Everything you need to know about content automation

When you hear the words ‘content automation’ or ‘content automation’ there’s a good chance that the first thing you’ll think about is using ChatGPT to write blog posts or create designs for you. 

And while that is technically automating your creative process, that’s not what we’ll be focusing on here. Mainly because using generative AI to create content is still pretty inconsistent when it comes to quality.

So, before we get any further, let’s answer a couple of questions about content automation.

What is content automation?

Content automation, or creative automation as it is sometimes referred to, is the process of automating your content creation process by removing the need for human intervention in your content lifecycle. The primary objective of content automation is to automate any content process that is either repetitive, time consuming or expensive.  

Essentially it is the act of creating marketing assets in large volumes quickly—usually print, online or video assets. And while AI generated content would fall into the same category the best way to handle content automation is usually based on rules and dynamic templates as this approach has less chance of creating faulty assets.

When it comes to creative teams, content automation can take several forms depending on the project needs. It can be used when creating assets in many different languages, regional dialects or with localized imagery, content automation can be used to manage sizes and formats when creating the same asset for different social media channels, and it can be used when redesigning layouts for seasonal campaigns and promotions.

What is the difference between marketing automation, content automation, and creative automation?

Marketing automation is the act of using software and online services to execute, manage, and automate marketing tasks and processes to boost campaign performance and efficiency usually by replacing repetitive manual marketing processes.

Both content automation and creative automation is a part of marketing automation as a whole, and the two are largely synonymous terms for automating content creation.

Content automation is most commonly used when discussing content creation for organic channels such as websites and social media platforms where creative automation is usually used when discussing automating creative assets for advertising campaigns.

How do you integrate content automation into your business processes?

It really depends on the type of content creation you want to automate, but when it comes to automating content localization or building creative assets for a campaign or promotion, it works best when integrated with your organization’s digital asset management system and product information management system and feeds information into your content automation projects.

A creative automation system that is isolated from your other systems hold much of the same issues as AI generated content in the sense that there’s a larger margin for errors.

Who needs content automation?

Content automation is mostly used by creative, marketing, and production professionals who manage complex, time consuming content or creative projects. The more complex the production task you are handling is, the more you will benefit from content automation.

But that doesn’t mean creatives are the only stakeholders when it comes to content automation. Far from it. Among those usually benefitting from content automation are leaders within technology, ecommerce, operations and buying/category teams.

What are the benefits of content automation?

There are lots of benefits to using content automation in your marketing operations. For instance, content automation can lead to:

• Faster turnaround when creating marketing assets
• Simpler processes for creating marketing assets
• Ability to create marketing assets in large volumes without straining your teams
• The ability to easily scale the creation of marketing assets up or down depending on needs
• Empowering others to independently create and adapt assets, reducing the likelihood of bottlenecks.

How do you know if you need to think about content automation?

If any of the following statements are true for you, it would be worth it to at least considering content automation:

• You’re using spreadsheets to manage content creation workflows
• You want to improve the control you have over your asset production
• It takes you too long to produce even simple marketing assets
• You operate in multiple channels, markets, languages and/or media formats
• Your marketing campaigns get bottlenecked by creative tasks
• It’s hard for your teams to find assets for a specific product.

Which department should own automating content creation in a company?

As with all things, it really depends on the company. If we’re talking a retail brand it may be marketing or buying/category management that owns the but if we’re talking a production agency it may be business operations who manages it.

As long as the system you choose is not a stand alone system and is linked to your workflows and processes it is not hugely important specifically who owns it.

How does the Encodify Creative automation Studio differ from other solutions?

Where a lot of content automation systems are standalone systems, the Creative automation studio for Encodify has been designed to work with your other business operations tools. 

Our approach is to design the technology solution using multiple tools to deliver the most optimal solution that fits your business case. 

Because of that the Encodify Creative automation studio has an in-process view of your workflows, and easily integrates with your DAM, PIM and proofing tools across departments and functions.