If generative AI is the future of marketing (and media in general), how can you compete with other marketers if ALL OF US have access to the same tools?

We can all create amazing images, videos (soon), and articles. We can all use the most amazing copywriter as a template to write our own copy. We can even develop entire marketing plans in SECONDS.

We can also research almost any topic to justify the claims that we make for the products and services we’re trying sell… in almost no time.

Basically, pretty soon we’ll all be able to build anything we want to help our clients sell whatever they want with little effort… but is it a good thing?

It means UNLIMITED competition which may be a problem, but more importantly, it means that all businesses will soon lose the competitive advantage known as “professionalism.”

Why “Professional” Marketing Assets Aren’t Special Anymore

Back in the good ol’ days of digital marketing, if you could produce professional copy and visuals, you would be ahead of 90% of your competitors.

Writing consistent copy WAS hard.

Generating professional graphics WAS hard.

Producing professional pictures and videos WAS hard.

Now, professional marketing assets aren’t just widespread and more available than ever before, they’re LESS effective than user generated content (UGC) in most cases!

According to a Nielsen study, 92% of consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than they trust traditional advertising.

Why is UGC content more effective than professionally created content? It feels genuine and trustworthy.

Even if UGC content is made for personal gain (e.g. influencers, sponsored individuals, affiliates, etc.), it doesn’t matter to the viewer. They just see amateur content made about a product or service they might be interested in. They’ll trust that much faster than the fanciest commercial you can make.

UGC materials don’t need to PROVE anything, we as marketers do.

How Can Professional Content Keep Up with UGC?

So, what can marketers do to influence viewers the same way unpaid (or low paid) amateurs do with UGC?

The answer isn’t simple, but it is necessary.

If we need to produce professional content AND it needs to be compelling, we’re going to have to start proving ourselves in real world situations.

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We all sell high quality, well-vetted products and services (of course), but a list of features, benefits, and even testimonials isn’t going to be compelling enough any more. People want proof, and there’s something we can do to directly provide it.

How Case Studies Can Deliver Results Like UGC

Case studies are the professional business/marketing equivalent to User Generated Content.

Here’s what makes UGC effective:

• Authenticity: UGC is perceived as genuine, fostering trust and credibility.
• Relatability: Real user experiences make it easier for potential customers to envision product use.
• Social Proof: Positive interactions in UGC serve as powerful endorsements, boosting confidence.
• Diverse Perspectives: UGC provides varied viewpoints, appealing to a broader audience.
• Engagement: UGC generates higher engagement, fostering a sense of community around the brand.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Leveraging UGC is more budget-friendly compared to producing polished branded content.
• Scalability: UGC can be easily scaled, allowing for continuous and diverse content creation.
• Emotional Connection: UGC can evoke emotional responses, creating a stronger brand connection.
• Word of Mouth: UGC acts as digital word of mouth, amplifying the brand message organically.
• Adaptability: UGC can be adapted for various channels, maximizing its reach and impact.

Now, let’s look at what makes case studies compelling:

• Authenticity: Like UGC, case studies are authentic and based on real experiences, fostering trust.
• Relatability: Case studies provide real-world examples, making it easier for potential customers to relate.
• Social Proof: They serve as powerful social proof, showcasing successful experiences with the product or service.
• Diverse Perspectives: Case studies often include diverse perspectives, offering a well-rounded view of the product’s impact.
• Engagement: Well-crafted case studies can engage readers, drawing them into a narrative that highlights the value of the product or service.
• Cost-Effectiveness: While creating case studies involves some investment, they can be cost-effective compared to other forms of content creation.
• Scalability: Case studies, once created, can be shared across various platforms, maximizing their reach.
• Emotional Connection: Effective case studies can evoke emotions, creating a deeper connection with the audience.
• Word of Mouth: Positive case studies can be shared by customers, acting as digital word of mouth to amplify the brand’s success stories.
• Adaptability: Case studies can be adapted for different marketing channels, offering versatility in their use.

Even with all of these similarities, Case Studies can feel stuffy (especially when they’re related to services). There’s one type that can come closer to UGC, and that’s the “Undercover Case Study.”

What is an “Undercover Case Study?”

This type of “case study” has been done for years, and was popularized by the show “Undercover Boss” which started airing in 2010. If you didn’t know… this was marketing (and was probably paid for by the company being featured). Here’s a few entertaining moments if you haven’t seen the show before:

Yes, there are a ton of cringy moments when the “boss” proves to be incredibly incompetent while working simple jobs, but the desired effect was usually achieved: humanizing big companies and their owners/managers.

It also provides a ton of exposure for the brand, what they sell, and why you should shop there (even if the only reason to shop there is to help the poor souls that work there).

You might be saying, “I don’t have millions to spend on a production like this, what can I do?”

Good news! Marketers are stepping up to show how this type of case study can be done without a million-dollar budget.

Undercover Billionaire: A Step Closer to Practical Undercover Case Studies

“Undercover Billionaire” is this American TV show where super successful business folks get stripped of everything and get plopped into small towns armed with just $100 and a car. They’ve got a tight 90 days to spin that measly $100 into a cool million-dollar business, all from scratch.

The show kicked off on August 6, 2019, and wrapped up its first season on September 24, 2019, featuring bigwig Glenn Stearns. Season two stepped up the game with three entrepreneurs, including the likes of Grant Cardone. Here’s a peak at the content:

Folks love this show for throwing the American dream into the ring and seeing if it’ll come out on top. Can you really build a booming business with just pocket change? Sure, the show’s taken a hit for maybe being a bit too scripted or over the top, but it’s dishing out some serious lessons on hustling and business building.

Here’s the rundown: these high rollers pick a business, build a squad, hustle their way from that humble $100, and BOOM – a startup is born. Oh, and there’s a Discovery Channel film crew shadowing them, calling it a documentary on starting a small business from scratch. They want you to think, “Hey, if these guys can do it, so can I!”

Yeah, we get it – reality shows can be a bit Hollywood, maybe stretching the truth here and there. But, “Undercover Billionaire” serves up some real-deal insights into the wild world of entrepreneurship and the crazy hurdles of starting a business from ground zero.

It also shows whether the marketing techniques touted by people like Grant Cardone ACTUALLY work.

Again, you might be saying, “This is great, but I still don’t have a budget for something like this.”

In that case, good news! Someone is making a show that could prove the practicality of undercover case studies for the rest of us!

Undercover Agency: The Future of Marketing?

We know you can produce a compelling, interesting undercover case study if you have the money for a big show and the ability to get huge names on it, but what if you have a smaller budget and a smaller following?

Enter our DigitalMarketer friend and community members, JC & Karen Hite from Hite Digital.

They’re gearing up to embark on a daring mission: launch an agency from scratch and try to acheive $10k in profits within just 4 months. To up the stakes even higher, they’re moving to Searcy, Arkansas (from their home in Nicaragua) to do it.

They want to prove that their marketing techniques, for both starting an agency and gaining results for their small business clients, works. To do that, they’re following these specs:

• No team
• 4 months
• $2k starting funds

To add an extra layer of challenge, JC is throwing in a commitment to keep faith and family at the forefront. That means reading the entire Bible during this experiment and powering down the phone from 5pm-8pm for some quality family time!

Can the Hite’s “Undercover Agency” show prove that undercover case studies are the future of marketing? We’ll find out!

If you’re an agency owner and want to join JC on this journey, they’ll be posting their progress starting in December 2023. To follow along, just join their Facebook Group.

The post “Undercover” Case Studies: Why the Future of Marketing Is Proving Yourself in the Field appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Are you scared of AI yet? Are you worried that it’s just waiting to steal your job and eliminate the need for humans at all? Why won’t AI replace everything that we thought we were good at?

There has been a ton of speculation regarding the use of AI, and whether its capabilities will spell the end of mankind… being employed.

There is one reason why you shouldn’t worry too much, and it revolves around a piece of fiction known as Iron Man and his highly capable AI known as Jarvis.

The question is very simple: Is Iron Man still Iron Man without Jarvis, or without Tony Stark?

The answer isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

Technically, Stark can operate the Iron Man armor without Jarvis (both he and War Machine can do that according to details found here). Could he build the suits without Jarvis though?

Also, Jarvis can operate a suit without Stark (although given how the Iron Man “House Party Protocol” performed, I would say it doesn’t work great). Even so, Jarvis is super smart and combat tested, so what makes Iron Man special at all?

It all comes down to purpose, motivation, and imagination.

While Jarvis technically could have created the Iron Man armor at any point, and may have even discovered the need for it since it had access to all information online, it never created, or attempted to create, a solution at all… it took Stark to do that.

Jarvis: A VERY Capable AI

Jarvis, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) system, is a fictional character in the Iron Man franchise. Created by Tony Stark, Jarvis serves as Stark’s personal assistant and operates within his advanced suits. Here are the key capabilities of Jarvis:

Intelligent Assistant: Jarvis functions as a highly advanced and intelligent assistant to Tony Stark. It possesses natural language processing capabilities, allowing it to understand and respond to human speech.

Voice Recognition: Jarvis can recognize Tony Stark’s voice and other authorized individuals, enabling personalized interactions and secure access to its functions.

Information Processing: Jarvis has vast computational power and can process and analyze large amounts of data within seconds. It assists Tony Stark in research, data analysis, and decision-making.

Strategic Analysis: Jarvis can analyze complex situations, generate strategic insights, and provide suggestions to Tony Stark in various scenarios, including combat strategies and business decisions.

Automation: Jarvis has control over various systems, including Stark’s suit, laboratory equipment, and his mansion’s infrastructure. It can automate tasks, manage inventories, and operate complex machinery.

Holographic Interface: Jarvis can project holographic displays and interact with them in a three-dimensional space. It assists Tony Stark in designing and modifying his suits, as well as accessing information visually.

Security Systems: Jarvis maintains advanced security measures, protecting Tony Stark’s suit and personal data. It can detect threats, monitor communications, and initiate countermeasures when necessary.

Communication: Jarvis facilitates communication for Tony Stark, managing incoming and outgoing calls, messages, and information requests. It can establish connections with various devices and interfaces.

Learning & Adaptation: Jarvis continuously learns from interactions with Tony Stark and improves its capabilities over time. It adapts to Stark’s preferences, optimizes its responses, and acquires new skills.

Emotional Intelligence: While not explicitly shown in the movies, Jarvis displays elements of emotional intelligence, understanding Tony Stark’s moods and providing emotional support when needed.

Essentially, Jarvis acts as Stark’s own personal Skunk Works (Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs). If you’re unfamiliar with Skunk Works, it’s a highly secretive research and development department with 3,700 employees, a 215,000 sq. ft. facility, and an estimated $1.5 billion annual budget.

Jarvis researches, builds, innovates, suggests, and emotionally supports Stark. It is one of the most amazingly capable AI ever conceived in reality or fiction for that matter (and I’ve read a LOT of fiction).

Iron Man manages to accomplish the greatest feats of engineering ever conceived in his basement with the help of Jarvis… with no human help whatsoever. All he had was Jarvis, a genius-level intellect, limitless cash, and the coolest house ever… so basically nothing.

Just kidding, he still had a lot… but the most important thing he had wasn’t all the stuff, his money, his AI, or even his intelligence.

The most invaluable, irreplaceable thing he had was purpose, motivation, and imagination.

Tony Stark: The Only Reason Iron Man & Jarvis Exist

Could Tony Stark exist without Jarvis and his Iron Man suit?

Yes! That question was asked by the creators of Iron Man 3, where Tony loses his suit and has to rely on himself to save the day (not a great movie, but directly applicable to the question in question).

The real issue was whether or not Stark wanted to help at all. Put yourself in his shoes… you’re a billionaire who has saved the world many, many times. You’ve risked your life, lost friends and assets, and your continued intervention in global problems puts you and everyone you love in danger.

Why wouldn’t you just pack it in?

Did Jarvis ever come to Stark and say, “Hey! Why aren’t we building more things to save humanity?”

Even when his ill-fated AI invention Ultron tries to take over everything and destroy the planet, it’s still obsessed with Stark, and uses their relationship as its primary motivator behind its plans.

No, the reason why Iron Man continued to act was his purpose and motivation, which forced his imagination to create a vision of the future that required his action.

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His inventions and activities had nothing to do with AI, it had everything to do with getting something done.

You’re Iron Man Too

You may not be rich, a genius, or even have a motivator like saving the planet, but you will always have some kind of motivation and imagination.

If you don’t have a purpose, it’s time to get serious about finding one! I’ll talk more about that process soon. The good news is that I have a FUN way of figuring out your purpose.

The point is that AI is not here to steal your job or kill you, it’s here to make your life 100x easier… and part of making things easier to going to be letting go of tasks and responsibilities that you weren’t very good at anyways.

That’s a good thing, and those tasks are not going to be something you will miss.

At the end of the day, AI was invented to make our lives easier and help us accomplish things easier and faster, using less resources than we ever have before.

AI was a great thing for Stark to have, and it will be for you too.

The post The #1 Reason Why AI Isn’t a Threat: The Iron Man Question appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Artificial Intelligence is a game changer for marketing. While AI will be useful in many industries, the nature of the marketing profession makes it even more powerful, from the need for constant content generation, to ideation for advertising concepts, to automation for day-to-day operations, AI is the biggest innovation in marketing since the internet.

Since the beginning of 2023, the amount of AI tools for marketing has exploded.

While there’s no official count of new AI applications since the beginning of the year, if you monitor websites like TheresanAIforThat.com, you’ll find dozens to hundreds of new applications being added every day, with the current list including 4,600+ apps covering over 1,300 tasks.

Further, the investment in new AI companies has rapidly expanded. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), investments in AI software, hardware, and software for AI-centric systems will increase 26.9% to $154 billion in 2023 over 2022, with $300 billion expected by 2026 (SOURCE).

In 2021, the investment in AI doubled globally from less than $40 billion to almost $80 billion (SOURCE), and look what has come from that!

Needless to say, there are many, many choices when it comes to AI applications, and it can be difficult to nail down which ones to use, much less which ones you should focus on.

After discussing the topic for dozens of marketing professionals and AI experts, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: marketers should master ChatGPT BEFORE anything else.

Here I’ll explain why.

Why Marketers Need to Focus on AI Skill Development

Marketers are notorious for falling prey to “shiny object syndrome.” It’s no surprise why… the easiest person to get sold is a salesman after all!

There are always new methods, platforms, techniques, tricks, tips, and tools to make your marketing faster, better, and more effective. Every company needs marketing to succeed, and the impact of good marketing can make or break your organization.

AI is the shiniest object of all for marketers…

Here’s why AI is such a vital development in the marketing industry:

Ideation: Marketers and marketing agencies may have to create multiple concepts for content and advertising for each client every day. This need for volumes of creativity was time consuming and tiring, but with AI the process has become 10 times easier. No more lag time between needing to brainstorm and creating new concepts… AI makes it almost instant.

Volume Creation: In addition to massive amounts of new concepts and ideas, AI also provides the ability to create brand-specific content whenever necessary. By “training your AI” to create content based on a particular style, marketers can create new advertising copy, landing page headlines and text, email drip campaigns, social media descriptions, lead magnet materials, and much more 10 times faster than before.

Personalization: With AI, marketers unlock the power of personalized experiences on a large scale. By leveraging data analysis and machine learning, AI comprehends individual preferences, behaviors, and purchase patterns. Marketers can then tailor their messaging, recommendations, and offers to each customer, creating engaging interactions that drive conversions.

Data-driven Insights: AI’s ability to swiftly and accurately process vast amounts of data empowers marketers with valuable insights. They can delve into customer behavior, market trends, and campaign performance. AI-driven analytics tools offer actionable recommendations based on data, enabling marketers to make informed decisions and optimize strategies for superior outcomes.

Customer Support & Chatbots: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants provide instant and personalized customer support. They excel at handling customer inquiries, offering product recommendations, and facilitating purchase decisions. Available 24/7, AI chatbots enhance response times and boost customer satisfaction by delivering prompt and relevant assistance.

Predictive Analytics: AI algorithms leverage historical data to predict future outcomes, empowering marketers to anticipate customer needs and behavior. Predictive analytics aids in optimizing marketing campaigns, identifying high-value customers, and forecasting sales trends. With these insights, marketers can allocate resources effectively and enhance overall campaign performance.

Automation & Efficiency: By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, AI liberates marketers to focus on strategic endeavors. AI-powered tools automate email marketing, social media scheduling, content generation, and data analysis. This streamlined automation boosts efficiency, productivity, and eliminates manual effort.

Competitive Advantage: Marketers gain a competitive edge by harnessing the potential of AI. AI-powered tools enable advanced market research, competitor analysis, and trend forecasting. By staying ahead of industry developments, marketers can make proactive decisions that differentiate their brand and seize opportunities for success.

With all that said, you will severely limit your ability to use AI if you bounce around from application to application. That’s why you need to get focused.

Why You Need to Limit the Amount of AI Applications You Use

While AI may be new to the marketing profession, the need to focus on a particular set of skills has been around since the dawn of the position.

Skills like copywriting, product positioning, data analysis, customer service, communication, networking, adaptability, and innovation are keystones to the professional marketer.

The ability to utilize AI is just the latest one.

I’ve found that the principle of minimalism allows for the quickest development of new skills. Unfortunately, trying to learn how to use a dozen new tools goes against this philosophy… you need to limit the number of new applications if you really want to master one.

Here’s why the principle of minimalism applies to AI skill development:

Intentionality: In the world of minimalism, intentionality reigns supreme. It urges individuals to deliberate and question whether they truly require an array of specialized tools or if a single tool can serve their needs just as well. By consciously evaluating the functionality and purpose of each tool, you can make mindful decisions that align with their specific requirements.

Simplification: Minimalism champions the art of simplification, both in life and possessions. By minimizing the number of tools and opting for multi-functional alternatives, you can declutter your tool collection, streamline their workflow, and eliminate unnecessary complexities. Embracing simplicity allows for a more efficient and unencumbered approach.

Functionality over Excess: Minimalism urges us to prioritize functionality above all else. Instead of amassing an abundance of tools for each specific task, the focus shifts towards identifying a versatile tool that can effectively serve multiple purposes. By valuing functionality over excessive accumulation, minimalism fosters efficiency and resourcefulness in our endeavors.

Mindful Consumption: At the heart of minimalism lies the principle of mindful consumption. Rather than succumbing to impulsive or societal pressures, minimalism encourages you to consciously evaluate your needs. By carefully considering the necessity of each tool and making choices aligned with those needs, we reduce excessive consumption and wastefulness. Mindful consumption promotes a more intentional and sustainable way of living.

With all that said, there’s many reasons why ChatGPT is the marketers-choice for AI skill development.

Why Marketers Should Focus on ChatGPT

Yes, there are newer and more specific AI tools out there, but ChatGPT is still the standard when it comes to marketing, and for good reason.

The following is just a few of the reasons why the use of ChatGPT should be a primary focus of marketers.

Conversational Superpower

ChatGPT possesses unparalleled conversational superpowers that elevate customer engagement to new heights. With its natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT can simulate human-like interactions, leading to more personalized and meaningful conversations with customers.

Marketers can harness this power to provide tailored recommendations, answer queries promptly, and build strong connections that foster brand loyalty.

Further, marketing is one of the few areas of business where a conversational style is more effective than technical communication styles, making ChatGPT ideal for this type of content generation.

Versatile Marketing Applications

ChatGPT’s versatility empowers marketers to excel across multiple marketing applications. Whether it’s content creation, customer support, lead generation, or even social media management, ChatGPT delivers exceptional performance.

Marketers can leverage ChatGPT to generate engaging blog posts, automate personalized email campaigns, and handle customer inquiries efficiently—all from a single AI tool.

Better yet, as marketers utilize ChatGPT they’ll start to define their prompting style, creating more and more content from less prompts.

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Standardized Brand Voice for Unlimited Companies

With ChatGPT as their exclusive AI tool, marketers gain a profound advantage in crafting hyper-targeted campaigns that utilize a consistent brand voice.

ChatGPT’s ability to understand individual preferences, behaviors, and purchase patterns allows for laser-focused messaging. Marketers can tailor their content and offers to resonate with each customer on a deeper level, resulting in improved engagement, higher conversions, and increased ROI.

Since marketers often focus on more than one company or client at a time, ChatGPT allows for continuous content development through individual chats that maintain the organization’s brand voice without the need for a technical account set up each time. It doesn’t care how many clients you take care of, meaning both cost and time savings.

Continuous Learning & Improvement

ChatGPT’s continuous learning capabilities enable marketers to stay ahead of the curve. Through ongoing training and exposure to real-world data, ChatGPT adapts and evolves to meet changing customer needs and industry dynamics.

Marketers can capitalize on this adaptive learning to refine their strategies, optimize campaign performance, and drive continuous improvement.

Dependable Development & Longevity

Few, if any, companies have spent more money or received more investment than OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in the company to date (SOURCE), and with a valuation of $29 billion, OpenAI won’t be disappearing any time soon.

Further, with over 100 million users and an expected revenue of $1 billion by 2024, the company is strong and growing (SOURCE). If any company will lead the way in consolidating smaller companies with similar solutions, it’s this one.

How to Develop Your ChatGPT Marketing Skills

ChatGPT is like a hammer. In the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it can still be useful, but in the hands of a carpenter, it becomes something transformative.

That’s why the second cohort of DigitalMarketer’s AI-Powered Marketer Accelerator is focused exclusively on ChatGPT. If you want to learn how to employ the most powerful frameworks built by DigitalMarketer over the last dozen years, while also using AI to make the process faster than ever, you need to attend.

The post Why ChatGPT is the Best Tool for Marketers appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Let’s dive into the pool of reports that have been surfacing recently – those revolving around AI, the economy, and how this roller coaster of a world may impact your marketing agency, then we’ll shift gears and put your agency under a microscope.

My goal is simple, to spark a lightbulb moment, where you say, “Ah, these are crucial, foundational aspects of my business that I’ve been overlooking.”

Your customer avatar, your customer journey, your niche… all those buzzwords you’ve heard until you’re blue in the face (but might not have really acted on quite yet).

The “development” of your small business was optional until recently. You could ignore trends, delay updating your services, and maybe even “step away” from operations before… but NOT ANYMORE.

Things are changing FAST, and if you don’t get your business on track, you’re going to miss out. Not only could your services (and therefore your business) become irrelevant if you fail to consider how new technologies, marketing practices, and methods are changing, you’re going to do something even worse… YOU WILL MISS A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY.

The rapid progression of AI and societal change means one thing: all businesses are facing the same lack of experience and also have access to new technology. The next Google, Facebook, TikTok, etc. are going to launch over the next

It’s time to crush that resistance to change, and the action starts here, right now.

What’s the Matter With the Way Things Have Been?

Let’s take a moment to gauge your feelings about the internet so far.

Is the internet a dreamy utopia where you can find everything you need, with all of the fun and answers just a click away?

Or is it more like stumbling into an IKEA store, utterly lost, drifting aimlessly from bedrooms to kitchens, only to end up shelling out an unexpected $5k for a living room set you didn’t intend to buy?

That sums up the internet so far – a wild, chaotic IKEA… a poorly structured labyrinth of information.

The tool we’ve been given to navigate this labyrinth is a search engine, biased and inefficient, a Frankenstein monster of our own creation. My theory is that this mess of a situation paved the way for social media to rise and shine.

As search has gotten increasingly unhelpful, we resorted to building individual networks to connect with others (Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, etc.), but due to the nature of these networks, it doesn’t satisfy what we really want… easy access to easy answers.

The internet has, until now, been a digital wild west. Full of freedom and opportunity, but so chaotic that it’s tough to make progress.

In the midst of this chaos, AI seems like the answer to our original dream of the internet. Imagine logging on, typing a question, receiving a concise answer, and smoothly moving onto the next thing on your list.

Sounds like a dream, right? Instead, we’ve been stuck in an endless loop, spending hours, sometimes a whole day, hunting for that elusive piece of information. This was not the plan.

The plan was, “Hey machine, fetch me the stuff I’m looking for,” and the machine promptly delivering. Instead, but again, what we got was a virtual IKEA store.

But fret not! Change isn’t a monster, change is progress.

The internet, as we know it, has been somewhat dull and mediocre, merely the first step in the evolution of new technology.

What the Heck Is Happening Right Now?

Needless to say, the future promises much more CHANGE, and you need to be prepared to leverage it to the fullest.

Are you worried about recession, war, or the economy in general? Most of you probably are, and rightly so given the topsy-turvy state of affairs.

Hold onto your hats, folks, because we’re about to dive into a wild world of change that could make your head spin.

Recession, War, & Economy Fears

The US inflation rate is tap dancing at 4.93% (in May 2023), a subtle decline from last month’s 4.98% and a healthy decline from last year’s 8.26%. To put that into context, the long term average inflation rate is around 3.28%.

Basically, the cost of everything is high and getting higher, and boy, is that going to pinch when it comes to netting those customers for your business.

Worse, especially for marketers and businesses reliant on expendable income, is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). March 2023 saw a jaw-dropping spike in the consumer price index to nearly 10.1%.

We haven’t seen anything like this since the eighties, perhaps. This figure does exclude food and energy costs, and in a way, that makes it all the more striking. We’re now looking at a significant disposable income that marketers, like us, are vying for.

Which brings me to the ecommerce sector. We just launched a report recently called the Hawk AI Ecommerce Report.

If you’re still thinking that ecommerce is on a skyrocketing trajectory post-2020 pandemic, hate to break it to you, but that’s not the case. Growth has tapered off.

The average order value has leaped 31% year over year, even as overall sessions dipped by 5%. I can almost hear you scoff, “5%, that’s peanuts!” Hold on.

In a realm where constant growth is king, a 5% dip in eyeballs looking at products is no laughing matter. It’s like a crack in the dam.

So, the past year wasn’t e-commerce’s finest hour. But hey, let’s focus on the positives, like the soaring average order value. There were also some intriguing trends, like a 78% hike in the ‘buy now, pay later’ option during Black Friday.

Now, let’s dig deeper into the data. Strap in, folks, because we’re about to embark on a rollercoaster ride through the year-on-year changes in the consumer price index since the disco era of the seventies.

AI Taking Over

Switching gears now, let’s talk AI, specifically about its sudden blitz through the ranks. Our little friend ChatGPT has managed to amass a staggering 100 million users in just two months. To put that in perspective, this AI darling outpaced WhatsApp, mobile phones, Twitter, and even the internet itself in terms of user base growth. It’s like a comet blazing across the tech universe.

Sure, AI has been on the scene for a while, but what we’re witnessing now is the starting of its “coming of age.” It’s like the awkward teenager morphing into a supermodel.

And this is just the beginning, because once your average Joe and Jane start using this tech, it’s game on. Commercial interests are pricking up their ears and eyeing that 100 million users figure like a juicy steak.

AI makes creating new apps, especially simple ones, almost free. Back in the mid-2000’s I wanted to develop a fitness application and was told that it would cost $500,000 for a non-working mockup. Today, I could probably develop the whole thing for free, and that’s exactly what many entrepreneurs are doing.

How many apps? Hard to say! New ones are coming out daily. If you want an idea of how many, check out TheresanAIforThat.com. As of this articles’s publish date, they have 4,434 indexed AI apps used for 1,242 tasks.

Information Tech War

Then there’s the battle of the tech giants, who are in a mad dash to revamp, reinvent, and reimagine their platforms to keep up with AI’s blazing trail. Remember when Instagram flipped its focus to Reels, only to switch back to photos when that didn’t pan out as they’d hoped?

You know what’s really intriguing? We’re watching TECH GURUS make these seismic decisions, not your average consumer.

It’s as if the tech nerds have hijacked the driver’s seat, pressing buttons and yanking levers without asking the passengers where they want to go. Despite having the funds to do extensive surveys, they’re barreling full steam ahead.

So, here we are, standing at the precipice of the great information tech war. It’s a new battlefield, with tech giants scurrying to mimic the success of TikTok and AI applications like ChatGPT, a frontier so vast and unsettling it’s causing Google to break into a cold sweat. Because, if AI continues its meteoric rise, SEO’s value could crumble like a cookie.

When it comes to content creation, the game is changing.

While Google still dotes on keywords like a doting parent, AI is taking a different approach. It’s an evolution, my friends. A revolution, if you will, where we shift from the creator dictating the content narrative to the user wielding the power.

The current model of content production is like putting the cart before the horse. It’s all creator-centric when it should be focusing on the user. Now, you might argue that keywords stem from user queries, but let’s be honest, it’s like trying to piece together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

So what’s the deal with AI and why is Chat GPT all the rage?

Well, instead of playing favorites like Google, who’d boost Bob from down the street because his keyword game is strong, ChatGPT levels the playing field. It takes a massive fixed data set, learns from it, finds patterns, and then churns out an answer that’s an average of all the answers it has analyzed.

So when folks say AI is biased, I chuckle.

Sure, it has its inclinations, but it’s no more skewed than Bob penning an article with the sole aim of lightening your wallet. That’s the harsh reality of the internet, which loops back to my earlier point – the internet, as we know it, is flawed.

Why AI is Growing Right Now (and Why It’s Here to Stay)

Switching gears now, let’s gab about AI adoption. We’re seeing a steady uptick here with about 35% of global companies harnessing AI in their operations. Now, I know, most folks’ minds jump straight to Chat GPT, but AI’s tendrils extend much further.

Consider the likes of TikTok, Starbucks, and other bigwigs. Ever used the Starbucks app? It’s a masterpiece of design rooted in machine learning – understanding how people interact with information, discover products they desire, and even related items they might fancy. This intricate dance of relational data is all orchestrated by AI, and it’s been this way for some time.

Nike and other industry titans have been riding the AI wave for a while now.

This 35% isn’t a passing trend; it’s a new industry standard. Interestingly, the data suggests larger companies are 100% more likely than their smaller counterparts to have AI up and running in their operations.

The message here is crystal clear – the big players are in the AI game to stay.

Small businesses, to stay in the race, have got to be nimble and swift to adopt these changes. If you’re stuck in the slow lane, you’ll not only be left in the dust by the corporate giants but also by the fresh-out-of-college Joes, who’ve grasped AI’s potential and are now moulding their marketing knowledge base around it.

Consider this, while we’re scrambling to retrofit AI into your existing frameworks, there’s a whole new generation coming up that knows nothing else.

Now, don’t get ahead of yourselves. I recently interviewed forty twenty-somethings for a new role. Not a single one had tried AI. They’ve heard of it, sure, but their understanding is largely surface-level. This presents an enormous opportunity for established players to tap into the AI potential because the rookies, surprisingly, aren’t fully clued in yet.

AI & the Job Market

An interesting tidbit, one in four companies are turning to AI because of labor or skills shortages.

The job market is a tough nut to crack. Companies, particularly the big ones, are starting to question whether they need new hires or if they can simply reallocate tasks.

Let’s debunk this misconception that AI is a job thief. It’s not.

What AI does is streamline specific tasks and processes, some of which were once part of someone’s job description. Suddenly, email monitoring or data analysis isn’t a full-time position; it’s an automated task, courtesy of AI.

This doesn’t mean you’re axing jobs. Rather, you’re ramping up efficiency.

Here’s the golden ticket – we always say you should aim to be 10x more productive with AI. As marketers, you have the expertise and AI offers the tools. The result? Your abilities are amplified.

We’re not talking mass job losses here. We’re talking about enhanced productivity and speed, reducing the need for extra hires and solving issues with unmotivated employees, which, believe me, can be a headache.

As marketers, it’s natural to be concerned about our roles, but we do have a creative function, and that makes a difference. The top five jobs at risk of automation aren’t ours. They’re IT professionals, data engineers, developers, data scientists, and customer service professionals.

I’ll provide a link to IBM’s 2022 State of AI report for more details.

So while we should be aware, let’s dial back the worry a notch.

In terms of labor and skill shortages, many are quick to condemn AI adoption, arguing it deprives people of job opportunities. Often, these critics (which can be referred to as Luddites), oppose new tech due to various pressures unrelated to the work at hand. We need to take a moment and remember what’s most important here – our customers.

Our primary focus shouldn’t be our employees, business partners, or investors. It should be our users. There’s been debate about whether Google should index AI-created content or human-produced content, but the truth is, good content is good content. Period.

From a customer-centric perspective, they don’t care about your internal issues. They care about receiving a great product or service.

As businesses, we need to stop obsessing over our internal operations and start considering our users more.

Your priority should be delivering the best content for your audience, rather than worrying about who’s producing it. Of course, ethical considerations matter, but they should not overshadow the primary goal – customer satisfaction.

What does that imply if you’re aiming to scale?

Well, stellar customer service is mandatory. The user experience has to be outstanding. The product – whatever you’re selling, has to be top-notch. Plus, customers need to be sold on your brand. The days when you could sell a product, move on to the next customer and repeat, are long gone.

This shift has already begun on the product front because Amazon’s model has forced us in that direction. It led us to commoditizing products we don’t care much about to get them as cheaply as possible.

Now, the focus is on people committing to brands and quality products. No more tolerating being on hold with an offshore call center for hours and still not having your issue resolved. Those days are done.

So picture insurance commercials – except they weren’t lying, you know? I find insurance commercials amusing because they promise the world but do virtually nothing, or worse, they fight you when something goes wrong.

That’s how traditional marketing has been. That needs to change now.

We’re moving towards a time where we deliver, not just promise. So again, expect significant changes in the marketing industry. Things will be different, and there may be fewer of us, as we become ten times more effective – keep that stat in mind. If your competitor was ten times more effective, would you stand a chance? Not really.

Your competition may no longer be a big agency. It could just be a lone individual who has figured out how to automate everything seamlessly. This will lead to unified marketing because it will be generated by a single individual.

We’ve all heard tales about a guy working out of his basement for a year, building a company from the ground up and then becoming a millionaire, posting pictures of Lamborghinis in Dubai or something. Have you ever wondered how that works? It works because everything originates from one person – it’s cohesive, whether it’s high-quality or not. It all feels like a personal brand rather than a product of a committee.

That’s how most companies are – built by committee. It leads to a lot of compromises and blandness, and it disconnects you from your customer avatar. It results in a bland, default campaign. And anyone can create default campaigns now.

For instance, with the help of ChatGPT, you can have a month’s worth of social media content without breaking a sweat.

The era of achieving great success by following a systematic approach is over too. Now, you need a system (which many companies lack) in addition to excellent execution and delivery.

AI is the Latest Case of Creative Destruction

The process of the new taking over the old is known as creative destruction. Essentially, it’s the process of continuous internal revolution within the economic structure, constantly breaking down the old and creating the new.

This phenomenon isn’t new – it’s been part of our history. For instance, let’s go back a bit. Remember when disposable film cameras were a thing? You know, the little plastic and cardboard ones you’d get at weddings, click away mindlessly, giving you a bunch of sub-par pictures, costing you a small fortune to develop.

That era has been replaced by the era of digital photography. With a digital camera, you popped in an SD card, and voila, instant content. Remember the decline of Polaroid? Polariod sales essentially got obliterated, overtaken by digital photography.

That’s creative destruction in action.

Our task, then, is to navigate this constant change, ensuring that we are always on the cutting edge, always adapting, always prepared for what comes next.

In doing so, we ensure our survival and growth in this ever-evolving landscape.

Let’s draw parallels to another example, the decline of manual stock trading and the rise of online trading. It mirrors the way digital marketing took over offline marketing.

I set up my online stock trading account back in high school, and I can’t picture doing it any other way. I spoke to from a trader that they’d pay a hefty fee to place their processor just a foot closer to the data line, buying them an infinitesimal edge in time. Can’t even imagine operating in that industry without such capabilities.

Let’s talk about the decline of traditional retail stores and the rise of e-commerce, an area that exploded during the pandemic.

Stores had to shutter all over the country as people were locked indoors, finding that they had more time and disposable income since they weren’t splurging on trips. They turned to e-commerce. Even though some physical stores are reopening, ecommerce isn’t going anywhere. It’s the future.

Then, we have the decline of physical media and the rise of streaming. Remember when strolling the aisles of the DVD store on a Friday night was a treat, and the excitement of finding an unexpected gem? That was a “thing,” replaced now by the advent of streaming, which effectively obliterated Blockbuster and all other DVD shops.

Now, let’s glance at the decline of traditional newspapers and the rise of online news. When was the last time you actually looked at a physical newspaper? Can’t remember, can you? And even in the checkout aisle, you’re more likely to be scrolling on your phone.

This process of ‘creative destruction’ that we’re going through, it’s cyclical. We’re on one cycle right now, but the key question is, will you make it to the next one?

Prepare Your Agency For the Future: Fortification & Innovation Assessment Framework

To navigate these tides of change and chaos, I propose a strategy of fortification and innovation. The marketing frameworks we’ve taught to hundreds of thousands of marketers (like the Customer Value Journey, Customer Avatar, and Core Message Canvas) still work.

They’ve worked for countless people and companies, and they’ve generated billions in revenue (over $100 million directly for DigitalMarketer). Even so, they need to be fortified so they can be even more effective using the latest technology, in this case, AI. That’s why we launched the AI-Powered Marketer Accelerator.

Similarly, you need to do the same thing with your customers by fortifying what works, and innovating improvements.

Are you prepared for the new market? If you don’t score 15 or above on either the Fortification or Innovation questions… you aren’t ready.

Click Here to download the spreadsheet.

Fortification

Rate your business from 1 to 5 on the following questions (1 = Not Defined, 5 = Well Defined)

How well-defined is your customer avatar?

Step one is understanding your customer. This is the foundation we’re building on.

So, the first question is, who’s your client? Can you define that client? Rate the clarity of your client definition from one to five.

Can you visualize them? Picture Sally, the yoga enthusiast with four children who somehow finds time to attend all their matches, manages a myriad of tasks and all she desires is the perfect phone case to capture her life moments.

I’m chasing after the emotional connection here. I’m not interested in the mundane demographic data like a married, suburban mother between 35 to 45. That’s old news. I crave something juicy, something impactful for advertising.

Can you craft an advertisement, a tantalizing, effective ad using just that customer avatar?

Because if you can’t, you’ve got a hazy, nebulous understanding of your customer rather than a clear customer avatar.

How well-defined is your niche?

Moving on, question number two, what’s your niche? We’ve had endless discussions on niches. I’m quite fond of the phrase ‘niche it to rich it’. So, what’s your niche?

Can anyone take one look at your business and instantly discern your niche? If no one, even those familiar with your work, can pinpoint your niche, then you likely don’t have a defined niche. Evaluate yourself on your niche clarity. On a scale of one to five, how well-defined is your niche?

How well-defined are your products & services?

Next question, what’s your product or service? You might think it’s evident, but believe me, I’ve dealt with countless companies that were clueless about what they’re selling.

They might know their product or service catalog but fail to succinctly define it. Like with any offering, apply the 80/20 rule. If you can’t discern where 80% of your revenue is originating from, you likely have a poorly defined product or service.

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How detailed is your primary Customer Value Journey?

Next up, what’s your customer value journey? It’s not about educating them on marketing, it’s about illustrating the complexity of the process. Marketing isn’t just putting up billboards or Facebook ads, it’s a comprehensive, consistent plan. If your approach isn’t cohesive and consistent, you don’t have a customer value journey, rather a collection of tasks you perform for clients. And is that contributing to their growth? Or is it just ensuring your next paycheck?

So evaluate your core customer value journey on a scale of one to five. You should ideally have these customer value journeys segmented by product or product line. If you don’t, then you lack customer value.

How detailed is your conversion process?

And finally, what’s your conversion process? Can you describe it? Is it meeting Joe at a local business event, following up, running a discovery session, and signing him as a client? If you don’t have a conversion process, then you don’t really have a business, you’re merely interviewing for a job with random people, hoping that they hire you. Not much of a business model, is it?

You likely do have a conversion process, it just hasn’t been formalized yet. So, rate how formal and defined your conversion process is, on a scale of one to five.

Innovation

Rate your business from 1 to 5 on the following questions (1 = Not Defined, 5 = Well Defined)

How customized are your solutions for each customer?

AI’s level of personalization and its ability to generate immense amounts of content instantaneously means your customers will increasingly expect comprehensive, cohesive, and customized solutions.

If you’re not delivering these, they’ll seek out those who can. As I’ve mentioned before, you need to consolidate what you’re currently doing before you can innovate. You can’t possibly innovate in these areas if you don’t have them clearly defined to begin with.

Customers are going to become increasingly expensive to acquire, which means customer retention will become absolutely crucial.

How well are you taking care of your clients? Is it an afterthought or a constant priority? This needs to be at the forefront of your strategy – how to acquire and retain customers.

Next, you’re expected to exhibit your core competency in every facet of your business. This is why I always insist on expanding content marketing.

Your content is essentially a public display of your competence. When I commit to a brand, I undertake extensive research. I devour everything they’ve published, check all their social platforms, sign up for newsletters. If I find any inconsistencies, I likely won’t engage.

While this might sound eccentric now, it’ll soon become commonplace, as customers will have access to transformative experiences. They’ll find brands that ‘fix’ things for them and they’ll never consider leaving. So, brace yourself and be ready for the AI revolution in marketing!

How expensive are your customers to acquire?

The acquisition of your customers is escalating in expense, necessitating that customer retention takes center stage in your strategy.

Do you lavish attention on your clients or do you scatter that attention sporadically? This isn’t about generating monthly progress reports as an afterthought. It’s about constant engagement. Think about how you sign up your customers and how you ensure their allegiance.

Time to face the music – your core competency needs to be glaringly visible across your entire business. This is why I’ve always been an ardent advocate of content marketing. You see, your content is your public avatar, your professional facade. When I decide to commit to a brand, I run a comprehensive background check – I pore over every piece of content they’ve put out, scour their social channels, subscribe to their newsletters. If I detect inconsistencies, I’m out of there.

Now, this may sound a bit extreme in the current scenario, but trust me, it’s a trend that’s picking up steam. Why? Because consumers are being exposed to these transformative brand experiences. Once they get a taste of a brand that ‘fixes’ things for them, they’ll stick with it. So, picture this – a thousand fiercely loyal customers hooked to your brand. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

However, to earn that loyalty, you need to ensure that your content rings true to your brand. This is a significant issue I have with brands outsourcing their content creation. If you aren’t the one crafting the content, it lacks authenticity. If a customer reads an article attributed to you but you didn’t write it and then they approach you with questions based on it, how does that reflect on you? Not favorably, I assure you. You need to create your content and answer every question your customer could potentially have.

You’re also expected to anticipate questions they may not even know to ask yet. If you aren’t providing the answers, they’ll seek them elsewhere. So, it’s paramount that you invest in your content creation, possibly even leveraging AI-generated content.

How well are you expanding your private following?

With the uncertainties in search algorithms, it’s critical to develop your private following. A consistent newsletter is a good place to start. It gives you a platform to roll out content regularly and nurture your audience privately.

This idea came to me when I saw brands that relied heavily on Facebook for their marketing get banned. You need to secure your audience independently, away from the vagaries of social media.

How well are you using AI to augment/improve your speed & processes?

Now, let’s touch upon the application of AI in marketing. The core uses include personalization, predictive analytics, chatbots, image recognition, voice search optimization, content creation, lead generation, A/B testing, and sentiment analysis.

It all circles back to data crunching and content creation. However, don’t assume AI-created content absolves you of your responsibility. It’s still your duty to bring a unique style to every piece of content, across all platforms and mediums.

So, let’s tackle some pressing questions. How customized are your solutions for each customer? Are they templated or do they address unique needs? Next, how costly is customer acquisition for you currently, compared to last year? And, how well are you utilizing AI to enhance your speed and processes?

The post Future-Proof Your Marketing Agency with the Fortification & Innovation Framework appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

During 2022, DigitalMarketer generated 181 articles, 101 podcasts, and 141 youtube videos for public consumption (we also generated over 1,000 gated videos but we won’t include that data here).

In our Content Marketing Certification we teach you how to build the Content Performance Report. The point is to allow you to assess the performance of all of your content using simple metrics, then use those metrics to identify potential opportunities for new content.

Surprisingly, the most consumed content was PODCASTS. Even though we produced less podcasts (101) than both articles (181) and videos (178), podcasts still accounted for 53% of total consumption.

Quick note that “consumption” for our content strategy is “views” for for video, “unique pageviews” for articles, and “downloads” for podcasts.

On average, each podcast was downloaded 2,491 times versus videos at 432 views, and articles at 781 pageviews.

The following is a breakdown of the top performing content DigitalMarketer produced in 2022.

The Best Performing Content

Here are the top performing pieces of content from each content type.

TOP ARTICLE: How Facebook Ads Are Changing In 2022
TOP PODCAST: Episode 231: Become A Certified Email Marketing Master
TOP VIDEO: Paid Traffic Mastery Certification w/Kasim Aslam

Top Performing Articles

The article titles cover a variety of topics related to digital marketing, advertising, and related fields. Some articles focus on specific tactics or strategies, such as Facebook Ads, email marketing, or content marketing.

Others cover broader topics like the skills marketers need to succeed or emerging trends like Web 3.0. Some articles also offer tips on building effective campaigns or optimizing sales funnels.

Overall, the articles provide a range of insights and advice for marketers looking to improve their skills and stay up to date with the latest developments in the field. Here are some possible patterns that could be found with these results:

Emerging Trend Articles

Several article titles mention new or emerging trends in the field of marketing, such as Web 3.0, post-digital marketing, and 2023 digital marketing trends.

• What Marketers Need To Know About Web 3.0
• 2023’s Digital Marketing Trends for Small Business
• A Revolutionary New Way to Look at Content Marketing Strategy
• The 5 Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies to Try in 2023

Specific Tactics & Strategy Articles:

Many of the article titles focus on specific marketing tactics and strategies, such as Facebook Ads, email marketing, content marketing, and video marketing.

• What Is Digital Advertising?
• The Ad Grid: How To Build Traffic Campaigns That Convert Higher And Scale Faster
• Is Email Marketing Dead?
• How to Write a Sales Page
• 5 Ways to Drive Traffic and Sales with Short Videos

Skills Development Articles:

Several article titles offer advice and tips on developing marketing skills or building a marketing career path.

• What Is A T-Shaped Marketer
• What Does It Take To Be The Head Of Marketing?
• DigitalMarketer Marketer of the Year 2021/2022
• Want to Build a Content Marketing Career Path? Here’s What to Do
• Marketing Skills You Must Have in 2023

Optimization & Conversion Articles:

Some article titles focus on optimizing marketing campaigns and improving conversion rates, such as the Ad Grid and copywriting tips for sales funnels.

• The Ad Grid: How To Build Traffic Campaigns That Convert Higher And Scale Faster
• Why Email Marketing Is Still Crucial In 2022
• 3 Copywriting Tips To Optimize Your Sales Funnel
• Million-Dollar Funnels Aren’t Made With Ads

Common Mistakes Articles:

Two article titles highlight common mistakes that marketers make, such as the #1 mistake when running paid ads and the 5 mistakes that limit YouTube subscription numbers.

• The #1 Mistake Most Marketers Make When Running Paid Ads
• 5 Mistakes That Are Limiting Your YouTube Subscription Numbers

Social Media Articles:

Several article titles focus on social media marketing, such as tips for winning big on social media.

• 7 Tips To Win Big On Social Media – From The Office Of Kris Krohn
• How Facebook Ads Are Changing In 2022

Time Efficiency Articles:

Some article titles offer time-efficient solutions for marketing, such as the 2-hour-per-month content marketing framework.

• How To Create Functional SOPs (That Your Employees Actually Use) 
• 2-Hour-Per-Month Content Marketing Framework

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Top Performing Videos

The content focuses on digital marketing, advertising, and business growth strategies. The titles are aimed at marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners looking to improve their marketing skills and drive revenue growth. The videos cover a range of topics, from social media marketing and email marketing to paid traffic, digital retailing, and content marketing.

Some of the videos appear to be focused on providing specific tips and strategies, such as “How to handle sales objections” and “8 Tips for Writing Effective Email Marketing Subject Lines.” Others are geared towards offering more comprehensive courses or certifications, such as “Paid Traffic Mastery Certification” and “Become a Certified Email Marketing Master.”

The videos feature various experts in the marketing industry, such as Kasim Aslam, Ryan Deiss, and Jena Apgar.

Overall, the video titles suggest that the content is geared towards helping businesses and marketers improve their digital marketing strategies and increase their revenue through targeted and effective advertising.

Paid Advertising & Traffic Generation Videos:

• Paid Traffic Mastery Certification w/Kasim Aslam
• How should you structure your ad copy for Facebook and Instagram?
• How to Create a TikTok Ad Assembly Line with Maxwell Finn

Email Marketing Videos:

• Why Email Marketing Matters for Monetization with Alex Cattoni
• Become a Certified Email Marketing Master
• 8 Tips for Writing Effective Email Marketing Subject Lines

Social Media Marketing Videos:

• How to Generate Brand Awareness Through Social Media with Jena Apgar
• How to Create a TikTok Ad Assembly Line with Maxwell Finn

Business & Growth Sales Videos:

• Businesses Now KNOW They Need Digital Marketing
• Networking to Earn Your First Clients

Industry Insights & Trends Videos:

• The Future of E-Commerce is THIS
• How is automotive digital retailing performing?
• It’s Over… Machine Learning Won.

Content Marketing Videos:

• Get Certified in Content Marketing
• DigitalMarketer Academy Announcement!
• 3 Foundational Skills Every Marketer Needs

Top Performing Podcasts

These podcast titles cover a wide range of topics related to marketing, business, and social media. Some of the titles focus on specific tactics or strategies for marketing and advertising, while others explore broader topics related to entrepreneurship and personal development.

The titles also vary in tone, with some being more straightforward and instructional (“A Sales System for All Personalities”), while others are more attention-grabbing and use humor or shock value to pique interest (“Using Poop to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign?”).

Overall, these titles suggest that the podcasts are aimed at entrepreneurs, marketers, and business owners who are interested in learning more about how to grow and scale their businesses, improve their marketing skills, and stay up-to-date on the latest trends in social media and e-commerce.

Advertising Tactics & Marketing Strategies Podcasts:

• Episode 231: Become A Certified Email Marketing Master
• Episode 223: Surprising Social Media Stats and How to ACTUALLY Get Results from Your Content
• Episode 224: How Course Creators Can Fill Up their Funnel with Marcio Santos
• Episode 225: 5 Ways to Make Your Content Scale with Shaina Weisinger
• Episode 234: 3X Your Agency in 1 Year with EJ Saunders

Personal Development & Entrepreneurship Podcasts:

• Episode 227: Finding Yourself After Failure with Amber Spears | DigitalMarketer Stories
• Episode 233: How Joe Rogan Built His Brand on Cultural and Technological Trends
• Episode 241: The Secret Sauce (and Missing Link) to Scaling a Business with Victoria Caldwell

Interviews with Successful Business Owners & Marketers Podcasts:

• Episode 226: A Sales System for All Personalities with Neal Tricarico
• Episode 228: Using Your Personal Brand to Build Your Agency with Jeff Hunter
• Episode 244: Secrets of a Tik Tok Marketer with Gavin Bell
• Episode 245: Increasing Your Website Conversions 100% with Michael Buzinski
• Episode 252: Handling EVERY Sales Objection with Alex Schlinsky

Social Media & E-Commerce Trends & Insights:

• Episode 230: A Doomsday Clock that Will Make You a Better Marketer? | Interview with Dave Albano
• Episode 235: Meta Insiders on Instagram Reels
• Episode 238: Bringing a Brick-and-Mortar Business Online with Lanell Beckels
• Episode 240: E-Commerce Strategies for 2022 with Scott Cunningham and Simon Trafford

Creative & Unusual Marketing Tactics:

• Episode 237: Using Poop to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign?
• Episode 236: The Secret to Publishing a Video a Day

Podcasting tips and tricks:

• Episode 221: The RIGHT and Wrong Way to Book Guests on Your Podcast
• Episode 242: Hiring and Onboarding a Marketing Manager with Albert Abrantes
• Episode 220: A Low-Pressure System to Get Agency Clients

The post What We Didn’t Expect from Our 2022 Content Performance Report appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

AI is an opportunity, not a threat. The marketers who embrace change will see their capabilities expand faster than they ever thought possible. Marketers who hide or ignore the trends will be left behind.

There are two ways to look at this situation. Let’s start with the negative way…

The Lost Marketers on the Beach

All the marketers sat on a beautiful beach that went on far as the eye could see. They chatted, laughed, built sand castles, and played in the waves. Then the ocean started to recede; a little bit at first, but as the minutes ticked by, it got farther and farther away from the shore until it couldn’t be seen.

The marketers looked at each other perplexed… some thought it was funny and ran out onto the wet sand where the waves used to crash. Others remained were they were, and simply discussed the troubling disappearance of the ocean. Still others ran inland towards high ground, screaming for the rest to follow.

By the time the tsunami could be seen, it was too late for anyone to change their mind. The wave rose, and rose, and rose, and it got closer, and closer, and closer. It swept up the people who had run towards the ocean first, then the people who did nothing, and then pursued the ones who tried to prepare for its arrival.

Everything they had built on the beach was destroyed. Most of the marketers were lost, sucked into the ocean or smashed against the shore. The remainder stumbled across a desolate landscape, picking up the pieces of what they had built, and began reconstructing from scratch.

I’m sure you guessed that AI is the tsunami, and the three groups of marketers are the ones that are happy about AI but aren’t taking it seriously, the ones on the beach aren’t doing anything, and the ones heading for the hills understand that AI is a game changer and are starting to prepare.

The good news is, this isn’t the only way to look at this situation!

The Adventurous Marketers on the Frontier

The crew was ready. Cargo stowed, flight checklist reviewed, engines in the green… the countdown had begun. The count reached zero and like a match being struck, the ship leapt into the air climbing higher and higher, faster and faster until the mountains and waves devolved into a mat of green and blue, and the clouds billowed below.

They were headed towards space, where countless new stations had been constructed near resource-rich astroids… or maybe to the manufacturing plants on the moon… or to the growing colony on Mars… or to explore the moons of Jupiter. The crew was excited with the endless possibilities this new frontier had opened up.

There would be danger and fear, but that would be easily squashed by adventure and opportunity, driven by courage, energy, and a ravenous appetite for advancement.

The frontier had been opened to everyone, and once that happened, the crew realized that the environment they had been operating in had become stale, monotonous, tedious, and boring. The frontier had saved them.

Which story do you identify with? Which one sounds like more fun?

Survival is stressful. Adventure is stressful. The difference is that you can choose adventure, while survival is just something we all have to do.

Your Marketing Career is Safe If You Want It to Be

I speak to a lot of well-established, successful marketers who have been in marketing for over 20 years. That puts them in a unique set of people who saw the transition from traditional offline marketing to digital marketing… the biggest change in the industry since the television.

They’re NOT worried. All they can see is possibility. Possibility for more effective marketing, for more efficient teams and workflows, for expanding markets in new industries, and for tech that makes they themselves 10 times more productive.

If you choose to view AI as an opportunity, you will have the right mindset for what’s coming next.

What’s coming next? A shift in the way we do things! It’s something we’ve faced before and will face again. That said, you still need several traditional marketing skills to succeed in the new age.

Here are 5 ways to safeguard your marketing career.

#1: Double Down on Marketing Strategy

With AI tools increasing the productivity of marketing managers, and allowing all marketers to produce content faster than ever while also managing paid media channels more effectively, the marketer that can produce the best overall strategy will win.

Note that I said “overall strategy” and not “paid media strategy,” “social media strategy,” “content strategy,” “product strategy,” etc. With marketers’ growing capabilities comes the opportunity (and necessity) of creating a cohesive strategic plan that can be created and executed by a single marketer.

At DigitalMarketer, we have the Customer Value Journey to guide overall strategy creation. It’s an 8-stage process that will turn strangers into buyers into active promoters, and you can incorporate all elements of marketing (AI, email marketing, social media marketing, copywriting, etc.) into it.

TAKE ACTION!

If you don’t have a well defined overall marketing strategy, you don’t need to create one from scratch. The Customer Value Journey has been used to make over $100 million for DigitalMarketer and billions for our students. Download this ebook and start solidifying your strategy today.

#2: Start Using AI

No, you can’t avoid using AI tools.

If you think that you can eventually hire an “AI Specialist” just like you do with a “TikTok Specialist” because you want to avoid the platform, you are 100% wrong here. You need to build a basic understanding of how AI works so you can evolve your strategy to match.

Your ability to both use and understand AI will directly impact your ability to manage marketing campaigns. Without a basic understanding, you won’t just SEEM out of date, you will be truly lost, and that will be very noticeable by your subordinates, colleagues, superiors, and clients.

TAKE ACTION!

Not using AI yet? Not to worry! Simply set up a ChatGPT account RIGHT NOW. Next, whenever you’re planning on doing a Google search for something, instead put the same search into ChatGPT. Review the answer and ask follow up questions to refine the result. This is the FIRST STEP to understanding AI and what it’s capable of.

#3: Ensure That You Understand All Marketing Methods

Do you still need to understand each marketing method if AI could potentially execute it for you? Of course you do. How could you manage anything you don’t really understand? You can’t!

Could you manage a group of doctors if you have no medical experience? How about mechanics if you’ve never fixed a car? All managers in skilled workforces have typically done the job in some way, shape, or form in the past. Marketers are no different.

At DigitalMarketer we call it the T-Shaped Marketer. A T-Shaped Marketer is somebody who has expertise in about 1-3 main marketing facets.

Being a T-shaped marketer means that you can help clients with their marketing strategy from A-Z. While you’ll have your bread and butter (like SEO, social media, paid ads, or community building), you’ll be able to create winning strategies amongst other marketing facets by collaborating with your marketing team.

While AI might ultimately replace some of the marketing specialities, your understanding of what role the method played will be pivotal to your advancement as AI becomes increasingly widespread.

TAKE ACTION!

Do a self-assessment, and find out where your marketing skills are really lacking. Here are the marketing skills that we promote at DigitalMarketer. Copy the list, then give yourself a 1 to 10 score regarding your knowledge and understanding of each one. If you give yourself a 5 or less on any of them, start researching, or take a course to learn more.

• Digital Advertising
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Search Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Copywriting
• Ecommerce Marketing
• Analytics & Data
• Community Management
• Optimization & Testing

#4: Add Style & Creativity to Your Skillsets

AI isn’t magic… it’s just a new kind of program. You’ve used computers and programs for years, and you understand the limitations they have when it comes to new ideas, stylized content, and general creativity. It can only know what we know, so the best way to stay useful is to KNOW MORE.

How can you start to “know more?” You do more! You experience more. You open your mind to every possibility and identify and squash habits that prevent you from learning. This sounds simple, but it is far from it.

Hate to bring it up… but you know your aversion to using TikTok because “it’s for young people,” or “you don’t have time,” or “you’re too mature for the content?” STOP IT. That is a perfect case study of your tendency to limit growth because it’s uncomfortable and you fear change. ‘

Now that you’re open to learning, let’s talk about creativity. Who better to show you how to beat AI in creativity, than AI? Here’s what ChatGPT had to say on the subject:

So! According to AI, you can beat AI by leveraging your creativity to develop unique ideas, perspectives, and content by combining human intuition, experience, and creative thinking.

Let’s take it a step further by talking about style. If you can’t define your brand’s style in every aspect of the content they generate, then it doesn’t have a style.

Every piece of content you generate needs to have a unique and identifiable style that matches your brand. Every article, video, graphic, document, post, press release, event, physical location, website, etc. needs to look like “you.”

This is extremely important as more and more people generate more and more content using AI. If we all use the same tool to create content about the same subject, there will be no reason to go to one vendor over another. Your content needs to reflect you.

If you don’t consider yourself stylish or creative, stop it. You’re both of those things, you just need some practice.

TAKE ACTION!

Two tasks for you to do here… get creative and define your style. To get creative, set aside 15-30 minutes a day for creative exploration. This could be through artistic mediums like painting or drawing, but it could also be trying physical activities like yoga or weightlifting. The important part is that you try something NEW each week, every day.

For your personal style, open a document and define 3 unique aspects of the following (start with this personal list to really drive home the need for defining style in every aspect of your life):

• Your Writing Style
• Your Wardrobe
• Your Home
• Your Diet
• Your Hobbies

Don’t overthink it! Simply start to think about what makes you different from other people.

#5: Improve Your People Skills

AI isn’t people! We all know this. Just try to chat with a bot and you’ll quickly notice who’s a person and who isn’t.

There are dozens of facets of communication that we unconsciously execute every time we have a conversation. From body language to tone to mood to outside factors like the weather, time of day, and current events, a lot goes into how we converse with each other.

That isn’t likely to change soon, which means that your personal relationships with coworkers, managers, employees, customers, clients, and vendors will still require people skills.

“People skills” are more than just conversing as well. If you want to be a truly capable human, your skills will need to include emotional intelligence, empathy, adaptability, listening, openness, acceptance, authenticity, curiosity, clarity, patience, compassion, and an abundance of energy to make it all work.

That personal touch will be more important than ever as the more mundane tasks that used to suck up our energy and emotional reserves will be increasingly delegated to unfeeling machines (AI).

I think one directive sums up your new mindset well: BE INTERESTING.

Be interesting in your conversations. Be interesting in the way you approach projects. Be interesting when you talk to people you see every day. Be interesting to new people you meet.

TAKE ACTION!

For the next week take notes on any conversation that lasts more than 5 minutes. Note how interesting (or boring) the engagement was, and then consider how you could have made it more interesting. After a week, take one of your notes and apply it to your conversations for a day. See how the conversations go and adjust accordingly.

Conclusion: You’re Going to Be Fine

You don’t have be afraid of the coming changes, but you do need to be open and aware of them. Start using AI right now, and really start to think about what makes you special as a person.

If you want a huge leg-up, consider the AI-Powered Marketer course. We’re assembling a team of highly intelligent marketers who are embracing AI right now to enhance their results.

The post 5 Ways to Safeguard Your Marketing Career Against/With AI appeared first on DigitalMarketer.