Are the robots taking over? It's a question many people wonder as artificial intelligence gains prominence in our daily lives — especially in marketing.
The market for AI in marketing is likely to hit $107.5 billion by 2028, a massive increase from $15.84 billion in 2021.
What could this mean for marketers and content creators? Is there a place for AI in content creation, and can it benefit marketing creatives? To answer this question, I spoke to several content creators who use AI.
I also compared their experiences to data from HubSpot's recent State of AI survey, in which we asked over 1,350 professionals about their experience with AI. Here's what I found.
How are Creators and Marketers Using AI?
According to our survey, 33% of marketers who use AI use it to generate ideas or inspiration for marketing content.
One way AI can be used for ideas or inspiration is by creating a mood board with tools like Kive.ai. Filmmaker and photographer Mateo Toro recently started using Kive.ai to design mood boards to develop treatments for his film projects.
A video treatment is a way to convey a project's concept or story. Many video treatments involve the use of images and visual media found online or in previous works.
"Video treatments take time. You have to scrub through the video, to take screenshots, and edit for the video treatment," Toro explained. "[Kive.ai] just makes it so much easier for me to find the video that has a style or tone I'm looking to emulate."
With Kive.ai, creators can paste the link of a video into the system, and Kive.ai will extract frames from the video as screenshots to import into a board. Toro says the process can save him hours of time.
"In a video treatment, I could be going through 10, 15, 20 videos to reference," he said. "You add that up, and it could easily be an hour of time just scrubbing through, screenshotting, and dragging content to a treatment."
AI can also generate ideas for blog content. For example, HubSpot's content assistant AI can create a list of blog topic ideas and develop outlines centered around specific concepts.
Besides inspiration, the second-most common use of AI is writing copy for marketing materials. Our survey found 28% of marketers who are using AI leverage the tool to write materials such as blog posts and emails.
For example, Bethany Anderson, a public information officer for Milton, Florida, says ChatGBT streamlines the writing aspect of her job.
"I love it because ChatGBT is a software that learns," Anderson explains.
She says ChatGBT can mimic her writing style, so she'll sometimes use the tool to write press releases, social media posts, and SEO-friendly blog content.
Anderson says the tool is handy because writing is a crucial part of her job, but it's far from the only responsibility she has to tackle daily.
"I am behind the scenes planning events and getting them out to the public," she says. "So, ChatGBT allows me to get the writing done in a very easy, seamless way so that I can get to the bones of my job — which is outreach."
Anderson admits she was wary of ChatGBT at first but tested it out during a week that was jam-packed with deadlines.
"There was this one week a couple of months ago when I had so many deadlines, so many social media calendars due, so many blogs due, and so many bios due — I was drowning," she recalls. "So I said, 'I'm going to give it a try.'"
Days worth of writing assignments could be completed in just a few hours thanks to the assistance of AI, according to Anderson.
Her experience aligns with the findings of our survey — 75% of marketers said generative AI helps them create more content than they would without it.
And 77% agreed generative AI could help create content more efficiently.
"We're talking about days of your life that you get back," she said. "And, to me, time is valuable. It's more valuable than money."
Will AI Replace Content Creators?
A common concern surrounding the use of AI is whether the technology will replace human marketers and creators. Nima Olumi of Lightyear Strategies says it's unlikely.
"We use AI to pull a lot of statistics, come up with interesting angles to pitch to companies, and work around certain angles that are marketing and media-friendly," Olumi said. "I don't think it's a complete replacement for writers or thinkers."
Writing and content creation are subjective fields, according to Olumi, and they still require people to do the necessary critical thinking to decide the kind of content that gets published.
Ultimately, Olumi predicts a future where AI will assist marketers and creatives in improving their output and producing content in a shorter time.
This makes sense, considering our survey found that 77% of marketers agree that generative AI will help marketers create content more efficiently.
And 79% agree generative AI can improve the quality of the content they create.
Olumi encourages professionals to embrace AI and use it to their advantage rather than shy away.
Specifically, he says creators should spend time learning and testing applications like Open.ai and ChatGBT to see their different capabilities.
"Spend hours asking question after question to see how far you can push the limits of the application to serve your needs," he said. "You have to feed it context."
As the presence of AI in marketing continues to grow significantly, you'll want to take the time to discover how it can best serve your own team's needs.
Professionals and creatives like Olumi, Anderson, and Toro all found ways to use AI to help them improve the efficiency and quality of their content.
Instead of worrying whether the robots will take over, find ways to work alongside AI so you and your company can remain competitive in the market and essential to your clients.
