preferences of different customer groups, marketers can tailor their campaigns to resonate more deeply with their target audience. This targeted approach has been shown to improve conversion rates by up to 40%, driving revenue growth.
Recognizing Revenue from Increased Productivity
1. Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains
When AI is used to automate tasks and streamline processes, organizations can achieve significant cost savings. Some examples include: visualizing your customer's buying journey and more with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, up your search game with Perplexity's AI-powered search, and develop a marketing experiment roadmap prioritized for your campaign goals in minutes with lifemind's CampaignIQ.
These savings can be reinvested into other areas of the business, such as product development, to drive further growth. Additionally, increased efficiency means that employees can produce more in less time, directly impacting the bottom line.
2. Improved Customer Experience
AI can enhance the customer experience by providing personalized and timely interactions. Satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend the brand to others, leading to increased revenue. Improved customer experience also reduces churn rates, ensuring a steady stream of revenue from loyal customers.
Here at Lifemind.ai, we are helping customers align their brand story more effectively with segments where deeper engagement is desired for upsell / cross-sell, as well as expanding to new markets where messages have not resonated in the past. For example: a leading Solar company is using lifemind to deepen their penetration of two top markets - testing values including Self-Reliance, Financial Savviness, and Innovation that are aligned to each worldview segment. See Figure 1 below:
Additionally, they are looking to open a new market - we've chosen one of the larger sub-100 indexing segments as seen in Figure 2. Values aligned to this conservative (Positional) segment include reliability, self-sufficiency, and adaptability. Creative by channel is provided by the platform to fuel creative testing.
3. Data-Driven Decision Making
By utilizing AI for data analysis, businesses can make more informed decisions that align with market demands and customer preferences. This strategic approach minimizes the risk of failed products or campaigns and maximizes the potential for success. Data-driven decisions lead to better allocation of resources and more effective marketing strategies, both of which contribute to revenue growth.
Lifemind provides a compelling example of how AI can be used to increase productivity and generate revenue. By leveraging AI to understand customer values and segment the market into distinct worldview segments, lifemind helps businesses create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. This approach not only improves engagement and conversion rates but also reduces marketing spend by focusing efforts on the most promising customer segments.
Conclusion
AI offers numerous opportunities for organizations to increase productivity and generate revenue. By automating routine tasks, enhancing customer support, and leveraging data for strategic insights, businesses can streamline operations and improve decision-making. Marketers, in particular, can benefit from AI's ability to personalize and optimize campaigns, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. As demonstrated by lifemind, understanding and targeting customer values can significantly boost marketing effectiveness and drive revenue growth. However, it’s crucial to be intentional when rolling out new AI tools. Utilizing a change management framework can help ensure these tools take root and scale effectively, allowing organizations to truly unlock new levels of productivity and profitability.
