Ep 62: Introducing AI: get smarter with your built environment marketing
Welcome to the first epsiode of the 2024 season of The Built Environment Marketing Show.
Today’s episode features Amy Walters from Bloom Creative, Jessica Barrett from Bidwells and show host Ayo Abbas. All three speakers have won Digital Women of the Year Awards so this discussion is one to listen to as we tackle AI from a practical perspective.
We talked about how built environment firms can harness AI in their marketing and provide practical ways of application from marketing, content creation /communications and graphic design perspectives so there’ll be something that will apply to us all.
Key takeaways:
A quick rundown on what AI is
AI tools that we’ve used
Practical ways you can get started using AI in your marketing workflows
AI Marketing tools mentioned
Marketing
Communications
Design
Resources and links
About the show
The Built Environment Marketing Show is hosted by marketing consultant and content creator Ayo Abbas. It is unashamedly about marketing for architects and engineers. And I'm happy that we tend to go deep and have real conversations with real marketers out in the open. I want you to be so inspired that you come away wanting to try new things.
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Transcript
Ayo Abbas 00:05
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the 2024 season of The Built Environment Marketing Show, and I am your host, Ayo Abbas. I am a digitally-led marketing consultant and I specialise in working with built environment firms. This show is all about showcasing the amazingly smart marketing that goes on in the built environment sector. And I hope it inspires you as much as it does me to try new things, especially things in digital. And today is a special episode, which was recorded live over on LinkedIn on February the first, it was lovely to hear from Amy Walters and Jessica Barrett, about how they're using AI in their marketing. At the moment, I think a lot of people are stuck in the realms of business as usual, and not thinking about how they can include AI as part of their marketing workflow. Hopefully, this episode will inspire you to get started. Enjoy. Hello, and thank you so much for joining us. And welcome to this livestream which is kicking off the next season of The Built Environment Marketing Show. So thank you so much for joining us. And I am Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing and marketing consultant who works with architects and engineers. And I started this podcast in lockdown one which is like three and a half years ago scarily because I wanted to open up more people to the types of marketing conversations that I have with my friend. And it's been going for three and a half years. And 60 episodes have about 12,000 downloads. I'm quite happy with that to be honest. And today you are being treated to not one, not two, but three digital Women of the Year. So they're the young ones. I'm the older one. So true. It's like there's no way I'm like like I'm the older. So Amy Walters. She's the founder and lead designer of Bloom Creative and Amy helps businesses to Bloom by an art enhancing their branding and designs. And my other panellist is Jess Barrett, and Jess is Marketing and PR Exec of Bidwells, who describes herself as a jack of all trades master of comms, which I really liked, by the way, so let's get going. So AI certainly dominated the headlines last year with the introduction of ChatGPT from OpenAI, which basically just grabbed every headline going. But don't be fooled AI wasn't really the new kid on the block, but it has been around for quite some time. So it's in many ways, the kind of one of the day to day marketing tools you may already be using. So today we're going to talk about how built environment firms can harness AI in their marketing, when we're looking at it from a practical point of view. So looking at AI from a marketing perspective, which is mainly me from a content creation and communications perspective, which have been chess and from a graphic designer perspective, which will be from Ami. So you've got a good mix of marketing there, and so hopefully it will help you. Here's a quick rundown of some of the key AI definitions. Ai stands for artificial intelligence, which means a general concept of machines acting in a way that simulates or mimics human intelligence. AI can have a variety of features such as human like communication or decision making. Algorithm. An algorithm is a set of rules that a machine can follow to learn how to do a task. Machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of AI that is particularly focused on developing algorithms that will help machines to learn and engage in response to new data without the help of a human being generative AI. Generative AI is about generative artificial intelligence. And it's basically AI that is capable of generating text, images or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts. So one generative model that you might know is ChatGPT. For example, generative AI models learn the patterns and structures or their input based on training data, or LLM and then generate new data that has similar characteristics. Large Language Models, or training models, Large Language Models, or LLM's or deep learning algorithms that can recognise summarise, translate, predict and generate content using very large data sets. That's enough for some of the quick definitions. Now let's get on with talking about the practical uses of AI with Amy and Jess. So why is it important that people start to kind of look at AI and put some time into learning how to use it themselves? What do want to kick us off? Amy? Yeah,
Amy Walters 04:47
I think it's one of those things that a lot of people are scared to use. And so just getting started is great. And the more that you use and get started with it, the more you discover the ways that it's going to be helpful for you So if you draw it back to just one small thing, an example I love to give is there's a general a tool and AI tool that generates a to do list for you. So you say, I'm going to be live on LinkedIn this afternoon talking about this, you click a button, and it gives you 10 things that you need to do to prepare. So it knows based on what other people have prepared, and that kind of thing. And so you can see how suddenly, then that's become a useful tool that sped up your process or reminded you of things you might have missed. And then I'll kind of let just talk about the ways that then that can expand a bit further. So
Jessica Barrett 05:38
I think a lot of people think of AI and they think of activity. And they think of blog writing and content writing. But there's such a plethora of tools out there. So I think it just shows from the diverse team we are in that we can talk about strategy, comms and graphics, it can help you record podcasts, edit video, come up with meeting notes I've used it for. So I think you don't have to limit yourself just to using it for content and blog writing. But if you use it in small ways throughout all of your work, then it can just really help you. And I think I second what Amy said that, if you use it in small ways. Now it will help you in the long run. I think it's the new Google people who didn't use it and adopt it early on, kind of struggled to keep up with it and kind of keep grinding with the technology. So I think it's just one of these things that it's just growing more and more every day. If we look back in the last year, 18 months, AI chat, loads of different tools have grown at such a rate. So I think it's something that you should kind of learn how to use now. And it will help you in the long run.
Ayo Abbas 06:44
What's the app called that you mentioned aiming?
Amy Walters 06:46
Oh, it's Magic Todo. You go to Goblin.tools, and it's that that will come up.
Ayo Abbas 06:54
So if your to do list type person, that's for you. Fantastic. Okay, so talks about why it's important. I mean, for me, I, I think it's worth I've seen people investing into it, if you see it as your marketing assistant, to someone that you know, some something that can help you take away, I guess the repetitive strain I was doing, I was reading up this morning. And, we waste a lot of time doing mundane tasks in marketing, don't wait, uploading this, you know, looking for the right contacts or whatever. And it's like, how can we do this quicker and faster and better. And I think there's a lot of tools out there that we're not using or making the most of that could actually help us to do our, our jobs a lot quicker. And I guess release from some of the kind of mundane stuff and actually start doing a more, dare I say fun strategic stuff. So for me, that's why people should start playing around with it, actually, because I think he can help us to do a lot more and be a be a lot more efficient in how we work. So for me, I think I think that's why
Jessica Barrett 07:58
Absolutely, that's the key takeaway for me as well is that it can help you become more efficient. I think people need to realise it is basically like having an assistant someone to bounce ideas off of. It can't do everything for you, I don't think you should always take the content that AI gives you and just release it to the world. It does require some refining, whether you're proofreading it, or as we've discussed machine learning, feeding back to chat and saying actually, the tone is not quite right, this is more I want I want more of a professional tone rather than corporate and refining it in that way. And then AI works better for you once you start kind of communicating with it. And I think that's why AI in ChatGPT has kind of taken the world by storm. It's because it's conversational. And people kind of like how you would ask Google a question. You can ask chat a question. And people are familiar with that kind of search. So yeah, key takeaway for me is efficiency.
Ayo Abbas 08:59
Yeah. And that's the thing. I know that you're right. It's the conversation, you can dig deeper and delve delve deeper if you don't get what you need. But I think the other thing for me is that it's changing so much like as a platform when you even like, look at ChatGPT and just all kinds of AI is changing so fast. But like you kind of go back in and then you suddenly go, oh, that's a new feature there or now I can have, you know, my settings for my background. I can actually just put it in there. So I don't have to keep going. I'm a marketer, who works with architects and engineers, you can just go in and knows who you are. So it's things like that. And it's always changing. It's always worth kind of going in and just thinking what's been updated since I was last on there as well. So yes, I do find it quite fascinating. So in terms of design, how are you kind of using kind of AI and AI based tools and design? What are you finding it useful for and what what would you suggest?
Amy Walters 09:50
So there's probably two different ways that it's most useful. One is the kind of ideation so testing things out, coming up with different ideas, having a look To see how that might appear. So I might use that to say storyboard an idea out and kind of get different images, instead of having to draw those out, I can generate those through AI to be quite quick, test different ideas out before doing the kind of hard graft of actually editing everything. But then the other side of it is being able to use it as a tool to speed up editing. So something that I use it for quite frequently is to do things like take things out of images, so you highlight it, and you get it to remove it from an image or to generate something new within an image that wasn't there, or one that's really good in Photoshop at the moment is you can put an image in, and you can drag out the kind of canvas size, and then it will generate everything around it. So that's really good for things like website banners. So, so often you can be looking for a stock image for absolutely ages, find the perfect one. And it's just not wide enough for the space on the website that you want to fill. So then you use the AI to kind of build that out. And then it's something that a good designer could do, if they've got the skills, but it would take so long that it's just not worth the time, whereas AI now speeds up that process, and makes it possible. And so those are probably two of the main ways to coming up with the ideas and actually implementing them that I would use AI in design.
Ayo Abbas 11:24
And what tools were you using. So you talked about Photoshop, now whichever one you're using, so
Amy Walters 11:28
some of it will be ChatGPT and bouncing things back and forth. Some of it will be using Dall-E, and the latest one through chap. GPT is kind of Dall-E3, I think, which is one of the better ones. And that's an image generation tool. So for those listening that haven't used Dall-E3, you prompt it with some text, and the more specific you are with your text, the better. And then it will create images for you. And you can kind of edit it from there. I personally don't use mid journey, but I've got blue with like Willow, which is very similar to mid journey. And then the other tools that I occasionally dip into is Canva. So Canva have a new AI magic suite, which a lot of my clients do stuff on Canva. So their their AI tools are called Magic Tools. And they're really great. And they're kind of developing those. Yeah, I mean, there's probably loads more, but that's they're the main ones
Ayo Abbas 12:23
is the main ones. And do you find sometimes some of the tools or like some of the Canva AI stuff looks a bit ropey to me. And like, you know, like everyone kind of sometimes talks about, like, look at their hands, and they look like this weird kind of like, are you finding now or is it getting better?
Amy Walters 12:40
I think it's one of the ones that is getting better. But Josie's just added there. Canva does have similar expanding images. But it's not as good as Photoshop, but it's there. And that's exactly right. It's, I did a comparison where I wanted to add. So I wanted to add a kayak to some water. And then I wanted to add a grizzly bear nearby. And it was for a talk, it wasn't for any particular content, it was random stuff for talk. So I did, I did exactly the same prompting in Photoshop than I did in Canva. And there was you could tell the difference with Photoshop being that pro editing tool that given that Canva is one of those all in one, not pro level tools. It doesn't do half bad for being an accessible AI tool.
Ayo Abbas 13:24
And like what sort of typical prompt would you put into, say Dall-E or Photoshop or something? What would you what would you put in? What sort of words or language would you do? What do you include?
Amy Walters 13:35
So with something like daily, I'd be very detailed. So I'd be saying things like photorealistic maybe the dimensions of the images that I wanted, I'd be very descriptive. So in the past, I've done ones like a field of wildflowers that are purple, of course, with the sun setting behind at golden hour. And what I say is generally you want to describe it as if you're describing it to someone who has their eyes closed, and they can't see what you're trying to describe. And so you do that, and then use different kinds of things like photo realism and bouquet effect and that sort of thing. And so that's how I would use darling and how it prompt Dall-E. But with Photoshop, you can be very to the point. So you can literally highlight an area and just put grizzly bear, and then it will generate you four different ideas to choose from. So you don't I don't find that you have to be as descriptive with Photoshop.
Ayo Abbas 14:27
So is that because it's just like a more sophisticated kind of developed? Or is that like the difference of them? Some of these, you know, like, the Canva one might not be as good because it's Canva. And it's part of a bigger whole is that?
Amy Walters 14:39
Yeah, particularly I think as well with Photoshop, you're asking it to do a specific thing. So Dall-E, you're asking it to create a whole image from scratch. So you have to be very descriptive. Whereas in Photoshop, you're selecting an area and you're just saying remove, or now you don't even have to say remove you just hit enter or you're expanding it and it understands based on the rest of the image, what is the After. So it knows like with the grizzly bear example, I'm not obsessed with grizzly bears, by the way, it's just just an example. It knew where the sun would be shining. So it made sort of made sure that the sun was shining from the same angle as the rest of the image. The bears feet was in wet in the water. So it uses the rest of the image that you have to do less prompting in that respect.
Ayo Abbas 15:20
Ah, okay. Yeah, that's really, really useful. Brilliant. And I'm gonna go to you now, Jess. So from her kind of columns and PR expert. Background, I can't remember what the word was forgot that perspective, that was the word. So how long have you been using? What tools have you been using? And what's your help to do?
Jessica Barrett 15:39
So within my in house marketing and PR team, we've been using quite a lot of tools over the past 12 months, so obviously chatting to t. And we're exploring, kind of paying for ChatGPT 4 so a couple of years within the team have it but it's not spread across the whole team. We're looking at copilot for Word as well, we've not used that yet, but are looking at getting a subscription because I think it's changed from needing 250 people to kind of sign up and have an account to where it's much more expensive. Now, it's integrated with Microsoft suite. So word so you can be typing and blog. And it can help you by as you're typing in words, you don't necessarily have to do stuff in chat anymore. So there are tools that I'm excited about are trying but the ones that we've been using. Use video creating tool called PlayPlay, which is really good. Has great integration with branding. So perfect for us, as in house marketers. I use Claude similar to chat for those that don't know, but instead of only being limited to typing things, you can attach documents. So you can attach a meeting transcript or a document or contract or a press release from something and ask it to summarise things, ask it to come up with a title or ask it to condense things. And it's so good. But I'd say the distinction between Claude and chat is called helps you to summarise things and condense things, whereas chats a lot more creative flow
Ayo Abbas 16:17
can handle a lot more data, can't it like a lot more summary stuff and information. Whereas chat goes, no thanks can't do this now.
Jessica Barrett 17:29
I think I found exploring loads of different tools, it's really helpful. So we've got a tool called Fireflies, it kind of joins as an additional person within a team's meeting, and transcribes the meeting as you're going. And then it after the meeting will give you a list of highlights or actions that's really good when you've kind of got back to backs and not a lot of time to digest. So I use otter
Ayo Abbas 17:54
for that it's the same thing you can use. And
Jessica Barrett 17:58
I found that AI is really helpful for some of those administrative tasks like meeting notes or kind of condensing things down. So those are a few tonight. And we have these mid journey a little bit for some of our creative campaigns in terms of like imagery and planning. And then Canva we use as well, we've got an account that as Amy says it can be a bit hit and miss.
Ayo Abbas 18:22
Know that it's so so useful. Hi, it's Ayo here. And I just wanted to interrupt the show quickly to say a bit more about what I do. I'm a digitally lead marketing consultant and I specialise in working with built environment firms, just like yours. I think there's so much more that AEC firms can do to make the most of the digital marketing opportunity. And if it's something that you would like to explore working with me how to make the best of online and in person world, then do get in touch, email me Ayo which is ayo@abbasmarketing.com. And let's have a chat. And I guess what, when you're prompted, so when you're using ChatGPT, what kind of things are you searching for? Are you or do you prompting it to do? What kind of language
Jessica Barrett 19:12
I always I always tell chat who it is, I say you're an expert copywriter or you're a PR specialist and give it that background, then it knows exactly where it's coming from. I try and give it a word count limit, but it's not great. It's a word count is quite good at sticking to tone. So often, once you nail your corporate branding and tone of voice is really good at adhering to that if you have a couple of words that you know that you're corporate and friendly, then it can become really consistent. And that's one thing that we found is that it helps all of our content become consistent. Because sometimes when you've got multiple people in your in house team, we've all got slightly different interpretations of what your tone of voice is. So it's helped us a lot with being insistent and on brand. I've forgotten what your question was now a I've gone on a bit of a tangent. So
Ayo Abbas 20:06
it's like, okay, don't worry. I think it was more about what what you're using in terms of your prompting what prompts, what prompts you're
Jessica Barrett 20:13
using, say, using specific words, giving it a brief and also saying who the audiences. So as being a consultancy, we have quite a few different client types and key customer segments. So knowing who those are telling chat, like describing them and what they need out of it. So you're being educational, you're informing. That's really key as well, we have to give it such a good brief.
Ayo Abbas 20:41
Yeah, I mean, I have to admit, sometimes when I see some of the pitfalls, or you know, when you see sometimes on LinkedIn, and people are like, here's a prompt booklet or whatever playbook for ChatGPT. And other prompts, like two pages long. I'm like, who's got time? is long? You know what I mean? I think I think some of that at least like Claude feels like it's a bit more problems don't have to be as detailed and some of those, isn't it? But I guess it's trial and error to see what's needed. Which, which, which different application, isn't it?
Jessica Barrett 21:09
Absolutely. So I think if for those listening, you've not really dived into AI, or perhaps you've just tried chat a little bit. Think about what you want AI to do for you, what tools might you want to explore, and then just have a go, there are loads of free trials out there. And just kind of explore things, trial things, think how actually, it would be better if this was a bit more creative, and then try and find another tool out there. Because there are 1000s of tools out there, there's going to be one that does exactly what you want. And
Ayo Abbas 21:41
most there's so many more coming onto the market as well, which is quite quite incredible. Someone's just said use myGPT.Dev is a great tool to use with ChatGPT, which helps you begin with an initial prompt eg copywriter to GPT. I think there's also, quite interestingly, I think there is I think one of the things you've put on some of your notes, Amy was around, you've got like chat bots and things like that. And I know when I've been listening to podcasts around AI, there's been that thing of you can kind of train it to do those kinds of basic tasks. So like, if you're writing a press release, as in, you know, the basic the who, what, where, why questions that you would use, or if someone came into you in the business and said, you write a press release, as I always do. But it's like the you can use that to get to your first first first rough draft. And I think things like that, where you can go, that would save me a lot of time, and then it's taken to the marketing team. So I think looking at your overall workflows and using tools to kind of look at those basic questions and those workflows that you do all the time, that actually could be automated as an amazing way that people could save time going forward. I
Jessica Barrett 22:45
completely agree. I don't think that charts ever going to replace content writers. But I think it can help a lot with some of the lower value content and the stuff you do have to turn out. And it's really repetitive. And as I said earlier, it helps you become more efficient, and then frees up your time to think about larger projects like thought leadership staff, working on research reports, the stuff that's higher value. That's really key.
Ayo Abbas 23:11
I mean, marketing wise, some of the ways I have used it myself is is even just things like understanding customer personas, or what should go into it. Or sometimes I will look at I start I did, just like over the holidays and stuff I did, like, I looked some of my blogs, and I put some of them in and I said how can I improve these to improve their SEO? And also I use it for things like headlines, and you can kind of just ask questions and go, How can I prove this? What else should I be doing? What's missing from this landing page, there's lots of kind of little things you can kind of use it just to kind of do a back and forth and improve what you're doing. But I think there's also that kind of area that you can use AI to kind of understand like personas, what issues your, your your clients are likely to be facing, you can ask you know, prompts around, you know, what are architects based in London? What challenges are they facing at the moment, you know, and it's good, it can give you quite a lot of stuff and you know, it but like you say it's like playing around with it, which I think is the most important part with
Amy Walters 24:09
using it for things like your target audience and market research. You also have the benefit that it's not got, it's not got that people pleaser need to tell you that it really likes what you're doing. So if you approached your clients, they would have that tendency and that bias to want to say good things feel more awkward, saying the kind of critical things that could be improved, whereas GPT and stuff. It doesn't have that bias. It's like yeah, I'll just tell you factually, if that's who I was, this is how I would feel based on what it knows from what it's read and learned.
Ayo Abbas 24:47
Okay, so we kind of I guess we have focused a lot on the kind of positives and how people can use it. What would you say are some of the negatives of AI? Or what should we be wary of? Could be another way of phrasing
Amy Walters 24:58
from a design perspective like And if we're talking, what can I not do so well, as opposed to getting into the ethics debate, which I'm sure we'll touch upon as well. And at the moment, AI, generative AI doesn't do faces so well. So if you want to generate a person, you need the person to be facing away. And it could be the silhouette of a person, not necessarily a person's face, there are tools that are getting better, I'm really honing in on developing that. But at the moment, your standard ones are not going to create people very well in your images. That's good to know. Good enough to face.
Ayo Abbas 25:36
Yeah. And you just,
Jessica Barrett 25:39
I think one of the thing to remember is the machine learning factor, like it takes what you put it in and learns from it. So for me working with press releases of confidential information, I don't really use AI to tweak press releases, because that information is confidential. And you don't know what people could be searching for. The last thing I want to do is not key Exactly. So you do have to kind of keep that in mind. And I think also, I mean, that's changing. So with some of the paid for charging pretty for it, your data is kind of retained within your account, and we've copilot that will kind of keep it within your Word documents. I think that's changing. But there's always been that question about reputational risk. And for me, as someone who looks after a thumbs branding, it's always something that plays on my mind. So think, yeah, just kind of proceed with caution.
Ayo Abbas 26:37
There are horror stories, aren't they of people uploading, like confidential client information to ChatGPT. And it's like, you do need to have your wits about you and think about it. But you're right, that whole privacy thing. But there are certain firms out there that are building their own kind of private versions, like ai, ai tools, which will set up their own kind of computer infrastructure and things. So I think, a
Jessica Barrett 26:58
lot of working on it secretly. And then I think JLL is probably the largest property player, this kind of created their own tool. So I'm really interested to learn more about what they've done and how they using it internally. But it does cost a lot to develop this kind of, so it's not available for everyone. So I think if you are kind of a freelancer work for a smaller agency or a smaller property firm, then exploring lots of different tools is perhaps a greater, like return on investment at this current stage until you know what you want to achieve. I'd be interested in what your clients are asking of you. Are they asking about ai ai integration? Or is it something that you're kind of using your initiative with?
Ayo Abbas 27:48
To be honest, no, none of my clients have approached me about it. I mean, I have, but I do have clients who are like in the Proptech and construction tech space. So they're, they're using AI throughout their kind of ecosystem. So they're a lot more forward thinking. And to be honest, I have to admit, one of my clients was the first person when ChatGPT came out was like, Have you not used it yet? And he started showing me it. So I think those types of companies are more progressive, I think most traditional large companies, they're not necessarily using it as much, or it's on the people's to do lists. So I mean, for me, I just find it really interesting. And I think it's got a lot of scope. And that's kind of why I'm trying things out for myself, to see how that's working and things like that. So yeah, for me that that's in
Jessica Barrett 28:29
with AI in in stakeholder buy in that's a really interesting topic. Because I think, naturally we work in a creative field. So we are going to explore new tools and kind of explore AI naturally, you'd be more inclined, but for those in property, particularly is such a foreign concept. So trying to explain how we're using it, it's been quite an interesting process over the last year, I think, my firm, we won an award for our use of AI in B2B marketing. And now that we've got that accolade that's kind of given us some gravitas and kind of enabled us to get increased stakeholder buy in. So that's been a really important shift for us. And I'm excited to see how that develops over the next year.
Ayo Abbas 29:15
But I think are building on that I think the whole thing about you know, it's a very property and construction is a very traditional sector. And we are, you know, we're we're right, we know, we're ripe for investment, and like VCs are literally putting, you know, we're one of the fastest growing segments for venture capitalists to kind of invest it in. So, you know, there are a lot more tools coming across the industry from how people design, you know, and I think that's the thing is that there was this see out there of new stuff coming into our sector and I, I think there's many people who aren't going to see it coming, you know, and it's kind of like, in terms of how they work, the process is everything, everything is going to change, not just marketing. And I think I think that's the thing is, but I think it's also quite scary for people as well. Cool. We got some questions. Ange Lyons, have you had any clients let you go and say that AI is going to do your work now?
Amy Walters 30:07
I actually haven't. But interestingly, I've had clients who have been using AI, and then poured me your bloom creative in and then are happy for us to use AI because we're transparent about the use of AI with our clients anyway. So then it's sort of like they, they already were using it, and then they've come to us. So it's been the opposite. I've found,
Ayo Abbas 30:28
I've not had it. But I have heard of someone who, basically they had someone say, actually, I could be using AI rather than paying you to write this copy kind of thing. And I think, yeah, but the quality they were getting from Ai wasn't great. So I think there are, there are always going to be people who go, I could just use AI for that and don't see the value in buying a consultant or as a specialist. But you know, those aren't your clients, I think it's them is the main thing and not to be worried about it. But I think we've all got to continue, and I guess know where we really add value. I think that's all we can do, really.
Amy Walters 31:01
And I think as well like from, again, from a design perspective that that fear of is someone going to leave me as a client and do it themselves with AI, if you as a designer are learning the really pro AI tools. So like the ones that are in Photoshop, in Illustrator, InDesign, every time I open those apps, it's like there's a new AI tool, the more you're learning those pro ones, the more you can support your client with the stuff that you know how to do that they wouldn't necessarily be able to access as a kind of entry level. Designer / DIY designer.
Ayo Abbas 31:34
Exactly. It's the value. So value add, isn't it? Where's your value add and your value add? It's gonna be on the top end premium stuff rather than how's your Canva one, which it doesn't look as great, which is true. Fantastic. Okay, and Christine Baltas, who is a good friend of mine says seeing organisations advising clients on AI, but in house teams on the backfoot on using them themselves. This is a great testament to what can be done, which is just, it's very, very true. I think it's there's many people kind of advising, but how many? How many marketers are really using it. And I don't think there's that many.
Jessica Barrett 32:08
I think people are increasingly using it. I think people started adopting it in 2023. But I think there still is some scepticism out there. And it's almost got a bit of a stigma attached to it that you're kind of I don't know if lazy is too strong of a word, but that you're cutting corners. So I think it's about actually explaining how it can be used effectively. And then it's more about increasing your efficiency and freeing you up to use your skill set on other things that add more value,
Ayo Abbas 32:40
I guess, to close this out. So in terms of kind of resources or people to follow who who would you who would you recommend people follow? Well, what people should do to find out more.
Jessica Barrett 32:50
So I do particularly follow anyone for AI. My manager is actually quite good, friendly. I don't know if he's watching, but he's really good at advising how to use AI within property. So for those that do operate within this sector, give him a follow. But i and b perhaps if you are naturally engaged with AI and reading that content on LinkedIn, as we discussed, the algorithm will give me more of that content. So I'm constantly discovering people and finding out more and more. But so many people within marketing, PR comms graphic design are vocal on AI. So I'm sure that there will be there's so many podcasts and blogs and insights reels, there's so much out there for you to digest almost an overwhelming amount. So I think perhaps the best advice is to kind of sit down, look at your work, what you want to achieve and think do what do I want? Do I want someone to help me come up with a structure for a blog? Do I want a tool to help me transcribe videos? Do I want something that will help me produce cleaner graphics? And then try and find creators that are speaking on those topics? Yeah.
Amy Walters 34:05
And you only Yeah, very similar. So I would have a scroll through LinkedIn. I imagine. Lots of the people listening will be from the built environment side of marketing, that if you're listening, and that's not your side as well, if you go to like hashtag artificial intelligence and that sort of thing and follow the people that you see based on what it is that you're looking for. So obviously YouTube would be able to advise much more specifically within that niche. But from a wide point of view, that sort of hashtag design in AI and that sort of thing. Just have a little search, see what people are posting about. I think communities are really great. So there's the digital women community that well I mean, that's what we all got the Digital Women of the Year awards from that they do. They do their twice yearly conferences, and whilst it sounds like it's win Men, they are open to men, there are men that turn up to the events like Gus Bhandal is amazing. And he comes to every event. And those events are the kind of introductions to different AI things as well as other aspects of marketing. So getting into those communities where people are talking about it, and just having these natural conversations, tuning into LinkedIn live site, this is probably the best place you're gonna find resource and people to follow without feeling overwhelmed, like Jess was saying, and
Ayo Abbas 35:27
things like that marketing meetup as well. They do some really good events on AI and that kind of digital side, which I think it's just trying not to get overwhelmed. But I guess another good rate, we use HubSpot, they've got some great reports and research into AI and the definitions. Actually, I had a look at some of their stuff earlier. And there was a lot there, but like not too overwhelming. It's well written. So I think in terms of if you're looking at where to start, what to use those those are kind of nice places. And I think is it Heather Murray I thought follow who's like from about the only person I follow on us like aI related because I find them to Bro-ey sounds like not really interested. But, but she's great. And her stuff is like really approachable, which I think is the most important part. So it doesn't know me. There
Jessica Barrett 36:11
are a lot of short courses out there as well. So on HubSpot, but also the Chartered Institute of Marketing have a short course on AI at the moment. So that in itself shows that AI is here to stay the fact that chartered bodies, releasing courses,
Ayo Abbas 36:25
specialist courses, I saw that I keep getting the ad, but it was got podcasting. I
Jessica Barrett 36:30
mentioned the marketing meetup as well a so that was fantastic and have international meetups now too. And also for property profile networks. Great. And they've got a session next week actually on AI. Yes, and they have quite frequently have topics about AI and breakfast meetings for members all say kind of, you're able to talk about wherever you like including AI. So there are so many groups out there that are collaborative, whether that's marketing meetup, digital women profile network, that have resources and experts so definitely explore those. Thanks
Ayo Abbas 37:07
to my panel, Jess, and Amy. And if you want to contact any of us, you can find us all on LinkedIn and connect with us by thanks so much for listening to the built environment marketing show. Don't forget to check out the shownotes which will have useful links and resources connected to this episode. You can find that on www.abbasmarketing.com. And of course if you liked the show, please do share it with others on social as it helps more people to find us. See
