09th Jun, 2022

CMOs are being sidelined. AI can get them back on the field.

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AI for content marketing

CMOs are being sidelined.

That’s according to a new report by the Marketing AI Institute and Persado. Instead of leading digital transformation, CMOs are watching their budgets and influence shrink. According to the 2021 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets (as a slice of company revenue) have gone from 11% in 2020 to just over 6% in 2021. With an ever-increasing spend on digital, marketing – and by extension, its influence – is on the decline.

Why?

Because CMOs are viewed as lacking tech savvy. In a Rackspace survey of 1,400 leaders and employees, CMOs were ranked second-to-last among the C-suite for their tech knowledge.

All is not lost. AI is rising as a massive force driving digital transformation—and its top use cases are in marketing. McKinsey predicts AI will create between $1.4 to $2.6 trillion of value in marketing and sales alone and savvy CMOs are already taking advantage with AI-powered technologies like machine learning, voice interfaces, and chatbots.

Marketing leaders have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lead AI adoption by leveraging immediate AI applications and quick-win opportunities to drive incremental revenue.

The Top AI Use Cases for CMOs

How can CMOs use AI to drive digital transformation?

There are literally hundreds of ways to use AI for marketing—or for any part of your business that’s driven by data. Some of the core marketing use cases where AI can start making a huge impact for any CMO include the following:

Advertising

AI can analyze advertising performance, spend, and engagement data at scale and use the insights to tell you what’s working and what to do about it. Language tools can even write ad copy for you or build hundreds of ad creative variations in seconds.

Today, AI advertising tools can:

  • Predict which ads work before you launch.
  • Write ad copy and copy variations.
  • Scale creative across platforms.

Content Marketing

AI-powered language is one of the top use cases for AI. Language AI can not only understand natural language in written, video, and audio form, it can also write and speak, opening powerful AI use cases for content marketers to:

  • Personalize the right language to the right users in every marketing message.
  • Suggest content topics.
  • Align content with user intent.

Customer Experience

Consumers demand always-on, frictionless experiences with brands. It’s impossible to keep up, regardless of your headcount, without technology that can deliver personalization at scale. With AI, brands have the ability to tailor messaging, service, and offers to each and every customer.

Using AI, you can:

  • Answer questions and solicit feedback
  • Personalize messaging and offers
  • Direct customers to relevant resources
  • Unify customer data for richer behavioral profiles.

These are just a few examples of the use cases CMOs are leveraging today to leverage AI for marketing and boost the digital relevance of the marketing function.

Learn more about the promise of AI for marketing and how you can adopt it using a 10-step playbook in AI for CMOs: The Real-World Playbook for Digital Transformation – a collaboration between MAII and Persado.

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