Anyone familiar with the digital marketing industry will know that it’s one defined by evolution and change. But the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity AI and hundreds of others presents a paradigm shift of a scale previously unimaginable.
In this article we’ll explore the potential impacts of AI on digital marketing.
#1: A fundamental shift in how Google works
A key strand of digital marketing is technical SEO, i.e. the process of optimising a website to help it rank higher in search engine result pages. Since its launch in 1998, Google has returned other websites in its results pages: originally just a list of 10 results, nowadays a combination of text results, ads, answer boxes, images, maps, and other elements based on the nature of your search.
The reliance on external content has remained constant, with digital marketers incentivised to create high quality content that addresses users’ search queries. Create quality content and you’ll rank more highly, which will bring traffic that you can convert to paying customers.
The most significant potential impact of AI is that Google could provide AI-generated search results with no requirement for external content. This would, at a stroke, make swathes of the SEO industry obsolete. Your content, regardless of how good it is, won’t be pulled through to search results – it won’t attract traffic, and a big stream of potential customers dries up.
This isn’t some far-away hypothetical either: Google is already trialling this tech in the US and some other markets, with plans for a global rollout likely slated for the next year or so.
Digital marketers of all stripes are faced with an existential dilemma: either figure out how to refine their offering quickly, or become obsolete.
#2: A change in the nature of job roles
Copywriter. Graphic designer. Website designer, even. All of these roles are threatened by the rise of AI, because when it’s possible to generate articulate copy, attractive images, and full websites at the click of a button (and the creation of a prompt), why pay humans to do it?
While this seems drastic at first, we think there’s likely to be a backlash against AI generated content that will dampen the effects a little. Just like how there was a boom in artisan goods in response to mass manufacturing, there’ll probably be a newfound premium placed on content created by humans (hopefully accompanied by an expectation to pay them fairly, too!)
Agencies who want to keep ahead of the curve should be fostering a collaborative, experimental atmosphere: tasking employees with learning as much as they can about as many AI tools as possible, and contributing to the process of figuring out how to incorporate them into processes and workflows. The end result here is something mutually beneficial: an empowered workforce with access to and understanding of the latest tools, and a desire to create awesome digital marketing materials with them.
#3: A more difficult pitching process
When choosing a digital marketing agency to work with, prospective clients understand that there is a skills gap between their business and the agency in question. While they’ll have questions about what an agency does and how, they won’t presume to be able to do the work they’re looking to commission.
This forms the basis for good discussion and a healthy working relationship. But factor in the tools outlined above, and we expect to see prospective clients asking a lot more questions about what they’re paying for, whether AI is being used, and what’s to stop them doing it themselves in house.
This presents a new challenge for agencies: figuring out how to communicate your refined service offering in a way that’s transparent, and that fosters a relationship built on trust and real belief that you’ll be able to provide something they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
Just the tip of the AIceberg
These are just three of many impacts that AI will have on the digital marketing industry. As AI tools and platforms continue to become more sophisticated we expect to see exponential change, some of which will go beyond our wildest speculations.
Our main advice is this: buckle up. Accept that things are going to change, and try your hardest to learn everything you can that’ll help you embrace it.
