• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 7, 2023

Are you worried about AI taking your job? You’re not alone.

Twenty-seven percent of marketers fear AI will threaten their job safety, according to AI in Marketing: Cutting through the hype and harnessing the potential for marketers, a study by SurveyMonkey.  

Why are they concerned? Of the professionals surveyed, 45% believe marketers do a better job of creating marketing campaigns. But 35% say AI performs better. And 19% feel they’re about the same.  

The margins shift when it comes to gaining insights from data: 

- 63% believe AI does it better, and 22% give the nod to marketers 

- 46% say AI performs better when making product recommendations, while 34% claim marketers are best at it 

This may explain why 74% of marketers are using AI weekly or more frequently. 

The study says that marketers are beset with tasks that use up time and resources.

Among those that could well be handled by AI are transactional emails, segmentation and targeting, lead scoring and routing.

“When asked what promotional items AI could potentially handle, marketers have high levels of confidence for many elements that would typically require human intervention,” the study states. “Emails topped the list, but SEO copy, images, blogs and articles ranked high for over four in ten marketers.” 

That said, how are marketing departments actually using AI?  

- 35% with both stand-alone tools and integrated within the backend 

- 34% integrated in the backend of platforms (product recommendations, digital ad buying, predictive analytics)  

-  25% within stand-alone tools (chatbots, email automation)

- 6% AI not used  

What are the challenges to using AI?  

- 41% lack of knowledge to effectively use AI  

- 35% integrating AI within legacy workflows  

- 34% lack of data quality to feed into AI applications  

- 34% AI unable to fully replace workflows  

- 32% complying with privacy regulations  

- 27% fear for job safety

- 25% difficult to measure ROI from AI tools  

But let’s say your marketing team overcomes those issues. The benefits are:

- 56% allows for focus on higher-level tasks  

- 53% automates repetitive tasks  

- 465 Enables faster decision-making  

- 43% identifies and helps reach new audiences and markets 

- 41% enables new experiences for customers  

- 41% more personalized offerings for customers  

-  40% uncovers fine-grained insights 

- 38% customer and sales presentations 

Here’s one caveat: 75% support AI-generated content being excluded from search results.  

SurveyMonkey polled 403 marketing professionals.