The launch email went out. Then nothing changed.
It’s a familiar story. Leadership approves the new platform or the AI licenses. There’s a kickoff, a demo, and a burst of excitement. A few people become power users. Everyone else tries it once, hits a snag, and quietly goes back to the way they’ve always worked.
Six months later, someone asks what the team is getting for the investment. No one has a clear answer.
The tool isn’t the problem. The way it was introduced is.
The adoption gap is bigger than most leaders think
This isn’t a few teams getting it wrong. Gartner found that marketers were using just 33% of their martech stack’s capabilities in 2023, down from 58% in 2020, while technology took up roughly a quarter of the marketing budget. Among the top barriers respondents named: ecosystem complexity, customer data challenges, and inflexible governance. (Gartner, 2023)
AI is following the same pattern. In BCG’s 2024 research with 1,000 executives, 74% of companies had yet to show tangible value from AI. Roughly 70% of the challenges companies faced came from people and process issues, with only 10% tied to the algorithms themselves. (BCG, 2024)
The lesson is clear. Technology value isn’t won at the point of purchase. It’s won in the workflows and habits that come after.
Why new tools stall
In our experience, adoption breaks down in predictable places.
- The tool came before the problem. The team bought a capability without agreeing on what it should fix, so no one knows what “success” looks like.
- It was layered on top of old workflows. The new platform sits next to the old spreadsheet, and people do the work twice. Eventually they drop the new one.
- There are no guardrails. Without clear guidance on what AI can be used for, what data it can touch, and who reviews the output, people either avoid it or use it in ways that create risk.
- Training was a single demo. One session shows people where the buttons are. It doesn’t show them how the tool fits into their actual week.
- No one owns it. After launch, the tool belongs to everyone, which means it belongs to no one.
What adoption-first looks like
The teams that get real value flip the order. They start with the work, then bring in the technology.
- Start with the workflow. Map how work moves today and find the steps that are slow, repetitive, or error-prone. That’s where tools and AI earn their place.
- Choose a few high-value use cases. Don’t try to transform everything at once. BCG found that AI leaders pursue about half as many opportunities as their peers and scale more of them.
- Set the guardrails early. Define approved uses, brand voice standards, data boundaries, and human review points. In regulated industries, this is non-negotiable. Everywhere else, it builds trust.
- Enable people in the flow of work. Train by role, using the team’s own projects. Identify champions who can coach their peers and surface what’s not working.
- Measure use and outcomes. Track whether people are actually using the tool and whether it’s saving time, reducing rework, or improving quality.
Where AI fits on a marketing team
AI is most useful where it removes friction from the work around the work: drafting briefs, creating first drafts and content variations, summarizing research and stakeholder feedback, and pulling together status reports.
What it doesn’t replace is judgment. Strategy, brand decisions, stakeholder relationships, and final approval still belong to people. The best AI adoption makes that line clear, so the team can move faster without losing what makes their work good.
Technology with people at the center
Every tool your team adopts is a change in how people work. Treat it that way, and the investment pays off. Treat it as an IT rollout, and it joins the long list of licenses no one uses.
That’s the work we do at Elite Vue Consulting: aligning martech and AI adoption with the workflows, governance, and change management that make it stick. Process plus people.
Sources: Gartner, “Gartner Survey Finds 63% of Marketing Leaders Plan to Invest in Generative AI in the Next 24 Months,” August 23, 2023. Boston Consulting Group, “AI Adoption in 2024: 74% of Companies Struggle to Achieve and Scale Value,” October 24, 2024.