Doing More with Less: Innovative Marketing Automations to Help CCOs and CMOs Get Time Back

Marketing budgets have shrunk from 11% in 2022 to just 7.7% in 2025, creating unprecedented challenges for leaders. This decline comes amid what many are calling “The Era of Less,” where Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) face mounting pressure to drive growth with fewer resources. Smaller budgets, leaner staff, and the relentless demand to demonstrate ROI have become the new normal, making smarter allocation and sharper focus more critical than ever. 

The reality is that marketing leaders face smaller budgets, leaner teams, and relentless demands to demonstrate ROI. This strategic shift to leveraging AI is the competitive differentiator that transforms how marcomms leaders allocate resources and amplify impact. 

The Strategic Shift: Why AI in Digital Marketing Matters Now 

With 86% of C-suite leaders planning to increase their investment in generative AI in 2025, the era of cautious experimentation is over. Moving forward, the marketers who stand out will use technologies in layers. Efficiency in basic tasks is standard, but the real opportunity lies in using AI to enhance strategic influence and decision-making capabilities. Automation empowers executives to articulate business objectives with greater clarity and reclaim time to achieve ambitious growth targets. 

For communications leaders seeking to maximise  time and budgets, here are high-impact innovative marketing automations you can use to get time back on manual tasks and focus on more creative, strategic work.   

AI Use #1: Automated Media Intelligence and Briefings 

Media monitoring traditionally steals precious hours from more innovative, thoughtful work. Many PR pros spend hours a day compiling coverage, evaluating sentiment, and deciphering whether content resonates. While extremely important, it’s often reactive work that keeps communicators from getting ahead of emerging opportunities and narratives. 

AI revolutionises this process by delivering comprehensive reports with instant insights, sentiment breakdowns, and competitor analysis. These transform monitoring into proactive, actionable intelligence that drives strategic decisions. 

Key automated workflows include: 

• Media intelligence that offers automatic scans from thousands of sources. 

• White space opportunity and risk identification with coverage analysis and sentiment tracking. 

• Competitive context monitoring that reveals market positioning opportunities. 

The transition to automated briefings empowers organisations to shift focus from reporting to planning. Instead of reacting to headlines, CCOs can proactively shape the news cycle, armed with insights that used to take hours to compile. 

Organisations investing deeply in AI see ROI improve by 10–20% on average. Advanced marketing automation applications help communications leaders reclaim valuable hours each week – time that can be reinvested in higher-impact strategic work. 

AI Use #2: AI-Powered Analytics for Stakeholder Message Optimisation  

Understanding which messages resonate across different stakeholder segments remains a persistent challenge, especially when personalisation drives competitive advantage. But traditional manual analysis of engagement metrics consumes time without providing the strategic depth CCOs and CMOs need for effective decision-making.  

Modern marketing automation allows teams to scale highly relevant content with a tailored tone and copy at high volume and speed. Prompt AI tools to deliver: 

• Sentiment analysis across stakeholder journeys to understand touchpoints and assess emotional responses. 

• Summarised and analysed engagement metrics for all platforms and content formats. 

• Variations of stakeholder messaging for immediate testing. 

Using intelligent analytics leads to measurable improvements in stakeholder outreach. Marketers will notice increased engagement rates by delivering personalised content that aligns more closely with stakeholder needs while dramatically reducing time spent on content testing cycles. 

This transition also shifts marketing departments from relying on intuition to making data-driven decisions, empowering leaders to craft communications with confidence and precision. 

AI Use #3: Proactive Reputation Risk Detection and Crisis Management   

The days of responding to crises after reputational damage begins are over. AI revolutionises crisis management through predictive approaches powered by instant alerts and actionable recommendations.  

By leveraging insights from past crises to recommend the most effective response strategies and continuously refining approaches based on new data, template response frameworks can be developed and ready to deploy when minutes matter most.  

Core functions of AI in the crisis management landscape should include: 

• Instant signal monitoring that detects abnormal spikes in mentions and sentiment changes. 

• Risk scoring and prioritisation for effective resource allocation. 

• Automated response frameworks with tailored crisis plans based on historical data. 

Using AI during a crisis speeds up detection, prioritisation, and communication. AI can simulate how the crisis might unfold and give PR professionals an understanding of which outlets are likely to run the story so they can engage early and tweak the narrative. The human touch is essential to provide judgement and empathy, but by fusing this with artificial intelligence’s ability to anticipate risks, CCOs can manage crises from a position of preparedness rather than firefighting.  

AI Use #4: Automated Internal Comms Campaigns 

As hybrid work and multi-location teams become the norm, keeping employees informed and engaged through screens has become a daily challenge for CCOs and CMOs. AI can automate key parts of your internal comms ecosystem whilst maintaining authenticity as it has the capability to replicate tone, style, and phrasing based on prior communications you input.  

Consider implementing:  

• Monthly CEO or CMO updates that are pre-scheduled with personalised intros, embedded video clips, and targeted segmentation. Open rates and engagement analytics can also be tracked to gauge reactions and improve the next month.  

• Sentiment surveys after major company announcements and new campaigns, summarising the results into a dashboard for leadership to review.  

• Shoutouts to recognise employee wins, anniversaries, and culture moments. This helps keep morale high and maintain a positive communication rhythm without losing time through manual tracking.  

Tapping into AI capabilities for internal comms allows effective engagement with teams even during busy periods or travel by maintaining transparency and connection.  

Best Practices for Implementing Innovative Marketing Automations 

Begin by selecting tools that align with your organisation’s strategic ambitions. Evaluate technology not just for features but for its ability to integrate with existing marketing automation systems without disrupting established processes. 

Building AI literacy across the department is equally crucial. From understanding basic prompt-writing to interpreting automated insights, your team needs confidence to maximise the technology’s capabilities and drive measurable ROI.   

Although AI can deliver outstanding results with little effort, maintaining human oversight ensures strategic verification. Check that outputs are relevant, contextually accurate, and aligned with your brand standards. 

To stay ahead of the curve, recognise that technology is continually evolving. Adapt your marketing automation solutions based on performance data, refine workflows, adjust prompts, and collaborate with the system to deliver the best results.    

Lastly, establish clear KPIs to track the efficiency and planned impact of the systems. These metrics can include employees who have created the most effective prompt to score risk on news articles, time saved on media monitoring, or reduced crisis response times.    

Truly leading in AI adoption requires selecting the right tools for your organisation’s operational identity, effectively training teams, and continuously refining workflows.  

The Future of AI-Enhanced Communications Leadership 

Success with AI is about catalysing purposeful and thoughtful thinking. CCOs and CMOs who embrace AI in their marketing efforts secure lasting competitive advantages, positioned to anticipate change, engage stakeholders more meaningfully, and lead with data-driven confidence. 

In an era where marketing budgets are tighter, but expectations remain high, AI transforms how you operate. It’s about doing better at a faster pace with greater strategic impact than ever before. 

Learn more about AI innovation capabilities at https://www.theblissgrp.com/capabilities/ai-innovation/