How To Play Web3 and AI To Win at Digital Marketing
It’s like Wayne Gretzky said, “skate to where the puck is going to be.” Aside from having one of the most spectacular mullets to bless the 1980s, world famous ice hockey champion, Gretzky, gifted the world with this wisdom: great players gain strategic advantage not by reacting in the moment, but by continually anticipating and adapting to the ever-changing game. Substitute ice hockey with digital marketing and the advice still holds true – making it essential for marketers skating solely in the Web2 rink to follow the puck towards Web3, to see how technologies including everything from blockchain, the metaverse, and edge computing, to IoT, and AI, are being leveraged to counteract Web2’s decline in digital marketing efficacy.
Don’t get frozen in Web2’s digital marketing practices
Digital marketing has taken an unequivocal hit from the ever-growing demand for data privacy, where advertising has traditionally relied on its tracking and attribution abilities (Digiday). There’s no question that Apple’s 2021 iOS 14 operating system launch directly impacted performance marketing with a major privacy change that increased user control over apps using their data.
Digital ad rates are now slowing, with a 7% YoY decrease from 2022 reported in April 2023 (MediaRadar). Economic instability and rising inflation are putting pressure on digital marketers to justify ad spend and pause activities that no longer deliver.
The obvious answer might be to increase sales-driven marketing tactics to power through a looming recession, but when consumers are more cautious about spending, and the tools are becoming less effective, this is not recommended.
Instead, research by Analytic Partners found that the wiser approach is to funnel at least 50% of marketing spend towards brand-building and community (Analytics Partners, 2022).
Follow the puck to community-based marketing
We’ve written before about how Web3 is shifting the community paradigm and about how Web3 technologies and tokenization are actually strengthening brand-consumer relationships, by creating mutually beneficial incentivized communities where everyone has the opportunity to “buy in”. In Web3 community-driven word-of-mouth marketing is very much fueling growth by enabling brands to build relationships with customers rather than simply selling to them. Here brands can establish communities where self governance, shared collective interests, and a fair value exchange, are coded in. This is helping to foster a space for collaborative storytelling, and through a combination of Web3 social platforms, content creators, and user-generated content, community-driven word-of-mouth marketing is thriving in Web3. Looking above and beyond Web2 performance marketing to the brand building and community-driven practices of Web3 is arguably the direction digital marketers should be facing.
Keep a watchful eye on AI
At this point no one is snoozing on AI, especially when generative AI, which can automate the production of all kinds of marketing content, from text, and images, through to videos, is expected to reach $126.5 billion by 2031 (Allied Market Research, 2023). AI is already delivering ROI, driving cost efficiencies, and accelerating creative cycles for 66% of marketers (Botco.ai, 2023). At the same time polls indicate that 25% of marketing work could be automated in the coming years (Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute). This does not mean that 25% of marketing jobs will go to AI, but rather that when specialized skills can be automated they very likely will be. So again, skating to where the puck is going in this case means continually aiming to gain more generalist marketing skills. Digital marketers need to stay flexible, and be ready to quickly adapt to change – our innate ability to adapt is arguably the ultimate human advantage over technology because it is already hard wired into our genes. Honing creative and problem-solving abilities will also put digital marketers in the best position as their roles, and the technology, keep evolving.
Anticipating the digital marketing game’s shifts
Wayne Gretzky's timeless quote transcends ice hockey and remains just as important for digital marketers today. Just as great players anticipate the game's shifts, digital marketers need to look beyond the Web2 moment, to see where the future of marketing is heading in Web3.
Here marketing is looking beyond transactional and performance-based tactics, to community-driven marketing with the goal of bringing a better value exchange and balance to brand-consumer dynamics. This in turn is fostering incentivized communities and collaborative storytelling which help to spread the word and bring growth to Web3.
As the puck hurtles towards AI at record speed, adaptability is becoming the absolute vanguard of digital marketing; as some specialized tasks yield to automation, digital marketers need to cultivate more generalist and versatile skills, get creative, and remain primed for the technology’s continual evolution. In other words, winning at digital marketing in 2023 is going to take anticipation, agility and above all adaptability.