What Does the Future of Digital Marketing Look Like?

Digital marketing has been around for decades now and has been driving businesses with respect to growth and revenue. Because the internet is such a crucial part of our lives, digital marketing will always be in demand, no matter what. It is a rapidly growing industry with constantly evolving trends and technology. A lot of people have made inferences about the evolution of AI alongside the evolution of digital marketing, and some people believe that AI will soon replace a lot of human jobs in the domain of digital marketing services in the UK.

Marketing isn’t going anywhere, it’s been around for thousands of years and has evolved as time has. What has changed are positions and responsibilities and that is something that will continue to change. Even with more automation you still need individuals who can interpret the data and understand what optimizations may need to be made. We’re nowhere at the point where I can just tell a system I have a $1M budget and let it choose all the channels and make every decision, but I will still need some oversight. Still need to create content, videos/etc and will still require people for that.

In this blog, we will discuss the evolution of AI, how it might impact digital marketing and what the future of digital marketing actually looks like

The Advent of AI and The Future of Digital Marketing

AI is actually becoming quite advanced, especially when it comes to tools like chatbots. It’s getting to the point where Google is able to create AI that their engineers can’t tell if it’s sentient or not because it’s so convincingly “human” when conversing with it.

But carrying a conversation that actually makes sense is a long way from being capable of making strategic decisions. Tactics like paid search are ripe for automation since the back end of the system is entirely run by algorithms anyway and it is being increasingly automated. Bots that are getting better at carrying convincing conversations are not too far off from the skill set of a bot that’s good at writing copy that seems like it was written by a human.

However, AI currently can’t write a campaign strategy or build a brand. By the time AI is advanced enough to do work this complex, it will be complex enough to replace most people’s jobs in general, including outside of marketing. At that point, we as a society might have to rethink our relationship with work and how goods and services are distributed in our economy. It would have much further reaching consequences than some marketing jobs being automated away.

But in the near future, AI is more likely to replace a good chunk of call centre and chat support employees, with intelligent AIs handling frontline support and a handful of humans handling escalations that couldn’t be handled by the bots. Marketing already makes use of a ton of automation, so if you’re doing highly repetitive and less than creative work or you’re outside of strategy, then there’s some risk of that work being automated.

How Will Chatbots and Openai Affect the Content Creation Side of Digital Marketing?

Given the rapidly churned-out content of OpenAi and the speed at which chatbots are able to quickly generate long-form blogs, a lot of marketers who are in the content creation departments – copywriters and content writers etc – are worried that they will soon be replaced with these technologies.

But the AI itself is learning from the Web, which is filled with a huge amount of badly written, AI-generated articles, and high-end copywriters need not worry just yet. Ultimately, it’ll change how we do some things and might speed up some areas, but it’s still blatantly obvious which companies use AI-generated marketing compared to those with human marketing teams. AI still isn’t in a place to do emotional marketing, generate opinion pieces or understand new markets and it relies too much on poor data. So we should embrace AI but not lean on it.

The Issues That Pervade the Digital Marketing Industry

We cannot underestimate the importance of digital marketing because digital channels are still important for businesses and digital marketing skills still have a growing demand. Digital marketing is still viable but you need to understand the state of the market. There are thousands of digital marketing agencies out there that make big empty promises and you need to compete against that.

You also are competing against people on Fiver and Upwork from third-world countries who can’t speak English but still get hired by business owners in the USA because they offer cheaper services. Then, there are people who have hired those people above and now believe that digital marketing doesn’t work because they were lied to, or had ads written for them in broken English and blew the entire ad budget within 2 hours with all ads being shown in Germany.

How Will the Job Market for Digital Marketers Look Like in 2024?

Digital marketing remains a competitive industry and is expected to grow and remain afloat in 2024, but individuals who embrace continuous learning, adaptability, and a proactive mindset can establish rewarding and successful careers. Businesses will continue to rely on digital channels to engage with customers, and with that, digital marketing professionals will remain crucial in enabling companies to thrive in the digital landscape.

Hence, in order to assert your position, or remain in a competitive market, it’s a good idea to expand your knowledge. Perhaps learn some computer languages like SQL/etc, Power BI and other tools to analyze data. Client relationships are still uber important so roles in Account Services/etc will still be there. But the workforce is expected to decrease in size, and where you may have needed a team of 6 to manage an account, you might only need 3-4 but it’s never going to be a team of just computers.

Why Are So Many People Leaving Their Marketing Careers?

It’s not so much, that people are frustrated and leaving their marketing career, but people generally in whichever field seem to be fed up with their careers due to the economic downturns and stagnant growth. Be it nursing, teaching, banking, or real estate, people in every field seem to be tired of their jobs and want to switch.

It’s not marketing, but it’s just work; some people will find a good fit, but some won’t. sometimes the solution is changing jobs, whereas other times it’s changing careers. Marketing in itself is considered an objectively fun and creative career option, but if you feel that you have outgrown it, or if you feel stuck, then it might be the time to think about your career options or vertically move around in other departments.

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