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AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450)

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Is it possible that clicks are overrated in digital marketing and in marketing more generally? Isn’t the point of marketing to drive revenue? I think so, in both cases.

You absolutely can drive revenue without clicks. Great marketing has done that for years. But, if that’s the case, how do you measure the value of your marketing, and especially, of your content marketing? How do you stand apart in a sea of sameness? And what role does AI play in all of this?

AI, content, and revenue — and why clicks are overrated — is the topic of this week’s episode of Thinks Out Loud, our marketing and customer acquisition podcast.

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AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) — Headlines and Show Notes

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Transcript: AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated

Welcome to Thinks Out Loud, I’m Tim Peter. I read an article the other day from Amanda Natavidad at Spark Toro that asked, “Traffic is Down, Revenue is… Up?”

Weird, right?

The fact is that I see this all the time. Google search on social and ad performance sometimes declines, and yet revenues are either flat or better.

In the immortal words of Diondre Cole, “what’s up with that?” Does that mean your marketing isn’t working? Or is it possible that clicks are overrated? Can you drive revenue without clicks? And if you can, what role does your content marketing play in making that happen? Lastly, how does AI play into all of this? The answers are, well…

Hang with me a second. I’ll get to them shortly.

This is episode 450 of Thinks Out Loud. We’re talking about driving revenue without clicks. Let’s dive in.

Before I get too far into this discussion, I want to address the big question, which is “what is the point of marketing?”

The answer, which you probably know, but might surprise a few folks, is marketing exists to drive revenue.

Your job isn’t to drive clicks or traffic. It’s not even to build your brand. The point of marketing is to drive revenue, period, end of story.

Building a brand is a great way to do that, to drive revenue. Almost always, it’s a critical step towards driving revenue. And clicks and traffic certainly help. But they’re also steps towards the overall goal. And that goal is revenue, or even better, profits. As a buddy of mine likes to say, “you don’t deposit clicks. You deposit money.”

I don’t mean this to be mercenary. Your company and your team and you yourself may have larger, more altruistic, more beneficial motives for the work that you do. There are so many companies who do great work in this area. Think of companies like TOMS or Patagonia or Out of the Closet, a thrift store in my backyard, that donates its proceeds to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

They’re all remarkable. They do tremendous work in their communities and they deserve credit for their commitment to making the world better for all of us. But without revenue, without profits, without cash money, those companies can’t deliver of their amazing admirable promises to their communities.

Marketing that doesn’t deliver revenue, at least in the longer term, is a waste of time, it’s a waste of budget, and it’s a waste of effort. That’s why I always say that content is your 24 by seven by 365 salesperson and your 24 by seven by 365 customer service rep. It is marketing in action. It is marketing intended to drive results.

The salesperson part of it is obvious. It drives sales. And the customer service rep part helps drive satisfaction and retention among your customers. Those lower your long-term cost of customer acquisition by helping you keep the people already using your products and services and getting them to come back again and again and again. That’s why, what you’ve heard me say before, that content is king and customer experience is queen. They work together to sell and retain your customers.

So shouldn’t your content at least drive clicks? Again? No, not necessarily. I mean, it’d be great if it did, but it’s not necessarily what you need it to do.

Your content exists to connect with your customers, both real customers and potential customers. It helps them understand who you are and help people solve their problems, how you make their lives better. And again, help convert them to customers and keep those customers coming back again and again and again. Convert and keep. That’s what your content needs to do.

Clicks are one way to do that, sure. But your content can do so much more than that. So much more than simply drive a single click.

When your content is shared on social channels, it can keep your name in front of potential customers. And that can drive people to type in your URL, or far more common, search for your brand name. Think about how much search has changed over the last couple years. We don’t have 10 blue links any longer. We don’t have the way search has always worked. When people search for your category or a topic area or something more generic, you might show up. Do you know what comes up when people search for you by name? You, your brand. That is a genuinely good thing. Capital G, capital T, GOOD THING. You love to see it.

And getting people to be invested in your brand is part of what your content is supposed to do. Because that’s how you drive revenue. You get people to care about your brand. You get people to care who you are. You get people to care about what you do to help them live a better life. That’s the whole point.

My friend Mark Schaefer has a new book, “Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World,” which is well worth your time.

It is filled with tons of case studies of brands doing amazing work, creating great stories shared with their customers, friends and families and fans and followers that drive actual, real, honest to goodness engagement in the best possible sense of the word with brands just like yours.

It causes those folks to want to learn more, to browse, and yes, to buy, to create revenue for your brand, to create profits for your business. Content that gets people curious about your business is good content, is really good content. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

Because getting people curious about your brand, getting them invested in your brand is how you convert them to customers and how you convert to revenue.

You also can measure it. I know this might sound contradictory relative to what I said a little bit ago, but you can see the value here even without clicks. Pay attention to changes in traffic from brand and keywords. Keep track of how much direct navigation and activity on your app you receive if you have one. Most importantly, keep a close eye on your revenue. While the specifics of how you drill down into the details around this kind of tracking are beyond the scope of today’s episode, every one of these are signs that your marketing is reaching the people you want to reach, that it’s doing the work you need it to do.

In fact, I’m going to say something a little controversial here, but if you can’t see it show up in your revenue, then your marketing isn’t working. That’s a sign right there that you have work to do. You need to be able to see something to know that it’s working. And if you’re not seeing it, then it’s not working. And if you are seeing things happen, then it’s a sign that things are working. It’s just drilling into the details to know how to do that. Drop me a line if you’d like to learn more about how to do that. We help people solve that problem all the time.

So content marketing is good even without clicks on the content itself, right? It makes sense why you want to use it. How does AI fit into this picture? Well, I’m glad you asked.

First, I want to go back to our prior episode from a couple of weeks ago where I said “AI won’t kill content marketing, bad content will. Boring, obviously machine generated content that lacks humanity will. Content that fails to connect with human beings as individuals and as members of the communities they care about will kill content marketing. In short, AI will only kill content marketing if you let it.”

I am dead serious about that. AI will not produce the content that your customers love. Almost no way, no how. What AI can do though, is help you brainstorm ideas for content.

You can use AI to generate personas for your target customers. Then ask your favorite AI to provide feedback about your ideas before you invest too much time and treasure into producing them.

You can use AI to help you craft outlines or even, and I can’t emphasize this word enough, create rough drafts for your content, for your imagery, for your video scripts, and for your social media posts. Again, rough drafts, not the final draft.

You can also use AI to help you parse your data to uncover whether any spikes in your analytics represent a fluke or a longer term trend.

When you use AI to help you craft content, do not, and I am begging you, DO NOT take the output these tools provide and post them as is. Do not use them as the final version of your content. Anyone can do that. Increasingly, it feels like everyone is, and that’s why we see so much crap content.

I mean, if I’m being perfectly honest, I use AI-generated images more than I should. We’re going to be moving away from that over time. They’re just not always great images. They don’t do what we need them to do. They don’t tell the story of the brand we need them to tell. It was great to test them out. It was great to learn about them. It was great to see what could be done with them. But fundamentally, do they actually represent us at our most human, at our most sincere, and at our most truthful and honest? No! They’re not great content. They’re fine. But they’re not great.

Instead, your content should reflect your brand, your personality. And as much as possible, a specific individual, a specific human within your company who can build longer term relationships and trust with your target audience.

You don’t want customers to connect with a robot. For one thing, they probably won’t. Right? For another, it doesn’t stand apart from anybody else’s robot.

Instead you want your audience, you want the people you want to talk to to connect with human beings, with the human beings that make your company, your brand distinct and human.

To give one real world example, this podcast that you’re listening to right now is not scripted by a machine. It isn’t hosted by a machine. We do use AI to transcribe the recording. We use AI to test titles. We use AI to generate the image that accompanies each episode and do some careful curation of multiple possible images. We occasionally use AI to review the script and provide feedback. And that’s it. That’s all we do.

Other companies we work with use AI to help personalize messages or test alternatives for different customer segments. Some use AI editing tools to streamline video production. They — and we — use AI to improve efficiency and scale. But all of those start and end with human crafted content. That’s the only way you’re gonna stand apart. Otherwise, you’re gonna sink into a sea of sameness.

So what are some key takeaways as you think about using AI to help your content marketing drive revenues without clicks?

  • The first is that the point of your marketing is to drive revenue, period.
  • Next, your content marketing is your 24 by seven by 365 salesperson and 24 by seven by 365 customer service rep.
  • If your content helps you gain customers or keep existing ones, your content is doing its job, whether those people click or not.
  • Next, your content that makes customers curious about your brand and your business is good content. Do more of that.
  • Next, you can track your content’s effectiveness by watching branded activity in search, social, and your website.
    • AI can help you identify traffic and trends there.
  • Next, AI can also help you streamline or scale production of great content.
  • But AI shouldn’t be the face or voice of your company. Customers want to work with people they like and that they trust. Your people must own and produce your final content deliverables.
    • Plus, remember that everyone who uses AI to create their final content deliverables increasingly all look and sound the same.
    • Break free from that herd. Be human.

Ultimately, great content produced by and for humans will help you drive revenues and profits for your business with or without clicks. Embrace that reality. Your business, your brand, and your bottom line will all thank you for it.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might so know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 450 of Thinks Out Loud, and an archive of all of our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast.

And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Thanks so much for listening today. This show wouldn’t happen without you. I very much appreciate you doing it. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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