How AI will transform the marketing engine and how you can monetize the possibilities

AI is expected to increase sales productivity by 30% in 2025, and 84% of marketers believe that leveraging AI will enhance their marketing efforts. The year ahead is going to see AI increasingly shape and influence how brands build and execute their marketing programs. It will also see more scrutiny placed on how organizations monetize their AI investments.  

B2B marketers will consequently double down on ways they can “do more for less.” AI already provides a wealth of opportunities to enrich existing services and speed up the creative process with GenAI. Marketers will now look to use the right tools and deploy solutions to capitalize on these opportunities to greater effect to see how much measurable real change they can drive. At the same time, it’s likely they will also start to recalibrate how AI can simplify and extend the services they offer. This will reduce the overall cost of sale, a savings that we expect will be passed on to customers in a bid to provide a more competitive point of difference.  

According to the Metia Insight team, who analyzed the commercial conversations of CxOs around the subject of AI, organizations are already starting to reevaluate their strategies. We expect this trend to accelerate in 2025 as they focus on how they can measure and improve the ROI of their transformation initiatives, especially when it comes to AI adoption.  

Establishing ROI frameworks 

Our data suggests that leaders are increasingly emphasizing the need for structured ROI frameworks before diving into AI adoption. Many will also need to reevaluate their ambitions to ensure they devote their resources to initiatives that deliver realistic and achievable results as well as value.  

In 2024, we saw B2B leaders experiment with AI in bold and innovative ways. Many for the first time, and all with varying levels of success. These “experiments” demonstrate a great willingness to innovate and break new ground, but they may not all have been done with as much regard for the bottom line as we will likely see going forward.  

Strategic implementations 

If 2024 was a year of experimentation and extensive investment announcements, like ServiceNow’s major commitment to invest £1.15 billion in the UK over the next five years, then 2025 will be a year for genuine and considered implementation. Many CxOs will move with more strategic focus toward practical AI integration across a suite of products and services. And they will look to advance their AI adoption journey from navigating challenges and identifying the “right” approach to optimizing and overseeing major changes to ensure they are positioned as a leader in their field. We therefore expect businesses to place greater emphasis on how they can improve revenue while refocusing their growth strategies around their customers to become “more human” and resonant.  

Experimentation to transformation 

Our findings also show there’s an increasing focus on information gathering and skills investment to help navigate the best way to stay competitive and ethical. For those on a more advanced AI journey, our data indicates that many CxOs will look to embed AI into their growth strategies—seeing AI not as a tool but as a driver of long-term success. This effort must include careful consideration of how to mitigate bias while balancing innovation with oversight, especially when it comes to navigating ethical complexities.  

For the 75% of marketers that are already experimenting with or have fully implemented AI into their workflows, 2025 will likely see big transformations in how marketing engines are powered and operate. AI will continue to shape and influence decision-making, spur content creation, and help hone or simplify processes. But how organizations find the right balance presents an interesting conundrum.  

Getting the balance right 

As leaders realize that ROI from AI investments will take longer than they anticipated, it’s possible their impatience with AI ROI could prompt some enterprises to prematurely scale back investments. That approach could prove to be a long-term disadvantage to growth and even impact their competitive edge in an increasingly challenging marketplace. To forestall such retrenchment, AI adoption strategies should be built with long-term ROI targets in mind. 

With budgets becoming more restrictive and the appetite for innovation increasing, finding the right balance will be key. AI expansion is inevitable, but the AI adoption journey will need to become more considered. Changes to the marketing engine must be rooted in identifying the right enhancements and maximizing profitability.  

Download Metia's B2B Marketing Trends Report here.