Why marketers should be AI literate, if only for efficiency

According to LinkedIn, AI literacy will be the most in-demand skill in 2025. To be fair, that also ties in with many of the conversations I've been having, and it got me thinking about how this directly impacts marketers and the marketing function as a whole.

I started seeing a lot of posts last year urging marketers to fully embrace AI so that they would not get left behind in their careers. But what exactly about AI should they be embracing, and is AI just a catch-all term here?

Sure, I've embraced the AI revolution and played around with the tools that marketers are told we need to and apart from a few, I think that a lot of the hype we see stems from the AI vendors themselves. Creating FOMO sells, clearly.

It's the LLMs, such as ChatGPT where marketers will see the most value and ensure that processes can be as efficient as possible, generating ideas for campaigns, looking at messaging differentiations in A/B testing, and just generally being a loyal assistant to the plethora of solo marketing teams out there. While I don't see the value in a full content strategy yet, operationally, I urge marketers to embrace it.

What kind of AI skills are in demand?

However, what are some of the AI skills that are in demand for marketers? What are some of the core skills that are essential for the current hiring managers?

 Well, I did what any marketer with extensive experience since the advent of modern internet marketing would do, I Goog...

Just kidding, I asked ChatGPT "Can you summarise across all current open Head of Marketing jobs in the UK that if AI is mentioned, how the job listing wants AI to be used?"

And the results:

• Developing and implementing AI marketing strategies

• Integrating AI solutions into marketing processes

• Leading AI focused teams

• Collaborating with clients on AI applications

• Overseeing AI project management

Anyone else seeing what I'm seeing? 

You could take AI out of all of those requirements, and it would still be your run of the mill marketing role.

So, what does this mean for the future of the AI marketer?

My thoughts are that businesses know they need AI skills in house to keep up and, like with other new trends, it lands solely in the lap of the marketing team to figure it out what it is and how the business will use it.

I've worked with a number of business leaders and founders to really get to the what and why of this. What skills to you want to see for your marketing leaders and why is it AI? Usually it's because they don't want to get left behind; frankly, that makes sense in a wider business context.

So, from the marketer perspective, those skills you've been honing, that quick prompt you've been running in the background to save an hour a week, those ad or subject line variation tests - they're going to set you apart from the rest. 

Efficiency is the name of the game when doing more with less and those AI skills are going to come in handy no matter how small as to some it's going to look like you're performing actual magic.

From a business leader and founder perspective, let's get a little more prescriptive what kind of AI skills that you want to see from marketing - do you want them to keep in touch with a technical business or do you want them to teach you how to use ChatGPT for efficiencies? They are very different things.