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Content marketing agencies face a new series of challenges as the industry becomes more dynamic by the day. They struggle to create high-quality content at a fast pace, but technological advancements like machine learning and AI offer new opportunities. Marketers can become more productive and deliver higher-quality content. Automation in content creation is a realistic scenario.
But could artificial intelligence offer better value to clients and boost business efficiency? According to expert marketers and AI engineers, it could.
AI in the content marketing context is a possibility that is yet to be fully explored.
Just think of how many mundane parts of their daily activity marketers have to tackle manually. Finding keywords, planning blog post topics and writing them, optimizing content and testing landing pages, share scheduling and analytics review, these are parts of content marketing that not all experts are thrilled about.
Luckily for marketers, technology comes to their aid to automate the most boring activities. And the good news is, all these intelligent solutions allow marketers to deal with the higher-value tasks of their jobs and forget about repetitive and unpleasant activities. This helps content marketers improve business performance and create better content.
With a growing workload and an online medium growing in complexity, AI can simplify more tasks and assignments. Although marketers today rely on workflow automation, ironically, it remains mostly manual.
Automation tools save plenty of time. They still can improve their capabilities, thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Using data to the marketer’s advantage is the surest way to succeed in a competitive and dynamic sector like content marketing.
Nearly all the data created up to date has been created over the past two years. We are all bombarded with information and data, and discerning between what’s important and not becomes more difficult every day.
Marketing specialists have access to information on everything that interests them. From sales, advertising and re-marketing, to web analytics and e-Commerce, the web is full of information and data.
But still, content marketing is a manual field. The human mind doesn’t have infinite resources to process information and build strategies based on it.
AI can help marketers leverage data and information and use it in the following tasks.
Below are some of the prospects offered by AI to marketers, discussed in detail.
You are probably already familiar with Siri and Cortana, but IBM’s Watson, a more advanced robot that uses AI is what takes the game to a whole new level.
Watson uses requests and questions to make suggestions. It processes language commands and responds to them in an accurate manner. It can learn, understand, and reason on its own, but it can also interact. One of the most advanced use of a similar technology is Intelligent Assistance (IA).
Now imagine having an IA tool like Watson to assist your clients in filing content requests. Instead of using standardized forms or emails, your clients will be able to communicate with an intelligent robot. Based on the information they feed your robot about campaign goals, campaign length, special demands and so on, your company can design new workflows.
This will simplify your team’s tasks by eliminating the human client-team communication and by designing an accurate workflow and action plan.
Businesses in other industries already use similar systems. Some Hilton hotels already have a robot concierge, and North Face uses a similar tool to find out customer’s clothing preferences and tastes, before recommending products.
Luckily for content marketers, AI tools can be leveraged by their businesses, too!
Predictive intelligence increases business efficiency. This technology helps businesses understand consumer behavior and personalize products and services. In content marketing’s case, predictive intelligence helps marketers personalize content, depending on what readers seem to respond more positively to.
Predictive intelligence can also help marketers determine where prospects find themselves in the buying process (lead scoring). By leveraging lead scoring, marketers can determine which leads are sales-ready and which are not. They can create call-to-action content for newsletters and other marketing strategies to speed up the conversion process. This Gartner study shows that predictive lead scoring can improve ROI for both marketers and businesses using their services. This standpoint is also valid for low lead volumes.
AI can also be leveraged by marketers to generate content. While AI can’t generate high-quality content, it can be used to create simple content like sports updates and stock reports. Machines can learn how humans speak and organize phrases naturally, and can generate similar content. This technology has been used for several years now by press agencies like the Associated Press, Fox, and Yahoo.
Content curation is the process used by content marketers to find trending topics in a certain industry. But as you would expect, when managed manually, this is a time-consuming process. There already exist tools that use AI to curate content more efficiently. Tools like BuzzSumo help marketers research what topics are trending and what ideas they should follow.
Marketers don’t create content without a purpose. Their goal is to engage the target audience and move prospects to the next phase. Content marketers can use artificial intelligence to create relevant content for each prospect. The algorithms used by AI that collect and process data make this task easier.
AI can now help social media platforms to customize user’s news feeds. Today, users see on their feeds only those news and social media posts they are interested in.
Social media platforms use AI to analyze users’ likes, comments, and actions like hide and mark as spam. This makes their news feeds more accurate. In this case, marketers can use the same technology to their advantage. By using the same type of AI algorithms, marketers can find out what type of content their audience finds engaging and what type of content they respond to.
When marketers know what type of advertising the audience is responding to better, they can adapt their own campaigns. Based on the new information and insight offered by AI, they can create more engaging and entertaining content.
Marketing is now easier than ever, thanks to AI and machine learning. Content marketers can find out in real time what the audience wants, and they can adapt their campaigns to their needs. They can adapt the channels they use; they can find out the most appropriate time to post their content. Complex algorithms are game-changers in all industries, and online marketing is no exception. And we can already notice small changes in the field, riding the wave of AI!
Diana Nadim is a writer and editor who has a Master degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content in various fields. Besides working as a contributor writer for TrustMyPaper, Diana also runs her own 3to5Marketing blog. What inspires her the most in her writing is traveling and meeting new people. Follow her on Twitter.
