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Automation
It has become quite the buzz-word in digital marketing communities lately. From email campaigns and social media to lead generation and PPC advancements, digital marketing activities are becoming more automated by the day.
In our modern world, manual jobs are constantly being threatened by technology. But this reduced need for human participation is not isolated to traditional labor industries. As automation begins to permeate the digital landscape, similar concerns come to mind.
Could the advancement of automation software in the digital space render the jobs of some online marketers obsolete?
This Software as a Service (SAAS) provider seems to thinks so.
RankScience Wants to Replace SEO Teams
RankScience is a Silicon Valley based start-up making some serious claims on the future of SEO consultants’ place in digital marketing. They recently introduced an SEO automation tool that they believe has the potential to make manual search engine optimization a thing of the past.
Here's RankScience in a nutshell: Subscribers route their traffic through its content display network (CDN) to undergo mass A/B testing. In a matter of minutes, the software performs thousands of A/B tests to continuously boost organic search rankings. RankScience vows that their automation software only uses White Hat techniques and coincides with Google’s best practices
TechCruch goes into more detail on how the software operates here.
The masterminds behind RankScience believe their technology will have such a powerful impact on the role of SEO analysts because it is unlike any other software on the market. Other SEO tools serve as analytics dashboards that merely track progress and identify areas for improvement. However, RankScience’s CDN uniquely allows them to actually implement these suggested changes. Since this automation software handles the full scale of SEO operations, it endangers the need for SEO teams.
Implications for SEM and PPC
Advancements in automation software prelude an interesting future for other digital marketing positions as well. Several Search Engine Marketing and PPC automation services have also been recently introduced to the market.
These technologies perform similarly to RankScience.
They begin by tracking performance, running A/B tests, and implementing appropriate solutions to optimize campaigns. Optimizing campaigns includes automating bid management within Google Ads' Smart Bidding service, which lets users automate their PPC strategies determined by previously learned machine goals, such as target ROAS or max conversions. Advancements in PPC are such that anomalies detected by the automation software can be alerted to people, giving PPC specialists peace of mind to trust the process.
So then, do they similarly have the potential to overtake the jobs of digital marketers?
The Value of Marketing Insights
Automation intends to add ease and efficiency to the jobs of digital marketers. However, ease and efficiency can produce unintended consequences.
Alas, the remaining question is how valuable is the insight of an experienced marketer? Surely, the creativity and articulation of a skilled marketer cannot be easily replaced by technology. After all, marketers are demanded by the needs of clients or businesses.
As a business owner, how comfortable would you be without the accountability and insights of a marketer? Someone to suggest areas of high potential, or to warn about the sensibilities of creating ad copy for different locations?
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