Automation and Digital Marketing: Blending Automation with Expertise

Over the last few years, tight labor markets and advancements in AI and computing power has made automation a hot topic in the industry. Companies will continue to invest more funding into developing automation tools.  Automation is a great way to reduce time and effort spent on redundant tasks.  However, just like any tool, automation needs to be deployed thoughtfully.

We believe automation can provide a platform that humans use to work on higher-level tasks. Human-in-the-loop is the best way to maximize what machines and humans are both uniquely good at. 

Impacts of Automation

When we break down a job into tasks and skills we can see that automation essentially shifts or re-frames the work that needs to be done. Automation cannot replace people, but it can replace some of the tasks that people do.  Ultimately, time saved is redirected to things that are much more productive.  

A case-in-point example is the evolution of ATMs.  As the Corporate Finance Institute describes in detail, the motivation for ATMs included addressing employee complaints about long business hours, reducing congestion in banks, and cutting labor costs.  There was great concern about the ATMs replacing jobs in the news every night; however, the shift ultimately resulted in customers identifying with bank brands through networks of branded ATMs.  This cultivated deeper customer relationships leading to an increase in demand for loans, investments, and services that require skilled employees.

This shift created more demand for higher-skilled workers who could do more than just hand out money to customers. As ATM installations grew from the 1970s through the 2000s, bank teller employment increased along with it.

Our Point of View: 

The same AI shift is impacting us in digital marketing.  AI is automating those tasks that are repetitive, labor intensive, and well defined.  Automating these tasks brings up a host of other needs that require even more expertise from your partners including the effective setup, training, and monitoring of AI.

At Conversion Logix, the bar of success that we set for ourselves focuses on measuring the additional value created when using automation.

In our Ad Ops team, we’ve created several automation tools to make building and managing campaigns easier. One example is our search builder tool. We created a connection between our customer database, project management tool and Google Ads that allows us to pull all relevant client information in automatically, choose the floorplans we want to build out, and automatically create the campaign. This tool has saved our team thousands of hours and freed up their time to focus on the deeper optimization of each account.

We’ve also seen firsthand when AI tools go awry. In one case, we were using Google’s Auto-Apply Recommendations engine, where Google suggests things like budget updates, new keywords, or different ad copy. 

In this instance, we were helping a multifamily housing community generate ads to drive traffic to their website.  We leveraged Google’s suite to automate some routine ad creation and  Google’s AI recognized the word “fountain” in the community name.  The AI started generating ads featuring fountains that could be purchased at the property.  Our campaign manager immediately noticed the drop in relevant traffic and stepped in to guide the AI towards an effective use of our customer’s budget.

This example is a classic case where automation can replace some of the repetitive tasks of ad creation; however, automation is not well suited to replacing a skilled account executive focused on achieving higher-level goals for a customer.

The Human in the Loop: 

At Conversion Logix, we know that AI will play an increasingly important role in the customer experience and that both the technology and effectiveness of that technology will increase over time.  We continually discover and test new ways to bring more automation into the way we run campaigns.  Our testing also allows us to surface the most relevant data so our team can focus on recommendations that truly move the needle for our customers.

Working with Conversion Logix allows you to leverage our experience with automation and our campaign experience and data from campaigns across the industry.  Our campaign managers combine these tools and insights to keep a “human-in-the-loop” to continue exceeding the goals and expectations of our customers as new AI technologies emerge.