AI: The Power Tool to Progress

?In my last BIG corporate job, on my second interview the President of the company came in and asked me what I loved most about marketing, what I was best at.

I’m certain he thought I would say art, or writing – perhaps designing brochures or organizing the trade show stuff.

“Research,” was my answer.

I’m quite certain he was caught off guard, as an empty space followed.

He followed with what I studied in college, like 20 years before. My 4.5 liberal art years started in science and finished up with a meandering double major in Philosophy, English and minor in Art with a concentration in sculpture (mostly welding).

I asked my advisor if I could graduate and he said, I thought you were 'one of those,' (perpetual students was what he meant). The fact is, I had no idea what I wanted to be, and before 2000, liberal arts was basically what many people studied.

I was fortunate to land in a communications company as my first job, back then marketing was not really a 'thing.'

Many people, including some marketing people, don’t understand that marketing, in its truest form, is a multi disciplined vocation.

Marketing is not an art or brand director, not your web technician, nor your technical writer, but a gyroscopic medium that balances the effect of the organization, its products, services and brand in its entirety, and its movements through the markets towards a clear goal.

In the best of circumstances, full transparency of all parts of the mechanism and knowledge make for the most balanced movement, and sales are impacted immensely, from top of funnel through to the end.

Even so, the line from CMO to profit margin is often blurred.

Marketers are often considered, incorrectly, an expense. In fact, at the job I was just referring to, the CEO used to walk the halls of the marketing offices on Mondays shouting “Expense! at us," so it was safe to say he did not have an understanding of what we did (or what I called him under my breadth).

When there is a lack of transparency inside a company, departments become closed and cobbled systems - protected islands instead of continents. ?

CMOs can run into trouble when organizations are not whole and departments are territorial. People don’t like other people in their territory and the CMO is a traveler, which is likely why CMOs have the shortest tenure.

To be fair, the longest tenure of the C-suite, on average is 7 years, and that is the CEO.

Heads of sales, at the end of the funnel, have the longest survival rate, even through online sales growth, has now reached into the double digits and is anticipated to grow more than 70% in the next 6 years.

I believe this is because they are the last mile in the funnel and deliver the money.

AI will change the game.

AI is a lot like the CMO, which might be why marketers find it such a valuable tool. AI, when used correctly, is collaborative, but also intrusive.

Time and disclosure is never on the side of the CMO, so with the power of AI, CMOs can move at lightning speed, breaking down the silos, uncovering the issues, and gathering the data necessary to develop a comprehensive and strategic plan for progression.

I am only at the beginning of understanding this tool and already tasks that would have taken weeks take hours.

AI cuts swiftly through the bull and moves straight to action.

Its bots cross into every department of the organization, opening doors and offering transparency. Accessing information, removing the barriers of ego, and opening up files that were hidden, the good, the bad and the ugly, healing the wounds faster, and exposing opportunities for amplification.

For example, if your data is not ready for e-commerce, AI can bring it into alignment, for your e-commerce partners, for your website, and your API integration swiftly, automating the process for the future.

Forget tedious line by line, row by row concatenation needed in years prior, AI can utilizing computer vision to understand the various partner instructions, photographs and illustration, and extraction and set up. Now, you have more time to draw those lines between what you do and the bottom line margin.

Do you have multiple channel partner with varying pricing strategies that need review? AI can handle that as well.

Varying sales margins? Covered.

Customer service responses need streamlining? Check.

Technical direction? Done.

Customer inquiries? Let's set up that AI Assistant.

AI can cross all departments, kick down the doors and reveal the holes in your systems while suggesting improvements to your staff, products, marketing, sales – all in real time.

How's that dreaded project management process? Add that Six Sigma Framework into your prompt and karate chop this quarter's mission into OKRs for your team. AI can take frameworks and missions and set up programs for your various tasks.?

Do you have a customer service rep who can't seem to remember how to answer the basics? No worries, you can program AI to offer suggestions, so that they don't make those egregious errors while still offering human touch in your service.

AI is often thought of as a marketing tool, perhaps because marketers quickly saw how it helps to scale the ever-mounting content they need to produce to keep up in a the flooding marketplace.

Maybe it is because it can be used in competitive research, A/B testing, regression models that optimizing campaign strategies. AI provides numbers and metrics that put an end to the dreaded "opinion" meetings where everyone has an input, and opens closed department doors.

Or maybe marketers just see how others are using it more often, as we are on social media both at work and at home.

All of these uses are is just the tip of the iceberg.?

AI is for all areas of your enterprise. And, like an enterprise marketer, AI offers less procrastination, and more progress.

But, maybe that is the problem.

Recently, @Heather Murray, Founder of AI for Non-Techies and one of the AI Marketers on the forefront training businesses in AI noticed four common blockers after training hundreds of businesses:

1. No strategic direction

2. Resistance to change

3. Drowning in too many tools

4. No coordination

She suggests creating a team to counter these blockers, but these are the same blockers CMOs have encountered for years.

In other words, the problems Heather encountered with AI are not new problems, AI just takes the emotion out of it.

In the hands of your CMO, AI will pinpoint definitive areas where blockers exist - quickly, effectively, mathematically, and without emotion. An awesome gyroscope of troubleshooting. A magic gift available to your CMO get the job done quickly, to set a course of action for your organization to finally progress forward.

Plans and strategies for progression, now with the data, the math and regression models behind them - with charts, data delivered by bots that crawl onto spaces and places that people and egos had previously placed barriers between. AI gets the mess and fuss out of the way.

Businesses that use AI in their planning will be able to pinpoint trouble spots, correct issues and scale – rapidly.

$ 64,000 Question: Are businesses truly ready for it? Progress that is?

Do the top executives want to know, definitively, where their problems are? The technology will expose the holes in their business.

What will leadership do with the answers?

This is the problem.

Many of business leaders already know, or at least have an inkling of an idea where their ugly exists, but their reluctance to move on a solution not only exposes the issue, but issues with their decision process.

Everyone is playing “King of the Hill” in business, and today, there are less hilltops, and more everyones than ever before.

No one stays on top forever.

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