AI Terms Marketers Should Learn (and a Few You Already Know)

Over the past few years, news sites, investor decks, and happy hours have been filled with talk of AI. With LLMs bumping into GPTs, we know many B2B marketing decision-makers are trying to make sense of which pieces of jargon matter for their businesses. So, as we go on this journey of learning together, let’s set the table with a list of terms to start with to demystify AI conversations and remind marketers why we’re talking about this in the first place.

Most lists we’ve found ignore using these AI technologies to find real business value. As you’ll see below, we’ve included technical terms and marketing terms.

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A LIST OF AI & MARKETING TERMS ALL CMOS SHOULD KNOW

• Artificial Intelligence – An umbrella statement for many of the other technologies listed below. AI is a new way of thinking about computer science where, instead of asking a computer to perform a specific task, the machine expands its reach into problem-solving, reasoning, seeing and identifying objects, and making predictions.
• Generative AI – A category of processes that, given an input (“draw me a tree”), can produce output in a pre-defined category, in this case, creating an image of a tree that didn’t exist before. GenAI can also output text, video, audio, code, and specific file types (like PPT files for us marketers).
• Workflows – For marketers, workflows are the key to codifying AI in your business processes instead of using it for spot tasks. Anyone can bring up a ChatGPT interface and ask a one-time question, but workflows are a strategically designed combination of machine and human handoffs, tasks, and results that are repeatable and valuable to a business.
• Prompt engineering – An AI system will only be as good as the inputs it’s been given. Prompts are the term for how you ask a system for your output, and what sounds simple enough is really a mix of art and science. Different AI systems react differently to the asks, tone, and their own history with a user, and these variations on prompt responses continue to change with new GPT versions.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Once we’re done messing around with prompts, we need to remember we're running a business. There’s nothing more important for B2B marketers than having a firm grasp on Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC – the cost it takes to find and sign a new customer), and the good news is that AI is here to help. Not only can AI-powered systems help you to calculate and predict future CAC, but creative workflows can also help reduce the cost of creating marketing materials. AI can also ingest customer and campaign performance data to optimize your marketing for more efficient spend. All marketers need to know how much it costs to gain that next customer, and here at the Zaaz Collective, we’re obsessed with using AI to do exactly that.
• OpenAI - As AI companies go, OpenAI is currently the 800-pound gorilla in the AI world. They make some of the most popular AI tools in the market (ChatGPT, DALL-E, etc.). Headed up by CEO Sam Altman, the company began as a non-profit in 2015 and has grown into a powerhouse of talent and resources fueling the push for smarter AI. 
• GPT – You’ve been hearing a lot about GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers). It’s an awkward acronym that refers to an AI architecture created by OpenAI. Once the GPT has been trained on enough data, it can take your text prompts (“What was the average height of baseball players in the 1920s?”) and output the answer (“Average heights ranged from around 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 10 inches”) in a conversational tone.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – Again, we can't forget the marketing metrics. AI can help project revenue from customers over the duration of your relationship by crunching retention and up-sell data. But more than that, it can deliver insights on how to improve those numbers with predictive models to personalize the customer experience to reduce churn. With strategic AI workflows, machines can help keep your customers happy (and keep them around.)
• DALL-E – Another tool from OpenAI, DALL-E is an AI-powered visual engine to create images from text prompts. You can access this tool through ChatGPT, the Bing Image Creator, Microsoft Paint, and other services.
• Midjourney – More AI-driven visual functionality here, which currently offers more options to refine images after seeing the initial result. Panning, zooming, upscaling, and more.
• Large Language Model (LLM) – LLMs are systems that are trained on large sets of data to serve a specific purpose. ChatGPT is an example of an LLM.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM) – Here at Zaaz, we believe in Account-Based Everything. In the business-to-business world, you need to be efficient with named accounts that fit your Ideal Client Profile. AI tools and workflows can make sure you’re reducing your ABM production costs while allowing you to target companies with a high likelihood of having interest in your product. And, if you’re looking for personalization at scale, AI offers solutions for B2B marketers that turn buying signals and engagement levels into leads.
• Hallucination – Everyone has bad days, including AI systems. A hallucination is when AI systems grab the wheel and steer off-course from their intended tasks. If the output from a prompt looks fishy, it’s a good idea to run it again and verify the results from other sources. Which leads us to…
• Humans in the Loop – The headlines continue to promise a future where jobs continue to get replaced by machines operating in autonomy. While some manual tasks can certainly be automated with today’s technology, AI systems need humans to prompt, verify results, refine and re-run prompts, and understand the inputs and outputs. The term humans in the loop is a reminder that people are still essential to ensure automated tasks are running correctly.
• Chatbots – We’ve all been using Chatbots for years through automated customer service agents. Some of those experiences have been great (not waiting 15 minutes on hold), and others have been hit-and-miss (receiving a series of obviously scripted answers back until finally getting handed off to a human). AI chatbots aim to expand that experience (now with both text-based and voice-based prompts) and make the experience more human via greater access to powerful data from LLMs, as well as a more refined balance of voice and tone.
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) / Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – B2B marketing is all about leads. Good ones. Better ones than you had last week, so you can educate them about why your product or service is a good fit for their needs. By introducing AI workflows into your lead scoring and outreach tactics, you can create and deliver custom content based on your offerings that connect with a specific ICP to guide them down the funnel toward becoming a long-term customer.
• RPA (Robotic Process Automation) – RPA is the use of software bots to automate tasks you’d rather not be doing. You define what you’d like the bot to do (“copy/paste files from one folder to another”), set a schedule, and check in on the process and results (see "humans in the loop" above). Up until now, AI and LLMs have mostly been focused on pulling together large sets of data and returning results, while RPA processes can give access to systems (like your laptop) to interact with digital assets.

When diving into AI for marketing, never forget your why.

The first waves of technology always focus on the what and how while forgetting the why. Here at the Zaaz Collective, we’re hyper-focused on building modern marketers, and that means putting any new tech into a marketing context. It takes more than throwing a loose prompt into a ChatGPT text box to find real value from AI, it means marketers need to keep the basics in mind (CAC, LTV, ICP, etc.) while finding ways for this new tech to improve their operations.

Reach out to Zaaz if you’re interested in using AI to drive lower Customer Acquisition Cost, boost Customer Lifetime Value, or verify or expand your ICP. We’re building workflows to help all B2B marketers do their jobs better, faster, and more efficiently.

AI is a tool, not a magic wand. Keep your marketing goals in mind as you roll out new AI initiatives, and you’ll stay ahead of the rest.

Which terms did we miss?

Which goals do you think marketers should focus on when embracing AI?

Add your thoughts in the comments and let's discuss.

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