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Why, As A Hands-On Digital Marketing Agency Owner, I’ve Reduced My Client Book of Business

Those who know me well understand that, at my current age, I want more non-work time to enjoy with friends and family — particularly friends and family members who have already retired and are free “to play.” But, honestly, that’s only part of the reason, in the last couple of years, I’ve turned down work from prospective clients, and instead, referred them to other marketing consultants and agency owners whose expertise I value.

How Has AI Impacted Marketing Agencies?

A key reason I’ve turned away possible new clients and associated new work is this: AI has made the work of marketers so much harder, particularly, for those like me, who are responsible for driving traffic to clients’ website thru implementation of SEO (search engine optimization) best practices. In the days of AI search/answer engines, such work also includes AEO and/or GEO. So, what have the impacts to marketing agencies from AI been? Here’s what our agency has experienced:

  • No longer being able to rely on properly structured/employed website meta/SEO tags (meta description tags and SEO title tags) to effectively/sufficiently support a website being served up by search engines for relevant queries/search terms entered into a standard search engine — think Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
  • Needing to think as broadly as possible about how to be found online/create awareness of an organization, since the tactic mentioned in the above bullet, is no longer enough, even when combined with other former SEO best practices, such as using appropriate keywords in website page and post headers, publishing website content that addresses questions target audiences have, and incorporating inner and external links in website content.
  • Related to the above bullet, thinking broadly may mean revisiting marketing activities and tactics one hasn’t used or considered in a while: social media advertising, nextdoor.com advertising, and publicity/PR.
  • Clients or our team needing to research a variety of online directories and setting up listings on appropriate ones to support AI search/answer engines considering the organization-in-question as creditable
  • Constantly needing to monitor both organic search traffic (traditional search engine traffic from standard search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, but also from Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews) and AI assistant/AI search traffic in Google Analytics (in addition to organic search traffic, Google Analytics is able to report on traffic your website gets from visitors who clicked on a link to website served up by AI search engines like Google Gemini or ChatGPT to land on your website, known as a citation) to determine whether new marketing tactics and activities geared to helping an organic be found online for relevant searches or prompts entered into a variety of standard and AI search engines are working.
  • And, these are the biggest impacts — 1) agencies need significantly more time to stay educated and up-to-speed on how to respond to the use by so many consumers and businesses of AI search/answer engines/tools and what PR and marketing activities best support an organization being mentioned or cited in AI prompt results. Regardless of their level at an agency, each employee easily needs an hour or two each day to read appropriate e-newsletters, attend webinars, and to follow and participate in LinkedIn discussions related to AI search. 2) agencies need extra time to monitor and analyze marketing results, so they are able to keep a close eye on how their client organizations are faring, since AI search and answer engines are evolving and very regularly changing what data they are evaluating/scraping or what information they are using when deciding whose name and website to serve up in response to a particular “prompt” entered into their search tool.

We will soon be publishing a blog post related to the last bullet above and how complicated and time-consuming it has now become to track SEO/AEO/GEO results, so stay tuned for that!