How I learned to love the bot
Using automation to elevate emarketing
I’ve always slept just fine at night — dreams clear of any nightmare of a robot revolution stomping into my place of work and taking my job. No, that could never happen. Certainly not sometime extremely soon, say… right now!
Okay, busted. I was, for a time, a little scared of automation. After all, I’m in digital marketing, my job is to watch Google’s every step, and they’re not exactly trying to hide the direction they’re going in — automate everything. Yes, anybody who has their eyes open can see, a new age of automation is upon us, and it’s going to shake up the job market like nothing else before it. So you can’t blame me for being kept up at night by the lingering question: where do I fit, in this new world of bots?
Why so worried?
At surface level, it seemed as though automated software could do everything — automated bid management in paid media, automated email marketing, automated chatbot messengers, automated CRM systems, automated social media posting across platforms, automated reporting with Google Data Studio, AUTOMATED EVERYTHING!
I know what you’re thinking, ‘Calm down, Anton! Didn’t your job just get a whole lot easier? Just click a button and Bob’s your uncle?’ Well, in a sense, yes, but, it also means that a lot of skills I developed to perform all these tasks manually have suddenly become redundant. It felt like it was only a matter of time before the world woke up and realized that they wouldn’t need people like me and the services I offer — not with this ‘bot’ running around doing it all automatically.
At the time, I had no choice but to continue my day to day and act as if everything was completely normal. I had no choice but to carry on plugging away as I watched the world move on, all automated, all efficient, without me. But … as automation and I spent more time together, I got to know it a little better. I’d sit down with … her … and find all my analytics laid out before me, all the heavy lifting I had planned for the day — all already done for me. But work was so far from over. With all the computing and administrative tasks done, I was left with nothing to do but … be human, in all of my innovative, creative glory.
Things are getting serious
So, it’s safe to say, automation and I are an item now. We complete each other. And our TouchFoundry clients notice. I’ve got more hours in the day to plan, strategise, review, revise, conceptualise, learn — and get it done in record time. When TouchFoundry clients get me on board, they get the best I have to offer because I’m not wasting time with grunt work; I give them my pure knowledge and experience, resulting in better bang for their buck and infinitely more creative solutions to their marketing problems.
I sleep a lot easier these days — in fact, it’s the best sleep I’ve had in years. With automation handling the administrative toiling of digital marketing, my job has never been more enjoyable. So to anyone living in fear of ‘the bot’, worried that the day it replaces you is nearing by the minute, let me pitch this idea to you: perhaps don’t ask how the bot might replace you, but rather, how you can make the bot work for you.
