Artificial intelligence continues to be the big buzz in Silicon Valley if not the entire world and for good reason. Recently, blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFT’s, service cloud etc., were the interesting new kids on the block, but quickly reached their nadir and fizzled or became just another fad that peaked, passed or ended up in court (see Sam Bankman-Fried)!

AI is different. It has greater staying power because it will affect every part of the business tech stack in some fashion. I have written about how CEOs, CFOs and boards are already evaluating AI and this piece will focus on how CMO’s can use it or benefit from it now or in the near future.

If you’re a CMO you want to know how your competitors are using AI? What do I need to know?

How does AI enhance or alter the most basic responsibilities of CMO’s?

What were they responsible for six months ago vs. what will they be responsible for now or soon?

Innovation and marketing go hand in hand. To fall behind the AI marketing curve likely means you’ll be replaced by someone who is ahead of it!

I asked marketing maven and public relations expert Sylvia France what she was encountering in the AI marketing space and this is what she said:

“By embracing blended AI technologies and working in tandem with them, marketers can streamline operations, improve targeting/personalization, and achieve better results in today’s fast-paced, data driven marketing landscape. AI has the potential to improve every facet of marketing; however, it can’t replace human creativity and authenticity. The human touch is needed to create and sustain meaningful relationships with prospects and clients.”

Let’s start with marketing 101. As any CMO, or freshly minted marketing MBA will tell you they must completely understand what their CEOs’ stated strategy is to help them hit their numbers and keep investors on board with their plan.

This is what CMO’s have traditionally been judged by:

Top 5 Responsibilities of a CMO

1. Sales Growth: Driving growth via marketing initiatives. This includes developing and executing marketing strategies that attract new customers, increase sales, and build brand awareness.

2. Brand Development: This includes developing and managing the company’s brand identity, messaging, and positioning in a way that resonates with current/future customers as well as employees.

3. Lead the marketing team: Responsible for hiring, leading, and managing people as well as developing a team that can achieve an overarching corporate marketing strategy. This includes setting goals, providing direction, coaching, training, and developing team members skills.

4. Create a marketing strategy & manage the budget: Working with the C’s a CMO creates a budget that will successfully support the corporate business strategy.  This budget includes allocating the right resources to the right marketing buckets and people while ensuring that funds are used efficiently, and perhaps most importantly can be measured.

5. Stay up to date on marketing trends and technologies: CMO’s must constantly scan the ecosystem for best practices, ways to differentiate their product and consistently develop innovative marketing strategies and campaigns. When something like AI pops up it isn’t “this is cool” it’s “how can I use this now as well as in the future”? This may be the toughest of the five to do while caught up in the day-to-day marketing part of their role. Often outside SME’s are needed to understand not just what is possible but how does it work, how much it will cost, how long will it take and can I measure results? AI falls in this last responsibility bucket and it is evolving at breakneck speed!

Now that we have a CMO responsibility base – what can AI potentially do for CMOs?

It’s so new there aren’t many case studies or best practices that can be easily accessed and learned from. Instead, there is a lot of marketing fluff (who better to wade through that than CMO’s ?) touting all the amazing things AI can do. That’s all swell and good but a marketer needs to know what is real vs. “someday” in the future we can do that. Their jobs depend on knowing the difference!

With that in mind, let’s review ten, real world AI marketing use cases.

10 AI Driven Use Cases for Marketing

1. Personalized customer journeys: AI can be used to create personalized buyer journeys that are tailored to each individual customer’s needs and interests. This can be done by using AI to analyze customer data and behavior, and then using this information to deliver targeted messages and offers at the right time and medium.

2. Marketing automation: AI can be used to automate email marketing, social media marketing, and customer segmentation.

3. Content creation: AI can be used to generate personalized content, such as blog posts, social media posts, and product descriptions via database analysis. Resulting in more engaging, targeted and user relevant content for their audience. Many buyers want to do their own research these days – not be led by salespeople down their chosen path.

4. Marketing analytics: AI analyzes marketing data to identify unknown trends and patterns. This is used to improve marketing campaigns and make better strategic decisions.

5. Customer service experience: AI can be used to provide personalized customer support and resolve issues quickly and efficiently, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

6. Lead generation: Identify and qualify potential leads, and then nurture them through the sales funnel before and during the sales rep buying window. This can significantly improve the sales team’s perception of marketing. Which is often a huge challenge!

7. Marketing ROI measurement: AI tracks the impact of marketing campaigns and identifies which campaigns are driving both positive and negative results. This data can then be used to allocate resources more effectively to optimize future campaigns and eliminate ineffective ones. And at a speed humans couldn’t do previously! No waiting for the Nielsen ratings report (or other reports) for ROI analysis. AI can do this 24/7!

8. Budget optimization: AI can create a data driven analysis and optimize marketing spend by allocating budget to the best performing channels, campaigns, conferences, and mediums. Real-Time!

9. AI-powered marketing campaign, AB testing: By virtually testing different marketing campaigns, AI can quickly identify the most likely effective ones. This can provide marketing with the ability to change campaigns on the fly and get better results without waiting for results to trickle in after the fact.

10. AI-powered marketing forecasting: AI can be used to analyze and forecast future marketing performance based on historical data as well as data from real-time actions creating a virtual feedback loop. This provides a more holistic short & long term view resulting in better strategic decision making as well as allocation of resources.

Marketing can also use AI to help sales teams by cloning buyers (see Seth Marrs – Forrester writings). This is used to create specific content, sales role play and the entire marketing process (just like sales process but using marketing to personalize the buyer journey with key content at the right time in the buyer journey). This is just coming into play (see Augmented AI) and it sounds super cool!

These are just a few of the many ways that AI can be used by CMOs to improve their marketing results. As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective AI-powered marketing solutions emerge every week!

The key is to combine marketing knowledge and experience with the “what if” of AI.

“If I knew this, then I could position our product this way. If I knew what they did after reading this article or where they went for additional information, I could put an ad here or…”

The possibilities are endless – the key is having smart, innovative CMOs that aren’t afraid to push the AI envelope by asking the question – “what AI can tell me that I never knew before?” –Then virtually test it before I commit budget dollars to it!

Please tell me what you’re hearing in the marketplace – what else can AI do for marketing right now as well as in the near future?