When thinking about useful AI tools for demand generation, AI-assisted data analytics are one of the first things that come to mind. However, analytics and other CMS tools don’t address one of the biggest hurdles in long-tail demand generation: Getting future customers to give you enough information now to ensure your brand is top of mind when they’re ready to enter a buying cycle.
When my company Outsnapped launched its first AI photo booth in early 2023, we noticed that gen AI is inherently conducive to collecting all kinds of information — and putting a smile on a future customer’s face while doing it.
3 Methods For Leveraging AI Technology
Here are three ways you can employ the technology and begin tapping into a retargeting goldmine.
1. Give Trade Show & Event Attendees A One-Of-A-Kind Experience
If your company has an annual trade show or conference (or attends them as a vendor), offering participants gen AI images with an onsite photo booth is the opposite of handing out drink koozies with your logo. While one will likely end up in the back of a kitchen cabinet somewhere, the other might end up on their social media profile.
AI photo booth technology can turn a simple selfie into an AI avatar and deliver unique images with that avatar within minutes in exchange for that crucial email address. True gen AI renderings are far more than swapping backgrounds — a simple headshot can be used to generate a person’s AI avatar riding on horseback into a canyon, closing a deal, looking like a boss or in full superhero regalia ready to take on the next challenge.
You’ll want to be sure to work with a vendor that can design an interactive experience that aligns with your brand, but the forms that experience take are almost endless.
2. Gamify Experiences & Use The Process To Get More Info Than Email Addresses
Many of us remember illustrations and cartoons of robots in scenarios where a human says a command and the robot goes, “Bleep bloop” and does the thing. Well, the command part with gen AI — the input that dictates the output — is where demand gen marketers have a huge advantage in collecting potential customer data easily and willingly.
If you’re really focused on customer education in a niche market — say time-saving cleaning appliances — you might ask a prospect to choose their cleaning style, design inspiration (i.e. modern, vintage, minimalist) and the area of the house they struggle the most with — and then render images that show their AI avatar smiling and laughing in a spotless dream living room or kitchen.
Any type of answer can affect image generation as part of a carefully crafted behind-the-scenes process. For example, if you ask where people spend their time online, answering “over X hours spent on social media” might generate lightning bolts in the images of these participants, providing striking visual data that can help you target customers more efficiently.
3. Build Trusting Relationships With Your brand Over Time & Fight Retargeting Fatigue
Using gen AI to create cool, personalized experiences is possible in a variety of situations beyond a physical photo booth. Experiences can be digital on any device and live on a landing page or within an app. You might use gen AI to render text experiences instead of images to make participants a character in a short story, or deliver a scene in a script for a TV pilot based on their life (using the answers they disclose).
People love AI photos of themselves, but AI can render images of anything you can imagine (and many things you can’t). In your brand’s email newsletter, you could invite people to create images of “the most irresistible pizza” on a special landing page and give away a pizza party to the winner.
To avoid some of the pitfalls of gen AI (like bias, or extra fingers), always work with someone who is an expert on creating prompts and behind-the-scenes guardrails. Just like any other marketing experience or event, you have to think through worst case scenarios and test it out before going live. You aren’t going to have an open, self-serve bar in a high school gymnasium during school hours, right? So don’t be like Bing, who let bad actors ruin the reputation of Mickey Mouse faster than the beloved character can say, “Oh boy!”.
Take Advantage Of Free Tools To Dip Your Toe In Gen AI’s Creative Potential
It’s a great time to play with AI image generators that are currently free, such as DALL-E 2, Microsoft Designer and Canva, as they definitely won’t be free forever. Render an animal hybrid, the perfect cake or a tropical escape for your mood board and have some fun with it!
Remember, beyond the stereotype of faceless AI robots is a magical capability that can make interactions with future customers feel MORE human, not less.
Nicholas Rhodes is the Founder and Creative Director of photo booth agency OutSnapped.
