Marketing standards and trends in 2016 or 2017 are no longer the done thing in 2019, and more changes will be afoot in content marketing for 2020.
Due to the laws of physics, nothing stays the same. The content channels that are most effective for certain segments will evolve and change, and marketers need to be nimble—this is where all the data they collect can pinpoint changes in patterns and effectiveness.
Due to the laws of physics, nothing stays the same. The content channels that are most effective for certain segments will evolve and change, and marketers need to be nimble—this is where all the data they collect can pinpoint changes in patterns and effectiveness.
And while so many things change or evolve, content is still king, still the answer to buyer’s queries and still an effective lead magnet and predictor.
With the rise of personalization and AI, content creators now look at AI and its potential as a rival in producing content.
Headlines like “AP’s ‘robot journalists’ are writing their own stories now” from The Verge way back in 2015 have always sensationalized AI’s ability to create and disrupt even firmly established professions like writing, teaching, lawyering.
While AI does destroy some jobs, it creates more, and is still primarily a tool to help most professions.
AI-generated content is no different. It’s a robust tool and source of opportunity, not a threat. And it is going to change things for writers and editors, but not in an apocalyptic sense.
We already enjoy AI-generated content
And there’s no going back. It won’t be long before people get used to the chatbots that pop up in websites, with that greeting and peppy offer to help. Everyone has used it at one point, and will continue to do so.
The thank you emails when you’ve purchased something, the reminders from accommodation providers, and the sometimes annoying, sometimes helpful reminder when you left something in your cart when you’re shopping: these are all partnerships between humans and AI, delivering personalized, relevant content to each customer.
And we’ve come to expect them. They’re now the standard.
Evolving standards challenge—and pressure—content creators. With people tweeting or doing a Live video on Facebook during events, content creators have to be just as fast. That’s where AI is already proving indispensable.
AI has so many advantages for content marketing
On average, Millennials spend close to 9.6 hours per day and Gen X spends 7.9 hours per day consuming content.
The attention span of a goldfish is no longer a concern, because everyone’s getting the content they want to consume. This is thanks to powerful AI-powered data-driven algorithms and tools. Your target audience is already riveted.
They’re so used to being entertained and charmed by content that 41% of U.S. consumers abandon a brand when there is no personalization or trust factor. Attention is still a precious commodity, yes, but personalization gets you that attention. Personalized experiences are the new normal.
AI simplifies that now quintessential personalized customer engagement. Chatbots are top of mind when it comes to AI-augmented content marketing.
Chatbots represent the expectations we have in the world we move in today: instant access, instant answers, and even instant service without having to download and use the dedicated apps.
The role of AI is making this “instant everything” possible alongside accuracy and thoroughness in executing and delivering the personalized experience and content.
Speed
Marketers need to be able to quickly modify marketing campaigns to be as effective as possible. This can put a lot of pressure on a marketing team to generate content at a faster and faster pace—having a tool that generates content (which is not something new) will be incredibly helpful.
Captions about events—pop culture, sports, socio-politics—need to be not just fast but instant: AI can create the captions, the captions double as article introductions, and the writers can flesh out the articles. Meanwhile, the Facebook and Twitter pages are up to date and the post is gaining likes and retweets.
More comprehensive research and outlines
Even with Google’s rules and constant refinements to its SERPs (search engine results pages), it’s still hard to wade through all the noise on certain topics out there. Top results aren’t always the best.
AI can scour the internet in seconds and generate a comprehensive brief for any topic. All your sources are in the brief, together with all the stats on the competition your content has to stand up against.
AI is almost autonomous here. We may enter the topic but we essentially don’t tell them what to look for, and AI sees patterns humans miss. In this way, it bridges the gap in research in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken one human or a whole team.
This data-capturing aspect of AI is already and will continue to be regulated better and better by policies all over the world. The GDPR is already in place in the EU and becoming the standard worldwide, while the US has the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Aside from guarding privacy, this also has the beneficial result of writers and marketers getting only vetted information, where AI also helps because not all vetted information are easily found manually.
Personalized assistance
Sales is no longer transactional but personal. AI-generated content makes every customer feel cared for once they open your landing page, in a scope no human team can accomplish.
A pop up welcome window, with easy navigation to the day’s deals. Helping you to find your size through a series of questions. Subsequent offers based on brands or items you bought previously.
Joining the high-tech experiences of huge brands (and even beating them), The North Face, Sephora, and Asia’s Zalora use AI-generated content to give shoppers the experience of attentive, personalized assistance.
If not already doing so, soon content marketing teams will partner with AI to craft messages for every scenario and suggest relevant content that will push that customer to sales, or to continue upselling over an extended period after a completed transaction.
Predictive marketing and curation
You can blame (or thank) AI algorithms for social media networks’ constant customization of news feeds. Don’t want to see bad news? Just keep liking and RT-ing kittens being adorable assholes and you’ll see more and more of them.
When you’re trying to lose weight, reading one to three articles on yoga or saving videos about intermittent fasting would prompt the delivery of similar content.
This is AI. It looks at your audience’s browsing data to see what questions they’re asking and what types of content they like: Video? Infographics? Long-form or shorter articles?
AI-augmented content marketing speeds up nurturing and nudging your leads along the buyer’s journey and sales funnel by collating data for lead scoring, identifying where each customer is in the buyer’s journey.
This in turn enables AI to help marketers curate and deliver the right content—and the right offers—at the right time to the right audiences, based on what other content that specific reader has consumed and their lead score.
Massive, channel-flexible content push
AI gives marketers better data and insights on how to use that data to deliver better customer experiences.
Inevitably, savvy marketers will also figure out how to create the content that accompanies those improved customer experiences, whether it’s ads, articles, emails, blog posts, text messages, reviews, price comparisons, and so on.
Also inevitably, marketers will need AI to deliver the right messaging in the right places to the right people.
AI-generated content is here to stay—and be utilized
AI is not about to take writers’ jobs. Not yet anyway, nor in the foreseeable future, when AI’s upgrades can be better applied to fine-tuning its accuracy and complexity.
For now, one thing is clear: AI-powered tools and data are freeing up writers to do more. With research, reports and quick newsbites in the hands of AI, writers can truly focus on writing. Without getting lost in the details, we can see and better articulate the big picture.
