I started building websites in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
Geocities and other site builders made it easy to have dazzling gif-centric websites that would make your eyes bleed (in the best possible way).
By about 2004, I started hand-coding websites in HTML/on-page CSS. I had a website for my teenage rock band with a thriving little forum, and by some miracle, another site on internet security that had 20k visitors a month (don’t ask me how!).
By 2006, I realized these skills were something people would pay for, so I started a little “web and graphic design” company so I could officially demand money from friends and family who were asking me for free work.
It didn’t even dawn on me until 2012 that this could be an actual career. I was doing freelance work for companies I worked for (building their sites, designing signs/logos/menus, etc.). In 2013, I landed a corporate job in corporate for a major law firm.
In 2015, I went full-time on my own with a web design and digital marketing agency.
The rest is history.
So why do I tell you this story?
The reason I have stayed in business and, frankly, have never had issues finding work is that I was able to navigate and implement technical skills for businesses.
I didn’t think of it as marketing until much later, but all along I had the advantage of technical skills using tools like Photoshop (illegal copies I’m sure) and HTML/web development.
Why do technical skills matter so much?
For one, they allow you to execute. But more importantly, they are rarer than other skills.
Being technical is a rare enough skill set and in high enough demand to command a premium over less technical skills (exceptions given to strong creative expertise).
Other agencies would outsource the technical stuff to me (like web dev, SEO, ads, analytics, hosting, etc.) and would do the creative stuff themselves.
In many cases, I earned more by being technical.
AI is changing things
AI is going to make a lot of technical skills redundant. We’re entering a world where the long tail of execution will be absorbed by AI and robots. You won’t need to learn code or server infrastructure.
So what does one need to do to stay relevant as AI slowly takes over our work responsibilities?
For now, the best thing you can do as a marketer is to:
- Become a strategist who is very good at deploying tactics to get business results, and
- Learn AI to stay on the cutting edge of the field so you can stay relevant for as long as possible
In other words, marketing teams will be much smaller and led by strategists who can navigate technology, creativity, and strategy.
At least for now. Who knows what things will be like in 5-10 years but to me, the writing is on the wall for those who are unprepared.
Being good at AI is the new “technical skills”
If you have the technical chops to implement (eg. design, develop, write, etc.) you have a chance of being able to deploy AI effectively to create similar results to the old manual way you did things.
If you don’t already have these skills, using AI will be much harder (for now).
Being a skilled craftsperson allows you to make more precise prompts and get more precise outcomes. You probably have better taste, too. Those skills are not wasted.
But the hands-on-keyboard stuff is going to go away… and fast.
It’s best to stay on the technical side of the equation by getting very good at AI. Because it’s not AI that will take your job, it’s someone who knows AI that will take your job.
You will still need the strategic skills to navigate the competitive nature of business, but I don’t think you will survive without also being on the AI/technical side.
Be the one who is still standing when the commodified work gets taken by the robots.
—Kevin