The search giant announced a swathe of new Google AI tools yesterday that are set to usher in a new era for marketers around the world — that of AI. Just as in the inaugural Google Marketing Live event from a decade ago, when the world was transitioning from a desktop-centric to a mobile-first approach, Google has declared that we are once again on the brink of monumental shift in the marketing landscape - the transition towards artificial intelligence and generative AI. This shift, much like the last, promises to redefine and transform the way we approach and understand marketing, regardless of whether you’re an SME or a Fortune 500.
Google touted the fact that small & medium sized businesses are the lifeblood of the economy, accounting for 90% of all businesses, and are responsible for 60-70% of employment and 50% of GDP worldwide. It’s no wonder the search giant is keen to keep these businesses happy with AI features geared specifically for them that should, in theory, allow SMEs to compete with larger enterprises.
Whether or not you agree with the rise in use of AI tools and capabilities (I myself had a minor existential crisis back in November when ChatGPT first popped up on my radar, and I’ve been pondering the implications of it for my own career ever since), Google made one point clear. You’re not competing with AI, you’re competing with marketers that are already using AI — so embrace it, they proclaimed, or be left in the dust.
With that in mind, here are the five most significant Google AI tool announcements from Google Marketing Live 2023 and how they’re going to transform small businesses forever.
If you’ve ever tried your hand at creating ad copy for Google Ads, you probably know how intricate a process it can be. With Generative AI Ad Copy, Google is taking the hassle out of the process by integrating Bard-powered AI directly into the Google Ads platform.
Once it rolls out to the public later this year, you’ll be able to link your website, say a few words about the services you offer, and the AI will do the rest, crafting engaging headlines and descriptions that fit within the character length while upholding your brand’s tone of voice. This is going to be a game changer for SMEs who may not have the time or money to craft the 15 recommended headlines and 4 descriptions that Google suggests for their responsive search ads (RSA) format.
If you thought Dynamic Search Ads were impressive, you’ll love this next feature. Not only will Google Ads be able to help you prepare your ad campaigns in advance with AI generated headlines and descriptions, it will also enable small businesses to respond in real time to consumer searches in a way that simply wasn’t possible until now.
What that means for small businesses is that they’ll be able to use Google AI tools in Google Ads to set up automatically created assets. With these ads, Google AI will analyse the search query and, based on content on your website and other ads in your account, generate ads on the fly that directly relate to the searcher’s input.
For instance, the product team shared the example of a customer that searches for skin care for dry sensitive skin, and Google AI changes the headline from ‘Shop Our Skin & Hair Care LIne - Get Ready to Turn Heads’ to ‘Soothe Your Dry, Sensitive Skin - Start Owning Your Glow Today!’
With the click of a button, small business owners will be able to leverage Google AI tools to create unique imagery specifically tailored to their brands. Using text to image generative AI, Google Ads users will be able to enrich their ads with custom imagery that captures the right tone, style and look that they need to market their brand in line with the all-important brand strategy and positioning, without incurring the costs associated with licensing stock imagery or professional photoshoots.
What this means for photographers, free stock photo websites like Pexels and Unsplash, or even their paid competitors Getty Images, Shutterstock and Adobe Stock remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the creative world and the world of marketing is about to be shaken up. Small business owners facing tougher economic times might be disinclined to foot the bill for expensive photoshoots or pay monthly subscriptions to stock imagery websites when they can get comparable results without the investment, save for a handful of cases where extreme precision or perfection is required.
Carrying on from the last product reveal, another of the Google AI tools announced at Google Marketing Live 2023 was the ability to craft product photoshoots from your own products with the help of AI.
You’ll be able to upload a photo of a product, say a skincare cream, remove the background automatically and then, with just a few words, get production quality lifestyle photoshoots of the product surrounded by whatever you want. This is going to be particularly beneficial for small businesses, because with just a few extra steps, they can add additional images to their products, which can help boost impressions by an average of 76 and boost clicks by a staggering 32 percent.
Perhaps most impressive were some of the video capabilities that will be available as a part of Google’s AI toolset. Chief among them, the ability to automatically create template text, generate AI voiceover for videos in multiple languages, and resize videos automatically for different aspect ratios.
This is going to make marketing via video ads much more accessible for small businesses, allowing them be in the spaces where consumers are spending so much of their time, whether that be watching short-form video content on YouTube Shorts or longer-form content on YouTube.
As a small business owner, you're no stranger to the challenges of keeping pace with consumer trends. But these new AI tools from Google are about to change the game. They're designed to help you create text, image, and video content more easily, and to respond in real-time to customer queries with ad content in a way that was previously impossible. This isn't just about keeping up - it's about getting a competitive advantage and maintaining it by leveraging AI.
Don't let your business get left in the dust during this period of intense transformation. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of integrating AI into your marketing strategy, I'm here to help. As a digital marketing consultant, I can guide you in making the most of these new AI tools. Schedule a call with me here, and let's start planning how we can use AI to take your business to new heights.
