Introduction

AI has transformed the way businesses do digital marketing. It’s now used to write blog posts, create social media copy and plan ad campaigns. It’s all about speed and efficiency with AI enabling businesses to generate ideas, produce drafts and plan their marketing in a fraction of the time it used to take. The downside is that the content is starting to sound identical.

If your business is completely reliant on AI-generated text then you’re likely to end up with a lot of the same ideas, the same cliches and the same generic messages. The output may well look professional but it doesn’t necessarily convey what makes your brand unique. In a crowded digital landscape simply producing more content isn’t the answer. You need content that actually answers people’s questions, that reflects your brand and that gives them a reason to look at you.

The answer isn’t to stop using AI. The answer is to understand how to use it. When you combine the power of AI with human creativity, audience insight and a clear content strategy you can produce content that is genuinely useful and which will help achieve your digital marketing objectives without in any way compromising your brand’s character.

Understanding the Problem With Generic AI Content

One of the principal reasons AI content feels so generic is that the prompts you give the AI are so often very general. If you ask an AI to write a blog on digital marketing the output is likely to be full of the standard stuff, the standard industry jargon and the standard explanations that you’ve seen a thousand times before. It will be perfectly grammatical, but it won’t necessarily be anything new.

A social media caption such as ‘Take your business to the next level with our innovative solutions’ could be used by pretty much any business. It gives absolutely zero indication of what the business actually does, what problem it solves or indeed why the customer should pick that business over any other.

This is a problem when businesses simply publish content to stay active online. If there’s no real message or purpose then blog posts, website pages and social media content can all end up being rather repetitive. Good digital marketing isn’t just about ticking off a content calendar. It’s about understanding what your audience want to know and being able to provide a useful answer.

How to Use AI in Digital Marketing Without Losing Your Brand Identity

1. Understand your audience before you create any content

Every piece of content that’s going to be of any use starts with an understanding of the audience. Before you go and use AI to write an article or run a campaign you need to have a good grasp of what your audience is interested in, what they’re going to be asking, what their problems are and what they expect.

For instance a business owner looking for digital marketing services may not just want to know what SEO or social media marketing is. They may be in the position of not getting any enquiries at all, not attracting the right kind of customer or not having any traffic to their site. Content that deals with those issues head on is far more valuable than content that just gives a generic description of the marketing services.

AI can be used to help sort the customer queries, suggest appropriate topics and even draft article outlines. The direction of the content however must come from actual customer research, customer conversations, website analytics and industry knowledge. Content that is developed around real problems is going to be more relevant and far easier for the reader to relate to.

2. Give the AI clear instructions and context

The quality of the AI output is very much dependent on what you feed it at the outset. A brief prompt will generally result in a very broad response, whereas a more detailed brief will give it a much better idea of what you’re after.

Rather than just asking the AI to write an article on digital marketing, explain who the article is for, what problem it’s trying to solve, what the relevant keywords are and what tone the brand operates in. You can also throw in some info about the services offered, the target market and the way the business communicates.

For instance a blog aimed at small businesses who are battling with online visibility should be all about practical solutions rather than marketing speak. That context is what enables the AI to produce content that is relevant to the reader and in line with the aims of the business.

AI should be viewed as a writing assistant rather than a substitute for strategic thought. The more clearly a business defines its purpose the easier it is to produce content that gets the message across.

3. Maintain a Consistent Brand Voice

A brand’s voice is one of the things that makes its communications stand out. Some brands will naturally adopt a more formal, informative tone, others will be more conversational, more creative or more direct. If you’re using AI without very clear direction then that voice can very easily be lost.

Businesses should have simple brand voice guidelines which set out how they want to communicate. These can cover sentence structure, the language they use, the tone, the terminology and the type of message that is appropriate for the brand.

Once the guidelines are in place then every AI draft should be checked to make sure it sounds natural and consistent. Overstated claims need to be replaced with plain speaking, the jargon needs to be stripped away and any sentences that sound too formal or artificial need to be rewritten.

The aim isn’t to make every piece of content sound the same. It’s to ensure that our blog posts, website copy, adverts and social media content all embody the same core brand identity, just in a format that’s appropriate for each particular platform.

4. Add original ideas and real examples

One of the most effective ways of making AI assisted content more useful is to incorporate information from actual experience. The AI can help to structure the ideas and explain the concepts, but the real value comes from the business’s own experience, its own customer insights and its practical knowledge.

A digital marketing agency writing about website conversions might well point to the impact of poor service descriptions, confusing site navigation and weak calls to action on a visitor’s willingness to enquire. Rather than just giving generic advice they could go on to say what the business should be looking at and how they could spot the issues.

Real examples make the content far more understandable as the reader can see how the concept applies to their own circumstances. Businesses can also share in their own words some of the actual projects they’ve done, the actual questions they’ve been asked by customers and the actual lessons they’ve learned.

Any performance metrics, testimonials or case studies should be accurate and based on real information. If the example is purely hypothetical it must be clearly stated as such. Originality is about adding some real value and insight rather than just making up some impressive sounding claims.

5. Focus on useful content rather than keyword stuffing

SEO is a vital component of digital marketing but producing content just to get the keywords in won’t necessarily make it any better in terms of search engine performance. Simply repeating the same phrase in every paragraph won’t automatically result in a better search ranking.

Instead businesses should be looking at the main keyword, the related search terms and the questions that their audience are actually asking. If you’re writing an article on AI in digital marketing your relevant terms would be AI content creation, content marketing strategy, AI marketing tools and SEO content optimisation.

These keywords should be naturally embedded in the title, the introduction, the relevant headings and in the body copy wherever they are appropriate to the discussion. Related terms can be used to help explain various facets of the topic without making the writing feel repetitive.

More than that really the piece needs to meet the reader’s expectations. A reader looking for ways to produce better AI content is going to want practical advice, clear examples and a sensible process. That’s what makes the content useful to them and what makes it more relevant to the purpose of SEO.

6. Review and improve every AI generated draft

Even a very good AI draft requires human review prior to publication. AI can produce incorrect information, rephrase the same point in different ways or make assertions that appear to be valid without any real basis. Publishing the content without checking that it’s accurate could be disastrous for a brand’s reputation.

Before you go live with the article, read it from the reader’s point of view. Does the intro properly set out the problem? Does each section add something of value? Is the advice actually useful in practice? Strip out any redundancy and replace the generalities with the specifics.

It’s also vital to check the facts, the stats, the links and the references. For website content in particular you need to look at the heading structure, the readability, the internal links and the metadata. All of those things contribute to the article meeting its objectives both in terms of content for the audience and in terms of its wider digital marketing aims.

AI can cut down the time spent on drafting and editing, but human judgement is still required to decide what gets published.

Conclusion

AI has made content creation far easier, but the reality is that you still need thought, creativity and a real understanding of your audience if you’re going to create content that actually connects with people. A business that is solely reliant on AI to produce its content may end up publishing more often than it ever has before, without actually giving the reader any reason to remember the brand. The real benefit of AI is that it can be used to augment ideas, to be more efficient and to produce content that has a clear purpose.

A good digital marketing strategy is all about audience research, original insight, consistent brand messaging and smart optimisation. When you bring AI into that mix you can produce content that is not only easier to create but is also more relevant and resonant with your audience.

At BigBox Studio we think good marketing starts with understanding the business, finding the right opportunities and then communicating a message that actually makes a difference. That’s true whether you’re doing SEO, content, branding or performance marketing. Every single thing you do should have a purpose. In a world where anyone can create content the brands that really stand out are the ones that have something genuine to say.