Upskilling Marketing Organizations Capabilities and Evolving Agency Relationships

AI-Enabled Productivity is Reshaping How Marketing Organizations Operate

73% of marketing organizations expect AI to have a ‘high impact’ on their content marketing operating model, as found through the latest Alexander Group B2B marketing industry research. Gen AI was a new frontier for commercial leaders in 2024, with significant excitement and endless potential use cases without battle tested ‘best practices’ to rely on. Many organizations are experimenting with new AI-driven features of their current tech stack and/or seeking ‘best of breed’ solutions to drive productivity at specific elements of their buyer journey. Alexander Group’s latest media research indicates advertisers are leveraging AI capabilities to regain greater ownership of their marketing motions with streamlined content development, creative services and market research capabilities built in-house.

One key impact of this trend is that marketing organizations are re-evaluating their relationship with agencies as the pace of ‘always on’ marketing, and expanded digital capabilities are straining the original advertiser-agency value proposition alignment. Marketing organizations have never been more enabled with tools to efficiently design and deploy campaigns, test concepts, evaluate progress and pivot on a dime. Media industry leaders are reexamining the ROI from their investment in agency partnerships and the opportunity cost of building internal capabilities to drive long-term value.

“We spent more time managing agencies than the campaign”

– B2B Marketing Executive

Deploying resources into high ROI activities is a goal of all commercial leaders. As marketers look to execute their 2025 operating plan, consider the organizational capabilities that will drive your success over the next 3-5 years and align partnerships to enable both near-term and long-term execution. The agency model is evolving to meet the new advertiser landscape, which will need to provide more comprehensive solutions and improved customer experience.

People Create Results, Technology Scales Impact

Advertisers seeking to own greater aspects of their marketing engine need to scale not only day-to-day operators, like program managers and product marketers, but also the marketing operations capabilities to manage a growing MarTech stack and drive operational effectiveness. To help identify the key next step(s) to upskilling your marketing organization, assess the current operating model and capabilities against a commercial excellence framework to prioritize your growth pathways.

~70% of marketing organizations are increasing investments in 2025 and are looking to deploy additional capital evenly across people and program spend. Organizations looking to deliver enhanced and targeted customer experiences are revisiting their customer journey to identify execution gaps and invest in roles to curate value positions and deliver tailored programming to high-value customers. Leading marketing organizations are increasing capacity and specialization across product marketing, content development and marketing operations functions to better manage omnichannel capabilities, invest in longitudinal knowledge and upskill their team’s competencies.

While headcount gains will improve capacity, commercial leaders are leveraging AI to drive productivity and unlock burdened capacity across their teams. AI is impacting the way marketers conduct day-to-day activities and accelerate production, however managing a growing tech stack with a ‘best-of-breed’ world is not a simple task. Leaders need leverage their revenue/marketing operations and revenue enablement functions to routinely evaluate technology decisions, future and past, to reduce overlap in capabilities and drive optimal utilization.

Based on Alexander Group client work throughout 2024, successful execution of AI capabilities is equal parts cutting-edge technology and operating model, training and enablement. As new technologies are evaluated and deployed, re-examine the operating model to monitor effectiveness and invest appropriately to upskill the people who deliver results.

Agencies Need to Adapt to New Operating Models

What does this mean for agencies? Agencies need to assess their customer experience landscape and level up their end of the bargain as their competitive set has expanded to include “DIY” capabilities now available to their stable customer base. Publishers and B2B marketing organizations are creating more in-house capabilities to deliver what they’ve historically relied on agencies to deliver. While marketing organizations are attempting to create value by taking more ownership over means of production, select agencies are realizing this trend and identifying gaps in how their offering set and operating model meets their customer needs. Agencies are responding by investing in commercial leadership to improve the customer experience, bring the full suite of their portfolio to market and manage a rapidly evolving competitive landscape.

Create Success in 2025: Aligning Customers, Capabilities and Offerings

As Q1 of 2025 comes to a close, now is the time to re-evaluate your current operating model and how well your capabilities and offerings align to your customer needs. Diagnosing where gaps exist in the customer experience will help drive investments that impact 2025 results and lay the foundation for success.