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AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce — How You Stay Relevant

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I’ve long argued that artificial intelligence won’t take your job, but that smart people who use AI might. What you might want to think about though is what “smart people who use AI” looks like in practice. Because your future in marketing and e-commerce undoubtedly depends on using AI well.

In this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, we take a look at what “using AI well” in the future looks like. We also break down the skills needed now… and in the future. And, most importantly, we explore how you can stay relevant as AI continues to change marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition overall.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce: How You Stay Relevant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 452) — Headlines and Show Notes

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You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 19m 49s

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Transcript: AI and the Future of Marketing and Ecommerce — How You Stay Relevant

Welcome to Thinks Out Loud. I’m Tim Peter.

You’ve heard me and others point out that AI won’t take your job, but that smart people who use AI will. Especially given that there was a dreadful jobs report released today. What is the future of sales, marketing, and e-commerce roles in an age of AI? We know that AI isn’t going to take all the jobs. That is a silly notion.

But what do the marketing and customer acquisition jobs of the future look like? What do you need to do to ensure that your job is safe? How do you stay relevant? How can you survive and thrive as a marketer, whether in branding or performance marketing, or as an e-commerce professional in an age of AI?

This is episode 452 of Thinks Out Loud. Let’s dive in.

First, let’s acknowledge that the miserable US jobs report today didn’t have a lot to do with AI. A third of the lost jobs come from cuts in government employment alone, apparently enacted by our acting Prime Minister, Elon Musk.

That said, economic uncertainty may influence executives at other companies to cut jobs and to believe that AI can replace those workers. While there’s no direct evidence that I’m aware of that that’s happening yet, in any large scale anyway. It’s certainly plausible and something that I’m watching for at present and in the weeks and months ahead. There’s some isolated cases but we’re not seeing it as a large scale trend yet.

Second, let’s also acknowledge that despite the possibility of some leaders looking to AI to replace folks in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition roles, there is no way that all of the jobs in those fields go away in any reasonable timeframe. That is simply not going to happen. I like to tell the story of my grandmother, Marie, who worked as a telephone operator back in the 1930s and 1940s. A telephone operator, for those unaware of the gig, was a major job role for many women back in the early part of the 20th century. In 1920, roughly 2% of all women employed in the US were working as telephone operators. I mean, that’s a huge number.

More impactful, at least in my family’s case, is that according to the 1930 census, my then 23-year-old grandmother, Marie, and her 25-year-old sister were the only two people in their household with jobs. Their dad, my then 49-year-old great-grandfather, was an out-of-work machinist who had been laid off as part of the Great Depression. These two young women were the ones who actually kept the family fed and housed during a time of enormous economic pain and uncertainty.

At any rate, the reason I tell this story is because today, telephone operators don’t exist. My grandmother, who was long retired by the time I came around, is the only telephone operator I’ve ever met. The job is completely nonexistent. Technology, in the form of automated switching, made the job go away.

So I don’t want you to take away from this discussion that technology can’t make a job go away. I would never suggest that it’s impossible for that to occur. I know firsthand, or at least secondhand, from my grandmother, that it absolutely can happen.

I also don’t want you to think that I believe AI is going to take all the jobs away, period. I suppose it’s theoretically likely, but it’s functionally impossible in reality. Even though Telephone Operator no longer exists as a job role, plenty of people still work for Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile and all kinds of other carriers around the world.

Broadening our look at various job roles for a minute, remember when I said the telephone operator was one of the top jobs for women 100 years ago? Well today, the top 10 jobs held by women in the US, representing around 17 % of all jobs, employ more women than the total number of women who had a job back in my grandmother’s day. In other words, there are almost six times as many women working today as there were women working 100 years ago, despite a full century of technological progress. And the numbers for men are smaller, because obviously there were a lot more men working than women working 100 years ago, but the same basic truth applies. There are more people working even in an era with a lot more technology.

Research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the job outlooks for advertising, promotion, and marketing managers will increase by8 % between 2023 and 2033, a pace that’s faster than the average of all the jobs they track. And again, they’re taking into account technological change when they make these forecasts. So don’t tell me that all of the marketing and customer acquisition jobs are going to go away anytime soon, or potentially ever. That seems extremely unlikely.

Sure, some studies show that almost two-thirds of marketers, and this is a quote, “fear that AI will steal their jobs.” For the reasons I’ve already outlined though, I’m not convinced. I’m willing to bet that there will be plenty of long-term opportunities for marketing and customer acquisition professionals in the years to come, regardless of progress with AI.

None of that means, though, that your job won’t change. And none of this matters to you if your job goes away.

When thinking about the effects AI might have in your marketing roles, that’s where your focus needs to remain. How do you ensure that you stay employed? How do you ensure that you stay relevant?

Let’s start with change.

You’ve likely heard that AI affects tasks more than it does jobs. That’s true. There’s some research from IDC that suggests generative AI will increase marketing productivity by more than 40% by 2029, so just in the next four years.

And yes, some of those productivity improvements may cause companies to hire fewer people. I bet that more than a few CFOs will figure, “Why do we need more people if the folks we have can improve their output using these tools by 20% or 30% or 40%?”

I mean, if you think about it, a four-person team where each person sees a 25 % lift in their productivity, suddenly, on paper, looks a lot like a five-person team. Of course some C-suite execs will think this way. And at least in some cases, they’re probably right to do so.

As I see it, there are several areas where people working with AI can be more effective than just people or AI alone. That’s what your job becomes now. How do you become one of those people?

If you want to stay relevant, if you want to grow your career in marketing and customer acquisition, there are a number of areas that you need to focus on. These include:

  • Strategic thinking. Given that AI can increasingly handle tactical aspects of marketing — so things like conducting A/B tests or putting together outlines and rough drafts of copy and headlines, those kinds of activities — your ability to think about the big picture becomes even more important than it already is. Your ability to think beyond short-term incentives and look at where your brand and your business fits into your customer’s lives longer term matters more than ever. To that end, it’s increasingly important for you to think about the next area that matters too, which is…
  • Human-centered thinking, things like brand and ethical considerations. AI provides powerful capabilities, but it will never be more human than a human. Who speaks for your customers’ concerns about privacy and safety and the pace of change in their lives? Who represents their needs overall? Who’s looking out for your customers? If it’s not you, do you really think that the machines will? Even when we’re using technology, automation, and AI to move faster, and ideally better, we’ve also got to lean into our humanity to show care and compassion and our core values in every interaction. In many cases, those are what your customers cherish more than anything. If you think about technology more broadly, when human beings started riding bicycles or started driving cars, they also realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t okay to simply mow down pedestrians whenever and wherever they wanted. Right? We don’t want to turn machines loose without guidance and governance from other humans who are thinking about what matters most of all to our customers and to our communities. The marketers who bring those skills to the table will find that they’re able to both do right by their communities and by their companies through their attention to the longer term needs of the people they serve. Be human. It’s something you can always do better than a machine.
  • Another area where you can focus is on data enabled thinking. Notice that I didn’t say “data driven.” Data-driven sometimes turns into following the numbers blindly. Data-enabled instead means that you’ve learned to recognize and value not just the numbers, but the story that those numbers tell you. You can’t ignore the data, that would be foolish. And AI is outstanding at finding patterns hidden within your data, often shining a light on opportunities or hidden insights that you or your competitors might otherwise miss. What’s also true is that you must get good at interpreting what the numbers tell you about the bigger picture. You must get better at asking the right questions of your data. Learn to exercise your judgment around what the data says. This is a key area where you can use AI to help you improve. I’ve mentioned many times before Wharton School entrepreneurship professor Ethan Mullick, who requires all of his students to use artificial intelligence when they do their assignments. But he also requires them to show their work. He wants to assess why they chose a given direction and help his learners understand how to improve their thinking when using these tools. I frequently use ChatGPT or Gemini for brainstorming sessions. I riff on ideas that I see when assessing reports and other data to sharpen my thinking. These tools help me think more deeply and push me towards second order thinking when examining results and improving those results over time by reducing errors, reducing unforeseen consequences, helping me think bigger about our companies and our plans, marketing, and e-commerce activities. All of those are incredibly valuable and make me a better marketer and customer acquisition professional.

The last place I’d encourage you to focus is on learning. Now, let’s be fair, learning is hardly a new idea in marketing and customer acquisition. But the rapid pace of change brought on by technology generally, and by AI specifically, demands that we hold ourselves accountable for our own growth over the long term.

(As a quick aside, I don’t think this is only true in marketing. It is equally true in every aspect of business and in life. If you’re not learning, if you’re not growing, you’re in trouble long term.)

Happily, most marketers are already doing the work here. If you’re not already doing this, you need to put in some time to get comfortable with the tools that are out there.

These could include general purpose AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. They also could include AI features in various ad platforms like Google Ads or Meta Ads. And they could include the AI capabilities built into Salesforce or HubSpot, Adobe Suite, Klaviyo, or Mailchimp.

But, and this is probably different than what you’ve heard before, the point isn’t necessarily to become expert in any one tool. I’m not saying you should not become comfortable with them. You should. And if you’re earlier in your career, you definitely want to develop a degree of fluency with the tools relevant to your job. There is no doubt about that.

What’s also true is that the tools and technologies change rapidly. That’s kind of the whole point of what I’m talking about today. Being really good at just one tool can be career limiting. It’s a good idea to be well known among your peers and community as the go-to person for search marketing, or the best email expert, or the queen of e-commerce. And being proficient, knowledgeable, and up to date in the tools of your trade matter. You should know how to use them. But if you focus too narrowly on a single tool and only its ins and outs, only that, that’s when you’re more at risk.

Instead, look for trends and patterns across the array of tools and tactics in your chosen part of the marketing field. Then explore how those tie back to larger marketing trends, how they fit into the bigger picture of customer acquisition. It’s okay to be known as, for instance, a Shopify superstar or an SEO specialist. Just make sure you take the time to fit that into the bigger picture. Because the people best able to connect to the dots, to see how various pieces of the customer journey tie together,

are the people best positioned to build a sustainable career. And all the better if you’re then able to communicate complex topics to more general audiences. This stuff, all of this digital stuff, all of AI, can absolutely be complicated. The more you’re able to help others just navigate that complexity, the more you’re able to tie that back to a business result, the more those folks are going to want you around.

So to wrap this all up, AI is here, it’s real, and it’s part of your job to understand it. Technology has made some jobs go away in the past. It’s likely that AI will do the same today and in the future. You can compete in an age of AI by focusing on areas where you are naturally better than AI. AI can’t out-human a human.

Strategic thinking, human-centered thinking, and data-enabled thinking, plus learning, are key to your longevity in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. That’s always been true, and it’s more true today than ever. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep helping others do the same, and they’ll look for ways to help you too.

AI will change some of your tasks, and it probably will change your job, but it will only take your career as a marketer away if you let 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 I hope that you might 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. I’d really appreciate that.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 452, and an archive of all our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. And of course, as always, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

I want to thank you so much for listening this week. I want you to know this show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and 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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