Artificial intelligence is slowly but surely gaining a foothold in every department in every industry. Technological advances show no signs of slowing and artificial intelligence will only become more crucial as time marches forward.
Marketing is no exception when it comes to the proliferation of AI. As marketing tactics and techniques become more sophisticated, artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in honing and improving those efforts. Buyers nowadays wants completely personalized experiences. For large enterprises that is a serious undertaking and requires many moving parts. Parsing large amounts of data and effectively implementing processes for wide-scale personalization—and many other necessary functions of a successful marketing team—requires marketing AI.
Salesforce recently released their influential 2017 State of Marketing report. The company surveyed 3,500 marketing leaders to generate a report that sheds light on what the best marketers in the world are doing to be successful. The results make it very clear: marketing AI is on the rise and every marketing team should be embracing artificial intelligence.
The Best Marketers Are Already Using Marketing AI
The concept of marketing AI isn’t an abstract idea that is many years down the road. Marketing AI is already here, and the highest performing marketing teams are already embracing it to help them succeed.
The State of Marketing report segmented the marketing professionals into high performers, moderate performers, and underperformers. When asked if they are using marketing AI, 72% of high performers indicated they were, and only 32% of underperformers said they were. That means that high performers are 2.2x more likely to use marketing AI than underperformers.
These results make it clear that marketing AI is something all marketers should be leveraging. The highest performing marketing leaders around the world are using marketing AI to transform their teams—and their businesses.
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Marketing AI Effects Everything
Artificial intelligence is a very broad term that can be applied to many different things. This is also true for marketing AI. The number of marketing activities that can be improved and made more efficient with marketing AI is nearly limitless.
Marketing teams continue to take more and more responsibilities on their plates. The marketing activities of today look a whole lot different than even those of 10 years ago. CRMs, MAPs, and sales enablement platforms have reshaped the marketing landscape.
Salesforce’s report found that marketing leaders expect marketing AI to effect nearly every one of those marketing activities over the next five years. More than effect, they expect AI “will have a substantial or transformational impact” in these areas. The report broke down the question into two distinct areas: Improving Efficiency and Advancing Personalization.
In the “Improving Efficiency” category, four different areas tied for the top spot. They were: Productivity of marketers, Campaign analytics, Digital asset management, and Business insights across data and systems.
For the “Advancing Personalization” category, three areas were voted as most likely to be impacted by marketing AI: Hyperpersonalization of content; Dynamic landing pages and websites; and delivering the right message, on the right channel, at the right time.
Looking at those responses it’s clear that marketing AI is going to—and currently does—have a direct impact on every single area that Marketing touches. Marketers are already seeing results with their marketing AI usage. According to the report, 64% of respondents said it has “greatly of substantially increased their overall marketing efficiency.”
Marketing AI is something that every marketing professional should be planning on implementing, or looking at how they currently leverage artificial intelligence if currently using it. The consequences of not leveraging marketing AI could be dire, and mean your team could get left behind.
