Be different - How will you stand out in a world driven by AI?

Generative AI is here to stay, but what does that mean for professional services marketers? 

The current hype is focused on short-term efficiency gains, but what about the longer-term implications?  What does it mean for your content marketing strategy?  How will it impact lead generation?  How can we stand out from the AI-generated noise and what role will marketing play in the firm of the future?

Is this just another passing fad?

Unlike previous technology trends, such as blockchain and VR, generative AI is already visibly influencing our daily lives and routines.

The reasons it is finding so many potential uses are twofold:

• It makes previously inaccessible data readily available
• It presents this in a user-friendly, interactive manner

In its current form, gen AI can formulate ideas, write content, and act as a sounding board in an engaging and interactive way.

That means anybody, not just data scientists, can use AI to improve their efficiency in a wide range of day-to-day applications.

What has changed?

AI has existed in one form or another for more than 50 years. The key to this latest iteration is that it makes the underlying algorithms accessible to a much wider audience.  It is an expert translator.  

That means I can query a database table in English rather than SQL, and Gen AI can present the data in a human-readable format.  If I don’t understand or want to drill down further, I can ask questions and give further instructions ad infinitum.

Its superpower, though, is its ability to analyse unstructured data.  That’s important because it is estimated that more than eighty per cent of the world's data is currently stored in written formats such as : 

• books
• documents
• reports
• customer feedback
• etc.

Previously, analysing any volume of this unstructured content would have been impractical due to the time required to read and process it manually.

Gen AI efficiently translates this unstructured data into digestible insight.

How disruptive will Gen AI be?

We anticipate a highly disruptive impact, potentially on a scale comparable to the advent of the Internet. Generative AI is not merely a technological product; it serves as a catalyst for a host of other innovations.

Much like electricity, the steam engine, and internet connectivity, innovative individuals and companies will harness AI to drive previously unimagined applications.

As with previous disruptive technologies, this will impact industries, jobs, and livelihoods in both positive and negative ways.  

We are already seeing this. In a recent webinar, one agency owner was excited about using AI for video and photo shoots. He can now dynamically substitute the actors with different genders/races/ages to provide his client with a vastly improved product at massively less cost to the agency.

You might imagine the actors, photographers, video editors, location owners, and stock photo library services have a very different view.  Like the canal boat owners watching the railway tracks being laid alongside the waterways, they will be wondering what this new technology will bring.

Predicting the extent of this disruption is well beyond the scope of this article and would be foolish from such an early-stage vantage point.

As Henry Ford (allegedly)  said:
 

Which leads us nicely on to talk about something old Henry was a genius at and is Gen AI’s most common use case: efficiency.  

Immediate (efficiency) opportunities

Every application developer is working furiously to build some form of AI into their products. These “co-pilot” AI tools can automate routine tasks, write or improve content, analyse data, etc., offering users new functionality and large potential time savings.

However, the advantages in terms of competition could be short-lived. Over time, everybody will benefit from the new features introduced to Word, SalesForce, Google Analytics, etc. Once everybody has access to the same tools, there will be little net gain over the competition.

There will be a short-term, first-mover advantage, but it won't last long.

Most of the noise around Gen AI is in this space.  There is a lot of hype and excitement about efficiency improvements but little focus on how it will improve and/or disrupt existing products and services in the longer term

Medium-term (18-24 month) challenges

Looking beyond the initial efficiency gains, there are longer-term, more challenging implications for the adoption of AI.  It’s impossible to predict all the changes it might bring, but two things are already becoming clear:

1. Creative and knowledge-based industries will be affected most (and first)
2. Search will be disrupted (which means so will most of your digital marketing)

Planning now to tackle these two issues is a strategic imperative.

1 - Knowledge will be commoditised

Generative AI allows everybody (with a paid license) access to the same cumulative knowledge the model has been trained on.  

This will level the playing field for skills and content, allowing everybody access to “best practice” knowledge without the need to research and read multiple sources.

The good news is that this will result in better-informed workers and improved online (and offline) content quality.

The bad news is that it won't make you much better if you are already good.  

In a recent Boston Consulting Group experiment, half of a test group was given access to AI, and half was not. The group that was given access to AI outperformed the non-AI group by a good margin.

However, the results for the AI group showed an interesting divide:

• The lowest-skilled cohort improved by 43%
• The higher-skilled people only improved by 17%

That shouldn't be a surprise if you believe that AI has been trained on best practices from trusted sources. Those with less experience were “levelled up” to that of their peers, while the top performers were already “above average” and had little to gain.

From a marketing perspective, we are already starting to see an explosion of content across all sectors and areas of expertise. Google is fighting back by detecting AI-generated content and removing it from its results, but this is almost certainly a battle they can’t win.

In the future, only the most trusted sources will appear at the top of the search engine results pages—if they appear at all…

2 - Disrupting search

Two years ago, it seemed inconceivable that anything could disrupt Google search.  Over the last 20 years, it’s become one of the most ubiquitous and profitable products of all time, even changing our language by becoming a verb.

Today, users are starting to turn to AI tools such as Chat GPT, Claude, Bing and Perplexity to answer their questions.  Instead of a long list of paid and organic links that take time to research, they get immediate answers that can be “discussed” with AI to gain further clarity.  

If you ask the AI tools to cite resources, they will provide them, but users will likely use these citations to validate the credibility of their answers rather than click through and read the source.

Commentators are already talking about the “Ask” era of search in which answers are provided without the need to leave the search engine's page.  Google has been introducing this for a while already, and depending on your industry, organic search referrals are already down by 10-25% as a result.

The impact on some kinds of content, such as guides, FAQs, and how-tos, which have historically been the evergreen bedrock of content marketing strategies, will be particularly pronounced.

AI will replace them, providing the best answer by combining responses from hundreds or even thousands of sources.

This won't just impact organic search traffic to your site. Guide content has been a particularly valuable tool for lead generation. Users indicate they are “in market” by requesting a download and happily provide their details in return. The impact of the “Ask” model on lead generation will be similarly pronounced.

So the question is: How will you stand out in a world where everyone has access to the same core knowledge, content is everywhere, and Google doesn’t refer organic traffic to your website?