AI is all over the news. It’s inescapable — and even in its current fledgling form, it’s changing digital marketing, agencies and business models. The news is full of people yelling about AI. Either it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, or it’s going to turn into Skynet and kill us all. No in between.
The truth is less exciting.
Labor-saving tools like ChatGPT and MidJourney are here to stay. The previous landscape of digital marketing was based on volume and velocity of content. AI is taking over those responsibilities, but as it gets easier to create content, you need to focus on creating with purpose — whether your content is human-made, AI-generated or both. Here’s why intentionality matters in an AI-driven world.
The Old Way: Volume Content
When we say digital marketing has been based on volume and velocity of content, what does that mean?
I’ve lived it. I worked for a couple of years as a ghostwriter, creating content for a PR agency’s clients. Most of the assignments were articles about topics I knew nothing about before I started writing.
I once wrote an article about real estate in Seattle. I don’t know anything about real estate in Seattle; I’ve still never been there (though I’d like to visit). It was just recycled content I found on Google. In my time doing that work, I wrote about medical technology, investing, vitamins … a ton of things that I knew basically nothing about.
The clients didn’t care that I wasn’t a subject matter expert. Neither did the publishers. The point wasn’t to get people good information. The point was to get a PR mention. For the content publishers (Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other big sites), the goal was search traffic — which drove advertising revenue and relevance. The articles didn’t have to be good. They just had to be good enough.
I paid my rent with that work, but now AI can do it just as well as I can. Probably better. Definitely cheaper.
I’m good, and I’m fast, but I’m limited by the amount of information I can take in. An AI isn’t — it’s far faster to just type a prompt and get the output than it is to lean on someone like me. I’m John Henry in the age of the steam drill. And I can tell you right now, after years of labor in the content mines … even the worst examples of AI inaccuracy aren’t worse than some of the human content writing out there. It’s over. AI has won.
Good Enough is No Longer Good Enough
Having a stable of fast creatives used to give you a leg up over the competition.
No longer.
AI gives everyone the ability to create content at scale. Will it be great content? No. But it will be good enough. And the floodgates that have already been cracked will burst as the Internet drowns in procedurally generated articles, images and videos.
That content is about to lose all its value. When anyone can create functional informational content (for example, “The Top 5 Instagram Video Editors” or “How to Use Facebook For Your Local Business”), the ability to create it at scale does nothing for you or your audience — no value for SEO or for social media discovery, and nothing that makes people want to sign up for your mailing list or buy. You won’t be able to differentiate yourself.
This is why intentionality matters.
Most of the content revolution has been driven by Google. Content volume helped SEO (even if Google said it didn’t). It gave you a ton of things to post on social media. Brands have been creating content for Google and social media platforms for years, using their visibility and click through numbers as a proxy for audience attention.
In other words, as an industry, we’ve prioritized middlemen, not our audience. That meant focusing on volume. Now, if we want to reach people, we need to focus on uniqueness. Experience. Expertise. Taste. All the things that AI can’t do.
AI is a really good paintbrush, the best we’ve ever seen — but that’s all it is. A paintbrush means nothing without the hand that wields it. And whether your content is driven by people or AI, it needs to provide real value for your audience, not just give them the same information they can get anywhere.
The Future of Marketing in an AI World
When everyone is creating content that only provides information at scale, you have to do something different.
Most SEO content is empty calories. And as my boss Ed Bardwell told me when we were working through the outline of this article, “The one meal I had in San Francisco in 2007 I remember. I couldn’t tell you what I had for lunch yesterday.”
You get the same number of calories from McDonalds and the French Laundry. But one only nourishes the body; the other nourishes body and soul. You’re only going to remember one of those meals.
Focus on creativity.
Give your audience something they can’t get somewhere else in the mass-produced, franchised Internet we’re headed towards. No more playing games with Google or Meta trying to fool the algorithm. No more trying to make up for quality with volume. The playing field is level now.
So how do you succeed in an AI-driven future?
Use your experiences, your understanding and your background to stand out from the pack and tell your story.
AI will make things easier for you — ideation, exploration, seeing ideas from new perspectives. It can help you breathe life into your inspiration and discover ways you hadn’t even thought of to tell your story. But it has to be your story.
That’s the one thing AI can’t do. And it’s the one area you can use to differentiate yourself now.
AI is Here to Stay
AI isn’t going away.
It will make the work of content creation easier — but it can’t replace you and your unique perspective, experiences and understanding of the world. Focus on the things that matter — the things your audience cares about — and the things that make you a good fit for them. Don’t get bogged down in creating replaceable content.
Need a hand figuring out how to stand out? We’ve consistently been ahead of the curve. Let us help you create content that serves both you and your audience. Just drop us a line, anytime.
Best Regards,
David Brandon
Copywriter
Rainmaker Digital Services