• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 11, 2023

Only 55% of marketing teams are able to meet the growing demand for content. But they are looking at generative AI to take up the slack, judging by Gen AI Powers Content Marketing Advantage For Early Adopters, a new study from Deloitte Digital, conducted by Lawless Research. 

Of the companies polled, 26% are using Gen AI. But 45% plan to join those early adopters by 2025, while 26% expect to deploy Gen AI in 2025 or later. Only 3% have no plans to use it. 

But can Gen AI deliver on the demand for content that grew by 1.5x in 2023?

“Customers expect a brand’s ads, emails and other content-driven experiences to feel personally relevant, always right on time and in the right place,” the study notes.  

The early adopters are using Gen AI to produce these content elements:

• Data visualizations/infographics — 59%
• Images and visuals — 56%
• Captions — 50%

They hope to achieve:

• Improved content quality — 65%
• Increased content accessibility — 51%
• Automated SEO keyword identification — 46%

Their select range of channels includes:

• Advertisements — 60%
• Social media — 56%
• Mobile app — 44%

But there is a downside: “More than 3 in 4 early adopters remain significantly concerned about potential brand risks introduced by Gen AI, including intellectual property and legal jeopardy, cultural sensitivity mistakes, impersonal experiences and lower creative quality.” 

It adds: “Nearly as many remain concerned about talent and change management challenges.” 

On the positive side, Gen AI users are achieving higher-quality content and/or tagging (60%), increased employee productivity (59%) and greater volume of content produced (57%). In each case, they far outpaced future adopters. 

Moreover, early users exceeded their revenue goals by an average of 14% compared to 2% for future adopters while enjoying a 12% return on investment. 

To get there, 40% of early adopters are mostly using proprietary models to train Gen AI tools. And they are 3x as likely as others to have a formal analytics process to balance content supply and demand, a fully functioning project planning process and a very high level of automation. 

Lawless Research surveyed 650 leaders at B2B and B2C companies with at least 100 employees and $50 million or more in annual revenue.