Content creators and marketers face the challenge of producing more personalized and engaging content for consumers dealing with information overload—also now referred to as digital noise—and financial worries. Merely delivering a great product or service doesn't cut it anymore. Predicting and proactively tailoring solutions to your target market's requirements is the new name of the game as customers become more selective readers and spenders.
An Insider Intelligence report citing Salesforce data shows that 62% of consumers expect companies to anticipate their needs. Moreover, the same percentage feels emotionally connected with the brands they buy from the most.
Anticipating client needs requires enormous amounts of data, which is where artificial intelligence comes in. A PwC report showed that in 2022, business leaders sought AI input for decisions related to customer experience (61%), strategy (60%), product development (52%), and marketing and sales (46%).
15 Ways AI Leverages Content Personalization and Engagement:
- 1. Forecast reporting for industry-wide connections
- 2. Competitor tactics discovery
- 3. Outreach content creation and distribution
- 4. Customer segmentation
- 5. Search engine optimization (SEO)
- 6. Automated delivery in the right platforms
- 7. Tailored campaigns
- 8. Well-designed chatbots
- 9. Optimized site search
- 10. Smart always-on self-service option
- 11. Multilingual support
- 12. Customized recommendations
- 13. Human error reduction for faster issue resolution
- 14. Expanded insight-gathering for better service
- 15. Customer team coaching and supervisor assistance
What is AI Content Marketing?
AI content marketing involves AI technology to produce, optimize, and distribute content. You must provide a description or instruction (also referred to as a "prompt) for the AI to work. The content generator may ask you to type a keyword, phrase, or short paragraph for context. The generated content would come from databases where these AI platforms received "training" to draw information.
Moreover, these tools allow you to get insights into customer behavior and automate the creation of high-quality content at scale based on client data analysis. Thus, AI has practical applications for e-commerce, social media, and news.
Most digital marketers find AI most helpful for email marketing (63%), according to 2022 findings of Capterra, which asked marketing agencies to identify the work areas where they're leveraging AI and machine learning (ML). Rounding up the top 12 use cases of AI for digital marketing include:
- Advertising (58%)
- Data analysis (57%)
- Personalization (49%)
- Audience targeting (45%)
- Media buying (44%)
- Behavioral analysis or insights (42%)
- SEO optimization (40%)
- Facial and voice recognition (36%)
- Lead generation (34%)
- Content or copywriting generation (33%)
- Real-time offer generations (31%)
The same survey ranked enhanced customer experience (33%) and better personalization (30%) as the second and fourth top benefits of AI and ML software for content marketing.
How Can You Use AI to Create More Engaging and Personalized Content?
AI platforms can produce conversational articles, ads, and other content on any subject in minutes, thanks to exposure to forums and online communities like Reddit. You can even set the tone—casual, business-like, or academic—to align with your brand voice.
You can improve personalization and engagement using AI in the following areas:
Business Forecasting
Business forecasting involves predicting sales, expenses, and profits using historical data. Demand and growth forecasting are the two most common types of data predictions. Analyzing trends—current customer behavior and buying patterns—can help companies accurately plan for future internal and external requirements, from raw materials and workforce to inventory and delivery logistics. Meanwhile, growth forecasts allow companies to formulate accurate budgets, marketing strategies, and resource allocation.
1. Forecast reporting for industry-wide connections
Digital marketers can report results from AI-powered forecasting tools to help supply chain entities make pricing plans, predict revenues, and identify causes of customer churn. AI-generated insights can also prompt companies to protect their customers or innovate new products and services.
For instance, AI findings can advise insurance or banking clients about personal rate management or warn them about fraud, price increases, and other risks. AI-collected data could hasten the publication of healthcare firms' reports on the success or challenges faced by new technologies or drugs.
Popular AI business forecasting tools include Obviously.ai, Pecan, and Futrli. As companies steer the narrative by publishing predictions from AI-processed data, they also enable the growth of their thought leadership.
Example: Levi Strauss & Co.
Source: levistrauss.com
Levi's developed its in-house Business Optimization of Shipping and Transport (BOOST) engine to track stocks, fulfill orders, and consolidate shipments. The leading denim brand reportedly fed shopper information and external consumer behavior data into its ML pipeline to predict demand and sales, make informed pricing decisions, and further personalize consumer marketing. The result: shoppers get access to a product despite its unavailability at Levi's distribution centers, provided a store near the buyer has it in their inventory.
The company began using BOOST for online order fulfillment in August 2022. Levi's has since promoted the patent-pending technology as serving its mission "to turn consumers into lifelong fans, wherever and however they like to shop." Its revenues grew 12% for the fiscal year 2022, while its global direct-to-consumer business rose 18%.
2. Competitor tactics discovery
AI can notify you about trends and themes dominating public discussions by using "listening tools" that let you monitor online messages depending on the competitors' names or the topic you want to track.
Tools such as Crayon and Klue can help you track your activities related to your competitors on and off their websites, including employee reviews, pricing changes, and marketing campaigns. Awareness about these developments can help you tweak your marketing strategy, product lineup, and rates.
Marketing
Higher customer acquisition costs in 2023 make it imperative for businesses to craft and send personalized messages founded on real-time consumer insights. Here are a few ways AI accomplishes this:
3. Outreach content creation and distribution
Outreach refers to engaging with prospects, including influencers, to convert them to paying customers or pitch your collaboration idea.
AI can customize outreach messages—from subject lines to sending times—and automate their distribution. To optimize your copy's performance, run A/B tests for your campaigns using AI. Moreover, AI software offers various templates, including requests for proposals (RFPs), to help you get a favorable response and land a sale.
To avoid inaccuracies in forecasting your pipeline, you can use AI-driven solutions, most of which use scoring systems to measure the probability of conversion.
4. Customer segmentation
AI can segment your customers into categories based on shared characteristics beyond demographics. These hi-tech tools can study your clients' past interactions with your brand, dividing them according to social media activity, browsing behavior, and purchase history.
5. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Brands can use AI to optimize messages that will allow them to stand out from the competition. AI tools can identify high-value keywords or words and phrases that your target audiences are most likely to search for. You can also use AI to find the most relevant sites to link to and have the highest probability of earning a hyperlink back to your website.
6. Automated delivery in the right platforms
Content schedulers now use AI to know the best times to publish content, depending on the social channel. AI can post content on multiple social media and track real-time user engagement simultaneously. You can also use this feature to send push notifications via SMS as part of mobile marketing.
7. Tailored campaigns
Segmentation helps you publish targeted ads that increase the chance of conversion, reducing wasted ad spend. Emails and other offers are also easier to personalize when you know your audience segments.
8. Well-designed chatbots
Developing a conversational AI roadmap that covers all the different moments of a customer's digital journey makes for an engaging user experience. Provide triggers that bring conversations to a live customer representative to reduce client frustrations.
Example: JP Morgan Chase Bank
Source: inquirer.com
JP Morgan Chase and motivation AI platform Persado are in the fourth year of a five-year partnership for the banking giant's digital and direct response marketing. Chase decided to tap AI for an extended period after an impressive 450% increase in the bank ads' click-through rates under a 2016 project with the platform. At that time, Persado's Message Machine identified words and phrases to improve marketing copy for Chase's card and mortgage units. Under the current deal, the platform will work to increase engagement for all written customer communication.
Influencer Marketing Hub’s article on 7 Best AI Copywriting Tools can spark ideas and optimize your website or social media content for lead capture and client retention.
Customer Service
Optimized website search and AI chatbots can make each website visit or social media interaction memorable and fulfilling.
9. Optimized site search
Consumers who use your website's search bar to find products are 2 to 3 times more likely to convert. Make returning visitors feel at home by personalizing their on-site search. AI can customize searches using past search history, browser location, and purchase history so registered subscribers or frequent visitors can find relevant suggestions.
AI can also enhance the content in customer service scenarios through conversational AI. These tools—which include chatbots—provide voice or text-enabled support to your human customer care teams. Traditional or rule-based bots only answer questions within their algorithmic parameters (if users say "X," reply with "Y.") They may not give a sensible answer if you type a message containing words they don't recognize. In contrast, conversational AI uses machine learning and predictive analytics to respond with a human touch. They base their suggestions or advice on prior discussions, inquiries, and transactions. They can also detect sentiment, intent, and context in customer messages.
Organizations are already using AI-powered chatbots to answer 70% of FAQ-based queries. You can program these intelligent bots to reply to different versions of the same question in your brand's language and tenor.
10. Smart always-on self-service option
Conversational AI wins big points on engagement and personalization based on 62% of Tidio survey respondents who said they prefer interacting with an AI bot to waiting 15 minutes for a live customer agent. 70% of poll participants shared positive experiences with bots, adding that these tools addressed 90% of their queries in 10 messages or fewer. Companies can also program bots to route messages to the appropriate departments or live agents.
Companies in various industries—banking, healthcare, real estate, travel, and legal services—already use apps equipped with AI bots to schedule appointments, book reservations, and get more information about a product or service.
11. Multilingual support
Research conducted by business messaging firm Intercom revealed that 70% of consumers become loyal to brands that offer assistance in their native language. Moreover, they tend to wait longer for customer reps to resolve their issue (58%) and tolerate product weaknesses (62%) if they get language support.
Thus, AI bots trained in the language of your clientele will not only save you money in hiring native speakers or translators. This feature will also raise your perceived value.
12. Customized recommendations
Because AI bots archive previous conversations with clients, these virtual agents can make recommendations that align with the customer's preferences, demographics, and past behavior. They can scan historical user data quickly and give real-time suggestions, including upsells and new offers.
13. Human error reduction for faster issue resolution
Human customer team members can commit typos or forget crucial customer information during manual data collection. Correcting mistakes can take time and appear unprofessional. AI can help minimize or eliminate errors by automatically capturing and saving all the data your users input voluntarily or through your AI's prompts.
14. Expanded insight-gathering for better service
AI bots enable your company to get more insights about your client base the more they "converse" with these bots. Your contact center can later review the message exchanges to identify recurring client problems, knowledge resources that need updating or elaboration, and operational inefficiencies.
15. Customer team coaching and supervisor assistance
You can design an AI chatbot to provide in-the-moment guidance for handling negative customer sentiment, reducing hold times, and regulating speech speed. AI can also assist supervisors in monitoring calls and identifying conversations needing immediate intervention.
Unity
Source: zendesk.com
3D development platform Unity worked with Zendesk to launch an AI chatbot following a spike in support tickets or customer queries between 2019 and 2020. The self-service Answer Bot resolved nearly 8,000 tickets, which the game and simulations maker said amounted to $1.3 million in savings. Its customer team also brought down its resolution time by 7 hours.
Agents later use the information gathered by the Zendesk bot to update its FAQs, product documentation, and tutorial videos, which its customer team and its platform users can refer to.
AI: Efficient But Not an Instant Solution
Although we have listed more than a dozen AI functions for improving content personalization and engagement, the technology may not suit every business.
AI works better with companies with large data sets like retailers, banks, and travel sites. You also need to set aside time for data feeding and training. Moreover, any AI chatbot must integrate with your existing systems and comply with security standards.
Nevertheless, the case examples above prove AI's undeniably crucial role in producing marketing content that resonates with your audience.
Are you ready to discover how to choose the best AI platform for your brand? Read "Best AI Chatbot Platforms for 2024" for our 8-point selection guide and comparison of chatbot tools.
