June 15, 2023

5 Ways Agencies Can Leverage AI to Win More Customers

Darcy Bickham

5 Ways Agencies Can Leverage AI to Win More Customers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the world of marketing. With conversational chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard on the rise, marketers can leverage AI in many new ways. As an agency professional, it's critical to stay on top of the latest in AI and discover effective strategies to increase efficiency by incorporating it into client marketing campaigns. With so much information, determining where to begin can take time. This blog can help! We'll discuss five ways your agency can get started with AI and how you can utilize it to positively impact your client’s bottom line. We also have an infographic at the bottom of the blog that highlights the top takeaways. Let's get started!

1. Provide Added Value

Showing that your agency is informed and leveraging the latest AI can give you a leg up on the competition. AI is continuously making headlines and being discussed by marketers. As an agency professional, it's your job to be aware of these conversations and answer any questions your clients may have. Better yet, you can proactively provide clients with updates on the latest AI technology and showcase how you'll use it to improve their marketing outcomes. Let’s say a prospective client is deciding between two agencies, and one showcases how they leverage AI in their marketing efforts, and the other doesn't, which one do you think the prospect will go with? As an agency professional, you should always look for ways to add value for your clients, and AI can help! If you're looking to keep up with the latest in AI technology and localized marketing, consider subscribing to our weekly Local Memo newsletter.

2. Automate Processes

One of the most significant benefits of AI is its ability to automate processes. You can use AI to analyze large data sets, streamline repetitive tasks, and optimize marketing campaigns that usually take hours of planning. For instance, many online reputation management platforms are partnering with AI to automate review responses. This added benefit is a huge time saver for clients with 100s or 1,000s of business locations, allowing your agency to focus on other areas of your clients’ marketing strategies. Below is an example of Bard drafting a response to a restaurant review complaining about long wait times.

An example of Google's Bard responding to the prompt "Respond to a review complaining about a long wait time at a restaurant"

It's worth noting that while automation is helpful, a human touch is still needed. For instance, conversational chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard may still make mistakes. It's also important to be transparent with your clients about where AI is being used. Since AI is still relatively new, some clients may hesitate to use it for specific efforts. You can avoid potential issues if your agency is transparent about when and where your agency plans to use AI. This blog should also give you the knowledge needed to explain to clients the benefits of AI.

3. Develop Fresh Content Ideas

Like automating processes, AI can help your agency develop fresh content ideas! When juggling numerous clients, developing countless creative social posts, email copy, and longer-form content can be challenging. That's where AI comes in. Using the same conversational chatbots mentioned above, your agency can ask for ideas on blog topics, how to write a fun social post around the first day of summer, or how to personalize an email about upcoming changes to a client's restaurant. In the example below, we've asked ChatGPT for some blog topics for retailers focusing on the start of summer.

A computer screen showing the responses ChatGPT provides when asked to share blog ideas for retailers at the start of summer

You can take this same example and ask the chatbot to create ideas for a social media campaign or have it draft social posts for you. Again, we recommend verifying the tool's output to ensure its accuracy. If you need additional help developing a strong local social strategy for your clients, download our Localized Social Content Guide.

4. Improve SEO and Online Visibility

In recent use cases, AI has also been found to help improve local SEO efforts and search visibility. AI has existed in search engines for several years and ensures that the content served in search results meets Google's E.E.A.T criteria (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness). Your clients’ content must meet these criteria to be competitive. If your agency is helping specific clients with their SEO efforts, there are a few ways that AI technologies can help. For instance, you can use AI to maximize keyword research. Tools like Semrush leverage AI and can help you quickly identify trending topics and new keyword opportunities for clients. They also draft a keyword report on the search volume, keyword difficulty, and user intent for dozens of keywords. On the other hand, generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard can help your agency optimize content from an SEO perspective. This includes but is not limited to, drafting meta descriptions, inserting keywords throughout the content, and creating title tags. For a more detailed look at AI and SEO, check out our blog on the topic. If you're looking for additional ways to improve your clients' SEO efforts, our Top 10 Things You Should Be Doing in Local SEO Now guide can help!

5. Increase ROI

Last, and arguably most important, AI can help you increase the return on investment (ROI) for your agency and its clients. With processes now automated, you'll have more time to focus on other efforts and will ultimately garner better results for them. This is a win/win situation because not only will your clients start to see better marketing outcomes resulting in increased revenue, but your agency will have more time to take on new clients or expand the scope of work with current clients, boosting ROI. Let's get into the specifics. Using AI to improve your SEO efforts will again help boost a client's online visibility and win more sales. Alternatively, using AI to develop content ideas will save your internal team time they would otherwise spend brainstorming, which they can now use to help the business grow elsewhere. Improving ROI is at the top of every marketer's mind, and AI can help! For additional ways to add value to your clients, check out our Guide to Localized Marketing ROI for Agencies.

Strengthen Your Clients’ Marketing Efforts With AI

Now that you understand how AI can be leveraged to serve your clients better, it's time to begin using it. Finding a marketing solution your agency can use to execute all areas of your clients’ marketing strategies while incorporating AI is challenging. That's why we're excited to introduce SOCi Genius! The SOCi Genius platform provides agencies with actionable insights and recommendations for clients while automating their most important workflows at scale. With SOCi, agencies can strengthen their clients' digital presence across local search and social pages — all while protecting their online reputation, driving customer engagement, and generating market-leading results. As a part of SOCi Genius, we have Genius Reviews. SOCi Genius Reviews integrates our award-winning review response management tool with GPT-4 to transform how marketers respond to reviews. It combines cutting-edge AI technology, advanced on-brand training models, and leading localization and automation tools to deliver a highly customizable and automated system for managing reviews.

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