If you’re a marketing leader, odds are, you’re already rolling out artificial intelligence (AI) or at least thinking that you should. Why wouldn’t you? By automating tedious tasks and generating new insights from data, AI can both make your employees’ lives easier and enable you and them to make better decisions.
But here’s something else I’d lay odds on: Before you can get your AI or other new tech plans off the ground, you have to jump through a number of old-fashioned hoops.
As a CMO, I’ve had to deal with all of these obstacles in my AI and other marketing technology (martech) initiatives. Here’s some of what I’ve learned about overcoming them.
1. Measure the ROI.
Can you quantify the value of your employees’ greater engagement (because they’re not wasting time filling out spreadsheets)? Can you prove that you made a better decision because of the insights AI gave you? The answer is yes--but probably not with the KPIs you’re currently using. Use AI itself to help solve this AI challenge. AI’s speed and smarts can ingest huge amounts of data to auto-generate real-time, standardized metrics.
For those new to AI in marketing, start wherever you have the most complete, reliable and standardized data, and make sure you choose a platform that will let you scale up. This can also help you get the rest of your data in shape.
2. Get the money.
My organization is excited about new technology--but also cautious about writing big checks. So how did we in marketing get the funds for a tech stack that could support AI and other martech)? We showed that the investment would drive business and improve predictive analytics to provide insights to our marketers and sales and client teams. And it’s not just us. One of the world’s most popular sports leagues is making a similar investment.
Our leadership likes highly accurate, business-relevant data and forecasts, and they’re willing to invest in it.
3. Train your employees.
A big part of the answer to the upskilling challenge is to give your insiders the outsider treatment: Win them over with tried-and-true marketing tactics such as offering training in bite-sized, addictive pieces, and empowering them to achieve results quickly. We brought our geographically dispersed marketing team together for an upskilling and collaboration summit driven by technology focused on new ways of working.
Never forget the power of putting smart people in a room to learn and create (and learn by creating) together.
4. Make the business case.
To prove that our AI and broader martech investment would pay off, we didn’t just produce a deck. We offered a whole new marketing strategy focused on targeted campaigns to achieve concrete business goals in specific geographies, services, and products, with the business’s collaboration.
With this digital-ready marketing strategy in place, it was straightforward to show how AI could enhance it.
5. Recruit.
In the global war for talent, which will likely accelerate even further, committing to be an AI leader already gives you a leg up. We recently made two big hires--and these top marketing talents sought us out, in large part for the opportunity they saw to work with AI and other martech.
Employees want to work with the latest tech, and they want employers who will teach them the skills they need for it.
To recruit the marketing (and tech) talent you need, make your tech and training part of your pitch. Conferences and industry journals can be a great way to get the word out that anyone who works with you will work with the latest martech.
Showing the ROI, getting a budget, making the business case and training and recruiting employees--probably none of that sounds sexy. But in the year of the AI reality check, they will open the door to real-world AI payoffs and to similar payoffs with other emerging tech.
