When Stack Overflow first burst onto the scene 15 years ago it did what any ambitious new business should do – find a gap in the market and stake its claim to that expertise.
An innovative product and ambitious growth plans meant that Stack Overflow certainly did that. Now an invaluable tech community platform for developers, the non-paywalled Q&A site gives users instant access to expert computer programming advice from all over the globe.
With an estimated 100 million users each month and featuring among the world’s top 200 websites, Stack Overflow has become well versed in marketing itself, placing the New York-based firm’s chief marketing officer, Khalid El Khatib at the forefront of both the tech and marketing worlds.
From the birth of social media to the seismic impact of generative AI, marketing has changed beyond recognition over the past 15 years – so how can marketers make sure they adapt to the new status quo?
AI’s seismic impact
The advent of generative AI such as ChatGPT is set to change the way marketers work on a day-to-day basis, with many fearing it ultimately risks them being rendered utterly irrelevant.
While these fears may be valid, for now AI remains an endlessly exciting tool, enabling marketers to create and innovate on a scale unimaginable at the turn of the century. The extent to which the industry is embracing these developments cannot be understated; El Khatib estimates that he already spends 20 to 30% of his time figuring out how Stack Overflow’s products and capabilities can evolve to “meet this moment”.
“Will AI have an impact on marketing and how we work? Yes, absolutely. The extent to which and exactly how is yet to be determined, we’re still figuring that out.”
While excited about what AI can offer, El Khatib remains cautious for now.
“We’re not using ChatGPT to create our sales outreach or write website copy or blog articles. I think that we’re in the very early stages and the level of competence around the accuracy of a lot of what these models are spitting out is still fairly low.”
El Khatib stresses that there will always be “a huge need for human talent and face-to-face marketing,” pointing out that AI programmes are not a one-size-fits-all, making them inappropriate for many marketers. For now.
“Every company is different, that’s one thing I want to caveat,” he says.
“Some products are incredibly complex and appeal to very complex personas and industries. Content creation and copy, customer research and customer service are the three areas where people are starting to invest in AI and are seeing good results today.”
The social media revolution
The impact that AI will have on the marketing sector is expected to mirror the upheaval caused more than 15 years ago by the advent of social media and online networking.
As one of the defining societal movements of the 21 century, social media has completely invaded every facet of our daily lives, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram now being used by billions of people and businesses around the world.
It has been both a blessing and a curse for marketers, who are now able to reach audiences on the other side of the globe in just one post. For El Khatib, social media helped to significantly level the playing field.
“I joined Facebook and Twitter when I was in my early twenties and it was unfathomable to me that either platform would be used as a B2B marketing tool,” he says.
“Social media transformed marketing across so many dimensions and democratised the profile of what a marketer looks like. Fast food companies can now engage in a Twitter back and forth that can generate millions of dollars’ worth of impressions with a single click – historically they would’ve had to do a massive media buy for that.”
El Khatib also points to concerns around the growing phenomenon of social media fatigue – manifested notably in a mounting distrust of influencers among the younger generation.
The key to solving this, he says, is authenticity and greater personalisation.
“Although influencer marketing will always have value, the notion of what an influencer is will change.
“Expertise will matter over looks, accuracy will become really paramount. People are going to scrutinise things more and more so I think the future of influencer marketing will hinge on expertise, accuracy and authenticity.”
Circling back to AI, El Khatib envisages two future scenarios for the UK’s relationship with social media. The first sees AI becoming “better trained and highly effective”, making our relationship with social media and the internet even more productive.
“Or there’s a world in which it’s so overwhelming that the pendulum swings back and we become more analogue than we were before,” El Khatib says.
“And there are some people who think that that’s what’s happening with teenagers right now.”
Harnessing new technologies
New technologies – such as augmented reality, virtual reality and of course AI – have changed the way the public consumes media, meaning marketers face intense pressure to constantly innovate, despite their increasingly tight budgets.
“Everyone’s being asked to do more with less, and that’s especially true when it comes to marketing,” says El Khatib.
“Marketers are scrutinised when it comes to the efficacy and the ROI of their marketing programmes, but they also need to be future looking. The best marketing teams are walking and chewing gum at the same time.
“They’re not over-indexing on buzzy technologies and tools. They’re highly orientated around ROI messaging and engaging customers, not over-investing in what promises to be a silver bullet.”
Although new technologies open new and exciting opportunities for marketers, El Khatib focuses on the importance of skilful communication and solid copy.
“The most memorable marketing campaigns – and the most effective – are written by excellent communicators; people who understand value propositions and can deliver them clearly. The written word will always be a paramount component of excellent marketing.”
Navigating the technology crossroads
Technology’s rapid advances have brought the industry to a crossroads.
“We’ll continue to see that successful companies are really iterative in their approach to things,” says El Khatib.
“They run experiments, see what works for them and they don’t over invest or over index in any one trend. Other companies treat AI like a war that must be won. They’re rolling out products, saying ‘damn the consequences, we need to get a response out there right away’.
So should firms put all their eggs in the AI basket and rush out new products regardless of the consequences? Or should they take a more measured approach, based on sound financial planning, proper experimentation and due process?
Unsurpsrisingly, El Khatib advises the latter. There is no war to be won.
