Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every industry; it has already dominated the field of marketing. In light of this, IBM Watson Marketing released a report that says that moving into 2019, CMOs and digital agencies are reimagining the marketing function, driven by a growing need to structure data to enable actionable, real-time decision making.
The two key highlights of the report are:
- The rise of AI in marketing has led many CMOs to reimagine their departments.
- Companies will begin to hire a director of marketing data and other marketing data professionals in 2019.
Data has been a foundational piece of the puzzle for successful marketers, helping to advance customer segmentation, personalization, and relevant messaging to customers and prospects.
The report says that the massive surge in information available will lead to the rise of the role of “Director of Marketing Data” and other data-related marketing roles in cutting-edge organizations in 2019. These professionals will work with tech vendors and internal teams on data integration, as well as to create processes, rules, and procedures to ensure that critical data is collected and integrated into a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for use.
Along with these new roles, marketing professionals will look for solutions that are open and easy to integrate via APIs and pre-built connectors, the report said. “Those companies where marketing struggles to partner with IT, Customer Support and e-commerce and to integrate relevant data across channels, functions, and systems will essentially be limiting their AI marketing systems from making accurate or reliable decisions and recommendations,” it noted.
“It’s not often an entire profession experiences a sea change the likes of which has profoundly impacted all facets of marketing, but we are in that moment,” said Sylvia Vaquer, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of SocioFabrica. “This transformation fueled by AI-powered inferential connections provides a rare opportunity to re-architect the whole ‘marketing house,’ but it’s critical to have practical knowledge to capitalize on it.”
Scott Brinker – the Vice President of Platform Ecosystem at inbound marketing platform HubSpot shared through an email that he agrees “with the concept more than the label.”
He added that “most marketing operations and technology leaders have been focused on this data architecture mission as part of their domain.”
While there is “definitely room for specialists here,” Brinker said, it would be better to roll up this position into the larger team rather than “further fragment the modern marketing department.”
