“Being an AI pioneer comes with great responsibility. Personalization without invasion of privacy. Intelligent automation, without dehumanization. We can make marketing more intelligent and brands more human.” - MAICON 2019 Opening Keynote
Artificial intelligence presents ways for marketing agencies to create more value through automating, augmenting, and accelerating their operations. This automation results in increased profits, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
But, many agency leaders aren’t sure where to begin with AI.
At last, AI Academy for Marketers is here to help.
In case you aren’t familiar: AI Academy is an online educational platform that helps you understand, pilot, and scale AI. We created this platform to help marketers gain access to affordable, AI-focused education that advances learning and aids in AI implementation.
The Intelligently Automated Agency is one of the Academy’s deep-dive certification courses for members. In the course, Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) and Jessica Miller (@jessica_joellen) of PR 20/20 dive into how to make companies more profitable, competitive, and attractive to clients through AI.
Keep reading for an overview of how companies can get started using AI to boost agency profits.
What to Expect from the Course
This course was designed to help agencies uncover strategies that turn AI from a buzzword into a business development tool that can drive performance and profits for your team and clients.
Today, we see AI as the next evolution where we can show clients how to increase revenue and drive down costs with greater efficiencies and personalized experience at scale.
In this beginner-level, 3-hour certification, you will:
- Discover how AI can automate repetitive, manual tasks, freeing up talent to pursue higher value and higher profit activities, as well as increase margins.
- Enhance the value of the work you already do for clients by augmenting human creatives with machine systems to personalize, produce, and perform at scale.
- Uncover strategies to turn AI from buzzword into a business development tool that drives performance and opens up new profitable pathways.
The AI Agency Opportunity
Why is AI poised to be the next game-changer?
Think about your most successful paid media campaign. What were the results that proved to your agency and client that it was a success?
Now, think about how your team made that happen. How many hours were put into strategy, audience targeting, creative development, rounds of reviews, and measurement? It’s a lot and this equates to budget wasted.
There are now a surplus of smart systems (i.e. WordStream, Albert, Pattern89) that can help you automate these processes to create a better experience for the client. These systems enable brands to produce better results with greater efficacy than the manual process alone.
The potential of AI is there, but what is holding marketers back? Where do we begin?
How to Position Your Agency For Success
As you move forward with AI, the key factors to focus on are readiness, business strategy, culture and change, systems and processes, and capabilities.
1. Evaluate your team's AI readiness.
You can’t just turn AI on. The transformation of an intelligently automated agency takes time and effort through partnerships, learning, and pilot projects.
The first step to understand if your agency is ready for this step is to take the Microsoft AI Readiness & Your Organization survey.
After completing the survey, talk about the results with your team to kickstart those conversations around AI readiness.
2. Evolve your business strategy.
You don’t need an AI strategy, you need a smarter marketing strategy. Marketing is going to get smarter and so will the tools that come with it. As marketers, we have the choice to sit back and wait or be proactive in understanding how marketing is evolving. Ask yourself, “What impact will AI and marketing AI have on my agency in the next 2-5 years?”
3. Focus on culture and change.
When any transformation happens within your business, it is crucial to communicate the opportunities to your team and encourage collaborative conversations about the change. As a marketing pioneer, it is critical to foster a culture that thrives with evolution through understanding and open communication.
4. Review organizational systems and processes.
When reviewing your current systems and processes, center your attention on what is outdated and what needs to be improved. Examples of systems and processes include data storage, department silos, user manuals, information systems, and systems that enable other systems.
AI enables systems to share information and truly be interdependent.
5. Expand agency capabilities.
You need to equip your talent with what they need to succeed. We can do this through training, continuous learning, and collaborative conversations. The goal of expanding capabilities is to code curiosity into your culture, develop skill sets over time, and choose partners wisely.
Ready to discover these and other important AI concepts? Sign up for the AI Academy below.
Gianna Mannarino
Gianna is an intern for Ready North and Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. She is a senior at Ohio University studying Management Information Systems, Analytics, and Marketing.