We use artificial intelligence (AI) technology every day. We use it when we tell Alexa to play a song. We use it when we scroll through our Netflix account's "You might like these videos" feed. We use it when we ask a chatbot a question instead of calling a customer support phone number. As a result, AI has become an integral part of our everyday lives.
Marketers use AI when they personalize emails or track the results of a digital ad and marketing professionals are especially excited about the tools that write content. The latest AI technology causing a stir is software that creates content, including copy, code, or graphics. One of the most talked about tools is ChatGPT. As with all new AI technology, it is not perfect, and the most compelling use cases are blurry, so the more you know about this (or any AI tool) before you dive into using it, the better.
How We Got Here
The global AI market is predicted to reach $190.61 billion in market value in 2025. Every aspect of business has a use case for AI, but marketing and sales departments prioritize AI in strategic planning more than any other department. Here's why…Netflix's recommendations engine (powered by AI) is worth $1 billion a year for the company.
Consumers are also embracing AI for customer service activities. Almost 9 out of 10 customers had at least one conversation with a chatbot in 2022, and 7 out of 10 reported that the experience was positive. Gartner also tells us that customer satisfaction is expected to grow by 25% by 2023 in companies using AI.
What is AI?
At first, Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused on developing algorithms that mimic the cognitive functions of the human brain to create machines that think and reason like humans. Over time, it has evolved from simple rule-based systems to more complex and sophisticated algorithms that learn from the environment and make data-backed decisions. Artificial Intelligence automates processes, improves efficiency, reduces costs, and enhances customer experiences, and its technology is used to build systems capable of speech recognition, visual object recognition, problem-solving, decision-making, language translation, and more.
AI in Marketing
Artificial Intelligence is used in marketing in various ways, from automating mundane tasks to providing insights into customer behavior. AI identifies patterns in customer data, predicts customer preferences and interests, and recommends products and services most likely to interest them. AI can also automate marketing activities such as segmenting customers, creating personalized campaigns and optimizing ad placement and targeting. Additionally, AI automates customer service tasks such as responding to emails and sorting through customer feedback.
AI helps marketers build better websites based on user data and customer interactions with their content. Many brands use AI graphics tools to create or enhance visual assets, from automatically generating images to assisting designers in creating more complex graphics, improving the customer shopping experience by giving them a better visual experience of their products. This helps a customer decide which product to purchase.
AI Writing Tools
In the last year, AI software that produces conversational quality copy with few human prompts has become more widely used. Open AI's GPT-3, a language model that uses deep learning, is the most popular AI software for writing copy. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system developed by OpenAI that is based on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 model.
ChatGPT is designed to engage in natural-sounding conversations and provide relevant, accurate responses to a wide range of questions. It can also generate copy based on prompts from users. However, ChatGPT is less powerful than GPT-3 and is often over capacity and unavailable for some users.
Other AI-assisted tools are being introduced everyday to help marketers write headlines, novels, e-books, articles, emails, social media posts, blog posts, games, and more. AI writing tools can generate text based on keywords or questions, drafting entire passages in seconds. In addition, AI tools can provide helpful suggestions on how to improve grammar, spelling, and word choice, as well as provide alternative phrasing or sentence structure.
Are AI writing tools helpful or harmful to marketers? There are pros and cons to using them.
The Benefits of Using AI Writing Tools
- Cost savings: There are cost savings in using AI writing tools for specific mundane or routine tasks like answering FAQs in a chatbot.
- Research: If you are writing content that needs a lot of research and references, these tools can help you find and cite relevant data faster.
- Editing: Many writers rely on AI writing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to ensure their copy is grammatically correct and easy to read.
- Ideation: If you are stuck for new content ideas, plugging a specific question or keyword into an AI Writing tool may spark some new ideas.
The Cons of Using AI Writing Tools
- SEO: ChatGPT and other AI writing tools create content by scraping the web for existing web content and repackaging it. However, Google “fingerprints” original content with the specific author. If you copy and paste ChatGPT content to your website, Google will tag it as unoriginal content and lower your SEO rank.
- Cost: While you may save some payroll costs, most good AI writing tools are not free for full access. Jasper.ai is one of the most powerful AI writing tools available, and full access starts at $49 per month for 50,000 words. Copy.ai has a free plan for 2,000 words per month, but the unlimited plan is $36 per month.
- Limited availability: ChatGPT is often at capacity, and as popularity grows, other tools will experience the same issues.
- Not human-centered: AI is still a machine. AI can mimic writing styles or patterns, but the content will not have the same level of emotion and subtleties a human writer can capture. AI will never be able to tap into or communicate that innately human need to connect and engage with other humans.
How to Use AI to Make your Work-Life Easier
Artificial Intelligence can be useful for a busy marketer when used strategically. It should never be a substitute for a human-focused task that builds brand relationships and engages consumers. But some AI tools can help your team automate, inform, and improve your online marketing activities. If these tools help you be more efficient and give you more time to engage your target audience, they are worth considering.
Social media listening and brand awareness
It is always smart to understand how your brand is perceived online. The task of social listening involved tracking online mentions of your brand, measuring brand awareness and sentiment, and leveraging that knowledge in digital marketing and advertising campaigns. You can use this knowledge to work with your content marketing and social media teams to craft new content strategies for your blogs, e-newsletters, and social media posts. Social media listening can also inform your customer service department about potential issues and inform your PR team about current industry trends and potential influencer partnerships. Performing this task manually is time-consuming, impractical, and inconvenient. But it can be critical to your team’s success. More than 82% of businesses view social listening as a key planning element. Finding a comprehensive listening tool is worth the investment. In fact, almost 61% of businesses now have a social media listening system in place and are monitoring for keyword mentions.
Content idea generation
Some new writing tools can be useful when your content team is stuck for new ideas.
When you type in a few prompting questions or keywords, the tools will incorporate natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to suggest relevant topics and how those topics are ranked. The more detailed your prompts are, the more relevant the ideas will be.
Here is a case study to consider. The marketing team at Tomorrow Sleep wanted to establish the brand as a market leader and expert. The team found a tool to help them discover high-value topics for their blog. Next, it used advanced analytics within the tool to measure its competitor's rank for these keywords. This knowledge showed the marketing team where there were gaps and opportunities in their current content calendar. Finally, the team created content around those high-value key topics and posted it on their websites. The results were astounding. Monthly traffic to the website went from 4,000 to 400,000 visits, which is a 10,000% increase. The site also ranked for multiple positions in a single search result and earned domain authority for the featured snippet for specific search terms. This AI tool was critical to Tomorrow Sleep’s content marketing success.
Content organization and outlines
Some AI tools use natural language processing and machine learning to analyze information and suggest a logical structure or outline for a piece of content. This task can be useful for blog or article writers who get bogged down with researching and organizing information into a functional outline. The tool asks you to enter your main topic, and the tool uses AI to suggest subtopics and a logical order for your content. This can ensure that the content is well-structured and easy to read. Using these tools can help a writer save time and be more productive; however, it's essential to review the suggested outlines carefully and make any necessary adjustments to ensure the content meets your specific needs and goals.
Personalize content with customer data
According to Salesforce, 52% of people say they’re likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize communications to them. AI-based personalization tools help companies understand their customers better by analyzing behavior patterns, preferences, and demographics and then providing them with relevant content, products, and services. Demographic data can also help a marketing team find and nurture new customers.
AI-based personalization can be used in many ways. Here are a few:
- recommend products based on past purchases in emails or landing pages
- customize search results on a web shopping page based on user behavior
- suggest content on a website or blog based on tracked keywords
- serve targeted digital or social media ads based on past user behavior or location
Take this example. Vanguard is a global investment firm managing $7 trillion in investments.
The financial industry is highly regulated when it comes to advertising. The rules made it challenging to stand out from their competitors in advertising because everyone had to use the same messaging. Vanguard used an AI tool to personalize their digital ads based on the specific messaging that resonated most with their customers. As a result, the conversion rates for these ads increased by 15%.
Boost campaign ROI
AI tools can also assist your team in making marketing decisions that increase conversion and enhance your campaigns’ return on investment. They can collect a vast amount of information and data about your brand, industry, consumer sentiment, and your own marketing and advertising campaigns. The tools then use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and predict future outcomes with more accuracy. Predictive analytics informs how your team should make upcoming campaign decisions—targeting the right audiences with the right message every time results in a more significant ROI.
The Bottom Line
Artificial Intelligence has become a valuable tool for many marketers, but that doesn't mean you should blindly embrace the newest hot innovation everyone is talking about. While turning over all your content needs to an AI writing tool is tempting, it's essential to understand the tool's limitations and set your expectations accordingly.
These tools can help a marketing team be more efficient. They can make your life easier and more productive, but they will never replace human-centered content created with thoughtful marketing strategy and a complete understanding of your brand. You cannot replace real people and experience. There are nuances in marketing that AI cannot understand or attain.
If your marketing team needs assistance creating content that embraces your brand and engages your customers, the marketing team at Phase 3 is available. Contact us today to schedule a discovery call.