Can Generative AI benefit your salon?

Salon business expert Liz McKeon explains how AI can do the heaving lifting on creating content that gets your salon’s name out there

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise content creation and improve marketing, helping businesses to grow and expand. It takes human inputs and creates something new, such as audio, blogs, video or art.

Given a prompt, it can generate new content. AI learns by using normal language learning models and consuming content. It picks up patterns in these language models, then converts them to complete thoughts or improve ideas provided by a human person.

Generative AI has the potential to be a transformative technology for marketing creatives because it makes conveying ideas faster. But what about salons? Every salon business is continually under pressure to create new and exciting content for social platforms, which can be both costly and time consuming. Used correctly, AI can reduce the time it takes to develop content.

What Generative AI can do

AI marketing tools can help you make key marketing decisions more easily. By gathering data quickly, AI can make a number of quick tactical choices that would take humans far more time and effort.

AI can be assessed directly through an AI app, which can select the right models for the right circumstances and combine them to serve the user’s need more effectively. You can then use AI as an assistant to help you convey your ideas by giving it prompts.

Prompts are the input that you give the AI to set the directions for what it generates. Prompts are just normal speech patterns that humans use in everyday language, so the entry level is manageable. The key is in developing specific prompts that determine the quality of the output AI generates – this is a skill that takes practice. Keep your prompts simple.

How much time do you spend searching for visuals to accompany your content for posts? When looking for new ideas for visuals, generative AI can be a brilliant tool. You describe the image you want as clearly as possible to help AI give you the best options. Each of these options will be original, and you don’t need to buy the rights to use them.

The downsides

Generative AI is still in its early stages, so there are some limitations to take into account. Any AI app is only as good as the data it has to work with. As a result, there may be errors reflected in some generated content. AI should never be a replacement for the critical role of the human content creator.

AI can’t conduct research or analysis. The written content is fairly surface level, so you have to bring the analysis and substance to your content. AI will mimic humans, but it can’t compare with human experience, so you have to put your own spin and perspectives in your content.

While generative AI can be used to create content more efficiently and quickly by automating certain tasks, it does not have a conscience, a sense of morals or any historical context. To avoid content becoming biased, human creators are essential to ensure that AI assisted content in inclusive and thoughtful. AI should not be seen as a replacement for human activity, research or judgement.

5 steps to get you started

1. Identify what you hope to get out of AI marketing. Define metrics and KPIs that you can measure to assess your progress
2. Create a data privacy strategy for you AI activity from the start. The best way to do this is to programme data privacy rules into your AI solutions
3. Using AI is easy, but using it well takes training, experience and intent. Using AI efficiently to drive results from marketing is a creative skill that will take time to develop. Avoid situations where only one employee has the essential knowledge to work with AI tools
4. Select an AI platform. Choosing the AI tools to power your marketing activities is one of the most important steps in getting started. Consider your main marketing goals, such as increasing the speed of marketing operations, reducing the cost of marketing, improving lead generation and conversion rates. Then choose the tools that excel in meeting your needs
5. It is a good idea to keep track of how AI is performing in your business. For example, how many hours are you saving, how well is the content performing and monitor your search rankings. Learning early can give you a competitive advantage

Liz McKeon is a salon business expert and founder of the International Salon Business School

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