In this video, join marketing experts Claire Elsworth and Nick Handley as they demystify the AI evolution and explain what it means for modern marketers…
Claire and Nick challenge the idea that AI is a threat, instead revealing how it’s a powerful tool to enhance creativity and streamline your campaigns.
Key discussion points:
- AI & Search: Discover how AI is changing search, and why the core principles of marketing remain more important than ever.
- Zero-Click Future: Learn why a decline in clicks isn’t the end of the world, and how to measure success in a new, AI-driven landscape.
- The Marketer’s Mindset: Understand the new skills and mindset required to thrive in an era where AI is your co-pilot, not your replacement.
Transcript
Claire Elsworth: There’s been a lot of panic in the industry lately because the way we think about search as a channel and a marketing touchpoint is changing. But I think what we often forget as marketers is that search is first and foremost led by consumer behaviour.
We started thinking about search as a channel because when search behaviour began to really take off in marketing, it was all exhibited on a very similar-looking platform, and we now see Google as the dominant environment for that.
But ultimately, the motivation behind why someone searches hasn’t really changed. It’s just the way we surface information in response to that search that is changing.
If we go back to that point about remembering that search is a behaviour, it makes it easier for us as marketers to understand how we need to respond to our audiences who are searching and how we can help them in that moment.
Nick Handley: I completely agree, but it has always been a behaviour. I think people forget quite often that this isn’t the first time. Whilst AI is an incredibly hot topic right now, we’ve had the rise of social search that’s been apparent for years now, if not a decade.
I think the interesting thing about AI at the moment, and with it being such a big topic, is that we’re seeing every major player adopt it. Before, we saw a slow uptake for social search, and it’s only now becoming a bit more prevalent. I feel like AI is already vastly challenging that. We’re seeing AI Overviews, you know, taking a large proportion of the search market as it currently stands. And we’ve never seen something move as quickly or take as much dominance in the market as we’re seeing with AI Overviews.
Claire Elsworth: When we’re talking about zero-clicks, initially, when this term started getting used more frequently, there was, I think, some understandable nervousness about how we’re going to measure success. Does this mean that we are less successful, that we’re not hitting our KPIs because our clicks are going down?
I think the thing to remember is that clicks were always a proxy, right? Just because you are not being clicked on, it doesn’t mean that you’re losing that opportunity to influence. You absolutely still can. But you’re going to be doing so through maybe a citation now rather than bringing someone through to a site. So for me, it’s about taking a look at your KPI framework and making sure that that is doing the job it’s meant to do and accurately representing what success looks like for your business in a zero-click future.
Nick Handley: We’re seeing the importance of social and brand mentions, but I think there just becomes a bit more of a need, an inherent need, for us to optimise towards them a hell of a lot more than we were doing. So I think whilst zero-click is scary, if you’re doing the right things, it doesn’t have to be as scary.
Claire Elsworth: It’s really important to remember that the fundamentals haven’t changed. And these are marketing principles. As a brand, if we want to resonate with our audiences, we need to be engaging, we need to be relevant, and we need to be trustworthy and authoritative. What’s happening now with AI Overviews in search engines and LLMs is that we’re adding that layer of ‘talkability’ as a signal that these environments are using to understand just how important your brand is, and that’s what’s going to get you cited. But it’s really just relying on those marketing fundamentals to build strength in your brand, which is going to be increasingly important in this new world. It should always have been important, but it’s now even more of a consideration.
Nick Handley: Speaking from a paid media point of view, recently we’ve had AI Max for search on Google, which is changing the way that we advertise on search. Where it used to be keyword-based, it’s now becoming more intent-based and, to an extent, keywordless, which scares some people, but it’s quite exciting. We see the same on Meta. We know creative is such a big thing within the space of social and paid social. But Meta’s moving towards things like Advantage Plus, allowing us to enhance that creative. We’ve never really had that before. The tools are becoming easier to use, almost levelling the playing field yet again for smaller and bigger brands.
Claire Elsworth: The biggest takeaway surrounding this whole conversation about AI and search is that it’s really nothing to be scared of. There have been some controversial takes that this is the death of the search engine. It’s absolutely not, for me. I think so long as we are remembering the fundamentals of what we should always be holding dear as marketers, and that we’re optimising towards what our audiences need, this is really nothing to be scared of. It’s just the next step in the evolution of our industry.
