Shifting Perspectives: Marketers Reassess AI’s Role in Performance

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the marketing industry has sparked both fascination and fear. Creatives and content marketers, whose expertise lies in crafting compelling narratives and visually captivating experiences that drive business results, initially perceived AI as a potential threat to their roles. Concerns about job displacement and the automation of creative tasks loomed large. After all, how many scifi movies have we watched where the robots DID take over? 

Knotch ran a survey of hundreds of marketing professionals in the US in order to understand how perspectives are shifting, and to examine the velocity of AI adoption. And while only sixty-five percent of respondents reported current use of AI for marketing purposes, a large portion of the remaining 35% expressed either an intention to adopt AI in the next year or an acknowledgment of its inherent value. Check out more of the findings below. 

AI’s Wake-Up Call: Why Marketers Must Rethink Its Role In Performance

Many respondents, including both current and future users of AI, agreed that its most valuable applications lie in idea generation and content or copy creation. The widespread adoption of Open AI has steered individuals toward these straightforward use cases, but it also reflects a somewhat generic understanding of AI’s capabilities. As a result, areas such as performance analysis, content optimization, personalization, and user experience optimization have remained relatively unexplored, leaving substantial opportunities to educate users about the comprehensive utility of AI in marketing.

For most respondents, the primary association with AI in marketing revolves around efficiency and time-saving benefits. These emerged as the dominant choices when asked how AI will impact their roles. This perception suggests a limited view of AI’s potential, confining its application to mundane or low-level tasks. Marketers have yet to fully grasp how AI can be harnessed to enhance their performance and delve into more strategic domains.

Reassuringly, only a small minority of individuals believe that AI poses a threat to their jobs, such as devaluing their work or making their roles redundant. Brand Marketers exhibited the highest level of concern regarding devaluation, with 9% expressing this fear. Demand Generation professionals also indicated some apprehension (7%). Moreover, 11% of Content Marketers anticipated that AI could potentially eliminate their roles, as did 9% of Product Marketers and 8% of Brand Marketers.

While the appetite for AI is ravenous, and those that have already adopted it are seeing great value, the vast majority of respondents, comprising 85% of the sample, emphasized the necessity of human involvement for the successful implementation of AI. This likely explains why so many marketers do not fear that their jobs are at risk due to AI adoption. Most marketers have at least some strategic element to their work, and as of now, AI requires oversight.

Seventy-nine percent of both users and non-users recognized the benefits of AI for their individual roles, while a slightly lower percentage (78%) perceived its advantages for marketing organizations as a whole. 

Only 50% of respondents said they feel confident that they know how to get the most value out of AI for their marketing organizations. And this may well be due to the fact that the most popular and available tools on the market, can’t provide significant value when it comes to content marketing. 

While tools like OpenAI / ChatGPT, or those built on top of that infrastructure, are great at pumping out generic copy at a rapid pace, or coming up with multiple options for headlines or social copy, there is no guarantee that what it creates will resonate with an audience or drive business results. The next generation of AI tools will have performance at their core, ensuring that the output not only helps with efficiency, but also effectiveness. 

Safeguarding Against Risks With AI-Generated Content

While the potential benefits of generative AI in marketing are significant, many marketers still have hesitancy when it comes to its adoption. One primary concern is intellectual property and plagiarism. As AI-generated content becomes more sophisticated, ensuring originality and proper attribution becomes crucial to maintain ethical standards and avoid legal issues.

Another risk lies in the potential for poor-quality content. While AI can assist in content creation, it’s essential to maintain human oversight to ensure the accuracy, relevance and overall quality of the generated material. Marketers must exercise caution to prevent the dissemination of low-quality or misleading information that could damage their brand reputation.

There’s also a perceived risk of spreading false information through AI-generated content. Without proper fact-checking and human validation, AI systems can inadvertently perpetuate inaccuracies or generate content based on biased or incorrect data sources. To effectively manage these risks and ensure responsible adoption of generative AI, it’s critical for marketers to prioritize transparent communication, implement robust quality control mechanisms and maintain a strong emphasis on human oversight.

Stay Ahead of the AI Curve

The marketing landscape has undergone a rapid change due to artificial intelligence (AI), and brands that want to stay ahead of the competition must embrace AI. Those clinging to conventional tactics will inevitably lag behind competitors that leverage the transformative power of AI, not only for efficiency, but also for improved outcomes and increased revenue. And the potential of AI does truly go beyond just automation. Its capacity to examine data and automatically enhance effectiveness of content leads to improved performance and business results.  

What to access more exclusive data on the adoption of AI? Download the full report here.