ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence tools are making it easier for creative agencies to create content, improve SEO results, and even access royalty-free music for digital campaigns.
While there is no doubt that AI can automate output and reduce the time required for some of marketing’s most tedious tasks, it also raises questions about potential downsides. What do digital agencies lose by replacing them? Is it possible to jump in and invest too early and create more losses than they win too early?
In a recent episode of “This Week in Local,” a podcast hosted by Localogy analysts Mike Boland and Charles Laughlin, Local SEO Guide CEO Andrew Shotland explained how agencies like himself serve clients. shared their views on how they are incorporating AI to Pitfalls with this approach.
In Shotland’s view, most agencies aren’t saving as much time using AI to develop creative content as they think. Tools like ChatGPT are fast but not very accurate. This is a big problem, especially for agencies looking to create hundreds or thousands of local pages for national brand clients.
“The way we are approaching AI, and obviously the way most smart companies are approaching AI, is that we can use AI as a starting point, and then we need an editorial process.” says Shotland. “All technology in AI is a prompt, what you ask the AI to get the output you want. Then you have to check it, so you need a good editing process. We’re still out on how much you can save just by using lighters.”
Shotland believes that ChatGPT does not pose an existential threat to search engine giants like Google, but rather a more long-term impact on third-party services and applications that perform basic functions for marketers and agencies. I think I will give
“We use something called a regex. If you were a coder you would call it a regex. Now you just go to ChatGPT and ask for a regex that does all sorts of crazy things. , works really well, I used to spend half an hour looking at Stack Overflow to see if anyone figured it out.”
Shotland expects to see significant demand for off-the-shelf AI tools next year. He predicts that most agencies will shift workflows to leverage his AI for content development.
“I think the first confusion is with writers, who have to move their skill set from purely writing to rapid creation and then to editing,” says Shotland.
Cost is one factor that may affect how marketers use AI in the future. ChatGPT is currently free, but we may add pricing for business users in the future. If OpenAI fails to address ChatGPT use cases well, competitors like Jasper are more likely to steal market share. Cloud-based work platforms such as Notion and Slack will almost certainly also take advantage of this trend, adding built-in AI-powered assistants.
In the big picture, Shotland is one of many who wonder if local marketers are paying too much attention to AI. In the long term, he believes machine learning could have a significant impact on how Creative, his agency does business, and the evolution of the industry itself.
“In practice, the main change for local SEO will probably be a massive increase in AI-assisted content. You can’t afford to create custom content for each location unless you do, so I think you’ll see a lot of agencies and a lot of internal teams experimenting with content creation at this scale. I don’t think that’s what innovation is about,” says Shotland. “I think the innovation is in using these techniques to run this kind of automated feedback he loops. You actually have a machine that updates content without interfering. That’s the sweet spot.”
