It’s happening again. Another technology hype train is steaming toward a business near you. This time, the hype is overflowing with AI. The current frenzy may feel like a runaway train, but this sanity check will reveal it is more of a bullet train with room for you and your team to serve as conductors.
Boards and executive teams are asking your marketing team how you are incorporating AI into your operations. But many marketers struggle to address requests to alter martech stacks and cost structures in favor of AI solutions. Stress levels are high. FUD boosts anxiety, and jobs don’t feel so secure.
It’s time for a sanity check. Here are two important messages and a recent history lesson as perspective for rationalizing AI and marketing.
- Time is on your side – You are not late, you are not behind.
- Participate in the innovation – you don’t have to be on the sidelines
Exhale. Let’s delve into the past as evidence why these two messages are so true.
Consider two major tech trends that altered business models in the past quarter century – the Internet and cloud computing. The sociological response from the human race was similar for both. Both trends took years to play out. They spiked, ebbed, then eased through cycles of hype, FUD, and reality checks. Eventually these trends settled into calmer states of mass adoption.
With cloud computing, innovators were giddy about building clouds on various infrastructure and economic models. On prem. Public. Private. Hybrid. Virtualized. Bare metal. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, XaaS. The market was in dire need of sensible articulation. As these models emerged, the marketing was dizzying. Product marketers did their jobs. They pounded cloud model merits, excelling at describing the Simon Sinek “what.”
However, for years CIOs and CISOs wrestled with how much to put into clouds and what to keep on prem. They needed guidance on how to report ROI, value, and risk management. They watched the cloud wars wage for years among competing vendors, cloud providers, and marketers debating use cases for private and public clouds, then hybrid and multi-cloud models.
“It’s a contest to show my blinky lights are better than your blinky lights,” a friend and cloud architect colleague of mine once said sarcastically, referencing the marketing of 1RU and 2RU pizza box-shaped appliances going into data center racks to power the cloud economy’s growth.
The market needed to work itself out, but the time to get to a normal state took awhile. While innovators focused on invention and cloud religion, marketing fell short of explaining material impact and business benefits. Sure, we heard about cost savings and convenience of on-demand access to information. But saving money doesn’t mean a business hits its lead gen, pipeline, and revenue goals. Those metrics matter to ELTs and boards. If Marketing exerted the same rigor in spotlighting cloud impact on topline revenue growth and bottom line EBITDA for customers and their customers’ customers, business decision makers would see the value sooner, accelerating procurement and market adoption.
Cloud computing was inevitable. How fast that inevitability arrived was the question.
Fast-forward to today. The same trend is playing out with AI. Instead of AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP, it’s Llama vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini. Proprietary vs. open source. A new LLM. A new integration. A new plug-in. Data privacy and security. A new use case. A new technology. A new startup. A gold rush from the VC and PE community. Innovator’s Delight is back.
As technologists, investors, and vendors compete against the clock, the larger population of users wants time to slow. They are struggling to keep pace. Businesses are experiencing considerable FUD. They need help understanding AI conceptually and its countless possibilities for their jobs. Simply put, they need AI to be meaningful.
As the innovator population invents, marketing has an opportunity to lead the way. It’s an obligation, really. Marketing is in the middle of the handoff between innovation and consumer adoption. This cycle of innovation, learning, and application will transpire indefinitely. Marketing must guide the marketplace. It can learn from past experience marketing cloud computing. This time, focus on material value and business benefits to accelerate mass adoption.
It’s why you are not late to influencing AI’s impact on your business and marketing specifically.
Time is on your side – You are not late, you are not behind
As the AI frenzy takes hold, embrace this time to explore. Everyone is learning and testing, making sure solutions actually work. Be your own focus group. Apply this learning closer to home – use the martech community as a training ground.
Many martech vendors don’t even know what they are going to deliver yet. They are working feverishly to ideate and incorporate AI into their solutions as we speak. Fortunately, they are doing the heavy lifting for you. AI integration into workflows are emerging daily in your vendor stack, from Hubspot to Adobe to Zapier, making adoption seamless.
But no one is quantifying the effect materially. We need to see AI’s application directly tied to quantifiable topline revenue growth metrics and bottom line EBITDA goals. We need to see the widespread transition from technology innovation to business impact. It will happen, and you have a role in dictating how fast.
You have time to participate in the innovation
One day the paradigm will be different. Gen Z is coming. They are entering the workforce every year, and they are naturally primed for AI just as Gen X was for the Internet and Gen Y for on-demand, cloud-based mobile apps. Heck, Gen Z is going to be building AI apps for decades. When the paradigm changes, will you be ready, or will your skills be outdated?
You have time. Use this runway wisely. When that paradigm-shifting moment arrives – a moment that could arrive next month, next quarter, or next year – have a perspective on marketing with AI. Don’t let AI control you. Use AI so you control your destiny.
Here’s one way to take control. Tech trends always stimulate new generations of vendors. As entrenched martech vendors evolve their solutions with AI, new startups are bound to emerge en masse. Leverage this moment in time. The martech vendor community needs focus groups and beta testers. They want customer input. Join the innovation by partnering with vendors to make your job better.
As you become more involved, you can become more comfortable with AI and branch out to help escort your own business into the world of AI. Lead the way. It’s why marketing exists – to make sense of things. Marketers get paid to look around corners, see market trends, and capitalize on them.
In the big picture, how many major tech trends and business model transitions will we see in our careers? Three or four? It’s like buying a car. It doesn’t happen often, so embrace the exhilaration when it does and make sure you are in the driver’s seat. Get involved in AI’s direction, and enjoy the ride.
