Marketers who don’t want to be replaced by an AI better learn SEO

I was thinking recently about the a story a few years back where a company moved its entire online ad budget to Adgorithms’ Albert.ai and ditched their digital agency. As AI makes further inroads into performing / automating marketing and sales functions, marketers don’t need to think of AI as a job-threatening adversary; rather, they should apply the approach of those in our industry who, from the start, focused on marketing “through” the original AI — Google’s search engine.

Tactically, search engine marketing requires a combination of art, science, and jedi-like maneuvers to game a search algorithm in favor of a brand’s content and ads. But in broad terms, SEO strategies employ three separate but related principles that will always serve modern marketers well as AI usage expands:

First, the brand serves the audience, not the other way around. Effective search engine marketers always use data-driven insights to construct content and services to help an audience while promoting a product or service. Want to see poor results? Use carefully-derived attitudinal insights from large syndicated survey databases to develop a compelling message to your most valuable audience…and push it out through search without thinking about content to help evaluate the product. “But I used data!” you’ll say, defensively. But not all the right data, so “no pain, no gain.”

Second, partners RULE, so know your brand’s place and join forces whenever you can. Search engine marketers evaluate which companies do best at delivering value for any particular search query, and if their brand will not generate visibility, they partner with affiliates and influencers. A few years back I worked with a travel company that invested in doing this well, and their cost per lead measures significantly improved…because, correctly executed, the partner’s authority and relevance to the consumer will create attention and impact for the brand and the partner. Want to see a long-tail of low visits, engagement, and conversions? Go it alone and try to get your branded product or service competitive visibility in search without leveraging partners. Cue the tumbleweed across your (potentially) best-selling product page…

Last, instrument your digital marketing efforts to work best with the AI. Search engine marketers will, tactically, optimize the website user experience, make their content accessible, and ensure content can be analyzed for relevance. But their mindset is to operate in an environment where audience signals are listened to, branded content is optimized, and tracked for impact on sales. While much of these activities might be automated through an AI, the way that audience signals are interpreted, and the path to optimization, are highly creative and hard-to-automate tasks. Want to see an AI fail to capture a marketing opportunity — or, worse, alienate an audience? Ask it to establish — and preserve — the right tone of voice for your brand…

So marketers, please dig deep creatively and analytically and expand your ability to listen, partner, and instrument your efforts to guide the AI, and you’ll be well-placed to deliver value to your audiences and benefit from the increasingly AI-driven future.