Marketing Against The Grain: How She Scaled an AI App to 3M Visitors/Mo Using AI SEO ft Chang Chen

Hosted by HubSpot Podcast Network | Release Date: November 26, 2024

In this insightful episode of Marketing Against The Grain, hosts Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan engage in a deep conversation with Chung Chen, a seasoned growth advisor renowned for her work with companies like Heygin, Microsoft, and Otter AI. The discussion centers on the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on marketing strategies, with a particular emphasis on AI-driven Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Below is a comprehensive summary capturing the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

1. The Evolution of Marketing in the Age of AI

Chung Chen begins by outlining her perspective on the evolution of marketing, emphasizing AI's pivotal role in this transformation.

Chung Chen [02:08]: "AI can be your employee that you should be able to delegate stuff to it. It's not here to replace anyone."

She traces the journey from the traditional TV-era marketing, characterized by mass-produced, non-personalized content, to the data-driven segmentation strategies that enabled more tailored marketing efforts. The advent of AI, however, marks a significant leap towards one-to-one personalization, where AI agents autonomously learn and adapt to individual user behaviors, delivering highly personalized experiences without extensive human oversight.

Chung elaborates on how AI shifts the marketer's role from creating broad segments based on experience and experimentation to leveraging AI's self-learning capabilities for nuanced personalization.

2. Core Use Cases of AI in Growth Marketing

The conversation delves into specific areas where AI is making significant strides in marketing:

• Localization: AI-driven translation tools reduce costs and accelerate content creation.

• AI Native Channels: Emerging traffic sources from AI search engines and AI answer engines, though still nascent compared to traditional SEO.

• AI SEO: Achieving substantial traffic increases, exemplified by driving 3 million monthly visitors within six months for a product.

• Influencer Campaigns: Utilizing AI to engage more micro-influencers efficiently, cutting costs by up to 80%.

• AI Conversion: Implementing AI agents for one-to-one personalization to convert more free users to paid subscribers.

• Content Repurposing: Leveraging AI to transform information-rich content into various formats, enhancing content scalability and versatility.

Chung Chen [06:08]: "Right now we are spending a lot of time on localization, SEO, and content repurposing and I'm very curious about where the AI native channels will grow."

3. AI-Driven SEO Workflow

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the AI SEO workflow developed by Chung Chen, designed to streamline and scale content creation for SEO purposes.

a. Keyword Research and Scraping: AI tools scrape Google search results, summarizing top SERP (Search Engine Results Page) data to identify key keywords and user intents.

Chung Chen [13:00]: "We have AI to connect to the Google search and scrape data and to learn the key points and to memorize the key data points that we should reference."

b. Content Summarization and Briefing: AI assists in summarizing search data and generating article briefs, which are then reviewed and refined by human editors to ensure quality and relevance.

c. Content Creation and Polishing: While AI drafts the initial content, human writers and editors infuse unique perspectives, ensuring the content stands out and aligns with brand voice.

d. Scaling with Automation Tools: Utilizing platforms like LOps, the workflow integrates various AI models for different tasks, enabling programmatic creation of landing pages via CMS platforms like Webflow.

Chung Chen [14:19]: "They have a native component for Google search... you can choose that for summarization you want to use one model. And for writing you can apply to a different model and you can combine and mix different models to create higher quality content as well."

e. Customizing Landing Pages: For product-focused landing pages, AI targets specific features with dedicated keywords, automatically generating tailored content for each page.

Chung Chen [18:34]: "For this one, which is the AI video app, it has all the different features for one feature. We actually identified 10 plus different keywords that we can target."

4. Maintaining Content Quality and Uniqueness

Chung emphasizes the importance of human oversight in the AI-driven content creation process to maintain quality and ensure uniqueness.

Chung Chen [15:23]: "Probably 50% or even sometimes more than 50%."

While AI handles the bulk of content generation, human editors play a crucial role in infusing personal experience, unique insights, and brand-specific information, thereby enhancing the content's value and ensuring it doesn't appear duplicated or generic.

Chung Chen [21:04]: "Most of the time it's the unique Content because we do see more and more people started to scale their content creation with AI. But at the end of the day, we are still the same Internet. We want to have information gain, we want to be able to stand out from the competition."

Key elements added by humans include:

• Unique Perspectives: Drawing from personal and professional experiences.

• Market Research Data: Embedding industry benchmarks and data points.

• User-Generated Content: Incorporating reviews and community discussions.

• Expert Insights: Leveraging content from interviews and specialized sources.

5. Performance Metrics and Outcomes

The AI-enhanced SEO strategies have yielded impressive results, with AI-created content performing on par with traditional human-only content.

Chung Chen [23:22]: "Most of the content we read is performing on par with the traditional human owning content."

Key achievements include:

• Traffic Growth: Scaling to millions of monthly visitors within a short timeframe.

• Cost Efficiency: Significant reductions in content creation costs.

• Productivity Gains: Allowing human teams to focus on creative and strategic tasks by automating repetitive tasks.

6. Common Mistakes to Avoid in AI SEO

Chung highlights several pitfalls that marketers should steer clear of to ensure effective AI SEO implementation:

1. Ignoring Keyword Intent: Failing to align content with the underlying intent of keywords can lead to ineffective content that doesn't meet user needs.

2. Targeting Overly Competitive Keywords: New websites should focus on niche, lower-difficulty keywords rather than attempting to rank for highly competitive terms initially.

3. Compromising Content Quality: Prioritizing quantity over quality can result in generic, low-value content that fails to engage users or rank well.

4. Lack of Unique Value: Creating AI-generated content without adding unique perspectives or additional value can lead to penalties from search engines and poor user engagement.

Chung Chen [28:10]: "The biggest mistake to avoid when it comes to AI SEO is like don't go and create a mass amount of AI generated content with LLMs that no human is working on improving like the quality, unique perspective, detail of information to make it really valuable and unique."

7. Practical Recommendations for Implementing AI SEO

For marketers looking to harness AI for SEO, Chung offers actionable advice:

• Start Small: Begin with niche keywords that have lower competition to build a foundation before tackling more competitive terms.

• Focus on User Intent: Ensure that content aligns with the searcher's intent, whether informational or transactional.

• Maintain Human Oversight: Continuously refine AI-generated content with human input to uphold quality and uniqueness.

• Leverage Automation Tools: Utilize platforms like LOps to streamline workflows and scale content creation efficiently.

• Integrate Unique Content Sources: Incorporate data, user reviews, and expert insights to differentiate content from competitors.

Chung Chen [30:48]: "I always advise the company that don't create content when you don't have anything unique to add."

8. Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

The episode concludes with a synthesis of how AI is revolutionizing marketing, particularly through AI SEO. The integration of AI tools facilitates unprecedented scalability and efficiency in content creation, while human expertise ensures the delivery of high-quality, unique, and valuable content. This synergy between AI and human input represents the next generation of personalized marketing, moving beyond broad segmentation to individualized user experiences.

Chung Chen [27:04]: "Now that we're actually just skipping that step and to rely more on the AI agent to understand the user on the one on one level and provide that proactive as well as super personalizing experience."

For marketers aiming to scale their reach and enhance their SEO strategies, embracing a balanced approach that leverages AI's capabilities while maintaining human oversight is essential for sustained success.

Conclusion

Chung Chen's insights provide a roadmap for leveraging AI in modern marketing strategies, particularly through AI-driven SEO. By understanding the evolution of marketing, implementing robust AI workflows, maintaining content quality, and avoiding common pitfalls, businesses can harness AI to drive significant growth and achieve a competitive edge in the digital landscape.

For those interested in exploring AI's potential in marketing further, this episode serves as an invaluable resource, blending practical advice with strategic foresight.