The Opportunity in AI Taking Agency Clients

Marketers, designers, copywriters, ad buyers, AI is taking your clients. You’re not alone.

After 19 years in SEO, I’ve seen plenty of technology waves. The current AI FOMO wave is the most volatile I’ve seen, hitting every marketing vertical. Here’s how to reframe it as an opportunity.

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Why Clients Are Burning It Down

Had a consulting client built an app, decided they were a tech company, and went live despite weeks of warnings from my team.

They lost a year of rankings in ~10 days, months and thousands of dollars in SEO, plus opportunity cost. Gone. The $3k/mo they “saved” they still spend on tokens, but with worse results and more clean up cost.

Anyone can spend a day with ChatGPT and convince themselves an agency is unnecessary. AI isn’t the bad guy. Deploying it with no strategy, governance, or SOPs is.

How You Handle an Exiting Client Matters More Than the Exit

Be graceful.

When they crash (and they will), they’ll remember two things:

What they lost
How you treated them on the way out

They’ll remember #1 either way. Whether they come back depends on #2.

The Wave is Here, and so is the Opportunity

I’d guess we have at least another year before enough evidence of disaster builds up beore public sentiment starts to realign.

But it’s already starting to show shift…

We recently signed one of our biggest brand clients. They tried the AI shortcut, took the hit, and now understand why expertise matters.

Clients that have felt the pain close easier, engage better, and never question the fundamentals again.

Voice Your Position

A wave of exits will be followed by a wave of clients who learned the hard way.

I’m not anti-AI. We use it a lot at my agency. But if you believe using AI properly versus treating it as a substitute for expertise is a difference worth voicing publicly and consistently. It attracts loyal cheerleaders who will remember who was throwing spaghetti at the wall last year versus speaking truth.