Marketing is Dead – or How AI is Ruining Our Lives

Every year it seems, someone says marketing is dead. Just do a simple Google search and you’ll find a myriad of articles / videos / podcasts on this topic. The Harvard Business Review has written on this topic numerous times – starting with an article in 2012 with the title “Marketing Is Dead.” This article – before its time – discussed the importance of finding influencers that could help brands tell their story. One author for Forbes magazine last year (a plastic surgeon mind you) stated marketing was dead and that excellence in your field was the new thing. So, why do people constantly say that marketing is dead?

Let’s review the evidence for both sides as well as some other things people say “are dead” in marketing. We’ll start with the marketing is dead crowd. Here’s what we hear them say:

Marketing is Dead

“Marketing is dead. I personally have never understood marketing. It seems that I hire a company or someone or just buy ads and nothing happens. They just take my money, I can’t even see my own ads, and I never get anything in return. It’s either that marketing is dead or that maybe something else is better. I think it’s about experience and customer loyalty – not marketing. Or, maybe it’s my connections and word-of-mouth. Marketing is a waste of money.”

As you can see above, there are a number of people that say these types of things and, in fact, believe, that marketing is dead. I won’t deny that marketers ruin things. The very first banner and tile ad built by AT&T that ran online generated a click through rate of 44%. Today, the average click through rate for a banner and tile ad is only 0.05%. This has been true across platforms. Fewer users engage on social media posts. Fewer users sign up for email newsletters. Fewer people pay attention to newspaper ads. Fewer people pay attention to billboards. The list goes on. Gary Vaynerchuk famously said that marketers ruin EVERYTHING because they go to where the people are, ruin it, and then move to where the people are again.

So, if it’s so hard to do marketing, why not just create great experiences and then call it a day. Or generate a bunch of connections? Some would go as far as to say that some individual marketing channels are dead – the most popular to pick on are SEO and PPC.

SEO is Dead

“Not only is marketing dead – so is SEO. Now that AI can write content for us, search engines are just going to constantly put out low-grade, high-volume terrible content that I don’t want to read. Even those AI Overviews are incorrect. No one will know what is true and what isn’t – and therefore, we shouldn’t use search engines anymore. Didn’t you see the video where [INSERT ARTIST] said that their AI overview isn’t true. No one uses search engines anymore anyway.”

Some will say that the evidence points to search results becoming garbage. The argument is that with artificial intelligence, SEO is just about producing bad content using AI which no one wants – therefore SEO agencies will just produce bad content and get bad results and charge clients a lot for their services. Some also say that because the AI overviews are so bad in some cases, that search is being ruined. Another reason that some say SEO is dying for small businesses is that those that can do good work will have to charge so much that small businesses won’t be able to do SEO anymore.

There is also another new element coming into play dubbed “zero click search” where users are reviewing the AI overviews and watching more video content than ever and not visiting any websites thus no credit or value is given to the site other than a citation as a source. We’ve seen this sort of behavior before with Google Business Profile maps where users don’t click but use Google as the Yellow Pages of sorts. This behavior is leading some to believe that website traffic will decline sharply (which we’ll discuss later in the article) or that websites may eventually be obsolete.

No matter the behavior here – I won’t deny that SEO is hard. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the effort put forth to ensure your website shows in a search for a product or service that you offer or an adjacent topic that would lead to conversion (sales, leads, donations, etc.). Not to sound like a grandpa, but when I started in SEO, it was easy. Add the right keywords, get the right backlinks, and you could rank for anything. Now, it takes a great deal of work to rank! So much so, many small businesses believe SEO is dead for them due to the difficulty of ranking.

So – yes – SEO is harder and more expensive than it used to be. It’s harder because the requirements are different and it’s more expensive because it requires actual experience / expertise to write content that people in [INSERT INDUSTRY] care about. You can’t write basic content on a topic anymore and rank. Users – and well everyone – has higher expectations for what is being created. If you’re going to read an article about a particular medical procedure, do you want to read an article with no research but generated by AI or an article and video from a doctor who specializes in that procedure? I think everyone – even Google – would prefer the latter.

PPC is Dead

“Last time I used Google Ads, I could just pick what keywords I wanted to advertise for. Now, it wants to track all this stuff – ROAS (whatever the hell that is), conversions, etc. – and then won’t even let me pick the individual words I want to advertise for. It’s complicated, doesn’t work for me, and I refuse to spend money on stuff I don’t want to show up for.”

Some will also say that Google Ads is dead, or dying, due to recent changes on the platform. Until recently, marketers could easily select the “exact” words that they wanted to advertise for. This was beneficial in industries where you didn’t want to cross over into competitor searches or where you only did “one or two” things in an industry that could be very large from a keyword standpoint. The goal has always been to find the keywords that most relate to what your organization offers so that you’re driving the users who have the highest propensity of interest in what you offer. Now, Google is using AI (surprise!) to help you find the right place for your ads – thus it wants more control and is giving marketers less control so that it’s machine learning algorithms can determine where to show your ads.

This, again, is where it gets complicated. We’ve learned some of the tricks of the trade at Forum since Google’s AI roll-out as well as the addition of its new “Performance Max” ads, however that doesn’t mean that every single ad will be placed exactly where you want it. So, if you don’t have the time to bury in Google Ads to get it right, you’re going to struggle to find conversions where, maybe in the past, they were easier to find. Thus, it’s easy to just give up on the platform and say that it’s dead.

Marketing is Not Dead

Since its inception, marketing has always come into question. It is part-science, part-creative prowess, and part-instinct. It has also always been the red-headed step-child of finance. When dollars become tighter because of inflationary pressure, economic pressure, or sales pressure it’s easy to think cutting marketing dollars is the answer or not see the value in the effort if you consider marketing an expense and not a profit center. I’ve personally heard people say “oh – you creative types don’t get it” or “I only want marketing efforts that drive sales – if it doesn’t, you have to cut it out of the budget.” Yikes! Awareness doesn’t drive direct leads but is a REQUIREMENT to get people through the rest of the funnel…and usually to get to conversion – but those channels will RARELY if EVER generate a direct return. that can be very difficult to explain to some business owners.

For others – your industry may also be evolving which is causing some cracks in your messaging or value proposition. All of this leads to “feeling” like marketing isn’t living up to the task.

In addition, some fields in business don’t change as often. Finance may deal with new regulations or new modalities, but at its core it may not change very often. Marketing, on the other hand and because of its very nature, changes almost daily. So, if you’re not “in marketing,” it can be really hard to process the volume of change and understand that it’s change and not just failure of effort.

With these two elements at play, there are a few things to consider.  First, in times of financial pressure and change, marketing should be an element of your strategy that your organization leans into, not gets rid of. Statistically, organizations that can shift and focus their marketing messages in these uncertain times nearly ALWAYS come out on top. This was true during the Great Recession, the Pandemic, and whatever may come in the future.

Second, it’s always easy to blame the tactics and not the strategy. Many times, business owners and financial staffers only see the “tactical” side of marketing and see the costs associated with the content, the video production, the advertising expenses, the website costs, etc. and don’t take into consideration the items that may very well be the problem. Over my career, I’ve seen many times where the issues were related to the organization – it’s ability to deliver on its promise, the company’s value proposition, pricing strategies, staffing issues, and unrealistic expectations on budget versus ROI.

For instance, if the standard in your industry is that the average customer acquisition cost is $50 per customer – and you need 20 new customers per day to be profitable – what should your marketing spend be? This would equal $1,000 in marketing expenses per working day to get 20 new customers per day – and equate to roughly $240,000 per year! “Well what if my budget is only $25,000 for the year?” Then you can expect 2 new customers per day (not 20) – only 10% of your business goal!!

The important thing to note here is that you have to consider all elements as part of an overall marketing effort. Being quick to blame a marketing channel or tactic typically is short-sided as there are lots of elements that play into a marketing or sales decision. One redditor said that a marketer’s favorite phrase is “It Depends” and for good reason. There are a lot of factors at play in terms of how you reach your marketing goal. So, marketing is far from dead – it just takes a lot of know-how, insights, instincts, data, and skill to be truly successful (and not just lucky!).

Third, and speaking of influence, there is a bit of a knowledge gap in the market right now. During the pandemic, many marketing leaders retired leaving the next great generation of marketers with a leadership vacuum. That vacuum has created upward momentum for legacy digital marketers to step into leadership roles which has made an impact on how marketing is implemented and shifting even further into digital channels. However, as marketers in their 30s, 40s, and 50s step into primary leadership roles, it also has left small businesses left to pull from younger staffers – with the current pool of recent college graduates (or so-called “marketing experts” with no academic degree or marketing prowess – but they do have 25 followers on Instagram!) to hire from. While there are a lot of really talented recent graduates, there is also a whole lot of snake oil out there. The most talented of the pool tend to see marketing through a much different lens – with a strong focus on the impact of social media and influencers. While this is beneficial in some industries, it leaves small to medium businesses in small markets struggling to find their voice in an ever more crowded market place as social media typically isn’t the only way these businesses drive leads. Those struggling the most tend to be organizations in B2B or local services that struggle to find marketing value due to the inexperience of some of these young, bright marketers or their unwillingness to see marketing as a profit center (see point 2). All of this leads to a lack of trust in marketing or the impact it can have on an organization.

SEO is Not Dead

For those that SEO or websites are dead – Google alone drives over 63% of all U.S. web traffic. It’s clear that Google is still the primary search engine and that our websites still receive traffic from the platform – among other search engines! However the idea of search engine optimization is changing. Google alone is rolling out 12 or more algorithm changes per day to further optimize your search results and more and more users are using Google’s AI overview, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other AI-driven platforms to receive information. That’s not to mention use on TikTok, Youtube, Amazon and other platforms. This also doesn’t take into account zero click marketing behavior that is also changing how and when websites receive website traffic.

The truth is SEO isn’t dead, it’s just different. No longer is it “just” about keyword placement and backlinks. There are many, many elements that must be considered which just makes SEO more difficult – not dead.

Take for instance one of our dental office clients. We were looking to become more competitive in search in a highly saturated market. We had the strategies in place to rank well, however, the client was leery of making some of the adjustments we requested. A few years ago, Google rolled out new requirements that we in the SEO industry refer to as E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authority, trust) but basically these new requirements just signal to Google that you are an expert in your space and worthy to be trusted. While we have worked with the client to write industry-leading content over the past few years, some of the pages simply would not rank.

Why? Well, these content elements were not assigned to an author because the client wanted each post to represent the group, not individual doctors. While that sounds very team-centric, it’s problematic in proving to Google that experts produced the content on the site. We created robust bios for each staff member and assigned each blog post to an author with expertise in that specific field. Doing so increased organic search engine traffic by 30% in just 3 months and increased lead volume from these blog posts substantially!

And, E-E-A-T isn’t the only change. In a recent study, Gartner stated that in the next five years most websites would lose 50% of standard search engine traffic to zero click behaviors as well as traffic to images and video. So, what does that mean for marketers? It means that we have to go ahead and prepare for the advancement of video over words – leaning more and more into video production as a means to drive leads and using both video and language to create meaningful content! While AI can be helpful, and I won’t deny that we use it, but the idea of E-E-A-T is centered around providing real, not manufactured, authenticity and trust. AI can be a tool – but not a central element – in a marketing content strategy. We’re of the opinion that using the same principles, E-E-A-T, to prove an organization’s validity and value through video and all content will be a major trend in the coming years, and we’re here for it.

PPC is Not Dead

Yes – Google has taken all the fun out of Google Ads and is slowly moving the platform to being more and more driven by AI and machine learning. Tools like Performance Max – or P-Max for short – actually can improve some campaigns…and destroy others. P-Max ads run across platforms and are dictated by Google’s AI to determine where to show your ads to reach whatever goal you have set.

Because of how this platform works, it’s become increasingly clear that the implementation of machine learning in Google Ads is limiting transparency. Because they don’t really tell you how it works, you kind of have to work through the progressions and figure it out on your own (not a task that everyone can accomplish). If you just “trust” that the system has your back, it actually can generate a LOT of bad conversions / spam / etc. as you are selecting what you care about most. If it is conversions (leads / sales / contacts) then the platform will work to optimize for those, NO MATTER THE QUALITY OF THEM. That can be very dangerous for a company who is running Google Ads but not really paying attention to their efforts. In addition, new “cross channel” conversions can also mess with your mind a bit from a tracking stand point. However….

Optimizing P-Max and the other Google Ads tools available can lead to great results. You really need to understand “how” to optimize the platform. An easy tip – work to remove video ads from your P-Max campaigns. P-Max will automatically run ads on Youtube and other platforms to drive conversion. If you’re an e-commerce business, this can be great as it can generate impressions and – eventually – conversion. But, if you are a business that focuses on just leads / form completions / white paper downloads, etc. that is more one-on-one sales driven, then letting your ads run on these platforms will likely lead to a bunch of spam conversions. So, like with all of the items above so far, PPC isn’t dead – it’s just going through dramatic change which requires knowledge in the space.

 

 

In conclusion, marketing, and all its channels in fact, are not dead, but they are changing. And, marketing changes frequently. It’s a standard misunderstanding to state that marketing is dead or that marketing will be dead or that [INSERT FIELD OF MARKETING] is dying. We even frequently hear that search engines are dead or search engine optimization (SEO) is dying. But, again, it’s about renewal – not death. As we say at Forum, the only constant in our business is change. So, we have to continually prepare and react to it as it occurs.

With that, if you have a digital marketing need (or any marketing need), feel free to reach out to our team at Forum – we’d be glad to help.

 

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