By Erin O’Bannon
Today, marketers’ biggest challenge is maintaining market share in the saturated digital landscape.
If large brands do not consistently advertise and spread their message, they risk losing market share to other large competitors with big budgets or smaller, more nimble startups.
Making matters worse, brands must keep up with dwindling consumer attention and increasing competition. The number of platforms seems to increase daily, while the number of publishers now includes anyone with an account.
One-hundred years ago, marketers only had three different media options: print, radio, and direct mail. Television became popular in the 1950s. A few more decades later came the internet, bringing websites, banner advertising, and search.
But things took off from there: email, Facebook, Twitter, online video, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, and more all came onto the scene within the past 15 years.
Each platform has its own audience and function. Brands have to create unique content tailored to each of those audiences and purposes.
The number of pieces of content marketers have to create has increased 100-fold in the last 20 years.
Put simply, we went from producing around 10 unique pieces of marketing content per year, to needing 19 different content types, and 14,000 content pieces per year.
We have no reason to believe the introduction of new media platforms will slow down. The need for more content will only increase along with it.
Scale Marketing with Artificial Intelligence
It is not scalable or sustainable. At least not without artificial intelligence.
With AI, marketers can collect, organize, and analyze data; find insights and automate applying them to future campaigns.
But creating enough content is not enough.
Better marketing requires offering value and being relevant to capture and keep consumers’ attention.
Industry leaders are adopting a more scientific process to marketing: analyze historical data, make a hypothesis, test, and repeat.
However, the amount of data available makes it impossible for a human to analyze and make decisions in real-time. While they currently have to wait at least several days campaign data to be analyzed, AI enables real-time metrics that can automatically be tested to improve the campaign immediately, as well as over time.
Artificial intelligence processes marketing data in real time and produces better, more complete data and insights, optimized marketing messaging, relevant content at scale, and savings in both time and resources.
AI can optimize messaging, save time, and scale content, giving marketers free time to ideate new campaigns.
As John Hagel of Deloitte points out in, Is Artificial Intelligence Ready for Social Media, “Instead of worrying about potential job losses, brands should thank AI for freeing up so much time that can now be spent on creative work.”
The future marketing landscape will look only slightly different than it does today. The main difference will be in the level of productivity for marketers.
With AI, content marketing will rise to a higher level because marketers can be less in the weeds.
This article was republished with permission from Cortex.