How can Tech Startups use AI tools for marketing?

“AI tools can be applied to many aspects of marketing for Tech Startups, including customer segmentation, predictive analytics, chatbots, ad or voice search optimisation, and content creation. By taking advantage of these tools, companies can improve their marketing effectiveness, customer engagement and revenue growth.”

Yes, that response was generated from ChatGPT – can you tell? 😉

On a more serious note, AI tools can be a real game-changer in marketing, especially for bootstrapped and time-poor tech startups.

In one sense, you could say we’ve been using AI tools for a while now in marketing – just think of campaign automation platforms such as HubSpot, or SEO tools such as Semrush.

Where the landscape has really changed recently though is with content, impacted by the sudden influx of what are known as ‘generative AI’ tools. So that’s where we’ll focus in this article, with hopefully a few more specific pointers than ChatGPT can give us!

Using AI tools for content creation

Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with generative AI tools, but over the past year or so, I’ve experimented with a number of different tools out there and I’ve refined my use of them.

I’ve got to a point where I have a set few in my toolkit that I use for specific applications. I know where to leverage an AI tool to make up for my human shortcomings, but equally where to ditch the interface in favour of some brain wrangling instead! It’s by no means perfect and it will continue to change as new tools come on the market – but that’s all part of the fascination that AI tools hold!

So, getting to the nub of the question, how can we use AI tools for content creation?

Here are my top recommendations…

3 ways you can use AI tools for researching content topics

• Whether it’s identifying customer pain points to inform your startup product strategy, or brainstorming content areas that your customers need information on, AI tools are great for extending your research and getting you to think about topics you may not have thought of before. ChatGPT is a good starting point here, especially if you engage it in a ‘pseudo-conversation’ to dig deeper into the topic and why it’s worth spending time on.
• The second way you can use AI tools to research content topics is by leveraging tools specifically for keyword research and SEO recommendations. A great one I’ve been using recently is On-Page by Traffic Research, and specifically their Stealth Writer. Again, this helps understand what customers are interested in (and what they’re searching on), but it also pitches these ideas within SEO-friendly titles, subtitles and even longer-form content.
• Finally, I’m finding that AI tools are great for breaking down complex concepts – something that tech startups often find themselves faced with if having to explain how their platform or product actually works. Now ok, ChatGPT can tend to oversimplify concepts to the point that the copy is downright boring, but if you use it as a starting point, it can provide a foundation on which to build upon.

Now I will caveat all of the above by adding that nothing beats original research – be that going out and talking to new and potential customers, or even doing feedback surveys on a wider scale to garner volume insights. Where AI tools can help though is by either giving you a point to start from, or by enhancing original research you’ve already done. In other words, it can make your process either more efficient, or more enriched (or both).

Using AI tools for content planning

Once you’ve done that all-important research, you’ll want to get down to some content planning. And here, AI tools can also help! Here are some of the tricks I’m using at the moment:

• Using ChatGPT to source relevant quotes. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can spew out lots of different quotes (and their sources) that can be used within all forms of content marketing.
• Leveraging neuraltext for keyword clustering and keyword brainstorming. And yes, you can use this at the research stage too!
• Dipping into Copy.ai as my new ‘thesaurus.’ Let’s be honest, even the best pieces of content have some degree of repetition and an old-fashioned thesaurus just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore! Enter tools like Copy.ai and it’s like having an editor sat beside you when your brain just jams up.

Using AI tools for tech content writing

When it comes to the writing itself, I’ve found three main tools to both speed up and enhance my writing process – Copy.ai, Moonbeam and, once again, ChatGPT. Now everyone will be different here and find alternative tools to complement their own writing. But I’ve found that these three work well for how I personally work.

• Copy.ai is like another brainstorming tool. It helps me get unstuck with how to phrase certain things, or provide different ways to communicate certain concepts. It’s also great if I’ve got to spin off other content formats from a core piece of writing – for example, LinkedIn posts, taglines, even sales emails. It’s a real gold mine for all the different content use cases you’ll come across!
• Moonbeam is another bit of magic. Not only can it take my jumbled notes and turn them into legible content, but it also helps me overcome that awful writer’s block when I get it. And again, it just gives me that ‘other’ perspective on things and a different way of writing.
• ChatGPT is best used for content writing when you want to come up with stories or analogies. We all know that leveraging stories or specific use cases is a great way to bring a product to life and to provide real-life context, but coming up with relevant ones can sometimes be tricky. So instead of scratching your head for hours, just ask ChatGPT to give you an analogy, metaphor or use case for the concept you’re writing about. If it doesn’t give you one that feels right for your content, it will undoubtedly spur off another idea for you that does feel right.

So that’s a quick overview of how tech startups can use AI tools for marketing and, more specifically, content creation.  Admittedly, this approach can be used by many other types and sizes of company, but tech startups in particular can benefit from these tools to make their marketing all the more efficient and effective.