Are Marketers At The Risk Of AI?

AI is a reality. And like all technical advances since the industrial revolution, it will undoubtedly replace some jobs and create new ones as well. It is nothing new in that regard. And marketers must continue to adapt and future-proof their marketing skills, in the same way they have always done.

Change is good and that is what makes marketing is such as great career – there is always something new to play with!!

It's All About The Input

To start, let’s take a look at AI, like ChatGPT. These are used by a human who provide input and prompts to help generate text or images in response. The more creative and better thought out the prompts, then the better the output. I guess it is no different to Google. Google gives the answers to your questions and has become the friend to so many marketers since its inception (yes there was a time when Google did not exist). If you ask the right questions, these chatbots can write some really good content for you. They can help with SEO. They can do quite a lot it seems – all rather quickly. But any content created won’t be unique in thinking. And you will need to rework it for your audience and tone of voice– but it can be a useful way of starting.

Is AI The Kingmaker?

People say that “content is king”. If true, you could argue AI becomes the “Kingmaker”.

But let’s think a bit more about this. AI can create content. But marketers really need to drive what is being created and the quality of that.

At the heart of developing quality content is really knowing your target audience. You still need to have that context with your content.

You need the right content, delivered to the right person at the right time. You need segmentation and personalisation.

This is where marketers add value. And now need to add more value. For me the saying “context is king" remains more appropriate and it is marketers who will be creating that context. If they don’t, then there is a risk.

AI. Friend or Foe?

AI should be seen as the marketer’s friend. Finding ideas for content can be time consuming and AI can help (but make reference to the notes from the recent Content session from the Forum). AI can help with that in the same way Google helps us find what we need or don’t need. Moreover, it can create content much quicker than a human can. So, you could produce more – or just save time and perhaps budget in content creation.

But it’s about that input and you will need to adapt it to get your tone of voice to remain human and helpful. AI is not a human so can’t (yet) create the type of content that can connect at an emotive level that we need to engage audiences.

Do We Worry Or Not?

Should marketers and fellow content creators be worried? Only if they do not adapt and find ways to add real value to the content creation process. I may be proven wrong, but there's still a long way to go until AI replaces human writers.

Moreover, there is a need to get on front foot and adapt and

find a way to embrace AI.

Simultaneously marketers need to get smarter with Emotional Intelligence, spend more time really understanding their audiences and getting to grips with things like segmentation and personalisation. Things that need super human marketing powers. And with AI taking away some of the slog of content writing, you can now focus son this.

Creative Thinking Matters More Than Ever

But the one thing that us humans have over AI right now is that ability to apply creative thinking. We are all creative; some just don't realise it. In the world of AI, it will be creativity that is king. After all, creativity is the engine room of marketing. And with creativity working with AI you have a marketing team that organisations will want to invest in.