How marketers are adopting AI in their work

If marketers aren’t already using AI, they will soon. Only 4% of marketers said they don’t plan to use AI, according to a new study by co-marketing cloud platform SOCi Inc.

AI or else. Sixty-nine percent of marketers believe that those in the profession who use AI will replace those who don’t. That leaves 31% who don’t share that belief. But again, nearly everybody plans to use it or is currently using some form of AI in their work.

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Top AI use cases. SOCi polled 317 digital marketers in the U.S. About half (55%) were decision makers. Here is the breakdown of how they’re using AI.

“The diversity in AI tool adoption reflects the industry’s quest for more personalized, real-time, and efficient marketing strategies,” said Monica Ho, CMO of SOCi, in a company release. “Chatbots and ad-targeting, in particular, are pioneering this shift.”

Moving too fast? Roughly one-third (36%) of marketers said they thought AI adoption at their business was going at the right pace. Another third (32%) said they felt positive about the pace of adoption, but preferred slowing down a little. A quarter (25%) were neutral on the pace. And 7% said their company wasn’t moving fast enough in implementing AI technology.

“This isn’t just about technology; it’s about the evolution of the marketing profession itself,” said Ho. “Marketers that get on board and understand the role AI will play will be better positioned than those who don’t.”

Trusting AI for work. Another new study — conducted by meeting and scheduling management platform Calendly — took a closer look at how AI factors into the day-to-day workflow of marketers and their colleagues.

Calendly found that among sales and marketing professionals, 57% have yet to use AI; 69% are at least moderately curious about incorporating AI tools in their work.

This broader study — 1,241 professionals split evenly between U.S. and UK workers, and between three segments of the workforce — showed sales and marketing lagging slightly behind their HR colleagues in the trust they have in AI for some key job functions.

Why we care. Project management and content creation are key marketing functions that under half of marketers currently trust AI to do, according to the Calendly survey. Those include high-stakes tasks for marketers like creating customer-facing messages and experiences. The willingness to adopt AI tools is there (see the SOCi study). It might be that a lot of AI use will catch on through more widespread job functions like meetings and AI-generated summaries.

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