AI Ad Nauseum? Takeaways from INBOUND 2024

AI topics abounded at #Inbound2024, but that’s what many of us wanted.

Here are my human impressions of the conference this year.

AI Angst: Will the Robots Take Our Jobs?

First things first. If you’re feeling job insecurity these days, you’re not alone. The conference crowd’s collective anxiety was palpable.

Here’s what I learned:??

The Platforms We Love Will Try to Displace Us

Marketing tools are furtively bridging the gap from “marketer’s best friend” to “marketer.”

This puts them in an awkward position, marketing-wise: they need to remain favorable to marketers while selling AI solutions that try to do marketing work better.

One messaging tactic they used is rosy reframing: future marketers won’t “create,” they’ll “curate,” “connect,” or “perfect.”

The companies also claim that robots will remove “tedium” and “toil” from marketers, freeing them up for more strategic tasks. From experience, I know “freeing them for strategic tasks” means “taking their jobs.”

They Will Entice Human Help In Doing So

“The safest place to be in the AI revolution is in leading the charge,” said one platform-employed speaker, who I am paraphrasing, in a session titled “Hot Takes and Cold Truths: AI’s Next Chapter.”

I inferred this to mean we should be busy identifying jobs internally that AI could do better and then buy the speaker’s product to do them.

I’m not against improving efficiency with AI at all; in fact, I’m excited to lead AI initiatives. But I hesitate to cost anyone their job, which tech companies will incentivize.

But There’s Still Lots That AI Can’t Do

For the foreseeable future, humans outperform AI in the following areas:

• Improvisation. Audiences seek solutions to novel problems. AI is lousy at innovating.
• Connection. Increasingly, people want advice from other humans (e.g., Reddit search appends), not from brands and bots.
• Distinction. AI creative will never have the elements of surprise or originality required to achieve greatness.
• Growth. The data sources that feed LLMs are already running out, which could lead to a full-scale AI bubble burst.

To me, these deficiencies leave plenty of room for marketers to thrive.?

Other Takeaways

SEOs and Content Marketers Are in a Tight Spot

Some of my marketing heroes seemed downtrodden.

SEO guru Neil Patel wistfully declared that content is NOT king any longer. Also, the legendary HubSpot blog team is trying to reverse declining results. Additionally, many other star speakers noted that most websites are experiencing declining performance.

Some reasons for this are:

• Social platforms are holding traffic longer.
• Google AI overviews are zero-click.
• People don’t want advice from brands anymore; they want advice from people (e.g., Reddit).
• Search, in general, is losing market share to AI.

Many AI Products Underperform ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude

“Why would I use your product instead of ChatGPT?” I straightforwardly asked many AI product vendors.

For most, it came down to two reasons:

• The product was trained on better sources of data, such as email writing solutions that analyzed large amounts of specific email data.
• The AI widget was where I would need it, such as already in the CRM or writing tool.

For me, these are not compelling benefits. ChatGPT is smart and accessible enough that I don’t need another layer on the stack.

Learnable AI Skills Are Elusive

I wanted to learn about some resume-building AI competencies at Inbound since most AI “skills” I’ve encountered before have been pretty commonsensical.

Unfortunately, it seemed at the conference that “build AI skills” simply meant “buy AI software and use it.”

Paid Media is Stronger Than Ever

Paid media, especially social media, is one area that seems unthreatened by AI. I walked away with pages of tips on how to improve my PPC game, most of which are AI-unrelated.

Social media platforms are growing in terms of user count and usage, and companies like Meta are enjoying record profits. Targeting options on these platforms are also improving, making them a good place for marketers to be.

Final Thoughts: Facing the Unknown

Revolution is usually an empty buzzword at marketing conferences.

However, this year "paradigm shift" was not just a played-out overstatement. #Inbound2024 felt like a front-row seat to an industry in disruption.

Jointly facing the unknown, conference speakers could give only scant advice to conferencegoers facing an uncertain future. As such, I can only pass on impressions. However, I predict that the areas where AI falls flat – idea synthesis, originality, connection – which now appears to be a narrow gap, will eventually reveal a chasm in which marketers will regain lost footing.

THIS POST ENTIRELY WRITTEN AND EDITED BY HUMANS

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