Are you worried about the rapid advancement of AI in marketing? As artificial intelligence reshapes the marketing landscape, many professionals question their future in the industry. Will AI replace human marketers entirely as Sam Altman has suggested? What new skills do you need to stay competitive?
These questions keep marketers up at night, but here’s the good news. AI isn’t here to replace you. It’s here to enhance your capabilities and open up new opportunities. And that’s exactly what Social Pulse Podcast: B2B Edition guest Pam Didner discusses in this episode.
Listen to the entire podcast, hosted by Agorapulse’s chief storyteller, Mike Allton, or read on for the transcript.
Pam Didner is an award-winning B2B marketing consultant, speaker, and author of multiple books on AI marketing, including her recent works: The Modern AI Marketer in the GPT Era and The Modern AI Marketer: Guide to Gen AI Prompts. With over two decades of experience in global marketing leadership roles, she has been at the forefront of marketing evolution, helping countless professionals leverage AI to enhance their strategies and careers.
Please share your personal journey from what we would call traditional marketing to “AI marketing” expert.
Pam Didner: I wouldn’t say I’m an AI marketing expert. Honestly, I’m learning AI just like everybody else. If you are learning, I’m learning, too. I just happened to internalize my learning and wrote a couple of books about it. That’s it. That is the only difference between you and me. Seriously. And Mike is right. I was a traditional marketer. So what does that mean? That means I’m pretty old …
The key pivotal moment is somebody actually mentioned SEO to me once, like search engine optimization. I was like, huh? What is that? That was a pivotal moment for me transitioning from traditional to digital. And I think my transition from kind of like digital to AI, tt was actually probably back in the end of 2019 honestly, Mike … It was Andrew Gaffney [who] reached out to me and said, “Hey, a bunch of people are talking about AI marketing. Can you come and talk about it?” … Sure, no problem. And I turned around, I was like, “What the hell, I don’t know what that is. But I’ll find out.” So really it’s 2019 that I started doing in-depth research about AI. And that’s way before November 30, 2022, when ChatGPT was launched.
So I did quite a bit of research about AI way back then. And at that time, it’s really the big technology from Amazon, and Google, right? They are using the algorithm, the AI, to actually help them. Like ways to actually give us the route, from destination A to destination B, that AI we were talking about. It’s really the big shots we’re using back them.
I gave a talk in February 2020, literally a month before COVID hit. And with that talk, I actually wrote a book about it. Don’t ask me why I just decided to write a book about AI. And I named that book “The Modern AI Marketer.” And so I wrote a book and then just uploaded it into Amazon, like an ebook. And that’s it. Charged like 99 cents or a lot of time it’s free. And then from that point on, I kind of made that transition from a digital marketer to AI.
And then, of course, the launch of the ChatGPT really changed the world. So I decided to give that book a new kind of facelift. So I wrote two books, and [the new one] was launched about a couple of weeks ago in September. Yeah. So yeah, here I am.
Mike Allton: Well, listen, Pam, I appreciate your humbleness, but the fact is, if you’ve been studying and talking in teaching AI since 2019, you’re one of the OG AI marketers, along there with Paul Roetzer and Susan Westwater and Chris Penn. Most of us are just now, literally just now, getting started. I started my AI journey, so to speak, in late 2023, early this year, 2024, when we’re recording this. So, you are way ahead of me. Way, way ahead of me. I have not written a book yet on AI.
Pam Didner: You’ve got a practitioner. I know you are using AI all the time. All right. So you know what? You are good. You’re good. You’re there. All right, Mike, you are.
Mike Allton: Well, I do have a podcast all about AI where I’m, you know, literally picking the brains of experts at AI every time to help me level up along with my audience. And it’s funny because on that show, one of the questions I ask my guests all the time is, where do they see AI and where do they see AI marketing going in the next few years? And I usually save that to the end of the conversation. I’m going to ask you that question now because I think that’s going to kind of set the table for the rest of our conversation. And I know it’s hard to predict, obviously, AI is more than just a month out because things change so fast, but I still love your take on where you see it going over the next few years.
Pam Didner: that’s actually a good question. And honestly, I have to tell everybody, I don’t have a good answer for that. Just like Mike indicated, AI is morphing and changing, especially the AI usage model is morphing and changing on a regular basis.
I mean, we did not anticipate that ChatGPT would be launched on November 30. We did not anticipate within four days, five days, 1 million users, right? We did not anticipate less than three months like 100 million users. So, you know, we just don’t know. I’m not here to predict. What I do want to tell all the marketers and also sales professionals out there, it’s not what AI will do three or five years from now; it’s what you should do to test and learn about AI as much as you can.
You know, I hate saying this, like AI is learning about you, you should learn about it, too. And learn how to use it. It started with the ChatGPT. For example, if you are using it on a regular basis, good for you. If you are not using it, try it. You should definitely try it. I think at the minimal level, try to even have them write a social media post for you, have them write an email for you, or have them just write a prompt and to test the capability, test what AI can do for you.
The thing about AI that overwhelms all of us is AI can do many, many things. That’s why we are all overwhelmed. Because if you ask a question or write a problem about strategy, Boom! AI can be a strategist. If you write something about how to optimize AI, you know, how to optimize my blog posts, boom! AI becomes like a search engine optimizer and also a content creator, right?
If you ask another question related to, say, a different marketing job, boom, AI can provide an answer for that. It may not be the ideal answer. You need to have, you know, a point of view about it. But AI has the answer because AI can do many, many roles right now. That’s why everybody was like, okay, what should AI do?
Well, my question back to you is we’ll try it. Learn what AI can do for you within your job. Then you can determine how you want to use AI. Mike, I may not answer your question directly. I want to apologize, but I also don’t want to predict, given that my prediction is always wrong.
Mike Allton: Yeah. But you’re absolutely right about AI. I think Robert Rose said it best when he was talking about AI as a technology that businesses need to adopt the same way we use electricity or the Internet. There’s no AI strategy because it’s not a tool. It’s not like Canva where you know before you even open the app, this is going to help me create images.
AI is not like that. It’s completely different. And we see it evolving to the point where we’re recording this on September 17, just days ago, ChatGPT released their latest version, which now has a reasoning capability where it can think about what you want to think about and pause before it gives an answer. And there are incredible reasons why that is a huge advancement in AI. And to your point, we’re going to see so much more in the coming weeks and months.
Pam Didner: There’s one thing I do actually want to add. I think it’s very, very important that … there are many capabilities that will be added to AI bots in the next several years. It’s very important.
You have a point of view. That means you have to understand, and it’s not understanding, what’s right or what’s wrong. Like, if AI says this, you have to sit back and say, okay, is it true? Or can I really do it that way? If I do it as AI suggests, what are the consequences? Did you see what I’m saying?
I think it’s very important to actually have a point of view. And to me, that is one thing I constantly like to hone in. When I talk to my clients and talk to anybody, it’s like, they will give us their answers. They will have reasoning capability. Everything that may be on the surface is going to sound good. You have to kind of look, but … go down a little bit deeper and say, “Hmm. If that’s the direction I want to go …”
Ultimately, you have to make that call. And I think that will be the hardest part.
Mike Allton: Yeah, it helps to try to remind ourselves that generative AI today, when you ask it a question, you’re giving it a prompt to create a social post. As you said, it’s going to give you output that is average, because that’s what it’s designed to do. Give you the most probable answer, the most probable next word, then the most probable next word, which means it’s average, it’s mediocre.
It requires that point of view. It requires that awareness that, “Oh, I should either give it very, very specific instructions in the prompt [of] what I want.” Or keep asking it for more, for better.
One of the things I love saying is that the difference between me and an AI is that you can ask the AI to give you that same answer 10 times … If you ask me the same question three times, I’m done. I’m out.
Pam Didner: Why don’t you work with AI on this first before you come to me?
Mike Allton: So we’re kind of hedging around some things that I think people have thought incorrectly about AI. So let’s just hit that head-on.
What are some misconceptions marketers have about AI?
Pam Didner: This is a great question. That’s talk from different layers if you will. And when I started working with AI and I looked at some of the answers that AI suggested, I was like, “Oh my God, what could I have done?” I’m serious. Better than I could have done. I was like, I mean, I lost this round, man, but there are times that I will ask AI or I will write a very specific prompt and they give me an answer.
I was like, “What AI? Where have you been? You know what I’m saying?”
So what I want to share with everybody is: AI is not yet, maybe in the future, but not at this time, taking everybody’s job.
You have to understand AI, at this time, the way we use it as marketers or sales professionals, AI is software.
AI is something embedded into software or a platform, and they create the interface. And we answer questions. I mean, we ask questions they can answer … So, because it’s just software, we have to give a specific instruction, and they will do something about it.
If you want to build a workflow, you are the one still going to build it. The software is not going to be built for you. However, the software has the ability to do every single task that you lay out, but connecting them is still your job.
So, when people say AI will take everybody’s job? Maybe one day, but not right now.
It’s your job to understand what AI can do for you and what you can provide the most value. And then it’s your job to tell your management, your boss, you know what? This type of thing can be done by AI. This type of thing, you know what? You still need me. You are the one who needs to differentiate and articulate that very, very well.
To me, I think that’s our job … So that’s one thing I want to make sure everybody understands how that impacts your job. You need to articulate what you can and cannot do.
Mike Allton: Most folks may not know where this quote comes from. It was Sam Altman, founder of Open AI, who said 95 percent of marketing jobs are going to be replaced by AI in the future.
And the reason why he’s saying that is because the next wave of true innovation from AI is going to be AI agents, where you’ve got the ability for different AI entities, different AI applications to talk to each other … and take activities and actions on behalf of us. So, you know, you might be having a conversation with AI about a new ad campaign, and the AI is able to go into Meta and build the ad campaign for you. So the idea is it makes us so productive as workers.
Pam Didner: So productive that we eliminate ourselves out.
Mike Allton: That we eliminate a lot of ourselves out, right? You’d still need somebody in the organization to know that you want an ad campaign and to kick that off. But you might not need somebody to build a creative, somebody to actually set up the ad campaign. And we’re actually seeing that today in the programming industry.
Chris Penn recently shared a stat in his newsletter. He was talking about how the demand for new programmers has declined significantly in recent months because other programmers’ existing job holders are becoming two to five times more productive in their roles, thanks to using AI. So that’s the concern. And I think it’s a valid one.
Pam Didner: I do agree with that.
And I see that coming, and I’m not saying that’s not coming, but what I’m saying is between now and that, it’s still your job to understand what AI can do, cannot do, and on top of it, you should know AI is continuously learning, and we should, too.
You know … let’s assume you are a content creator or you are a graphic designer, great. That has served you very well for 20 years. So that job can be taken by AI, but what [are] other jobs that may be created or may be available that you need to learn about?
So I don’t have an answer to that. Right. And because, just like you said, 95 percent of jobs may be replaced, and it’s just a matter of when, and well, then you should think about it. What other kind of job opportunity that either will be created or maybe there’s got to be a change? You know, a direction in terms of your career. And this is something that we should always think about. I mean, including me … You revamp and make a transition several times.
Some of them may not be like your own well, but some of them are just because things happen. And I think we are at that turning point that all of us, me included, probably need to look into that option. And we just have to stay nimble. And then be able to adapt as we go.
Mike Allton: Yeah, you’re right. During the pandemic, I was helping businesses get into virtual events because I’d been doing virtual events since 2018, and then all of a sudden the pandemic hit and friends of mine were trying to run a giant 3,000-person conference here in St. Louis. And they had 30 days to go from being in person to online. So I helped them with it. I helped some other folks with that, and I talked about it.
But what if we approach this from a slightly different angle? So they’re thinking about the jobs that may or may not exist. How about skills?
Are there specific skills that you think marketers should be leaning into today that you suspect would be highly valuable over the next few years?
Pam Didner: That’s actually a very good question. Let me just share a story before I answer that question. You know what? Back then, when I was a traditional marketer, I didn’t need to know back-end integration or back-end technology. Okay. And you know, if I do a print ad, I mean, way back then, there’s a print ad. And you just do a print ad. You got all the layout, and then you give it to the typesetter, or you give it to the people who will do the print, and then they will make that happen. I don’t need to understand the technical side of print on a digital front, and Mike, you can vouch for me that to be a digital marketer, you to some extent have to understand technology. You have to understand the technical side of things.
For example, the back-end integration from, say, LinkedIn, when you run LinkedIn pay ads down to driving traffic to your website, and how do you use UTM to measure the click? How are you using the backend technology to capture that data? You don’t have to understand every single technical aspect, but you need to understand enough to be dangerous.
And I personally think, moving forward as a marketer, you need to understand technology even more than you think. And that is not something that we marketers are accustomed to or used to. It is kind of like data-driven marketing. A lot of people have been talking about data-driven marketing, and you have to look at data to understand your customer’s behavior, and I 100 percent agree with that.
But a lot of time people delegate in the marketing organization; they kind of delegate that to like analysts or the people to actually manage the data or do analysis. I personally think, as a marketer moving forward, you have to understand technology a whole lot more. You also need to understand how the backend is, and on top of it, you have to do some analysis on your own. So if you are a marketer in the enterprise, and your job is very, very specific and you never have a chance to do any of that, you should somehow venture out to know how some of those jobs are done. Is that helpful?
Mike Allton: 100%. I think that is a fantastic answer because I’ve asked a lot of different people this same question. And most people talk about, “Oh, you need to work on your communication skills, your relationship skills, your strategy, those kinds of things.” And those are all true to a certain extent, but for marketers specifically, understanding, at least at a high level, how the technology works and how the different solutions that we’re working with work together is super-important, folks.
Mike Allton: We’ve kind of been hinting around how humans and AI are going to collaborate. How do you see that changing in the future? Because you mentioned the point earlier where today it’s a matter of I have to go to Chat GPT and tell ChatGPT, and this is what I want you to do, say, or output. How do you see that changing?
Pam Didner: You know, let’s assume, if Sam is correct from OpenAI, that 95 percent of a job will be eliminated … He didn’t define what kind of jobs and maybe there are very repetitive tasks that will be eliminated.
As I said, maybe in the future there will be 100 percent takeover. But I think for a period of time, there is a coexistence or there’s a collaboration. Right? So there’s a lot of stuff that I can do. There’s a lot of stuff that humans can do. And maybe there is like this collaboration and working with each other to actually make sure things get done.
And the great example: You will ask AI to write a cold email for you, but you are the one who somehow needs to modify and edit it to make sure it’s tailored for your customers, right? The AI doesn’t know your customers as well as you do. Not yet. Maybe one day.
Well, but the collaboration right now is AI comes up with the first draft and you make it better. Right. You fine-tune it. So that is one level of collaboration. Maybe that level of collaboration is going to change. Instead of doing the first draft, you are going to get to the final draft and you just review it.
You become a reviewer, right? That’s also another level of collaboration. And then you can move down to the next level. AI actually pushed out the email for you. That’s also another level of collaboration. So I think that the collaboration between human and AI is going to continue to morph. And then it’s going to be to the point that it’s going to be very blurry in terms of, like, where that handoff is, and maybe, you know, Sam is right. Like we are completely eliminated out. Like all the ads that we’re going to see in the future, they are created by AI, not by humans. Is that sad? That would be super-sad. Oh, my God. Anyway …
Mike Allton: Yeah, that’s, that’s definitely coming: AI-driven ads, ads that are completely customized to the individual viewer. One of the fun science fiction references I like to point out here is Minority Report. And if folks haven’t seen that film, it’s a scene where Tom Cruise is walking through a shopping area and there are individual hologram ads popping up that are literally talking to him. And they’re talking about the things that they know that he’s interested in. That’s the future of AI advertising. A lot of that’s already here today.
And so that’s a really important point that the role in the amount that AI can do over time is changing. I also think it’s important to think about how folks can have real conversations with AI and as AI improves, the level of the conversation improves. The more that AI remembers, the more, like we talked about a moment ago, AI can actually think before it responds. And so it can evaluate whether its own answer is correct or relevant before it gives it to you. So you can have conversations about strategy, tactics, discovering your customers, and so on.
But I think some folks listening are probably a little terrified right now.
What other advice do you might have for somebody, who truly is afraid for their job security?
Do you have any other advice for them in that situation?
Pam Didner: I’m just like everybody else, even though I wrote two AI books. I was like, you know what, AI eventually is just going to write a book itself … I learned to embrace it, instead of being afraid. My thought and all my recommendations to you—it’s a flip of your attitude or your mindset. Just embrace it.
I mean, the train has left the station. There’s not much we can do about it.
Okay, so instead of being afraid that it’s going to take over your job, learn what I can actually do. And open your eyes and be pretty objective about what it can or cannot do just now or what it will do in the future. Right. At the same time, once you have that, once you accept it, okay, your mindset is like, okay, that’s the way it is, then you can plan on what you want to do next.
So assume you are about to retire 10 years from now. Okay. Well, then plan on it. Maybe you should save before you are [thinking], “I have 10 years to save.” Well, maybe you should save a whole lot more now. So my thought on any kind of career planning is that it’s go beyond in terms of a skill set.
Embrace the technology, understand what technology will do and also plan your life holistically, not just the skills that you probably need to possess or, you know, or another new job you have to learn. At the same time, plan in terms of trying to save as much as you can. It’s like, it’s more kind of like a very holistic planning of your life, not just your career.
Mike, is that helpful? Am I like talking way beyond the boundary?
Mike Allton: No, no. I love this answer because that is the best approach and philosophy to take. We cannot put our heads in the sand and ignore AI and just assume it’s going to go away. And I understand why some people would do that. Some people may have looked at NFTs and crypto and all those kinds of technologies over the past few years and said, “AI is going to go away. I don’t have to do it, just like I don’t need to be part of the metaverse.” That’s not true today.
How does one level up? How does one upskill?
I’d love for you to just start by telling us about your books, because I know you downplayed them, but they’re great resources.
Pam Didner: So let me just tell everybody how these two books [came to be]. I was asked to do some AI talks between March and June, and the talks were actually pretty well received, and I was, like, why don’t I write a book about it? Seriously. That’s how it came about. Before I was writing a fictional novel, and I actually finished it. And I had people read it; they were like, “This is kind of flat.” I was like, what? But then I read it a couple more times. I think they are right. It’s kind of flat. I need to rewrite it. So, and then I set it aside. I said, “Hey, I actually have a specific point of view about AI. Why don’t I write a book about it?”
So that’s how everything got started. [The book] is only 100 pages. And I told Mike, “You literally can read this book while binge watching Netflix. I’m not kidding.” Okay. It’s an easy read, and you can jump around. And this is about a modern AI marketer in the GPT era. It’s talking about the history of AI, what you should do to scale AI. And I have some ideas and I went a little bit more in depth to share with you in terms of what you should do. So check it out.
Okay. In this book, they are also 35+ AI prompts across different marketing disciplines. Okay. So when I was writing those prompts, I tested them as well. And I was like, “Oh, you know what? If I can write 35, I probably can write
second book. This is just a list of prompts. Go to chapter three. That’s the only place you have to go.” Chapter three has different prompts for 12 and the sales marketing category.
Again, you can binge watching Netflix and look at some of the prompts or at your computer and just test them. That’s it. These are the two books. So one way you want to upscale your AI is to [get] easy books to read. Trust me. It’s not that difficult. I don’t write difficult books. Mike can attest to that. So that’s number one.
Mike Allton: And I think the good news is for every marketer listening, you don’t need a college degree in computer programming to get into AI. I’ve been really, really focused on AI for approximately eight and a half months now, and I feel like I’m doing really well. I’m talking to a lot of smart people. I’m consuming a lot of really interesting resources.
So that’s my next follow up question to you.
Other than your books, where else should marketers turn today to get really good insights and information on how to upskill their AI knowledge?
Pam Didner: You know, there are a lot of courses popping up. Like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, they offer AI courses. In fact, I took one from MIT way back then … And so I think you should definitely check out the courses if you want to take from universities, and they offer online courses usually about eight weeks or less.
And there is always AI Academy, and The Marketing AI Institute. They also have courses that they offer [that are] actually very easy that you can follow up.
I personally am not affiliated with any AI courses. And my recommendation is Google is still your best friend. So Google on the AI courses or AI courses related to marketing and then check them out. And then based on their description, and also look at online comments, determine what’s actually best for you.
I don’t want to make a recommendation because everybody’s needs are a little bit different, but I do want to make sure that you understand is: Taking courses is one thing. Mike said it really nicely. He has been really trying and using AI in the past eight and a half months. The best way to learn AI is in the trenches … You cannot do that by taking courses. You can only do that by doing and making tons of mistakes.
Mike Allton: Yeah, you and me both. Like I said, I’m eight and a half months in, really. And I am now taking finally a formal course through Wharton Business School that’s offered.
Pam Didner: Why don’t I be an interviewer and you’ll be an interviewee? Let me just interview you. Hey, Mike, so I heard you talk. You took the course from one business school. Can you share with us your insight?
Mike Allton: Yeah. To your point earlier about how important it is for us today as marketers to understand the technology, I think that’s where a course like that shines because it helps you understand big data and all these things that are core to understanding artificial intelligence today, but I think you’re absolutely right. The best way to learn is to just do it. Listen to Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput’s podcast; the Artificial Intelligence Show, which is terrific.
Pam Didner: Very good. I’m so happy that you made that suggestion.
Mike Allton: That’s all we’ve got for today, friends. Don’t forget to find us on Apple, the Social Pulse podcast, B2B edition, and leave us a review. We’d love to know what you think. Until next time,
