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What might the marketing role of the future look like? As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, many of its hallmark strengths — such as content development, analytics and personalization — affect core components of marketing. Generative AI provides a $486-billion opportunity for marketers, according to McKinsey. However, terms like “slop,” referencing unwanted AI applications, highlight the mixed public perception to AI. Balancing these opportunities with ethical and business considerations complicates the situation for those aiming for AI-driven success. Given these and other AI and marketing trends, we look at some predictions, scenarios and opportunities for future AI marketing roles.
GenAI Will Make Marketing Techniques Generally Accessible
A new tool promising to upend the market isn’t new. Martech was overwhelming marketing with tooling before generative AI. For example, 50% of marketers in 2015 used five to 10 marketing tools regularly, while 50% of marketers in 2024 now use more than 50 tools. Even as AI copilots offer the promise of navigating product workflows on our behalf, the flexible nature of generative AI may provide broader capabilities more generally.
Using GenAI as mental assistants, smaller organizations now have additional “compute” to fill gaps in marketing thinking, strategy and communication, and individuals have an on-demand assistant to help address temporary cognitive obstacles. Knowing enough to be dangerous can become the default for many marketing roles, enabling a more self-sustaining knowledge system. The structure and framing of a marketing campaign are now directionally on-demand from a GenAI and becoming a commoditized technique, making creativity and experience-based craft even more of a differentiator.
Roles Shift Toward Marketing-as-a-Product
Marketing’s previous trend toward the technical may evolve into the technical-interdisciplinary when using AI tools. Using AI tools effectively requires skills in data analysis, creativity and strategy — leading to what AI researchers call human-centered AI. The simulatory nature of AI also enables a more experiential interaction with information about customers. One such application is the development of an internal chatbot by the work management company Asana to consistently communicate information about branding requirements.
By merging the multidisciplinary, technical and human-centered AI approach, marketing teams of the future are increasingly product teams.
Marketing leader Emily Kraemer emphasizes, “Marketing teams are becoming less and less like sales teams and more like product teams. If you keep thinking of marketing like a service organization to sales, you’ll get left farther and farther behind, and your growth will stall.”
Omnichannel experience, immersive experience design and other technical skills will likely serve marketing professionals well in this role. What might it look like to have a “Her”-like chatbot for a brand?
Increased Opportunities in Marketing for Cross-Functional Generalists and Experts
Do more with less is the LLM ops mantra. If an LLM + RAG system can provide 80% of the human might in a situation, leaning on the 80% as much as possible may mean the bar to a new marketing hire may now be that much higher. Or given time savings, existing marketing projects may be significantly expanded, requiring marketers to become more project management oriented. Specializing in one marketing niche or becoming a full-stack marketer are two clear career paths to position oneself. An expert can be more focused on the stage of a marketing problem, while a generalist can be focused on the marketing complexity and breadth.
For example, the European Travel company Holiday Extras used ChatGPT to extend the impact of their solo marketer, so they could localize copy for a variety of languages. Mirroring this, marketer Neil Patel suggests that smaller companies and freelancers may be better positioned to use AI due to less existing institutional overhead. Improved efficiency for nimble marketers can therefore mean both efficiency gains for existing initiatives and high-value experiments.
Human Personality and Creativity at the Forefront of the Marketing Role
The development of brand personalities and narratives will be increasingly critical, especially as generative AI saturates existing distribution channels. Fractional growth leader Libby Weissman emphasizes a disciplined and scientific approach to customer insights and analytics to cut through this noise: “Learn how to ask the right questions to unlock customers' true motivations, how to use AI to simulate the mindset of your various customer segments and to generate testable hypotheses.” An advanced understanding of a customer makes it easier to refine the customer niche and improve campaign performance.
Throughout this creative inquiry, AI can act as an on-demand assistant, helping identify the right marketing questions to ask and even over-analyzing information to save human attention. Knowing the right questions to ask means that constant learning and curiosity in marketing are important prerequisites. This may involve improving one’s own training data to effectively use AI tools to develop advanced ways of solving marketing problems.
The Marketing Role Will Adapt to Other Trends
Perhaps, as marketing author and leader Paul Roetzer suggests, non-AI businesses will be “obsolete,” as “all roles will be AI.” But AI is one trend of many. Professor Philip Kotler cites sustainability and “de-growth” as significant marketing trends as well as the techno-productization of the marketing role through SaaS and AI. Uncertainty is certain enough, and deciding on a marketing specialty and focus may be the most important decision for a marketer to make.
