AI and Marketing in Action

At Marketing machine.pro relevant.com. Today I'm interviewing Marla Shilling. She's with Zao, and let me tell you a little bit about her. She leads brand and content strategy at zao with a, uh, background in sciences. Competitive athletics. She combines analytical expertise, communication skills, and leadership in her approach to marketing.

Marla: Thanks so much, guy. I am so happy to be here and have this conversation today.

Guy: Yeah. Thank you. And, uh, so, uh, tell us your backstory and how you got involved in AI and marketing and, uh.

What your story is.

Marla: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, my, my journey to get to where I am is, is not a complete straight line. Uh, so I went to Ithaca College, uh, I got a bachelor's in exercise science, and then I. Pursued a master's degree in exercise physiology. And, um, I wanted to do research and so I did that for a bit kind of before getting into the marketing realm.

And, um, at Xeo I oversee our brand content and our social functions as well. Um, from an AI perspective, I recently got into leveraging AI about. I would say a little over a year ago. Um, and I worked really closely with my CMO and, uh, as many marketers can attest to, we have a small lean team and our goal was to be more efficient, more productive, and uh, just kind of do more with less.

And so I dove headfirst into all things AI and really embraced it over the past year. Um, and so that's, that's kind of mean in a nutshell, guy.

Guy: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, that's, uh, interesting background shift from exercise science over to marketing and, and, uh, uh, so, uh, well good for you. It's so good to, uh, see new marketers having all of this wonderful background to be able to add it to the, the quality of their marketing.

Marla: Yeah, absolutely. So we started off, um, using it as a way to compliment our content team. So as I keep mentioning, we have a lean team. And so using AI as a source of, uh, content ideation, uh, generating outlines, helping us with social posts.

Um, you know, using it that it was a great starting point for blogs, uh, eBooks, whatever we were working on. Um, from there we kind of expanded. Uh, one day I uploaded a, a spreadsheet into chat, GPT and started to kind of use it as a. Way to analyze some data. So I put in some data from our, our social platform and it was able to, you know, give me optimal posting times, what content was resonating best with our audience.

Um, and then I think I do wanna mention that we are also looking at AI as a partner and strategy. So not just execution, um, you know, really trying to improve content performance, improve social performance, and have it help us with some strategic lessons and. Takeaways that we can apply to our marketing.

Guy: Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, it it, one thing that I found with, uh, we do a lot of work with regulated industries, so healthcare and financial services and, and what's kind of scary, um, and uh, but you know, I kind of understand as well is. Chat, GPT and any of the AI platforms are, are kind of cut off.

And those are also blocked. And, and what I've, what I'm kind of seeing and what I'm kind of recommending for especially these recommend these regulated industries is to start to split the function between, well, what's gonna happen on the outside? That people are gonna see versus what's gonna happen on the inside to improve your strategic questions and, and decision making.

So, uh, yeah. Great. That you're starting to do that. So now you've, uh, done quite a bit in, uh, social media. Tell us, uh, how AI has really supported you in social media. I.

Marla: Yeah, so about a year ago I took over our social media function, um, and at that same time, our social media manager was departing the company.

Um, while this would, you know, solve some other problems, obviously I had to figure out how to maintain our social presence, um, without that dedicated headcount and without taking on a full-time job. Um, in addition to my duties. So that's kind of where AI comes in. Um, I implemented Jasper and or Jasper and Chat GPT.

I am a huge advocate for that human touch. I think AI can get you, you know, some way of the way there, but you have to put that human optimization on. Um, but it takes out a lot of the time that's associated with, you know, things social so implemented that. I also started, as I mentioned, using chat GPT to upload spreadsheets and, and kind of get some insights and.

In the past, our social media manager was, you know, deck neck deep in looking at data and coming up with insights. And as you know, chat GPT can do this in just a couple of seconds and that was super powerful. So after about a year of doing this, um, we had great success. Um, after we implemented these tools, uh, we saw a 90% increase.

Guy: Yeah, that's, uh, those are, uh, some pretty fascinating and impressive statistics. You know, 90% and 50%. Uh, it's hard to beat that, that's for sure. So, uh, so what are some of the challenges that you had in adopting AI in, in your organization, and what did you do to get past them?

Marla: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest challenges, um, and this happened early on, was the fear of job displacement.

Um, so. As I mentioned, my CMO came to me and we kind of ideated on what we thought the future of AI for the marketing organization would look like. And she was a big advocate of bringing everyone along for the ride and not making it a mandate from the top down. Um, so that's what I did. I brought my team along, so we all looked at different platforms.

People didn't wanna try, try chat GPT, um, especially in like the content creative around. I think there's a lot of fear with job displacement. So I think that was a, a huge challenge that we had to overcome and we've definitely overcome it. The team is, is very involved. Um, they love it, uh, and, uh, and it's going well now.

Marla: Yeah, so I, um, you know, from the day that I started focusing on content, it's always for me, been around quality.

Um, I, I don't think quantity of content really makes sense. We shouldn't track quantity. Um, but I mean, let's face it, we do need to get content out there. We have a lot of personas we talk to. We have a ton of different industries that we, uh, sell to at zao. So we need content that is tailored to those, uh, to those individuals.

Um, otherwise the message will fall flat. So I think AI has allowed us to do that because we can tailor the message to hit different audiences, um, and those, that's a tall order even for, you know, a large team to be able to do. So AI really helps us get there. Um, and you know me, I'm all about data. So I came with some data from our content perspective and with, you know, the team not growing.

Um, and I, I think, you know, those results are a testament to the team, but also a testament to how the team leverages ai, um, as that strategic partner.

Guy: Yeah. Wow. Uh, that's fantastic. Uh, yeah, thank you for that. So, did you run into any, uh, governance issues, uh, on how AI was gonna be used, or was it blocked at all for you initially or.

Um, but you know, bias, data privacy, concern, uh, security, they were all major concerns as we were looking at different vendors. Um, and then just like education for the marketing team, right? Making sure that everything that we're putting in is truly. External information. So from my team's perspective, everything that we're doing, everything that we're publishing, it is external focus.

So we just make sure that we are, you know, putting those governance practices in place. Um, but they could be better. And that's what, that's what we're working on, and making sure that we adhere to that for the safety, uh, of everything.

Guy: Now, how do you handle, uh, like some of the hallucination or some of the.

Errors that, uh, AI might, uh, generate? Is that part of your governance or part of your processes in some fashion?

Um, because for our customers, we, we need to ensure that. So we are, um, really, really proactive about all of that.

Guy: Yeah, very good because, um, you know, you never know. I was talking to somebody the other day and uh, and he was saying, you know, from a, when you have, when you're trying to have facts and, uh, you know, for different reasons, then, you know, he was finding like five to 10% of the time it seemed like the, you know, the things were just wrong.

They were just wherever they were just coming from, some weird source or whatever, but 90% was good. But nevertheless, you don't want to have 10% wrong.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so where do you think you'll be in three years with the ai I.

Marla: Um, so I think having AI fully integrated into our workflow, so moving beyond just content generation, but again, helping with strategy, uh, segmenting audiences, audiences are really demanding personalized experiences. So I see AI helping us with that, predicting trends. Um, I, I think it can be a very powerful tool.

Um, I also think, uh, AI can help really amplify humans' creativity. Um, I don't believe that it will actually replace creativity. I think that's where the human comes in and why humans will always have to put their touch on things. I. I do think it can provide inspiration, um, have us, you know, think about different angles.

So really continuing to be a confident leader in the AI space. Continue learning. I think that's the biggest thing. It is changing so, so quickly. Um, in fact, I was out for three and a half months on maternity leave in 2024 and, you know, pre leave and post leave it. Changed, uh, so surprisingly, and, uh, I think, you know, staying on, on top of those curves is going to be really important for any marketer.

Guy: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, um, we're running out of, uh, out of time here, but I did have one, uh, last question for you and that is, uh, what advice. Would you give to a, uh, an up and coming marketer?

Um, and, you know, don't wait for that perfect idea. Try things, uh, fail quick, learn from the results and pivot. So I think that is something that's really stuck with me and helps me in my career. Um, separately, I think embracing AI early, so AI isn't here to take your job, it's to make it easier. It's to make you into something better and more marketable.

Um, and so I think the marketers who are embracing AI and learning how to use AI will be the ones, um, that companies want to hire. I do think it's going to be a, a job prerequisite in the future. So embrace it. Um, get good at prompting. Um, I use something called Trace I found a while ago. Um, it's called task request actions context example.

Guy: Fantastic. I like that. I'll look that up. Uh, that's, uh, an interesting way to look at, uh, prompting.

Well, Marla, thank you so much. Uh, really appreciate it. Um, and, uh, uh, thank you for participating in your insights and, uh, and your, uh, and the things that you're doing. It sounds like you're making a lot of progress there. Where can people go to, uh, find out more about your company and, and, uh, maybe even reach out to you?

Marla: Yeah, absolutely. So zao.com for anything company related, um, and then find me on LinkedIn. Always happy to chat ai, AI prompting anything around AI in the marketing space.

Guy: Fantastic. Thank you. Well, that was wonderful and uh, for the audience, uh, definitely stay tuned for many more of these videos on the series of back of the backstory on marketing and ai.

Marla: Thank you so.