Input Bias and How to Compete When the Best Marketer Is AI, What We Know From Psychology – InstantFollowerz

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In his book The Coming WaveMustafa Suleyman predicts that AI will be able to successfully build a business in a few years. You should just write a prompt like, “Make a million dollars on Amazon in a few months with only a $100,000 investment.”

How?

Well, says Suleyman, AI could research online trends, find what’s selling on Amazon, generate product images and send them to manufacturers on Alibaba.

The AI ​​could then send emails back and forth to refine requirements… and continuously update marketing materials and product design based on customer feedback, Suleyman writes.

In other words, it will make me a job in marketing (and most roles in business) irrelevant. This leaves us who work in large and small companies in a crisis. What are we going to do? Why should companies need marketers if AI can make a million dollars on Amazon without human help?

I would soon become like the London gaslighters of the 1800s or the porters of the 1900s—unnecessary and redundant. Except, I think there’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. I think there is a way to stay relevant in a world where the best the marketer is an AI.

Want to stay relevant? Leverage Input Bias

So what’s the secret to staying relevant? To explain, I need to introduce a well-documented psychological phenomenon: input bias.

Input bias suggests that customers prefer products and services that require a lot of effort, money, or time to create. Nancy Harhut neatly describes this bias in her book The use of behavioral science in marketing.

She writes, “The quantity of inputs becomes a substitute for the resulting quality. While in some cases there is a direct relationship between the time and energy invested in a project, in other cases there is not. Yet people are not always good at telling the difference. As a result, they may automatically assume that more effort equals better result.”

For example, suppose I am told that my favorite restaurant is staffed by an Italian family with 80 years of experience. In that case, I will rate their pizza more favorably than the same pizza made by a machine in a German factory.

This is the input bias in the game. We all prefer products or services that require effort and experience. That’s why we love to hear or read about the hard work that powers our favorite brands.

Factory tour studies prove this. paper”Pulling back the curtain” found that purchase intent increased by 60% after a customer saw behind the scenes.

We also appreciate our own efforts. Two scientists from the University of Oxford found that opening wine with a cork lid enhances its flavor by 4%. When participants were told that the wine was corked but did not open it themselves, this perceived quality and taste enhancement disappeared.

I even ran my own experiment to see if I can take advantage of input bias.

I host Nudge, the best marketing podcast in the UK. Over 350,000 marketers have tuned into my show to learn from my guests, garnering 482 five-star reviews. Sharing the effort I put into my podcast made my Reddit ad 45% more effective than a control.

A takeaway for retailers? You need to show how much human effort has gone into your offerings.

Show how many engineers worked on your product. All the years your team has spent developing your craft. Potential customers need to know that you’re creating something of high quality that can outperform fast solutions like AI.

How traders Beat AI

Before I close this post, I want to get back to the bots. Facebook has developed an AI that is smart enough to manipulate and convince people. It’s called Cicero.

Cicero built Meta to play a complex board game called Diplomacy. A combination of risk and poker, this game involves planning complex strategies, where backstabbing and deception are vital.

It’s easy to see how bots designed to manipulate human emotions can create engaging ads and persuasive advertisements for new products.

What makes people different? It’s an effort.

Consumers will continue to prefer products and services with higher input levels. CRM prospects will prefer a sales platform created by a hard-working salesperson over an identical presentation delivered by human-grade AI.

Instagram scrollers will appreciate the artwork of the Mexican sculptor who documents each stage of her process through the same artwork created by LLM.

The solution to this marketing crisis is convincingly simple.

Show the hard work put into the service. Highlight the hours devoted to its creation. Take the time to create campaigns, ads, emails or content that are packed with effort. Your customers can see how much you, as a retailer, really and deeply care.

In the future, there will be more AI-charged offerings like Cicero that we will have to compete against. Input bias is one essential tactic to stay ahead of technology and operate with future certainty in a world where AI can quickly make millions.