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During the past year, many marketers had to operate with reduced budgets due to the challenging macroeconomic conditions. Despite working with fewer resources, performance expectations remained as high as ever. It was a pressure-cooker environment much like the kitchen from the hit TV show The Bear. “I need more MQLs, chef!”
Simultaneously, artificial intelligence technology was taking off. You couldn’t scroll through your newsfeed without seeing an article about how AI was writing academic essays, trying legal cases, managing investment portfolios, or even diagnosing diseases. It was clear that AI was poised to revolutionize industries and change the way we work.
To adapt to the challenging macroeconomic environment in 2023, some marketers used their budgets to invest in artificial intelligence solutions. The tools helped them increase productivity, unlock new first-party insights, improve customer experiences, and more.
Now, as recession fears dwindle and the economy stabilizes in 2024, marketers will have bigger budgets at their disposal. As a result, many will double down on their use of AI. Our recent State of AI in Digital Marketing Report found that a whopping 90% of marketers plan to increase their AI investments in the coming year.
Keep reading to see key results from our study, and to learn how AI can give your marketing team an edge over the competition.
While some are apprehensive about our current AI revolution — warning of job displacement, plagiarism concerns, and apocalyptic scenarios — marketers remain optimistic. They’ve seen the way it can automate repetitive tasks and increase productivity, and they know these features will be the key to outperforming the competition.
In our survey, nearly all respondents said they’re more optimistic about AI than last year.
The recession fears we experienced in the past two years are dying down. Economists predict that the economy will stabilize in 2024 and, as a result, many companies are loosening the purse strings of their marketing budgets.
Marketers are eager to spend their budgets on AI in 2024. Nearly 90% of respondents said that they will increase their investment in AI next year and an equal number said they will have a budget dedicated to AI-powered martech.
Smaller companies will invest more in AI than larger companies with 42% of those at companies with fewer than 1,000 employees saying they will significantly increase their AI investment in 2024 compared to 27% at companies with over 1,000 employees.
While marketers have the budget and the desire to invest in new AI technologies, they’re still facing barriers to adoption. New technology isn’t without its risks, and black box AI algorithms make marketers nervous about how their data is being handled.
Beyond data security concerns, some marketers lack the knowledge to implement new AI tools. This is a common issue, as AI technology is evolving at a rapid rate and it takes a good deal of self-teaching to stay abreast with the latest advances. Others marketers cited their inability to prove that the returns driven by AI tools would be worth the implementation costs.
Many marketers are ramping up their ad spend for 2024, and competition is looking fierce. To stand out in this saturated landscape and maximize the impact of their advertising budgets, leading digital marketers use conversation intelligence AI. The solution gives you complete attribution for the phone leads that your marketing efforts drive, so you can implement the same data-driven strategy you use for clicks. As a result, you can allocate your spend to the campaigns that are driving the highest-quality leads — both online and over the phone.
Conversation intelligence also uses AI to gather deep insights from phone conversations at scale. This first-party data is particularly valuable in today’s shifting privacy landscape, as regulators continue to put more restrictions on the use of third-party data. You can use the powerful insights you capture from phone conversations to build stronger customer profiles and develop more sophisticated remarketing strategies. Below some common retargeting strategies marketers implement with Invoca data:
Best of all, conversation intelligence isn’t just another tool to add to an already-crowded tech stack — it has deep integrations with the tools you use every day, including Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Salesforce, and many more.
It’s no secret that getting buy-in for a new software tool at your organization can be a challenge — especially when that tool uses AI. As we uncovered in our survey, the top barriers to AI adoption include data security concerns, lack of knowledge of AI solutions, implementation costs, and ROI is unclear. In this section, we’ll unpack how you can overcome these barriers to adoption to get buy-in for Invoca within your organization.
Our survey found that the most common AI adoption barrier marketers face is data security concerns. Many AI solutions are black box, meaning there isn’t any transparency into how customer data is being used. In some cases, AI companies transfer data to a third party for processing, which can create security concerns for marketers.
If you come across this objection, you can rest assured that Invoca is fully committed to complying with applicable state and international data privacy laws, ensuring that customer information remains protected and secure. We’re SOC 2 Type 2 certified, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant. We do not share customer data with third parties, and our solution automatically redacts sensitive personal data from your customers’ call transcripts. Learn more about our security compliance and data privacy practices on this page.
Some AI tools throw marketers into the deep end without any support, leaving them to sink or swim. Invoca, however, provides dedicated customer success managers who help customers not only get the solution up and running, but continually optimize it to improve performance over the long haul.
Here’s what Taylor Pawley, Director of Marketing at Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking had to say about the support they received from Invoca: “Working with the Invoca team has been fantastic. Everyone is invested in the success of the customer, and they’ve really helped us get the most out of the platform.”
We also give marketers the resources they need to become conversation intelligence experts — we offer a certification course and have an active online customer community where users share tips, advice, and best practices.
Some software tools have complicated implementation processes that call for ripping and replacing old technology infrastructure and building from scratch. This can be extremely costly, as it can require outside experts to assist with the process, and it can cause downtime on critical systems. Invoca, on the other hand, does not require you to change any of your existing infrastructure — it layers over whatever existing telephony you have in place without any interruptions.
While purchasing a new software solution always comes with a cost, sometimes it can be far more costly to do nothing and continue business as usual. For example, many marketing teams are running their programs based on assumptions — they’re guessing how many phone leads their campaigns drive, how valuable those phone leads are, and what the best tactics are to generate more of them. These assumptions can be costly and can cause teams to run inefficient or downright ineffective marketing campaigns.
Want to see how much your assumptions may be costing you? Use our Marketing Assumptions Cost Calculator to get an estimated dollar amount!
Invoca helps leading brands stop making assumptions and start making revenue gains. Our customer list includes DIRECTV, Renewal by Andersen, AutoNation, and more. Want to see all the incredible results Invoca has driven for customers? Read the stories on our customers page.
Want to learn more about how digital marketers plan to use AI in 2024? Check out the full, uncut State of AI in Digital Marketing Report here.
