The HubSpot Blog’s State of AI Report [Key Findings from 1300+ Business Professionals]

Whether you’re already using AI in your role or still on the fence, there’s no denying that the best way we work is about to alter drastically.

Identical to computers revolutionized the workplace within the late 1900s, AI’s ushering in a recent era that not only makes us more productive, but possibly even happier.

AI isn’t here to take over our jobs, but by saving the common skilled a whopping 2.5 hours a day, AI helps us spend more time on probably the most impactful, creative, and enjoyable parts of our roles.

We surveyed 1,350 professionals across business departments to learn more about attitudes towards AI, the way it’s already used, and the impact it can have in the long run.

Key AI Survey Findings

1. AI unlocks growth — even in a troublesome economic climate. 

AI became accessible to the masses just as businesses began to struggle to maintain up with inflation and budgetary pressures.

By boosting worker productivity and effectiveness, AI allows corporations to do more with less.

Marketers using generative AI save a mean of not less than three hours on every bit of content they make.

Across the broader business, sales professionals save two hours and quarter-hour a day using AI to automate manual tasks, while service professionals save greater than 2 hours a day using generative AI for rocket responses.

This makes business leaders highly optimistic about AI, with 68% saying it may well help their company scale in a way that might be unattainable without it.

65% think if it was fully implemented, their business would see unprecedented growth, and one other 65% see AI having an identical impact on productivity as the economic revolution had.

About 62% of leaders have already invested in AI for his or her employees to make use of. 71% of them report a positive ROI and 72% say it makes their staff more productive.

2. AI enables more time for probably the most impactful work.

95% of pros using AI say it helps them spend less time on manual tasks, spend more time on an important parts of their role (88%), the parts of their job they enjoy most (85%), and on the creative points of their role (83%).

Our marketing trends 2023 survey shows that marketers spend a mean of 5 hours a day on manual, administrative, or operational tasks.

AI allows us to stop doing those tedious tasks and spend more time on high-impact activities we actually enjoy.

3. AI is extremely effective across industries.

It’s not nearly saving time — business professionals using AI are simpler at their jobs.

For marketers, generative AI enables them to create significantly more content, and that content performs higher.

63% of marketers using generative AI to make content say it performs higher than content made without generative AI.

Meanwhile, 89% say it improves the standard of their content and 83% say it helps them create significantly more content than they might without it.

In the case of marketing content specifically, AI can even streamline processes.

A whopping 84% of bloggers using AI and/or automation say it’s effective at aligning web content with search intent. Moreover, 80% say it may well help improve user experience, 74% consider it advantages their SERP rating, and 80% say it may well help boost Search engine optimization.

Outside of promoting, 85% of salespeople using AI say it makes their prospecting efforts simpler, allows them to spend more time selling (79%), and helps construct rapport faster (72%).

Lastly, 84% of customer support reps who use AI say it makes it easier for them to answer tickets, and 64% say generative AI makes their correspondences more personalized.

4. AI isn’t taking on jobs.

41% of pros in our survey are concerned about AI taking on their jobs.

But after we have a look at how persons are actually using generative AI, it’s mainly to get ideas, outlines, and first drafts.

And, when you’ve ever tried to get AI to put in writing a publish-ready article or social post, you recognize it just isn’t quite ok.

When using generative AI to put in writing copy, just 5% of marketers use it to put in writing entire pieces of content for them.

While one-third (35%) of generative AI users lean on it to get ideas or inspiration, one other third use it to get an overview down. Meanwhile, just 25% use it to put in writing just a few paragraphs that they’ll then must expand on.

Moreover, 96% of marketers using generative AI to put in writing copy say the necessity to make some level of edits to the text before it’s publish-ready.

Still, persons are cautious in relation to generative AI, with 76% of pros saying employees should use AI or automation at work — but avoid becoming overly reliant on it.

Apart from job fears, there’s one other big reason to not lean on generative AI an excessive amount of.

The largest challenge marketers face with generative AI is that it sometimes provides misinformation. Without doing deep research, there’s really no approach to know when it’s making something up.

For instance, almost half of marketers using generative AI say they’ve received information that they know is inaccurate. To make matters worse, only 27% are very confident they’d know if the data was improper.

This highlights the importance of getting a knowledgeable (human) expert working with AI to make sure information is accurate and guide it in the precise direction.

One other major challenge with using AI is knowing where and when to make use of it. Which tasks ought to be automated and which require the human touch? Let’s get practical and try specific use cases for AI across marketing, sales, service, and Search engine optimization.

How AI’s Utilized in the Workplace

Immediately, one in five business professionals use AI and/or automation of their role. And, this percentage gets greater when diving into certain fields — like marketing.

Since that is all so recent, the query of what counts as AI or automation continues to be loosely defined, so actual usage might be much higher. Let’s take a have a look at specific use cases for every role to get a greater idea of how AI is getting used at work.

AI in Marketing

Whether or not they use it, 82% of marketers say generative AI has impacted the best way they plan to create content in 2023 and 69% say it will be significant to their overall content strategy.

The largest advantages of generative AI are that it allows marketers to make content faster. It also increases the standard and personalization of their content, and offers inspiration.

How Marketers Use Generative AI

The most well-liked use cases for generative AI amongst marketers are conducting research (48%), creating content (45%), analyzing and reporting on data (45%), and learning the way to do things (32%).

In the case of content creation, marketers use generative AI to get ideas/inspiration (22%), summarize text into key points (21%), write copy for marketing content (20%), create images (20%), and create outlines (18%).

31% of marketers use generative AI to assist them make social media posts, while 28% use it for emails, product descriptions (25%), images (22%), and blog posts (19%).

Marketers say generative AI is most helpful for creating social media posts, product descriptions, and responding to emails.

Common Generative AI Tools in Marketing

Chatbots like GhatGPT are the most well-liked, followed by text generation tools, visual tools, and audio tools.

How Bloggers & SEOs Use AI

84% of bloggers and SEOs say AI’s impacted their Search engine optimization strategy for 2023.

The largest advantages of using AI are that it helps bloggers optimize their website for Search engine optimization, improves the user experience, helps create an Search engine optimization-driven content strategy, and saves time by automating manual tasks.

The three hottest use cases for AI/automation in relation to web sites are analyzing blogs to supply actionable insights (37%), automating time-consuming Search engine optimization tasks (35%), and leveraging AI to assist create an Search engine optimization-driven content strategy (34%).

Bloggers also say these are probably the most helpful AI use cases for optimizing their website for Search engine optimization.

In the case of chatbots like ChatGPT, 44% of bloggers predict a positive impact on their Search engine optimization strategy. 51% see no impact in any respect, and just 5% see a negative impact.

Prompting Generative AI

If you happen to end up prompting AI again and again to get your required result, that’s totally normal. It is a brand recent skill we’re all learning in real time.

For instance, 95% of marketers using generative AI to put in writing copy say they prompt it two-to-four times to succeed in their intended goal — just 4% reach their intended end in a single prompt.

Essentially the most effective strategies for prompting generative AI are experimenting with different prompts to see what works best, offering relevant context or background info, providing highly specific prompts, and using follow-up prompts to expand on previous ones.

AI Across Business

AI in Sales

Marketing isn’t the one area of business evolving with AI.

71% of sales professionals say AI/automation tools have impacted the best way they plan to sell in 2023, and 60% say these tools are essential to their overall sales strategy.

The three hottest use cases for AI/automation in sales are automating manual tasks (35%), offering data-driven insights (34%), and helping write sales content or prospect outreach messages (31%). Sales pros also say these AI use cases are probably the most helpful for reaching their goals.

How Sales Teams Use Generative AI

86% of sales professionals using generative AI to put in writing messages to prospects say it’s effective.

The most well-liked use cases for generative AI amongst sales pros are content creation, prospect outreach, research, to learn the way to do things, and data evaluation/reporting.

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In the case of prospect outreach, generative AI is most useful for re-purposing messages to prospects by adapting them to a distinct audience, writing messages to prospects, and getting ideas/inspiration for prospect outreach messages.

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AI in Service

The largest advantages of using AI/automation tools for customer support are that they make customer support available 24/7, automate manual tasks, and help reply to customer support requests faster, allowing reps to spend time solving more complex tasks.

61% of customer support professionals say most reps will use AI/automation of their role by 2024.

The three hottest use cases for service AI/automation are routing requests to reps (29%), collecting and analyzing customer feedback (28%), and enabling chatbots or self-service tools to reply customer questions (26%). These are also probably the most effective AI use cases within the service field.

Need a deep dive into how AI is changing the general business-world? Take a look at this post from The Hustle.

The Way forward for AI

While we don’t know exactly what’s going to occur next with AI, there’s little doubt that the cat’s out of the bag, and there’s no going back. Listed below are some predictions from the business professionals in our survey to contemplate:

• 64% say AI/automation tools will make a major impact on how they do their job in 2023
• 57% say most software they use may have AI or automation capabilities in-built by 2024
• 56% say most individuals will use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to help them of their jobs by 2024

Because the landscape changes, we’ll keep tabs on how AI evolves and the ways it’s getting used within the workplace. Keep a watch out for more articles with the insights it’s essential to use AI to unleash your human potential, while leaving the busy work to the robots.