Artificial intelligence is a disruptive technology that can create a revolutionary change in the present job scenario. Whether you are a doctor, engineer or a marketer some way or the other automation will impact your field, job role, salary and job security. According to a research by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 38% percent of US jobs face threat from automation. There are similar projections for other countries as well like 30% for the UK, 35% from Germany and 21% for Japan.
Every field from banking to education to agriculture can be potentially affected by automation. While some see it as a huge opportunity for the development others consider it as a disaster in the making. A common opinion among the masses is that automation is just a theory which will take decades to come out as a practical solution. Particularly marketers feel that their art of human conversation can never be automated – say hi to chatbots! In this article, we will understand the impact of artificial intelligence on marketing jobs and how to make yourself an automation-proof marketer.
How will artificial intelligence impact marketing jobs?
Automation will impact marketing in many ways. From work style to job roles marketing will evolve dramatically because of artificial intelligence. CMOs have longed for tools that can help in hyper-personalization and targeted messaging at a granular level. Finally, there is technology that can make this a reality. Here are some ways in which artificial intelligence can impact marketing:
Martech will become mainstream:
According to a research by EmailMonday, 42% of companies are already using marketing automation. Which can cut down many jobs. Marketing automation tools can synchronize marketing efforts, enable targeted messaging and provide insights into customer behavior. Popular tools like Marketo and HubSpot are working rigorously to improve customer insights. This is just a crux of the big picture. Martech along with artificial intelligence can automate messaging, A/B testing, persona building, account-based marketing (ABM), customer segmentation etc. thus, impacting a wide range of job roles. Marketing tasks of lower intellectual requirements and that of routine nature will be ones facing the real threat.
Automation in personalization:
Over a period, companies have collected immense amount of customer data (called Big Data). It relates to buying behavior, preferences, geography, etc. This data was beyond comprehension up until recent times due to lack of sophisticated solutions and data analyst professionals. Now, there are many tools like Hadoop and Tableau that make it easy to analyze this data. A technology called machine learning enables computer programs to learn from insights gathered from this data and improvise on itself. Once these sophisticated programs gather enough insights they can automatically target customer with the right messaging. This will eat away jobs like marketing analysts which ironically is one of the hottest jobs today.
The threat to content editors:
There are many popular tools that are effective in finding errors in content. While copywriting remains an artistic job, content editors face a serious threat. Editors like Grammarly and Hemingway are great tools at the disposal of marketers that can understand contextual errors and provide suggestions. With artificial intelligence, the day is not far when this job role will cease to exist altogether. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) a program can understand contextual meaning in human conversations and provide relevant outputs. Along with this sentiment analysis can also help these programs understand the emotional side of any communication (or content). All these AI technologies can easily automate content editing and even perform it better than content editors.
How to secure your job?
The present AI scenario enables the computers to only specialize in one type of activity like playing chess or analyzing images. To save yourself from the wrath of automation, you need to get highly skilled in tasks which involve strategic thinking and analysis. You should also start learning various automation tools to keep yourself updated with the trends. While automation will destroy some jobs, it can also generate many other, like professionals to operate the tools and leverage technology. By becoming capable of implementing marketing automation tools you can save your spot in the turmoil.
Another way to save your job is to be more creative. Highly engaging and interactive content has always remained the backbone of marketing. This content can be in the form of image, video or text. Artificial intelligence fails to automate tasks where creativity and out of the box thinking is involved. Overall if you are doing a simple routine job then your employment is facing threat. The key to becoming automation ready is to stay relevant, create engaging content (email, blog, video, social media post etc.) and master the art of selling high ticket clients. If you do this, you will always be safe no matter which automation tools come up.