I sold my agency about a decade ago. We were a fully digital agency with beautiful customers. The agency still exists today, and it is nowadays part of a mega agency conglomerate. When I started it, we had to compete with traditional print-first agencies. We were of course a digital-first agency, and the competition was fierce. But by the time I had sold the company, print was loosing it against digital. But there is a new kid on the block now that is threatening the large digital marketing agencies. Because leaner, more powerful AI agencies are coming and they will reshape the market for marketing and communications services and go head-to-head with “traditional” digital agencies (pun intended).
Before we start!
If you like this topic and you want to support me:
- Comment on the article; that will really help spread the word 🙌
- Connect with me on Linkedin 🙏
- Subscribe to TechTonic Shifts to get your daily dose of tech 📰
- Checkout my new book: the Machine Learning Book of Knowledge 📖
- If you have a crazy project idea and want to share it? Book 30 minutes. 💡 https://calendly.com/marco_van_hurne/happy-hour-hacks
Hear, hear! AI agencies are on the rise, people
AI platforms are entering the market that allow for everything from content and creative development to market research and strategy. Firms are taking full advantage of these innovations to keep up with their competition.
Businesses of any size can use it now, even if their employees lack a deep understanding of programming or AI.
One such AI agency leading this transformation is Braive. They are combining high-tech tools with human insight. Braive is a full AI based digital marketing agency for ever aspect of their marketing business – from lead generation with bots, all the way to content creation, automated funnel management, and cross-posting on socials to even ROI measurements. And all of this is based on AI tools.
Braive uses AI and automation to create smooth marketing operations, do market research, improve customer engagement, and because it can automate almost anything –> improve overall efficiency. For example, Braive helped a leading home lending company increase its lead generation by 30% and improve its digital campaign performance by 126% through AI-driven market analysis, strategy, and quick deployment of targeted marketing initiatives.
Even though this means that more companies are using AI to manage their content marketing, some marketers are still wary of the ways in which AI will alter their profession and change the agency landscape.
Before ChatGPT
Many organizations have been making use of AI for some time now. Worldwide, businesses are using AI systems to do everything from content creation to customer acquisition.
Consider Kronos, a firm that has made a name for itself as a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence marketing on a global scale. After launching in 2016, they have quickly expanded to a team of over a hundred people. Kronos’s services have helped companies like Coca-Cola, Uber, and Airbnb implement AI and machine learning into their operations. To help businesses comprehend how modern consumers employ technology, they provide a range of services including content automation, customer experience management (CEM), and predictive analytics.
Symphony is the name of another firm that uses artificial intelligence to help brands better understand their customers. Since it was born in 2013, the company has expanded to employ more than a thousand people. They offer services like customer experience management (CEM), content automation and predictive analytics to help companies better understand how consumers use technology today
In other instances, established advertising agencies are using AI without disclosing it to their customers. This has the potential to expedite content production while cutting down on the manpower needed for digital and artistic tasks.
Redefining as AI capable organizations
Traditional advertising firms are quick to catch on and evolve into AI-enabled enterprises. They are aware of how quickly it is progressing and do not wish to be left behind. Some of the industry’s heavy hitters had already anticipated and planned for ChatGPT’s arrival long before it was officially announced.
Publicis Group (a marketing conglomerate) bought an artificial intelligence company called Layer.ai. The company employs NLP and ML to improve brand content. Publicis’s Starcom MediaVest Group (a communications agency) with over $6 billion in annual billings, will use Layer.ai. This is just one example of how agencies are leveraging AI to improve their services — and it’s only the beginning. IPG spent a lot of money on an AI lab a long time ago and now uses the findings to improve their services. The agency released Insights Central, an AI-powered brand management platform, to aid in the decision-making process of marketers.
IBM has collaborated with advertising firms like BBDO and McCann to facilitate their use of AI. IBM Interactive has used AI in the formulation of creative briefs in order to generate concepts. Their AI platform provided real-time analytics on campaign performance and return on investment, assisting clients in managing their campaigns.
AI chatbots are helping smaller, independent businesses compete with their larger counterparts. They are often more adaptable and quick to meet the demands of their customers. They are in a better position to take advantage of new technologies like artificial intelligence than the larger ones because they lack existing systems.
“The availability of AI and automation tech, has helped us to level the playing field. It has allowed us to compete with larger firms. At Braive, we use this technology to build intelligent, and more personalized marketing solutions” -Josh Shaner, Founder & CEO at Braive
Offerings
AI is used to generate audience-relevant content. It can do this by analyzing the existing content that you have and the content published on other sites in your niche ). Because of this, AI can learn to replicate your successful writing style in future posts.
You can save a lot of money on labor costs by using an AI chatbot or an AI service to generate content for your website. They can also assist in the development of automated content creation platforms.
One platform allows its customers to write all of the copy for a client’s website. Data from their client’s CRM system and website analytics tools can also be used by the agency to determine which topics were most important to their customers. They then used the data to create blog posts about those topics, which the client’s sales team could share on social media.
AI agencies can help you with all aspects of your client’s marketing strategy and analytics, including:
Building a fully AI based marketing funnel
At Braive, AI is used to build entire marketing funnels from scratch:
- Perform and optimize paid media campaigns including testing ads across regions and channel
- Run email campaign to maximize open, click-through and conversion rates.
- Use data to optimize a website’s conversion funnels to help get more leads and sales.
- Develope content marketing strategies to help connect with your audience.
- Creating social media content for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- Using analytics and data to understand your customers, their needs, and how you can meet those needs.
- Developing a customer experience strategy that helps you build stronger relationships with your audience.
Dominating personalized content
The cost of content creation is a major concern for many businesses. A company spends on average 20% of its marketing budget on content creation, and this number can be as high as 50% for larger brands.
And because of this, many businesses are looking for ways to cut the cost of creating original branded content. Especially since some experts estimate that good-quality content requires seven times the effort as bad-quality content.
Some companies may find an opportunity in working with AI agencies to automate the creation of content creation platforms.
Here are some examples of tailored content:
- A travel agency might send an email with tips on packing for a trip to Hawaii, based on what you bought when booking your ticket (for example, if you’re bringing your family along).
- An online retailer could generate video ads for different products, based on what the user has previously viewed.
- A real estate agent could send out a monthly newsletter with tips about home maintenance and updates on the local market.
- A marketing agency could send you a special offer on its services if it identifies that your website is not ranking well in search engines.
- An online retailer might send an email with a coupon for an item that matches what the customer purchased previously (based on data from their store or third-party vendors).
- The point is, tailored content can be used to offer individualized recommendations or deals based on what someone has already bought, liked or interacted with.
How are these AI agencies different than the traditional agencies
Traditional print-first advertising agencies have been supplanted by a proliferation of digital-first advertising agencies and techie marketing studios. These companies are now being disrupted themselves by AI startups that have a few key differences from their forerunners.
First, unlike many other businesses, these ones are actually developing their own AI-driven technology from scratch. As part of their advertising services, they are actively developing AI systems in addition to providing tech support and coding work.
Those AI agencies will be able to act much more swiftly because they are able to use the available tech and can connect them in workflows using tools like Zapier or Make dot com. This will lead to a dramatic increase in content creation rate as processing times decrease.
Marketers can focus on more high-level strategic decisions because AI automates and analyzes marketing processes. They will be able to devote more time and energy to advising their customers on strategic business issues rather than simply implementing campaigns. They will be able to complete tasks at a fraction of the cost of conventional agencies because they are so efficient with these tools.
AI agencies can function with fewer than ten employees and still produce a substantial amount of work.
They will be able to collaborate with clients on a global scale and through multiple channels. AI is easily scalable and deployable in any part of the world via a variety of channels. This will allow them to compete with larger agencies.
Impact to the labor market
Of course there are risks associated with this AI transformation as well. Agencies may become leaner and more competitive with larger agencies, but that may lead to significant job losses.
The market is already changing.
Accenture has stated that they will be eliminating up to 50,000 positions over the course of the next three years. Accenture is a global management consulting company with a focus on market strategy, technology, marketing, and digital operations. They employ over 370,000 people globally.
WPP is another major company that has recently announced layoffs.
WPP has over 200,000 employees all over the world. The timing of these announcements couldn’t be better, as both the unemployment rate and wage growth have been consistently low for the past two years. There is concern that this AI transformation will lead to more automation and job losses than ever before.
However, this may pave the way for a new type of independent agency and content producer. Many former employees of larger agencies have already struck out on their own to become independent product developers, entrepreneurs, or marketing consultants.
The question is, can the industry absorb all these new indie agencies and content creators?
The future of marketing and communication services is murky at best.
I predict that there will be some disruption in the short term, it’s not like technology has ever stopped progress in other ways. There may be a lot of uncertainty about the long-term effects of this technology, but one thing is certain: AI firms are here to stay.
What do you guys think?
Well, that’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I’ll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
Think a friend would enjoy this too? Share the newsletter and let them join the conversation. LinkedIn appreciates your likes by making my articles available to more readers.
Leave a Reply