Industrial Content Creation for Scalable Manufacturing Content Marketing Needs GenAI + Human Expertise

Is industrial content creation your biggest challenge in manufacturing content marketing?

You are not alone, 62% of manufacturing content marketers struggle with the same problem. (Source)

Generative AI (GenAI) tools offer a helping hand, but creating industrial content that resonates with your technical audience needs human expertise. Engineers expect technical accuracy and industry insights, but GenAI alone cannot meet those expectations.

For a more in-depth understanding of the hurdles and challenges in industrial marketing, read Struggling with B2B Industrial Marketing? Your Essential Guide to Proven Strategies & Tactics.

Let’s dive into how you can leverage the best of both worlds—GenAI and human expertise. 

Using GenAI in Industrial Content Creation for Ideation and Research

Let me start with how using GenAI for industrial content creation can be very helpful. GenAI can drastically accelerate your industrial content creation processes, from sparking new ideas to streamlining research and supplementing limited in-house bandwidth.

To illustrate this, here are two examples:

You are a manufacturer of pressure relief valves:

Your prompt: “Suggest different blog titles emphasizing the safety benefits of pressure relief valves for industrial applications.”

Potential GenAI Output: “Pressure Relief Valves: Your Processing Plant’s Safety Net” or “Preventing Disasters: Why Pressure Relief Valves are Critical.”

You are a marketer in the power generation industry:

Your prompt: “How have material innovations in wafer butterfly valves helped in the power generation industry?”

Potential GenAI Output: “New alloys, polymers, and coatings specifically designed to withstand harsh operating conditions (extreme temperatures, corrosive fluids) common in power generation applications, extend valve lifespan and reduce maintenance needs.”

Note that you have to think about and create the right prompt to get good output from GenAI. Keep in mind the GIGO principle (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

By combining GenAI’s data-driven insights with the human expertise of industrial marketers, you can create content that truly resonates with your audience and drives meaningful results.

The Limitations of GenAI for Industrial Content Creation and Marketing

While GenAI is a powerful tool, it’s important to understand its limitations within industrial content creation and marketing. Areas where human expertise remains essential include:

• Technical accuracy & nuance: GenAI may struggle with industry-specific terminology, standards, or complex engineering concepts.
  • Example: Incorrectly using the term “pressure” when “flow rate” is more accurate.
• Understanding the needs of your target audience: GenAI outputs may lack the depth needed to address the pain points, knowledge level, and criteria engineers and technical buyers use to make informed decisions.
  • Example: A blog post explaining the benefits of a specific industrial component needs to go beyond features, addressing reliability, ease of maintenance, and compatibility with existing systems.
• Industry-specific insights: GenAI may not grasp regulatory changes, emerging trends within niche sectors, or subtle shifts in market dynamics.
  • Example: Upcoming regulations can significantly impact product recommendations or content focused on future-proofing industrial processes.

Streamlining Research for B2B Industrial Marketing With GenAI

GenAI can quickly gather and process large datasets related to keywords and competitors. However, interpreting those results, identifying the most valuable opportunities, and tailoring content with industry-specific nuance requires human insight.

While comprehensive market analysis requires human expertise, GenAI can accelerate the process by gathering and organizing data. Here’s how:

• Basic market trend identification: GenAI can process large datasets to discover potential trends, requiring human analysts to confirm and interpret within the specific industry context.
  • Example: Ask GenAI to summarize recent news articles, industry reports, and social media discussions about your niche sector to highlight potential emerging technologies.
• Competitor intelligence: GenAI can analyze competitor core messaging and keywords to benchmark your own efforts.
  • Example: Ask AI to generate a comparison table of you vs. your closest competitor focused on their content formats and target audience overlap.
• Audience insights: Understand the concerns, questions, and language used by your target audience on online platforms.
  • Example:  Ask Gen AI to find the top 5 recurring questions asked on industry forums that are popular among your audience. (You may need to provide the names of these forums so AI can find relevant information).

This underscores the importance of human intervention. Remember, GenAI’s market research outputs should be considered starting points to be validated and strategically interpreted by industry experts.

You can’t count on GenAI to plan and create your industrial marketing roadmap from start to finish.

GenAI is a Tool, Not a Replacement, in Industrial Content Marketing

As you’ve seen in this post, GenAI offers valuable assistance within industrial content marketing, but its true potential is unlocked when combined with human expertise. Let’s explore how this partnership can transform your content strategy and the limitations to keep in mind.

GenAI’s assistance varies depending on the content asset you need to create. Here’s how:

• Blog posts: GenAI excels at ideation, basic outlines, and research. Humans refine for accuracy and audience relevance.
• Case studies: GenAI can summarize raw technical data, but human writers are needed to create the compelling narrative and highlight ROI.
• Product descriptions: GenAI generates feature-based descriptions, but technical accuracy and optimizing content that addresses customer pain points requires an expert human touch.
• Technical articles: GenAI can help with initial drafts based on existing content, but industry expertise is needed for accuracy and thought leadership positioning.

If you noticed, the underlying message highlights how even the best GenAI outputs in industrial content marketing benefit from human expertise. Above all, in-house Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) must review every piece of content before publishing.

Organic SEO is an important part of industrial content marketing, and GenAI also plays a role here. To learn more about it, see my earlier post, “Could Generative AI Revolutionize Your Industrial SEO Strategy?”

Your industrial content marketing using GenAI benefits significantly from:

• An expert’s deep understanding of the industry sector and your specific niche within it
• Knowledge and understanding of the complex technical buying process and decision-makers
• Industrial marketers experienced in crafting content that aligns with different stages of the buyer’s journey

With over 35 years of experience serving industrial companies, we understand how to leverage GenAI effectively alongside proven industrial marketing strategies. If you’re ready to scale your content marketing efforts without sacrificing quality, let’s discuss how we can partner. Let’s Talk.