State of Implementation of Generative AI (Gen AI) in Marketing

Generative AI in marketing is a disruptive force– every aspect of marketing is permanently reshaped by the novel technology. According to a survey of 1800 global CMOs and marketing executives, organizations are allocating a significant portion of their budgets to include Generative AI in marketing technology stacks. More than two-thirds (76%) of organizations are ready to fully embrace generative AI in marketing to unlock new revenue opportunities, enhance customer experiences (CX), and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. In 2023, generative AI or gen AI has forced organizations to embrace a culture of innovation and experimentation, with compliance, ethics, and governance at the center, with their Marketing Technology tools and solutions. Capgemini’s report titled, “Generative AI and the Evolving Role of Marketing: A CMO’s Playbook” highlights the game-changing impact of Generative AI in marketing efforts and the future of generative AI-enabled marketing campaigns in 2024.

No other technology has proliferated our lives faster than gen AI. For instance, ChatGPT reached 100 million users within two months. AI has made an impact on every business function within an organization. Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, HR, IT, Finance, and Operations departments heavily rely on ChatGPT-like tools and capabilities to harness the power of data analytics for automation-driven real-time decision-making. Marketing departments, in particular, are at the forefront of generative AI adoption for selective applications in website development, content marketing, video and image generation, chatbots, and search.

Why do Marketers Love Generative AI in Marketing Tasks?

Generative AI, by definition, can learn from a wide range of data points, applied to specific tasks and situations. According to Hubspot, marketers use AI to create better and faster content. 35% of marketers use AI for research, generate new ideas, and write better copies. 48% of marketers consider AI-powered inspiration as a major benefit of using Generative AI in Marketing. 49% of marketers feel AI content is more personalized, while 50% believe AI enhances the quality of their copy.

The pattern-derived learning of AI models such as LLMs helps users to generate texts, speech, videos, images, and in some cases, neural sentiments.

Today, Gen AI tools can perform creative tasks for various operations. In some cases, tools like Bing, BARD, Synthesia, DALL-E2, Midjourney, and ChatGPT can even outperform human efforts. Marketers love using gen AI tools for the obvious reason that they can be easily integrated with the existing Marketing Technologies for email, content management, CX, and so on.

According to Capgemini, the Marketing function is rapidly embracing Gen AI despite their organizations adopting a “wait-and-watch” approach in 2023.

Top Use Cases of Gen AI in Marketing

With Gen AI adoption, technology investments in the Marketing and Sales functions have soared significantly in 2023. The state of implementation of generative AI in marketing highlights the importance of time-saving capabilities in content generation, personalization, and financial opportunities. According to Deloitte, 82% of early AI adopters have already gained financially from their AI investments. In the next two years, 90% of global marketing leaders will increase the use of gen AI. Despite open talks related to the biases, hallucinations, ethics, and accountability of gen AI tools, marketing leaders are optimistic about their AI-focused martech investments for B2B and B2C sectors.

Top Applications of Gen AI in Marketing

Designing and Content Generation

Marketing teams are using Gen AI tools for designing and generating content for their websites, emails, newsletters, surveys, social media posts, messengers, chats, and videos. In most omnichannel campaigns, AI has replaced design teams. In 2024, we could find generative AI tools proliferating deeper into multiple channels to engage with customers with augmented and mixed reality content. Regardless of the channels they choose, marketing teams will be able to deliver a personalized customer experience.

Marketing Analytics

Generative AI in marketing functions can transform the way teams leverage analytics for measuring performance and impact. Platforms such as Google Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud help marketers create advanced audiences and segmentation to power superior customer experiences for omnichannel campaigns. Data-driven marketing insights can increase CLTV with prioritization of customer sentiments, ad spends, and real-time recommendations for upsells/ cross-sells.

Conversational AI for Voice and Chatbots

Marketing teams use conversation AI technologies for their voice and chatbot-based customer experience management solutions. Generative AI in marketing using voice and chatbot technologies helps in creating an intuitive customer service and support workflow. These can understand complex customer queries and generate relevant responses with little or no intervention from human marketers. As gen AI tools get more advanced through self-learning models, marketing teams can expect to improvise on their ability to improve customer interactions and reduce the friction in customer journeys.

Event Planning and Marketing

AI-borne events are the future of B2B marketing. Webinars, virtual conferences, and product launches could all see a dash of generative AI in the coming months. At AiThority.com, we covered events organized by Salesforce, Adobe, Cisco, Intel, AWS, NVIDIA, and others — these events showcased their AI themes with powerful AI-generated messaging and content. Using AI for events planning and marketing reduces production time with personalized content generation and automation techniques. For marketers, events ROI can be quickly scaled by driving registrations and engagements through AI and bot-based interactions.

According to Capgemini’s CMO’s Playbook on generative AI in Marketing, here are the top use cases:

• Data Analysis
• Personalization and CX
• Campaign creation
• SEO
• Image and video generation
• Text content creation
• Brand avatars
• New product development
• Metahumans
• Customer service management
• Brand metrics and sentiment analysis

Other areas where gen AI in marketing is making the biggest splash are shown below:

In the coming months, we forecast marketing efforts will amplify their dependence on AR  VR and gamification, powered by generative AI. The revolution has already begun.

Marketers are not pausing on their AI investments despite challenges related to transparency and copyrights. Almost 80% of organizations have allocated a budget for gen AI integrations or plan to do so in the next six months. Leaders believe gen AI initiatives will lead to brand enhancement, cost efficiency, innovation, time optimization, and improved customer experience. However, as 70% of enterprises are potentially exposed to ethical challenges and legal issues, there is still much work to be done.

For example, less than half of companies (42%) are prepared to address copyright infringement cases for AI-generated content. 

Our team spoke to Eliza Nevers, SVP of Product at Lotame about AI’s role in marketing and advertising. Eliza said, “Brands and agencies remain cautious when it comes to handing over large portions of their operations to artificial intelligence. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t looking to master the tech and seek future advantages (and efficiencies). Therefore, companies — particularly agencies — will scramble in 2024 to upskill talent with help from the right partners. Meanwhile, media buying agencies will focus on training specific AI models to get ahead, as more ad buying is likely to be executed and optimized by machines over time. We’ll continue to see the rise of AI consultants as a competitor to agencies, which will likely drive agencies to expand their services in this realm to better compete, and serve clients.”

Likewise, Nicola Kinsella, SVP of global marketing at Fluent Commerce said, “AI had quite the year in 2023, dominating the headlines with major analyst firms predicting its significant impact over the years to come. But to be successful in 2024 and beyond, AI will be forced to rely on the very sources many fear the technology will replace: people and data. Retail data is highly complex and dynamic with siloed information that is constantly in flux, whether it’s consumer buying behaviors, delayed shipments, product shortages, or labor demands. Teams equipped with retail order and inventory data management systems will play a major role next year to help produce and maintain clean, accurate, and accessible data needed for businesses to take full advantage of AI.”

Generative AI and Machine Learning: B2C versus B2B Campaigns

When it comes to incorporating Gen AI in marketing strategies, marketers in the B2B sectors are only slightly behind their B2C counterparts. However, the gaps will close between the two with B2B marketers testing and experimenting with Gen AI more actively than B2Cs.

The budget for generative AI in marketing technology investments has grown significantly in 2023. According to Capgemini, surveyed organizations have earmarked 62% of their martech budget for AI-focused initiatives. These efforts highlight the evolution of generative AI in marketing and customer support. In B2C organizations, CMOs are assuming much larger roles and taking greater accountability for revenue growth and profit-making. Most B2C CMOs are keenly investing in Martech platforms such as SaaS-based Marketing Clouds, CDPs, Customer Journey Platforms, and Analytics.

Future of AI in Marketing Technology: What CMOs should Prepare for

The report mentions that gen AI in marketing will augment human creativity, and not replace it.

Challenges with Generative AI in Marketing

Accepting hard facts and trustworthiness about generative AI in marketing are the top challenges for CMOs in 2023. Within six months, organizations that believed the benefits of generative AI outweighed the costs and risks decreased significantly. In April, 74% of organizations agreed generative AI benefits outweigh costs and risks; by October, this number dwindled to 57%. Despite challenges, CMOs could continue to leverage gen AI in their marketing technology strategies for assistance with long-term brand building, and enhanced customer service.

66% of organizations use gen AI for innovation in new channels in addition to the reduction in marketing costs.

To prove a point, Capgemini mentions the AI-generated marketing campaigns owned by Coca-Cola, Spotify, Wendy, Nestle, JP Morgan Chase, Heinz, Mercedes, Casper, and others.

Apart from the obvious risks and compliance-related challenges, organizations agreed that finding a balance between generative AI and human creativity tests their strategies. On average, 55% of organizations stated that balancing gen AI efforts with human creativity is an ongoing challenge in 2023. Experts believe that expecting machines to 100% match human emotions and build a deep emotional connection is beyond AI’s capabilities at the moment.

By the end of the decade, gen AI could create new opportunities for CMOs to augment human creativity through advanced analytics, intuitive decision-making, emotional conversations, and context understanding. By 2030, most organizations could be differentiated from each other as “AI innovators” or “fence-sitters.”

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]