How to accelerate content marketing ROI with AI

We’d all like to maximise our gains swiftly, and one way to achieve this is by understanding content marketing ROI with AI.

The reality is ROI takes time. With content marketing, the challenge is not just creating great content - it’s ensuring that it resonates and drives action. This aligns well with understanding the 10 pain points of the B2B buyer which is crucial for effective content marketing. And ultimately gets your customer to convert. The process requires strategy, good SEO, seasoned content creators - and a little luck.

Our marketing agency can’t help with the luck, but we can drive content marketing ROI with AI in other ways. High-quality and consistent output are important - and AI can help amplify both of these aspects, which is a key aspect of how to design an AI marketing strategy . Here’s how.

Boosting creativity with AI

Every creative knows what it’s like to hit a wall.

The creative impulse can seem to come at a whim - and sometimes it just does not come. If you’re on a deadline, panic can begin to set in.

AI is the perfect tool to overcome those moments of creative block. It’s great at rapid idea generation and can provide fresh perspectives you haven’t yet considered. Tools like Compass - already trained on a wealth of brand data - can spitball fast, whilst retaining the nuances of your brand’s voice and messaging.

Considering AI tools have only been commercially available for a couple of years, this huge adoption rate is a testament to their effectiveness. Creatives wouldn’t bother with a tool that downgraded their content, so there is something about AI that elevates the creative process rather than diminishes it.

AI doesn’t replace human ingenuity. It can’t do that. But it can amplify it. AI tools can help creatives brainstorm, spitball, draft, and segue between ideas - smoothing out any wrinkles. It’s a creative lubricant, giving free flow to a stream of ideas.

Faster writing with AI

A lot of content marketing ROI with AI depends on speed. This is both the speed of production - as well as quick reaction to trends and hot topics.

Social media (in particular) moves at lightning speed. Brands that can react quickly, jump on trends, and deliver a consistent stream of content (of high quality) are likely to win their customers over. And capture attention - the modus operandi of social media.

Fast can mean relevant on social channels. But speed isn’t enough. Your content needs to resonate with your audience, maintain high quality, sit within brand guidelines and - ideally push your customers to convert.

Not much then.

AI helps content creators perform this balancing act. Using AI tools, 20% of employees save 1-2 hours daily. Creatives can better walk the tightrope between quality and speed.

Audience insights captured by AI

A 2022 survey in the US found that 57% of B2B marketers were successfully using AI-driven chatbots to better understand their audience.

Data on customer preferences, FAQs, and pain points could be captured more effectively using chatbots. And the top automated tasks performed by chatbots are tasks like collecting information and qualifying leads.

In short - AI-driven chatbots are a dual powerhouse, providing support and pulling insights from each conversation. A human advisor isn’t easily able to capture data and provide advice simultaneously.

Similar data can be captured in areas like recruitment. Radar, an AI-powered talent intelligence platform, goes beyond finding talent. The tool pulls in data - meaning that it can preemptively source the right candidates. This gives the platform a predictive capacity, enabling recruiters to make faster, smarter decisions.

Enhancing SEO with AI

SEO has always been difficult due to the complex nature of search algorithms. The goalposts (ranking factors) change a lot, which leaves marketers struggling to keep up. This does mean that quality wins out, since it’s difficult to trick the system and bypass an engine’s capacity to evaluate content’s authenticity, relevance, and usefulness.

Google relies on web crawlers that “read” and index web pages. The crawlers rely on a lot of criteria, much of which Google obscures. Keywords play a part, as does the content itself, technical audits, link building, and more. For marketers, there’s a fair amount to implement, track, and adjust – especially when algorithms constantly change.

AI is well-positioned to step in and streamline many SEO processes, including:

• Suggesting long-tail keywords and topics, allowing businesses to target more specific audiences & improve search rankings

• Content optimisation, identifying gaps in readability and content structure

• Supporting technical SEO audits, identifying standout issues on web pages

Scaling your content strategy

Scaling quality content creation is difficult - but made possible with AI.

AI allows for the automation of time-consuming tasks, such as topic ideation, fleshing out the content of an asset, and SEO optimisation, which makes it easier to produce a high volume of content.

Still, human ingenuity is required for creativity. This can’t yet be expedited (much) by AI tools, but the technology can be used to enhance other areas of the content process. AI can speed up various aspects, such as content curation, personalisation, and distribution.

What AI is particularly good at is generating brand-consistent content at scale. This is content that sits within a set of brand guidelines - something that can be difficult to achieve without individual domain knowledge. AI tools like Compass, once trained in a company’s brand guidelines and TOV, are able to quickly produce (or check) content for a desired style and messaging.

Let AI be your competitive advantage

AI doesn’t replace human creativity. But it does deliver a clear content marketing ROI with AI across the content marketing landscape. It automates time-consuming tasks, delivers rapid (and fresh) content ideation, optimises SEO, provides audience analysis, and helps marketers focus on strategy and creativity.

A tool that delivers content marketing ROI with AI across multiple areas is invaluable to any content creator. It enables scaling of content production while preserving the creative spark. Although it cannot operate independently, AI should be embraced as a powerful ally to enhance human ingenuity and creativity.

Frequently asked questions