MarTech Interview with Lara Belonogoff, Senior Director of Brand Strategy, SurveyMonkey

Lara, please introduce yourself to our audience. What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing, and how did you get your start in the field?
I started out my career as a writer. But I grew to love marketing for its delightfully complicated blend of art and science. I’ve worked in a variety of industries from travel to healthcare to tech, but one constant area of interest to me has always been storytelling, and how to best create original experiences for people, whether they are your customer, your market, or just the person sitting next to you at a dinner party.

Could you provide an overview of SurveyMonkey and elaborate on your role as senior director of brand strategy?
SurveyMonkey is a global leader in online surveys and forms. We empower people with the insights they need to make decisions with speed and confidence. Our vision is to raise the bar for human experiences by amplifying individual voices, and our mission is to power the curious so they can shape what’s next. Our fast, intuitive feedback management platform connects millions of users worldwide with real-time AI-powered insights that drive meaningful decisions. We provide answers to more than 20 million questions every day, helping people, teams, and organizations turn insights into action, attract new audiences, inspire customers, create advocates, and extend their competitive advantage.

In my role as senior director of brand strategy, I lead the brand marketing, organic social media, video, content marketing, and research teams, driving the company’s brand efforts. I draw from more than 20 years of experience and expertise across a wide range of disciplines, including content strategy, copywriting, brand building, digital media, and marketing.

There’s been a lot of hype about AI in the general public. Being a fellow marketer and a researcher, what is your perspective on this?
The discussion we see around AI is to be expected with any ‘new’ technology (though newness is relative when it comes to AI, as we know the earliest successful AI program was written in 1951!). As AI becomes more well known, it’s natural for people to debate the value, ethics, and future impact of the technology and to ask questions that fuel progress. Even just seeing how ChatGPT has become smarter in just the last few iterations has been really thrilling to watch. And as a marketer, I feel like I’m part of an adaptable and incredibly curious group of professionals that for the most part are excited to see what will happen next and are figuring out how AI will impact them.

As AI dominates business conversations, it’s important for marketers to know that over half (59%) of Americans expect it to have a major impact on their lives in the next five years. Our research shows tremendous opportunities for companies that effectively use AI. Because AI cannot fundamentally understand the human experience, we at SurveyMonkey believe that authentic human insights (the ‘other AI’) are crucial to making the technology effective.

As AI evolves, we expect the need to incorporate even greater human validation at every step of the way. As more and more people interact with AI and the technology it enables, we will see even more clearly where human engagement and intervention will be required to make AI effective and useful for marketers.

In the field of marketing, how do professionals currently use AI for automation, optimization, and analytics? Could you provide some specific examples?
It’s important to note that AI already powers many of today’s marketing systems and processes, such as automation, optimization, analytics, synthesis, labeling, sales enablement, experience management solutions, and so much more. According to our research, nearly three-quarters (74%) of marketers say they regularly use AI for a variety of tasks, and more than one-third (36%) use it daily.

AI lessens the load for many marketers by executing the rote, time-consuming tasks that require extensive attention to detail—such as data synthesis, complex pathing, personalization, and recommendations at scale. It also helps us move faster from a blank page to a full-fledged idea. When we increase how quickly we can move past cognitive blocks, AI enables marketers to be more efficient and reallocate valuable time for more strategic thinking. For example, our research also shows that marketers use AI most for emails (57%) and customer-facing chats (55%), which are time consuming and can typically be addressed effectively without significant human engagement.

But AI is not only being used to help marketers complete routine tasks. In fact, 63% of marketers say AI is better at gaining insights from data than they are; 55% use AI chatbots for lead generation; 54% use it to evaluate social media sentiment; and 47% use it to deliver more personalized product and service recommendations to customers. Bear in mind that these AI-driven tasks still require some level of human intervention or engagement, that’s where the ‘other AI’ I mentioned earlier, the authentic input, comes in.

Your study suggests that 74% of marketers believe AI will make it easier for consumers to discover their company’s products and services. How does AI contribute to this discovery, and what kind of impact does it have on marketing initiatives?
Recent AI-driven applications offer newfound speed and accuracy for marketers today. The SurveyMonkey platform has always helped deliver key insights quickly, drawing from one of the world’s biggest datasets. We already have been using AI in multiple ways in conjunction with our proprietary dataset to enable faster, more impactful decision-making.

AI is an important tool for driving productivity while retaining the ability to pivot based on the evolving data and analytics marketers rely on. Marketers with the access, budget, and training to use AI will have an advantage, but it’s not that simple. Our research shows that AI and the ‘other AI’ go hand-in-hand. The trick lies in striking a balance between the two.

As AI advances, the customer experience (CX) is changing for CX pros and consumers, which heavily influences marketing strategy. As machines learn over time, surveys and other feedback mechanisms are using more organic, familiar language, making them more comfortable to use. As consumers have more positive experiences with AI and begin to grasp how it can enhance the quality of their lives and jobs, their trust in the technology naturally increases. And as consumers begin to see AI as a valuable asset, CX teams will be able to deliver an even more positive end-to-end customer experience that enables greater visibility into the featured products and services we market.

AI’s role in personalization and tracking trends is critical for marketers. Can you elaborate on how AI helps marketers tailor messages and capture emerging trends? What benefits does this bring to their campaigns?
The human mind (marketers, specifically) will always provide the greatest creative strategy around the products they market, but with its ability to quickly process and analyze large amounts of customer data quickly, AI plays a vital role in enhancing the data-based insights we lean on to drive consumer purchases. For example, AI might highlight or capture nuances around a trend that is likely to resonate with a specific customer set; marketers can then leverage that intelligence via personalized outreach to specific customers to drive purchases. AI is also able to analyze and optimize marketing campaigns so quickly that marketers can make real-time adjustments and improvements to campaigns or strategies that do not resonate with customers as expected.

Your research mentions the use of AI in generating transactional content and iterative design. Could you provide insights into how marketers are leveraging AI in these areas?
AI is a useful tool for producing direct transactional copy that cuts straight to the point and for jump-starting creative thinking. Despite concerns around certain aspects of generative AI, marketers are using it for information-heavy materials that require significant time and attention to detail, such as creative output, presentations, email, social media content, ad copy, blogs, and more. Marketers that aren’t using AI to at least automate tasks will be at a distinct disadvantage.

Marketers should always use caution, verify, and be careful with anything that is AI-generated. Authentic human input will always be needed to use AI effectively and responsibly, so it’s important to ensure the ‘other AI’ is baked into any marketing strategy.

Generative AI, in particular, presents unique concerns. Could you delve into these concerns and the impact of AI-generated content on the marketing industry?
It’s important for marketers to consider the balance between what AI can do, and what AI should do. For example, nearly one-third (32%) of marketers use AI for SEO copy, yet 75% support AI-generated content being excluded from search engine results. We already see some dissonance in what some marketers are doing and what marketers think they should be doing. In the end, when not used responsibly, AI can present a threat to marketers’ job security and the legitimacy of what we do.

Research shows that workers in advertising & marketing (73%), technology (68%), and consulting & research (61%) are likely to anticipate the most change in their job due to AI within the next five years. But despite the fact that 27% of marketers fear AI will challenge job safety, there is no reason to worry about AI ‘taking over’ or usurping jobs—because at least for the foreseeable future, AI isn’t able to understand the authentic human experience.

AI does not and will likely never possess purposeful creativity based on human connection; fully inspired thinking, writing, and strategies; nuanced and evolving human thoughts, emotions, preferences, or sentiments; and so many more unique capabilities of the human mind. AI is a strong framework builder, not the designer. But when coupled with human ingenuity, authenticity, and validation, it has the ability to drive true and powerful change to our jobs and lives.

Looking into the future, what trends or developments do you foresee at SurveyMonkey?
We draw from a powerful insights engine and (this year we celebrate!) 25 years of intelligence, constantly generating new data and ongoing, up-to-the-moment insights. Looking forward, AI will continue to permeate our solutions at every point along the way, from survey to creation, fielding to analysis; and AI will continue to be fundamental to our offerings, as evidenced by the recent introduction of Build with AI, the newest capability in our SurveyMonkey Genius lineup of AI-enabled features.

And, because we get first-hand experience using the technologies and solutions we deliver to our own customers, we will continue to be uniquely positioned to help customers weave the ‘other AI’ into their business strategies to further the value of the data and insights shaping.

To wrap up Lara, what advice would you give to marketing professionals looking to embrace AI in their strategies?
Over the past few years, marketers have learned lessons about the importance of agility, the willingness to try new approaches, and the breakthroughs that come from making bold decisions. We face a challenging business environment where the pressures are intense and anticipating trends can be difficult. That’s why it’s so important to stay curious and be brave. I also strongly suggest keeping up with the research including these recent learnings, so you can stay close to the needs of your markets and customers.

Remember that any technology that makes our jobs easier, our work more productive, and our customers happier is worth embracing. There will always be risks and fears; focus instead on the existing opportunities and potential ahead. Using AI and other technologies can be an invaluable differentiator, but only when coupled with the ‘other AI’ – that indelible and inimitable human element is what truly gives marketers an edge.

For more expert Interviews, articles and industry updates, follow Martech News