Salesforce has released its 'State of Marketing' report, sharing insights from over 4,800 marketing leaders across 29 countries, including 250 from India. 

The report covers the latest trends on how marketers are evaluating and implementing AI into their operations; approaching data acquisition, maintenance, and application strategies; and ensuring customer trust and security as vulnerabilities increase. 

Implementing/leveraging AI is marketers’ topmost priority on a global scale, as well as their biggest challenge, according to the study. 

The report indicates that while 66% of marketers in India have access to real-time data to execute a campaign, 59% need the IT department’s help to do so.  

Generative AI may be relatively new, but marketers have been quick to add it to their arsenal. Globally, over 50% marketers say they currently use predictive and generative AI — and nearly all marketers plan to use both types within the next 18 months. 

Other key insights from the research include: 

• 79% of marketers in India are already experimenting with or have fully implemented AI into their workflows.
• 28% of marketers in India are fully satisfied with their ability to unify customer data sources.
• 58% of marketers in India track customer lifetime value (CTV).
• 92% of marketers in India say they have a clear view into marketing’s impact on revenue.

AI implementation is also a point of differentiation, according to the report: High performing marketing teams are 3.1 times more likely than underperformers to have fully implemented AI within their operations. The three most popular AI use cases among marketers in India are: Getting performance analytics, generate content, programmatic advertising and media buying.

Locally, improving use of tools and technologies is India marketers’ top priority, while building/retaining trust with customers is their top challenge. 

Businesses have long struggled to connect disparate data points to create consistent, personalised experiences across customer journeys. Yet as third-party cookies are depreciated and AI proliferates, that quest is only becoming more critical — and challenging. Marketers in India use an average of nine different tactics to collect data, with customer service data being the most common.

Full personalisation remains a work in progress, says the report. To meet rising customer expectations around personalisation, marketers are graduating beyond broad audience segmentations, like location or age, to more specific identifiers like individual preferences or past interactions.  

There’s also a difference between how the highest- and lowest-performing marketing teams adapt, says the report. High performers in India fully personalise across an average of 6.0 channels, compared with others who fully personalised across 5.0.

Marketers seek unified analytics. There is no shortage of data sources, but putting that data to work is a challenge — especially when it demands a holistic or long-term view of data, according to the report.

Nishant Kalra, VP - digital, Salesforce India, said, “Today, data and AI hold the promise of helping marketers reach customers in new, more engaging ways, but they are far from reaching their potential. Eager to make the most of every customer engagement, marketers deploy a wide variety of tactics to collect clues for better audience understanding. Today it is evident, sales and marketing can no longer be viewed as just another function, they are the very engines and drivers of growth for any business. As marketers in India are prioritising AI and data capabilities, building and retaining customer privacy and trust poses a significant challenge. Insights from the report are valuable to marketers across the country to help them outdo their competition by embracing AI and data, to drive loyal customers, while mitigating trust, privacy and security challenges.”