Content marketing
Social
Content
Foreword
No one doubts that generative AI will transform marketing and ecommerce practices. The debate, for me, isn’t if transformation will occur but when it will happen. What this research reveals is that different organisations are at very different stages of adoption. Sci-fi author William Gibson’s quote from 2003 seems spookily accurate: “The Future is already here…it’s just unevenly distributed.”
But while differences in maturity exist, there are three main categories of barrier that are preventing all marketing organisations from fulfilling the promise of this amazing technology: strategic alignment, technology and skills.
Here at Econsultancy, our mission is ‘Learning For Growth’. In this new era of generative AI, we believe that while the role of marketing hasn’t changed, the toolkit for how you do it most certainly has. Today’s marketers need to seamlessly blend evergreen capabilities such as strategic thinking, critical judgement, and creativity with evolving skills as highlighted in this report such as prompt engineering, content iteration and data analysis.
Today’s capable marketer is one who can integrate the power of GenAI into their role without forgetting that the fundamentals of brand building have stayed consistent for decades.
Paul Davies
Managing Director, Econsultancy
paul.davies@econsultancy.com
The relationship between GenAI adoption and competitive performance
One of the remarkable things about GenAI as a technology is how quickly it has been adopted. Less than five years since the release of Dall-e, the launch that really kicked off the GenAI boom, we find that half of marketers (50%) are now using these technologies daily as part of their job, with a further 35% reporting they use it at least weekly.
With the vast majority of marketers now utilising these tools to some degree, the conversation now shifts from adoption to effectiveness and, ultimately, ambition.
Market leaders are more likely to report higher levels of GenAI maturity
One of the key findings from this research is an increasingly clear relationship between competitive performance and AI maturity. Marketers whose organisations outperformed their competitors over the past year (market leaders) reported higher levels of AI maturity vs those who just kept pace with the market or lagged behind (market followers). Market leaders were much more likely to have moved out of the pilot phase with their GenAI solutions and be measuring ROI.
At least part of that performance seems to be driven by the effective use of these tools. Of the market leaders, 87% reported high levels of satisfaction with GenAI tools (met or exceeded expectations), ahead of market followers where over a third (35%) reported that either expectations were not met or that it was too early to tell (vs just 13% of market leaders).
This difference extends into where these technologies are being integrated, with market leaders being much more likely to have integrated them directly into the customer experience. These integrations are more complex and potentially higher-risk than productivity or internal use cases, but they also hold the greatest potential to create a competitive advantage.
Understanding the ambition to execution gap
Despite the pace of adoption, there is a disconnect between organisations’ ambitions with GenAI and where they are today, with almost all marketers (96%) reporting a significant gap between the business’s aims and the reality.
If GenAI is to achieve its promised transformative effect within organisations, that gap will need to be bridged.
- Technical (Navy): This spans concerns about the capabilities and security of
the tools themselves but also challenges around integration
with legacy systems (referenced elsewhere in the research). - Strategic (Yellow): Covering governance, investment and leadership.
- People (Pink): A lack of effective training and skills.
Skills and training are vital… but in many places missing
One of the greatest differences between market leaders and market followers was how effective the organisation’s generative AI skills development and training offer was.
Inadequate skills were not only among the top three challenges cited by marketers, but when comparing market leaders and market followers when it comes to GenAI, one of the greatest differences was how effective the training offer was.
Training also plays a vital role mitigating the other challenges shown in Figure 5. As risks around the reliability of the tools can be reduced through teams having a strong
understanding of how these technologies work, the knowledge of where they can be best applied and through the nurturing and application of critical thinking.
Econsultancy offers support for critical thinking as part of its suite of GenAI capability building solutions
The difference between marketers’ confidence levels and what they know reinforces the need for investment in skills and knowledge development. Though almost half of marketers (47%) described their GenAI knowledge as advanced or expert, when it came to a relatively simple knowledge test, only 4% got all the answers correct.[1]
The most pressing skills gaps identified by respondents were those most closely related to the day-to-day use of GenAI, with practical skills including prompting ranking first (44%), followed closely by how to use these tools within their workflows (43%). An understanding of how GenAI works (37%) and its strategic potential (34%) were also identified as gaps by over a third of marketers.
How to bridge the gap
For individual marketers, this research should act as a call to action to invest in your own GenAI skills, with 65% of marketers with hiring responsibilities describing these capabilities as essential or desirable in marketing and CX hires. Even within organisations, 38% of marketers believe that these skills will increasingly play a role in who gets selected for promotion.
Organisations that have not yet addressed how to upskill their teams are opening themselves up to significant risks. Not just in terms of misuse, or misapplication, but in terms of remaining competitive.
Get in touch
To find out more about how Econsultancy can help you bridge your GenAI skills gap and more, get in touch with Christian Reid, christian.reid@econsultancy.com.
Methodology
This research took place from July–August 2025 and surveyed marketers and CX professionals across a range of sectors and regions. Figures are rounded to the neared whole percentage and therefore may not always add up to 100%. For more details on the sample and methodology contact rose.keen@econsultancy.com.
About the author
Rose Keen, Content and Insight Director, Econsultancy
Rose Keen is the Content and Insight Director at Econsultancy. With over 15 years of media and business strategy experience, she has worked across a wide range of industries from automotive and advertising to food and fashion. She has a particular interest in the intersection between customer behaviour, cultural shifts and technology.
Find her on LinkedIn or contact her at rose.keen@econsultancy.com.
