So Your CEO Gave You an AI Mandate. Now What?

AI is quite the buzzword these days with many senior executives, including CMOs, finding themselves on the receiving end of pressure—or even an AI adoption mandate—from their CEOs. But once the directive has been given, where do you start? How do you ensure that your AI efforts create real, measurable impacts for your brand and the experience of your customers?

Marketers Not Using AI Are Already Behind

Over the last year, the conversation around AI in marketing has shifted. McKinsey reports that GenAI use in businesses has nearly doubled in the last 10 months. It’s no longer about whether to integrate AI into your marketing strategy but how quickly and effectively you can do so. A recent survey shows more than half of CMOs cite AI investment as a top 5 priority for the next year and three out of five are the driving force for GenAI in their organization, reflecting a seismic shift in expectations from the C-suite. 

But here’s the key point to remember: Not all AI use cases have the same impact. 

The low-hanging fruit of AI use cases, like AI for content generation, has been the natural first step for many marketing teams—it’s a safe, natural, and easy way to dip a toe in the water. However, to stay head of growth, CMOs must aim higher, using AI to reshape their funnel and redefine the customer experience—not just small-time productivity gains. The reality is if your AI strategy is only limited in scope and focus to automated content generation or basic data analysis, you’re likely going to fall behind your competition: A recent Gartner report suggests that by 2025, 75% of B2B sales organizations will be leveraging conversational AI assistants in their pipeline growth efforts.

Think Bigger: Reshape the Funnel with AI

CMO Council’s most recent data on business expectations show that the majority of CMOs remain steadfast in their priorities in 2024—top-line revenue growth and reducing operational costs, with AI technology-driven efficiencies, brand and customer value creation, and higher sales conversion rounding out the top 5.  Your GenAI strategy should have a significant impact on every single one of those expectations, rather than being relegated just to the “efficiency” box. 

There’s only one way to leverage AI in service of all these top 5 priorities: Conversational AI designed to activate your whole funnel.

AI assistants built on Conversational AI platforms are armed with both language generation abilities and advanced intent models that enable them to autonomously engage leads and customers, understand their intent and react accordingly. They act on triggers from prospect or customer activity to drive toward a business goal—for example, following up on inbound leads and using two-way dialog to qualify and nurture down funnel.

This isn’t a distant future vision: Forrester and VentureBeat both say AI agents are already in use for leading marketing teams. And with Salesforce jumping in with their Agentforce announcement, AI agents are the next non-negotiable for revenue teams.

The Right Solution for Enterprise Marketers

Conversica Revenue Digital Assistants are AI agents specifically designed for Marketing and Sales use cases, connecting with leads, prospects and customers on your team’s behalf. Here’s how:

1. Deliver Two-Way Conversations Throughout the Funnel: Revenue Digital Assistants bridge the “Conversation Gap” between your brand and potential customers. They engage each contact in a 1:1 dialog that feels personal and responsive across the whole lifecycle—even at the top of the funnel, which otherwise would be relegated to one-way blasts that do little to convince a lead to convert.
2. Engage Early at Scale: Two-way conversations are automatically triggered by actions (e.g., form fills, event attendance, scoring thresholds, etc.) and tailored to each individual with data from your CRM and MAP. This means brands can engage leads in a highly relevant, 1:1 interaction right from the start, ensuring no opportunity gets missed and providing the hyper-personalized experience today’s buyers expect.
3. Protect and Enhance Your Brand: Revenue Digital Assistants are trained on your brand’s data as part of Conversica’s unique blend of AI models, ensuring conversations stay on-brand and on-message. Our enterprise-grade Trustworthy AI guardrails ensure the highest level of accuracy, brand alignment, and security.

Experience is king, and AI is the tool to uplevel it. By engaging customers earlier in their journey, learning from their interactions, and continuously adapting, you can create an experience that sets your brand apart. The future of marketing lies in embracing this new buying model, where AI plays a central role in every customer interaction.

The CMO Funnel Files Bottom Line

Marketing leaders need to think bigger about how AI will transform their industry and the persistent growth directive—not just by creating content, but by reshaping the entire funnel. The time is now to use AI to reach higher in the funnel, deploy digital assistants, and ultimately, transform the way your brand engages with customers.

At the end of the day, experience still reigns supreme for consumers. GenAI gives you the tools to elevate that experience in ways that will set your brand apart. By embracing the new buying model, you can engage with potential customers from the very beginning of their journey, helping them define their problems and guiding them toward your solutions in a way that feels natural and authentic.

Don’t wait to leverage AI for your funnel—because your competitors certainly won’t.