3 Ways AI Will Reshape Content Marketing in 2019
Artificial intelligence is everywhere in 2019. From smart home assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa to predictive driving technologies in the latest Tesla, AI has infiltrated everything from our homes to our cars and even what we wear.
Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in the marketing space. As with so many new technological developments, brands have been desperate to incorporate artificial intelligence into their approach, with varying degrees of success. For many such brands, AI is being positioned as a magic bullet: a one-size-fits-all solution that will solve all of their marketing woes.
Behind this hyperbole, however, there are some areas of marketing where artificial intelligence is making a very real difference; where it is being used to make campaigns smarter, more informed and more appealing to the average consumer. One such area is content marketing.
While content marketing may not seem the most obvious place to incorporate AI — given its creative, design and copywriting focus — a growing number of content marketers are beginning to recognize AI’s potential to develop and inform content strategy. With this in mind, here are three ways that AI is already starting to influence content strategy in 2019:
1. Informing the content roadmap
The combination of AI and existing big data is providing marketers with unique insights into the success of previous content — both from their own campaigns and those of competitors.
Through advances in AI, content marketers can now analyze hundreds of thousands of content pieces, instantly calculating which were the most successful in terms of views, shares, repeat viewings, social metrics, readerships and numerous other factors. Through artificial intelligence tools, this can go far beyond the insight provided by traditional analytics, providing insights into increasing niche and abstract themes that helped to make campaigns a success.
As one example, consider Google. Using CONCURED’s AI tool to review thousands of pieces of Google’s content marketing, it is possible to see that those relating to Google’s HQ, CEO and environmental initiatives were the most likely to drive engagement. Such insights can help to inform Google’s content marketing strategy and create an invaluable content roadmap in future.
2. Find a better role for humans
There’s no denying that content marketing is still — and probably always will be — a very ‘human’ field. Relying heavily on writing, storytelling and creativity, it seems unlikely that content marketing jobs will be fully replaced by artificial intelligence any time soon.
What AI does allow, is for humans to be freed up from those roles that do not come naturally to them; roles such as vast data analysis and non-biased interpretation.
By providing a clear, irrefutable basis for decision making, content marketers can remove their own personal biases from data analysis, creating content strategies that reflect what they know will work and what will resonate best with their audiences. This will not only help to make content marketing more strategic, it will also free marketers up to focus on the ‘human’ aspects of the job that they do best… being creative.
3. Tie content marketing to ROI
One of the biggest challenges faced by marketers has been proving the value of marketing to the board. Unlike sales, marketing has a hard time linking its outputs to the overall financial success of a business.
This is especially true in content marketing, where the end results can both be hard to track and won’t necessarily result in a direct sale for the brand. Instead, content marketing exists in a far more fluid space, focusing on awareness and decision making, rather than conversions and hard sales.
Artificial intelligence is changing this fact. By providing ever more data and hard evidence of where content marketing has and hasn’t worked, AI is helping demonstrate an increasingly tangible link between marketing and business success. At the same time, it is also providing content marketers with greater justification to ask their CEOs and boards for more budget in future.
Simply by proving that their contribution can be measured, content marketers are securing their place as a valuable resource in the eyes of the board. As AI tools advance in future, it may not be long before we can see a truly tangible ROI being established for all content marketing activities.