AI may seem like a futuristic concept, but you use it dozens, if not hundreds, of times everyday most likely without knowing it.
Major brands such Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Netflix are powered by AI technologies including: machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, speech and image recognition, natural language processing, and natural language generation.
While AI has transformed other industries and redefined how we learn, communicate and live as consumers, we’ve yet to see the same volume and velocity of AI innovations in marketing – until now.
Massive amounts of data, exponential growth in computing power, and the availability of AI from leading technology companies have combined with a flood of venture capital money to prime the marketing industry for disruption. Many time-intensive, data-driven tasks commonly performed by marketers are being augmented, and, in some cases, replaced, by AI.
AI is now forecasted to have trillions of dollars of annual impact on businesses and the economy, according to research from McKinsey Global Institute, PwC, Gartner, and IDC. And much of this impact will be in marketing and sales.
In short, your life is AI-assisted, and your marketing will be too.
The marketers who take action to understand, adopt, and scale AI have the opportunity to create a significant and sustained competitive advantage for their businesses and themselves. That’s because AI enables marketers to:
- Accelerate revenue growth
- Create personalized consumer experiences at scale
- Drive costs down
- Generate greater ROI on campaigns
- Get more actionable insights from marketing data
- Predict consumer needs and behaviors with greater accuracy
- Reduce time spent on repetitive, data-driven tasks
- Shorten the sales cycle
- Unlock greater value from marketing technologies, like AI chatbots, and more.
However, many marketers don’t have clarity on what AI means for them.
How will AI impact brands, jobs, and marketing tasks?
What are the most valued marketing AI use cases?
What impact will marketing AI have on accelerating revenue growth and reducing costs?
We set out to answer these questions, and more, with the 2021 State of Marketing AI Report.
In fall 2020, Marketing AI Institute and Drift teamed up to gain unparalleled insights into the awareness, understanding, and adoption of AI throughout the marketing industry. The 2021 State of Marketing AI Report is the result of our research.
This groundbreaking report establishes industry benchmarks for understanding and adoption of artificial intelligence. It also offers a glimpse into a near-term future in which marketers and machines work together seamlessly to run personalized campaigns of unprecedented complexity, with unimaginable simplicity.
Using Marketing AI Institute’s AI Score for MarketersTM assessment, marketers had the opportunity to answer 13 survey questions, and rate the value of 49 sample marketing AI use cases. More than 400 marketers answered portions of the survey, and 235 completed all questions and use case ratings.
The marketing industry is on the cusp of the next frontier.
What we learned is that the marketing industry is on the cusp of the next frontier in digital transformation. Marketers believe that AI-powered solutions will intelligently automate dozens of common marketing tasks, and drive value through revenue acceleration and cost reduction.
A Challenge and an Opportunity
Our report finds that forward-thinking organizations are already using AI to accelerate revenue and reduce costs. In the process, they’re building sustainable competitive advantages for their products and their people. Unfortunately, most marketers still lack adequate education, training, and confidence to understand, pilot, and scale AI technologies.
The State of Marketing AI today presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
It presents a challenge to AI-powered companies, vendors, and champions – a challenge to drive AI education and adoption with smarter solutions and approaches.
And it presents an opportunity to every marketer – an opportunity to evolve into a next-generation professional by embracing AI.
Together, we can transform the marketing industry. Together, we can move forward the State of Marketing AI.
Want to join us?
Download the FREE report here.
