Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being used in all aspects of business and marketing. The technologies allow decision-makers to extract valuable insights from a large amount of data so businesses can stay on top of emerging trends.
In this blog, I’ll cover how you can leverage AI to help increase ROI and get better results.
What AI Can Do For Content Marketers
AI is an umbrella term to describe a suite of unique, but related, technologies that includes machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing (NLP), and natural language generation (NLG). With the ability to process an enormous amount of unstructured data and decipher natural language, AI is used to extract insights and make recommendations based on previously established criteria.
It aids content marketers in discovering keywords, planning blog post topics, optimizing and personalizing content, implementing automation, testing landing pages, scheduling social shares, and reviewing analytics. AI has become an indispensable tool for data-driven marketers because we have more data than we know what to do with. The success of our efforts hinges upon the ability to extract the right insights from the data we already have, e.g., on our ecommerce, CRM, or DMP platforms.
Here are a few ways AI can be leveraged by content marketers:
Narrow the Content Discovery Gap
Producing content is just one part of content marketing. In order for the content to be effective, it needs to drive the right action from the right audience through content curation and maintenance. No wonder 67% of marketers indicate audience identification and targeting as their top priority. You can leverage AI to get your content discovered and acted upon by the right audiences using strategies such as capitalizing on local demand, gauging topic opportunity sizing, and determining consumer intent.
For example, AI tools can help discover characteristics of top-ranking content and offer real-time recommendations on how to improve content performance. In addition, you can use predictive intelligence to deliver content in the right format and through the right channel, that’ll be most useful and engaging for each individual along the various stages in the buyer’s journey. This capability allows marketers to fully leverage the power of personalization and marketing automation technologies to deliver targeted content to each prospect or customer and increase the ROI of their content marketing efforts.
Create Content Of High Value
Most content creation efforts are educated guesswork: marketers make assumptions on what will be of great demand based on past information and their subjective understanding of the market. AI can guide marketers to craft content that’s of greater value to the audience by analyzing and strategizing pertinent keywords and schematics in real-time to enhance a piece of content’s discoverability and engagement.
You can use AI to identify trending topics by using algorithms to track conversations on the Internet, such as those occurring on social media and within published content, to help you stay ahead of the trends and create content that will lead the conversations. By removing the guesswork, more of your marketing budget can be optimized to create and promote relevant content that will attract the right audience and deliver the desired results.
Stay On Top Of Industry Changes With Smart Content
Content marketing best practices are evolving all the time thanks to the constantly changing SEO and social media algorithms, as well as consumer expectations and preferences. The use of AI solutions helps marketers quickly adapt to the ever-changing search landscape with the delivery of “smart content”—content that’s contextually appropriate and intelligently personalized to your customer’s needs.
The use of “smart content” tailored specifically to each prospect’s customer lifecycle stage, purchasing history, or browsing behavior means you can fully leverage the power of omnichannel marketing by delivering personalized communications through all touch points including website, email, social media, mobile app, and more.
Intelligently Automate Repetitive Tasks
To stay on top of search and marketing trends, you need to constantly evaluate and analyze a lot of data. Many of these repetitive and manual tasks can be automated using AI-powered marketing tools so you can plan, optimize, personalize, promote, measure, and analyze content and its performance.
Start by evaluating your current content marketing process and identifying tasks that can be automated with AI technologies to save time and money. For instance, the ability to identify the best topics and content format based on real-time data can free up your resources to focus on content creation. You’ll be able to keep your key strategic documents up-to-date and generate high-impact topics that will make outsourcing your content creation tasks much more cost-effective.
Maximize Opportunities To Leverage Insights From Your Data
Using the right data, you can extract the right insights to help predict outcomes, devise strategies, personalize content, and tell stories at scale. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to what the highest-impact insights are for your organization and content marketing needs.
The best way to maximize opportunities offered by your data is to work with internal stakeholders and owners of datasets to extract the most pertinent insights and strategize the appropriate actions.
Use the AI Capabilities Of Your Existing Marketing Platforms
Before you add new software to your arsenal, you should look at the AI capabilities of your existing tools. Many platforms are actively integrating AI into their existing offerings.
Leveraging the AI features in your current tools will not only give you a great starting point to familiarize yourself with the technology, but you’ll also be able to take advantage of the seamless integration that’ll allow you to get up and running faster and more cost-efficiently.
Conclusion
By 2018, 62% of enterprises are expected to be using AI technologies. As a marketer, it’s time to embrace artificial intelligence if you want to stay at the top of the curve, remain relevant, and continue to engage your audience in a meaningful and profitable way.