Both artificial intelligence (AI) and content marketing are the trending topics in the world of marketing because of their enormous potential. After reading this article, you will get to know if there is a relationship between AI and content marketing. Not only this, but you will also get to know how AI can impact the content marketing strategy if there is a relationship between them.

Many marketers have already started investing in both content marketing and artificial intelligence. According to the prediction made by the Forrester,the investment in the AI is expected to increase by 300% in 2017.

And the survey shows that the tech giants like the Facebook, Google, Apple, and others are making huge AI investments. In today’s world, the customer service without AI seems quite incomplete, as more and more companies are starting to use AI for improving the quality of their customer service.

Talking about the content marketing, most of the major companies have already included content marketing in their overall marketing plan, and it has given them a huge return on investment.  Many marketers are also involved in social media outreach campaigns for a better reach. The study shows that around 92% of the marketers believe that their organization perceives the content as an important asset.

Now, here are the questions: What is the relationship between the AI and content marketing? How can AI impact the content marketing strategy? It’s true that both are the part of digital technology. We will discuss this issue in the next part of this article.

How can AI impact the content marketing strategy?

Till now, AI has been able to impact the various sectors of the business. Finance, customer service, marketing, research, etc are some of them. One should not be surprised if AI impacts every human aspect in the future.  It has a huge potential, and we are just experiencing the beginning of AI.

Content marketing is one part of digital marketing, and the AI is already impacting the content marketing strategy in various ways. Most of the marketers are already taking advantage of it by adding AI in their content marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at how AI can transform a content marketing strategy.

1. Content Creation

There are journalist robots that are already generating numerous pieces of content for the big companies, such as Yahoo, Samsung, Associated Press, and others. And, the rate at which these robots create the content is very impressive. These robots can create around 2,000 pieces of basic content per second. As the quality of these robots improves over time, they may well be able to generate complicated pieces of content in the future.

For now, these robots are not able to generate complicated pieces of content, though. This means that there is still a lot of scope for the content writers. However, there is no need to waste your precious time on the creation of simple pieces of content because of these robots, which provides the opportunity for you to spend more time on the important projects.

Some of the applications that can create these basic pieces of content are Narrative Science, WordAi, and so on.

2. Large-scale empathy and personalization

It may not be a tough task for marketers to personalize the messages for the small group of their clients, but it does become tougher when one needs to personalize the messages to the large group of customers.

According to the study conducted by the Forrester, around 40% of the loyalty marketers find it difficult to personalize their messages. The AI has the solution for these marketers along with other marketers who want to quickly personalize the messages in a large scale.

Emarsys, which is the marketing automation software company, launched its new AI platform to address this issue in November 2016. This AI platform allows the marketers to engage in 1 to 1 communication and personalization with their clients on a large scale. This platform uses more than 2 billion Emarsys customer profiles.

Furthermore, these customer profiles are enabled by the AI that automates the communication, content, and the timing. This platform helps the marketers to get rid of the burden created by operational and execution tasks, which provides them more time to focus on content and strategy. However, the marketers should think of the content that could be personalized using these types of software.

The company named, WayBlazer, which is a cognitive travel platform can be a great example of how AI can be used for personalization. This website is using IBM Watson’s AI for personalization of travel insights, images, and recommendations. This shows how AI can help in the creation of intelligent content for the customers.

3. Transformation in SEO Strategy

The people who have some idea about content marketing know how important SEO is to the success of the content marketing campaign. There are thousands of companies that are competing to rank higher in the popular search engines, and the companies with no SEO efforts will not be able to rank higher in the search engines.

The Google started using Rankbrain in 2015. This AI system assists in breaking down the search engine queries. Rankbrain uses high-end natural language processing which enhances the user context and voice search.

Here is a simple example that will help you to understand how this AI system works. If a customer visits a specific Chinese restaurant and leaves a review stating that the tofu in that Chinese restaurant is delicious and the dinner in that restaurant does not create a hole in a pocket. With Rainbrain, the Google automatically recommends this restaurant to its users who are searching for a quality Chinese restaurant on a limited budget.

Furthermore, AI is also introducing visual search capabilities, which allow the users to upload specific images to find the products. The AI platforms with the ability to read real images can take the SEO to the new level.

4. Helps in better understanding of your customers

It’s crucial for the marketers to understand his/her customers. Without a good understanding of the customers, it’s not possible to effectively market the products and services to the target group of customers. How easy would it be to market your products and services if you know what is in your customers’ mind even before they visit your company’s website? It would be really easy, isn’t it?

With the power of AI, it is now possible to understand the customers’ needs, desires, and expectations in advance. It helps the marketers create a better sales pitch and search for the best resources to increase the chance of conversion.

The AI technology is getting better every day. This technology can analyze thousands of factors and compare them with each customer. The AI technology analyzes the broad customer behavior factors with every single customer and displays the report.

The USAA used the AI technology, and the guess rate of the USAA improved from 50% to 88%. This report will help the company to understand what products and services to promote for a better result.

Furthermore, a better understanding of the customers will also help the company to provide a better customer service to their customers.

The task of understanding the customer is hectic. Just imagine how much time one has to spend on the demographics of the customers without technology. With the power of AI, you can easily know the customer needs, which will help you to plan your tactics.

5. Increases the web security

In today’s world, the payment process is done using credit cards and other e-wallets. The website must ensure the customers that their websites are safe for the customers to insert their credit card information.

Let’s take an example of a customer who wants to purchase a product online from the website. Do you think the customer will insert his/her credit card information to purchase the product if he/she is not sure about the web security? As a result, the website can lose a lot of sales.

The study shows that e-retailers are at the highest risk of breaches. And, the statistic shows that North America accounts for the 72% of the cases of the data breaches. With so many cases of data breaches, a visitor is not easily convinced of the security of the website. Just username and password forms on the website will not do. Thus AI is crucial in the security domain in today’s age of digital technology. As AI technology helps in a better identification of threats along with a better risk assessment.

All the marketing efforts will be useless if you don’t provide a secured web service to the users. And, there is no point in marketing a lot without conversion. So, implement AI technology to boost the security of the site. A security boost will help in increasing the conversion on the site.

6. Better recommendations and suggestions

A website without an option for the visitors to subscribe to it will not do well in the long run. Increasing subscribers and following up with them with a newsletter is a must for the website to be successful. While sending out a regular newsletter, the marketer should also include product recommendations for increasing the chances of sales.

There are many big companies who are already making use of AI for product recommendations. The Netflix uses the predictive analysis for recommending the movies that you may want to watch.  As people are focusing more on AI, there will be a massive improvement in the quality of AI for sure. This will increase the chances of the company being more closely aligned with the customers’ interest.

Conclusion

Many marketers have been able to get a decent return on investment without even combining AI in their content marketing strategy so far. However, they may not get the same return after all other marketers start using AI in their content marketing strategy.

The study shows that the organic search is responsible for around 51% of the web traffic. Because the use of AI helps in the SEO purposes as well, the marketers who prefer not to include AI in their content market could well be out of the business at some point of the time. Include AI in your content marketing strategy; improve your current content marketing strategy, and get a greater return from your content marketing efforts.

Article written by: Stevan Mcgrath