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The emergence of artificial intelligence in marketing has spurred an influx of affordable and accessible marketing automation tools that aid marketers when it comes to completing mundane tasks like finding stock photos, proofreading copy, social media marketing, and even lead generation. This AI revolution has been welcomed with open arms by marketers so far, with 61 percent of marketers saying that both machine learning and AI will be their most significant data initiative in the next year Survey Data on Marketing and AI carried out by MemSQL.
The same survey revealed that 74 percent of all respondents consider machine learning and AI to be a game changer, indicating it had the potential to transform their job and industry. But in what way will it transform the digital marketing industry?
With AI taking a significant chunk of a marketer’s workload, is there now more pressure for marketers to perform — or will AI bring nothing but sunshine and rainbows to the marketing scene? We’ve spoken to leading marketing professionals to get their insight.
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AI Making Marketer' Jobs Easier
Right now, AI is making life easier for marketers — there’s little doubt about that. Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO of Prague, Czech Republic-based Socialbakers, believes AI can offload 30 percent of a marketer’s workload, helping them focus on “higher value activities” that drive business growth. “If you consider how much time marketing [professionals] spend on mundane, repetitive marketing activities, such as discovering keywords, mapping the brand’s persona, personalizing content for different audiences and analyzing data; then multiply that for every product and region/language the business operates in, you can see that these tasks add up to a lot of man-hours. Being able to offload many of these repetitive tasks to AI will free up a significant amount of time for marketers,” Ben-Itzhak explained.
Mark Floisand, CMO at Quebec City, Canada-based Coveo, also noted how AI marketing tools are helping marketers deliver personalized customer experiences at scale. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing marketing as we know it, and it’s a good thing. Along with machine learning, AI is becoming fundamental to marketing strategies because of its profound impact on the ability to personalize customer experiences. Leading organizations are already starting to see results. AI is helping [marketers] draw insights from their data and [make each customer journey] relevant,” said Floisand.
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Putting More Pressure on Marketers
So, AI is giving marketers back their time, and it’s empowering them with more data — faster. That sounds great, right? Right. But at the same time, doesn’t all of ease indirectly increase the pressure on marketers when it comes to performance and ROI-deliverance? Erika Jolly Brookes, CMO of Atlanta, GA.-based Springbot, doesn’t believe that marketers will be negatively impacted by AI. “I don’t think [AI] will add pressure. It will give us more time to be more creative about our products or offerings and [also have] more time to focus on how we’ll position them. [Plus], it will enable us to focus more on what we’re good at and where we add the most value,” said Brookes.
Moreover, Floisand commented that, If anything, AI will, “helps to transform “bad marketers” into good ones by empowering them with [the] relevant information about their customers wants and needs and allowing them to test and gain insight from their campaigns in real time.”
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Redefining 'Good Marketer'
Seth Myers, Director of Data Science at San Francisco, Calif.-based Demandbase, commented that AI will change the way we define what a “good marketer” is. “...the best marketers today will have 10 times the impact in the future [thanks to AI]. It will be the marketers that truly understand their target audience, who can think strategically and long-term, and who embrace new technologies that will excel,” Myers explained.
Don't worry too much though says Floisand. “Marketers [should not] worry about AI “exposing” them, they ought to recognize its potential [in helping them] generate more leads, drive conversions, [and how it can] have a direct impact on business growth targets,” he said.
What’s your take on artificial intelligence in the marketing scene? Is it a boon or a bane for marketers? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
