Embracing AI: A Golden Opportunity for Seasoned Marketers and Executives (What’s Stopping You?)

To us it’s crazy that a staggering 97% of companies feel an urgent need to integrate AI technologies; however, a mere 14% of business leaders feel fully prepared for the AI shift. (Fast Company 11/14/23)

We’ve witnessed and navigated through game-changing shifts before in our industries, so what’s stopping everyone now?

Do you find this moment in time frightening, immobilizing, or exhilarating?  Regardless, we know how you’re feeling…AI seems tantalizingly close, yet frustratingly so far away.

So, let’s go with exhilarating. Now how do you inspire your teams, your boards, and yourselves and get moving?  AI's our new challenge, and our experience is our ace card. It’s time to flex those muscles we've built over the years.

Let’s get started together:

Assemble your AI Squad – identify a cross functional team of forward-thinking individuals to lead your AI charge.

• Seek out the AI curious, at any level, within your organization. These folks will become your change champions.
• Establish your external group of peers and experts to serve as your executive-level sounding board and team.  This is your trusted support system where it is safe to not know and grow together.

Align on your business priorities and strategy for AI in the short term as you learn today but remember there will be a longer-term transformation to come.

• To start, identify your biggest business pain points and AI use cases with the greatest revenue and cost optimization potential. Bring your team together to brainstorm and prioritize together so that all can contribute their expertise and feel ownership in the AI transformational journey.

An AI use case is a narrowly defined, quick-win, pilot project with a high probability of success. Pick tasks that are data-driven, repetitive and predict behaviors or outcomes. Your goal for each pilot test will be to garner efficiency, performance lifts or both.

Your use cases can be in the areas of content development, analytics sophistication, lead generation performance, creative production scale and efficiencies, and more. Choose what’s most relevant to your business needs.

Build your short-term road map: start small, fail fast, learn quicker.

• This is where your decades of business experience are invaluable. Crawl-Walk-Run. Set tools and testing methods based on discipline and rigor. Build operational processes and teach your teams along the way. It isn’t just about the latest tools and tech.

Jump into the AI Pool: it’s like learning to swim; first, you have to get in the water!

• Remember, you must be brutal in evaluating results and scaling only what works.  Think about deploying no more than 1-2 tests to start. When you get better at it you can add more rapid sprints for further testing and roll out.

30-90 Rule:

• Activate within 30 days
• Test over 90 Days
• Keep or Cancel

With each experiment, you will expand your AI comfort zone.

Celebrate the wins, learn from the failures and, most importantly, inspire your teams for the future together.

Don’t be shy about asking for external help but be wary of “AI experts” … we all are figuring this out together.

So, seasoned marketing pros, here's to our next chapter. Let's set the strategy, rally our troops, and lead the charge into AI. It's about more than just keeping up; it's about setting the pace.

We wouldn’t be marketers without a CTA 😊 If you are ready to dive in and are looking for an external sounding board or partner who can help accelerate your efforts, we at the CMO Syndicate are here for you, from strategic thinking and use case brainstorming to operational deployment. DM us, include us on your trusted peer team, ask us questions, and let us know how we can help.

About The CMO Syndicate

The CMO Syndicate is a diverse group of world-class Chief Marketing Officers who rapidly solve growth and profit problems for CEOs, VCs, CMOs, and PE firms. As global CMOs from the world’s top companies, The CMO Syndicate is not a traditional marketing consulting agency, and we are not typical marketing or growth consultants. We are growth experts and operators who actually do the work on a part-time or project basis as outsourced fractional and interim CMOs.