The AI Marketing Journey: My Q1 Learnings and Predictions

We’re now a quarter of the way through 2024, and I have some news for you: AI is absolutely coming for your marketing job.

Don’t panic just yet. I’ve spent the last few months intensely studying and experimenting with AI for marketing, and I’ve discovered both concerning and exciting insights that I want to share with you today.

The Hard Truth About AI and Marketing Jobs

Let’s not sugarcoat this. There are roughly 400,000 marketing jobs in the US right now, and I believe a significant portion of those are going to disappear as AI advances. Will new jobs be created? Absolutely. But I’d be surprised if even half as many new positions emerge as those that vanish.

Why am I so certain? Because I’ve spent the past quarter diving deep into what these tools can do, and the capabilities are staggering:

• Social media management
• Email marketing campaign creation
• Content writing and editing
• Video editing
• Media management
• Landing page design
• Ad campaign optimization

These are all things I’ve learned how to do over my career—from running AdWords campaigns for summer camps to growing LinkedIn followers from 0 to 25,000—and AI is rapidly becoming capable of handling many of these tasks.

Learning AI Is Easier Than You Think

Here’s the good news: mastering AI isn’t nearly as difficult as learning to code. Trust me, I’ve done both.

When I learned to code websites years ago, it was painful. One misplaced semicolon would crash everything. Just connecting your domain to your host was a challenge, let alone getting WordPress up and running.

AI, on the other hand, is forgiving. It’s fluid. There’s plenty of room to experiment, make mistakes, and gradually improve your skills. You don’t need a computer science degree or coding background. What you do need is:

• A willingness to experiment
• The ability to break down complex tasks into small steps
• Effective delegation skills (yes, you’re basically delegating to a machine)
• Patience to test, refine, and iterate

The Hidden Figures Lesson

One of my favorite movies is “Hidden Figures,” which tells the true story of African American women who computed calculations by hand for NASA’s early space missions.

In the film, one character sees IBM machines being installed and immediately recognizes that these computers will replace human computers like herself. But instead of giving up, she gets her hands on a book about coding, teaches herself the programming language, and ends up leading her entire department into the future.

I believe we’re at that exact moment in marketing right now.

The marketers who roll up their sleeves and learn how to effectively prompt, craft, and direct AI will be the ones who thrive. You’ll become the manager of AI tools rather than the person being replaced by them.

What I’m Building Now

After exploring the current AI landscape, I’ve realized that while the underlying AI technology is impressive, many of the tools built on top of it are still rudimentary. That’s why I’m creating my own tool specifically for podcast marketing.

Podcasting has been my bread and butter for years, and despite great recording and hosting platforms like Zencastr, there are still significant gaps when it comes to distribution. My tool will address that by applying AI to podcast transcripts in ways that current solutions don’t.

I’m also working on documenting everything I’m learning about AI marketing to create a comprehensive guide for marketers who want to future-proof their careers.

Join Me on This Journey

2024 is the year to master AI before it masters your job. Here’s how you can join me:

• Follow me on LinkedIn for regular updates and insights
• Test and experiment with AI tools in your current role
• Break down your marketing tasks into steps that could be automated
• Start thinking like an AI manager rather than a task executor

Remember, somebody has to pull the trigger and manage all these AI tools that are in development. Why not you?

The future of marketing is being written right now. Let’s make sure we’re the ones holding the pen.