Let’s call out some myths surrounding AI.
Every couple of days, someone is claiming it will take over all jobs, rewrite the entire Internet, and turn marketing teams into the “dinosaurs” of yesterday. However, the fact remains that AI won’t replace marketers – it will replace outdated ways of marketing.
At Slinky Digital, we’ve experienced this firsthand. AI isn’t taking away our creativity; it is simply fueling it. In reality, what AI is really doing is redefining how strategy, storytelling and data work together, and those marketers who learn to partner with it (instead of fighting it) will ultimately move forward.
Let’s discuss how AI is actually changing marketing – and what you need to do to stay ahead, smartly.
1. AI Isn’t Magic, It’s an Assistant
The majority of marketers have likely seen the buzz surrounding AI.
Tools are popping up everywhere promising to write your blog post in seconds or boost your ROI overnight. Those types of promises may seem appealing; however, they are usually an exaggeration.
While AI can learn from massive amounts of data, it does not know what drives human behaviour. That’s where marketers come in and provide their value-adds.
At Slinky, we are using AI strategically, not recklessly. We’re able to use AI to gain insights much quicker, create more personalised campaigns, and streamline the tedious tasks of keyword mapping and ad optimisation.
While AI is very helpful with these tasks, it is still the creatives and strategists behind it that make the business sound human, not robotic.
Think of AI as a super-efficient assistant. It will do the heavy lifting; however, it still needs a creative director to guide it.
2. Too Much Data – How to Stop Drowning in the Ocean of Information
Here’s the dirty little secret that nobody wants to tell you: AI has made marketing data messier.
Yes, you can now track users’ intentions, scroll depth, click behaviour, purchase patterns, all of it in real-time. With that increase in data comes a huge risk: losing sight of the story.
A campaign based solely on data points can appear technologically perfect, but emotionally flat. The key is combining AI’s accuracy with true human emotion.
For instance, at Slinky, we typically combine AI-driven analytical tools with our team’s own market research. The AI may identify that a specific audience segment is “engaging less” with a particular ad.
However, by asking why, our team can go further and determine if the tone was wrong, the images did not resonate, or the offer was off base.
This is the magic formula: AI identifies the “what”, and humans identify the “why”.
3. Content Creation Is Not Dying – It’s Evolving
Do you remember when marketers were concerned that AI would replace human writers, graphic artists, and video editors?
That’s simply not what’s happening. In fact, content creation is having what can be called a second golden age – just with some different technology.
AI allows us to test more versions of content and do it much quicker than we could before.
Want to know how your ad headline will perform using a slightly different tone of voice? Done. Want seven days’ worth of social media captions created around your brand voice? Easy. Want some SEO blog post ideas that actually align with search intent and aren’t simply keyword-stuffed? No problem.
However, creativity still dictates which path we take.
As an example, we have recently conducted testing for one of our clients with regard to blog posts. The first strategy utilised AI-generated outlines, while the second was strictly a manual brainstorming session. The hybrid strategy – utilising both AI for structure and a human for storytelling – performed significantly better than both previous strategies. It ranked significantly faster and converted more leads.
This is the type of balance we strive to achieve at Slinky – data-driven creativity.
4. Predictive AI: The New Best Friend Of Personalisation
I’m sure you’ve noticed how the ads on the internet appear to “know” what you’re thinking lately. You start looking at hiking boots online and suddenly all of the advertising platforms think you’re planning an expedition to climb Mount Everest. This is predictive AI in action – predicting your next move based upon your previous behaviour.
What is new today is how precise predictive AI has become.
Predictive AI can identify micro-patterns across multiple platforms – things that humans could never see – allowing marketing professionals to provide hyper-personalised content to their customers before the customer even searches for it.
However, this is also where brands can quickly get creepy.
Personalisation should not be intrusive – it should be considerate. At Slinky, we use AI-generated insights to help guide our messaging but never dictate it. As an example, we may utilise the browsing behaviour to personalise an email subject line or website banner but we’ll never sacrifice authenticity for clicks.
In reality, the true art is being subtle. Predictive AI provides the data. However, it is still up to a human to make a judgment call.
5. SEO: Not Dead, Just Smarter
If you have heard “SEO is dead” more times than you care to remember in the last year or so, you are not alone. However, while many may believe that SEO is a thing of the past, it is simply evolving to a more strategic approach.
The new AI-driven systems being used by Google, such as Search Generative Experience (SGE), will summarise answers to a user’s query directly on their search page. As such, the focus is no longer strictly on ranking based on keywords, but also includes factors of context, credibility, and clarity.
Here at Slinky, we are working towards optimising all content to reflect the changing landscape of how Google presents its users’ searches. The future of SEO is not about trying to outsmart the algorithm through tricks and gimmicks; it is about truly helping users find what they are looking for.
6. Paid Advertising: An AI Playground That Still Requires a Strategist
AI has greatly enhanced the world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
From Google Ads’ Smart Bidding to automated A/B testing, we have tools today that can run thousands of different campaign variations before you’ve had your morning coffee. While these tools can optimise bids far faster than a human could, they do not provide the same level of understanding and context that a human does.
A machine learning algorithm can potentially identify the lowest cost-per-click. However, it cannot ensure that the correct customer is being targeted. Furthermore, an AI may spend money on non-relevant clicks when the potential gain is short-term.
As such, our PPC specialists do not hand over complete control to AI. We allow AI to automate, but we always keep a watchful eye on the strategy, message, and timing behind each ad campaign.
Effective advertising is not about getting a click; it is about creating conversations that lead to conversions.
7. Social Media: The Human Connection Still Wins
Humans can instantly recognise when a social media post was generated by AI. They are usually too well put together, a little too generic, and a little too… perfect.
Although AI can certainly aid in generating social media content quicker than a human can, tracking engagement metrics, and suggesting optimal posting times, it cannot replicate the unpredictable nature of creating social media content that is REAL. The humour, the raw emotion, the unexpected timing – these are what create a genuine connection between a person and their audience.
We have also tested this same concept at Slinky — using human-created social media captions with a few extra features provided by AI (i.e. idea creation or hashtag suggestions ) has been shown to perform better than completely AI-created captions.
Social media is still a people-first platform, and while AI is a useful tool, personality ultimately drives sales.
- Web Design – Where AI Meets Instinct
Using AI-powered website builder platforms today, one can generate an entire homepage in literally seconds. Sounds amazing until you take a closer look. Yes, it will function as expected. But does it feel right? Generally no.
Great web design is not simply pixels and templates — it’s psychological. It is about directing your visitors’ focus, establishing trust, and creating interest. And those abilities are based on human experience.
At Slinky, we utilise AI-powered tools for usability testing, heatmaps, and performance analytics. They tell us where visitors hesitate, how far down the page they scroll, and where they stop. But it is our designers and strategists who make the final decision based on understanding why your visitors behave in such a manner.
The result: websites that look modern, load quickly, and actually drive conversions without losing the human element.
9. Adapting Without Losing Your Voice
If AI has rewritten the marketing playbook, then what should your business do? Here are some tips that we give our clients.
- Take small first steps. Try out an AI tool or two and see how it works with your business, perhaps just in analytics or ad testing. Then, expand upon it. Don’t try to remake everything you have all at once.
- Your brand voice should always be intact. Allow AI to assist you in creating your content, but don’t let it write your content. Your audience trusts your voice, not a machine’s.
- Use data as a guide, but don’t follow the numbers blindly. Use the numbers to inform you on what your next step may be, but also use your knowledge and experience of your audience, as well as common sense.
- Invest in having human oversight. Whether it’s developing content, doing SEO optimisation, or analysing your campaigns, the final decision needs to come from a person.
- Staying curious will keep you ahead. The marketers who continue to learn and experiment and are open to new ideas will never fall behind.
10. The Next Chapter of Marketing: Human + Machine
Let’s face it, AI isn’t going anywhere. New technologies are going to pop up continuously. Some will be ridiculous, while others will amaze you. The point of using these technologies is not to fight them, but to use them smarter.
At Slinky, we view AI as a co-pilot. One that allows us to produce better insights, greater results, and better-performing campaigns for our clients.
We combine the best of technology and creativity when producing content, including search engine optimisation (SEO) and Google ads, web design, and social media, to give our clients the very best of both worlds.
Because the truth is, marketing has never been about the tools; it’s about the people who use them.
And the future of marketing will belong to those who understand how to utilise AI and yet maintain their humanity.
Want to explore how to modernise your digital strategy and lose no part of your brand’s voice?
If you’re interested in learning how to develop a more modern digital strategy and want to make sure you’ll never lose your brand’s voice, we’d love to talk to you.
At Slinky Digital Agency, we provide businesses with real results through smart SEO, innovative web design, performance-based PPC, and social media strategies that create genuine connections.
Let’s use AI for you – not instead of you.
Contact Slinky today to discover how the future of marketing can be both intelligent and extremely human.