4 Ways AI Will and Won’t Affect Content Marketing

Since ChatGPT exploded in popularity, my conversations with non-content marketing colleagues focus on one topic: generative AI. My clients, adtech and martech leaders and marketers, are also wondering how they should be using this technology and what it spells for the future of content marketing. I’ve even heard tales of SaaS companies firing most of their content marketing staff, hoping AI can fill the gaps.

As with all new technologies, much of the hullabaloo about AI is hype and overreaction. ChatGPT will not (effectively) replace your marketing team. But it does have some value that your team may wish to exploit.

Here are four ways AI will and won’t affect content marketing.

Generative AI will help content marketers with research

While not as sexy as writing professional-caliber drafts from scratch, AI’s main impact on content marketing at this stage will be on research. This is the only use for which I personally have found generative AI especially helpful. 

A couple of months ago, I was reading a draft by a writer who had never before written about location data. The writer bungled a couple of industry terms and seemed to be struggling to grasp the core benefits of location data.

So, out of curiosity, I plugged a prompt into ChatGPT: “Write a blog post on the benefits of location data for companies looking to grow internationally.” ChatGPT produced a brief article that accurately mimicked industry jargon and captured a few relevant benefits of location data for the target audience. This came as no surprise. Generative AI had done exactly what it should excel at: synthesizing existing information on a straightforward topic.

As the head of a content marketing agency with a dozen writers, I advise my writers to enter similar prompts into ChatGPT when they need to get their heads around a new topic. This isn’t revolutionary; it is essentially a more efficient version of Google Search. But it can considerably increase the efficiency of content teams tackling new topics.

ChatGPT can assist with iterative copy testing and repurposing

In a similar vein to research, ChatGPT is able to help with iterative copy testing. For example, if you have a blog post and need to brainstorm headlines, ChatGPT should be able to come up with some thought-provoking results. 

Similarly, AI may be able to assist at maximizing the value of each content asset. Let’s say you have a blog post on the aforementioned topic, the benefits of location data for companies looking to grow, and you want to repurpose the asset for email and LinkedIn. By giving ChatGPT some parameters for the style of each of these channels, the bot may be able to generate copy that a writer can then edit into final prose.

Technologists are unsurprisingly excited about AI’s potential to generate ad creative. Companies can experiment with AI and may occasionally be impressed with the results. But can the technology get inside customers’ heads and deliver the combination of visual and textual creativity that makes a difference to brands? I’m a bit more skeptical about this for the reasons I’ll cover in the next two sections. 

AI can’t capture what’s unique about your brand or expertise — and it’s a mediocre writer

When you read section one on location data and ChatGPT, you may have wondered, “If ChatGPT could create a basically accurate blog post about location data, why wouldn’t you just use ChatGPT instead of human writers?”

There are a few reasons not to replace human writers with generative AI.

ChatGPT is a mediocre writer

First, ChatGPT synthesizes all the other content out there on the internet. So, stylistically, it produces content that reflects the rhetorical and stylistic caliber of the average internet writer. This is not high-caliber content. 

For example, I recently, at the behest of my business coach, asked ChatGPT to try to write a sales email. It began with the cringeworthy clichés of a mediocre sales copywriter: “I wanted to personally reach out and congratulate you on the insightful Q&A we recently published with you. Your expertise shone through.”

This is saccharine and over the top; it comes off like the writing of an unconvincing sycophant (which, admittedly, is what a lot of poorly paid freelance SDRs sound like). Your content should leverage the emotional intelligence of smart humans who understand how to communicate effectively with your customers. It shouldn’t sound like copy-and-paste content from a cheap template written by a content mill. 

ChatGPT can’t capture your brand voice or unique expertise

I recently spoke to a client, the interim CMO at a global, $1 billion tech company, who said, “Anyone who thinks ChatGPT can replace writers has never worked with a CEO with high expectations.”

Serious business leaders expect content that is not just basically accurate — which ChatGPT can often do — but that reflects their brand voice, their unique position in the market, and their singular expertise. AI copying other content on the internet cannot check any of these boxes.

Furthermore, this difference — the ability to communicate what value you and you alone offer — is precisely what makes marketing effective. If your content is a replica of other people’s content, whether it’s generated by AI or copied from your competitors’ blog posts, it cannot differentiate you from competitors and give you an edge. This raises the question of why you’d create intentionally derivative content in the first place.

AI can’t devise a custom content marketing strategy

When you hire a content marketing agency or senior content marketer, the tactical execution of writing content is not the most valuable service you’re acquiring. You’re getting a strategic partner who can not just devise a content strategy tailored to your needs but also adapt it as results accumulate to produce the greatest possible impact on your business. As of now, AI cannot replicate this strategic function.

Who are your customers? What do they care about? On which channels can you most effectively reach them? How will you design several different content assets and sequences to generate leads and guide prospects down the funnel? What are the major issues in your space, how are your rivals talking about them, and how can you differentiate yourself? What are the major trade publications in your industry, and how can you get featured in them?

These questions — and the ability to devise evolving answers to them — are where the deepest value of human content marketing talent lies. As long as AI cannot do the same, it would be unwise to give up senior content marketing talent, which would leave you with mediocre execution and very little ability to marshal it for maximum impact.

In short, AI can help with research and creative testing. But don’t get sucked too far into the hype cycle. You’re a long way away from automating your content marketing team.