Using AI in Marketing to Run More Effective Campaigns

The essentials

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

• Basic skills are important. Focus AI marketing efforts on what your team does best and outsource non-essential tasks to maximize resources and improve productivity.

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

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

At the same time, they are expected to generate not only growth at all costs, but also profitable and sustainable growth, while managing tight budgets and being continually tasked with doing more with less. In addition, they must also demonstrate the direct impact of their investments and activities on the financial performance of the company.

It’s a big challenge, but it’s also the best time to be a marketer. Thanks to technological advancements and marketing solutions, problems we thought were insoluble are now more insoluble than ever.

To keep pace with an ever-changing industry, marketers must take creative approaches to investing. They must evolve their services 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 big business model. siled marketing departments and help their businesses achieve these goals while taking marketing to the next level.

Here are three approaches to achieving this advanced AI marketing.

Use AI marketing tools to reimagine your workflow

Many organizations are adopting AI to improve task efficiency, but they’re not thinking big enough. You need to rethink the entire workflow to create value and impact your organization. Are you currently trying to integrate AI into an already established workflow and integrate the technology into separate marketing tasks?

Map out each step needed to get from the original idea to the final deliverable. Only then can you reimagine the workflow holistically. Run it like a hackathon and inspire your marketing team to engage in friendly competition to innovate workflows that lead to dramatic increases in performance. This challenge will not only invite the team into a process of which they will inevitably be a part; it will also allow 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 strengths and apply AI strategically

There are areas where your business needs to be the best, including branding, product innovation and customer engagement strategy. But there are also functions that you don’t need to excel at or manage internally, like social management, campaign execution, and marketing analysis.

Determining your primary and secondary skills allows you to see everything that can and should be reinvented in your marketing engine, and allows you to explore where you can place your budget investments. AI supports everything from brainstorming high-level strategies to streamlining email workflowand you’ll want the space available in your budget to experiment with the best ways to meet your unique needs.

“Help” is the key word here. The goal is not to replace jobs and roles; it’s about helping your team scale their marketing with AI solutions and agents who are also AI marketing experts. This allows your internal marketing department to focus on big picture things like brand positioning, messaging, and strategies that will give your organization a competitive advantage.

Be intentional and flexible in how you use AI marketing

The urgency of investing in AI capabilities cannot be overstated. Marketers who delay risk falling behind, while those who harness the power of AI will gain a significant competitive advantage. But just as important is how you use technology and how you budget for it.

This is essentially a modern marketing mandate: do not commit any random AI acts. Your investments should be highly intentional, supporting the teams and partnerships you already have. They also need to be flexible so you can scale up or down as the market, your business, and your customers evolve around you.