Deloitte study: six out of ten marketing leaders used artificial intelligence (AI) in their activities over the last year

Despite the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) has only recently gained momentum, marketing leaders have already used this technology in their activities over the last year, according to six out of ten respondents (60%) at the latest edition of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Survey, conducted by Duke University with the support of Deloitte. The report also shows that AI adoption has an effective impact on organizations, with marketing leaders mentioning that sales productivity has improved by 6% and customer satisfaction by 7%, while marketing overhead costs have decreased by 7%.

Content personalization (53%) and content creation (49%) are the two main uses of AI in marketing, the study underlines, followed by improving marketing return on investment by optimizing the content and timing of digital marketing (37%) and programmatic advertising and media buying (35%). In terms of content creation, blogs (65%), website content (62%) and social media (55%) are top areas for which organizations use AI tools.

“The use of AI in marketing is still in its early stages, but its seeds already bear fruit. For marketers, AI might address challenges such as managing and optimizing content among a myriad of channels, providing a seamless and personalized brand experience across different ecosystems and touchpoints or even ensuring regulatory compliance for organizations and avoiding issues such as selling an unsuitable product to a customer, and misinformation. For marketing teams, AI will play the role of an enabler, allowing them to work more efficiently, better understand their customers and cultivate skills that will complete the benefits that technology brings to the table,” said Ruxandra Bandila, Marketing and Business Development Director, Deloitte Romania.

In a post-pandemic world, companies show progress in their digital marketing transformation journey, as almost a quarter of marketers (24%) participating in the survey believe their organizations have fully integrated digital investments, compared to only 14% last year, and 13% of respondents said that organizations leverage digital investments to drive and evaluate marketing decisions, compared to 7% a year ago.

When it comes to spending patterns, increases remain modest. The report highlights that mobile spending registers a slight increase of 2% compared to last year, reaching 16% of the marketing budget, but it is expected to surpass the pandemic high of 23% in five years and reach 27%. Marketers continue to report mobile marketing as contributing weakly to company performance (2.9 on a 7-point scale), especially because of the difficulty of tracking the customer across the journey (40%), of the weak link between the mobile and the broader marketing strategy (38%) and of the insufficient in-house mobile expertise (37%).

Social media spending represents 16% of the marketing budget and is estimated to remain flat in the next 12 months, registering an increase of only 3%. Instead, when it comes to predictions for the next five years, it is expected to surpass the pandemic high of 23% and reach 24%.

When thinking about the skills of future marketing hires, the top priority identified by the survey respondents is the ability to rapidly re-evaluate the approach as new priorities emerge, followed by creativity and innovation skills and the ability of navigating ambiguity. At the opposite side, financial acumen is showcased as the least prioritized skill.

However, organizations don’t rely only on their employees’ capabilities to implement marketing activities. They also turn to agencies, vendors or partners, as marketers are outsourcing 20% of their activities and are predicted to increase this share by 5 percentage points in the next year.

The latest edition of the CMO Survey is based on the responses of more than 300 marketing leaders, active in 15 industry sectors in US.

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Deloitte Romania is one of the leading professional services organizations in the country providing, in cooperation with Reff & Associates | Deloitte Legal, services in audit, tax, legal, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, business processes as well as technology services and other related services, through over 3,400 professionals.