The age of AI is here and it's changing content creation and marketing faster than ever before. As AI capabilities advance, nearly every aspect of content from writing to graphic design to video production will be transformed. According to one estimate, by 2025 AI will be creating 50% of all business content (Gartner).
For marketers, this represents a huge shift. No longer will laborious and manual processes be needed to churn out blogs, social posts, and other materials. AI will deliver more content, faster, at a lower cost.
But to capitalize on this content revolution, marketers need to start preparing now. This means understanding how AI content creation works, recognizing the benefits it brings, and optimizing their strategies accordingly. Brands that embrace an AI-powered approach will gain a distinct competitive advantage.
Recently Ross Simmonds, founder and CEO of Foundation, we'll dive into the nuts and bolts of AI content creation and why it represents the future. We'll look at the key benefits AI content offers for marketing. And we'll explore practical tips to prepare your strategy, so you're leveraging AI rather than being disrupted by it.
Ross Simmonds is the founder & CEO of Foundation, a global marketing agency that provides services to organizations all over the world ranging from some of the fastest-growing startups to global SaaS brands, shared insights on AI marketing, content distribution, and AI video avatars.
AI Content Creation
How exactly does AI generate content? The basic process involves training machine learning algorithms on vast datasets of high-quality human-created content. This allows the AI to analyze the patterns and structures behind certain types of content.
For written content like blog posts, the AI studies countless articles to learn effective narrative styles, grammar, word usage, and more. For visual content, the AI ingests millions of photos, graphics, and videos to understand good design principles.
With this training, the AI can then autonomously produce original content within certain parameters. All you need to provide is a topic, headline or prompt. The AI does the rest.
Today's AI content tools are capable across modalities:
- Written content - Tools like Jasper, Writesonic, and Quill can generate blogs, social posts, website copy, emails, and more.
- Visual content - Services like Canva, Designs.ai, and Over generate custom images, graphics, and designs based on prompts.
- Audio content - AI voices from companies like WellSaid Labs, Descript, and VocaliD can narrate audio clips or entire videos using synthesized voices.
- Video content - Tools like Synthesia, Vidnami, and Kapwing allow you to automatically create explainer videos, product demos, animated clips and more.
As these technologies improve, we'll see AI applied to nearly every content medium and format. The possibilities are endless.
Benefits of AI Content
Why is AI-powered content set to become the norm? There are several compelling benefits that make it a game changer:
Speed and Scalability
AI content creation is exponentially faster than human creation. An AI tool can churn out dozens of blog posts, social posts, or videos in the time a person would spend on just one. This allows for greater scale and volume of content.
For example, an AI can quickly generate hundreds of personalized landing pages tailored to different audience segments. A human would struggle to manually produce even a handful.
Personalization
Related to speed, AI also enables hyper-personalized content. With AI, it becomes feasible to customize each piece of content to connect with specific users.
AI tools can ingest customer data to understand preferences and interests. It can then generate tailored content that resonates much more than a generic, one-size-fits-all approach.
Cost Savings
Given the speed and scalability, AI content creation is much more affordable than relying solely on human creators. This cuts production time and costs significantly.
Marketers can reallocate budgets away from manual content processes to other areas.
The long-term cost savings are substantial.
In summary, the speed, personalization, and cost benefits make AI-powered content production a winning formula.
Preparing Your Marketing Strategy
To fully leverage AI content creation, marketers need to optimize their strategies. Here are key tips:
Audit Content and Workflows
Take stock of your existing content. Look for areas where AI could augment or automate processes to make them more efficient.
Maybe blog posts are created manually by a team of writers. Or social media management involves scheduling individual posts one by one. These are prime targets for AI.
Test AI Content and Measure
Don't overhaul your whole content strategy at once. Start with small tests of AI-generated content, and compare performance against human-created content.
Measure beyond vanity metrics like views or shares. Look at meaningful metrics like conversions, leads, sales impact. This will reveal where AI content provides value.
Optimize For AI
Structure your content workflows, technology stack, and data architecture to fully support AI content at scale.
For example, ensure you have structured SEO and metadata so AI content can be optimized systematically. Maintain organized content repositories where AI content can be stored and managed.
Develop Processes to Manage AI Content
Planning how to source prompts, brief AI tools, review output, govern usage and more is key to effectively managing AI content. Document processes for your team to follow.
Look for Ways to Maximize Creativity
AI works best when the human creative role is not eliminated but augmented. Look for ways content creators can oversight AI tools and inject creativity through prompts, editing, analysis etc.
By preparing your marketing strategy across these dimensions, you'll be ready to meet the AI content future with confidence.
Conclusion
The future of content is undoubtedly AI. As AI content creation tools continue advancing, they will transform content production with unprecedented speed, scale, and personalization.
For marketers, this represents a huge opportunity. But it also poses an existential threat if you are not prepared for this shift. As your competitors adopt AI content, they may gain an advantage in volumes of content, conversion rates, and more.
Now is the time to start readying your strategy. Audit your content workflows and infrastructure. Begin testing AI content on a small scale and expand as the technology improves. Optimize your processes, technology, data, and content for an AI-first world.
The brands that embrace AI content creation will gain a distinct competitive edge. They will deliver highly resonant experiences at scale. And they will future-proof their strategies in a landscape where AI dominates.
By understanding the AI content opportunity, and taking steps to leverage it proactively, you can ensure your marketing is ready to thrive in this brave new world. The future of content is coming - prepare for it today.