Andrea Fryrear is CEO and cofounder of AgileSherpas, a leading consultancy for building modern marketing operations that are AI-ready.
Marketers are widely acknowledged to be among those greatly affected by AI, which has made many of us race blindly into haphazard adoption. While some action is usually better than none, marketers risk disrupting their already chaotic processes if they don’t approach AI strategically.
At my company, we’ve been asking marketers around the world about how they get work done for eight years now. But this year, we decided it was time to really dive into AI for the first time. What we found in our State of Agile Marketing Report is that one group of marketers was more likely to have adopted AI and see positive results. Peeling back the layers, we learned there’s a clear set of agile practices, mindsets and approaches that can increase marketing teams’ likelihood of productivity, prioritization and AI adoption.
My company provides agile training for marketing teams, and I believe the lessons we learned this year can be used to inform how businesses approach work management, even outside of marketing.
The Challenges Of AI Adoption
Today, the pressure to adopt and integrate AI into business processes can be overwhelming. It’s no wonder that our report found only 7% of the 430 marketers surveyed said they weren’t considering AI at all. But, despite the fact that 93% of marketers want to integrate AI, only 17% have fully worked it into their marketing processes.
So what’s stopping them?
First, they’re overwhelmed by an endless number of AI tools. From 2023 to 2024 alone, the number of marketing technology products increased by more than 27%, with many of those solutions featuring AI. I’ve learned through conversations with marketers that many are also concerned about compliance and wondering how to approach the AI integration process. It can all feel like trying to drink from a firehose, except the firehose itself is also moving, and there’s a big timer letting them know they need to finish drinking before their competitors do.
But despite these challenges, some teams are figuring out how to turn that firehose where they need it to go.
What Enabled Marketers To Integrate AI Into Their Processes
One of the most surprising takeaways from our report was how much a team’s level of agility could impact their ability to fully integrate AI. “Fully agile” teams were more than three times as likely to have done so compared to their less agile counterparts. This aligns with 2021 research from McKinsey, which found that “highly successful agile transformations” led to improvements in efficiency, employee engagement and operational performance, as well as “turbocharged innovation.”
But besides agility, what practices enabled marketers who called themselves “extremely successful” with AI adoption to excel? We found they had more leadership support and agile training, focused on fewer high-value activities and enjoyed greater autonomy. This environment enabled these marketers to rigorously test and experiment with AI. Instead of simply adopting whatever AI tool their leaders told them to, greater autonomy enabled marketers to figure out what worked for them. As a result, we saw those higher AI integration rates.
This tells me that giving teams the tools and culture they need to solve as complex a problem as AI integration really makes a difference.
How To Develop Practices That Translate To AI Success
Knowing that agile, autonomous and supported marketing teams can perform in all these ways is great, but what about knowing how to unlock those benefits? We asked how people educated themselves about agility, and many respondents used free and paid self-paced video learning, agile certification courses, written content, attended conferences and worked with coaches. However, leaders can go beyond this. I recommend:
Mindset Over Practices
The bigger takeaway for leaders is that while agile practices are important, their foundation is always mindset. The first step to unlocking all of these benefits is to think like an agile leader. For example, instead of stepping in to directly “help” your teams with AI adoption, figure out what tools and training they need, provide them and give them space to figure things out. Micromanagement isn’t what teams need here.
Focus And Prioritization
A part of that agile mindset is ruthlessly prioritizing your work. For AI integration, this means not letting perfect become the enemy of good. For example, accept that you’re better off running a test on a tool and learning something as opposed to waiting weeks and weeks to find the perfect tool to test.
The reason this is so important is that each time you experiment with a new AI tool or use case, you’ll gain valuable insights. Those insights can then be applied to the next test. In my experience, the value of waiting for a better tool or use case to test rarely outweighs the benefits of gaining those insights fast, particularly in a space as fast-moving as AI.
Navigating Compliance
Another common hurdle leaders need to overcome is compliance. There’s no getting around the reality that navigating compliance with AI is tricky, but treating compliance or legal teams as stakeholders can help. That means involving them in AI adoption early and seeking their input at a regular cadence.
When compliance teams are actively involved in the AI adoption process, you get more mutual understanding. Compliance can see what challenges the teams implementing and testing AI are up against, while those teams are better able to see what compliance is trying to do.
The Path Forward
So, whether you’re a marketer or not, this data shows a clear path forward. Fully integrating AI into your processes can help you remain competitive in today’s landscape, but getting there requires giving teams the support they need to cultivate agile mindsets and behaviors.
Once marketing teams can embrace experimentation, continuous improvement, focus and prioritization, and autonomy, they’re uniquely positioned to thrive in an AI-first business environment.
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