There is no shortage of discussion about how AI is changing marketing. From content creation and campaign development to data analysis, personalisation and automation, the list of things marketers can now do faster, and potentially more efficiently, seems to grow every week. And while much of the conversation focuses on productivity, I think there is a more interesting question we should be asking: if AI makes more of marketing easier to execute, what becomes more valuable?
It’s a question I’ve been thinking about since interviewing leaders for our recent Beyond the Numbers report. One of the themes that emerged in those conversations was that the expectations placed on senior marketing leaders are changing. Technical marketing expertise remains important, but increasingly, it’s what marketers do with their knowledge, experience and understanding of the business that makes the difference.
After all, most CEOs aren’t sitting around wishing their marketing teams could produce more content, create another campaign or deliver an additional dashboard. They’re thinking about how to grow the business, attract more valuable clients, respond to changing market conditions and stay ahead of competitors. They want to understand where new opportunities might come from, why certain deals aren’t progressing and how the firm can strengthen its position in the market. Marketing has an important role to play in answering those questions, but it requires a different mindset from simply delivering more activity.
This is where I think AI could create an interesting shift in the value of marketing. If technology is increasingly taking care of execution, the contribution of marketers should move further towards interpretation, judgement and commercial thinking. Rather than simply producing reports, we need to explain what the information is telling us. Rather than waiting for briefs, we should be identifying opportunities. And rather than focusing on creating more and more content, we need to think harder about the stories that will genuinely influence the people our firms want to reach.
Ritu Mohanka, CEO of VONQ, made an interesting observation during our interview for Beyond the Numbers. She believes that while AI will automate a lot of marketing’s execution, storytelling will remain an important human capability. I agree, and when we say storytelling, we mean making sense of complex information, understanding what matters to different audiences and communicating a clear commercial argument. That’s as relevant to a conversation with the CEO or CFO as it is to a marketing campaign.
Of course, none of this means that marketers can afford to ignore the technology itself. Quite the opposite. Understanding what AI can and cannot do will become an essential part of leading a modern professional services marketing function. But knowing how to use the tools is only one part of the equation. The bigger opportunity is to use the time and capability they create to become more commercially valuable to the organisation.
That means developing a genuine curiosity about how your firm makes money, which clients are most valuable, how buying behaviour is changing and where competitors might be gaining ground. It means spending more time with clients and commercial partners, joining together information that might otherwise sit in different parts of the business and being confident enough to challenge assumptions when the evidence suggests a different direction. It also means recognising that not every important business decision comes with a perfect dataset. Sometimes, the value of an experienced marketing leader lies in their ability to apply judgement when the numbers don’t provide an obvious answer.
I also wonder whether AI will make the distinction between a marketing delivery function and a genuine commercial growth partner much more apparent. If producing content, analysing campaign performance and managing routine activity become easier and cheaper, those things alone may become less effective ways of demonstrating marketing’s value. The professional services firms that see marketing primarily as a production function may increasingly question what they’re paying for. But those that recognise marketing’s contribution to understanding markets, shaping strategy, building reputation and identifying growth opportunities may see its importance increase.
For senior marketers, I think this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. We need to embrace the efficiencies AI offers, but we shouldn’t allow the conversation about our future to become entirely focused on tools and productivity. The skills that will differentiate talented marketers are likely to be the ones that are harder to automate: commercial curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, judgement, leadership and the ability to turn information into a compelling story that helps the business make better decisions.
Perhaps, then, the most important question isn’t simply what AI can do for marketers.
It’s what marketers should become better at because AI can do more.
This is one of the themes explored in our new report, Beyond the Numbers: How professional services marketers can redefine marketing’s value, which draws on conversations with CEOs, CMOs and commercial leaders about the changing role of marketing and how we demonstrate its commercial contribution.
