If I told you the future of AI is print marketing (yep, billboards and ads) would you buy it?
Let’s debate with the help of Garry (a Skilly who answers questions about Garrett County, Maryland and leans into the Deep Creek Area to promote tourism, events, and local businesses thanks to Sarah M. Myers at The Deep Creek Times).
First, a quick refresher on agentic AI (SkillBuilder.io) as I shared it with my son’s class. Agentic AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can make decisions, take actions, and achieve specific goals on its own, kind of like a very smart robot helper. Imagine you have a super-smart robot friend who can understand what’s going on around them, think about what to do next, and then do it all by themselves. For example, if you wanted a robot to help you clean your kid’s room (we all do second to that laundry robot we have been dreaming about as parents), an agentic AI would be the type of robot that could figure out where to start, pick up toys (yes, even legos), put them away, and even decide to vacuum the floor, all without you telling it what to do each step of the way. This kind of AI acts like a helper that doesn’t need constant instructions or what you may think of as prompts with AI. It knows how to think on its own to help solve problems and get things done.
How are we working towards this at SkillBuilder.io? First, our AI can generate specific questions about products or services that are relative to your competition at the specific moment someone wants to ask something without any manual inputs. Second, the AI thinks about what type of question it got asked (e.g., open ended or yes/no) and then decides on the format of answer that will best fit the goal of the question. Finally, the AI looks across your organization, content, collateral and then compares that to the competition in real-time – this is the start of AI that can help you create the questions that matter NOW, the answers that help NOW, and a dynamic set of goals that evolve just like a job description would leading to less and less guidance needed to accomplish tasks like getting a meeting, asking for a donation, or getting someone to subscribe or follow.
Okay, back to offline marketing. The thing we have observed whether you are selling reservations at a restaurant or B2B SaaS is that context and timing matter a lot when introducing a salesperson (AI or human) to help make a decision and even with the average American spending more than 7 hours in front of screens per day the far majority of their time is spent without screens and interacting with the world. And that’s where Garry helps, after all, nobody wants to spend more time searching or figuring out how to buy a thing than necessary BUT when you are standing in front of a restaurant or sitting as a passenger in the car it’s often hard to know what to ask or where to even start searching and here is the opportunity for offline marketing that leads to online activations (for the least time necessary to reach your goal like making a reservation somewhere, something that flies in the face of attention or ad based revenue models most of the time). Unless you have a different experience than I do, I haven’t got a personal greeter in front of every business I want to buy from or the parks I want to hike in and as a result I do less shopping and walking. Here is where AI comes in given it can be launched from a simple URL (independent of a website) or scanned on a QR code to lead to the same simple pop up where you start having a conversation, just like texting a local guide or expert, and not a website search that feels a lot like walking around a dark room looking for the lightswitch. It’s a guide, not a brochure. It’s a conversation, not a basic bot menu. It’s responsive to your style, tone, and culture, not vanilla and plain (this can happen with generalist AI but not specialized as often in full disclosure) like everyone is talking to the same salesperson.
A popular example with Garry is trying to get something to eat BUT how you find the right place at the right time can be tricky. Not sure what I mean? Try this out “Where can I eat with my dog and kids in Deep Creek?” with Garry: https://skillbuilder.io/external-ai-chat/q3htzata88
So, why use billboards and print ads to support your business with AI (in addition to your website and social channels)?
We know that everyone won’t have a use case that requires a billboard, window sticker, bus ad, or flyer but a lot of people are still looking for tangible ways to be introduced to a business and between the SPAM, screen exhaustion, and good ol’ fashioned nostalgia of finding things as you explore we think there is a future here for offline marketing + AI.
What do you think?
