Balaji Sampath
AI drives marketing into the future, supercharging tasks from research to engagement. The question is no longer “if” AI can transform marketing; it is how to harness its power to stay ahead. It is about how to augment human potential with AI to achieve unprecedented results. In this article, we discuss AI’s impact and lay out strategies to master its transformative force, addressing potential challenges head-on.
The days of generic marketing campaigns and treating the audience as an identical cluster are well behind us. The driving force behind this shift in marketing is AI, which plays a pivotal and defining role. A transition from the traditional to a Generative AI approach has enabled marketing strategies to add up to $1.2 trillion1 in value across industries.
For a while, AI’s capacity to transform marketing has been obscured by a fog of hype, but the breakthroughs are real. The central idea of this article is that AI can significantly accelerate and improve many traditional marketing tasks, from research to engagement. As we explore these unprecedented opportunities, we will also lay out steps to address and avoid potential challenges that AI can br6ing with its power of transformation.
Riding the AI wave from research to outreach
AI dramatically augments and amplifies the potential of marketing professionals, making it an imperative and not just an option. AI’s profound impact can be felt in all fundamental areas of marketing, bringing forth productivity, accelerated time to market, and a head start in the brand narrative. Here are a few low-hanging fruits you can target for the best ROI.
1. Secondary Research: The magnitude of human effort spent scavenging through primary and secondary content is quite high. What if we had a cohesive view—a unified market and competitive intelligence profile that is automatically updated? AI leaps into the spotlight, helping aggregate data from the public domain and proprietary corporate databases to build this unified intelligence like a ‘competitive market assistant’ that keeps marketers updated in real time.
2. Positioning and Messaging: The potential of AI continues beyond data analysis into generating insights and crafting value propositions. AI can generate this initial proposition, later polished by marketing experts through refining and feedback. This seamless partnership of AI and human finesse ensures a robust value proposition. The ability of AI to assemble the first version of this proposition, even if it is just 60% accurate, gives a head-start and allows marketers to direct their focus to areas that need finetuning.
3. Sales Readiness: With capabilities spanning text-to-PPT, text-to-image, outline-to-PPT, podcast narrative conversion, and battle card creation using competitor data, AI simplifies and accelerates the generation of artifacts such as elevator pitches, battle cards, and sales scripts. AI optimizes aesthetics and relevance across platforms, leading to higher engagement rates. With AI, marketers gain more than just groundwork; AI transforms into a valuable ally, a competent assistant working in tandem. The marketing team can then effortlessly collaborate with AI, utilizing their combined efforts to enhance strategies and initiatives.
4. Content Creation: Instead of getting bogged down by the immense demand for diverse content across multiple channels, the marketing team can implement an AI solution to streamline content creation. Gartner expects that by 2025, 30% of outbound marketing messages2 will be AI-generated, up from almost 0% in 2022. AI assistants based on GPT models and beyond can create compelling content ranging from drafting press releases to curating social media posts to webpages, enabling marketers to focus more on crafting nuanced strategies that resonate with their target audience and honing the message to perfection.
5. Breaking Language Barriers: In an increasingly globalized market, reaching international audiences has never been more crucial. AI-based translation services can provide accurate translations of your content, ensuring the essence of your brand’s message is communicated accurately and authentically, irrespective of geographical boundaries.
The goal is not for AI to replace human effort but to amplify human potential, offering us a jump start and insights to accelerate time to launch and build deeper client connections. AI offers many benefits, and it is crucial to address the rising concerns around data privacy and ethical considerations that come with its application.
Ethics, data confidentiality and privacy
Cybersecurity and privacy impact a company’s valuation directly, not to mention its reputation. Marketers should develop stringent guidelines and adhere to an ethical AI policy to ensure the responsible use of AI technologies. Ethical considerations in AI deployment must be central to every discussion or decision.
Here is a checklist to get started and stay on the ethical journey.
1. Data Privacy and Confidentiality: 60% of marketing leaders believe collecting customer data while balancing privacy and customer value3 will be more challenging in 2023, while 84% of businesses say4 it is their most valuable factor when buying software. It is evident that when adopting AI or any new technology, marketers should focus on the privacy and confidentiality of the information shared: Does the data remain within the company, or could it potentially extend outside? And if some information is found outside the company, will this be acceptable?
2. Enterprise GPT model: Marketers should look at the emerging concept of ‘Enterprise GPT,’ which offers enterprise-grade security and privacy and longer context windows to process historical internal data. A private, enterprise version of AI models should not feed internal company data into the public domain but be able to access public domain data. This model would ensure the company’s confidential data remains secure, safeguarding proprietary information. Companies could then maintain a repository of templates, creatives, and licensed assets, which the E-GPT (AI tools) can leverage.
3. Centralized governance of marketing tech: Taking an AI-first approach necessitates a synergy between marketing and technology teams. In today’s landscape, the CMO organization can no longer ignore technology’s significance. Technology has seamlessly woven into their role, becoming an integral aspect rather than an external mandate. The evolution of AI fosters enhanced collaboration and partnership between the CMO and CIO, resulting in improved outcomes.
Recall the early days of e-commerce, when consumers were skeptical about sharing credit card information online, questioning its safety and security. Today, it’s second nature to most of us. Just like the initial skepticism around e-commerce has given way to trust and ease of use, so will concerns about AI ethics. With the proper groundwork and vigilance, ethical AI will soon be standard, not an exception.
Upskilling for the AI-first future
It’s important to remember that while AI can increase efficiency, drive growth, and improve productivity, it cannot replace human intervention. Consider digital marketing, product development, go to market (GTM), analyst relations, and branding functions. They all stand to gain from AI, but to fully harness its potential, upskilling is crucial. Staying relevant means understanding how AI can amplify their efforts across these areas. Marketers now need to embrace this technology enthusiastically rather than dismissing it with statements like “I’m not a tech person.”
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Leading the way with an AI-first mindset
The journey to an AI-first approach has hurdles, but the potential benefits outweigh these challenges. It’s about connecting the dots, breaking down silos, and driving a seamless crossover between sales, marketing, product development and other functions.
The early adopters that adopt an AI-first approach to marketing are the ones that will be at the forefront of driving customer engagement and setting the narrative in the market while the late followers play catchup. Are you ready to adopt an AI-first mindset and lead your organization to be among the pioneers?
Disclaimer Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respective institutions or funding agencies
- https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier#industry-impacts
- https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/beyond-chatgpt-the-future-of-generative-ai-for-enterprises
- https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-22-gartner-survey-finds-sixty-percent-of-marketing-leaders-believe-collecting-customer-data-while-balancing-privacy-and-customer-value-will-be-more-challenging-in-2023
- https://www.gartner.com/en/digital-markets/insights/importance-of-data-privacy
