21. July 2024

Online Marketing – An Update

Do we now need to completely overhaul our online marketing because of AI?

This is the very question many of our clients are currently asking. The answer? A clear yes and no!

Read the latest assessment from our digital expert, Christoph Eichholz, from our Munich office.

Key Points at a Glance

SEO

Let’s take search engine optimization (SEO) as an example. A lot has happened since the beginning of last year:

Bing and ChatGPT (also known as “Copilot”) prompted Google to quickly integrate its own AI into search (“Code Red”).

The result has already gone through a rebranding (from “Generative Search Experience” to “AI Overview”). However, in most countries it is still not available – with the rollout in Germany planned for later this year.

So – has this completely revolutionized search engine optimization?

The answer: yes and no! The new “AI Overview” still displays links to websites alongside AI-generated information – sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the query. And the quality of Google’s AI still fluctuates noticeably: at one point, users were advised to eat at least one stone a day or to glue cheese onto their pizza. Clearly, there’s still plenty of fine-tuning going on.

Some changes, however, are certain. Overall website traffic will decline, especially for general queries (e.g., “SEO” or “What is SEO?”) that AI can answer directly.

So what now?

A number of sensible measures can already be derived from this. First, the importance of strong backlinks may increase – and building them certainly won’t hurt. Second, it’s advisable to focus more on specific search queries (e.g., “B2B SEO agency” instead of “What is SEO?”). Third, naming the authors of web articles and providing targeted FAQs directly on your website can further strengthen visibility.

As for many of the other tips currently circulating on how to optimize for AI-driven search, it remains to be seen when – and if – they’ll actually make sense to implement.

Kreation

Ähnliches gilt auch für die anderen Bereichen des Online-Marketings: Ideen können Graphiker inzwischen schnell und einfach per KI visualisieren. Ob man diese Bilder dann auch veröffentlichen kann, muss man dann allerdings im Einzelfall prüfen. Bei Videos sind manche Dinge auch schon möglich – andere aber wider Erwarten eben doch noch nicht.

Auch bei den Social Ads sind einige Vorschläge der integrierten KI-Helfer durchaus sinnvoll, z. B. bei alternativen Anzeigetexten. Aber nicht immer: Hin und wieder gerät die künstliche Intelligenz auch auf den Holzweg.

Long story short

Yes, a lot is in flux right now. But that doesn’t mean marketers should rush into panic mode or blindly adopt every new feature. Instead, it’s worth carefully considering which of the latest developments truly fit your marketing strategy, which ones are likely to establish themselves in the medium term – and then testing thoroughly how well they actually work.

This certainly requires additional effort. But it will pay off: those who embrace AI opportunities early and intelligently can gain a real competitive edge in many areas. And, as has so often been the case in online marketing, at some point you’ll need to adopt innovations anyway – otherwise you risk being left behind.

In short: better sooner than later.

And we’re here to help. That’s why we’ve set up a cross-agency AI team dedicated to monitoring all new developments, analyzing the latest trends every week, and identifying which clients could benefit from new features. Where it makes sense, we introduce and test these innovations directly with our clients – and adapt our processes accordingly when they prove successful.