The road to an AI-powered future is paved with countless political, technical, and societal challenges. For their part, PR Agencies endure similar challenges because when it comes to modern PR, artificial intelligence remains one of the lowest items on the agenda.

But not for much longer.

The rise of AI will enable your public relations team to do more with less. In concert with social media, search engine optimization (SEO), data analytics and human creativity, AI can help your agency create an environment where you can react faster and more effectively to issues and concerns than ever before.

Here are 7 ways AI will improve your chances of success:

1)  Strategic Ally: AI will exponentially enhance agency speed and effectiveness. An agency can effectively engage both consumers and key stakeholders at virtually every stage of a transaction. And since automation will increase ease of use and client access, the agency will be able to generate higher impact campaigns - faster

2) Enhanced Analytics: PR Agencies already generate detailed information using data from a variety of sources. But this isn’t enough. They will need to move beyond dashboards and traditional analytics tools to incorporate AI into their day-to-day business operations. AI will help PR agencies identify and act on valuable insights—for example, information that can lead to the optimal time to release news releases, optimize on-site content marketing strategies, or avoid the pitfalls of seasonal content programming. By augmenting their analysis skills with AI, PR agencies can do a better job of implementing tactics that the data alone could never provide.

3) Messaging Mastery:  One of the most important aspects of PR is the ability to provide concise, useful, and inspiring content. While PR agencies will continue to develop effective, cohesive messaging, AI is poised to empower them with the tools to automate several parts of the creative process such as as content research and developing first drafts—and provide insights that they would never have access to using traditional data sources.

4)  Increased Agency Productivity: Routine, repetitive work takes a huge toll on employee, often times resulting in high over-servicing costs. Agencies are expected to take on all of these tasks to augment larger client teams. Automation reduces the burden, making it possible for people to work effectively and offer far greater value to the clients, customers, and partners they work with. One area for example is drafting Press Releases. Often a client may require several rounds of drafts before deciding which version to publish. HelloScribe can reduce this time exponentially.

5) Enhanced Media Effectiveness: New models will emerge that focus on partnership, not labor. And as machine learning algorithms pick apart your media and campaign performance and combine this with deep data about a brand’s customer behavior and objectives, new opportunities will arise for agencies to deliver enhanced services based on previously unstructured customer data.

6) Ease of Compliance and Reliability: Today, more than ever, large groups of companies rely on a variety of technology to support campaigns. Since many of these technology platforms are developed and monitored in-house, automation will lower the cost, complexity, and risk of these platforms.

7) Greater Quality: While maintaining quality standards and processes has never been easier, it has taken a toll on staff’s time. No agency can run a client relationship without a strong, responsible team, and AI and Automation will help to improve agency performance, manage account workloads, and reduce the impact of errors on campaigns.The overall quality of agencies’ Client Support Operations will improve, yielding far more value. And as current clients make plans to use AI and Automation to help improve their brand’s productivity, they’ll see a sharp increase in their agencies’ productivity, too.

If PR agencies want to add value and be a real contender for clients looking to leverage these technologies, they need to turn their focus away from only charging for marketing services, and look at how they can capitalize on their agencies’ technical capabilities and offer the cutting edge tools and services their clients are looking for. With the potential to help clients reach more people, automate more content, speed up delivery, and make processes simpler and less expensive, AI and Automation will increasingly become table stakes for those Agencies seeking to develop or maintain a competitive advantage, and attract new business.

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