Today, inbound marketing is inescapable for any startup that wants to be successful online. Not surprisingly, a survey done by Statista found that content marketing was believed to be the most effective digital marketing technique according to marketers — followed by marketing automation, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The one downside of inbound marketing is how much time and resources it takes for entrepreneurs and small business owners to do research and create content. AI can help with this by automating some of the tedious tasks associated with it, saving you time and money so you can focus on other aspects of growing your business.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a computer program that uses sophisticated algorithms to mimic human behavior in the form of actions or in creating new thoughts. AI can be used in everything from making predictions based on data in order to make medical diagnoses, playing games like chess and in marketing.
How to boost marketing efficiency with AI
AI offers many tools that can help make life easier for small business owners without requiring additional staff members or resources. Here are three ways AI can boost inbound marketing efficiency:
1. Faster content creation
When it comes to inbound marketing, content creation is the name of the game. Today, in order to get traffic, you need a steady stream of high-quality content that helps attract and engage prospects in your industry.
This process, however, can be time-consuming and in some cases nearly impossible to carry out in a timely manner — especially with the number of social media platforms entrepreneurs need to keep up with.
An AI copywriting software can help in this regard by automating and speeding up parts of the content creation process, such as writing blog posts, emails, landing pages, Pin titles and descriptions, and Instagram captions. The majority of these AI tools use OpenAI’s GPT-3 AI model to generate human-like content and marketing copy.
Let’s say you have an electric vehicle startup and want to write a blog post about the benefits electric vehicles have on the environment. With a tool like Jarvis, you can do this easily by giving it commands like “write an outline for a blog post about how electric cars can help reduce greenhouse emissions,” “write an intro paragraph about how electric cars can help reduce greenhouse emissions,” and more.
If you’re using Instagram to grow your business and want to generate engaging captions, all you’d need to do is open up Jarvis’ Photo Post Captions template, add a bit of information about your post, choose a tone of voice, click “Generate,” and let the AI write the copy for you.
One thing to keep in mind is that while helpful, none of these tools will automatically generate a 20,000-word article with one click. To get the best outcome, you need to give these tools some guidance — think of them as writing assistants, not a quick solution to all your content problems.
2. Faster keyword research and SEO analysis
Every entrepreneur tackling Google SEO knows just how long it takes to find the right combination of keywords, keyword phrases, SEO categories, and a host of other things to optimize their website content for search engines.
Some AI-powered tools like Outranking.io can speed up this process by quickly identifying relevant topics and keywords you should go after, creating search-optimized outline ideas using user intent and search engine result pages (SERPs) data, and showing you live updates on how your content is doing in terms of SEO as you write it.
Let’s say you have a nutrition startup and want to write a blog post about vegan protein powders.
Once you add the keyword “vegan protein powder,” Outranking.io will generate SEO-friendly meta title and description tags, show you step-by-step optimization instructions, and give your content an SEO score.
Inside their editor, you’ll also be able to see things like how many headings (H2, H3 and H4) your article must have and a list of relevant keywords you should include in each section.
Instead of having to use a browser extension to manually check how long your competitors’ blog posts are so you can have a better idea of how long yours should be, the tool also gives you all of that information based on your target keyword.
3. Better communication with customers
Nowadays, customers expect 24/7 support. In an ideal world, you’d have someone in your team available at all times to take calls and respond to inquiries sent via social media/email and so on.
However, in the real world, it can be a challenge for small businesses to maintain this level of customer support, especially startups with limited budgets.
This is where AI can come in handy. For example, chatbot tools like ChatBot can be used in tandem with inbound marketing software to provide real-time messaging support.
The AI behind this type of software is designed to learn based on user interactions in a conversational manner, making it seem more intelligent and human — and less robotic. Plus, it can more easily escalate and filter messages depending on how urgent or time-sensitive they are to ensure timely and accurate responses.
Regardless of how well AI is able to simulate a human-like conversation, you shouldn’t automate every single message.
These tools are best used to handle simple and repetitive questions. This way, your human team can focus on more complex tasks and growing relationships with other customers. Remember, one of the most powerful tools in marketing is authenticity.
AI is a tool, not a threat
AI is a powerful tool in the modern world of business. If you want to take your inbound marketing strategy to the next level, this technology can be an extremely useful way for small businesses and entrepreneurs alike to tap into new opportunities that weren’t available before.
As you could see from this piece, AI-powered tools can automate and speed up parts of inbound marketing, such as content creation and research. This way, you can better focus on other aspects of your marketing strategy in order to get closer to your business goals.
In the end, AI is a tool that’s here to help us humans live more efficient lives in general — in the office or in your personal life.
