Does AI rival the career of demand generation?
Don't believe the "experts". NO ONE knows the answer to this question with confidence). All that said, here are my hot takes:
AI will have an impact on your career as a Demand Generation professional in the medium term. How?
-Automation of your routine tasks: AMEN. This is a great thing and will allow us all to spend more time focused on more interesting creative and strategic problem solving.
-Enhanced Data Analysis: Again, this is rad. Imagine you have your own, personal data scientist to help you parse the reams of data we collect as marketers, and develop real and impactful business insights.
-Personalization at Scale: More great news here. AI will help us personalize sales and marketing interactions beyond the hard limits of 1:1 "account based marketing". That means more net new leads, more qualified leads, more opportunities, higher average deal sizes, more closed won and happier customers.
-Improved Lead Generation and Nurturing" See above for personalization; it will have a meaningful impact on our ability to ship the right ad to the right prospect at the right time. It will help us customize our nurture streams and produce the right content. This is great news for all of us.
-Content Creation and Optimization: This is probably where you can see the biggest impact RIGHT NOW. If you are not using free, off the shelf tools for content ideation, outline creation, narrative flow, H1 & H2 creation and editing for readability....you are missing out. Will this replace the Content Marketing Manager or Copyeditor role anytime soon? I don't think so. It's just going to make them more productive.
-Real-time Customer Insights: I don't think we're here yet, but I think it's coming and it's a GREAT THING. In near-future states, AI will provide real-time insights into customer behavior and engagement, allowing for more us to be responsive and pivot quickly to marketing strategies. The big question for us human working professionals is, "can we increase our agility and be prepared to quickly adjust campaigns based on these insights?"
-Skillset Evolution: Ok so this one is INTERESTING. You want to take a risk and get ahead of building an inevitably hot, in demand skill? Invest in your query development skills (I recently heard of a startup shutting down for a month to train their entire staff on this). Get proficient in using AI tools and platforms, understanding AI-driven analytics, and how businesses can integrate AI into your overall strategy.
All that said, I don't think AI will replace your role in the next 5-10 years, provided you embrace and leverage the tools that are rapidly becoming made available to you.
In the long term - ten plus years - AI will almost certainly transform the the role. Maybe even eliminate it as it stands today. But there's no need to panic. It may be hard to remember, but there were no "Demand Generation Managers" 20 years ago. And Marketers like you and me still have jobs.