How AI will NOT change digital marketing for small business

For the past six months or so, I have been low-key obsessed with the question:

How will AI change digital marketing strategies and tactics for small business?

There is a lot of hype around this new technology, and maybe for that reason, I have been asking such a large question, with the assumption that AI will CHANGE EVERYTHING DRAMATICALLY.

This week I decided to ask a different question, one that feels easier to wrap my head around:

How AI will not (or cannot) change digital marketing?

Thinking critically about this question has felt more fruitful and has helped me temper the hype around this topic. Here’s a quick stab at answering that question.

AI will not and cannot change the fundamental structure and function of the Internet.

I like to think realistically about how people utilize the Internet. At its core, the Internet is just a network of information that people can tap into via various access points (smartphones, computers, etc).

People use these access points to search for solutions to their problems. Whether it's the perfect pair of shoes, a new restaurant to try, or the answer to a specific question—they’re looking for something.

The "value" or "function" of the Internet, as far as investors have been concerned, is its ability to connect people to solutions that they are willing to pay for. I have my own ideas about the value of the Internet, as a medium for bringing people together and creating communities.

These fundamentals of how the Internet provides value to people are structural. AI cannot change this structure because AI is a product of this structure.

If you agree with this argument, we can find hints of the more subtle ways (read: less dramatic ways) that AI can change the experience of connecting with information via the Internet.

With all this in mind, here are some takeaways for small business leaders:

Don’t stress about being on every channel! AI is channel agnostic – it does not care where the information comes from (social media, your website, your YouTube videos, customer reviews of your business). If the information is relevant to your customers and what they are looking for, it will make the connection. Pick one content format that makes sense to you, and produce it consistently and authentically.

Consistent content has never been more important – as a product of the Internet, AI can only "know" what the Internet "knows." (Apologies for all the scare quotes). For businesses, this means you need to talk about yourself A LOT, in order to be found by AI. This is a content challenge (blogs, videos, podcasts), whatever that looks like for your business. The good news here is that with AI tools, producing content for your business has never been easier!

I will expand on these topics in future posts. Thanks for reading!

My name is Cheyne Minto. I am a digital marketer who is obsessed with helping small businesses get found online.