Upgrade Your Marketing with AI Initiatives
Jenn Lessmann
Last year, Indie Author Magazine focused an entire issue on AI, the ways authors could make use of new machine learning platforms, and some of the ethical concerns involved with the impact of artificial intelligence on the publishing industry. Since then, the opportunities and challenges have continued to expand.
In her article “(Artificially) Intelligent Advertising,” IAM staff writer Gayle Leeson discussed using Sudowrite, Jasper.ai, or the AI editors available through platforms like SocialBee and Wix Facebook Ads to develop marketing and social media copy. She also delved into the, at the time, limited use of AI for market research and highlighted Marlowe (https://authors.ai/marlowe), an application that offers manuscript critiques.
All of those options are still available. Indeed, SocialBee now labels the company an “AI-Powered Social Media Management Tool” in their SEO. But these programs and more have evolved considerably in the past year, becoming even more powerful in the wake of 2023’s AI boom. So how can authors get the most out of AI tools for marketing and promotional strategies in 2024?
Using Generative AI
Since you may already be familiar with ChatGPT—I gave you ten tips for writing better prompts last year—here are some ways to use it for marketing, recommended by Book Launchers in a blog post for IngramSpark. Try uploading your manuscript and asking the AI to create articles, podcast scripts, or other content. Although at first glance it seems like this would be more useful for nonfiction writers, authors of fiction could also upload portions of their manuscript and test the AI’s ability to write blurb variations or rewrite a scene from an alternate point-of-view for use as a newsletter bonus or other reader magnet. The blog author includes the caveat that you’ll still want to edit the output, but since the AI starts with something you’ve already created, the content should be stronger. Other suggestions include asking your AI for more content ideas and asking for ways to market your book. Book Launchers also recommends asking your AI to do research on influencers, bookstores, or libraries for you. You can get ChatGPT or Jasper to generate a list of YouTube channels or blogs that relate to your book’s topic or genre, quickly providing you a list of people to contact for potential collaborations or networking.
Beyond Content
In December 2023, Lisa Harkness, Kelsey Robinson, Eli Stein, and Winnie Wu published an article, “How generative AI can boost consumer marketing,” for strategy and management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. They identified the following examples as ways AI “has the potential to deliver value quickly”: personalization of marketing campaigns, unstructured customer data analysis, process automation, and opportunity identification and idea generation. Ironically, all four AI initiatives are used by large retailers like Michaels, Stitch Fix, and Mattel to humanize users’ experiences with their online stores and deepen engagement.
The authors recommend limiting AI tools to these specific purposes because “attempting to incorporate too many different [generative] AI initiatives in the hope that something sticks can end up being costly, diffuse, and difficult to track, making it hard to incorporate whatever lessons are generated across the launches.”
Alisha Lyndon, of Forbes, writes, “It’s important to keep in mind that generative AI is about reshuffling tasks, not replacing jobs. In other words, it should be set to augment, not substitute.” With that in mind, she offers more ideas for using AI to create a more personal connection with your customers—or readers, in the case of your author business.
First, she suggests using AI’s “prowess in analyzing datasets and recognizing patterns” to scale personalization by prioritizing accounts. This might mean segmenting your newsletter list or streamlining your funnels to deliver more individualized experiences for your readers. Once you have your audience sorted, you can further tailor your content to individual readers using generative AI to create deeper engagement.
If you want to test reader responses to new content before you roll it out, Lyndon writes that you can use AI to build a sandbox in which to stress-test those reactions. By giving the AI information on your readers, you can ask it to predict what content, style, or tone might work best with that group of people. You can also use AI-driven analytics to “identify the next best actions for high-value accounts.” This way, you can focus your energy where it will have the greatest impact.
Unite.ai, a website that specializes in providing news about progress on AI, recently released a series of reports on the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Conference, including a panel on “unleashing creativity through the human-robot duality in marketing.” Although their coverage starts with tools for brainstorming and drafting, similar to the previously discussed uses for ChatGPT, the article goes on to explore other ways AI can impact marketing, including helping you find your ideal readers.
According to Jacob Stoner, who wrote the article, one of the most significant advances in the strategic role of AI has been its “ability to analyze and leverage big data with unprecedented accuracy.” Because AI can now identify the most accurate user base for testing, marketing campaigns can become much more targeted. AI technologies like predictive analytics and machine learning can track market trends and consumer behaviors. They can also forecast future shifts and dissect “consumer feedback and online interactions to refine marketing messages and tactics,” Stoner writes. These efficiencies allow marketers, and authors, to focus on strategic and creative work.
AI Tools for Authors
With so many possibilities available, and more on the horizon, it can be challenging to know where to begin. Authors just starting to explore how AI might serve their business may want to choose one or two systems that have already proven themselves in the indie author community.
Here are a few tools to check out if you’re ready to move past ChatGPT and MidJourney.
Zapier
Zapier provides integrations for web applications that use automated workflows. For example, Zapier can pair with Google Docs, Trello, Slack, Asana, and Airtable databases, as well as ChatGPT and Writer, another generative AI platform. Authors can input data into a Google form and use Zapier to pass that information to ChatGPT for content generation. Zapier can then transfer the formatted results to Google Docs to be edited. Zapier bills monthly at four levels, depending on the number of tasks you think you’ll need, ranging from a $19.99 starter plan to $69 for teams. The free plan features a visual editor and unlimited two-step zaps.
IAM Publisher Chelle Honiker shared a few ways authors can use a combination of Zapier and ChatGPT to automate content creation for social media. After brainstorming with ChatGPT to create a list of subjects and previews for future blog posts, she builds a daisy chain of zaps to draft the blog, create social media posts, craft an image using DALL-E, start a WordPress post using the image and keywords, and load the RSS feed into a newsletter. The resulting content will be optimized for SEO with strong keywords and backlinks. You can even include a step in the chain that asks Zapier to send the content to a spreadsheet with a checkbox and wait for approval before it pushes the results out to your socials.
Custom GPTs
If you start with one of Open AI’s custom GPTs, Honiker says, you can feed the AI a PDF of previous blog posts, or even your manuscript, and get results that mimic your tone and voice. In her experience, only about 20 percent of the resulting blog content needs to be revised. This allows you to create blogs, social media posts, and newsletter content trained on your writing alone.
Pushing the custom GPT further, if you’ve uploaded your manuscript and given it capabilities for web browsing and image creation, you can ask the AI to develop Amazon blurbs and keywords or craft images for ads and other marketing. Ask it to create a CSV file that lists your characters and the chapters in which they appear, and you have the beginnings of a story bible that you can use in your writing or for reference when you’re looking for specific quotes. Prepare for book talks or create a list of discussion questions for your back matter by asking the GPT to analyze your manuscript for tropes and themes. Ultimately, the GPT can create anything you ask it to, so if you run out of ideas, or need guidance in telling it what to do, you can ask it for help.
Shimmr
Shimmr.ai is a UK-based marketing company that uses AI to automate advertising specifically for authors. Using the publisher’s EPUB file, its AI develops ads, book descriptions, keywords, and author bios, selects placements to reach the ideal reader, and directs traffic to your sales platform. Shimmr is open to any genre, fiction or nonfiction. Although authors can choose to stop or remove ads at any point, they are deployed automatically after a review of the first round. Shimmr’s FAQ section assures partners that “The ePUB is used to create our ads but does not become part of the training set of the LLM.” The service is priced at a flat $75 per month, per title in an annual subscription. The CEO, Nadim Sadek, has also published a book on how publishing can embrace AI, titled Shimmer, Don’t Shake.
As AI continues to expand its capabilities, indie authors may find more of the frustrating tasks of publishing taken completely off their to-do lists, allowing them to focus on the creative work that only humans can do. In the meantime, these tools can upgrade some of the processes you already have in place.
How are you using AI as a tool for market research in your author business? Are there any tools or platforms we’ve missed that deserve a spotlight? Let us know at feedback@indieauthormagazine.com!
Jenn Lessmann