Preparing for an AI-Infused 2025 Marketing Strategy: A CMO’s Guide to Getting Smart with AI Before Year-End

AI offers transformative benefits for marketers, enabling them to leverage data at a scale and precision previously unimaginable. Among the many benefits, AI frees up time to focus on strategy and creativity, allows for deeper insights into customer behavior, enables highly personalized content and offers that drive better engagement and conversion rates, and empowers marketers to anticipate trends and customer needs.

With just two months before the year ends, many CMOs are feeling the pressure to incorporate AI into their marketing strategies for 2025 but aren’t quite sure how or what to prioritize. Whether you’re completely new to AI, already testing the waters, or a step ahead with implementation, there’s a unique approach for each stage to get you ready to start next year strong. Let’s dive into where you might be on the AI journey and some practical steps to help you leverage AI as a central part of your 2025 strategy.

First Things First: Questions Every CMO Should Consider

1. How familiar are you and your team with AI concepts and tools?
2. What outcomes are you looking to achieve?
3. What is your data quality and infrastructure like?
4. Have you tested any AI-driven tools or campaigns yet?
5. Are your stakeholders ready to support AI initiatives?

Once you’ve determined what you’re solving for, it’s also important to think through the various ways in which Marketing teams apply AI: consumer, product and enterprise – each unlocking unique benefits with varying tradeoffs in scalability, quality, security, risk, and cost.

On the consumer front, the focus is on personalization and customer engagement through tools like predictive analytics and recommendation engines. Product-oriented AI is all about driving product development and innovation, analyzing feedback, trends and market sentiment to ultimately inform new features and enhancements. And lastly, Enterprise AI largely serves to boost internal efficiency and streamlined decision-making by automating tasks such as demand forecasting, lead scoring and resource allocation. The magic happens when all three work together to enable marketing teams to deepen customer relationships, drive innovation and operate efficiently.

Your perspective on the above will help determine the next steps and bring clarity on where to focus between now and the end of the year.

If You’re New to AI: Three Steps to Get Started

If AI feels like uncharted territory, no worries. Starting now gives you the time to experiment, learn and strategize. Here’s what you can do before 2025 to become familiar with AI:

1. Build Your AI Foundation

• Understand the Guardrails: Be sure you’re clear on – and follow – your company’s guidelines and policies for the use of AI tools in the workplace. Leveraging AI ethically, appropriately and in the right context is paramount.
• Get the Basics Down:?Begin with understanding AI fundamentals and potential applications in marketing. There’s a plethora of resources out there, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend two free courses that Optiv has launched: AI Literacy and Awareness, and Secure AI for Business Stakeholders. You can check them out here: https://www.optiv.com/solutions/artificial-intelligence
• Learn from Success Stories:?Browse case studies where AI has driven measurable success. This can help you identify potential AI applications for your business. I suggest a quick search on Starbucks to learn about their Deep Brew initiative. It’s a fascinating example of leveraging AI to drive a brand's personalization engine, optimize labor allocations and streamline inventory management in stores. Also, institutions like the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (which just so happens to be my alma mater) regularly publish research on AI innovation and are a great place to start.
• Don’t Go it Alone (this is super important): Partnership with your GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance), security and IT teams is a must, as tempting as it might be to dive right in. What could go wrong? The answer is a lot. Commonly used AI platforms might seem like low-risk experiments, but you'll want to tread carefully any time you risk your company's reputation or data on the outputs of an AI model. Remember that “free" tools, more often than not, use your inputs and data to train their own models, which could cause significant privacy and data protection concerns. Be sure you team-up with IT to ensure they implement and support AI functionality appropriately. Even closed models implemented incorrectly can cause significant data loss incidents.

Lastly, be cognizant of the very common "shadow AI" that your teams might be using outside of policy. It’s critical that your AI Marketing plan balances the benefits of secure AI solutions with the nuanced complexities and risks associated with AI.?

2. Experiment with AI-Enhanced Tools

• Start small:?Test out a few easy-to-use AI tools —think predictive analytics or automated content creation with tools like ChatGPT.
• Observe the Impact:?Use this phase to evaluate how AI tools impact your day-to-day marketing and the types of insights they generate.

3. Start Building Stakeholder Interest

• Outline AI’s Potential:?Brief your team and stakeholders on how AI can enhance efficiency, improve customer experience and deliver data-driven insights.
• Identify Quick Wins:?Highlight the potential for small-scale wins with AI — like improved email personalization or social media analysis — that you can test without extensive resources.

Goal by Year-End: Get comfortable with AI concepts, test a few tools, and bring key stakeholders on board to support an AI-enhanced marketing strategy in 2025.

If You’re Early in the Journey: Three Ways to Step Up Your AI Game

Maybe you’ve dabbled in AI but haven’t fully integrated it. This phase is about securely testing AI in more targeted campaigns and setting up a data framework.

1. Prioritize Data Quality

• Data Audit:?Conduct an audit of your current data sources to assess quality and coverage. High-quality, accessible data is the foundation of any effective AI initiative.
• Invest in Data Cleaning and Integration:?Improve data access, collection, management, and storage practices so that your AI tools have reliable and appropriate information to work with.

2. Run Targeted AI Pilots

• Choose a Campaign:?Select a specific campaign or function (e.g., customer journey mapping or lead scoring) and integrate AI-driven tools to see what impact they can have.
• Track KPIs and Outcomes:?Define key metrics for each pilot to assess the effectiveness and make necessary adjustments.

3. Deepen AI Skills for the Team

• Upskill Your Team:?Many marketers have heard the saying: AI alone won’t replace your job, but people who know how to use AI will. Now is the time to get smart. Enroll your team in intermediate courses, ideally focused on applications of AI in marketing, like customer behavior prediction and content optimization.
• Create AI Champions:?Identify team members who are enthusiastic about AI and encourage them to lead small AI projects, creating momentum within your organization.

Goal by Year-End: Lay a strong foundation in data readiness, prove AI’s effectiveness through pilot projects, and foster a more AI-savvy team.

If You’re Advanced: Focus on Integration and Optimization

If you’re already using AI tools consistently, the goal now is to build on that foundation by integrating AI into your broader strategy and optimizing processes for maximum impact. Once again, partnership with your GRC, security and IT teams is incredibly important.

1. Embed AI into your Marketing Strategy

• Expand Use Cases:?Take AI beyond isolated projects and start weaving it into your broader marketing strategy, from customer experience to content planning.
• Align AI with Business Goals:?Ensure AI applications are directly tied to business KPIs. For example, if increasing customer lifetime value is a priority, use AI to refine personalization tactics.

2. Fine-Tune Data and Infrastructure

• Review Data Infrastructure:?Assess whether your data infrastructure can handle increased AI demands. Consider upgrades if necessary to support higher data volume and faster processing.
• Automate Data Management:?Implement automated data management solutions that make it easier for AI tools to access and process data in real time.

3. Cultivate AI Governance and Ethics

• Formally Define Governance Policies:?Establish guidelines around data privacy, transparency, and bias to ensure responsible AI use.
• Track Performance Metrics Regularly:?As AI becomes part of daily operations, set up performance reviews to track ROI and identify areas for improvement.

Goal by Year-End: Fully integrate AI into your marketing strategy, ensuring your data and governance processes are ready for scaling.

Wrapping Up: Preparing to Launch in 2025

No matter where you are on your AI journey, being proactive now will help you start 2025 with confidence. By asking the right questions, testing AI tools, focusing on data readiness, and bringing your team along for the ride, you’ll be positioned as a leader who’s not just keeping up but innovating in a rapidly evolving marketing landscape.

Remember:?AI isn’t about replacing human creativity or intuition — it’s a tool to augment it. By embracing AI thoughtfully, you can make data-driven decisions, enhance personalization and streamline your marketing processes, creating a more impactful and adaptive strategy for the year ahead. And if you need expert help, Optiv has an incredible team of AI professionals that can safely and securely guide you along the journey.