Is fully automated digital marketing even possible?

Digital marketing is the leading edge of AI advances and high-tech innovations. Surveys indicate AI industry aims its efforts at infusing automated intelligence into digital marketing; improving the understanding of customers, retaining customers, improving customer experiences, market research, acquiring customers, and improving direct marketing. Every day we’re inundated with news of more advances in marketing automation such as:

• Behavior data of customers that is automatically processed; like whether someone used a mobile app in the last 30 days.
• Marketing programs that are triggered automatically and run themselves without any intervention, usually triggered by the pre-computed customer behavior data.
• Advances in process automation and related programmatic marketing jobs that used to involve human intervention; wave/drip campaigns, and paid media buys.
• Helper tools like website and mobile app builders, grammar checkers, content taggers, SEO using AI, and others.

Couple all that with many other technological factors spurring on AI and automation like:

• Digital devices, tags, and pixels collecting data at fast speeds
• Falling data processing, and cloud storage costs
• Free open source tools, and pricing models that put more software in the hands of more marketing users
• Adaptive algorithms which learn what offers customers respond best to.
• More natural language generation in handling some previously thought to be untouchable human tasks, such as automated writing

According to the above, some might presume that the end of human-powered marketing is at its end. However, others ignore these tenuous signs, might simply respond, nonsense.

Through years of history, during which digital marketing was born and came of age, the real answer lies somewhere in between. With today’s automated processing and AI in digital marketing, it’s clear humans have a crucial role, narrower, yet crucial.

Over the years, human ingenuity caused marketing to go digital, to be more scientific, and its content to be richer, more compelling, and more personalized. Without a doubt, AI in digital marketing is the real thing. It has improved reach and targeting, quickened the pace of experimentation, automated direct impression and response tracking, and compressed marketing program cycles.

Marketers have employed a lot of applications; from SEO tools to email tools through campaign management systems to creative suites, and mobile messaging platforms. Automation has enabled more personalized marketing. Companies that use marketing automation in the development and execution of their process, have improved conversion rates, grown revenues, and become more efficient. Having said all that, all along, technology-minded humans have remained instrumental components of both developing and executing those systems.

Will marketers wake up one day and find themselves obsolete?

During this period of hyper-automation, the number of digital marketing jobs has grown; the US Bureau of Labor statistics projects that another 24k jobs will be added by 2026 in the US alone. Back in 1995, there was no such position as an SEO analyst, a social media marketer, or even a mobile marketing manager. Although some old jobs disappeared, and some are at risk, still there’s no indication that anyone employed in digital marketing today, have anything to worry about.

Automation is responsible for various tasks; writing email subject lines, deciding the best time to send that email, or even deciding how much to bid for digital ads. While this happened, you’ve watched new roles emerged. While certain aspects of marketing production have become machine-executed, new marketing opportunities emerged, opportunities that require human intellect, like determining if augmented reality provides any marketing lift.

AI will improve to perform more complex tasks, and more complex jobs; completely replacing telemarketers as suggested. This is not new, it’s known as collective learning and has been affecting human advances for ages, since people invented language, writing, and tools.

As one of the main reasons for societal and technological evolution, it fosters sharing and accumulating knowledge by allowing us to pass down knowledge and build on it via spoken and written communications. And it enables us to refine and evolve our machines.

As one of the main reasons for societal and technological evolution, it fosters sharing and accumulating knowledge by allowing us to pass down knowledge and build on it via spoken and written communications. And it enables us to refine and evolve our machines.

What should marketers be doing today?

Don’t fear automation and AI in digital marketing, use it. Marketers and CX professionals must automate to stay competitive and ensure their survival. They have to reduce costs to acquire and deepen customer relationships, otherwise, watch their competitors do it.

Eventually, marketers build systems that entice customers to engage in less expensive and fully automated channels; buying cycles are compressed, costs to serve comes down, and customer satisfaction rises. However, marketers must always monitor to see that satisfaction, revenue, and market share are improving. They must constantly check if these automated or semi-automated interactions deliver hyper-personalized, frictionless, and valuable experiences.

Regardless of how you evaluate your marketing capabilities, there’s always room for improvement. Nowadays, to most marketers it takes about three months to create and execute new programs from inception to execution.

Conclusion

It’s unlikely that your marketing job will be replaced by AI. But another employee that knows how to use AI in digital marketing more effectively than you, probably will.

It’s unlikely that your marketing job will be replaced by AI. But another employee that knows how to use AI in digital marketing more effectively than you, probably will.

Big brands will be those to think creatively, design effectively, and execute flawlessly to deliver seamless experiences compiled by both machines and humans. Using this approach, everyone will stay gainfully employed.