How can marketers avoid being replaced by AI in the next 5 years?

Written by: rosie

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Forsight News

The industry has undergone tremendous changes in the past five years.

The traditional concept of the “T-shaped marketer” has become obsolete, stifled by artificial intelligence, automation, and many other factors.

If you still believe that a deep skill + broad knowledge = job security, then you are more likely to be replaced by large language models (LLM) in the next 5 to 10 years. This is not about stirring emotions at all, but rather predicting how replacement will unfold in the coming years.

Today's marketers are no longer the deepest experts, but those who can excel at multitasking.

This is the π-shaped marketing revolution.

The framework for predicting this transformation

@emilykramer first proposed “π-shaped marketing” at MKG, and Emily's judgment on the direction of industry development is very accurate.

A similar pattern has emerged across various fields such as cryptocurrency, fintech, and tech startups. Companies have grown tired of hiring five experts who do not communicate with each other, which is costly, and early-stage startups rarely have such funds. Even when they do, the experts need coordination and clear workflows, which most startups have yet to establish.

Pi-type marketing means having multiple deep areas of expertise. It can be imagined as the Greek letter π, with multiple vertical pillars of deep knowledge supported by a horizontal foundation of general marketing understanding.

The reality of experts being replaced

The company is still hiring for positions such as “Community Manager” or “Social Media Specialist,” but the founders are not quite sure which type of marketing personnel they should hire first; however, that is a completely different topic. If your resume states “Community Manager” or “Social Media Specialist,” you may be eliminated within 5 to 10 years.

It's not because you're doing a bad job. It's because the work you're doing now can also be done by AI.

AI can:

Write copy that is better than most native speakers.

24/7 round-the-clock optimized advertising campaigns

Analyze data faster than humans

Creating high-quality content at scale (Claude excels in this regard)

Automated email sequences that perform better than manually written emails.

But AI cannot seamlessly switch between growth marketing, ecosystem collaboration, and community building while understanding how the product actually operates and the dynamics of the industry.

This still requires human judgment across multiple fields.

Why did this happen?

Three forces make π-type marketing inevitable:

AI democratizes personal skills: Now every marketer can use tools that once required years of training to master, and the entry barrier for any single marketing skill has disappeared.

Role boundaries are breaking down: growth marketers need to understand the ecosystem. Community managers need to grasp token economics, social media, and growth marketing. Social media experts need experience in product marketing and KOL marketing.

Speed requires versatility

How I discovered this.

I didn't plan to become a π-type talent; it happened because I was constantly pulled to solve problems that required multiple skills:

Pillar 1: Paid Customer Acquisition + SEO

Run advertising campaigns for the project across all platforms.

Achieve organic growth through content and search optimization

Understand which channels bring real users instead of traffic.

Pillar 2: KOL Marketing + Social Media

Manage influencer relationships and partner transactions

Build brand influence on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord.

Communicate translation between the technical team and retail audience

Pillar 3: Positioning + Storytelling

Explain complex DeFi/infrastructure to ordinary people

Build a narrative that promotes adoption and investment

Positioning projects in hot markets

When these skills enhance each other, magic appears. Your KOL activities improved paid targeting; your technical understanding enhanced social content; your growth data shaped partnership strategies.

Practical and Effective Web3 π-type Combination

In the Web3 space, many marketers have been working in a π-shaped manner, just without naming it that way, due to streamlined teams, limited budgets, and the ridiculously fast pace of development in this field. Here are the π-shaped combinations unique to Web3 that I have noticed:

Community Marketing + Product Marketing

In Web3, the community is the distribution engine for products. If you know how to position products and activate the community (meme, incentives, feedback loop), you will become highly competitive. Many “community leaders” have quietly become de facto Product Marketing Managers (PMM), testing product narratives, building messaging through Twitter/Telegram, and feeding insights back to the product team.

Growth Marketing + Token Economics

The growth of Web3 is not just about advertising or SEO. Token design is the growth engine, and if you understand lifecycle activities and token incentives, you can design a loop that retains users rather than buying them. Marketers running activities or conducting airdrops on Galxe and Zealy are already combining growth with token mechanisms.

KOL marketing + community building + social media

Why it works: KOLs provide the initial distribution, but the community is where retention happens. Someone who knows how to achieve KOL transactions and build grassroots engagement will create a compound effect. By 2025, many “KOL managers” will actually be community builders who keep KOLs engaged and integrated into the community ecosystem.

Business Development (BD) + Product Marketing

Why it works: In Web3, partnerships (integration, co-marketing, liquidity trading) are marketing. If you can establish partnerships and build them with strong positioning, you can amplify credibility and influence. Many “business developers” write copy, publish tweet threads, or draft newsletters, quietly cultivating the abilities of product marketing managers.

Data Analysis + Growth Marketing

Web3 provides open data. A marketer who can read on-chain analytics and run growth loops can build campaigns based on real user behavior.

Why this happens: The team is small, with no independent token economics and growth department. The distribution of Web3 relies on incentives, community, KOLs, and integrations, rather than Google and Facebook ads. As a result, marketers are forced to integrate different disciplines to survive. The most critical π-shaped combination in Web3 revolves around community + other areas (product marketing, growth, KOLs, token economics). The community is a constant, and the second pillar defines your strengths.

System thinking naturally emerges

“The performance of a system depends not on the individual performance of its parts, but on how they work together: how they interact with each other, rather than how they act individually. Therefore, when you improve the performance of a part of the system in isolation, you may destroy the entire system.” — Russell Ackoff

When you work across multiple cryptocurrency marketing fields, you will discover patterns that experts tend to overlook:

How community sentiment affects token prices, which in turn influences marketing budgets, thereby changing growth strategies.

How partner announcements affect user behavior, thereby influencing conversion rates and shaping activity optimization.

How the update of the agreement affects user onboarding, which in turn affects retention metrics, and thus impacts community engagement.

Systems thinking is a strategic intuition that naturally develops when you understand the multiple parts of marketing and product strategy.

The advantages of AI

AI will not replace π-type marketing personnel, it will only enhance their role.

Experts are concerned that AI will take their jobs, while π-type marketers are using AI across all capabilities:

AI-generated content variants, selected based on community insights.

AI analyzes on-chain data and interprets it from multiple marketing perspectives.

AI optimizes advertising campaigns, formulating strategies based on an understanding of the ecosystem.

The broader your knowledge of cryptocurrency, the better you can utilize AI tools across different functions.

Build your crypto π-shaped skills

Step 1: Evaluate your current depth

Which area of crypto marketing are you truly excelling in? If not, choose one and delve into it.

Step 2: Identify adjacent skills

What recurring issues require different knowledge? Are users facing difficulties in acquisition? Learning paid media. Unable to explain technical concepts? Cultivating content skills.

Step 3: Learn through practice

Don't just attend classes. Look for cryptocurrency projects that force you to develop new skills while leveraging your existing strengths.

Step 4: Connect various fields

Actively seek connections between skill areas. How can on-chain analysis improve community management? How can KOL experience help manage social channels?

Key points

AI cannot integrate insights across communities, growth, partnerships, content, and technical marketing while understanding how cryptocurrency technology actually works.

Start building your second pillar now, followed by the third. Become someone who can solve complex crypto marketing problems that require expertise across multiple fields.

Because when AI can optimize everything, the only thing that matters is knowing how everything is connected in the strategy.