If you've been on the internet recently, you've probably heard about a nifty little tool called ChatGPT. It's one of the latest AI tools that's taken the world by storm, and it's just one of many!

But, as wonderful as ChatGPT is (we’ll cover that later), there are a plethora of AI tools out there that your outdoor brand can use. From inventory management to personalized customer support, keep reading to learn how to implement these tools.

If you're not familiar with artificial intelligence (AI), it's a process of machine learning that recognizes patterns and uses algorithmic thinking to solve problems or requests. 

So, with automated processes handled by AI, you’ll save time and be able to focus on the things that really matter – like scaling your outdoor business.

Customer Personalization

As an outdoor brand, you can use AI to personalize customers' experiences by analyzing data and behavior. As people interact with your advertisements and web pages, the tools can store patterns, allowing you to do many things. 

What AI Can Do for You: 

AI-powered recommendation engines can analyze customer data such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and search queries to provide personalized product recommendations to each customer. Email marketing tools can analyze customer data to segment customers based on their interests and behavior and send targeted messages and promotions that are more likely to resonate with each customer. 

Lastly, chatbots can provide customer service and support specific to the users’ needs by analyzing inquiries and providing relevant information. For example, if you own a ski brand and a certain pair of goggles sells out, AI can provide smart recommendations for the customer depending on their needs and preferences (e.g., price, style, model). 

AI Tools:

Hubspot’s ChatSpot tool is a customer relationship management (CRM) bot that efficiently performs these functions. You can sign up for early access here. Additionally, you could consider Forethought, found here.

Ultimately, these tools can help you build stronger relationships with customers and increase customer loyalty while removing time-consuming tasks from your to-do list. 

Supply Chain and Inventory Management

What AI Can Do for You: 

Simplify the process of keeping track of and restocking your gear, apparel, products, and other inventory. As an outdoor brand, you can benefit especially from having information related to high and low seasons of traffic so you know when to have certain things in stock.

Inventory management systems can use machine learning algorithms to analyze historical sales data, current inventory levels, and other relevant variables to predict future demand for each product. Doing so can help you reduce inventory carrying costs, prevent stockouts, and improve customer satisfaction. 

Additionally, you can reduce manual labor by automating the replenishment process; AI can generate purchase orders and send them to suppliers when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. 

AI Tools:

For inventory management, we recommend Logility, and Blue Yonder, which is owned by Panasonic, an international technology company.

Content Design and Creation

What AI Can Do for You: 

Perhaps the most creative way to use AI is to generate ideas for content, both organic and paid media. From an organic standpoint, you can use AI to inform you of trending topics and content ideas and even to improve SEO for written content like blogs and captions. 

Here’s where ChatGPT comes in handy. You could ask it to create blog ideas, social media captions, product descriptions, and more. And, since it’s conversational, you can provide feedback so that future results are improved based on your input (e.g., “make the last sentence funnier”). For more copy-specific tools, check out CopyAI and Jasper, which is helpful for long-form content.

Then, once you have ideas or content that resonate with your brand and audience, you can use tools to create assets or graphics.

AI Tools: 

Midjourney is one of the most common platforms for generating images. It’s offered by Discord, and with a free trial, you can generate 25 images by specifying what you’d like it to create. Another unique element is the ability to modify the art style. For example, you could insert the prompt “generate an animated image of a family walking along a beach.” 

Because the capabilities are limited and you can't input specific text or branded materials to appear in images, we recommend Midjourney for creating assets that aren't meant to just promote your product or service (e.g., using these images for a blog post or as a background, and overlaying a product image on top). 

With great power, however, comes great responsibility. These AI tools are only as good as the prompts you enter and the information you provide. Additionally, it's worth noting that sometimes the results could be incorrect or vague, depending on the subject. You should always double-check any AI-generated content for accuracy and infuse your brand's tone of voice and brand-specific details in any content it produces. 

Ad Placement

What AI Can Do for You: 

As a digital marketing agency, we're a bit biased, but this is one of the best ways to implement AI – specifically in the marketing process. Amazon is the world's largest online marketplace, with over 200 million Prime users and 6 million+ total sellers – and there are plenty of other platforms (Google, Meta, etc.). So, how do you stand out? That's where AI comes in. 

AI can help you target the right customers by directing your ads toward the people who are most likely to engage. By recognizing customer patterns and analyzing competitor behavior, your products can be better targeted for keywords, categories, and the appropriate audiences. For example, if your brand sells motorized bikes, AI could help push your product to search pages, including words like "e-bikes," "e-bicycle," or "electric bikes."

AI Tools: 

And our recommendation? Only the best, of course. Our proprietary Algofy AI tool has already helped brands use automated features for PPC targeting based on their KPIs. Want to see how we can do it for you? Contact us here!

Conclusion

So, if you've feared the word "AI," fear no longer; it's here to help, as long as you know how to use it. With so many tools, it can be hard to narrow down exactly what processes you should automate and how much trust you should have in machine learning.

But now that you've got some tools under your belt, go get to automating – or see how we can help – give us a ring!