What's Your Marketing AI Strategy?
I mean your real Marketing AI strategy.
For most large enterprises, the reality is this: try a bevy of experiments and see what works. For mid-sized firms, it's often, light up whatever AI features magically appear in our SaaS platforms. The driving forces behind both are totally understandable, but neither approach will get you where you want to go.
MarTech Leaders in a Bind
MarTech leaders struggling with AI strategies right now can be forgiven for a near-term reliance on tactics. You confront an ecosystem pushing absurd amounts of hype and impossible-to-replicate case studies. Board members and executives demand productivity gains at a time when:
- Most AI pilots won't scale, or won't scale in a cost-effective way
- Immature AI and Agent technology can't always be secured or governed properly (e.g., MCP protocol)
- Many promising use cases result in improved effectiveness rather than efficiency gains
- Real productivity gains tend to stem from cross-platform applications that individual vendors cannot yet fully satisfy
Vendors and consultants may disagree, but then please explain why at RSG, we regularly find ourselves on the receiving end of plaintive phone calls from enterprise MarTech leaders. It doesn't need to be this way.
The Foundations of Marketing AI
To know where you need to go, you start with a view of the world. For RSG, this means a reference model that, when customized to your circumstances, describes current and aspirational reality.
A good reference model is also opinionated. At RSG, we make four key arguments about Marketing AI.
AI as a Layer. For the large enterprise that must concern itself with security, governance, omnichannel coherence, and cost control, AI-based functionality will need to operate primarily as a distinct layer in your stack. This has profound implications for your architecture and what you demand of your platform vendors.
Effective AI relies heavily on the modernity and maturity of the rest of your stack. There's a myth floating around that AI means never having to get your messy data and content houses in order. Nothing could be further from the truth. Also, early experience teaches that enterprises with effective governance and controls can scale faster than those who don't.
AI needs to be use-case driven. Of course every consultancy tells you this; yet many abandon this precept amid a joyous festival of technical experimentation on your dime. Your company is clearly good at certain things. AI can make you better. Note the important corollary here: for established enterprises, AI is likely to prove disruptive rather than transformative.
Your AI strategy needs to be intentional. A collection of tactics doth not a strategy make. This means at least two things:
- Rigorously prioritizing your use cases against payoff and internal capacity; and
- Pursuing vectors of real value, rather than turning on whatever AI features appear across your stack
Real Acceleration
At RSG, we seek to simplify the world of AI enough that you can focus on the things that truly matter. This will vary from enterprise to enterprise. But our goal is to make AI real for you, so that you can realize true wins, at a faster clip. To that end, RSG can help you...
- Benchmark your current AI effectiveness, and analyze your readiness
- Develop a use-case driven strategy and roadmap
- Identify the right technology partners via RSG's brutally candid AI vendor evaluations
- Prove value through a practical playbook
- Join a peer group of like-minded MarTech leaders
End the Frustration
We know you're receiving a wide variety of advice on AI applications for marketing. From the biggest consulting firms to your smallest technology vendors, they all have a point of view. Most of them tell you, you're behind....and....you need to act now, yet offer vastly different takes on where to go. You likely sense that the sum total of following all that varied advice would be total chaos.
Not surprisingly, this can lead to strategic paralysis.
At RSG, we'll listen first, and ask a lot of questions, then work with you to develop an actionable AI strategy, grounded in reality, with a keen sense for what's technically possible.
