How to Prepare for The New AI Marketing Era

Two-thirds of Australian workers now use generative AI tools at least a few times a week, and even small and medium-sized businesses are embracing the tech to create content, with around 49% using it to write social media posts and marketing material.

Major organisations have already moved beyond experimentation. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for instance, has deployed AI across more than 50 use cases, from customer service to personalised product offers.

This rapid adoption stresses a critical point: marketers must be ready for a future where AI is embedded in almost every part of their work.

As marketers work to incorporate AI into their daily jobs, several challenges are emerging.

Privacy and data security are major concerns. A Deloitte survey found that 75% of Australian businesses worry about confidential or personal data leaking through AI tools.

Another issue is accuracy. Generative AI can sometimes hallucinate, meaning it may generate confident but completely false information. Many organisations are concerned about factual inaccuracies in AI-generated content, which can harm reputations and cost money.

Maintaining a brand's voice and style also poses a challenge. Without supervision or critical review, AI-generated content can lack the nuance and emotional depth of human writers. It can come across as bland, formulaic, or simply off-message.

Despite the challenges, the opportunities are too big to ignore. AI can improve campaign performance, boost productivity, and save both money and time.

The tech can also augment creativity. Having a blank when thinking of an idea? Ask the bot for 50 or 100 options, and it will produce them in seconds. Even if none are good, just the help in the brainstorming process can generate great ideas.

Professionals can also use it to test more campaign variations and refine messaging in ways that would have been too costly or time-consuming before.

This transformation also creates new career pathways. Skills like AI strategy and prompt engineering are already becoming valuable additions to CVs.

Many professionals worry that AI will impact employment or salaries in Marketing. It's easy to see why. Just ask an AI tool to create an ad script or image to see the results, and you'll quickly join those feeling anxious.

But use the tools long enough, and you'll also start to see their limitations and that there is no magic—to truly benefit from AI advances, marketers need to learn, use, and invest in them.

This is good news, as it suggests robots are unlikely to replace humans anytime soon.

But it's also a reminder that the technology can create a significant gap between pros who master it and those who don't. Sometimes it sounds like scaremongering or a sales pitch, but you don't want to find yourself on the wrong side of the AI skills we all need to develop. 

Assuming you're convinced, here comes the good news. There are loads of ways you can learn and dive into AI.

Short courses and microcredentials offer a practical, flexible way to build the skills to thrive. For example, RMIT Online's Artificial Intelligence in Marketing course helps students learn how to automate campaigns, personalise customer journeys, and integrate AI into broader marketing strategies.

Data literacy is another critical area, enabling marketers to use data to drive decisions effectively.

Understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI tools is equally important. Key skills will include knowing how to prompt tools like ChatGPT, critically edit AI outputs, and spot inaccuracies.

All that said, foundational marketing strategy skills remain essential.

It's increasingly clear that marketers need to know how to work without AI to be able to use it critically and ensure campaign quality and accuracy.

The rise of generative AI marks one of the most profound shifts in marketing's history. But while the tools are powerful, they still have limitations and require human insight, perspective, and ethical judgment.

Marketers who invest in learning today will craft the most effective, engaging, and responsible campaigns tomorrow.