The Customization Roller Coaster
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Content Marketing is fast becoming the jewel in the crown of customization, a crown studded with illustrious feathers named Crowdsourcing, 3D Printing, and Social Media. Mass customization is the rising sun; mass production, a soon-to-be relic of the past!
Winds of customization are sweeping Planet Earth even as technology enables unprecedented global connectivity and opens up fresh opportunities like never before. It is only a matter of time before the gentle breeze gathers hurricane force and transforms into a juggernaut of global proportions.
Back in 1895, farm equipment maker John Deere first printed The Furrow, widely regarded the first application of content marketing.
Alan Turning argued for the thinking power of machines in his pioneering paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in 1950.
Since then, Deep Blue has beaten then chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997 and IBM’s Watson trounced human opponents in Jeopardy, a TV game, in 2011.
How AI is Solving Marketing’s Biggest Problems
Customer is the king and the way to the king’s heart goes through catering his desires. How? Via personalized content.
This is precisely where AI comes into play – helping you read the customer’s mind! Once you know what the king craves for, your content marketing strategy can address these desires.
Please note, customization is the critical key to successful content marketing. Consider this:
- 60% marketing guys have tough time personalizing content;
- 52% customers may change their brand in the absence of personal communication; and
- 61% companies with pioneering game plans are already harnessing AI for identifying opportunities.
Internet usage generates tons of data. Interpretation of such, huge information is simply beyond human capacity. Predictive analysis, natural language processing, and generation of algorithms are the main tools of AI that provide insights into:
- Customer preferences what data / content they need, which platforms they use, and at what time they need it; and
- What your competitors are doing.
AI in Content Marketing: Present & Future
AI is focused on reporting, publication, and analytics at present. The combination of content marketing with AI thrusts the customer to the center stage and allows you to generate relevant and tailored content to guide your present and potential clients through all phases of the marketing funnel.
With the knowledge of customer requirements, you can:
- Personalize:
- Targeting of Potential Customers: by delivering useful data through their favorite channel at the right moment. For best results, employ a multi-channel communication strategy. Take Netflix, 75% of its suggestions are based on algorithms;
- Social Media News Feeds; and
- Content Curation: find and share great quality and relevant content.
- Improve Customer Experience: by minimizing the customer time and effort required to obtain personalized responses. Moreover, you enrich customer experience by providing knowledge-based value.
- Create Content Automatically: this application is limited to simple reports and news pieces. For example, Washington Post uses its robot Heliograph to write news pieces.
- Fine-Tune Customer Service via Chatbots that provide automated replies to customer queries.
How AI Can Change Content Marketing in 2019 and Beyond
As we move deeper into the 21st century, AI may overcome its present limitations viz. human creativity, communications with a human touch, accountability, and compassion. It could also start writing more complex content pieces by itself.
Currently, AI is necessary but not sufficient for successful content marketing. Humans still have to work on the insights it makes available.
Despite expected advances and contrary to popular fears, AI will not replace content marketers but be their valuable assistant.
Machines have always performed best when stewarded by humans. There’s no reason why this time will be any different!
Indrajeetsinh Yadav @ Falcon Words has created this article. For exemplary content that transcends beyond the obvious, write to us at info@falconwords.com or call us at +91-9822052945.