By QuickPro Mobile
•
09 Aug, 2024
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the latest technology to explode in the digital marketing space–and with unprecedented enthusiasm. Generative AI has experienced one of the fastest tech adoption rates in history - with ChatGPT accumulating over 100 million users in just 2 months . For scale, it took TikTok 9 months and Instagram 2.5 years to reach the same number of users. If you’re a digital agency owner, odds are your social and news feeds have been flooded with talk about AI. As your clients hop on the AI bandwagon, the value of the agency is at stake. How can you demonstrate the value of your services in an increasingly AI-enabled world? Fortunately, I don’t believe that AI will replace agencies. While AI is indeed reshaping how SMBs run their businesses, the value of the agency is here to stay. However, agencies will need to re-strategize the way they support their clients and create value. In this article I will discuss how your agency should be approaching AI today and into the future to ensure that you stay relevant and generate value for your clients. Where We Stand Today with AI Every day, a new AI-powered tool or application emerges, promising to generate instant results and accomplish tasks that once took weeks or months. These digital "magic wands" are flooding the market, igniting dramatic headlines questioning the future and relevance of digital agencies. Based on the market activity we’re seeing today, we believe we're currently in the thick of Gartner’s “hype cycle,” which starts with a surge of excitement and inflated expectations, followed by disillusionment, and finally, a stable plateau of productivity. The AI hype cycle first kicked into gear with the advent of OpenAI's GPT-2 and GPT-3 back in 2019. What sparked the recent hype is that these revolutionary language models were made available to the general public in the form of ChatGPT, a credible and accessible user interface that, for the first time, offered users a remarkably human-like conversation experience. The frenzied interest in GPT and similar technologies spiked in Google searches at the beginning of the year, before leveling off in April/May. Now, as the initial excitement stabilizes, we are reaching the “slope of enlightenment” on Gartner's hype cycle. How Agencies Will Continue to Create Value in the Age of AI While AI can handle a variety of different tasks that once consumed large amounts of an agency’s time, the technology falls short in a crucial area: formulating and executing a comprehensive marketing strategy. This is where digital agencies continue to provide unmatched value. The reality is that while AI can be an incredibly powerful tool, it’s just that: a tool. Meanwhile, the digital landscape is becoming more complex than ever and what is required from SMBs to succeed in the world today is more than what any one tool or set of tools can provide. What SMBs need to succeed is a comprehensive digital marketing strategy based on a deep understanding of the unique business needs and opportunities facing the business. This strategy must then be executed, using the right tools together to drive business results. AI is just one tool agencies can (and should) be using to deliver this value to their clients, and it allows agencies to do this at speed and scale—and at a lower cost.