AI in Professional Services Marketing: Where Promise Meets Practice

By Peter Vaughan-Fowler , Senior Consultant, Meridian West

On Thursday 31st October, I was fortunate to be on the panel for Meridian West’s latest webinar, exploring AI adoption in Business Development & Marketing. I was joined by three experts in the AI adoption space; Ben Lee, Head of Data and AI at Real Estate firm, Bidwells; Shane Redding, Think Direct, B2B Marketing Consultant and Non-Executive Director; and Illitch Real, CEO and Founder of Rubiklab, a research and technology agency specialising in data and tech development. The discussion revealed fascinating insights into how AI is reshaping professional services marketing - here are the key takeaways.

The Gap Between Promise and Practice

PM Forum’s 2024 International Marketing Benchmark revealed that whilst 68% of professionals believe AI will transform marketing and BD functions, fewer than half feel their firms are making adequate investments in the technology – a gap that defined much of our discussion.

The Journey to AI Maturity

The path to effective AI adoption ascends what Illitch describes as a "maturity pyramid" – moving from fundamental efficiency gains to more sophisticated applications of the technology, which augment human domain expertise and capabilities. "At the very first level, you've got all the basic fundamental needs... efficiency of scale, speed, cost. As we go up, the conversation starts being more sophisticated. It's not so much about doing things more efficiently but being able to do things that we wouldn't necessarily be able to do without integrating this technology".

From Technical Tools to Strategic Assets

What became clear throughout our discussion was how leaders in AI adoption are evolving their use of AI, from a mere productivity tool into that of a strategic asset. Ben explained how he sees AI as key to unlocking high-value institutional knowledge: "The most valuable things that people in any advisory business say or do come across in conversations and come out of people's heads, based on their years and years of knowledge and experience. Unlocking that and being able to leverage that... that's where the real opportunity is."

Real-World Applications

At Meridian West, we've seen firsthand how AI can augment traditional processes. Using our AI-powered research tool, MeridianAI, we're now able to conduct real-time trend analysis across multiple qualitative interviews simultaneously, by asking the data set questions. This has not only led to drastic time savings and efficiency gains, but also a significant value-add for our clients too, who now benefit from a new level of continuous insight sharing throughout the delivery phase of projects.

Overcoming Adoption Hurdles

However, firms report a multitude of barriers to AI adoption. Recent research, in which we interviewed over 900 C-suite execs, indicates that data security concerns and a lack of clear return on investment are two of the most prominent. For Shane, AI can enable a new era of data-driven marketing, in which value can be clearly shown. “Increasingly marketing has to show return and impact on pipeline. Using AI to build better propensity models, combining internal data with large external data sets, allows you to better target and convert customers, driving higher value and speed to value, by product – the ROI there is super clear”. Additionally, Shane believes that getting people to embrace new ways of working by identifying use cases that will save them time is a key consideration. "Find a use case for something people hate doing. They'll adopt it really quickly!"

The Marketing Professional of Tomorrow

One of the most fascinating aspects of our discussion centred on how AI will reshape marketing roles. As Ben noted: "I think marketing teams are going to look very, very different... there will be some people who become much more data-driven and there'll be some people who become much more focused on implementing, adopting, integrating AI into the team."

While technology skills will be crucial, Shane emphasised the growing importance of ethical considerations: "I think we need to be having a conversation with our marketing teams about ethics... Because I think AI can return answers that maybe don't fit your corporate strategy, certainly don't meet your purpose."

Lastly, echoing Shane and Ben’s sentiment, Illitch cited the importance of maintaining authenticity: "If everyone [using AI] has the same answer, how do you get a competitive advantage? How do you keep the voice of your business, the values of your company... How do you manage to keep your DNA really and build this moat around your organisation?"

Looking Ahead

The transformation we're witnessing isn't just about automation or efficiency - it's about fundamentally enhancing our ability to deliver value to clients. As the panel demonstrated, the key lies not in the technology itself, but in how we integrate it with our existing expertise and processes to create something greater than the sum of its parts.