Will marketers’ jobs be replaced by ChatGPT?

As ChatGPT becomes popular, people are not only paying attention to the rapid progress of technology, but also paying more attention to whether their careers will be replaced by artificial intelligence, and ChatGPT is likely to replace junior marketers. So how will it affect the marketing industry? How should marketers deal with it? Let's take a look at this article.

Based on my actual work experience in the past year and my observations of the marketing industry, I have a clear feeling that technology brings marketers unlimited imagination and implementation possibilities.

Especially recently, ChatGPT has become popular. When everyone is talking about it, you can feel it strongly: artificial intelligence is really here. The rapid advancement of technology not only affects our daily lives, but for marketers, it will also affect our future career development.

How popular is ChatGPT? It was released in November 2022. Two months after its launch, the number of users has reached 100 million, the stock price has skyrocketed, Microsoft has increased its investment by $10 billion, and Google and Baidu have announced that their own chatbots will be launched soon.

So how will ChatGPT affect the marketing industry? And how should marketers respond?

1. First of all, I believe that the underlying logic of marketing will not change. At the marketing strategy level, how marketing serves the company's business goals, how to combine special business scenarios and corporate goals, understand customer needs, and create value for customers will not change no matter how technology develops.
2. There is no doubt that ChatGPT will bring significant changes to the marketing industry from the perspective of marketing tactics and methods, but it will take some time to go from concept to implementation in China.

1. ChatGPT will change the way of search marketing (SEM), with scenario questions and answers replacing search results display

Usually, search marketing is that companies buy keywords, and then search engines prioritize your website or other articles on the search results page based on certain algorithms. This is a paid purchase. That is, the search engine provides a display of various possible results. As for which result the user chooses to view, it is entirely up to the customer, so display does not equal click.

What does ChatGPT change?

Compared to search engines that display various results for users to choose from, after users choose to use ChatGPT to ask questions, ChatGPT directly displays the answers and answers users' questions directly and directly. The accuracy and professionalism of its answers are unprecedented. Compared with the situation in the past where users had to select the results they wanted from massive data and might not find them, ChatGPT is a qualitative breakthrough in enhancing and improving user experience. It will greatly save users' time and improve the efficiency of obtaining information.

With the accumulation of data, the self-learning and version iteration of the machine, if the accuracy of its answers to questions is no longer necessary for users to rely on search engines, the logic of search marketing will inevitably change. User behavior habits will shift from search engines to ChatGPT, and advertising monetization models such as scene-based advertising will also replace search engine marketing.

2. ChatGPT is likely to replace junior marketers, so more attention should be paid to the learning of soft skills

Sam Altman, CEO of artificial intelligence lab OpenAI, said: "I think all repetitive work, as long as it does not require deep emotional communication between two people, can be done better, faster and cheaper by AI in the next few decades. People only worry about being replaced by robots and autonomous driving in factories, but almost no one thinks about this aspect. Few people talk about all the white-collar jobs that AI can replace."

"Perhaps this time, for knowledge workers, this is completely equivalent to the industrial revolution," commented Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Marketing personnel are typical knowledge workers, and it is time for them to think carefully about where their ecological niche will be in the future. Marketing capabilities are divided into hard power and soft power.

For junior content producers, massive amounts of simple repetitive content, simple copywriting and editing work are likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence in the future. This has become a fact with the emergence of AIGC (AI Generated Content). The speed and efficiency of AIGC content production have increased thousands of times, which is completely unmatched by humans. I even think that so-called higher-level marketing work, such as the formulation of digital marketing strategies, can also have templates to follow given goals and market information.

However, human emotional abilities, such as deep insight, empathy, communication, collaboration, leadership, and the ability to solve complex problems in a large organization, cannot be replaced by big data technology no matter how it develops. These are part of the soft power of marketers and are crucial to the development of marketing work.

For example, how to formulate an effective marketing plan? ChatGPT may be able to answer this question more clearly than professional marketers, and its logical method is flawless. However, how to combine the marketing plan with the actual business scenario and enterprise pain points, and how to customize it according to the actual needs of the enterprise, this part of the relevant insight and analytical ability may not be replaced by artificial intelligence.

Regarding the hardware strength of marketers, such as hard-core marketing knowledge, artificial intelligence may be able to learn faster and stronger than humans. However, in future work, hard-core knowledge without the support of soft strength will hardly have room to play. Marketers should pay special attention to the training of this soft ability, which cannot be replaced by machines.

3. Automated service capabilities have been further upgraded, and the efficiency of the marketing full-link management process has been significantly improved.

AIPL: Marketing Journey

Following the classic marketing journey of AIPL (from awareness to interest, consideration, and then purchase), users are usually reached by advertisements during the awareness and interest stages, and user sedimentation and operations are carried out on the brand's own platform, such as through official websites, emails, live broadcasts, etc., to further influence users and accelerate user decision-making.

Quickly move to the next link in marketing. When users reach the consideration or purchase stage, a functional department called BDR (business development representative) will follow up further with users to confirm their needs. In many companies, the BDR department is also called a call center or customer service department. However, unlike the sales department, they do not visit or face customers directly. Instead, they answer customer inquiries through telephone and other means to confirm customer needs in order to provide corresponding services.

After their confirmation at this stage, they will transfer the customer leads with purchasing intention to the sales department for further sales follow-up, such as what products to purchase, confirming the quotation, placing an order, etc.

The above is the general process of full-link marketing management for many B2B companies. The marketing department will manage the entire process and track data from the initial advertising to establish customer awareness to the final sales conversion. This process will basically not change fundamentally due to the advent of artificial intelligence, but the full-link cycle may be greatly shortened and automation capabilities will be further enhanced, thereby bringing about an overall improvement in marketing efficiency.

For example, when customer service calls users to confirm their needs, AI customer service will provide 24-hour uninterrupted service compared to manual service, and it can search for the most accurate information from a massive database and deliver it to users, which is a dimensionality reduction blow to manual service in terms of both time and space. And this is just one of the many measures to improve service efficiency.

If we have a way to break down the possibility of applying intelligent customer service for communication in each link in combination with business scenarios, and have a scientific method system to measure the aspects and extent of marketing efficiency improvement brought by artificial intelligence technologies represented by ChatGPT, then it is undoubtedly the direction that digital marketing will tackle next.

For example, how much customer satisfaction has improved, whether the customer decision-making cycle has been shortened, whether the decision-making speed has been accelerated, whether more customers have come to you because of your good service, etc.

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Author: Zhu Jingyu, WeChat public account: Jade Digital Marketing