Why Marketing Agencies Are Better Than AI Every Time (Yes, We Said It)

Ever feel like marketing these days is all about the latest AI tools? Don’t get us wrong—AI can be an excellent tool, but it’s not going to win you the marketing game all by itself. Here’s why a digital marketing agency is still your best bet for top-quality marketing techniques and deployment.

Video below for the TL;DR version:

 

You Can’t Leave Out the Human Touch

Imagine AI as a fancy drill. It drills holes like a champ, but it takes a carpenter to know where those holes need to go, right? The same goes for AI. It crunches data and spits out ideas, but you need a marketing pro to figure out what it all means for your audience and craft a strategy that works.

AI Is Great for Idea Generation – But What Comes Next?

 

We’ve input just about everything you can imagine into AI bots (because yes, we use AI as a tool), and while it does a good job of giving us a base to start with, it simply can’t replicate brand voice, cadence, and tone perfectly. It is also formulaic and lacks creative flare.

In fact, we asked Gemini to create a calendar for us – here’s our prompt:

And here’s what we got in return:

The content continues in much the same vein for the rest of the days – it tries to sell every single time, doesn’t really vary the call to action, and the hashtags are either irrelevant or ones that no one is using.

While there’s no doubt that AI is good for simple tasks, it’s going to give you repetitive content that’s unlikely to convert in the long run.

AI Doesn’t Do Graphics

Have you seen those AI-generated images with gibberish plastered all over them? Yeah, AI can struggle with the whole “visual communication” thing. Sometimes it does a decent job creating logos and other simple collateral. Still, if you need an infographic or anything slightly more in-depth, you’ll run into trouble, especially with these free tools.

When we asked Gemini for a graphic for our Day 1 social media post for the “calendar” it created, this is what we got in response: 

Social media primarily thrives on strong images and graphics. The bottom line is that you need someone with graphic design experience to handle your digital marketing game. 

Double-Check Those AI Facts (It’s Not Perfect)

AI pulls data from the web the best that it can, but it’s always a little behind the times and there’s no way for it to verify the data. It pulls what it thinks is closest to what you’re asking for – and it can spit out some incredibly incorrect facts.

Our writers have noticed that when you use AI to pull quotes, sometimes it pulls partial quotes from people and smashes them together or attributes the quote to the wrong person entirely. That, as you can imagine, is embarrassing if you aren’t fact-checking.

Plus, some AI tools raise red flags for privacy, especially if you’re just copying, pasting, and hitting publish. A marketing agency gets ethical marketing and ensures your content is on-point and plays by the rules.

 Agencies Get Results

At Pink Dog Digital, we don’t just throw content at the wall; we hope it works. We dive deep, crafting social media captions, graphics, and hashtags that work together like a well-oiled machine to reach your marketing goals. We go beyond that by offering SEO strategic smarts to get your content seen by the right people.

Check out this example of one of our social media calendars to get an idea of the work that our strategists put into each and every calendar they create:

This calendar represents the full month of March for Pink Dog Digital and includes the following:

• Custom-made videos that enhance the likelihood of reach and engagement
• Social media posts that include clever captions, eye-catching graphics, and hashtags chosen specifically for engagement
• Post-time optimization for ideal audience reach
• Holidays and “social media days” that are relevant to the business
• Blog article shares to drive traffic back to the site

You won’t get this kind of customization, content creation, or results by working solely with AI. As a fun test, we actually wrote this blog with AI to begin with. We’re including what AI originally spit out here so you can see the difference between the original article and the finalized, polished version (which took us about an hour to tweak, edit, and personalize). You can check the original out here.

AI is a Tool for Marketing Strategists

AI is awesome for insights and automation, but it can’t replace the human touch that makes your marketing work. Partnering with a marketing agency like Pink Dog Digital means you get the best of both worlds: AI’s power and the strategic smarts to keep your brand voice, message, and goals at the forefront. 

Ready to get started with your custom digital marketing strategy? Reach out to Pink Dog Digital today for more information.