Paul Dervan

My annual post recommending digital marketing trends to watch is now live, covering the new techniques and opportunities to look forward to in the year ahead. ✨ 🔮 📈 🚀 https://lnkd.in/ejh6s5GZ Of course AI is the main game in town, but which aspects of AI should you be taking a look at from a strategic POV? I cover 5 top-level use-cases of using AI to support marketing. But AI isn't the only game in town and I also look at the latest Gartner hype cycle, our updated Martech tools wheel and other opportunities to improve marketing across our RACE framework. Please take a look and let me know the new techniques and trends which you think will be important for you in the year ahead.

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Most businesses are stuck thinking about AI as purely a cost-cutting tool. Jim Lecinski thinks this is exactly why marketing teams, in particular, are getting sidelined whilst CEOs prioritise growth. Jim is a Clinical Professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School and former Google VP who saw the AI revolution coming years before ChatGPT launched. His strategic framework cuts through the noise: map AI applications across two dimensions - internal vs external impact, and efficiency vs transformation. Jim argues the magic happens when you move beyond the obvious productivity plays. Take IKEA's AI interior designer - it doesn't just save costs, it gives every customer access to professional design expertise that was physically and economically impossible before. That's transformational growth, not just incremental efficiency. The companies winning aren't just doing things faster and cheaper. They're doing things that were never possible. In our latest podcast episode, Greta Thomas and I had a brilliant conversation with Jim covering his framework and real examples from Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and others that are actually driving growth with AI. Worth a listen, particularly if you're thinking about doing more than just being more efficient - search 'Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition' on your favourite podcast platform or grab the link from the comments.

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📢 Google’s AI Mode is here in the UK - and it’s changing everything. Google has launched their most powerful AI search experience yet. Unlike traditional search, AI Mode introduces a conversational, context aware experience powered by Gemini. It’s not just surfacing links, it’s generating answers. For brands, this marks a major shift in how digital visibility is earned. To win in this new landscape, here’s what you need to focus on: ✅ Be reference-worthy - your content needs to be clear, trusted, and well-structured so Google cites you in AI responses ✅ Double down on EEAT - expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness are critical to appearing in generative results ✅ Optimise for entity recognition - make it easy for Google to understand who you are and what you do at a semantic level ✅ Create for context, not just keywords - content must answer broader intent, not just rank for specific terms ✅ Embrace structured data - schema, FAQs, how-tos, and product markup are foundational to being picked up by AI systems ✅ Rethink your performance mix – this is key, it's never been more important for paid and organic to work together to own more of the AI-influenced customer journey. A siloed strategy is a big no no. Hello Everysearch™ It’s never been more important to seriously rethink how your brand shows up in search. #GoogleAIMode #FutureOfSearch #SEO #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing #FoundEverysearch Found.

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This is me at the lectern last week giving a talk on AI, SEO and Digital PR. It was a Figaro Digital event for marketers working within financial services, professional services and B2B. I've been asked quite a lot about this subject recently so here are a few of the main take-aways from my talk: 1. Don't panic. Yes things are changing and it's ok to feel overwhelmed by the avalanche of AI news, but things aren't changing quite as quickly as some would have you believe. AI search is tiny compared to organic Google searches and the intent behind those searches is quite different. You have plenty of time to consider your approach and adapt activity before Chat-GPT overtakes Google, if it ever does. 2. SEO isn't dead. If you are doing best practice SEO then you are already doing most of what the LLMs care about. Ignore the hype. Rather than being dead I think we'll see the opposite, a boom in demand for good SEOs who understand how to rank in both search engines and AI. 3. Brand mentions are vital. Having your brand spoken about and reviewed in the press and on social channels is one of the most important things if you want to get more AI traffic. That's why being great at Digital PR is a superpower. 4. Data is limited. We're at the start of things so the tools we are used to haven't been created yet or are far from where we need them to be. Those great keyword suggestion tools and the ranking software you're used to aren't really a thing yet. This is important if you are requesting or defending budget for this work as it's a lot harder to do projections and harder to prove value. I was hoping people would find the talk useful and thankfully the attendees did, with 94% of the room rating it "very good" or "excellent". With that in mind I'll be delivering it at other event in the coming months. Watch this space.

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Social media is a tool, that's it. It's a tool that allows you to create digital assets, whether written, recorded, video - whatever. The quality, tone and positioning of that asset determines how far it will go and how many people see it. If you want 'the algorythm' to love what you post, optimise it for humans. Because that's what EVERY algorithm truly gauges, how humans liked your posts. The potential of this tool, compounds over time like savings in a bank account. You don't have to use this tool - but becoming well versed in it just makes so many parts of running a business, that much easier.

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One of the most useful lessons I’ve learnt in performance creative? You don’t need to be right on the first try. You just need a system that gets smarter every time you test. I’ve seen again and again that strong creative isn’t born from guesswork, it’s built from structured iteration. Here’s the framework we use to turn creative into a lever for scale: Phase 1: Isolate and test We launch controlled variations, testing one element at a time (hook, format, visual cue). The goal is to learn, not scale. Phase 2: Identify performance signals We don’t stop at CTR or CPC. We dig into hold rates, thumbstop %, conversion efficiency — whatever ties directly to the real outcome: purchases. Phase 3: Scale what works Top performers are refined and rolled out more widely, often adapted across channels. Nothing scales unless it proves itself first. Phase 4: Feed the loop Insights become briefs. Patterns become templates. Winners inform the next batch turning testing into strategy, not just trial and error. The result? Better performance. Less waste. Creative that doesn’t just look good, but works hard for the brand. Most brands say they need “more” creative. What they actually need is a better process. Because the real edge isn’t in making ads… It’s in making them smarter every time.

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