There is a common misconception that artificial intelligence can replace human creativity and ingenuity. But while some organizations are trying to build automated content production systems, the truth is that no machine will ever be able to replace the unique skills that humans bring to work every day. Even for something as simple as generating the content, people remain critical.

“There’s kind of this ‘paint by numbers’ [view] on automation,” said Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research. “People think you plug things in, and it magically happens.” This misconception means many companies may be missing out on opportunities to improve their content creation processes. Let’s take a look at why AI should matter to marketers, what role it can play in marketing departments today, and some other considerations to keep in mind.

Address the Recruitment Crisis

There’s no doubt that marketers face a recruitment crisis (and it isn’t just due to low unemployment). Marketers can be hard to hire because many of them do not have the skills needed for content creation, such as writing and editing.

To meet their growing quotas, organizations need people who can create content and scale across multiple channels and media types—and they needed these people yesterday (or at least by last month). It’s simply not realistic for organizations to hire enough people with the right skills to keep up with their current growth expectations. Moreover, there may already be more work than existing employees can handle. This is especially true if marketers do not have enough time to create quality content.

Using AI-driven technology, organizations can ramp up their production capabilities and stay ahead of competitors without hiring multiple staff members. In other words, they can finally keep up with the workload without overloading current employees. The technology within these systems can produce high-quality content quickly, allowing companies to take on more work volume than they could before and saving valuable time and money in the process. “AI enables people to be more effective,” said Paul Greenberg, founder and CEO of Poikos. “It frees them from low value/high volume tasks so they can focus on those that require critical thinking.

Turn Content into Intelligent Content

The future of content marketing will revolve around the concept of “intelligent content.” Gartner defines this as “content that is created, augmented, or transformed in real time to meet the needs of consumers” at each stage in their buyer’s journey.

Companies are moving away from publishing static pieces of information and instead of creating dynamic experiences for customers. That means marketers need to connect with prospects based on where they are in the buying process. This requires more than just content creation; it also means empowering employees with technology that enables them to deliver intelligent insights about every customer interaction, check RemoteDBA.com to know more. 

Executing this kind of personalization takes advanced technology that can act quickly, adjusting itself in real time to account for changes within a business or customer preferences. For example, if a competitor suddenly launches an attack on your market space, you’ll want to get more information out there quickly. You can’t afford to wait for someone in marketing or customer service to create and upload new content manually. “What the machine is good at doing is taking all of this data and turning it into something more meaningful,” said Martha Bennett, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. “The content still ends up being written by people, but then they feed that information into a system which helps them be more productive.”

Suppose AI-driven technology can understand the context and provide more personalized interactions with customers at each stage in their buyer’s journey. In that case, marketers will have the ability to uncover insights faster than ever before. “Getting the right information to the right person at the right time will be critical in the journey to increase customer engagement,” said Judith Hurwitz, president and CEO of AIIM International.

Use AI for Internal Processes

Using technology to uncover insights faster—researchers believe that artificial intelligence can also help marketers streamline internal processes. From improving recruitment strategies to uncovering new business opportunities, there are many ways that businesses can use artificial intelligence to improve their overall efficiency.

“There’s a whole series of things you could automate within marketing departments,” said Scott Brinker, chief technology officer at ion interactive, a digital marketing technology company. Brinker went on to list potential uses for AI, including automating media buying and ad optimization, evaluating marketing analytics and optimizing social media algorithms, among other things.

AI can also be used to track and identify industry trends. For example, marketers can monitor content creation and performance across different platforms and map those results back to various customer segments. This allows them to make smarter decisions about how they allocate resources. 

“What we can do is go out there onto the web, find examples of great content marketing campaigns, see what’s working for competitors—what messages are they putting out there—and then bring all that back into our system,” said Greenberg. “Then we will start to understand: What works well on Facebook? What works well on Twitter? And then ultimately what works well with a certain type of customer?”

A CRM with Real-Time Personalization

Artificial Intelligence is also the key to providing each customer with an individualized buying experience. This means companies must be able to identify, update, and connect information about different customers and use that data to provide more personalized interactions. “When you’re looking at connected CRM, you’re doing it for two reasons,” said Mike West, chief technologist at Sailthru. “Number one, the ability for employees within a company to have access to what they need when they need it; and number two, how do I connect all of these things, so my systems are talking back and forth with each other in real time.”

This requires marketers to track activity across various platforms and build out a holistic view of their customers. They also need to continuously update information about each individual across different systems—something that AI can help marketers achieve more efficiently than ever before.

Content Marketing will be Essential for Lead Generation

A recent study from IBM found that “marketers ranked ‘producing engaging content as the second-most important tactic, behind only improving customer experience.” Yet, many marketers don’t have enough time or resources to create and distribute high-quality content that resonates with their audience. Therefore, they must employ new strategies for lead generation.

Marketers can use artificial intelligence to uncover insights faster than ever before and provide each customer with an individualized buying experience.