Learn How Agencies Are Using Generative AI for Efficiency

Generative AI is making waves in the business world. And that has piqued the interest of agency leaders who are always looking to make processes efficient and cut time.

There are several agency workflows where generative AI can be supremely assistive. But since this is a new domain, you may be unaware of where to start. Or what are the processes where you can take help from generative AI?

In this article, you’ll find the areas where generative AI can do the heavy lifting for your agency. Also, I’ll share with you some ways to implement the technology for your processes.

Get ready to board the AI train, I have done my best to make it plain sailing for you!

Generative AI for Agencies: Worth the Hype?

ChatGPT was released on 30th November 2022 and took the world by storm. A million people were using the platform in just 5 days.

For perspective – it took Facebook 10 months to reach the million-user mark. 2.5 months for Instagram. So, people were really amped up about this “New Cool”.

Turns out, it’s the REAL DEAL. Generative AI is helping businesses in newer ways. With great prompts, you can get great outputs and save loads of time. It can’t replace human brains yet but it can significantly reduce efforts.

Champions in various fields are already using GPT to get things done quicker. In fact, a recent study by MIT shows that assistive GPT can reduce the time taken for some jobs by up to 40%. And I’m sure more such research will show up as time passes.

Another collaborative study between Stanford and MIT on 5,000 customer service agents at a Fortune 500 company showed that AI can significantly increase productivity. It improved across the board and up to 35% in some cases.

While Generative AI tech is still new, it’s definitely worth the hype. People are getting comfortable with it daily and letting AI do the heavy lifting for them.

You can automate tasks, get ideas fast, and make delays a thing of the past!

Won’t that be a dream for you as an agency leader? So, AI is definitely worth the hype. Read on to find out why. And in the end, you’ll find out how agency owners just like yourself are using AI to get more done.

Let’s explore some of the areas where you can take assistance from generative AI.

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Generative AI Assistance for Agency Issues

Agencies encounter problems all the time. Some of them just need better communication or probably a coffee cup. But for other problems and processes, you can definitely put AI to work.

Let’s see some examples of common agency problems and processes where AI can carry the load for you and boost overall efficiency.

1. Speed up Ideation Processes

Many times, boats for certain tasks don’t sail because ideas don’t flow as they should. As someone in the creative field, I also understand this struggle.

Sometimes I’d stare at the white canvas and be completely clueless about how to begin or what direction to take. Thankfully, I at least finish the idea collection pretty quickly with Generative AI.

This helps me get more done without losing time. One simple prompt can open you up to brilliant ideas. Here’s an example below:

I asked GPT to give me ideas to work with for a travel blog, and it opened up a list for me. I can now choose what I like and get to work. Remember, GPT can be as creative as the prompts you share with it.

In the example above, I gave AI the role of an animator and set up a context. You can see that it put out some brilliant ideas to work with.

With ideation time brought to almost zero, your resources can now apply the time to get the work done.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“I am looking to appreciate my agency employees for their performances. My budget per employee is $300. Give me some ideas for activities that I can do to make them feel appreciated”

“My agency got a new animation project. The client sells storybooks for kids and is starting a YT channel for kids. Suggest me some ideas that I can pitch to the client”

2. Assistance With Administrative Processes

Agencies rarely have a fixed work schedule.

Agency employees can get many “unplanned” administrative tasks, which can consume much of their time and stray them from the deadlines.

Let’s assume you are looking for a new developer. This is how the interaction will look like:

Manager: Hey Joe, can you write a JD for a new senior developer quickly? We are looking for someone with an experience of over 5 years and who should be fluent with XYZ tech stack!

Joe: Alright, I’ll do it!

Meanwhile, Joe would think he’ll lose time doing this task. Plus, it could very well make him lose focus. And that’s just one example. Administrative tasks like these can take a significant chunk of the week and can be just irritating when they come out of the blue.

With GPT, you can cram such hours-taking administrative tasks into a few minutes. Here’s an example of how.

I asked GPT for a JD using the following prompt:

“Hey GPT, write me a JD for a senior Python developer. We are looking for someone with an experience of over 5 years.

Just write the JD and leave out the extra details”

And look what it delivered:

It thoroughly covered qualifications, job responsibilities, and key competencies required of the candidate. It also gave a benefits section.

So, you have everything ready. You must fill in the company-specific details and review the results to see if GPT missed something important. And it’s ready to publish.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“I want to get approval for a national holiday from the client. Please write me an email that is polite and convincing”

“My agency needs a new graphics designer. The person must also have some command over video editing. Please write a suitable job description for me”

3. Help With Website Development

GPT is literally a developer sitting in your pocket. If you are a website development agency, using GPT can help you significantly reduce production time.

Of course, that’ll not remove the need for a professional developer. And there may be instances where GPT will give strayed answers. So a professional will know how to run through the GPT outputs and rectify errors.

In the example above, I asked GPT to assume the developer role and generate an output for the carousel in Javascript. It gave me comprehensive codes for HTML, CSS, and JS.

And that’s not all. You can write code in other popular languages like C, C++, Python, etc. Also, developers can use it for other purposes as well, such as:

• Getting code alternates,
• Highlighting errors or bugs in their code,
• Generating documents,
• Implementing best coding practices,

And others. So the use cases are many, which’ll lessen the time to finish the work.

To go into even more depth, you can utilize coding plugins offered by GPT-4.

Above are just some of the examples of the available plugins for coding purposes. Sure, there’s a lot for AI to improve. But even in its current form, it can greatly assist your agency with development processes.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“I want to cut down the extra lines of my Python code and make it as readable as possible. Review my code and point out the areas where I can improve. [Submit your code]”

“I can’t figure out the error in my code. Please run through it and help me find what’s wrong. [Submit your code]”

4. Email Production and Automation

Confused about the tone, content matter, and the overall setup of emails? Use GPT to craft personalized emails with the right tone.

For context, let’s look at an example below:

The email was almost there as is. If I had to send it to someone, I’d make a few tweaks to make it more personalized, and it’d be good to go. And if you are looking to send bulk emails, you can also do that.

But you’ll need someone with decent automation knowledge, let’s say about Python, to create and run scripts for bulk emailing.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“I’m looking for a cold email idea that will personalize the message to my [ideal customer persona] by using their name, mentioning a recent purchase or interaction, and then persuading them to take [desired action] with a sense of appreciation and gratitude.”

“Give me a cold email idea that will leverage the power of storytelling to connect with my [ideal customer persona] emotionally and then persuade them to take [desired action] with a compelling narrative that resonates with their values and beliefs.”

5. Better Content Creation (Graphics/Videos Included)

Anyone interested in any sort of presence on the internet needs content. Businesses, individuals, NGOs, etc.

With AI, you can create content so fast. Sure, the content still sounds robotic. But when you have something to work with, you can easily apply the human touch and save time. This applies to text-form content, videos, and graphic content.

There are so many tools for agencies available to assist you in this domain. Some of the top ones that you can explore are:

With the right prompts and some human management, you can immensely pace up your content creation process.

Note: Be wary of using AI-generated text content as it is. You can get reprimanded by the search engines and may lose your rankings.

6. Effective Keyword Research

This area is your bread and butter if your agency does anything SEO-related.

Even though SEO has evolved greatly over the course of years, KW research and incorporation still make up the foundation. Your task is to search for keywords that are your users’ search intent.

Sure, many tools are available to help you do that, such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, etc., but you can also put GPT to work for this task. At least, you can gather many keyword ideas that you can further refine using other tools.

Suppose you have to write a blog titled “How to Improve Your Car’s Engine Life” for a client who offers car repair services. Let’s analyze an example below and see how GPT can help you in this domain:

It has given me a good list of keywords that are very relevant to the topic. To understand these KWs better, I probed GPT a little.

I asked it why it showed me these keywords. What makes these KWs reasonable to use? And it gave me a solid answer.

And you can see that it’s answer truly reflects SEO best practices for hunting KWs. So, it’s definitely a tool worth the exploration.

You can cherry-pick KWs with potential and run them through other tools. Even this simple process will save you so much time manually hunting the keywords and losing your precious time on research.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“I am writing web content for clients who [add service/what they do]. Suggest me a list of 20 keywords to use that will help me rank better”

“I need a list of [no. of KWs] for a blog that I am writing on the [Topic Title].”

7. Effective Campaign Research and Planning

Creating and planning campaign briefs can take hours. Even weeks in some cases. Because there’s so much to brainstorm about. Then streamlining the ideas is another challenge to tackle.

But now, brainstorming for ideas can be super easy. For most cases, GPT can dump you with loads of ideas that’d otherwise take some much time for brainstorming. The volume of suggestions you get will relax your mental muscle immensely.

You can then pluck out the ideas that you think are workable and move toward their execution. GPT can create schedules for you for weeks, days, and even individual hours.

I created a rough planner and some research ideas for an “assumed marketing campaign.”

I made GPT assume the role of a Marketing Head and asked it for marketing ideas for a client’s campaign. I limited it to just 5 ideas, but you can ask for as many as you like.

Then, I asked for a planner in the form of a table. It did a pretty impressive job. You can just treat it as a template for your agency and fill in the client-specific details. It’ll save you lots of time and help your team take off from planning to execution pretty fast.

Example prompts for this purpose:

“Imagine you are a marketer. Your client needs a schedule of daily activities you’ll do for them for the next 15 days. Build me a table and include the following fields: [Fill the fields with your requirements]

“Give a template for ad campaigns to use for my client in [industry name].”

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Staying Updated With AI News and Trends

AI is still a new and budding thing in the tech scene. Many people are still getting accustomed to using it.

You may want to stay updated with the latest AI developments as an agency leader. To help your cause, I’ve gathered some of the best resources that you can follow and get the hang of the latest AI developments.

1. Superhuman

It’s an amazing newsletter to explore and update yourself on the latest AI developments. Superhuman is owned and managed by Zain Kahn, who is fast becoming an authority on AI.

He has over 700,000 followers on LinkedIn and half a million followers on Twitter. The newsletter itself has 350,000+ subscribers.

He shared exciting AI stuff and how businesses can grow using AI technology. Definitely, something to keep an eye on.

2. Artisana

Artisana.ai is another website that’ll help you stay informed about AI developments. The website keeps an overall pulse of the AI world and covers vast topics such as AI policies, how to use tech to improve agency processes, what companies have started using AI, etc.

3. Ruben Hassid

Ruben Hassid managed to gather over 200,000 followers on LI in a short span of a year. He’s commended for his command over what prompts to use with GPT and get amazing results.

He also shares insights on how to use AI for better SEO, content creation, video creation, etc. Visit his profile and see if you find something to help you improve your agency processes.

How Are Experts at Agencies Leveraging AI?

Let’s now see how the experts already use AI at their agencies.

1. Achieving Better SERP Rankings With AI

John Baek, Founder at JSB Digital Works

Before AI, our metadata optimization and content strategy approach was highly manual and time-consuming. We often relied on iterative A/B testing and manual keyword research to guide our decisions, which, while effective, didn’t scale as our client base grew.

With AI, we’ve experienced a sharp uptick in efficiency and quality with on-page optimization for blogs and web pages.

For example, our AI tools now generate meta title/description suggestions, generate outlines, and even help with semantic keyword clustering.

The benefits have been clear:

• Enhanced content relevance
• Better SERP rankings for our clients
• A notable reduction in our team’s time spent on-page improvements.

2. Enhanced Content Audits

Michelle Symonds, Founder at Ditto Digital

I have implemented AI solutions to enhance our content and SEO audit processes over the last few months.

The benefits of using AI within our processes are:

1. It has enabled us to quickly and easily fine-tune content to include more of the natural phrases and terms that are typically used by humans when writing about a topic but are not directly related to the main topic.

2. It is much quicker to perform a content analysis because it is fully automated. In contrast, before, it was partially automated but also required lengthy human analysis to compare client content with competitor content.

3. The AI-powered content analysis has meant that our SEO audits can provide more details about which areas of a web page to optimize.

3. Assistance With the Overall Functions of the Agency

Milosz Krasinski, Managing Director at Chilli Fruit Web

In our small agency, where we operate with a lean team of just six employees, implementing AI, particularly GPT, has become a transformative component of our daily operations.

Functioning as a versatile personal assistant, GPT has seamlessly integrated into various aspects of our business, offering benefits and efficiency that have far exceeded our expectations.

AI helps us with administrative tasks such as writing compelling job descriptions, automating cold email campaigns, and even assisting in scheduling. It’s as if we’ve added an extra employee to our team without the associated costs.

AI has reduced the administrative workload and enabled us to respond more quickly to opportunities and client needs. The flexibility and efficiency provided by AI have given us the agility to compete with larger agencies.

By embracing technology like GPT, we have created a more streamlined and efficient workflow, enabling our limited team to achieve more. The journey from manual processes to AI-assisted operations has been rewarding, offering both immediate benefits and long-term growth potential.

4. AI Has Significantly Enhanced Our Operations

Lauren Hawk, Marketing and Public Relations Specialist at Tinge Communications

We harness AI to bolster operational efficiency and spur creativity. Here’s what this looks like in practice:

• Brainstorming Sessions: We often invite ChatGPT to our brainstorming meetings. The more minds (even AI ones!) at work to solve a problem, the better. Think: Idea Generation: ChatGPT leverages trending topics and historical performance data to generate various content and campaign ideas.

• Problem-Solving: It provides various solutions to challenges, fostering innovative thinking and efficient problem resolution.

• Data and Trends Analytics: We put data, analytics, and trends at the forefront of every strategy we develop. AI provides an invaluable layer of analysis and pattern detection, enhancing our interpretation and application of past data in our day-to-day operations.

• Project Management and Administrative Tasks: ChatGPT significantly boosts our project management capabilities, from optimally delegating tasks based on past performance and workload to tracking project progress and alerting us to potential delays. It also assists with administrative tasks like managing emails, scheduling meetings, and setting reminders, freeing our team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Our use of AI is effective because we already know what high-quality work looks like and can discern where AI can amplify our efforts.

AI is a valuable tool to improve our efficiency and stimulate creativity, but industry expertise, critical thinking, and professional experience remain central to our team’s operations. We understand where AI enhances our work and where the human element is irreplaceable.

Summary

Generative AI surely has immense adoption potential for agencies. The above-mentioned ways of using it clearly show how it can assist and make things efficient and less time-taking.

And it’s still early. As people spend more time with generative AI, more use cases will definitely pop up. As an agency, it’s your job to use the best of this technology and make your processes more efficient.

You can learn from the examples above, and you can come up with processes of your own. The ground is open for exploration. It all depends on how creatively you put the technology to use!