A year ago I attended #Inbound in Boston, as I often do, with the hopes of generating new ideas for growing my business, Orange Pegs (+seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and the Lobsta rolls!). In prior years, I packed my days with breakout sessions. I shared laughs and stories with my close circle of solo traveler friends at the Hubspot-sponsored events. And, at night, I paced around in my hotel room and rewrote the future of Orange Pegs.
It was always so energizing and inspiring.
The ideas, the people, the energy, the optimism... they were earth-moving. And I absolutely attribute my ability as a first-time CEO to grow my business and my clients' businesses through our service offering to these annual conventions.
The AI disruption of 2023
2023 was different. I didn't walk away feeling optimistic or inspired. If anything, I came home stressed and uncertain about the future. I think most of us did. We commented on it throughout the event, and I could hear and see it in the background everywhere.
AI was rocking our world, and the future had never been more uncertain.
Presentation after presentation--it was one tool after another replacing human jobs or graph charts showing us what we already knew: that the AI disruption was just getting started.
And look how the next year went.
Layoffs.
Agency closures.
The value of people evaporated right before our eyes.
It didn't help that money was expensive and Silicon Valley lost its bearing when SVB went belly-up. That made it a lot easier to make the call when it came to budget cuts--marketing would have to go, and the overall consensus was that we'd be replaced (not augmented) by AI.
It's still rocking our world, but that gut-wrenching uncertainty is fading away, and it's back to business. Grow. Grow. Grow.
Interest rates are about to drop.
Searches for the term "Growth Marketing" are on the rise.
And, the roles and relationships between humans and AI in marketing are much clearer.
Human Efficiency Augmentation
The value of human input has not been lost in the last 1+ year. If anything, we're more important than ever. AI is eliminating the clutter and some of the messier aspects of the creative process.
But it's not replacing intelligence, because it isn't really intelligent to begin with. The "I" is a little misleading like that. Generative AI is an information curator and perhaps an idea inspirer. But it's not an idea creator.
Creativity. Ingenuity. These are human characteristics. AI's job is to crowd-source human creativity based on the direction of human input. But it isn't sentient with its own thoughts and unique ideas. In some ways, generative AI reminds me of the Star Children in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Super intelligent and efficient and great at learning. And they never sleep.
But they can't create or innovate.
Imagine having the kind of ability and stamina to support human intelligence.
That's the beauty of AI--it gives you the edge as a creative and innovative human to be better and faster at creating and innovating.
Experience is More Important Than Ever
Pouring 20+ years of experience into your AI queries is more likely to generate strong sales and marketing outcomes because humans are still the ones buying. Human experience goes a long way regardless of the marketing output you're getting from it.
When we write blog posts using SEO Surfer or Hubspot's Content Remix, not a single article generated to date could be published without human intervention. And there's nothing random about the content we create through these tools to begin with. The ideas for the blog posts still come from analyzing data and making decisions based on their impact to the North Star.
AI is making it easier to curate the data and get the creative juices flowing, which is a HUGE advantage because it allows us to put out better content, faster, and at higher volumes.
But human experience input cannot be replaced.
The Status Quo? More Like "Status NO"
One of our recent AI SaaS clients put it this way, "the standards of success today are the markers of failure tomorrow." He was referring to the problems his AI product solved, but I think it applies everywhere. His product is for Help Desk and Customer Service--focusing on lower-tier inquiries, so humans can be better and stronger with the more complicated issues that result in better, more substantial changes to the SaaS product itself. He's turning CS into a strategy center. That strategy--still very much a human element.
AI is presenting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get ahead fast in almost every business type imaginable. That's how you should be looking at it today.
But it's a double-edged sword with just as big of implications if you ignore it.
Either you use it as an accelerant, or you don't while your competitors do--and you become obsolete.
Forbes wrote a great article highlighting what it expects generative AI to do based on industry.
Conclusion
This is a race, my friends. Business is always a race, but this may be the most important and rapidly evolving race we will ever face. It may even be the biggest disruption in industry ever. Here are some statistics to back that up.
Any time there's a shift or disruption, you have a choice: Wait it out to see if it lives past the novelty stage, then come in later when it's safer (and not as lucrative) or adopt early and win big (or lose big if it doesn't stick).
But I think we can safely say that AI is here to stay. All it's going to do is evolve and get better. And because of how fast AI is catching on, the status quo is no longer the safe bet. It reminds me of Blockbuster's final days. Imagine how different things would have turned out had they leaned into the digital disruption earlier.
In this race, there will only be winners and losers.
And I just don't see how you can win today without the help of AI.
Likewise, I don't see how you win by relying solely on it, either.
Looking for help deploying a Growth Marketing program that harnesses the power of AI at every turn? Schedule a free Growth Consultation today!
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