Ep 94: Boosting Sales with AI Tools – Personalization Tips for Success

Market research has long been a crucial tool for businesses to understand their customers, fine-tune their products, and create effective marketing strategies. However, with the advancement of technology, traditional market research methods are showing their limitations. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI), a game-changer in the field of market research. In this article, we will explore the impact of AI on market research, its benefits, and how it can help businesses gain deeper insights into their customers.

The Changing Landscape of Market Research:

Traditional market research methods, such as surveys and focus groups, have provided valuable insights for decades. However, these methods are time-consuming, expensive, and limited in scope. In today’s fast-paced business environment, where time is of the essence, businesses need faster and more accurate ways to gather customer insights.

Harnessing AI for Market Research:

AI, particularly generative AI, is transforming the market research landscape by overcoming the limitations of traditional methods. Leveraging AI technologies, businesses can process vast amounts of data in real-time, providing a more comprehensive understanding of consumer behavior and preferences. This means businesses can make data-driven decisions faster, gaining a competitive edge.

The Power of Generative AI:

Generative AI analyzes large volumes of qualitative and quantitative data, extracting valuable patterns and insights that may have been overlooked using traditional methods. For instance, by using AI algorithms to analyze interview transcripts, researchers can quickly identify key themes, sentiments, and emerging trends. This accelerates the research process, allowing businesses to respond more swiftly to customer demands and preferences.

Real-Time Insights for Effective Marketing Strategies:

AI-enabled market research tools provide businesses with real-time insights, allowing them to stay ahead of the curve. Businesses can track customer sentiment, monitor social media trends, and analyze consumer behavior in real-time. This information can be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns, personalized customer experiences, and product enhancements that resonate with the target audience.

Conclusion:

AI is revolutionizing market research, enabling businesses to gain deeper customer insights in faster, more cost-effective ways. By harnessing generative AI, businesses can tap into a wealth of data, augment their decision-making processes, and create innovative solutions that meet customer demands. However, as with any technology, it is essential to approach AI with ethical considerations and transparent communication. Embracing AI in market research heralds an exciting future where businesses can understand their customers better than ever before, making our everyday experiences richer and more personalized.

Topics Covered

Primary topic: AI news updates
– Discussion of a chatbot fight between open AI CEO and Google’s new language model
– Risks associated with generative AI in business
– A news network’s investigation into an AI-generated interview with former President Trump
Primary topic: Traditional market research
– Definition and purpose of traditional market research
– Methods used in traditional market research, such as surveys and focus groups
Primary topic: Introduction of generative AI in market research
– Overview of Jade Kite and its role in market research and AI
– Explanation of how generative AI can enhance market research by analyzing transcripts and providing key insights
Primary topic: Traditional vs. generative AI in market research
– Comparison of traditional methods, where transcripts are manually read, with generative AI’s ability to accelerate the analysis process
– Possible advantages of traditional methods in terms of in-depth thinking and expert analysis
Primary topic: Benefits of generative AI in market research
– Faster turnaround time for results and reports
– Ability to analyze a large volume of data and identify key patterns and insights
– Potential for more accurate strategies and decision-making in market research

Podcast Transcript

Jordan Wilson [00:00:18]:

Is traditional market research broken? Will AI help make it better? make it worse, completely change it? I’m not sure. I don’t have the answers to these questions, but they’re not rhetorical. We have a guest today that’s gonna help us dive into everything about the future of market research and also what it means putting generative AI into that mix so we can learn more about our customers and clients. Welcome. Thank you. for joining us. My name’s Jordan Wilson. I’m the host. This is everyday AI. We are a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people learn and understand AI. Yeah. That’s right. Someone someone was confused the other day. They said, so what day is this? and it’s every single day Monday through Friday.

So if you’re joining us live, thank you. Make sure to get your questions in. What questions do you have about market research and AI? Let us know. Get your questions in now. that’s why we bring on a guest so we can all learn about this together. Alright.

Daily AI news

But before we get into that, let’s go over the AI news of the day. Alright. Very excited. We got some some some big stories, some big stories. So number 1, there is a chatbot fight of sorts. So, the open AI CEO, Sam Altman, just responded on Twitter, kind of slamming, I would say, a a recent, report, that said that Google’s new kind of secret large language model called Gemini would be about five times as powerful as ChatGPT. So, this was put out in a, kind of a blog post by some researchers that said, Google’s new large language model, would eat. I believe it said it would eat, GPT 4. So, if you wanna follow that catfight, jump on Twitter and follow along.

Next, there is real risks with generative AI and especially when it comes to how business leaders are using it in the office. So, a new a new Forbes report kind of looks at it and talks about how some of these risks are real, and it’s not just, you know, sci fi or make believe. So make sure you check that article out in the daily newsletter. It’s very interesting.

Alright. And last but not least, this is not a political story, but it’s dealing with politics, but Did a news network really just interview a fake president Trump Yes. This actually might have happened. so a a TV news news network, I’ve never heard of it called Real America’s Voice, aim aired a 17 minute broadcast, and now the network is investigating whether it was an AI generated Trump or a real trump. The network said they are not sure. essentially, everyone called them out and said this doesn’t sound like president Trump, former president Trump, they said this is AI. So wow. I mean, when we talk about AI and politics as the 2024 elections are heating up here in the US. I wonder if this is not the last time that something like this happens.

About Sidi and Jade Kite

Alright. But that’s not why you tuned in. You tuned in today to talk about market research and AI, and I’m excited for our guest today. So let me bring on Citi of Amin. He is the founder and CEO of Jade Kite. Citi, thank you for joining us.

Sidi Lemine [00:03:59]:

Thank you for having me, Jordan. I’m excited.

Jordan Wilson [00:04:01]:

Oh, fantastic. Let’s get into it. Just real quick. Tell everyone, just high level. What is Jade Kite? what do you all do in the areas of kind of market research and AI?

Sidi Lemine [00:04:13]:

Yeah. So we’re we’re a market research agency. We do qualitative research and quantitative and we’re just trying to move the needle and make things a little bit different from how they were in the sixties. The marketplace has changed a lot, you can’t compete in the same way you used to. You need to have a different understanding of your customers, and that’s what we bring with traditional methods and AI.

Jordan Wilson [00:04:38]:

Yeah. So let’s let’s talk real quick. Let’s go high level. you know, I think some people, especially if you’re in, market research or if you’re a business owner or if you’re advertising or marketing, you probably know what research is. You know, market research is, but give people what is kind of traditional market research before we shift into how AI may be impacting that.

Sidi Lemine [00:05:02]:

Absolutely. you want to understand your customers. You want to make products that fit them and adverts that fit them. And so to understand them traditionally, you, you’ve got to watch you’ve got surveys, right, on to 30 questions between 1 5, yes or no, or qualitative, which is focus groups, interviews, of which you can only do a certain amount. And ultimately, you’re confined to understanding just what they answered consciously. That’s your 2 options, broadly speaking.

Jordan Wilson [00:05:36]:

Okay. And then talk a little bit, city about what what it means to have AI, generative AI, involved in market research. So before we even dig into the details, like like, what the heck does that even mean to to start integrating generative AI into traditional market research?

Using AI with traditional market research

Sidi Lemine [00:05:57]:

So imagine you talked to maybe 25 people. Right? One win a row for an hour or 2 hours each. You’ve got transcripts of what’s being said. You’ve asked them tons of questions. you end up with maybe 600 pages of tightly written transcripts. you can read through those, have someone in your team read through those. Are you gonna get everything? Are you gonna get everything in time? when actually the client needs, you know, you need results in a few days. So what can you do to accelerate that a little bit to make sure you’re not missing anything. You can apply generally of AI to read through this transcript, give you the top line of what’s being said, interrogate them. And that’s one way that generative AI can really help is to make sure you keep the big picture and are a and is it are able to dive in into the detail as well?

Jordan Wilson [00:06:58]:

I have so many many interesting follow ups on that. But but before we get to it, just just wanna shout out everyone joining us live, and and and excited to to learn here. So, Jordan, thank you for joining us. Brian said is he looking forward to this one. Peter, the show of the show, the 1 and truly the best. Thank you, Peter. Appreciate that. Good morning, Wuzy. Yogesh. Yogesh, thanks for the intro. CD is awesome. Agree asking is everyone here in AI. I I think I’m real. I I I think, CD is real, but no, we’re we’re all here to learn AI. So so real quick, Citi, because I’m I’m very interested in that. So you kind of said, Hey, traditional market research is essentially you’re getting transcripts. Right? Are people still like market research companies still doing it that way where they’re still literally reading hundreds of pages of transcripts?

Sidi Lemine [00:07:49]:

Most of them. Yeah. It’s, it’s how it’s always been done, and it’s how most people still operate. You can the other option is to try and watch all of those interviews and watch the recordings, etcetera, It’s not it’s actually slower. you know, you’re gonna spend a week doing that, and it’s it’s just not the kind of turnaround that weakened ourselves anymore.

Jordan Wilson [00:08:11]:

Sure. So so for me, kind of, the traditional way seems archaic. Right? It seems very antiquated, but I’m sure there’s people on the other side of the fence that maybe, would defend it. So I’m gonna ask you to maybe play devil’s advocate. Why would marketing research companies still maybe say, let’s not use generative AI. I wanna sit down and read this 600 page transcript. I guess I guess what’s the rationale for, you know, companies still going the traditional route before we kind of talk about the benefits of the generative AI route.

Sidi Lemine [00:08:50]:

Very simply. put your finger on it when you say sit down and read, right? Research, strategy, these are disciplines that require a lot of thinking. The more time an expert’s fence thinking, the better the results, the more insight for the reports, and the more accurate the strategy. So spending a lot of time thinking is good, particularly when you don’t have all the expertise from a category or from, an audience. So not everyone has that expertise And so for a lot of people who are coming to grips with a new subject, it’s a it’s a good thing that they have, you know, maybe an excuse to spend all that time on the subject. It’s not a bad thing.

Jordan Wilson [00:09:38]:

Yeah. you know, maybe it, just saying she has so many ideas, in terms of improved market research. So even even with that, so what are new by tapping into generative AI? what are some new facets of market research that maybe weren’t, available or fee maybe even feasible for. So I guess what new, functionalities or insights, are companies able to get when they can, you know, kind of use this generative AI approach to market research?

Synthetic respondents in market research

Sidi Lemine [00:10:11]:

So is it one that will create a lot of debate if anyone listening is an in market research, please get in touch with me so we can have a a heated argument later. but one thing that came on the scene very recently is synthetic respondents. So, traditionally, you have to find exactly the right people. So let’s say you’re selling, luxury shoes to men in their fifties. You have to go out, find the right category of people to talk to and ask them how they feel about your new product. Right? and that takes time, and you’re in the middle of a a really important workshop, and you just wanna check something. You don’t have 2 weeks. You want something in the next hour. And so what some companies have been developing is synthetic respondents which are tailored exactly to your audience and are loaded up in some version of ChatGPT or equivalent. and you can just ask them questions, and you can show them your ideas, and they will respond instantly. They’re always ready. So, obviously, you can imagine this will get a lot of people up in arms on its validity, how good it is, which way it takes the industry, but it’s something that is completely new that was absolutely impossible a few months ago.

Jordan Wilson [00:11:30]:

What’s what’s your, not to put you on the spot. What’s your personal take on something like that? Is it are are there benefits to it? Is it too early to know? Cause I I have a hot take on this, but I wanna hear I wanna hear your take first on the synthetic research. So, yeah, instead of talking to 100 of humans, you know, essentially talking to you know, dozens or 100, I don’t know, of of AI personas. What’s what’s your take?

Sidi Lemine [00:11:55]:

This is what I’m gonna say. like I mentioned, it’s something that was impossible. You need results in an hour. Mhmm. Before that, you couldn’t. Are the results perfect? No? is this something that a multi billion Dollar Industry should be since next big ambition on, no. but as a pre check, as a really quick sense check as an idea generator, it has a lot of value.

Jordan Wilson [00:12:27]:

Mhmm.

Sidi Lemine [00:12:27]:

And if you’re going to go into research, let’s say you have you’ve developed 25 great ideas with your team. Are you gonna go into research and absolutely test each one of these ideas? and check them and try to optimize each. No. You’re going to put these to the tests quickly run them through your synthetic party participants maybe keep the 6 best ones. And then your real research, quotes, unquote, with human participants, is gonna be so much tighter, so much more productive, and so much more fruitful.

Jordan Wilson [00:13:02]:

Yeah. That makes sense. I guess it is, you know, giving capabilities that were never there. but here, I’ll do I’ll do my hat taking then I have a question. I think that consumer behavior is changing faster than it ever has before mainly because of generative AI because, you know, consumers now are getting probably, I don’t know, at least double or triple the amount of high quality personalized content because it’s so much easier to create that at scale with generative AI. So I I do think consumers, but behaviors are are changing a little bit but a a great a great question here from, from Yogesh, former guest. thank you Yogesh for tuning in. So he’s asking, can gen ai pick up on, nuances that a human can pick up? So is it better than a human or trained human? Can ai be as good or better?

Can AI be better than humans?

Sidi Lemine [00:14:02]:

I’ve always got the the the same answer frustratingly when thanks Yogesh, by the way. good to see you. when someone asks can AI do this, can gen AI do this? My answer is always, you know, are you talking about this week’s Genai. Last week’s Genai or neck or next week. It’s, it’s constantly evolving. I’m sure you’ve seen, the the ideal gram new generative AI image generator. what, 3 months ago, the big joke was, you know, generative AI can never do hands and it can never write correctly. You tell it to write something and you get a jumble of letters. And now we’ve got both for free. Yeah. And it’s just constantly changing. Can it pick up nuances in response? in what’s being said as well as a human, I will also ask which human? If you’ve got a junior university, maybe. you’ve got an expert that’s been doing this job for 20 years, probably not. We’re not there yet. So I wouldn’t recommend replacing humans with AI now, but just assisting them.

Jordan Wilson [00:15:16]:

That’s that’s a very interesting, an interesting take. And it’s kind of kind of related to, to to to this question here from Jackie. So great transition. So Jackie saying, she’s worked for market research companies, and asking, can it be that they think they are losing value So digging their heels in the sand. So maybe is that one of the reasons why we’re not seeing, even more generative AI and and market research maybe because companies have built up large companies by doing it the old school traditional way, which requires a lot of time Right? So you can bill high. Right? Hey. I’ll I’ll I’ll say the quiet part out loud, but is is that Is there something to that that, you know, they don’t wanna lose value of, you know, we have all these humans that have been doing this for decades?

Sidi Lemine [00:16:09]:

I I don’t wanna go that way. I don’t wanna think of my colleagues this way. I think genuinely, all of my colleagues are trying to do great work and deliver great insights. that help their clients perform better. That’s I I’m pretty sure that’s the general consensus.

Ensuring diversity when using Gen AI

Jordan Wilson [00:16:27]:

a great question, here from, Cecilia, and we’ll see. So, she’s asking who develops the prompts for, synthetic participants to ensure true diversity, which is a great point, Cecilia, because as we know, any generative AI models are trained essentially on the data just of the open internet, right, and and so much of the information that is using the that that is being used to train models of of all different mediums. It is inherently biased. it is in inherently has stereotypes. What’s what’s your take on Cecilia’s point, that, hey, is this what, like, the information that is being used with, you know, synthetic, participants. Let’s just let’s go down that route. Is it even reliable? Because a lot of that information may be very biased. It could be.

Sidi Lemine [00:17:23]:

Yeah. Absolutely. Hi, Cilia. Thank you for such a a really, really good, really important question. obviously, diversity is at the heart of everything we do, and representativeness is at the heart of market research. If you in this, even with human people, if you go out and you only talk to, you know,

AI [00:17:44]:

Sidi Lemine [00:17:45]:

to 25 white males, about your new soft drink, you’re gonna miss out on so much richness of how people view it. And so it’s all about the way the participants are built. and not all providers are the same, some will basically plug you in to change ABT, add a few prongs, and off you go, and there you get all the biases inherent to whatever generative AI, the beauty of it is when you go out and you build them consciously, you build your participants from very deep understanding of who your market is, who your audiences and you build in all of that diversity and so you will talk to a diverse crowd, get all of the information from them of who they are, what are their attitudes, how do they feel, segment them, and then you can make sure that when you do your synthetic research, you can address each of your different types of participants, each of your different segments of your audience individually or together and get that rich this.

Jordan Wilson [00:18:51]:

Yeah. it’s yeah. It’s it it’s one of those things Cassidy, I get I get where you’re coming from, but I also get, you know, because other people here, it looks like we have people in the comments that are in market research, you know, Here we go from from Brian, saying research needs to be done in a more efficient way given the volume of we of what we are trying to, assist in in many cases. And then, you know, goes to the same point that Jackie’s making here. saying sometimes you just need an answer that is close enough and good enough, and sometimes you need to be exact. So I’m guessing, you know, even, companies that are using generative AI and market research. it it seems like they need to, you know, and maybe going back to Cecilia’s point, maybe they shouldn’t be applying this approach across the board unilaterally. maybe they should be a little judicious about where they should be applying generative AI research versus where they should be still having humans involved at least you know, on the front, the back. Is that is that kind of the way that you see it?

Using AI judiciously in market research

Sidi Lemine [00:19:55]:

Yeah. That’s spot on. That’s spot on. Ask yourself, can I do market research now? Do I have time? And if the answer is no, cause 1,000,000 and billions of decisions are made every day without any market research, just shut in the dark, five people around the table, this is probably it. If that’s the case, there might be a new solution now that helps you at least get a sense check before you have to make the big commitment.

Jordan Wilson [00:20:21]:

Yeah. I think we got our connection issues. You know, thank you for those of you that that in the comments we’re asking, in Harsh, this is live. This is live. We’re taking questions live. We do it, every single week, weekday, 7:30 AM Central Standard. Here’s here’s another question. We’ll take this one live, Citi. Great question, from Mabrit asking, could synthetic respondents? And I know that’s not your background, you know, your, Jade Kite is is more of, you know, combining generative AI, and there is a big difference, probably between generative AI powered, you know, market research versus synthetic. But, you know, great question here. You know, what about for a a product or a company that maybe doesn’t exist like a startup in the MVP stage? How could, we’ll go both routes. So so quickly, could generative AI powered research work and then could synthetic? work for a company that doesn’t exist yet.

Sidi Lemine [00:21:12]:

Yeah. 100%. startups, particularly at MVP Sage, have a lot to gain from AI and constant methods. synthetic respondents is one of those cases because things move even faster for a startup. and you don’t always have the time or the the budget to go out and do big proper research. So this would work really well. Another thing that works really well is what we’re doing the most often, which is emotional analysis, and that can give you a definite advantage on quote unquote the big dinosaurs in your marketplace.

Jordan Wilson [00:21:47]:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s such a good point. you know, another another great question here, from from Val, Val, thanks for joining us. So aside and and and don’t worry, guys. Like, we’re gonna put in the, the newsletter. So make sure you go subscribe to that, your everyday ai.com. So, Sydney’s been dropping a lot of great information. we’re gonna link to Jade Kite so you can, check out more about them. But maybe for the everyday person, city, those who maybe aren’t in the position, to even hire, you you know, a company such as yours. What are some tools or, you know, recommended, software that that people can just jump in, and they can at least get some good insight So that’s kinda what Val’s asking, you know, is there a plugin in chat GPT or what other software can be used to at least get people started and get their get their you know, foot wet, so to speak.

Sidi Lemine [00:22:39]:

So first thing I want to say is as you can guess, I’m always super excited to talk about this stuff. So get in touch and, you know, you might not be able to hire us, and I might not be appropriate, but I love talking. I love giving advice. So find me on LinkedIn. connect and we’ll have a chance, and I can absolutely fill you in on on what’s new and best. In terms of tools apps you can use. It really depends where you are in your market research journey and expertise. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to just go ahead and do it yourself, right out of the box. if you are already doing market research, you want to enhance it with AI with generative AI, I would recommend looking up co loop, c o l o o p. they do absolutely fantastic work to help do what I’d said at the beginning and go through a lot of transcripts, go through a lot of data really quickly, and keep that detail. yabble is another one, yabble, that do something very similar as well, but with a slightly different angle.

Jordan Wilson [00:23:46]:

Yeah. I love that. I love that. Alright. So we’ve we’ve gone over a lot top to bottom city, but I I do have maybe 1 or 2 just as hot pressing questions before we before we wrap up. What would be your advice to the everyday person, and now they’re thinking a little bit differently. Maybe they weren’t thinking that generative AI had a place in in helping them, you know, make decisions about the future of their company. What are just some some practical tips or guidelines that you can give to people who are now maybe interested just in this in this approach at all first and maybe they weren’t before. So maybe some some learnings that that you’ve experienced or best practices, red flags to look for what would you say to people that are now interested in using gen ai and market research?

Advice on using Gen AI

Sidi Lemine [00:24:39]:

So I would say ask yourself a couple of questions and particularly ask yourself what do you believe that you cannot know about your customers, right, because ideally you would know everything there is to know about them, and there are probably some blind spots that you think are unavoidable or that you don’t have the budget or the time for. And I would say, look at these square base and reconsider. There there is probably a solution right now that exists that lets you have that knowledge quickly and within your budget. So that’s the first thing. The other one is, you know, talk to a small company. talk to someone who’s, medium sized or small who’s on the market and that has been doing a lot of things with AI. the community is actually a lot friendlier than we think. When we think, you know, market research company, we think about the big multinationals, very faceless, but actually it’s a very warm, very generous, community. And particularly the the few of us that are for on AI as well as maintaining tradition, are very sharing and always really excited to talk about it. So you know, reconsider your limitations and then just reach out and have a chat.

Jordan Wilson [00:26:05]:

I love it. I love it. thank you Wow. I mean, we got we got this so much here. I’m gonna have my my, my work cut out for me. today’s city when when we put together the, the newsletter to, you know, kind of recap this for everyone. So, you know, don’t worry if if if you miss some things we’re gonna be sharing about it in the newsletter today a little bit more about, CD and Jade Kite. So make sure you go to your everydayai.com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter right there. It’ll be out in a couple hours. check it out on podcast. Thank you everyone for joining us. You know, Jordan said from 1, Jordan, to another, thanks for hosting, saying Jade Jade Kite is amazing. thank you. and, Saddie, thank you for for spending your time. to to help everyone understand a little bit more about generative, AI in market research. This was a fascinating discussion. Appreciate your time.

Sidi Lemine [00:26:58]:

It’s been a real pleasure, Jordan. Thank you for everyone to join us as well.

Jordan Wilson [00:27:02]:

Alright. So we’re not gonna see you tomorrow. It’s Friday, but that’s fine. We hope to see you back next week. We have some amazing, amazing guests lined up, over the next week or 2 from entrepreneurs, startup people sales, to some executives. Yeah. from IBM, Microsoft. We’re we’re we’re bringing in, all whole range of of great guests to help us all learn generative AI together. So hope to see you back next week for more. Everyday AI. Thanks y’all.

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Ep 94: Boosting Sales with AI Tools – Personalization Tips for Success