For successful eCommerce brands, digital marketing and SEO have always been essential for creating visibility and maintaining traction. Customer profiling, content research and creation, and content testing and optimisation lie at the core of successful digital marketing and SEO.
But creating truly engaging and quality content for a specific audience requires a unique, nuanced approach and consistent dedication.
Enter AI.
Artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence are changing the game and revolutionising growth within the global marketing and SEO sectors. AI and GenAI’s evolving creative abilities provide highly effective tools that simplify and streamline the processes of profiling and segmenting customers, creating captivating content, and honing content creation and distribution strategies for maximum effect.
If you want to learn more about how AI is shaking things up, we’ve explored the potential of generative AI and artificial intelligence for enhancing SEO practices. We’ve also provided data on how these tools are transforming content creation and customer experiences at a global scale.
AI & Market Research
Marketing begins with market research which is usually a combination of qualitative and quantitative. In the US, this can easily run into multiples of 10,000 dollars to get anything near nationally representative. The costs are now a fraction thanks to AI.
Generative AI algorithms are becoming adept at market research and customer profiling, allowing content marketing teams to create more in-depth and accurate customer profiles by synthesizing vast sums of data. In turn, this data can be used to inform ideation. These algorithms can also effectively segment audiences based on interests, demographics and behavioural information. Plus, they enable marketers to use prompts related to content ideas for specific audiences to create targeted content with specific consumer segments in mind.
A study on the use of GenAI for customer profiling published in 2023 focused on a combination of customer surveys, social media metrics, and generative model analyses to assess the ability of variational auto-encoders and generative adversarial networks – two forms of AI – to improve digital marketing results.
The researchers note that the study produced significant improvements in numbers of clicks and followers, engagement rates, and sales through the use of AI-generated content. This content was created according to the personal preferences of core target audiences. The study’s feedback also showed notable increases in brand loyalty and content enjoyment.
Although researchers warned of potential limitations like ethical risks and algorithm biases, the research clearly indicates the potential of AI to enhance marketing efforts and improve key metrics like engagement rates and sales figures.
Adoption rates indicate similar promise. Statistics from a 2022 study published in the Italian Journal of Marketing note that 84% of marketing firms globally are either using or planning to use AI and machine learning in their customer categorisation and marketing operations.
AI in Content Research
Before the advent of AI for marketing, content creation was a time-consuming, labour-intensive process requiring significant human effort and creativity to engage key target audiences.
Nowadays, however, AI algorithms are capable of streamlining the content research process, vastly reducing the amount of time and resources needed to create engaging marketing content. These capabilities can improve the value of proprietary content exponentially. For example, platforms like Artios can mine data from platforms like Reddit and X to assist clients in producing unique and engaging proprietary content. This data can inform a content strategy, highlight what people are talking about, gauge engagement levels, and provide valuable insights into current talking points and trends amongst specific demographics.
Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools can also assist by analysing large data sets from social media platforms, eCommerce platforms, customer profiles and more, extracting key insights, and using them to generate text-based reports on the preferences of specific audiences. This type of algorithm enables artificially intelligent programs to automatically create high-quality content at scale. More specifically, content that aligns directly with its intended audience segments.
These abilities help to ensure consistent content quality across all relevant channels while freeing up valuable time and human resources for marketing teams. Forbes’ Lessons of 21st-Century Brands Modern Brands & AI Report further finds that AI assists marketers in succeeding at new product and campaign launches, in part due to comprehensive and accurate pre-launch research.
AI & Content Creation
The adoption of generative AI is rising rapidly across industries and sectors, including the SEO and marketing sectors. Growing numbers of businesses and brands are using AI for a range of content creation purposes, from creating images and videos to generating realistic audio files, to writing code and copy. AI-powered tools have even proven to be effective for developing new products, simulating content strategies, and creating tailored and personalised experiences for customers.
According to data from Hubspot’s State of AI 2023 report, marketers are now using generative AI to tackle a broad spectrum of marketing-related tasks. The report notes that:
- 22% of marketers use AI to find new ideas and content inspiration.
- 21% use GenAI tools to summarise text and content research data.
- 20% use these tools to create marketing copy and images.
- 18% use them to develop clear and actionable content creation outlines.
In terms of cross-channel content, the report states that:
- Around 31% of marketing professionals use AI to create social media posts.
- 28% use it to create email content.
- 25% use AI tools to generate on-site product descriptions.
- 22% of marketers use GenAI for image creation.
- 19% rely on it for creating engaging and informative blog posts.
This widespread use of AI in content creation has notable benefits. The Hubspot report notes that marketers who use GenAI for content creation save, on average, more than three hours on each piece of content they create. Additionally, it suggests that GenAI is assisting marketers in producing better quality content that drives enhanced results, with 67% of marketers surveyed noting that AI assists them in speeding up content creation without sacrificing quality or readability.
The Botco.ai State of GenAI Chatbots in Marketing report further notes that 58% of marketers who use generative AI tools to create their content cite improved content performance as the primary advantage of this creation method. It is for these reasons, among others, that organisations like Gartner predict that GenAI will be used for around 10% of all data creation by 2025 – up from only 1% in 2022.
Use of AI in Testing and Optimisation
AI even has far-reaching applications for content strategy testing and optimisation.
Artificially intelligent tools can read data pipelines, analyse existing content across multiple platforms and offer strategic recommendations for improvement according to metrics like customer profiles, behavioural data, and past content research results.
Marketers can use prompts related to content and readability optimisation tips to obtain AI-generated suggestions on improving the structure, readability, grammar, SEO, and visual appeal of their written, visual and audio content. This streamlines the process of ensuring that content consistently meets industry and customer standards while maximising user engagement and its impacts and visibility on search engines.
A Growing Case for AI Use
AI has become a mainstay in modern marketing practices, with the industry expected to reach a value of $107.5 billion by 2028.
With adoption rates and marketing applications soaring year on year, it’s clear that AI is revolutionising growth in marketing and SEO. Not only in the realm of content creation, but also in content research, marketing strategy testing, and targeted content optimisation.