Three payoffs stand out in the use of AI in marketing: increased sales productivity, increased customer satisfaction, and lower marketing overhead costs. That’s according to data from The CMO Survey of U.S. marketing leaders. The amount gained depends on how long companies have been using the tools, their digital transformation stage, and their level of experimentation. The most common uses of AI (content personalization and creation) do not have the biggest payoffs.

Although the hybrid work model has been widely adopted among many businesses, the complications involving peer relationships and connections that it has introduced linger on. Relying on results from The CMO Survey, the authors derived a set of strategies to help leaders navigate organizational culture and the socialization of new employees during this era of digital transformation.

Companies have never before had such powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers. Yet too many firms operate as if they're stuck in the 1960s, an era of mass marketing, mass media, and impersonal transactions. To compete in an aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. That means products and brands must be made subservient to customer relationships. And that means transforming the marketing department-traditionally focused on current sales-into a "customer department" by: replacing the CMO with a chief customer officer, cultivating customers rather than pushing products, adopting new performance metrics, and bringing under the marketing umbrella all customer-focused departments, including R&D and customer service.