Phrasee phun
24 Apr 2018
Who to follow: Paul Roetzer
@paulroetzer
Paul Roetzer really likes marketing. He also really likes AI. Basically, he was a guy we at Phrasee knew we needed to talk to.
A 13-year marketing veteran, and the founder of The Marketing AI Institute, Paul found his way into the marketing field shortly after graduating from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 2000. By 2005, Paul had founded his own inbound marketing agency, PR 20/20 which went on to become HubSpot’s first partner agency in 2007.
Author of 2011’s The Marketing Agency Blueprint and 2014’s The Marketing Performance Blueprint, Paul’s insatiable thirst for knowledge about what makes marketing effective eventually led him to begin looking into emerging artificial intelligence technologies and how they could be leveraged in automated marketing strategies.
Then, in 2016, Roetzer founded The Marketing AI Institute, which endeavoured to make AI technologies more approachable and actionable for marketers across the globe.
Combine an extensive understanding of AI’s emerging role in marketing with a lively social media presence, and do you know what you get? One of Phrasee’s very phavourite follows!
Happy #EarthDay from one small spec on our #palebluedot https://t.co/aALFbr5cFQ #sagan
— Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) April 22, 2018
“The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are” https://t.co/2yKm2mHrek
— Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) April 10, 2018
Now that we’ve etablished Paul Roetzer’s AI and social media bona fides, let’s see what else he has to say…
Paul Roetzer tale of the tape
Favourite food: Pistachio delight (my mom’s dessert speciality)
Pets: Two cats
Dream job as a child: Doctor
Last big purchase: LEGO NASA Apollo Saturn V Building Kit (I’m a total space geek).
Guilty pleasure: Million Dollar Listing. It’s my one reality show.
An interview with Paul Roetzer
For those who might not know, what is the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, and how does it make life easier for brands and marketers?
We launched the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute in 2016. AI is abstract and overwhelming to most marketers. Our mission is to make it approachable and actionable. We want to give marketers who take the initiative to learn and apply AI a competitive advantage in their careers.
What inspired you to create the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute?
How does AI drive marketing performance in the current landscape, and how will it drive marketing performance in the future?
It depends on the use case. AI is built to perform very specific, or narrow, tasks. For example, Phrasee uses it to write email subject lines that outperform human written copy, thus increasing open rates, click-throughs and sales. BrightEdge uses it to surface opportunities and insights for SEO that bolster organic traffic. Crayon uses it to track the digital footprint of competitors, which can be used to inform marketing strategy.
What questions should a brand ask itself before adopting AI into its marketing strategy?
- What repetitive, manual marketing tasks do we do every day/week/month/quarter that could be intelligently automated?
- What opportunities are there are to get more out of our data—discover insights, predict outcomes, devise strategies, personalize content and tell stories at scale?
- What are the AI capabilities within our existing marketing technology stack? Can we drive greater efficiency, personalization and performance without having to add more vendors?
How long will it be until all of the world’s marketers are all replaced by AI?
I don’t see that happening. Some jobs will be replaced. Others we can’t imagine will be created. But, for the foreseeable future, this is a story of human knowledge and capabilities being augmented by machines. That doesn’t mean there won’t be painful transitions at times, but the transformation will be mostly positive for brands and marketers. And, most importantly, for consumers.
What areas of marketing do you think are ripe for AI disruption at the moment, and what is standing in the way?
Anything that requires data to inform decisions and actions. A couple that immediately come to mind are media buying and marketing automation. The irony of marketing automation is that it’s largely manual. Marketers set all the rules that tell the automation software what to do. That will change.
What are the biggest problems that you envision arising in the AI marketing space in the next 2-3 years that people might not have thought of yet?
What is your least favourite thing about working in marketing?
The need, or, at least, the perceived need, to always be connected.