I’m going to write a little about the rise of social commerce, influencer marketing, and user generated content, and what this has to do with AI and the job market.
AI will continue to rapidly saturate traditional marketing and traditional digital marketing techniques, such as content marketing, consumer education, search engine optimization, etc. Most of these marketing techniques have already been commodified, so AI represents a second wave of commodification.
As this happens, social commerce, influencer marketing, and user generated content will continue to grow because it is based on relationship-building, rather than making deals. But the market will be inundated with platforms and AI tech that facilitates relationship-building until the market becomes well-understood. Fortunately, relationship-building cannot be fully commodified, but the market will do its best to use AI tech to make social marketing efficient over the next 5-15 years or so.
Why do I keep highlighting commodification? As the market becomes more commodified and pricing marketing spend becomes more efficient, three things will happen. First, the low-end market will atomize into countless tiny agencies fighting with each other to survive, trying to build relationships with up-and-coming nano- and micro-influencers. Second, the mid-end market will be characterized by large platforms developed by the major agencies that combine SaaS efficiency with sales-oriented customer service and faceless tech teams. Third, the kings of the high-end market, the major agencies, will continue to grow and rule the bespoke marketing campaigns with the two iron fists of sales: social proof and successful case studies.
So what does this have to do with AI? The marketing sphere isn’t the only place in which these types of changes will occur. I’m trying to demonstrate that AI tech, at least for the next 5-15 years, has clear boundaries which we can navigate until the real pain starts happening. Everyone, not just the entrepreneurial out there, would do well to explore these areas for a number of reasons:
1. These are the spaces where one will actually be able to bootstrap an operation with a low budget, because they can reliably find an edge/moat that you can leverage.
2. If a team successfully breaks into the space, these are the areas where they can use their experience to reach and compete at the cutting edge of this space. Why is this important? You can be reasonably sure that you will have more data on your market than any new team trying to break into the field after you.
3. Which means that these are the areas in which the team (now a working startup) will be able to leverage this data to develop their own industry-specific AI that will streamline business operations.
4. Which means that this team will be most able to commodify the market and develop platforms as the market grows.
I can’t stress enough that this isn’t just for the entrepreneurial. If you are in a sector that is being streamlined, you need a reliable schema with which you can make future career decisions, to join a team with the highest likelihood of success. I am well aware that my prior advice of “be the top 1% of your sector” simply isn’t that useful. So I’d like to go further and help people answer the following question: “Which sectors will afford me good upward mobility while minimizing my chances of being replaced by AI and platforms?”
Macaque Mentality
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