How We Use AI Writing Tools to Create Efficient SEO-Optimized Content and Marketing Campaigns

2023.02.13 10:29 AM By Joshua Taddeo, Principal Consultant

We are living in the age of content, where businesses must create both short-form and long-form content to generate awareness and drive conversions. Well-written content and marketing copy are crucial components of every marketing touchpoint. Since the late 2000s, content marketing has exploded as a growth strategy.

With the increase in online content, effective, informative copy has never been more important. There are two challenges: first, generating large amounts of content to meet consumer demand, and second, writing quality content to drive high-intent organic traffic to stand out from the existing noise and fluff on the web.

Given that good copywriting requires an enormous amount of investment, dedication, and effort, how should brands and marketers rise to the challenge? That’s where AI copywriting tools come in and why you should work with an AI and ML consultant to develop processes that work for your teams.

Could you provide a machine with a few instructions and let it auto-generate an engaging copy while you’re focused on more pressing tasks? Thanks to AI copywriting software powered by machine learning, now it’s possible. In this guide, we aim to provide an in-depth guide to show you how we’ve been creating SEO-optimized content that has ranked on the first page of Google with the help of AI tools. With the power of AI, you can completely transform your content marketing strategy.

What is AI Copywriting, and How Does It Work?

AI copywriting is computer-generated writing using machine learning technology and natural language processing tools. It’s the use of artificial intelligence to write copy for your marketing campaigns and website. You’ll need to decide the type of content you’re writing and what you’d like to write about. This could be anything from a long blog post to a short social media post. From there, you set specific parameters for the AI software to follow. For instance, maybe you’d like to write a blog post about the best ways to repair your windows.

Once the AI machine receives the instructions, it’ll generate content based on the given parameters by probing pre-existing content around the internet and processing it into something unique and plagiarism-free. Many organizations are catching on and leveraging the power of AI for their own marketing strategy. The American Marketing Association (AMA) uses an AI copywriting tool to create newsletter content for its 100,000 subscribers. Their AI tool helps them craft customized headlines and content for their subscribers.

The result is a 42% monthly engagement rate that excels above the industry standard and keeps their readers returning for more. While the results are great, you shouldn’t solely rely on AI copywriting tools for your content. Instead, use them as a first-draft starting point, add your own voice and tone and ensure you add a personal touch.

Applications for AI Copywriting: What Can You Use It For?

In today’s digital age, using AI copywriting tools for websites is one of the most important aspects of marketing. We are bombarded with so many things competing for our attention, so businesses must find new and innovative ways to get their message across.

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Here are ways you can use AI copywriting tools for your business:

● Blog posts and articles

● Webpage content

● Email newsletters

● Product descriptions and product reviews

● Press releases

● Social media posts

● PPC ads

● Advertising scripts

● Radio ad scripts

● Anchor text copy

● PPC ad titles

● Email subject lines

● Blog outlines

● Sales letters

Why Should You Use an AI Copywriting Tool?

These tools may be used by marketers and copywriters for a number of reasons. The first advantage of using copywriting AI tools is that they save you time. Since these tools can analyze data much faster than humans, they can produce complete articles instantly. Furthermore, AI copywriting is extremely convenient. AI copywriting can handle bulk content, such as product descriptions, so that you can concentrate on more demanding tasks such as lead generation and campaign management.

Last but not least, AI copywriting tools can help you overcome the dreaded “writer’s block” that every writer experiences at some point. If you need help brainstorming ideas or creating content, an AI tool can help. The benefits of AI copywriting are worth exploring if you’re a busy content creator with multiple deadlines and dreams of scaling your production. Furthermore, if you’re a general marketer with multiple roles, you can use AI copywriting to help create meta titles and descriptions.

AI Copywriting Limitations

AI copywriting has its limitations, just like any other digital marketing tool. Here are the following limitations you’ll want to be aware of:

Nothing is Truly Original

Although AI copywriting tools are impressive, they don’t produce anything truly original. Let’s not forget that this is a machine. By feeding them content and articles written by human copywriters, they create something new.

While the AI tools can produce excellent copy that is new and original, that doesn’t mean unique and engaging. Since the technology is simply using the next best word from the previous words in the sentence or content overall, in a sense, it's simply a regression to the mean. It's an average, expected output. While that may work for much of your standard marketing materials or content, it's certainly no way to stand out. All AI written content will need a human to make it as great as it can be to connect with a reader through personal expansion, editing, and novelty.

Requires an Understanding of How to Craft Great Inputs

Furthermore, you’ll need to tweak the input for better results. For example, let’s say you want to write a blog post about “how to manage and deal with back pain.” If you’d want a unique output, it’s best to add or have the AI generate an outline. In the outline, you can tell the machine to add headings like “causes of chronic back pain” or “best natural remedies for back pain.”

Additionally, you may want to tell the AI about the audience that the content is intended for and the tone you’d like it written. Crafting a well-organized and thoughtful input requires a steep learning curve. If you truly want to make AI work for you, you’ll need to spend hours drafting dozens of blog posts to learn how you can get the best craft impactful inputs to generate the best output.

Lack of Human Emotion

What’s more, AI software can’t replicate human emotions. Marketing requires emotions to drive consumer buying behavior, so it’s important that your ad copy and content invoke the right emotion. While AI copywriting is great for bulk projects, it might not be the best tool for crafting those more emotive posts that require a personal touch and true creativity.

Requires Meticulous Proofreading

Finally, AI tools at the moment can’t pick up “awkward” phrasing. While the AI-generated content usually makes grammatical sense, you’ll need meticulous proofreading to identify awkward wording and incorrect phrases. So what’s the takeaway? While AI copywriting tools can support your marketing efforts, they can’t completely replace human content creation. They should just be another highly useful tool in your toolbox.

Our AI Copywriting Process for Content Creation

The basic structure of every AI copywriting tool is based on an input-output formula. A brand, a marketer, or a copywriter enters certain types of information, and the AI creates content based on the information provided. Using natural language processing (NLP) software, AI copywriting tools perform reading and writing tasks at a near-human level. By scanning the web for patterns and copywriting best practices, these algorithms generate copy based on existing knowledge.

Although AI copywriting tools are straightforward in how they work, the process of using them goes beyond simply copying and pasting the content they generate. Content marketers and copywriters know AI-generated content rarely matches the context or use case immediately. Although AI-generated copy can serve as a good starting point, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

We’ve used the following three steps to craft high-converting and engaging blog posts and copywriting for our content:

Step 1: Set Parameters and Input Information

For your AI copywriting tools to work at their best, you have to feed them as much useful information as possible. Depending on your brand, this information may include your brand’s tone of voice, existing copy on your brand website, the context and platform of the copy, and any relevant parameters. Particularly for tools that limit the number of pieces of content you can generate within a particular subscription tier, you must give the AI enough information to generate the best, most relevant content.

Some tools even allow you to include articles in the input. It’s always best to research before crafting your input. Familiarize yourself with your competitors by seeing the existing content or ad campaigns out there. This gives you a starting point as to what your final output should look like. From there, curate your findings and craft the input so that the AI tool can help generate similar content.

Step 2: Generate and Select Content

Content generation is never a one-and-done process. In most cases, especially for short copy, such as ad headlines and social media content, you will be generating and choosing from several copy variations. Review all the copy variations generated, and shortlist a few to edit and refine (the number of shortlisted options depends on the content length).

Step 3: Read, Revise and Refine

Viewing AI-generated content through a human eye is the last and arguably most important step of using AI copywriting tools. Does your copy resonate with your target audience? Does it match your brand voice and the visual asset it’s paired with? Does it generate awareness, improve consideration, or drive conversions?

Rather than viewing AI tools as all-knowing leaders, the best copywriters view them as team members. Consider AI-generated copy critically, and understand that the best results come from a combination of AI algorithms and human minds.

How Should Brands Effectively Use AI Tools

Here are the dos and don’ts of how brands should utilize AI tools effectively.

Do: Use AI writing tools for brainstorming ideas.

Many copywriters admit to spending 60% or more of their time just writing headlines. A headline and a call to action are key touch points that are often necessary for long-form content to succeed. Due to such high potential and limited real estate, creating the “perfect” headline or content piece can be challenging. This process can be aided with AI copywriting tools by generating a large number of content options within a specific character limit that allows the copywriter to focus on editing rather than brainstorming.

Don’t: Use AI writing tools to compose thought leadership articles.

Brands and businesses can use thought leadership articles and content pieces to establish their authority in a particular industry by signaling their expertise. As a result, the brand becomes a market leader, and its audience becomes more trusting. Due to the fact that AI tools generate content based on existing content, they are not well-suited for writing about emerging or innovative ideas. AI tools can reflect, reformat, and report, but they cannot predict. To be a thought leader, you must be keenly observant and possess an in-depth understanding of industry trends, which AI unfortunately lacks.

Do: Use AI writing tools for predictable, standardized formats.

The use of AI tools is ideal for generating content in predictable, standardized formats. AI copywriting tools often come with pre-formatted templates, ranging from Amazon product descriptions to social media posts to Google search ad headlines. For example, Jasper.ai offers thousands of templates for ad campaigns, blogs, eCommerce, and email campaigns.

In these formats, character counts or necessary information are often restricted, and AI writing tools can easily generate content that meets those restrictions. AI can generate content that is specifically tailored to a particular use case using the formulaic approach for platform-specific copywriting.

Don’t: Use AI writing tools for strategic persona targeting.

Often, ads or landing pages are written to target a specific audience or user persona. This brief will include key information, such as demographics, interests, motivators, and unmet needs for these user personas. A level of human touch is still needed when it comes to strategic persona targeting, even with AI copywriting tools that allow you to specify a tone of voice. Writing copy tailored to a user persona requires copywriters to use their emotional storytelling skills and their understanding of their target audience. In the current state of technology, AI tools cannot achieve this level of empathy and emotional depth.

Do: Use AI writing tools for SEO keyword optimization.

To allow your content piece to rank higher on SERPs (search engine results pages), you can incorporate semantically related keywords and secondary keywords that are relevant to your target keyword into your content. Many AI tools have templates for keyword optimization, which involves strategically inserting relevant keywords into relevant parts of your content. As a result of Google’s Helpful Content Update, copywriters and SEO experts should ensure their keyword-optimized content still addresses the user’s needs in a unique and organic manner.

Don’t: Use AI writing tools for CRO tests.

The biggest challenge for a skilled copywriter is navigating and adapting to the various areas of marketing expertise that copywriting intersects with. Copywriting plays an important role in landing page and CRO tests since certain copy variations can serve as the basis of A/B testing frameworks. In order to avoid diverging from the CRO testing objective, it is best to avoid AI tools when following a CRO testing framework. Performing CRO tests with precision and thoughtfulness ensures that the results provide insights and learnings that can be leveraged to drive further growth.

Do: Use AI writing tools for outlines and summaries.

The advantage of AI copywriting tools is that they simplify content rather than elaborate on it. The AI is less likely to neglect crucial pieces of information if it subtracts rather than adds. In addition, outline and summary documents are usually shared only for internal communication, omitting considerations such as brand positioning, target audience personas, and any other outward-facing branding elements.

Don’t: Use AI writing tools for final drafts.

The content generated by AI can be a great starting point, but it should not be used as a final draft. Every piece of content, no matter how predictable or standardized should be checked before publishing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an AI or a human; mistakes and inconsistencies happen, and copywriters should always revise and edit as part of their writing process.

How to Choose the Right AI Copywriting Tool

As you build your copywriting software arsenal, not every tool will cut it. Each one you select should meet some basic criteria, and we have a few key features to keep in mind.

Easy to Use

‍No matter what tool you use, it shouldn’t add more stress to your life. Make sure the software is responsive and intuitive when reviewing or testing it. User experience is a big component in ensuring you can output high-quality and bulk content in a short period of time. There should be plenty of tutorial videos and help files available for software that naturally has a learning curve.

Collaboration-friendly

Whether in-house or freelance, content marketers usually work with a team of writers. By allowing you to share documents and assign tasks, a good AI copywriter should let you work together easily.

Flexible Pricing Plans

Choosing AI tools that are within your budget is the easiest way to narrow down your list of options. Estimate how many words you would need per month and how much you are willing to allocate for each piece of content or project. As a result, you won’t waste time exploring tools that are not appropriate for your business. You shouldn’t necessarily look for the cheapest option, but you don’t want to break the bank either. It’s also important to have flexible plans and pricing when you don’t need the full range of features.

Understand Your Needs

Depending on your specific needs, every tool has its advantages and disadvantages. Due to its specific focus on e-commerce brands, Hypotenuse AI is less versatile than some of the other tools listed, but that may actually be a plus if your business is looking for more product descriptions. In order to define the features you would be looking for in an ideal AI copywriting tool, it is important to first define your motivations and use cases.

Test Multiple Tools

A free trial or free subscription tier is available on most AI copywriting platforms. Test out multiple platforms with actual projects or micro deliverables before committing. Before committing to a more premium subscription, it’s important to identify potential deal breakers through hands-on experience with the tool at hand. To fully understand the capabilities of these products, keep a running list of both the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the most commonly asked questions about using AI writing tools for your business.

Is AI Copywriting Worth It?

Well, that largely depends on your needs. You can use AI copywriting tools to outline, generate ideas, and overcome your fear of blank pages. In order to make your content unique and offer value to your readers, you will still need to add your own voice, check facts, and add stats and other information.

Who Ultimately Owns Content Generated by AI Platforms?

Generally, the creator of a work owns the intellectual property rights to that work. If someone creates a piece of content using OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot, they’ll be considered the owner of the intellectual property rights. An AI writing tool like ChatGPT generates content that can be protected by intellectual property rights. However, there are a few important factors to consider.

In terms of use for ChatGPT, OpenAI specifically states that it retains the right to use any content generated by the bot for its own purposes. Thus, although the creator of the content may have certain rights to the content, OpenAI also has the right to use it in certain ways. Furthermore, the use of a chatbot like ChatGPT may involve other intellectual property, such as trademarks or copyrighted works. It would be necessary to consider intellectual property rights in these cases as well.

For instance, if the content generated by ChatGPT includes a copyrighted work, the creator cannot use the work without the permission of the copyright owner. It is important to note that while the person who creates content using ChatGPT may be considered the owner of the intellectual property rights in that content, there are a number of factors that can influence ownership and rights.

What are Google’s Rules on AI Generated Content?

If you have questions about ownership or other legal issues related to your content, you should review the terms of use for any tools or services you use and consult with an experienced copyright attorney. According to John Mueller, the content generated from AI copywriting tools is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, which may lead to a manual penalty. However, Google’s system may still lack the ability to fully detect AI-generated content without the help of human reviewers.

According to the Sr. Managing Editor of Search Engine Journal, Google’s algorithms can’t yet automatically detect content produced by language models like Chat GPT-3. The key is to use AI-generated content as a first-draft copy. Adding statistics, your opinion, and proper editing will help to prevent any plagiarized content.

Will AI Make Content and Copywriters Obsolete?

The short answer is no, but the story is much more complicated than that. Traditionally, a copywriter wrote and crafted marketing copy for a variety of channels and platforms. However, this definition is now obsolete, but it is also evolving and improving for the better. Since most content marketing teams can have access to one or more AI tools in their arsenal, writer’s block and time constraints are no longer excuses.

AI tools need to be seamlessly integrated into copywriting workflows, and copywriters should hone in on the skills AIs inherently lack. It will become more important than ever for writers to revise AI-generated content to ensure quality, brand consistency, and platform compatibility. As AI tools take over the writing and creation portion of the job, human copywriters must become more versatile and see copywriting as an integral part of an overarching marketing strategy in order to remain relevant. In addition to creating content, the best copywriters know the narrative of a buyer’s journey, as well as how each piece of content fits into a larger audience or channel strategy.

Unlike AI tools, copywriters are also emotional storytellers, evoking empathy and resonance in the emotional story. Creating an emotional connection with readers or consumers is an important part of copywriting. While AI can write within a platform’s specifications and constraints, it lacks an experienced copywriter’s emotional sensitivity and human touch.

Should Your Team of Copywriters Use AI?

AI can automate, speed up, and streamline the content writing process for copywriters. Content writers should use AI tools when tasked with generating a large amount of content within a short time frame. Copywriters can spend more time revising, refining, and strategizing with AI for the creation part of the writing process, which is crucial for both quality and quantity.

The question of whether copywriters should use AI is no longer relevant. AI tools are clearly designed to increase efficiency and speed up production. The question then becomes “how.” What should copywriters do to integrate AI tools into their writing process? What can copywriters do to avoid overusing AI tools? When should copywriters use AI, and when shouldn’t they?

Fortunately, you’ve learned in the steps above how to best use AI tools to maximize the quality of output and efficiency in your workflow. Keep in mind that the best copywriters in the future will know how to work with AI tools, not against them. At Universal Creative Solutions, we’re looking to shift the question to help brands and business owners effectively use AI writing tools to their advantage, not their detriment. As a result, the modern content team will know how to successfully balance efficient automation with human skill.

Start Streamlining Your Content and Copywriting Workflows with AI Tools

Whether you’re a busy copywriter, digital marketer, or business owner; AI writing software can help you scale your content creation efforts and achieve your business goals. They’re easy to use and can help you generate engaging, natural copy to support your content needs. Since every AI copywriting tool is different, it’s best to try them out before committing to a long-term subscription plan. That way, you get a sense of how their software works and which tool can best support your business strategy.

As more tools are being created and AI technology seems to be advancing rapidly, it’s more important than ever to learn how to use them. Many tools claim to be the best with new features, but very few people actually talk about how they fit within the framework of your marketing strategy and business. At Universal Creative Solutions, we’ve been on the cutting edge of using AI tools in our business and helping clients do the same. If you’d like to learn about the best tools and how to implement tools to improve operational efficiency, we can help. Contact us today!