Using AI in Marketing to Drive More Effective Campaigns

The Gist

• Redefine workflows. Use AI marketing to reimagine workflows, streamline tasks and enhance efficiency.

• Core competencies matter. Focus AI marketing efforts on what your team does best and outsource non-core tasks to maximize resources and improve productivity.

• Build in flexibility. Allocate budget for AI experimentation to stay agile and responsive as technology and market demands evolve.

Right now, marketing is in a pivotal moment; let’s call it the great reset of marketing. Leaders are at an inflection point where they must transform their functions to stay afloat and competitive, but they likely haven’t undergone that transformation yet.

At the same time, they’re expected to deliver not just growth at any cost, but also profitable, sustainable growth — all the while managing tight budgets and continually being tasked to do more with less. Plus, they also need to demonstrate how their investments and activities directly impact the company’s financial performance.

It’s a tall order, but this is also the best time to be a marketer. Thanks to advancing technology and marketing solutions, the problems we thought were unsolvable are now more solvable than ever.

To keep pace with the ever-changing industry, marketing leaders need to take creative approaches to their investments. They must evolve their departments into strategic, data-driven powerhouses that maximize revenue efficiency and support long-term business growth in a measurable and accountable way. When done right, marketers can use AI and avoid the traditional model of large, siloed marketing departments and help their companies achieve these goals while taking marketing to the next level.

Here are three approaches for achieving that advanced AI marketing.

Use AI Marketing Tools to Reimagine Your Workflow

Many organizations are adopting AI to drive task efficiencies, but they aren’t thinking big enough. You need to rethink the whole workflow to create value and deliver impact for your organization. Are currently you just trying to stuff AI into an already established workflow and inputting the tech into separate marketing tasks? 

Plot out every step it takes to get from the original idea to the final deliverable. Only then can you holistically reimagine the workflow. Set it up as a hackathon, and incentivize your marketing team to engage in some friendly competition to innovate workflows that result in a dramatic lift in performance. This challenge will not only invite the team into a process they’ll inevitably be part of; it will also empower them to leverage their talents and add more value to their positions.

Related Article: Making the Most of Generative AI Tools for Marketing Success

Identify Core Strengths and Apply AI Strategically

There are areas your company needs to be the best at, including brand strategy, product innovation and customer engagement strategy. But there are also functions that you don’t need to excel in or handle in-house, such as social management, campaign execution and marketing analytics.

Determining your core and non-core competencies allows you to see everything in your marketing engine that can and should be reimagined, and it lets you explore where you can place your budgeting investments. AI supports everything from brainstorming top-level strategies to streamlining email workflow, and you’ll want the room in your budget to experiment with the best ways it can assist your unique needs.

“Assist” is the key word here. The goal isn’t to replace jobs and roles; it’s to help your team scale marketing with AI solutions and agents who are also AI marketing experts. This frees up your in-house marketing department to focus on big picture items like brand positioning, messaging and strategies that will give your organization that competitive edge.

Be Intentional and Flexible With How You Use AI Marketing

The urgency to invest in AI capabilities cannot be overstated. Marketers who delay risk falling behind, while those who harness AI’s power will gain a significant competitive edge. But equally important is how you utilize the tech and how you budget for it.

It’s essentially a modern marketing mandate: Commit no random acts of AI. Your investments need to be highly intentional, supporting the teams and partnerships you already have. They also need to be flexible so that you can scale up or down as the market, your company and your clients evolve around you.