marketingartificial intelligence
Redefining Marketing Seniority in the Age of AI: Why Adaptation Matters More Than Experience
What traps do traditional marketers fall into when they rely on past knowledge instead of exploring new AI capabilities?
Incorrect assumptions and stagnation. Past knowledge is great, but without layering it with AI, marketers put themselves in a position to be chasing current trends and user behaviors constantly.
As people adopt AI across all aspects of their lives, they begin to expect more, whether it’s quicker answers, higher quality, or more relevant information. Relying on past knowledge without the addition of AI can lead to marketing in ways that don’t resonate with current consumers and cause marketers to react too slowly to underperforming tactics.
Today, a marketer with just a few years of experience can run fully automated, personalized campaigns using AI. How does this change the definition of “seniority” in marketing?
Seniority is traditionally defined by length of time in a career, and for good reason: knowledge is gained with experience. The longer someone worked in the field, the more experience and working knowledge they had, making them more valuable. In most cases, this was the only way to gain that experience.
AI is quickly leveling that playing field in many areas. For instance, let’s say a team is running a paid ad campaign. The veteran marketer would traditionally be leading the team, using his experience to guide the design of the ad. They’d choose the copy, the creative, the target audience, etc. If the campaign was underperforming, they’d have to make assumptions for the reasons why and make changes accordingly. Today, AI tools can assist with all of these tasks by relying on large sets of data, helping to optimize campaigns before they go live, and then adjusting, if needed, once they do.
Marketers who master the AI tools necessary to run optimized marketing programs become the ones trusted to lead efforts moving forward. Experience has its place, but it no longer serves as a defining predictor of success.
You’ve said that marketers who don’t adapt will be left behind. What signs are you seeing today that confirm this shift is already happening?
Businesses are becoming either AI-first or integrating AI into their products and day-to-day processes. Those who don’t adapt to AI won’t understand the business and how to help it grow. To see this in the world, look at the description of any current job opening. Nearly everyone, whether it’s marketing, engineering, or sales, specifically mentions proficiency with AI tools as a requirement.
You’ve emphasized that AI won’t replace people, but people who use AI will replace those who don’t. How do you explain this distinction to marketing leaders who are hesitant?
Let’s look at it from a brand perspective. Let’s say a company wants to run a video campaign that helps with brand positioning in the market. There are nuances to a company’s brand, competitors, and current events that only humans know. AI won’t understand each of these and create a perfect campaign from A to Z. However, AI can help provide ideas, creative suggestions, targeting segment recommendations, and the tools to create the final product.
In this scenario, AI doesn’t replace humans; it helps them execute faster and smarter.
In your opinion, what are the areas of marketing where AI can boost performance without needing a full transformation?
This can happen at nearly every level of an organization. I already mentioned paid ads and the ability to produce content more quickly, and there are plenty more. Let’s look at email marketing.
Brands rely on automated emails because they generate 37% of all email sales from just 2% of messages sent. Traditionally, building automated email flows took time and best practice knowledge. That’s no longer the case. Email platforms offer pre-built workflows and email templates to streamline creation, and infuse AI throughout the process to create more efficient messaging based on individual brands.
What once took marketers days, if not weeks, to create (if they had the knowledge), can now be done in minutes by junior team members. This is the type of transformation that’s possible with AI.
You recommend that marketers make time each day to learn and experiment with AI. What does that look like in practice, 15 minutes, a daily workflow test, or something else?
There are many different AI tools and platforms, learning them all is next to impossible. Gradually increasing knowledge is the key to long-term success. I recommend people spend at least 15 minutes each day learning something new with AI. Of course, if you can spend more, you should.
Spending 15 minutes each day can easily be done by anyone. For example, let’s say you already use ChatGPT for something simple, like brainstorming ideas. Spend 15 minutes experimenting with the prompt and learning which ones produce more or less favorable results. Then, push the boundaries to see if you can get a “pie in the sky" result, even though it may not seem or be possible. Failing can help users understand the limits of a tool, which further informs them of alternate means of achieving a goal, whether it’s through promoting or combining the output with other tools.
If you have more time to invest each day, make a list of things you wish could be streamlined in your day-to-day or “genie in the bottle” projects you wish could be done, and start testing different tools to help you accomplish these goals. With AI, even failure is winning.
Looking ahead, what will differentiate marketers who thrive in an AI-driven future from those who fall behind?
The ability to stack information, combined with critical thinking. As I mentioned, learning how different platforms can achieve different goals is essential. This will be the first line of separation. However, if we assume many modern-day marketers will learn these new tools, there will be a need for a second set of differentiation. Here is where critical thinking, and maybe even experience, come into the equation.
If we have 20 marketers who understand the fundamentals and maybe even advanced use cases of different platforms, no one is ahead or behind. Using critical thinking to determine how different programs can benefit their own department while connecting the results to different areas, like sales, marketing, and customer success teams, is how marketers can prove value to an organization.
I mention experience here because while seniority may be redefined, experience is still experience. Those with experience tend to understand how different teams operate and see the bigger picture. Combining experience with critical thinking, marketers can determine when AI-generated outputs don’t perfectly align with organizational goals — something only humans can determine.
When marketers become reliant on AI and assume every output is “correct,” the result is blandness, unoriginality, and stagnation. This is what separates the pack.
