Register now for Intro to AI for Marketers Live. A new, free online class taught by Marketing AI Institute founder, Paul Roetzer. Learn everything you need to get started with artificial intelligence in 30 minutes.
You may not realize it yet, but your job and career path as a marketer are drastically changing.
Little by little, day by day, artificial intelligence is getting smarter. The impact on you and your business will be profound.
Accelerating advancements in data accessibility, computing power and deep learning (an advanced form of AI) models have combined with billions of dollars in AI investments to create continuous breakthroughs in three key areas that affect every marketer:
- Understanding and generating language (e.g. GPT-3).
- Analyzing and producing images and videos (e.g. deepfakes).
- Predicting outcomes and human behavior (e.g. product and content recommendations).
Leading technology companies, including: Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook (aka Meta), Google, IBM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Salesforce and Tesla and are in an arms race with each other, as well as thousands of venture-funded AI startups, to acquire talent and develop AI applications that are transforming every industry and profession.
For marketers, this means that the technologies you use to plan and run your advertising, analytics, communications, content marketing, customer service, ecommerce, email, sales, SEO and social media are getting smarter too.
In your personal life, you enjoy the benefits of convenience and personalization made possible by AI:
- YouTube suggests videos.
- Gmail finishes your sentences.
- Facebook targets you with ads.
- Spotify learns the music you love.
- Alexa and Siri answer your questions.
- Amazon predicts your next purchases.
- Netflix recommends shows and movies.
- Google Maps routes you to your destination.
- Apple unlocks the iPhone by scanning your face.
- Tesla Autopilot steers, accelerates, and brakes your car.
- Zoom automatically transcribes your recorded meetings.
But as marketers and business leaders, you have to deal with evolving consumer expectations. Personalized and frictionless user experiences are no longer the exception, but the expectation.
Personalized and frictionless user experiences are no longer the exception, but the expectation.
Established brands are using AI to reinvent their businesses, creating customer experiences that wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago.
Meanwhile, AI-native companies are emerging to disrupt the status quo across every imaginable industry, in the process obsoleting slow-moving legacy companies that struggle to adopt and scale AI across operations, products and services.
AI, and the exponential growth it enables, won’t wait for you. The pace of innovation is unforgiving. The early adopters will struggle at times, but they will learn, and so will the AI. That learning will compound over time, and the marketers who take the initiative now will create a massive competitive advantage.
You Get to Choose What Happens Next
The reality is that tomorrow your career, campaign strategies, daily tasks, budgets, and tech stack will look a lot like today. And next week will be similar to the week before.
But month-by-month, year-by-year, the marketing industry and profession will slowly, and then suddenly, look nothing like it does today.
As AI advances what’s possible with technology, a next generation of marketers is emerging.
These professionals aren’t defined as next-gen because of age, but rather their approach to embracing change and applying smarter technologies.
Next-gen marketers use AI to deliver the personalization and experiences modern consumers expect, unlock previously unimaginable creative possibilities, and drive efficiency, revenue growth, profits, and societal impact that leadership demands.
If you don’t understand what AI is, and how it can be applied to your marketing, then you are at a distinct disadvantage moving forward.
But it’s not too late to get started.
Bringing the Power of AI to You (and One Million Marketers)
We are setting out on an educational journey to introduce AI to one million marketers by the end of 2026.
Why?
Because AI is changing the industry, the economy, society and your career, and not nearly enough marketers and business leaders have even a baseline understanding of the technology.
- What is it? Can you explain it in simple terms?
- What are sample use cases you can apply right now?
- How will it impact your career and your company in one year? Three years? Five years?
- How will it change the organizational structure of your marketing team?
- How can it be used to benefit your employees and customers?
- How can it go wrong?
- How should you get started?
According to our 2021 State of Marketing AI Report with Drift, 50 percent of marketers still consider themselves beginners when it comes to understanding AI terminology and capabilities. Another 37 percent say they are intermediate. But, my guess is most of the intermediates would struggle to answer the questions above.
Plus, I believe we have about five years until AI is infused into every piece of marketing software we use, and the winners and losers will be clear by then.
So, we have work to do, and you and your business have little time to delay.
Why One Million Marketers?
Quick math. There are approximately 10 million marketers in the world (according to LinkedIn Sales Navigator). One million is 10%, which seems possible to reach through content, webinars, conferences, podcasts, reports, interactive tools, and online courses; especially with the help of our partner universities, vendors and associations.
My hypothesis is that we can spark enough curiosity in those one million to get 10%, or 100,000, to take the next step (e.g. listen to an AI podcast, read a book, take an online course, demo an AI technology, attend a conference, subscribe to an AI newsletter, etc.).
Then we can turn 10% of those, or 10,000 people, into a community of next-gen marketers who join forces to create a movement. Together, we reinvent what it means to be a marketer, build smarter brands and make marketing more human (think “AI for good”).
Easy enough, right?
Intro to AI for Marketers Free Online Class
So how are we planning to be a catalyst to change the industry, and the world?
For starters, we are making it simple and free for everyone to take the first step.
With that in mind, we are launching an Intro to AI for Marketers Live class that makes basic AI education accessible to all, from college students to CMOs.
Register for Intro to AI for Marketers Live
Today, you can use AI to intelligently automate hundreds of repetitive marketing tasks to some degree, including: allocating budgets, developing ad copy, discovering insights in analytics, drafting social media updates, personalizing emails, qualifying leads, strategizing campaigns, testing creative, writing blog posts, and much, much more…
You don’t have to know computer science, data science, or machine learning to take advantage. You just have to understand what AI is and what it’s capable of doing.
This recurring 30-minute live online class shows you how. In it, we’ll teach the fundamentals of AI and show you exactly how to get started. During the class, you’ll learn:
- What AI is, and why it matters to marketers.
- How to identify AI use cases.
- How to find and evaluate AI technology vendors.
- How to classify AI applications within the five levels of the Marketer-to-Machine ScaleTM.
- What business outcomes AI can help you achieve.
- How to measure the value of AI tools on your company’s efficiency and performance.
- How to prepare your team for piloting and scaling AI.
In just 30 minutes, you can lay the foundation to transform your career and business using AI.
The course is presented live (almost) weekly, and there will be 15 minutes at the end of each session for Q&A and open discussion. It won’t be available on-demand, so be sure to register for a class you’re able to attend.
And, again, it’s completely free, so bring your colleagues, your agency, and your senior leadership.
You can become a next-gen marketer. Your journey starts today!
Paul Roetzer
Paul Roetzer is founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute. He is the author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence (Matt Holt Books, 2022) The Marketing Performance Blueprint (Wiley, 2014) and The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley, 2012); and creator of the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON).