Marketers know AI is essential to their success this year, but lack of education and training is holding the industry back, according to new research from revenue acceleration platform Drift and Marketing AI Institute. In fact, 70 percent of respondents identify that shortfall as a barrier to adoption of AI in their marketing.
The two companies teamed up in fall 2020 for their newly release 2021 State of Marketing AI Report, offering unparalleled insights into the awareness, understanding and adoption of AI throughout the marketing industry.
The research reveals that forward-thinking organizations and marketers are using AI to accelerate revenue and reduce costs—in the process, building sustainable competitive advantages for their products and their people. Unfortunately, most marketers still lack the education, training and confidence needed to pilot and scale AI technologies.
Key findings from the report include:
- 52 percent say AI is very important (37 percent) or critically important (15 percent) to the success of their marketing over the next 12 months.
- 41 percent of marketers are achieving revenue acceleration with AI today.
- 50 percent classify their understanding of AI terminology and capabilities at the beginner level, while another 37 percent identify at the intermediate level.
- 56 percent believe AI will create more marketing jobs than it eliminates over the next decade.
- 80 percent believe they will be intelligently automating more than a quarter of their marketing tasks in the next five years.
“The [report] shows that marketers see the power and potential of artificial intelligence to transform the marketing industry,” said Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, in a news release. “But, it also demonstrates that we are just getting started in terms of understanding and adoption.”
Download the full report here.
Using Marketing AI Institute’s AI Score for Marketers assessment, marketers had the opportunity to answer 13 survey questions, and rate the value of 49 sample marketing AI use cases. More than 400 marketers answered portions of the survey, and 235 completed all questions and use case ratings.
