The Rise Of AI: Will Marketing Consultants Become Obsolete?
A little while ago, the word AI was merely a buzzword. Everyone understood it as the impeccable but unreal tech like the stunts we see in Avengers movies. But alas, Artificial intelligence is now real and it’s up and running. Virtually every industry from insurance to construction is now becoming heavily reliant on marketing automation solutions.
IBM’s Watson for Marketing, for instance, uses Artificial intelligence bots to analyze their business and that of their closest competitors. The bot generates smart, data-driven stats that the company then implements to stay ahead of the competition.
AI’s data is more accurate than that collected by humans. They further work with the collected data to create full-fledged strategies that are optimized for success. This begs the question, does this mark the end of the road for marketing consultants?
Well, to answer that question, we must first look into the following:
- What exactly can AIM (Artificial Intelligence Marketing) do for now?
- What value do consultants have to businesses?
- Who can profit from AI today
How AI marketers work
To really know if Artificial Intelligence is going to replace marketing agents, we have to understand how they work and what it is they do.
Initially, bots were merely a bunch of software programmed to do something. Unfortunately, this made them incapable of communicating or acting like a human. Thanks to machine learning, the current AI robots can learn all the aspects of their niche and provide responses that are based on concrete data.
AIM takes a look at social media pages and analytics of your business, that of competitors and the industry, in general, to figure out which tactics work and which don’t. It goes ahead to propose an all-inclusive social media strategy that includes the type of content to use, posting times, and much more.
Some marketing AIs have a messenger system that reminds you when to post and can even offer content suggestions. In short, these robotic marketers provide answers to the following questions
- Where can I post?
- When should I post?
- How often do I need to post?
- What type of content will get the best engagement?
What marketing consultants bring to the table that AI doesn’t
Marketing consultants have been part and parcel of many businesses. E-commerce stores, web owners, and other netpreneurs use marketers’ services to ramp up their ROI. Basically, a good marketing agent can mean the difference between a venture taking off and filing for bankruptcy.
Content drafting is one part of marketing that consultants out do robots. They can write content that speaks to your current and target customers leading to high conversion. They can present your brand to potential clients in a way that bots can’t.
AIM can provide you with all the accurate statistics and analytics necessary for improving your bottom line, but they are not ready to put down that message for you. On this, you need a marketer who knows how to compose content that can appeal to the masses. Furthermore, when you are venturing into a new niche or expanding to new audiences, AI may not be as helpful as human marketers can be.
So, who is AI marketing right for?
Well, if you have a service or product that customers have fallen in love with and all you need is to get the word out, you’ll be good with AI. However, if your product/service is new to the markets and all you crave for is someone who can curate content that makes your brand stand out, go for marketing consultants.
Companies with huge chunks of data get bored analyzing and re-analyzing this information. Such firms need to include AI as a “member” of the team to be sure that the info collected is accurate and reliable. Human marketers will then work with that data to achieve the results entrepreneurs are looking for.
So will artificial intelligence replace internet marketers?
At the moment, the answer is no. As exciting as AI is, it still can’t make marketers obsolete. On the contrary, it will make them better. Smart consultants will take the information provided by AIs, interpret it and come up with their own effective strategies to propose to their clients. So, if you are a marketer and need this job for next coming years, it would be better to start looking into how AI marketing works.