Have you ever wondered why some marketing teams seem to effortlessly integrate AI into their strategies while others struggle to get started? The answer might not lie in the technology itself, but in the mindset of the team using it. Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of AI adoption in marketing, and how a simple shift in thinking can lead to extraordinary results.
In the fast-paced realm of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve isn't just about having the latest tools—it's about embracing a new way of thinking. Many marketers find themselves overwhelmed by the constant barrage of AI innovations, unsure of how to harness this power effectively. The problem isn't a lack of AI tools or capabilities; it's a gap in our approach to these technologies.
But what if I told you that the key to unlocking AI's full potential in marketing isn't about mastering complex algorithms or investing in expensive software? What if the real game-changer is something much more fundamental—a shift in mindset?
That's where our guest today comes in. I'm thrilled to introduce Natalie Lambert, a true pioneer in the world of AI-powered marketing. Natalie isn't just talking about AI; she's living it. As the former Global Director of Applied AI for Marketing at Google, she's been at the forefront of integrating AI into marketing strategies for one of the world's most innovative companies. Now, as the founder of her own consulting firm, Natalie is on a mission to help marketing teams worldwide make the cognitive leap into the AI era.
The AI Hat Podcast host Mike Allton asked Natalie Lambert about:
✨ Mindset Over Technology: AI success in marketing starts with a shift in thinking, not just adopting new tools.
✨ Creativity Amplified: An AI mindset enhances rather than replaces human creativity in marketing strategies.
✨ Continuous Adaptation: Embracing an AI mindset means committing to ongoing learning and flexibility in marketing approaches.
Learn more about Natalie Lambert
- Connect with Natalie Lambert on LinkedIn
Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode
- GenEdge Consulting
- Tamra Moroski, “AI for Sales Teams: A Mindful Approach to Scaling Without Losing Human Connection”
- Anyword
- AI Marketing Primer: A Comprehensive Guide for Marketers
- Explore past episodes of The AI Hat Podcast
Full Transcript
(lightly edited)
The Cognitive Leap: Adopting an AI Mindset for Marketing Success with Natalie Lambert
[00:00:00] Natalie Lambert: I look at AI as a creative catalyst, so it's elevating the types of work you do, the types of ideas that you have. So getting it out of your mindset that it is this replacement. And so I think if you can look at AI as this thing that expands how you think, what you can do, ideas, things that break from more traditional types of marketing.
You'll start to see that when you can combine those AI brainstorming sessions combined with your human expertise, you're able to truly refine and elevate storytelling. You know, I really look at AI as this, this partner that can, whether it's looking at data to figure out what's worked in the past and what is not, finding hidden patterns, suggesting novel ideas, being able to help you rapidly iterate on concepts or test unconventional ideas.
[00:01:04] Mike Allton: Mike's got The Hat, the AI kind. Unlocking power in business, you'll find. Cut through the hype, explore the tech. Every week, new ideas to check.
Allton leads us on a digital quest, AI secrets he'll always invest. Tune in tight, don't miss a beat. Knowledge groove, keep you on your feet. Listen up, to the AI flow. Business growth, here we go. Cutting edge insight, that's the plan. With The AI Hat, you'll understand.
Greetings program. Welcome back to The AI Hat Podcast where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into social media, advertising, search content, and other areas of business and marketing. Oh. And you get to learn to subscribe to be shown and prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead.
Have you ever wondered why some marketing teams seem to effortlessly integrate AI into the strategies while others struggle to get started? The answer might not lie in the technology itself, but in the mindset of the team using it. Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of AI adoption and marketing and how a simple shift in thinking can lead to extraordinary results. Because in this fast paced realm of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve, it's just about having the latest tools.
It's about embracing a new way of thinking. Many marketers find themselves overwhelmed by the constant barrage of AI innovations, unsure how to harness this power effectively in the problem. Isn't a lack of AI tools or capabilities. It's a gap in our approach to these technologies. But what if I told you that the key to unlocking AI's full potential in marketing is about mastering those complex algorithms or investing in expensive software.
What if the real game changer. It's something much more fundamental, a shift in mindset. And that's where our guest today comes in. I'm thrilled to introduce Natalie Lambert, a true pioneer in the world of AI powered marketing, Natalie, isn't just talking about AI. She's living it as the former global director of applied AI for marketing at Google, she's met the forefront of integrating AI into marketing strategies for one of the world's most innovative companies.
Now as the founder of her own consulting firm, Natalie is on a mission to help marketing teams worldwide made the continent of leap into the AI era. Hey, Natalie, welcome to the show.
[00:04:01] Natalie Lambert: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:04:04] Mike Allton: So excited to have you. You are someone that I've been following and reading for quite a while now.
You are a master at this. We're really lucky to have you, thankfully. You mentioned once somewhere that AI brings you joy. In your work, could you elaborate on how adopting an AI mindset has changed your approach to marketing challenges?
[00:04:27] Natalie Lambert: I can. AI, ever since I started working with AI, it has just been a joy to use and to do my day to day activities. So while many of us do sit on a team and we have colleagues, a lot of the work we do is still AI. alone. It is still solo. And one of the things that has been a lot of fun when using these technologies is to truly have a creative collaborator sitting next to me across all of the things that I do.
So I just, I don't look at AI as a tool. I really look at it as this creative partner who is always there with me, helping me generate ideas or helping execute strategies. And for me, what I think is the most fun. is testing AI's capabilities to see what more it could do that I never thought of. And so I think just for me, there's that aspect of having a buddy to, to do my work with, and then on the more kind of tactical side of things having somebody that I can delegate some of the more boring aspects of my job so that I do get to have more fun and do more of the creative elements that I love.
[00:05:54] Mike Allton: It's funny because I'm a words guy. I've been a writer for over a decade. Words and communication are really important to me. It's how we formulate thoughts. It's how we frame everything that we see. And pretty much everything around AI is a struggle for a lot of those reasons.
From the very first, we call it artificial intelligence. And so that already has these connotations of it's fake. It's not real. It's. Artificial. And then there's this whole idea that you've touched on where, is it a tool? Is it technology? Is it an assistant? Is it an app? Is it a chat bot? And obviously it's, it's all, and yet none of those things at the same time.
And so the words are lacking, which I think is one of the, one of the, one of mental barriers that we see in people just being able to adopt it. They're not able to wrap their mind around it because we're not able to adequately communicate what AI is. What are some other mental barriers that you've seen, particularly in marketing teams, when it comes to embracing AI and how do you overcome those?
[00:06:52] Natalie Lambert: So the first one that comes up the most with marketers is that they feel AI and using AI is cheating in some way. In some way, they, they, they see, they see that they can get things done faster and that AI is taking the pen in a lot of different aspects and they, they believe in some way that they're being held accountable to the amount of work they put in, not necessarily the outcomes.
And I see people who. Hesitate to play with these technologies because they just feel it's cheating and that they're somehow going to be punished in some way for using these technologies and they just look at it as a shortcut. They shouldn't be doing. So I would say that cheating aspect is number one.
And a second one that I hear a lot about is that marketers are afraid that AI might take over that creative process from them. And they went into marketing to, to bring out those creative elements of themselves. And so if AI can do some of these creative elements, there's this thought that maybe it makes them less creative.
But the way I look at it is that a I is just a creative partner that that's that's yours and that you've trained to help you in certain ways, and it can truly help you generate new perspectives. It can help you expand your creative processes and you as a marketer, then can look at all of those ideas that it's given you and the guide and refine the process.
So you're still ultimately. Responsible for the output and you absolutely should. That is what you as a marketer, your human touch can do. That, that stop thinking about AI as taking away that creative element from your work because it's really there to support you.
[00:08:59] Mike Allton: Those are two very valid points. I see that a lot. How do you get around this idea that AI is fake or cheating to your point?
[00:09:07] Natalie Lambert: I look at it as how much more can you do, but more than just the quantity of work, I look at it as what additional capabilities can you add to your arsenal that you didn't have with, without. AI. And so one of the best ways that I like to think about this and try to get into marketer's heads is instead of asking yourself, what can I do?
How can I accomplish this task? Instead, start to ask yourself, what could AI do if I guided it? And recognizing now that you have a whole bunch of little AI employees to you that can be guided by you. Some of the things that it can now do is help you with some of the stuff that you were doing today.
So maybe that might be blogging or social posts or data analysis or something like that, but then you can start to think about what additional capabilities can. You do, or can you guide it to do with your expertise? So a great example that I know a lot of marketers have struggled with in the past is creating things like an ROI calculator .
And those are things that in all of my product marketing jobs, we've wanted to build. And we've typically had to go to an agency and kind of build out these models and have them build these things for us. Well, with AI and tools like the Claude and specifically the artifacts feature, they can now build a lot of these apps and functionality with your guidance.
So you don't have to know how to be the person actually coding these tools, but it's your knowledge of your products and, what your customer challenges are and the ROI and things like that, that if you can guide. A employee, an AI employee, you can do more. So that's just how I try to explain it, which is stop thinking about it.
Just tell him taking all of these, these different roles. But more expanding all of the different things that you can do across. Kind of what you were doing and more.
[00:11:16] Mike Allton: It's, it's similar in my mind to how there was so much pushback a couple decades ago towards students bringing scientific calculators to work.
Yeah. Or not to work, to school rather. Because yeah, it was, it was going to do all the work for them. They were going to lose their education, whatever. Okay, that, that clearly has not hampered. Our ability as a society continue to move forward with technology and that sort of thing. And I was reminded while you were talking of just our previous episode, we talked with Tamra Moroski from the Marketing AI Institute, and that was a very similar conversation, but we unpacked this truth that if we're using AI effectively, it makes us more productive and efficient, which saves us time.
And part of that time could be spent thinking about what else we could be doing. And if you really let that thought sit. Those of you listening really think about the fact that most of us are in what we would probably describe as a rat race, where we are just running and running and running all day long, trying to keep up with everything we're supposed to do.
By the end of the day, we flop in bed and we fall asleep and we get up the next day and we do the same thing over and over and over again. We're not giving ourselves the freedom of a significant amount of time to really just sit and think and plan and be creative to your point and be expressive. What else could we possibly do?
A lot of us just couldn't imagine what we could do with 10 or 15 extra hours a week. That's okay. You should take the time to imagine what you might do with some of that, and that would, that would take some time. But that is one of the things that I think AI is gonna bring to the table for us as as we move forward.
[00:12:54] Natalie Lambert: Yeah, and and one thing I'd add to that is, especially if you are a specialist who truly understands a function or a or a process like you are a specialist in that it's about thinking about all the tertiary things that might have gone to other people in the past that you can now do. And so, like as an example, and I recognize this is certainly a big company example, I've got small company examples as well, but like, for example product marketer in a big company might create, write a white paper or write a kind of initial copy for a product page.
And then they pass that off to a campaign team or another group of folks who will build some of those kind of. I say secondary, not in that it's, um, less than, but built on. So derivatives of that, that hero asset. And now people who might not have been experts in some of these other processes, but we're a specialist in, for example, since we're talking about product marketing, they can now own the entire life cycle of their content or their product, or whatever the case may be in ways that they couldn't in the past. And I think it's that mindset that's also changing how startups are hiring because, you don't necessarily need a as many people but be it's just, it's a different skill set where you might have initially hire generalist. Now you can bring in specialists who with these tools can just have so much more impact on an organization.
[00:14:46] Mike Allton: And I love that. Could you share some other examples of how shifting to this AI mindset has maybe transformed marketing strategy or particularly campaign that you've worked on?
[00:14:57] Natalie Lambert: I think one of the ways that it has enhanced or changed things like campaigns is having a partner to do a level of brainstorming that might not have been possible for, you can have all the wild and crazy ideas and throw them up and see what sticks, try new things.
There are AI tools today that can create songs. So creating a promotional song for your launch there, and that's with the tools Suno, S U N O. And then there are tools like notebook LM from Google, which can create a podcast, and we talked about how Claude with artifacts can create an ROI calculator or some type of application.
And so it's using these tools. They, they become this like limitless. Partner to enable you to try all of these different things that my cat has decided to join. .
[00:15:58] Mike Allton: Yep. .
[00:16:00] Natalie Lambert: So, hello everyone. But it's, it's that idea of AI just bringing so many more cap capabilities and tools to your arsenal that ex campaigns can be expanded more than they, they have in the past.
[00:16:17] Mike Allton: Well, first of all, the cat's awesome. Cat obviously loves your new camera view. Here she approves. That's terrific. Now we've talked a little bit about how AI is impacting creativity, and we've talked a little bit about how it's impacting humanity. But I'm wondering if you could share what else you think about how this AI mindset that we want to adopt is gonna impact creativity, how it's going to impact or potentially stifle.
'cause you mentioned that's one of the, one of the concerns, right? Is it gonna stifle human creativity? How do you address those kinds of concerns?
[00:16:52] Natalie Lambert: I look at AI as a creative catalyst, so it's elevating just the types. of work you do, the types of ideas that you have. So getting it out of your mindset that it is this replacement.
And so I think, if you can look at AI as this thing that expands how you think, what you can do ideas Things that break from more traditional types of marketing you'll start to see that when you can combine those AI brainstorming sessions combined with human your human expertise you're able to truly refine and elevate storytelling.
And so, I really look at AI. As this, this partner that can, whether it's looking at data to figure out what's worked in the past and what is not, finding hidden patterns suggesting novel ideas being able to help you rapidly iterate on concepts or test unconvention.
Unconventional ideas. It really just lets you at a scale that you couldn't have done in before. Explore those various what if scenarios that I think can expand overall creative possibilities. In addition, it's just bringing all of that together. When you, you as a human can look at all of these outputs and decide.
Which ones are practical, which ones might be worth a shot and which ones just aren't going to happen, just simply not going to be there. But using these ideas to truly get you started from a higher place, and by higher place I really mean from a further point you're starting. Not from a blank slate, but from a set of ideas and then bringing that all together to be that final curator and and deciding what is is the best for this campaign and only you as as the human with this expertise can make those decisions.
[00:19:00] Mike Allton: I love that you mentioned storytelling. I'm a storyteller, content creator, both here and at my job at Agorapulse. And so I follow a lot of people who talk about storytelling and I'm not going to call them out, but a lot of them are very obviously anti AI in, in their social posts and I understand where they're coming from, but I disagree.
I'm using AI extensively now through my storytelling because I'm using it to help me develop outreach campaigns to customers and prospects to bring them on shows to bring them into interviews. I'm using AI to help me craft, interview questions like asking questions to the AI. Like here are the eight or 10 questions that I plan to ask this customer.
What am I missing? What else should I ask? Right. And it gives me great suggestions every time. Mm-hmm . But then here's the really fun part. I'll do the interview. There's no AI in the actual box like this, right? I'm talking to the customer. It's up to me what follow up questions I ask and that sort of thing.
But then I can take the entire transcript Yeah. And drop it into a custom GPT that I've built that has our brand voice, our brand storytelling guidelines, the structure we'd like for our success stories and the Ai instantly understands the entire interview, which is like a 45 minute interview, right? And crafts a flawless success story.
It has, their challenges, their journey, their transformation, the results, everything that they shared in the interview quotes, everything that I said I wanted, right? It's all there in a nice document that I can just hand to my content team and say, here's a draft for our next success story. You can polish, you can edit, you can change anything you want, but here's to your point, that place to start.
It's not a blank page. They don't have to go listen to a 45 minute transcript unless they want to. It just saves so much time and it allows us to scale our storytelling efforts, which could then be applied to any other area of marketing that you might want to work.
[00:20:57] Natalie Lambert: I want to ask one question about that because and I have my answer, but I'll ask you first since you started it you talked about putting all of this content into a GPT and it's all built for you.
I, I've live and die by my GPTs right now. I, as a solopreneur have created. Many to help me with so many various aspects of my job because it's, it's, it's, I am able to do more than I think I ever could have in the past being able to do this on myself. So my question to you is how many GPTs do you, have you created and do you use on a daily basis?
And I just like to know if I'm crazy.
[00:21:34] Mike Allton: Probably not as many as you. Let me do some quick calculations. I've got, I've got some custom GPTs and then I also used a tool called Magai, which I'll share in just a moment that has personas. And I love that because the personas in Magai, Magai is a wrapper for Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini , Meta, Grok. You can use any large language model you want. They're paid premium versions. And then you can apply the persona just like a custom GPT to whichever model. So I don't have to have a Claude project and then duplicate that into a custom GPT if I want to use the same thing, but maybe change the model.
So anyways. I probably have 12 that I've created and several of them I use every single day. I have this podcast personally, I've got four podcasts very similar to this at Agorapulse. So that's five active podcasts and I've got a showrunner GPT for every single one of those shows. So as soon as I have an interview coming up.
The, AI is my assistant, helps me prepare. I've got a brand voice. This is for me personally. I've got a brand voice, GPT, a brand audience, GPT. I've got some newsletter and promotional GPTs. I love them.
[00:22:44] Natalie Lambert: I, and I love what you've said, because what you've done is. Is absolutely how I recommend using them.
And I, I don't always think it's done this way, but it's like the single purpose GPTs, they do one thing and one thing. Awesome. You're not doing a bunch of different things. So, I personally have probably between 50 and 70, but it's like, but it's like for every minute thing, it's like I have one that, cleans up my email so that they, sometimes I'm sure everybody here has had those moments where when you reply, you just laugh, you, you put it on the page and then I have something that makes it sound super professional which is, is always important and doing it in my voice.
And then, ones for very specifically. LinkedIn or very specific and, and LinkedIn for Natalie versus LinkedIn for GenEdge, two completely different dbts and, I have them to help with proposals and all of these different things, but I have certainly gotten down to the micro task.
With these things to be able to call them and it goes back to fun. It's just, it's so much fun to do work when you can bring in all of your assistants at any given time.
[00:23:52] Mike Allton: And then you can apply them, right. You can be using one GPT and then shift gears. Like I'll use my audience GPT to help me with strategic questions.
But if in the process of that conversation, we decide, Oh, I should send an email. About this to this audience. Cool. Let me shift to the voice GPT. Okay. We already decided here's the outline. Here's what we want to talk about. Okay. Voice GPT helped me craft this in my style, which I think is hilarious. I went through this whole exercise.
I did a whole episode about it. Folks want to listen that I fed it blog posts and, and we had this whole conversation to develop what my voice is and then turn that into some custom instructions. And I was amazed at how well it nailed it's description of my voice. Better than I could have ever possibly described my own style and voice to the point where you know identified it picked up on how I like to use historical references and science fiction references And I actually have to tell it to dial it back.
Sometimes like if we're doing a professional email I'm like don't slip a star wars reference in into this email, make it my voice, but let's not go that far.
[00:24:58] Natalie Lambert: That's awesome. No, that's great. And I've, I've noticed that too. One of my fun ones, and this is for any, if you have kind of small business owners who listen to this podcast one of the ones that just, Really blew my mind is I created one based on, I was probably six, seven months into my business.
And so I created one that I uploaded all of the proposals that I had sent over that amount of time and told it like this, these are my capabilities. Understand that this is what I do. And the goal was I could go into it and write a customer challenge or a customer problem, and then its job was to apply what it knew I could do to.
That particular customer problem, and I've actually won a bunch of business on GPT created proposals and ideas that I don't, who knows if I would have come up with it, but it's certainly elevated. My proposals and and more catering it to each individual customer. So it's just fun. The different things that you can start applying when you, when you play with them.
[00:26:00] Mike Allton: Yeah, for sure. And speaking of small business owners and marketers, what do you think are some practical steps for them who, maybe even if they're not tech savvy, but they want to start developing an AI mindset and be able to start doing some of the things that you and I are already talking about doing.
[00:26:16] Natalie Lambert: So the first thing I tell people. All the time is just start with a daily routine, change a single daily routine. That is, is something that you do every day. So for example, if you always go to search something in Google, try using Perplexity. Try using the new chat GPT, search a GPT, just try using AI to do something that you do every day, get used to it, see its capabilities.
One of the things that you'll find when just changing something like search is that it is a different way to search now, it, it becomes a conversation. within these tools where you can ask follow up questions when you get a list of results and you can just keep going down the rabbit hole and you'll start to just become more comfortable with how the technologies work.
So if you choose to go back to Google, great, but it, at least it's just something very tangible that you can, can start with. Next I'd say Automate one repetitive task this week. So if you're sitting at your desk and you're finding you're doing something for the third or fourth time this week, find a way to use AI to help, change up and, and support you with that task.
It can be something as crazy as, or as simple as copywriting. So maybe it's an email, maybe you want. Maybe you always take the time to go back and reread your emails and fix them. See if that task could be automated with AI and in that copywriting. One of the ones that I started playing with a couple of weeks ago is I was sent a email with this, with a copy and paste of a bunch of things in a, in a spreadsheet.
And unfortunately when it's copy and pasted into an email, it doesn't perform like a spreadsheet anymore. So you can't. Copy the columns or the rows or things like that. And so I just tried giving ChatGPT a screenshot of the grid that was sent to me in email. And it was able to completely put all of that content into a table for me that I could then copy and paste into the spreadsheet I needed it in.
So that's just one of those repetitive tasks that many people On a regular basis get because you're constantly moving data from one thing to another. So finding a way to automate a different a random task. And then finally, there's so much great content out there, whether it be, Mike, you in this podcast, there's a lot of newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, so many people who are living and breathing this technology.
And, wow, most marketers don't have the time to stay. up to speed by themselves and play with everything. Leverage the insights of a lot of these professionals out there so that you can get up to speed faster.
[00:29:10] Mike Allton: Love that advice. And you're right. This is how it begins to become an actual mindset shift. The whole point of our conversation today is that we stop thinking about AI as the third or fourth step in a potential solutions. The third or fourth option that we try, and we bump it up to maybe it's the second option, or maybe it's soon to be the first option, I was just reminded of this yesterday. I wanted to see how this podcast had grown month over month since I launched it in May. And I, I, I host with megaphone, which is Spotify owned. So I've got statistics there. I've got analytics and Spotify got analytics at Apple, but none of them showed me monthly totals.
But I could download a CSV of every single day's downloads. Okay, cool. Well, I know how to import that into a sheet. But then I've got to summarize each month and then, have some sums and then total that and then turn that into a graph. And I started doing that. I'm like, gosh, this is already taking longer than I wanted just I've only been doing this for five months. It shouldn't be a complicated question. And then it dawned on me not as soon as I would have liked, but it dawned on me. Well, chat GPT could do this. So I just opened a new chat. I gave it the CSV file. I asked it, I said, look, I want this summary and it created a chart.
[00:30:31] Natalie Lambert: I cannot tell you the number of times that I have been just like you, which is I'm like 75%, 80 percent through a task of truly mind numbingness, awfulness. And I'm like, you know what? I didn't have to do this. And but that's, we're going to go back to that point one, which is change a habit because you'll start, it'll get you in the habit of, Looking there first, and I think that's the overall point, if we can always ask ourselves, could AI take this? It will help avoid some of those, those moments that I've had more times than I can count, and I live and breathe this stuff every day.
[00:31:12] Mike Allton: So hopefully those of you listening are relating a little bit to, to what Natalie and I are talking about, because we're talking with Natalie Lambret about the importance of, and the steps toward developing an AI mindset.
In a moment, we're going to explore some that might evolve in the coming years and how this will evolve. But first a quick word from our sponsor.
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And now. Back to the rest of today's episode.
So we've talked about creating emails and copy and content and that sort of thing.
How do you think this change this AI mindset, maybe it changes the way marketers approach data or decision making?
[00:32:43] Natalie Lambert: One of the great things that AI can do, and we've, we've talked about it being able to throw a lot of data and you get a lot of you got those pictures and you're able to digest the information better and faster.
I truly. enables us to learn from past performance and bring that data back in so that we have this continuous learning loop around what we should be doing in our jobs. Like how do we, refine a strategy? How do we improve performance? Kind of being able to Evaluate and analyze data as it's happening.
And as it's going through, we're able to make better decisions about the future. So let me just I'll give a great example. There's a really interesting tool called Anyword and I want to talk about Anyword specifically as it pertains to social media, because I've seen a lot of success there. So this is a tool that helps you create social media copy.
And it's, it's in many cases, not unlike just using chat GPT or any of the other, many marketing specific tools out there, but what makes it relatively unique is it can connect to your social data to learn in real time, what's working and help predict the performance of future social content based on how you're doing it.
Your, your posts have performed in the past. And so one of the really interesting things about this tool is you can either put in your own social copy or have it create social copy and it will score it based on your past performance. And you can choose to have it improve the performance of the post by aligning it with some of the most highest performing Content that you've done in the past.
So if you think about in, in today, I say today's world, but it's called the past, the past world without AI, where you're creating these posts. Yes. Can you can gut check how much a post is like a previous post that has done well, but when you have. AI sifting through hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of data points, having it be able to find whatever that, that small nuance might be that is generating a great performing post and have it be able to mirror that.
You're able to just shift from reactive A B testing and determining what's best to truly predictive content that, should perform better with your audience. And so I love this idea of AI truly being able to, to leverage the past and the current, to help you make smarter decisions over time.
[00:35:30] Mike Allton: I love that approach. We've talked often on this show about like things like content gap analysis, using AI to analyze the hundreds, perhaps thousands of blog articles that we've written and help us understand what else is going on. Should we write about what haven't we written about yet? And that's a very similar take, looking at all the past social posts and helping us identify what did really, really well.
And sometimes to your point, you can see that we often don't know why as marketers, why did this LinkedIn post do well? Right. And this one didn't win as a human. They look the same.
[00:36:04] Natalie Lambert: Interesting about this Anyword tool because I've seen it like a post get a very low score and then have it fix it and it gets a really high score in its predictive capabilities.
And you look at it and as somebody who's been in marketing for 25 years, you look at it and you're like, it's kind of same, same. Like I really don't see it. And then we get a 71 percent inclusive click through rate. It's like, how did, where did this come from? And, and I can truly tell you as somebody who, ran the social team at Google, you look at these two posts, it's, what is it?
Six dozen of one half dozen or whatever. Six of one half dozen of the other, whatever that expression is. It's, it's, it's not obvious, but AI has this ability to find, whether it be patterns or something that we don't see. Yeah,
[00:36:58] Mike Allton: no, that makes a lot of sense to me because I'm I'm certified in NLP, so I've studied how humans think about how they filter the information they receive, how they distort it and so on.
And I understand that there's subtle changes that we can make in language that are imperceptible unless you know what you're looking for. Like I tell you, imagine if you were sitting at your desk back at Google and you were talking to your team and already you're doing that. I used the word imagine, and that's an inherent command, even though I obviously didn't say it.
Imagine, there's words, there's patterns that we can use. There's a whole Harvard study about, people getting in line for a copier and you could just walk to the front of the line and get your copies done simply by turning to the person who was in the front of the line and saying, I need to do some copies because And it didn't matter what you said after that, they simply accepted the fact.
Oh, well, if you've got a good reason, even if it's not a good reason, you can do it. So there's these funny things about humans, human psychology that well, we know artificial intelligence has ingested this information and is aware of that. So I love that we're using it for these kinds of things. Now we've talked a little bit about the struggle that marketers have in keeping up with all these things that are happening.
It's something I've talked about on the show a number of times. First of all, I don't really talk about like the latest changes in developments. I'm not going to talk about tools that are new on this show because it changes so rapidly. I leave most of that to Paul Roetzer or Mike Kaput put it to it, right?
They're Artificial Intelligence. So it was great for what's happened in the past week for AI. But how else do you recommend that marketers who want to keep up, I'll phrase it another way. How important do you think continuous learning is in this technology in this area?
[00:38:53] Natalie Lambert: It's super important, but for, not just for the reasons of staying to date with the tools, because I fundamentally believe like AI is, it's not a technology.
We these tools are easy to use. It's what we talked about earlier, which is thinking about all the ways to apply them. And so I think that kind of constantly going into them and seeing what's possible, seeing if it brings new ideas or sparks, sparks new ideas is just a great way.
Of continually learning how to use them more so I really think about this because it's how I live my life with these tools is truly adopting that mindset of curiosity and play, if you're always going into it, these tools to accomplish. One specific task, then that's what you're going to know.
And you, maybe you'll become an expert at using these tools for that, but you, you won't get a sense for what they can do. And so one of the things that I truly try to do is go into these tools while I live in them daily, but just see, try a different. Use case, try to ask something that I wouldn't have thought to ask in the past whether it be career advice or what I should make for dinner, whatever the case is, really starting to just think about using them differently.
Because I think one, it, for me, it helps me explore the creative side of myself in figuring how to do this. So I don't always feel that AI is taking that. But it's just one of those ways to continually see what's possible, elevate your skills, improve your impact and have fun using these, these tools.
[00:40:50] Mike Allton: I love that advice. In fact, I shared the Threads just last week, I have a truly random assortment of liquors and alcohols in a cabinet downstairs. And so I told chat GPT, here's all the liquors I have. There's like 13 random bottles of weird things. And it's like, what can I make with this? Teach me a cocktail or two to make it.
And it gave me five really, really interesting, incredible cocktails, like a Cuban sunrise and some kind of oh, a a citrus lemon martini or an orange citrus martini. Really interesting and quite good, actually.
[00:41:25] Natalie Lambert: And one of the things that you could probably take that kind of prompt to the next level, and it won't always work.
I'll be the first to say, if you first, you don't succeed, do try again, try again, but like you said, you, you wrote in all of the different liquors you have, try just taking a picture. Of your liquor cabinet and uploading it because I think you'd be surprised like to me. That's the things that I sometimes miss.
I feel I have to give more information that I than I probably likely need to. And I get in that all the time. And this is again, someone who lives and breathes this. So, it just that's what I mean by taking that step. It's like you came up with a great use case. What if you just did a picture next time and didn't even take the time to write it?
You've seen, I'm sure you've seen people who take a picture of their refrigerator and I'm like, what should I make tonight?
[00:42:13] Mike Allton: That's exactly what prompted me to do that. Absolutely. So Natalie, my last question for you, I'm just wondering how you see this AI mindset evolving. I hesitate to almost say the next few years because these things are changing so rapidly as we talked about, but just in the very near future, how do you think marketers should be preparing?
[00:42:31] Natalie Lambert: So I, I feel we've had such a fun conversation and I'm so afraid this is going to come off awful at the end. But AI is no longer optional. It is fundamentally optional. A job requirement. So, once you get playing and start seeing how it can help with more basic tasks, go from from you from using it to help with tasks to using it to help build out strategic, like, build out plans, be that strategic partner that can help you improve your impact and and do more with it.
Within your role to align with, with what the business is trying to do. And so, I really, I just, I fundamentally believe that AI is something you need to be using every day. You need to find places that it can help you. I, I don't think there's a single person marketer who won't be able to find a use case for it to help in some way.
And I, I, I just, I say, get started, start playing, even if it's, you're playing in a way that doesn't even apply to your role, just start playing. And then as it becomes a part of kind of more of what you're doing, start using it in ways. That enable you to think bigger. So this goes back to that strategic partnership, really using it to ask bigger questions.
Think outside the box, think about new ideas that might not have been possible. And, instead of if it gives you some of these ideas and you think, oh, I can't do that or, or we don't have the budget to do X start to think, are there AI tools that can help us do this? That. We might not have had it had before.
So some of these things would have been off the table. So it's like, for me, it is just. Get into the tools, play with them every day. This is, we are not going to have a choice but to use these. And, and there's been recent studies, I believe LinkedIn did a study, I forget the numbers off the top of my head, but it basically said that managers are now both are willing to, Hire somebody with less experience if they know AI, which I think is important and other managers who are simply unwilling to hire people without AI experience.
So it's, it's, it's just not optional, but if you come to come to the party, thinking about it as a partner, as someone to help you. Get your work done. Make it more fun. I think you will truly enjoy the, the capabilities it brings
[00:45:15] Mike Allton: and that's the good news. This isn't an edict to use trigonometry every hour of your day.
I'm going to echo what you said at the very beginning of the episode, which is that this is fun. This brings joy. Today, I can honestly say how much fun and joy I feel when I use a I and it gives me some incredible idea or a really terrific output. How happy it makes me that. Oh, wow. Okay, that's awesome.
That was so easy. That saved me so much time. I can go on to doing the next thing and the next thing in my day. So I completely agree and I appreciate you making that point. Natalie, you've been fantastic. I know folks have getting so much this episode for folks who want to know more about you or they want to reach out and connect.
Where can they go?
[00:45:55] Natalie Lambert: Yeah. So, Gen Edge. co is my website. But please follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot of videos on how, on interesting use cases and how to use the different technologies. Same with YouTube. I have a great YouTube channel where I'm really starting to increase. The number of videos I post there, but showing how a small use case can, can turn into something super impactful with AI.
So I think those are the main places.
[00:46:21] Mike Allton: Awesome. Thank you so much, Natalie. Thank you all of you for listening. That's all we've got for today, friends. But remember if this is your first foray into AI. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by jargon and all the different tools. Download the free AI marketing primer linked in the show notes below.
It'll set your mind at ease and they'll free you to focus on the kinds of topics we've been talking about today. Meanwhile, welcome to the grid.
That's a wrap on another episode of The AI Hat Podcast. I hope you gained some valuable insights and actionable strategies to boost your business with AI. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with your network. And don't forget to visit theaihat. com for more resources and to connect with me.
Until next time, keep innovating and remember the future of business is human and it's powered by AI.
