Editorial
The Gist
- AI is no longer optional. Marketing leaders must decide which tools drive real strategic growth, not just surface-level insights.
- Strong data makes strong AI. Without clean, connected data, even the most advanced platforms will fail to deliver value.
- Leadership is evolving. AI enables CMOs to move from reporting metrics to demonstrating measurable business impact and guiding proactive strategy.
As more businesses start to integrate AI into their operations, marketing leaders are facing a new kind of challenge. It’s no longer just about whether to adopt AI—it’s about figuring out which tools go beyond providing surface-level insights to actually drive meaningful, strategic growth.
That decision-making process isn’t always straightforward. With so many platforms promising smarter results, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. The real value, though, comes from understanding what AI can actually do for your team, from smaller tasks to larger strategy and goals.
When it comes to marketing, most AI tools can be used by marketers, but very few are actually designed with us in mind. Many stop at generating dashboards or reports—they surface numbers but don’t connect the dots between strategy, insights and action.
Table of Contents
- FAQ for CMOs on AI in Marketing
- Challenges Around AI Adoption
- How Today’s Marketers are Putting AI to Work
- The Future of Marketing Leadership in the Age of AI
FAQ for CMOs on AI in Marketing
CMOs don’t need more dashboards—they need decisions. This FAQ distills how to evaluate AI tools, build the data foundation they require, and translate insights into actions that drive revenue and growth. Use these questions and answers to move beyond surface-level metrics, operationalize real-time intelligence across teams, and lead marketing with measurable business impact.
From Insights to Impact: What Marketers Really Need from AI
The tools I value most are the ones that help answer the real question marketers are asking every day, like “Which campaign is driving revenue,” “Which customer segments are most engaged right now,” and “Where are bottlenecks slowing execution?”
For marketing leaders, the question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to turn it from a reporting tool into a strategic growth engine. Here’s why I’m all in on AI—and why so many marketers are still struggling to unlock its full potential.
Related Article: Top 10 AI Marketing Analytics Tools
Challenges Around AI Adoption
One of the biggest challenges I see with CMOs and marketing teams when attempting to integrate AI into their workflows is data readiness—or, more specifically, the lack thereof.
In order to generate meaningful insights that can be used in campaigns or other work, marketers need to pull data from across the organization, including sales, product, customer service, digital channels and more to inform their strategy. But what’s often the case is that the organization’s data is siloed, outdated or inconsistent across teams. Since AI is only as good as the data it runs on, if the inputs are flawed then the outputs will be, too.
Within marketing departments themselves, teams already have a flood of data to sort through, from campaign metrics and customer interactions to channel performance. For employees who aren’t trained data analysts, manually making sense of it all can be overwhelming and lead to inconsistent or incorrect conclusions and missed opportunities.
Laying the Groundwork: Building a Strong Data Foundation
That’s why the first step before adopting AI is ensuring that their organization has a strong data foundation for AI. This means bringing all of their data into one central location that’s easily accessible by every team—and AI—and ensuring the data is clean, complete and consistent. Once an organization's data is AI-ready, then marketers can use AI to its fullest capabilities.
There’s also the misconception that AI is only good for speed. While it does help teams move faster by automating manual tasks, speeding up reporting and streamlining day-to-day workflows, the real value is that it creates space for deeper strategic thinking.
Beyond Efficiency: Creating Space for Strategy
In my experience, AI has offloaded the time consuming work of pulling data and other manual or administrative tasks. Now, I’m able to put more time, energy and focus into the “why” behind my work and dig deeper into questions like, “Who are we trying to reach with this campaign,” “What story are we telling,” and “How does this campaign ladder up to business goals?” So instead of having to choose between moving fast and thinking strategically, AI helps me do both.
Related Article: The Great AI Readiness Divide in Marketing
How Today’s Marketers are Putting AI to Work
Marketers, including myself, are using AI to do in seconds what used to take teams weeks. Everything from segmenting audiences and personalizing content to tracking leads and optimizing campaigns is now being done in real time. These tools not only make tasks faster, but can surface insights that help teams better understand their audiences, target the right people at the right time, and adjust spend and messaging as they go.
AI in Action: Real-Time Marketing at Scale
Day to day, AI is helping teams analyze campaign performance practically instantly, spot workflow bottlenecks before they cause delays and keep brand messaging consistent across every channel—which is a challenge that’s only grown as marketers expand their campaigns across new regions and customer segments. So instead of relying on manual reviews, AI can flag off-brand language, coordinate approvals across teams and make sure that every message aligns with company guidelines.
But the most valuable AI tools don’t just surface insights—they turn them into actionable next steps. They interpret data in context, highlight what matters most and help teams make decisions faster. At the end of the day, AI shouldn’t just be about the technology itself—it should empower marketers to focus on what we do best: driving strategy, creativity and overall business growth.
The Future of Marketing Leadership in the Age of AI
AI is transforming the role of marketing leaders by removing the manual burden of sifting through data to make room for faster and more strategic decision-making. So instead of waiting weeks for post-campaign analysis, CMOs and VPs of Marketing can now access real-time insights that clearly connect their actions to business outcomes—whether that's driving revenue, accelerating product adoption or driving long-term growth.
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This clarity allows them to shift from simply reporting on surface-level metrics like impressions or clicks to being able to show how marketing is directly impacting the organization’s bottom line. With AI, they can optimize campaigns on the fly and use those insights to inform what comes next.
Leading Differently: How AI Elevates the CMO’s Role
Beyond strategy, AI is changing how marketing leaders manage their teams. With more time and better information, they can focus on coming up with new ideas, align their efforts with broader business goals and lead more proactively rather than just reacting to what’s coming down the pipeline.
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