Almost every list of martech trends forecast how artificial intelligence (AI) will transform marketing. While AI offers benefits, optimizing automation is only half the job.
Marketing won’t deliver on AI’s promise unless the human side of the equation is given equal attention. Because business value increasingly depends on human factors including agility, innovation and relationships, those companies that best cultivate human potential will be the most successful.
Sources of Business Value Are Changing
Businesses will always need efficiency but squeezing out another drop has diminishing returns. CEOs realize that agility, innovation and improved customer experience will deliver tomorrow’s gains. KPMG revealed that 67% of CEOs agree with the statement that “agility is the new currency of business. If we act too slow, we will be bankrupt.” BCG found that 75% of companies say that innovation has become a top three priority, a 10% jump since pre-pandemic. Agility and innovation are essential strategies in a world that the US Army called VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous). Digital dynamics dramatically accelerated VUCA effects.
VUCA reality is especially obvious at a company’s edge and causes many persistent marketing challenges. The capriciousness of marketing derives from the same complexity as traffic or nature’s ecosystems. Science calls these “complex adaptive systems,” and they acquire their VUCA behavior from many interacting agents (e.g., customers, competitors, social networks, partners and regulatory entities) producing numerous feedback loops which cause situations to change rapidly and unexpectedly. VUCA is why customer journeys look more like a child’s scribble than a linear funnel, why a campaign that succeeded for months suddenly failed yesterday, and why calculating marketing ROI remains a frustrating challenge. Markets behave a lot like weather and stock markets.
Continue reading: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/if-you-want-to-succeed-with-artificial-intelligence-in-marketing-invest-in-people/
Marketing won’t deliver on AI’s promise unless the human side of the equation is given equal attention. Because business value increasingly depends on human factors including agility, innovation and relationships, those companies that best cultivate human potential will be the most successful.
Sources of Business Value Are Changing
Businesses will always need efficiency but squeezing out another drop has diminishing returns. CEOs realize that agility, innovation and improved customer experience will deliver tomorrow’s gains. KPMG revealed that 67% of CEOs agree with the statement that “agility is the new currency of business. If we act too slow, we will be bankrupt.” BCG found that 75% of companies say that innovation has become a top three priority, a 10% jump since pre-pandemic. Agility and innovation are essential strategies in a world that the US Army called VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous). Digital dynamics dramatically accelerated VUCA effects.
VUCA reality is especially obvious at a company’s edge and causes many persistent marketing challenges. The capriciousness of marketing derives from the same complexity as traffic or nature’s ecosystems. Science calls these “complex adaptive systems,” and they acquire their VUCA behavior from many interacting agents (e.g., customers, competitors, social networks, partners and regulatory entities) producing numerous feedback loops which cause situations to change rapidly and unexpectedly. VUCA is why customer journeys look more like a child’s scribble than a linear funnel, why a campaign that succeeded for months suddenly failed yesterday, and why calculating marketing ROI remains a frustrating challenge. Markets behave a lot like weather and stock markets.
Continue reading: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/if-you-want-to-succeed-with-artificial-intelligence-in-marketing-invest-in-people/
