It’s Time To Remix, Rework, Curate and Craft For Your Customers, Not The Bots!
My Quick Fire Optimistic Look At The Near Future
We have seen huge shifts in the last 6 months alone…
SEO 🔎 - instant answers, reduced traffic, classic SEO tactics being less effective
Paid Media 💵 - prices skyrocketing, more black-box algorithmically optimised ads and low-quality competitors finding more ways to appear on your brand and product terms
Social 👍- reducing organic reach, adding in content the platforms think we will like vs what we followed, squeezing in more ad slots per scroll and removing the need to follow or subscribe and working through “record user numbers with record engagement” but worst engagement we have ever seen…
Email 📧- filtering being more aggressive, landing in promo and other inboxes and ironically, more and more email newsletters
PR 🗣️- being less effective, fewer journalists covering our space, PR failing to adapt to the paywalled and new gatekeepers landscape
Push Notifications 📱- bundling and filtering by the OS’
Chat apps 💬 - being the home of conversation, dark chatter about our brands - driving or killing us via WOM and customers (rightly) demand higher quality service
It’s fair to say the majority of us have been overly exposed to algorithmic changes and have a fearful eye on the future.
Why Have We Got Here? We (yes, we) have made it a bad experience for customers, and the platform has overengineered its systems. It is now alignment, optimising revenue and AI season(s).
There is a huge opportunity for companies to create for and market to our customers.
Not for search engines and not at their customers.
But for our customers
Now, Enter AI
AI Agents will have a whole set of requirements and eventually provide us with a number of ideals ways to work for them, however, now is the time to be the brand leading in your space, create compelling content (big hints; create and curate content with personality, taste & unique expertise) for customers, whether that’s:
Short-form and deliberately to the point (giving time back, not taking it)
Mid-form, potentially a video explained with step-by-step instructions or audio content enriched with sounds, jingles and memorable voices (leverage what we used to do and marvel at)
Long-form - yes, people research actively checking multiple sources, people also read for fun and entertainment (we have done for hundreds of years), people will dive into longer-form when they want to invest in something or escape other things. This could be shaped like an interactive video, a blend of audio, video and written text or a choose-your-own-journey approach through a website, an app or a bespoke build.
Own The Next Shift
There are always shifts, from the latest social media algorthim update to the hottly discussed topic of the moment is the SEO shift to become “GEO” including Google killing generic traffic and SEO bait landing pages by offering more instant answers, this does not mean all the optimised content won’t work, infact it means you’ll have to and more importantly want to remix, rework, curate and craft for your customers (aka your people) not for a search or answer engine, not for a heavily filtered feeds or for how we have been told to create clickbait titles etc etc.
In the very near future, consumers will have a whole new set of trust factors to check, a whole new way to connect with brands, chat with brands and work through who is the brand (or bot) for them…
It’s very likely; filtering and summarisation in email inboxes, in WhatsApp chats, and search results (not just Google SERPs) will switch up another gear with the impending AI slop, so raise the quality not quantity - becoming the trusted brand, a home and hub for customers, this will be increasingly important and an opportunity to be more creative and get back to great Marketing.
Prep For The Near Future By Leading The Industry Forward
Now might also be the chance to give your blog and landing pages a rework, audit and then enrich with rich media, with voice notes and with scrolling and interactive infographic-like content. Invest in the platforms you control and will have direct relationships with your customers.
For all the fear and worry about AI’s impact on the near future, we have the ability to leverage this shift, get ahead to reshape how we connect and engage our customers. We can speak to Product teams, we can work with our technology partners, we can even build ourselves.
Go stand out for your customers, don’t blend in for search engines and remember, there’s always a way to optimise to them after the fact 😉
What Do You Think? Do You Agree Or Disagree?
Let me know what you think, drop a comment below or message me on LinkedIn to tell me.
This will be featured on Marketing Unfiltered Newsletter #24.
