Writer’s block: It’s an issue that interferes with any kind of writing, any kind of writer, in any context. Whether it’s coming up with the right concept or composing the next sentence, writer’s block can be debilitating to businesses.
Many marketers face a particular aspect of this problem. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of repetition, considering that content needs to relate to your product, which basically stays the same.
That’s where AI writers can make all the difference.
Here, we’ll dive into how and why AI writing is an effective method for marketers of all kinds, what types of content you can create with AI, and even get into some insights and examples to help you along the way.
How and Why Does AI Writing Work?
At the beginning of each project, the platform will ask you to input a bit of information about your task. It might ask for a topic, a product description and/or name, industry classification, keywords, etc. Upon choosing the format of the output – let’s say a blog or social media post – the AI writer will generate the copy.
The result is a myriad of content versions, or a set of blog paragraphs, each composed with a new take on the subject that you assigned to the platform. The challenge for the marketer at this point is to choose the best one – but more on this later.
Now imagine this capability applied to all of your content channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. A copywriter could spend hours brainstorming new content ideas for each, and more hours writing up their ideas using the right style and best practices. An AI writer will get the job done for each channel in only minutes.
AI-Generated Headlines
AI copywriters – at least the good ones – don’t just mass produce content that sorta-kinda makes sense. Their output is based on proven marketing and writing principles.
Take headlines, for instance. As any copywriter knows, the headline is where you make or break the potential of a piece to attract the audience. A good headline grabs the attention of the audience and makes them want to read more.
But headline writing is tough; it takes time, effort, and experience to generate eye-catching stuff. In order to compose those few words, a writer needs to:
- Understand the key selling points of the product.
- Have a thorough knowledge of the target market.
- Be able to explain the value of the product for its audience using attractive language.
- Generate a few variations to evaluate before posting.
In contrast, AI writers gain the ‘experience’ they need for headline composition in only moments. They scan the web for examples of copy that are similar to what you want to produce, and insert the terms that are relevant to your project. For instance, they will notice the occurrence of certain words and styles that tend to be used in headlines and apply them to yours. It can take a while until a person becomes familiar with the power words and action language used by successful copywriters, but AI gets the hang of it instantaneously.
Even with using AI to help generate your headlines, there are still a lot of tactics to consider when selecting the best one. In a test run by our creative team, we analyzed a wide variety of content and walked away with these findings:
- There is something to be said for longer headlines. In many cases, more contextual headlines boosted performancing — everything from higher conversion rates to a 26% lower CPCs in one instance.
- 70% of listicles tested in a headlines analysis had an increase in CTR when switching from a non-listicle to a listicle headline. In one case, switching to a listicle headline resulted in an 8X higher CTR.
AI Writers for Improving Content
Another application of AI copywriting tools is to help writers improve existing content. Of course, this includes basic tools like spelling and grammar check. There are also AI-based products like Grammarly, which indicate when texts are not optimal in terms of style. They will point out poor word choice and run-on sentences, and then provide suggestions for sharpening them.
Copywriters also get a boost from AI when it comes to iteration. It can be tiresome for a person to generate version after version of content pieces so as to find the most interesting rendition. An AI writer can turn out multiple variants in seconds. The marketer simply needs to choose which one looks like it will perform the best.
There are even AI platforms that rewrite content. The leading AI writers allow text to be pasted on a page and then provide options for improvement. A marketer can choose to modify the text using different tones of voice, such as “playful”, “hard sell”, “fifth grader”, and “conversational”. They can also have text rewritten to reflect the demographic profile of the audience by picking a more masculine or feminine style and language which appeals to a certain age group. Some AI writers provide the option to rewrite text by creating a unique style built from a synthesis of examples that the user provides to the platform.
Let’s take this Facebook Ad primary text example. Originally, this piece of copy received a score of 84 (provided by Anyword’s Predictive Performance Score).
But if we tell the AI to make this content even more engaging, here’s what we get:
We know that the proper tone of voice can make all the difference in your copy, and emotions play an important role in that. Depending on what you’re promoting or selling, the emotions you leverage in your copy may change. Here, looking at a dataset of nearly 200K ads, we present the top four emotions based on their average CTR.
AI-Generated Product Descriptions and Landing Pages
Product descriptions can be tricky to get right. They need to strike the best balance between length and information. If there’s too much text, the reader might just get frustrated and quit. If there’s too little, the reader might have questions about your product but not the patience to find out more.
In addition, a product description is like a sort of mini sales funnel. With the header, it hopefully catches the attention of the audience and keeps them reading down the page, through each paragraph and sub-header, until they reach the CTA. At any point, their interest might be lost. But even with analytics, it can be impossible to say exactly what part of the content turned them off.
The solution here is reiteration, and nothing does this better than an AI writer. The technology can build many versions of each part of the page, from headlines and subheadings to paragraphs, as we see in the example below.
They can also create eye-catching format variations like bullets and lists. Some platforms can translate a set of features that you provide into benefits that customers understand.
As the marketer rotates each version through the product page, they will eventually arrive at the proper mix of content that leads to the highest conversion rate.
AI-Generated Blog Post and Video Ideas
Many copywriters and marketers turn to AI for short content pieces like Instagram captions and Facebook posts. But, with a premium platform, marketers can now create entire long form content pieces such as blog posts and video descriptions.
The key here is to “work along” with the AI writer. For example, let’s say you want to create a blog post. At the very least, you need to give the platform a topic. If you want the blog to be about computers, the platform might produce a few titles and paragraphs about programming and others about hardware. You prefer hardware, and instruct the AI writer to compose a few more blog paragraphs on this subject. Within moments, you’ve got a complete blog on the topic of your choice, all based on a very limited idea of where you wanted the content to go.
It’s a similar situation with videos, but in this case, you can “reverse engineer”. Again, give the AI writer a topic and it will build the titles and paragraphs according to the route you choose. Once done, you will essentially have the outline of a video script. It can be used as a framework for the creation of the visuals, serve as a video content description, and perhaps work as a guide for narration.
A Final, Vital Content Capability
AI writers will produce line after line of content, but that leaves the marketer wondering which to choose. Of course, A/B testing is a standard approach, but that takes time. And saving time is the name of the game with AI copywriting.
That’s why Anyword developed its unique Predictive Performance Score. Each piece of content generated by the Anyword platform comes with a grade. This grade indicates a projected conversion rate. Through the magic of its proprietary technology, Anyword can estimate how well the content will perform by analyzing the style of the message and existing conversion rates of similar messages. It even predicts the potential of the content according to basic audience profiles, such as age and gender. Sound fantastic? Book a demo with us today, and discover why leading brands rely on Anyword for essential copywriting tasks, completed with the click of a button.
