🥊 Welcome to the AI ring, Gemini.

Google To Unleash Gemini AI - What We Know

AI fans, this could be massive. Google has been chasing its tail trying to muscle into the AI race. But this really could be (and probably is) the start of something which is going to directly challenge OpenAI and realistically, go so much further.

So what do we know? Well, DeepMind (a company owned by Google,) has been handing out early iterations of Gemini for testing. It’s being described as the next generation of AI and is multimodal, meaning it can process various data types, such as text, code and images. Its highly anticipated release will be before the year’s up, but an exact date is yet to be confirmed.

Currently, it is believed to be around 5 times more powerful than ChatGPT-4. By the end of 2024, it’s predicted to be over 20 times more powerful.

Why? Google’s index is incomparable, with the data they hold being almost endless. This allows for their AI model at incredible speed, something OpenAI cannot compete with.

What does this mean for Bard? At this stage, it’s unclear. But thus far Bard has been the standout under-performer between the leading AI language models. As to whether Bard will be supercharged by Gemini, or pass the baton over completely to a stronger iteration, remains to be seen. Over to you, Google.

The Outpost’s Opinion: This is starting to have the feel of the 20th-century space race. OpenAI & BingAI will be concerned, but the reality is that the sleeping giant has now awoken and thrown down the gauntlet. We’re especially excited to see how Gemini will feed into SGE, as no doubt it will in the near future.

The AIDA Funnel - A Framework For Conversion

The AIDA funnel is one of the most widely recognised routes to conversion. It’s fundamental to understand it when running a business, as it outlines the thought processes and actions a customer takes when looking for a product or service. It can be applied to almost any business but has been complicated by what we now refer to as Google’s Messy Middle. But more on this later. Let’s break it down.

There are four stages in the AIDA buyer journey. These are:

1. Awareness - Creating brand awareness for your product or service. The first time a customer sees you, your brand, a product or service.

2. Interest - Interest is generated, and the customer then seeks to find out more and specifically see if their problem can be solved by your product or service.

3. Desire - The buyer has seen potential in your offering. This stage focuses on changing ‘I like it‘ to ‘I want it’.

4. Action - ‘I want it, I’m getting it.’ The customer has received enough trust signals and is ready to interact with you.

Once your customer has purchased, you want to turn them into an advocate of your brand. Then, they will positively inform others as of your offering, as well give you their repeat business. This is commonly referred to as ‘Retention‘, or step 5. But let’s keep things simple for now.

Let’s look at the marketing activities you should be using to drive your customers through your funnel:

• Drive awareness - content marketing, word of mouth, topic/interest-based PPC ads.

• Build interest - PPC, organic search (SEO), how-to guides, infographics, SMM and UGC content.

• Initiate desire - case studies, customer reviews, testimonials, email marketing, PPC, organic search and UGC content.

• Create action - email marketing, PPC, organic search. Use compelling CTAs.

This is a traditional funnel which has been used for many years. But it has some drawbacks, especially for e-commerce businesses, such as not taking into account impulse buyers, such as those who say ‘TikTok made me buy it‘. But a more poignant criticism comes from the fact that the AIDA funnel doesn’t take into account the complexities of modern consumer behaviour…

The ‘Messy Middle‘ as we refer to it, is where consumers have a non-linear journey to purchase.

While the AIDA funnel remains a valuable tool for mapping user journeys and segmenting an audience, it should be used in conjunction with other models to account for the complexity of modern consumer behaviour.

Next week we’ll further delve into the Messy Middle, how it looks and what it means for your business.

The Outpost’s Opinion: AIDA is a fundamental starting point for businesses to map their user journey and segment audience behaviour. However, its linear structure is oversimplified for a modern consumer. If you are starting to build a user journey, start with AIDA, but build it into something bigger. The middle of the journey is often not as clear-cut as some would think.

Taylor Swift Makes Herself #1 (…on Google at Least)

Taylor Swift and her team pulled off a major SEO coup, by making her the most searched-for person/term on Google. A feat by anyone’s standards.

How did the 33-year-old do it? By inviting fans to solve a series of 33 million online puzzles (yes, really). Once the puzzles were complete, fans got to enter a vault of new track titles.

Each puzzle presented a jumble of letters to organise into words. To submit their guess, they would simply type it into the Google search bar.

The result? Millions of people organically searched her name on Google. It took 18 hours for the 33 million puzzles to be completed, and the vault is now open.

The Outpost’s Opinion: Both clever and innovative, this is a really engaging way to market her new releases. Some critics will say that it’s easy to get searches when you have 100+ million followers. In reality, it’s a bit of marketing genius to pull off something like this.