In marketing, there are a few constants: the boundless creativity of our teams, the quest to prove ROI, and the delicate balance between art and science at the heart of it all. But today, the rules of engagement are changing at a speed we’ve never seen before, and marketing’s remit is expanding just as fast.
Our tenth State of Marketing report from Salesforce captures this pivotal moment. The rise of AI agents is no longer a future concept—it’s a reality that drove $262 billion in online sales this past holiday season alone. However, this growth reveals a critical “execution gap.”
The Data-First Foundation
Looking at the top priorities for marketers today, AI occupies the top two spots: implementation and operationalisation. While it’s encouraging to see the industry embracing AI to drive efficiency, there is a significant risk in prioritising the tool over the foundation.
You cannot scale AI effectively without a unified data strategy. Today’s customers move effortlessly between websites, messaging apps, social platforms, and in-store, and they expect seamless, real-time interactions at every turn.
The Execution Gap
The old marketing playbook—built around broad, one-way campaigns—no longer applies. Today’s customers don’t want campaigns; they want conversations. While 83% of marketers acknowledge this, 69% admit they struggle to respond quickly enough to meet that demand.
At the heart of this gap is data. It is the backbone of agentic AI, yet 98% of marketing teams report at least one data-related barrier to personalisation. When data is fragmented or trapped in silos, AI simply cannot deliver the relevant experiences customers expect.
The complexity here is real. Agentic marketing requires integrating data from an average of seven different sources. Without unifying that data, AI cannot deliver the personalised, real-time experiences customers expect. The result? 51% of marketers say campaigns still feel generic, according to our survey.
What High Performers Do Differently
Some organisations are already showing what success looks like. High-performing marketing teams have made one critical shift: they’ve done the hard work of connecting their data and developing AI fluency.
Compared to their peers, these teams report 20% increases in ROI and customer satisfaction, using AI agents to provide round-the-clock responsiveness at a scale that human teams alone cannot manage.
Perhaps the most striking finding is the human impact. Marketers using AI agents are reclaiming around eight hours a week—an entire working day given back to focus on strategy, storytelling, and creativity. These are the marketers who are starting to close the execution gap: not by replacing people, but by giving them back the time to do what they do best.
The Future Outlook
For CMOs and marketing leaders, the path to realising this potential depends entirely on the foundations built today. More than 80% of leaders report growing confidence and curiosity about AI, but moving from curiosity to results requires investing in unified data and strong governance.
By designing processes that fully embrace AI-powered ways of working, we can move beyond mere efficiency to deliver more relevant, timely, and human experiences at scale. AI is transforming how we work, but it doesn’t change what great marketing is. It simply raises the bar for delivering it.
Read more:
- Why 77% of marketing leaders are redesigning departments for AI agents
- How Salesforce is quantifying the real value created in the agentic enterprise
- Why the agentic enterprise needs an operating system, not just a model
