Advisor's Discourse: Preparing for Marketing in the AI Era: Are You Prepared?
Advisor's Discourse: Preparing for Marketing in the AI Era: Are You Prepared?
As a marketing executive, I frequently witness and data supports that some marketers are ready for the AI era, while many are not. This unpreparedness could soon impact marketers' organizations, teams, and careers. But it's not too late. Taking the right steps with AI can help you enhance the value you and your team deliver.
What the Data Says About Marketers and AI
In PwC's October 2024 Pulse Survey of C-level executives, over half (58%) of CMOs said they're planning to invest in generative AI (GenAI) within the next 12 to 18 months. Over three-quarters (78%) agreed they'd use it to modify their business model.
This sounds promising, and perhaps you're among those CMOs. Yet, are you merely enhancing current processes with AI, or are you contemplating how AI might render your company's present business model obsolete? When considering AI's risks, are you just focused on high-quality marketing outputs or also planning for how AI elsewhere in your company could lead to IP breaches, bias, or other issues that could harm your brand's reputation (your responsibility)?
AI will disrupt business models and revolutionize marketing. In a few years, your company might not offer the same products or services that your current campaigns support. Your customers may use AI to develop independently. You might need to safeguard your brand following an inappropriately governed AI model causing an embarrassing error. AI will nearly certainly be essential to reaching customers in new, more effective ways.
AI could disrupt you, too.
AI is driving operational enhancements that are changing what you as a marketer can do and what your company or customers will expect of you. Have you long desired hyper-personalized marketing? Thanks to AI, it's already viable. Soon, stakeholders will likely demand it.
You can observe AI disruption most clearly in specific teams. In my firm's marketing function, for instance, our content teams utilize AI for note-taking, creating transcripts, brainstorming ideas, and aiding derivative content creation. Our editors use it to mitigate risks, improve search engine optimization, and amplify alignment with the brand. Our strategy and operations teams utilize AI for speeding up analysis and reporting. As a result, we've already observed productivity gains of 20% or higher in marketing, and the business is content with our faster turnaround times.
And we, like many, are just getting started. A marketer's workflow may soon resemble nothing like its present form. We might spend our days collaborating with AI agents for creative and strategic ideas, allowing iterations, simulations, creation, adjustments, and reporting on campaigns. Although this may sound like sci-fi, it's not far from reality in certain areas (such as software development).
Here's How Some Marketers Are Effectively Utilizing AI
As I see it, marketing—with a growing emphasis on data and technology—can serve as AI's ground zero in the enterprise. Begin by utilizing AI in marketing, deliver tangible value, and then aid AI in transforming the rest of the enterprise. Consider these recommendations to help marketers thrive in the AI era:
1. Establish a strategy.
AI will be integral to every aspect of marketing. So, it's best to have a plan. Decide where to start, how to expand, and when to capture incremental value today to support larger steps later.
2. Empower your team.
AI necessitates new skills, but the more significant change is cultural. Enable your team to understand how AI allows them to concentrate on more strategic and creative tasks, potentially offering them more valuable and fulfilling roles.
3. Optimize your technology stack.
You've likely recently invested in your MarTech stack and aren't eager to invest more. However, AI requires next-gen cloud engineering. The silver lining is that this transformation spans the entire organization, so you won't shoulder the cost alone. Collaborate closely with your IT and cloud teams to foster an infrastructure capable of supporting marketing-specific use cases, such as real-time customer data analysis, personalization engines, and content automation tools.
4. Manage the new risks.
Your AI requires AI-specific governance, and your team needs to understand responsible AI practices. Speak up for responsible AI everywhere in the organization. Make responsible AI (and privacy) part of marketing to establish trust with stakeholders and grow.
It's time to get enthusiastic.
I've worked in marketing for an extended period, and I've never been as enthusiastic about our field as I am now. Many of our desires—such as hyper-personalization, hard metrics, and automated assistance—are now within reach, thanks to AI. This includes agents to help us brainstorm and iterate new creative and strategic ideas, providing value beyond our expectations. The future is here. Are you ready for it?
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In the realm of marketing, renowned thinker Matthew Lieberman emphasizes the importance of embracing AI to stay relevant and thrive. Lieberman, a social cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University and best-selling author of "Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect," argues that AI can help marketers make data-driven decisions, improve customer experiences, and create more personalized campaigns. According to Lieberman, marketers who fail to integrate AI into their strategies may find themselves falling behind in the competitive landscape.