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Alleviate Project Pile-Ups with Marketing Traffic Control

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Alleviate Project Pile-Ups with Marketing Traffic Control

At Accelity, we’re totally into shaking things up to make life smoother for our team and our clients.

Recently, we introduced an exciting new “traffic” process that has revolutionized how we manage projects. We’re talking more visibility, better teamwork vibes, and chats galore about what our projects really need.

In this blog, we spill the beans on how Accelity’s new traffic process is turning our project management into a well-oiled machine, and the four optimizations we made to get there. Buckle up!

Optimization 1: Hire an Account Coordinator

The first step in updating our traffic control process was hiring someone to own it: a Marketing Account Coordinator. The Account Coordinator is an important part of each client’s account team at Accelity, driving the day-to-day activity of client campaigns and projects. 

Some of the Account Coordinator’s responsibilities include:

  • Supporting client campaigns from start to finish, including scheduling meetings, creating meeting agendas, taking meeting notes, updating project status docs, and assigning and managing tasks in our project management system.
  • Assisting client onboarding, making each step seamless so clients have a great impression of the agency right away!
  • Building the foundations of our client campaigns in HubSpot, leveraging this technology to launch full campaigns that include blogs, emails, social posts, SEO, ads, and more.
  • Working closely with the VP of Client Services, account managers and strategists to ensure client success and collaborate together on how to get there.
  • Communicating often with the VP of Creative, graphic designers, copywriters and other creative team members to ensure client projects are completed with high quality and are on time.
young woman in office

“The biggest purpose of my role with traffic is to help everyone on the team be able to execute on their tasks and to be able to deliver everything we promised to clients. Logistically, this means keeping tabs on task/project status and trying to anticipate and adjust when questions, concerns or “hiccups” arise so we can be proactive vs. reactive.”

Sierra Davis,
Account Coordinator

Optimization 2: Hold a weekly Client Services and Delivery standup

Our weekly team stand-up is a concise yet impactful 20-minute gathering. Here’s an idea of the agenda:

  • Because it’s Monday, we have a fun icebreaker to start the week on the right note!
  • The Account Coordinator provides a comprehensive overview of project due dates, ensuring everyone is well-informed about the week’s priorities.
  • The Strategic Marketing Director delves into reporting results, offering insights into what’s working effectively and where improvements can be made, thus guiding our data-driven decision-making. 
  • The Account Managers wrap up the session by sharing client highlights and upcoming endeavors, fostering a deep understanding of client needs. 

Our team’s weekly discussion is a great opportunity for us to work together, brainstorm solutions, and connect with each other. This helps us to be more efficient with our resources and make any necessary adjustments for the upcoming week. By doing this, we make sure that we are all on the same page and committed to delivering awesome results for our B2B SaaS clients.

Optimization 3: Hold weekly team meetings for Client Services and Delivery teams

In addition to our regular team catch-up, we have separate weekly meetings for our Client Services and Delivery teams. These meetings help each group focus on their own areas of expertise and duties. 

During the meetings, we work together to plan our tasks for the upcoming week, making sure we’re all on the same page with project goals and timelines. We also use this time to discuss any issues that might come up and figure out solutions together. It’s a great way to stay ahead of potential problems and keep our projects running smoothly.

Optimization 4: Create a Slack #traffic channel

The introduction of the #traffic Slack channel at Accelity has been a major game-changer for our project management and accountability. This dedicated channel serves as a real-time hub for keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that tasks are completed efficiently and on schedule—especially important for a team working remotely.  

Here’s how it works:

  • Every morning, the Account Coordinator updates the channel with a list of tasks that remained outstanding from the previous day, providing visibility into any unresolved issues.
  • Every day at 4 PM, the Account Coordinator then posts a comprehensive list of tasks that are still pending for that day. This daily check-in serves as a timely reminder of the outstanding work, helping teams stay organized and focused on meeting deadlines.

For our process to work, everyone needs to be accountable. If for some reason we miss a deadline, we work together to set a new one. This helps us stay in touch and on top of things. We want everyone to know what’s expected of them so we can keep our clients happy and work together as a team.

So, what happened to our marketing agency when we implemented a traffic process?

When we decided to roll up our sleeves and optimize the way we work, some pretty cool things happened.

First, our communication got a major upgrade. We’re all on the same page, no more confusing messages or missed memos. Plus, our task lists became crystal clear. No more wandering around in the fog, wondering what’s due when. It’s all laid out neatly, so we know exactly what needs to be done and when.

And guess what? Our projects started running better. Deadlines? We got ’em covered. Client services? Nailed it. It’s not just about making our lives easier; it’s about making our clients happier. They’re getting top-notch service, and they can see it. We’re delivering the goods with precision and finesse, all thanks to these process tweaks. So, yeah, we’re loving the results, and our clients are too.

Accelity is where bold people grow bold companies. Learn more about Accelity’s culture.

Friend or Foe? Generative AI for Graphic Design

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Friend or Foe? Generative AI for Graphic Design

This blog is part of a three-part series on the potential uses of AI in B2B content marketing. Accelity team members are currently exploring available tools and how they can help us best serve our clients. Check out our blogs on AI in copywriting and AI campaign strategy. 

While AI has been all the rage lately with the arrival of ChatGPT, there is one area of the creative world where the technology has definitely NOT been welcome: graphic design. There is a ton of controversy over whether AI is stealing from artists, in addition to other creative concerns about whether it will put artists out of a job. 

What does this mean for those of us in B2B marketing? The future is unclear. There are some really exciting—and kind of scary—possibilities. 

We asked our Designer Nate Panetti what the role of AI in graphic design and which tools he’s been using to support his creative work.

Generative AI tools our Design team is testing

With all of the hype around generative AI for content creation, many companies are applying the technology to graphic design. We’ve had too much fun testing out these tools to see how good they are at capturing our vision (or at making fingers). 

DALL-E 2

We’re familiar with how ChatGPT is changing the way we write, but its creators OpenAI also have a product for AI-generated design. DALL-E 2 uses AI to that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Unlike ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 is not free. 

DALL-E 2 features include:

  • Image generation: Create original, realistic images from a text description, combining concepts, attributes, and styles
  • Outpainting: Expand images beyond what’s in the original canvas, creating expansive new compositions
  • Inpainting: Realistic edits to existing images. Add and remove elements while taking shadows, reflections, and textures into account.
  • Variations: Take an image and create different variations of it inspired by the original.

Prompt: A Modern Painting of a Frog Eating a Donut while Sitting By A River

Shutterstock AI Image Generator

Prompt: An ant playing the guitar surrounded by blades of grass

Adobe Firefly

With our team spending much of our time in Photoshop, we’re excited to experiment with Adobe’s venture into the tex-to-image AI space, Adobe Firefly. Adobe only uses licensed or copyright-free images for generation, differentiating itself as the more ethical option. Firefly is currently in beta, and users need to request access. 

With Adobe Firefly, designers are able to achieve:

  • Text-to-image: Generate images from a detailed text description.
  • Text effects: Apply styles or textures to text with a text prompt.
  • Recolor vectors: Generate color variations of your vector artwork from a detailed text description.

Prompt: Punk Rock Flamingo with a Mohawk

Canva

The not-so-design-savvy members of our team report that Canva also has a text-to-image generator, available for free to users. As with other AI tools, users simply need to type in a prompt. From there, they can drop the image into their Canva creation and edit using their tools. 

Prompt: Professional headshot made to look like a painting; Watercolor style applied

3 examples of how AI has helped our marketing efforts

We aren’t so sure about using AI for complete image generation—both because of ethical concerns and because the technology isn’t super reliable—but there are plenty of cases when AI is already helping our team. Here are some ways that AI can help designers automate tasks and create image magic. 

1. Removing backgrounds from images

Removing the background from a photo is so simple but so tedious. Sites like Remove Background are great for when you need to remove a background from an image without the work of going into Photoshop and attempting touchups. 


2. Enhancing photo quality

This tool from Cutout.Pro came in handy recently for one of our clients. We needed a headshot from the company’s Founder & CEO, but the resolution of the file he had was too low. Normally, we’d say this is something that cannot be changed, but as AI capabilities are getting better tools like this do a great job. 

NB: Be careful—for this kind of AI usage, the generator is making features based on the environment and not what is actually there. In the example below, one of the bricks might not actually have a scratch on it, but it could’ve added a scratch to give it more detail. Use these tools with that discretion because they aren’t always 100% perfect. 

3. Creating a background

Removing a background is one thing, but having AI create an image where there wasn’t one is another. Using the right prompts, AI can fill in the blanks of an image to remove objects. 

In this example, our designer needed to remove the subjects from the image so that the client could use an updated photo of the team on the previous background. Instead of having everyone go back to the location and retake the image, he used DALL-E 2. Nate took a group shot of the Info-Pro employees and removed the people so we could have the background by itself. He described what the image looked like to the AI generator to have it fill in the missing image. 

A final note about using AI for design

While our team is excited about the potential for AI in helping us to automate simple tasks or jumpstart our creativity, it comes with a few big caveats. 

We recommend NOT using AI in the following circumstances:

  • To generate campaign assets. It can be great for getting some inspiration shouldn’t be used for final client deliverables. 
  • As a replacement for creativity. Robots don’t think in metaphors, so their ability to represent something visually is limited to how well you can prompt it. 
  • To mimic another artist’s style. Unless the artwork is in the public domain, be cool and don’t try to rip off someone else’s work. 
  • To create images with fingers. Unless you enjoy 14-fingered nightmare mutants. 

10 Ways B2B Marketing Has Changed In the Past 10 Years

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10 Ways B2B Marketing Has Changed In the Past 10 Years

Ah, 2013. We twerked! We took selfies! We watched “The Red Wedding!” And the one-woman shop that would one day become Accelity, led by our Founder & CEO Jackie Hermes, was born. 

The B2B marketing space looked pretty different than it does today. In honor of 10 years of Accelity, we’re sharing 10 ways we’ve seen B2B marketing change since 2013. 

1. Digital transformation

Like many of our clients’ industries, B2B marketing has also undergone a major digital transformation in the past 10 years, with companies embracing digital channels, tools, and technologies to reach and engage their target audience. This includes leveraging social media, content marketing, email marketing, SEO and marketing automation platforms.

What did we do before digital? For the youngsters reading this blog, we had to physically mail newsletters, fliers and sales information—in the snow, uphill, both ways. In-person trade shows, conferences and networking events were also a big part of the strategy. Oh, and don’t forget straight-up cold calling. 

Digital marketing certainly existed for B2B before 2013, but it was a smaller component of hte strategy than it is today. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: One of our early blogs from 2015, How To Track Marketing Metrics Without Getting Lost In The Details

2. Content marketing

Ah, our bread and butter! Content marketing has now become a crucial aspect of B2B marketing, and it was starting to get really hot in the mid-2010s. Companies focus on creating high-quality, informative content that educates and engages their target audience. This includes white papers, case studies, ebooks, blog posts, webinars and podcasts.

B2B companies were hyped about content marketing for two reasons:

  1. Content marketing educates prospects on a topic without being overly sales-y, building trust and nurturing leads to prepare them for the sale. 
  2. Content marketing (specifically blogging) was a clever way to boost SEO by creating more, higher-quality webpages featuring target keywords without keyword stuffing (which Google was starting to punish).

Content marketing definitely isn’t new (fun fact: Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard’s Almanack to promote his printing press) but from 2012 to 2013, the use of content marketing jumped from about 60% of a company’s overall marketing strategy to 93%. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: The Best Content Marketing Strategies Your B2B SaaS Startup Needs (2016)

3. Account-based marketing (ABM)

ABM has gained significant traction in B2B marketing over the past decade, and it’s a tool we love to test with our clients. Instead of targeting broad audiences, marketers now focus on specific accounts and personalize their marketing efforts to engage key decision-makers within those accounts.

While companies have always had big fish prospects they hoped to catch, and key executives they wanted to target, the changes in technology and data in the past 10 years have made ABM much easier to execute. Thanks to LinkedIn and Google, it’s easy to learn a ton about a prospect to know how to best craft a message that will resonate. (And our team would rather put our detective skills to use finding our clients new leads instead of spying on our exes…)

📂 From the Accelity archives: Why Account Based Marketing Should be Your Top Small Business Lead Generation Strategy (2017)

4. Account-based advertising

In addition to account-based marketing, B2B companies have embraced account-based advertising as another targeted tactic. With programmatic advertising (mainly on LinkedIn) and other targeted techniques to reach specific accounts and decision-makers with personalized messages.

Before marketers had this functionality, we might have a general sense of where to send an email or mail a flyer, and then hoped it found the right person. Today, we can run sophisticated LinkedIn Ads campaigns and to target and re-target individuals based on their industry, company, location, job title and more to make sure we’re maximizing our chances of success and conserving precious ad dollars. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: Convert More Leads with This B2B LinkedIn Ads Targeting Strategy (2019)

5. Social selling and personal branding

B2B sales teams have embraced social media platforms to build relationships, generate leads, and facilitate sales. Social selling involves using social networks to identify and engage with prospects, share relevant content, and establish industry expertise. For B2B marketers, this means LinkedIn is king. 

While many people think of LinkedIn as a place to find a job, B2B marketers know that LinkedIn is where you go to make a sale. But it’s not all about cold outreach. Having a strong personal brand presence, engaging with people’s posts, and demonstrating your thought leadership are all important pieces of the puzzle. At Accelity, we’ve found that 28% of our company’s all-time revenue can be directly attributed to our CEO’s personal brand(!). 

📂 From the Accelity archives: Differentiate Yourself Through Personal Branding (2015)

6. Video content

Video content has not only become increasingly prevalent in digital marketing in the past 10 years, but the way we think about video has changed too. While highly produced videos are still important to brand marketing the rise of influencer marketing and front-facing video content make it easy for anyone to simple open their phone and share a message. 

Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and the rise of live streaming on social media have opened up new avenues for businesses to engage with their audience through compelling visual storytelling. Even LinkedIn is no the video trend with LinkedIn Live, video posts and ads, and LinkedIn Stories.

📂 From the Accelity archives: How to Incorporate B2B SaaS Video in Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey (2019)

7. Marketing automation

B2B marketers heavily rely on marketing automation platforms to streamline their processes, nurture leads, and drive conversions. Automation tools help with lead scoring, email marketing, lead nurturing, and campaign tracking.

While workflows existed previously, platforms like HubSpot make it easy to nurture leads through the funnel much more quickly than when done manually. Once a lead has entered the sequence, they’ll continue to receive customized, targeted content depending on what action they take. Automation gets leads sales-ready much faster. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: ​​Why Your B2B SaaS Company Needs Marketing Automation Software (2019)

8. Data-driven decision-making

The availability of vast amounts of data has revolutionized consumer marketing certainly, and it’s changed the game for B2B marketing too. Marketers now rely on data analytics and insights to inform their decision-making processes, measure campaign effectiveness, and optimize marketing strategies.

With such precise information available, marketers have a much better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t. We can turn off ads if they aren’t resonating with the audience, or use more red CTA buttons if the audience loves clicking them. Data and analytics makes it easier to demonstrate the ROI of marketing efforts. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: How to Navigate Analytics (2015)

9. Personalization and customization

All of this data and analytics have enabled B2B marketing to shift towards delivering personalized experiences for prospects. Marketers can use customer data to segment their audience and deliver tailored content, messages, and offers that resonate with their target accounts.

Now, instead of having just one landing page that appeals to a broad audience (risking that it actually appeals to no one), you can create custom landing pages for each buyer persona. You can send those links out to segmented email lists by job title or company size to ensure the right message is hitting the right person, every time. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: How to Effectively Personalize Content Marketing to Increase Engagement (2020)

10. Integration of sales and marketing

The lines between sales and marketing have blurred in B2B organizations. Alignment between the two departments is crucial, with joint strategies, shared goals, and close collaboration to drive revenue growth. Marketing is no longer solely responsible for generating leads but plays a significant role in supporting the sales process throughout the buyer’s journey.

We navigate this relationship a ton with our clients (and within our own org!). Sometimes we’re working with an internal marketing team, sometimes it’s an outsourced CMO, and often it’s a sales leader who is our point of contact. With clear expectations and well-defined roles, sales and marketing can work as well as peanut butter and jelly. 

📂 From the Accelity archives: Become a Sales and Marketing Rockstar with SLAs (2018)

What will the next 10 years have in store for B2B marketing?

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how some of these bleeding-edge trends from 2013 would become standard practice in a decade. While we might have envisioned the potential for content marketing or automation, no one could have prediction the massive way a global pandemic changed the way we work and communicate with one another. 

So, what will be doing in the next decade? Will we be marketing in the metaverse? Will data become so targeted that consumers barely have to shop, or will it finally be regulated? Will none of this matter because AI took our jobs? 

Regardless of what the future holds, Accelity is excited to spend the next 10 years digging into the trends and tools that will help us deliver stronger results for our clients.

Superpower Your Marketing Strategy with AI

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Superpower Your Marketing Strategy with AI

This blog is part of a three-part series on the potential uses of AI in B2B content marketing. Accelity team members are currently exploring available tools and how they can help us best serve our clients.

For as many articles as there are raising alarms about the dangers of AI, there are just as many mocking how bad AI still is at executing many tasks. When it comes to marketing, AI still isn’t ready to draft final versions of copy on demand or generate images of fingers.

Where AI really shines in marketing is its role as a strategy tool. AI works best when it’s used as a jumping-off point that helps marketers take an idea and move it forward. If you know the right prompts, AI can give you myriad insights into your brand, competitors, audience and more. 

It’s like having a coworker to bounce ideas off of, but that coworker was trained on data models capturing decades of information. And also doesn’t steal your lunch in the breakroom. 

We asked our Marketing Account Manager Stephanie Roland for her input on how she’s using ChatGPT to generate new insights, validate hypotheses, and brainstorm concepts for her clients. 

A note on ChatGPT—AI tools that help marketers have existed for years, but the conversation really took off when OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. When this freemium chatbot launched, it became the fastest-growing app in the history of the Internet. While there are other tools available, such as Taskade, we’re going to focus specifically on ChatGPT and its reinforcement learning model to discuss how it can help with brainstorming and marketing strategy.

4 ways marketers can use AI for campaign strategy

1. Idea generation 

The responses ChatGPT generates—ranging from boringly traditional to wildly hilarious—make it a fun tool for brainstorming. By punching in details about your target audience, goals, and objectives, ChatGPT can offer a variety of concepts and campaign angles to explore.

Strategy consultant Julian Cole recently held a webinar that featured tons of awesome prompts for using ChatGPT for strategy. One of our favorites? Asking ChatGPT to generate r/showerthoughts about a topic, industry, brand or product. 

2. Audience analysis

Buyer persona research is a huge part of building a successful marketing strategy, and it takes a lot of time. ChatGPT can summarize information about target audiences and uncover new personas to gain a broad understanding of who you’re marketing to. Plus with the handy chat model, marketers can ask follow-up questions about customer demographics, preferences, and behavior to better understand their audience and tailor their campaigns accordingly.

Here is the incredibly thorough buyer persona profile it created for our example based on a super simple prompt:

Create a buyer persona for the founder of a tech startup where they are the only employee

Name: Sarah Techwell

Background Information:

  • Age: 35
  • Gender: Female
  • Education: Holds a master’s degree in computer science
  • Work Experience: Has 10 years of experience in the tech industry, including working for established companies and startups.
  • Family Status: Single, no children
  • Location: Based in a tech hub city like San Francisco or Austin

Demographics:

  • Occupation: Founder and CEO of a tech startup
  • Industry: Technology
  • Company Size: Currently the only employee

Goals and Motivations:

  1. Building a Successful Tech Startup: Sarah is driven by her desire to build a successful technology startup from scratch. She wants to create a product or service that disrupts the industry and gains significant market traction.
  2. Solving a Problem: Sarah is motivated by identifying and solving a pressing problem in the market. She wants her startup to provide a unique and innovative solution that improves people’s lives or business operations.
  3. Autonomy and Independence: Sarah values the freedom and autonomy that comes with being an entrepreneur. She enjoys having control over the decision-making process and being able to shape the direction of her own company.
  4. Financial Success: While not the primary motivation, Sarah is aware of the financial potential that comes with running a successful tech startup. She wants her hard work to be financially rewarding and hopes to secure funding or achieve profitability in the long run.

Challenges:

  1. Limited Resources: As the only employee, Sarah faces the challenge of limited resources, including time, manpower, and financial capital. She must be resourceful and efficient in managing all aspects of her startup.
  2. Wearing Multiple Hats: Sarah is responsible for various roles within her startup, such as product development, marketing, sales, finance, and customer support. This requires her to have a diverse skill set and the ability to switch between tasks quickly.
  3. Competing with Established Players: Sarah’s startup is likely to face competition from established players in the industry. She needs to differentiate her offering and find a unique value proposition that sets her apart from the competition.
  4. Scaling and Growth: Sarah must navigate the challenges of scaling her startup, including hiring and managing additional employees, expanding the customer base, and securing funding or investment to support growth.

Psychographics:

  1. Ambitious and Driven: Sarah is highly ambitious and has a strong drive to succeed. She is willing to put in the long hours and hard work required to build a successful startup.
  2. Risk-Taker: Sarah is comfortable taking calculated risks and embracing uncertainty. She understands that entrepreneurship involves inherent risks and is willing to face them head-on.
  3. Innovative and Creative: Sarah values innovation and embraces creative problem-solving. She thrives on finding unique and out-of-the-box solutions to challenges.
  4. Tech Enthusiast: Sarah has a deep passion for technology and keeps up with the latest trends and advancements in the industry. She enjoys exploring new technologies and incorporating them into her startup’s offerings.

3. Messaging and positioning

Developing the perfect brand messaging statements can take hours of finding exactly the right words. Marketers can use ChatGPT to rework and refine their messaging and positioning strategies. By discussing the unique selling points of a product or service, target audience needs, and competitive landscape, ChatGPT can provide suggestions and help optimize marketing messages for maximum impact.

Here’s the brand messaging statement ChatGPT wrote for MediConnectPro, a fake healthtech it also created earlier in the chat:

Brand Messaging Statement for MediConnectPro:

“At MediConnectPro, we believe in simplifying healthcare through innovative technology. Our mission is to empower healthcare organizations with a comprehensive and user-friendly platform that streamlines communication, enhances collaboration, and revolutionizes data management. With MediConnectPro, healthcare professionals can focus on what truly matters – providing exceptional patient care. Join us in embracing a future where healthcare is efficient, interconnected, and driven by the power of digital transformation. Discover a new era of healthcare with MediConnectPro, where communication meets excellence.”

4. Competitive analysis

Yes, you can go to each competitor’s website and spend time clicking through all the pages, reading their content, and checking their social (and you should still do that, too). But ChatGPT can synthesize what it knows about competitors quickly to help you get a high-level overview of the competition. You can even ask follow-up questions to find opportunities to outperform in areas where the competitor brand is lacking. 

When NOT to use AI for campaign strategy

The common refrain when using AI is to proceed with caution; even ChatGPT now has disclaimers at the end of some of its responses reminding people that it isn’t always accurate.

When asked about the benefits of using ChatGPT for campaign strategy, it added this caveat:
It’s important to note that while ChatGPT can provide valuable insights and recommendations, it’s always advisable to combine AI-generated suggestions with human expertise and critical thinking to create well-rounded marketing campaign strategies.

See? Even the robot agrees: AI works best with human expertise. 

With that reminder, it’s important to note that AI shouldn’t be your only tool. Here’s why:

  • AI cannot develop the campaign for you. You know the client or brand much better than AI. You’ll need to add the human element—empathy, humor, culture, etc.—to make the campaign successful. 
  • AI isn’t “set it and forget it.” First, you need to verify that the information ChatGPT provided is accurate. You’ll also need to continue to test and optimize what you found in the brainstorming stage. 
  • AI doesn’t have the most up-to-date information. If your competitor is relatively new, or you want to build a campaign around a new product, ChatGPT likely won’t be useful as its models were trained in 2021. 

Kickstart your strategy with the help of AI

When it comes to brainstorming and uncovering new ideas, ChatGPT’s wacky responses are an advantage. Bouncing ideas off of the robot can help you think about a problem or solution in a totally different way, uncovering the seed that will eventually become your super-effective strategy. While marketers should always make sure to verify and monitor AI outputs, the ideas it can generate will help unlock insights you might never have imagined. 

Exploring the Role of Generative AI in Copywriting

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Exploring the Role of Generative AI in Copywriting

This blog is part of a three-part series on the potential uses of AI in B2B content marketing. Accelity team members are currently exploring available tools and how they can help us best serve our clients.

When you think of using AI tools for marketing, perhaps the first thing you think of is how to use them for writing projects. If students are using it for their homework, marketers are using it for their assignments too, right?

Yes and no. While AI tools like ChatGPT can whip up a blog post (using your target keywords and in the brand voice) in a matter of seconds it… still sounds like a robot wrote it. So while AI isn’t coming for our jobs (at least any time soon), there are still some really cool ways it’s helping us to write stronger copy.

We asked our Senior Copywriter Michelle Breen which AI tools she’s been testing for content marketing. (This is all meta; Michelle is writing this blog with the help of the robots!) 

Join us as we share what we’ve learned about the AI tools available to copywriters, how we can use them to optimize client work, and when it’s best to stick to good old-fashioned human copywriters. 

Tools our Copy team is testing

  • ChatGPT: The freemium chatbot developed by OpenAI and the most popular AI tool since its launch in November 2022. With the right prompt, ChatGPT can do anything from writing an ebook to planning the perfect vacation itinerary. 
  • Copy.ai: The tool I was using before ChatGPT. Because Copy.ai is specifically marketing focused, its templates, prompts, and outputs are much more helpful. Users can generate only a certain number of words for free each month. 
  • Simplified: Simplified is an AI tool for content creators, not just copywriters. It has dozens of templates for generating email, social, web copy and more. (I use it when I run out of my free credits on Copy.ai). 
  • HubSpot AI: This is a new feature still in beta and powered by OpenAI. Since we’re a HubSpot marketing agency our team has slowly been getting access to see how we can use it with our clients (stay tuned!). 
  • GrammarlyGO: Grammarly’s AI has been powering our copy for years by suggesting edits for clearing writing. It just launched an AI feature to help with rewrites, voice changes, cuts and other improvements. 

4 ways copywriters can use AI for content marketing

1. Outlining blogs and long-form content

The worst part about writing content, especially long-form content, is staring at the cursor on your screen when trying to get started. AI can kickstart your momentum by coming up with an outline and filling in subtopics for each section. It often provides a solid framework copywriters can build from. 

2. Generate multiple variations of copy

Copywriters know all too well that when you’re writing a campaign, you say the same things OVER and OVER. While that can be good—prospects need to see a message multiple times for it to be effective—it can also be repetitive. AI can help writers come up with fresh new ways to state a message. 

3. Rewrite copy in a different voice

Just because we work with B2B SaaS doesn’t mean it has to be B2Boring. Our clients each have their own unique voice, and AI tools can help rewrite copy to fit different brands. However, AI doesn’t understand humor very well. (Have you ever asked Siri or Alexa to tell you a joke?) So while these tools can’t fully capture writing as your client, they can give you some ideas for making copy more engaging. See the example below. 

Let us help you win more clients. Schedule a demo today.  

4. Brainstorm headlines, subject lines and microcopy

Writing 1,000 words on the challenges insurance agencies face when they rely on manual processes? Easy enough. Coming up with an eye-catching headline for that blog? The hardest part. AI can help with the brainstorming and include the necessary keywords too. 

You can see the titles ChatGPT suggested for this blog post above. There are some solid choices, but we ultimately chose “Exploring the Role of Generative AI in Copywriting.” ChatGPT usually LOVES a subtitle, which can make a title pretty lengthy; plus, we didn’t want to make it seem like the blog would be a full endorsement of using AI (see the next section). 

How NOT to use AI in copywriting

We’re all learning here! There are many great potential uses for AI in copywriting, but before you fire your copy team, here’s what you need to know. 

AI does not know about recent events. 

AI is pretty limited in its knowledge of current events. If you’re writing about how proposed legislation could impact your audience, for example, it’s not going to be able to help you. Need a basic overview of Abraham Lincoln’s biography? Sure. Need to know how the most recent unemployment numbers are impacting your sector? AI can’t help. 

AI will not create novel or unique ideas.

Whether you’re a CEO trying to find a faster way to write marketing emails or a marketing director looking for ad campaign ideas, AI can only get your started. It might think of something you didn’t, but because it’s based on existing content, it got its ideas from someone who already thought of it (that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms). It’s up to you to take that inspiration and make it sound new to fit your brand. 

AI lacks the human touch. 

Sorry CFOs, you still need people. People are much better than robots at understanding emotions, sarcasm, tone, brand, and other nuances. These subtleties are what make great marketing campaigns so effective: they resonate with the audience on a human level. AI can help you get started with brainstorming (learn more about that in our campaign strategy post), but it’s up to the copywriter to choose the right words to drive the message home. 

Conclusion: It’s a start

In conclusion, generative AI has the potential to revolutionize B2B copywriting. With the ability to quickly produce large amounts of text and automate repetitive tasks, it can save time and increase productivity for copywriters. AI-powered tools can also help generate creative and engaging content, while still allowing for human input and oversight. However, it’s important to remember that AI-generated copy is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are still scenarios where human writers may be better suited for the task. By using AI in conjunction with human writers and understanding its limitations, businesses can leverage the power of AI to improve their B2B copywriting and stay ahead in a competitive market. The future of B2B copywriting is looking bright with the help of generative AI.

^ ChatGPT wrote that. It’s not how I would’ve concluded; I would keep it shorter and not spend so much time repeating the blog. It’s also not the main takeaway from the blog, but I’m not surprised the robot assumes it’s making my future look bright. 

So, what do we think? AI is a great tool for helping copywriters get started on writing tasks, but good marketing still demands the human element to resonate with the target audience: humans.

B2B Digital Marketing Resources You Need in 2023

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B2B Digital Marketing Resources You Need in 2023

A new year is the perfect time to evaluate your B2B SaaS company’s marketing performance and chart your path for the coming months. 

Whether you’re looking to break through in your vertical, want to master LinkedIn, or just need some help setting realistic goals, Accelity has you covered. Check out four of our favorite digital marketing resources created by our team of B2B SaaS pros. 

Your comprehensive guide to insurtech digital marketing

Today, insurtech marketing is all about building a full digital engine, one that attracts and converts modern insurance buyers. 

In this comprehensive guide, we share 3 strategies actually driving results for the insurtechs we work with, so you can crush your goals in 2023 (and beyond). 

Crack the code on insurtech marketing >>>

 

Build B2B LinkedIn ads that actually work

Are LinkedIn Ads really worth the investment? How much budget do you need to allocate to get results? 

Accelity’s Director of Strategic Marketing, Michael Ray, led a webinar sharing how he uses LinkedIn advertising to drive every part of his client’s marketing funnel to generate quality leads. 

Catch the recap to master LinkedIn Ads>>>

 

 

Massively increase awareness & generate leads on LinkedIn

Are you a B2B SaaS company spending a bunch of time on LinkedIn—but your pages are growing painfully slow and you’re generating next to no leads?

Accelity CEO & founder Jackie Hermes shared how to drastically increase the eyeballs on your B2B SaaS company and create a strong lead-generating engine—all by using LinkedIn. 

Watch the webinar to build your brand>>>

 

 

How to set business goals (and achieve them)

Setting goals and objectives for your business and marketing initiatives is important, especially at the beginning of the year. 

We put together a worksheet that will cover goal setting for your business and an accompanying exercise to help you get started.

Download the goal-setting worksheet >>>

We hope you find these digital marketing resources helpful and that you use them to reach your marketing goals in 2023!

5 Ways to Attract Better Prospects on LinkedIn

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5 Ways to Attract Better Prospects on LinkedIn

There are a lot of misconceptions about LinkedIn’s use cases as a sales and marketing tool. As a business leader, you may think LinkedIn is simply a place for job hunters, and your audience isn’t there. (They are…we’ll get to that!)

In reality, LinkedIn’s growth over the past few years hasn’t slowed down. According to recent site stats, over 830 million users are now on the platform.

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What Does Good Marketing Cost a B2B SaaS Company?

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What Does Good Marketing Cost a B2B SaaS Company?

CEOs and CMOs ask us this question all the time: “How much should I spend on marketing?” And the answer is… it depends. 

Honestly, you can run a marketing program with no budget, but you get what you pay for. On the other hand—regardless of whether you have money—you have to be willing to put in the time to be successful with your marketing efforts.

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Bird Watching in Brew City: Meet Nate!

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Bird Watching in Brew City: Meet Nate!

Nate Panetti

At Accelity, we believe the culture we build internally directly impacts the quality of work we create for our clients. That’s why we’ve assembled a team of kick-SaaS B2B marketers who are not only pros at their jobs but also a whole lotta fun. 

We invite you to get to know our talented team members so you can see what we’re all about. Come meet our Graphic Designer, Nate Panetti!

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