How Creators and Marketers are Using It in 2024 [Data]

The wild experience of AI remains to be on, and industries throughout the globe are using it for progress. However issues are additionally mounting.

For one, professionals proceed to query AI’s influence on their work. That is very true for a lot of entrepreneurs and content material creators, similar to myself, who’re eager to grasp the position of AI in content material advertising and marketing.

With the worldwide income for AI in advertising and marketing pegged at over $107.5 billion by 2028, there isn’t a doubt that AI will quickly (and will already) be an integral a part of the digital marketing landscape.

So, for the creator or marketer who needs to remain forward of the curve, figuring out the way to leverage this expertise is a no brainer.

Utilizing the actual experiences of promoting professionals and knowledge from our latest State of AI for Marketers survey, I’ll reply your questions on how creators and entrepreneurs are utilizing AI in 2024 and what this implies for his or her output and productiveness.

Desk of Contents

What’s AI in content material advertising and marketing?

Whereas there’s no commonplace definition of “AI in content material advertising and marketing,” I’ll try to construct one based mostly on the understanding of the 2 ideas.

Corey Wainwright describes content marketing as a “advertising and marketing program that facilities on creating, publishing, and distributing content material to your target market — often on-line — the aim of which is to draw new clients.”

Google defines AI as “a set of applied sciences that allow computer systems to carry out quite a lot of capabilities, together with the flexibility to see, perceive and translate spoken and written language, analyze knowledge, make suggestions, and extra.”

Combining these two ideas into one definition for AI in content material advertising and marketing would appear to be this:

AI in content material advertising and marketing includes utilizing applied sciences that analyze knowledge, perceive language, and make suggestions to create, publish, and distribute content material designed to have interaction a web-based viewers.

Advantages of Utilizing AI in Content material Advertising

I’ve gathered a number of the hottest purposes of AI in content material advertising and marketing, and their advantages are under.

1. Content material Creation

In our 2024 State of AI report, 43% of entrepreneurs place content material creation as the most well-liked use case of AI in content material advertising and marketing.

Content material can take many types — written, visible, video, and audio — and entrepreneurs are utilizing generative AI to convey these to life at scale.

“As a PR skilled working with high-growth SaaS startups and VC corporations, AI allows us to craft extra customized tales that resonate deeply with their audiences, drive engagement, and in the end, construct stronger, extra credible manufacturers,” Sim Aulakh, founding father of PR agency EstablishCred, says.

Advantages: In utilizing generative AI to do something from writing advertising and marketing copy to turning textual content into video, entrepreneurs can save time and enhance productiveness within the content material creation course of.

2. Analysis

Content material entrepreneurs must know sufficient about clients, opponents, and their trade to make assured choices about all the pipeline of content material manufacturing.

AI instruments will be fairly helpful to find this data and analyzing volumes of information to determine developments, key phrases, and related data, all in file time.

For instance, HubSpot’s new AI Search Grader — a first-of-its-kind, free app that shortly analyzes your model based mostly on what your prospects and clients are seeing throughout AI search engines like google and yahoo — offers you actionable suggestions on the way to enhance. Think about the wonders this could do for any advertising and marketing staff.

Advantages: In addition to saving effort and time, utilizing AI for content material advertising and marketing analysis ensures that choices are made extra shortly and confidently than handbook analysis. Superior AI fashions may even extract up-to-date data for extra correct content material planning.

3. Brainstorming Content material Concepts

I do know from private expertise that to be a inventive skilled is to, amongst different issues, settle for the truth that good concepts could elude you every now and then.

With AI, I’ve discovered this inventive block doesn’t must linger for lengthy as there are instruments that may generate or recommend inventive ideas that you possibly can tweak to your liking. As a content material author, I personally love having AI as a brainstorming companion after I get caught.

For Aulakh, whose firm undertakes a number of inventive initiatives, leveraging AI for content material brainstorming has been pivotal to their latest progress.

“Whereas human creativity can’t be changed by AI, it may be enhanced by AI. For instance, AI instruments like Gemini and ChatGPT have helped us throughout brainstorming and ideation processes for content material initiatives. Now, we’re in a position to ship on initiatives at a fraction of the time it used to take us,” he says

Advantages: Brainstorming with AI won’t solely kickstart your inventive engines but in addition pace up the method. Almost 82% of the entrepreneurs surveyed say that utilizing AI for brainstorming content material concepts has saved them no less than one hour of their valuable time.

4. Information Evaluation And Reporting

To learn the way content material distribution is faring available in the market and impacting the enterprise, content material entrepreneurs must depend on knowledge analytics.

AI-powered analytics instruments consider content material efficiency and generate detailed experiences on engagement metrics, ROI, and viewers conduct.

That is, in truth, the third hottest use case of AI for entrepreneurs, in accordance with our survey.

Advantages: Supplies data-driven and actionable insights for optimizing content material methods and will additionally automate reporting. This improves the standard of choices the marketer makes which, in flip, impacts efficiency positively.

5. Self Upskilling

Ever been in the midst of work and reached a hurdle that solely a fast search or YouTube video might make it easier to cross? Properly, 41% of the entrepreneurs we surveyed have and so they say utilizing AI helped them discover ways to do these issues.

Advantages: In addition to the consolation of studying the way to resolve an issue and doing so in file time, this use case additionally ensures that entrepreneurs stay aggressive and educated within the ever-evolving panorama of promoting.

Easy methods to Use AI in Content material Advertising

Let’s now check a number of the use instances talked about above.

With out a good suggestion, it’s inconceivable to get the content material on the highway to both appeal to or have interaction audiences. So, we’ll begin with brainstorming.

Assume I’m a content material marketer at HubSpot who wants a cool video concept for distribution on our social media channels.

I discovered a cool AI brainstorming platform known as Ideamap AI and requested it to brainstorm a video content material concept for HubSpot, after offering context on what sort of model HubSpot is. You’ll discover that the map it produces is a bit a lot, contemplating that I have already got bother deciding what I wish to do.

I selected the primary concept and used the broaden with AI choice to generate extra concepts or inspiration for advertising and marketing content material.

A technique AI can be utilized for concepts or inspiration is by making a temper board with instruments like Kive.ai.

Given the sheer vary of choices for growth and transformation accessible, it’s practically inconceivable to not discover one thing you’d be keen to work on.

So, we’re creating an animated explainer video showcasing how HubSpot connects advertising and marketing, gross sales, and customer support.

To get correct data wanted for this video, I might want to extract it from the web site. This time, I’ll make use of the analysis talents of ChatGPT Plus, which might pull real-time data from the web.

Whereas it does job of extracting the knowledge (from six websites), the output just isn’t precisely video materials. So, the subsequent step could be to ask it to create the video script, which might kickstart the content material creation course of.

Since OpenAI’s Sora has nonetheless not been launched to the general public, I needed to discover accessible alternate options. It’s value mentioning right here that 70% of the entrepreneurs we surveyed say they can’t wait to make use of the brand new tech.

Nevertheless, Elai, an intuitive AI video creator, got here in useful.

Creating the video with the script ChatGPT helped me create was certainly easy, though I have to point out that there have been not many video enhancing choices to select from.

Utilizing an avatar, an American voice pattern, and a clean background with HubSpot’s model colour had been so far as I might go, particularly as somebody with restricted video enhancing expertise.

Whereas I feel this try was removed from flawless, it was a strong effort. With some further time to refine the main points, I consider it has the potential to be even higher.

AI in Content material Advertising Examples

Producing Concepts & Inspiration: Mateo Toro

There’s an abundance of promoting professionals leveraging AI to spice up their productiveness and improve their methods.

For instance, filmmaker and photographer Mateo Toro just lately began utilizing Kive.ai to design temper boards to develop therapies for his movie initiatives.

A video remedy is a solution to convey a undertaking’s idea or story. Many video therapies contain using photos and visible media discovered on-line or in earlier works.

“Video therapies take time. It’s important to scrub via the video, take screenshots, and edit for the video remedy,“ Toro defined. ”[Kive.ai] simply makes it a lot simpler for me to search out the video that has a mode or tone I am trying to emulate.”

With Kive.ai, creators can paste the hyperlink of a video into the system, and Kive.ai will extract frames from the video as screenshots to import right into a board. Toro says the method can save him hours of time.

“In a video remedy, I may very well be going via 10, 15, 20 movies to reference,“ he mentioned. ”You add that up, and it might simply be an hour of time simply scrubbing via, screenshotting, and dragging content material to a remedy.”

Writing Copy: Bethany Anderson

Then there’s Bethany Anderson, a public data officer for Milton, Florida, who says ChatGPT streamlines the writing facet of her job.

“I like it as a result of ChatGPT is a software program that learns,” Anderson explains.

She says ChatGPT can mimic her writing fashion, so she’ll typically use the software to write down press releases, social media posts, and Search engine optimization-friendly weblog content material.

Anderson says the software is useful as a result of writing is an important a part of her job, but it surely’s removed from the one duty she has to sort out each day.

“I’m behind the scenes planning occasions and getting them out to the general public,“ she says. ”So, ChatGPT permits me to get the writing finished in a very simple, seamless method in order that I can get to the bones of my job — which is outreach.”

Anderson admits she was cautious of ChatGPT at first however examined it out throughout every week that was jam-packed with deadlines.

“There was this one week a few months in the past after I had so many deadlines, so many social media calendars due, so many blogs due, and so many bios due — I used to be drowning,” she remembers. “So I mentioned, ‘I’m going to provide it a attempt.’”

Days value of writing assignments may very well be accomplished in just some hours because of the help of AI, in accordance with Anderson.

Her expertise aligns with the findings of our survey — practically 80% of entrepreneurs mentioned generative AI has a optimistic ROI on their content material writing duties.

“We’re speaking about days of your life that you simply get again,” she mentioned. “And, to me, time is effective. It is extra precious than cash.”

Enhancing Drafts: Irina Nica

However, Irina Nica, HubSpot’s Senior Product Advertising Supervisor, makes use of HubSpot’s AI Content Writer to edit her drafts.

“It is like having a second pair of eyes that helps me undergo my drafts, tidy them up, and get them on the market sooner. Don’t get me fallacious … Writing is a big a part of my job and one thing that AI can’t take over, but it surely certain helps to hurry up the nitty-gritty bits like enhancing.”

She additionally makes use of ChatSpot, HubSpot’s AI chatbot answer designed to assist companies carry out advertising and marketing and gross sales operations, to supercharge her analysis.

“I like to make use of ChatSpot for getting fast suggestions for merchandise, books, or any kind of useful resource actually. Say I‘m searching for the most effective product advertising and marketing ebook for SaaS firms; usually, I’d be knee-deep in Google searches, studying articles, and testing suggestions on Goodreads,” Nica says.

“However with the fitting immediate, ChatSpot can get me there 10X sooner. I nonetheless give its closing suggestion a fast Google test, but it surely’s an excellent useful shortcut.”

Will AI exchange content material creators?

A typical concern surrounding using AI is whether or not the expertise will exchange human entrepreneurs and creators. Nima Olumi of Lightyear Methods says it’s unlikely.

“We use AI to tug a number of statistics, give you attention-grabbing angles to pitch to firms, and work round sure angles which are advertising and marketing and media-friendly,” Olumi mentioned. “I do not suppose it is a full substitute for writers or thinkers.”

Writing and content material creation are subjective fields, in accordance with Olumi, and so they nonetheless require individuals to do the mandatory vital pondering to determine the form of content material that will get printed.

Finally, Olumi predicts a future the place AI will help entrepreneurs and creatives in enhancing their output and producing content material in a shorter time.

This is smart, contemplating our survey discovered that 74% of entrepreneurs agree that AI instruments will help them be extra productive of their roles.

Olumi encourages professionals to embrace AI and use it to their benefit slightly than shrink back.

Particularly, he says creators ought to spend time studying and testing purposes like Open.ai and ChatGPT to see their completely different capabilities.

“Spend hours asking query after query to see how far you’ll be able to push the bounds of the applying to serve your wants,” he mentioned. “It’s important to feed it context.”

Making the Most of AI

Because the presence of AI in advertising and marketing continues to develop considerably, I recommend you are taking the time to find the way it can greatest serve your personal staff’s wants.

Professionals and creatives like Olumi, Aulakh, Anderson, Nica, and Toro all discovered methods to make use of AI to assist them enhance the effectivity and high quality of their content material.

As an alternative of worrying whether or not the robots will take over, I like to recommend discovering methods to work alongside AI, so that you and your organization can stay aggressive available in the market and important to your purchasers.

Editor’s word: This submit was initially printed in April 2023 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.