1 month ago
8
Our AI Path to Excellence series unpacks results from a survey of 2,000 marketers globally to understand how AI leaders drive more growth and efficiency with AI. First, we explore findings and provide clear steps for achieving excellence through AI integration.
Marketers know that AI is here to change the game, but how many of them know where to begin, what tools to adopt, and how to impress their CFO with results?
We partnered with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to survey more than 2,000 marketers globally about how they use AI in their marketing. But if all you want is the TL;DR, then catch this: AI leaders have achieved powerful results. Globally, companies in the leading stage have reported revenue growth ~60% higher than companies in the essentials stage in the last 12 months.1
In the first of these articles, we’re unpacking what makes an AI leader and how businesses can keep pace. We updated our framework that assesses AI leadership so that any company can consider where they fall and follow the advice to move toward AI progress.
What sets AI leaders apart
Marketing excellence is a journey, and the leaders in this space know that AI is helping them get to where they want to go, faster. We’re looking at the road from the essentials to transformation across the four main components of marketing: measurement and insights, media and personalization, creative and content, and people and processes.
Now, think of AI excellence as a journey. You know you need to start somewhere, with the essentials. More than one third of marketers are in this stage — just starting to implement and test new AI tools. You have to get these foundations in place before you can move along.
The bulk of marketers find themselves at the scaling phase. They’re done experimenting and have moved beyond small pilots. They’re using AI to streamline operations and reduce the time it takes to turn data into insights.
Nineteen percent of companies are considered AI leaders, connecting workflows and testing AI-assisted decisions and personalization.2 We looked at these leaders and identified the six capabilities they use to drive outsized revenue and business outcomes:
- An integrated view of the customer
- Faster testing, execution, and analysis
- Dynamic budget allocation shifts to maximize outcomes
- Personalized messages that reach audience segments in real time
- Creative developed with AI throughout the whole creative life cycle
- An “AI culture” with advocates across core functional areas
These capabilities produce tangible results. One e-commerce firm claimed it cut media budget-planning time by 66% and increased brand awareness by 11%, all by using a predictive AI model to forecast outcomes based on when and where it was reaching its audience.
Finally, we get to the rare few: those that are transforming their relationship with AI into a fully embedded flywheel.
The four AI pathways to marketing excellence
We broke down the journey to excellence into four AI pathways to make this actionable for every marketer. We know it’s a lot to navigate, but we also know that 95% of companies believe that there is value in a future workflow where AI is integrated seamlessly across use cases, and marketers provide oversight and innovative steering.3 To help you get closer to your goals, we’ve outlined the four pathways below.
1. Measurement and insights
AI helps you get to your goals faster, but you have to set up your systems for success first. That means setting the right KPIs. If you want to really impress your C-suite, then it’s in your best interest to track the ones tied to business performance, such as profit and ROI. But you already knew that.
In our research, AI leaders not only set meaningful KPIs but also implement modern measurement tools to track progress. This is a critical step, because AI requires accurate metrics to optimize. AI-powered measurement tools can extrapolate valuable insights you otherwise might miss, all while respecting your customers’ privacy controls.
Our survey revealed that, with AI foundations in place, leaders were able to get much more out of their data. The combination of clear KPIs, historical performance data, and first-party data allows leaders to conduct outcome-based planning, using AI to better predict and improve campaign performance and better optimize their media budgets.
In only a couple of years, the most advanced marketers will build the next phase: an AI-powered Marketing Engine that improves results continuously by measuring and optimizing in real time. Some AI leaders are already building this future.
2. Media and personalization
Media is a game of optimization, and AI gets marketers closer to the sweet success of delivering the right ad to the right person, in the right place, at the right time.
Whenever these leaders find a successful AI-powered campaign type, they scale it. They move their budgets to these higher-performing campaigns, resulting in the highest ROI and budget fluidity across campaigns and media types.
AI leaders deploy AI to find engaged, high-value audiences, across channels, and unlock valuable insights about consumer behavior that they might have missed.
After this stage comes AI-powered media transformation, where an AI-powered Marketing Engine builds and improves media plans in real time, based on continuous measurement.
3. Creative and content
At the scaling stage, marketers use generative AI to come up with impactful ideas and develop groundbreaking creative. They use tools that streamline the creative process while protecting their IP and ensuring legal compliance, sending final creative work through the tried-and-true review processes their teams have already put in place.
AI leaders continue to do this and more. They use AI to identify and scale the best performing assets and develop AI-powered “creative studios” that speed up go-to-market timelines.
AI is helping leading marketers test and optimize creative campaigns, often before they ever run. The dream of delivering relevant, resonant creative in real time, based on what’s most effective for each person — all integrated with real-time measurement and media capabilities — is closer than ever.
4. People and process
Marketing has always been a team sport. As you invest in AI, that team expands to include peers in the C-suite. Being a good team player means sharing a prioritized list of AI opportunities with them early on.
We found that successful marketers scale by identifying and investing in AI talent to build new ways of working. Then they codify these new approaches to spread them across the organization.
Leading marketers design new-and-improved workflows as the benefits of AI become apparent. Some respondents audit teams for upskilling opportunities. Others implement quarterly AI impact assessments.
Meanwhile, we found that transformative leaders rethink organizations as a whole to capitalize on the benefits that the AI Engine brings to marketing across the board.
These four AI pathways have always been interdependent, though we present them separately as a helpful way to break down AI leaders’ actions. Ultimately, in transformation, these pathways merge to create the AI-powered Marketing Engine.
The traditional flywheel has always existed in marketing. Now, leaders are adding AI to multiply its momentum.
Steer your company into its next phase, no matter where it is today
Most marketers are headed in the right direction, with 62% of marketers prioritizing adopting AI marketing tools/approaches in the next one to two years, according to Kantar.4 Once you’ve identified your company’s phase of AI development, it’s only a matter of taking action. In the coming installments, we’ll dive deeper into each AI pathway, your AI fluency assessment, and inspirational examples from companies around the world. Stay tuned for more.