GenAIOut-of-Stealth

Riding the Generative AI Hype Safely (and effectively)

In a nutshell:

We started working with Botika – a Seed stage GenAI startup in the fashion tech industry – at a unique moment in time. They needed to quickly shape up their messaging and brand, launch a website, and start generating market interest (demo requests) – all at the exact moment when the Generative AI hype exploded. We had to take advantage of this momentum since we couldn’t afford to miss the trend. 

The implications were clear – we had to work on creating new marketing foundations, but at the same time conduct both inbound and outbound activities to avoid being late to the generative AI party.

Our strategy was a two pronged approach – working simultaneously on longer-term activities (messaging, a new website, CRM) and on short term campaigns that would serve both to generate leads and serve for A/B testing and a feedback loop into the messaging. 

Results:

  • A rich, top notch brand (that was created together with the design studio – ask us for details) 
  • Hundreds of conversions and leads from ecommerce fashion brands and other industry players 
  • Significant and fast market feedback re the product offering, messages, pain points etc. 

Visit the Botika website to view current brand and messages: https://botika.io/

About Botika

Botika helps online clothing retailers take existing photos and generate an infinite amount of hyper-realistic, high-quality photos, featuring any model they choose. The GenAI based software makes it easy to change models, facial expression, background color and more. Retailers can achieve a consistent brand experience, diversify models and optimize performance for every item, in every market. 

Building top quality foundations fast – an oxymoron?

The most important goal was to create marketing foundations fast enough – messaging, branding, online presence and inbound infrastructure. No wait! With the AI buzz all around, the most important goal was to ride the hype and grab mindshare…

The unique market situation required us to adopt two very different mindsets simultaneously – on the one hand market research and message building, and on the other hand lead generation ASAP. to top it off, at such an early stage industry data and intelligence was limited, and new competitors coming out of stealth could appear every day. 

We decided to adopt an approach that would specifically fit this situation:

1: 

  • Messaging sprint based on highly focused market research and competitive differentiators 

2:

  • First, immediately update the existing web page with the new messages and content
  • Launch Google Ads and Linkedin campaigns to validate messages, keywords and target personas without needing to wait for the new brand and website
  • In parallel, start working on branding, new website and other marketing assets. 

3: 

  • Messaging finetuning based on market feedback from activity 2 (data from campaigns we ran) 
  • Campaign update and expansion for lead-gen and additional feedback (together with outbound activities) 

4:  

  • Start social media activities as fast as possible 
  • Thought leadership content creation 
  • Continue – and constantly optimize – paid media campaigns

Next, we planned to add SEO and PR efforts.

This agile marketing process allowed us to continuously improve the understanding of the ICP, the messages and our marketing activities. In addition, it allowed the team to run as many meetings as possible with new leads, and to understand their pains and motivations better.

At the same time, campaigns generated leads that resulted in PoCs and deals, and provided valuable validation.

Deep dive into the messaging and branding challenge

How do you explain Generative-AI to the ecommerce fashion industry?

One of the main challenges Botika faces has to do with the domain it operates in. How do you explain an advanced technology solution to fashion creative and marketing professionals? AI based models? Synthetic models? 

The world is abuzz with discussions about ChatGPT and Midjourney and their impact on how people work and the world we live in. 

In such a hyped environment, how do you convey a message that Generative AI can indeed revolutionize fashion visuals? 

Marketing fashion tech to non-B2B-techies required a highly nuanced, tiered approach of creatives and business and technological messages.

A lot of effort went into articulating the numerous business values of the solution. Yet at the same time we made sure to identify technological messages and differentiators. These technological concepts were planted intelligently in the business messages and allocated space in social media and long form content.

Important to note: We knew that targeting people from the fashion industry means that our brand visual language couldn’t be less than great, as these audiences are all about… fashion… 

We had to insist on the right color scheme, font, and other visual elements.

Botika website: Focused on business value

 

Botika Blog – addressing more advanced technological issues


Following the Data – PPC, GA and Hubspot

To validate the ICP and messaging, we turned to google ads, where we defined different ads groups with different target keywords, with evenly spread budgets. 

Each campaign led to a separate landing page with the appropriate messaging. 

We analyzed search terms, impressions, click-throughs, session duration and conversions per keyword. 

The team engaged with every lead in order to evaluate its potential, and by implementing Hubspot we were able to reverse engineer the journey for the most promising leads. 

We identified what messages and key search terms generated relevant leads with a clear understanding of the value proposition. 

What’s more, through the customer conversations we gained even more insights into how the Generative AI hype impacts our target audience, what are their concerns and objections and what specific features were most appealing to our target audience. 

We fed this valuable information back into the messaging and the product teams.

Summary

When we started the journey, the Generative AI hype was just starting, and it was clear that there was an opportunity too good to miss out on. With virtually no foundations and limited resources, the key to riding the hype was an agile approach that allowed Botika to capture some of the hype.