AI Can Scale Marketing, But Can’t Replace a Handshake

AI is everywhere in marketing right now. If you’re not experimenting, you’re already behind. But I keep coming back to a simple truth: Not every part of marketing is meant to be automated with AI.

I sit in field marketing. My job is to create opportunities for sellers to engage with customers and prospects, whether that happens virtually or in person. While AI is certainly changing how we plan, hyper-personalize, and scale marketing, the “field” part is still fundamentally human. This entails face-to-face conversations, real-time listening, and fostering the type of trust that you can’t generate with an AI prompt.

I’m the first to agree that AI is essential for modern marketing approaches. At the same time, it’s not a replacement for field marketing expertise and it’s not going to replace human interactions. But it can improve almost everything that happens before and after the handshake.

 Where AI is Already Reshaping Marketing

The clearest AI use cases show up where marketing is already digital, data-rich, and built for repetition. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a great example. ABM platforms can ingest a variety of data from a diverse range of sources, then use AI to curate content, improve targeting efforts, and orchestrate multi-touch marketing campaigns.

AI makes these systems smarter and more adaptive by quickly analyzing the data for behaviors and intent signals. It automatically adjusts audiences, messaging, timing, and next-best actions to improve engagement and conversion. This helps ensure a person receives relevant content when they want it, and on their preferred channel, such as email or social media.

SEO and content operations are moving quickly with AI, too. For example, I recently saw a tool positioning itself as an “SEO and GEO agent” that helps with both search engine optimization and generative engine optimization. This is essentially an AI system that claims it can manage and inform everything from technical SEO and keyword research to content creation, conversion optimization, and reporting.

Similarly, in social media we’re seeing more AI support for targeting, content creation, and optimization. The core advantage is that AI helps teams test more ideas and scale execution quickly.

Why Field Marketing Remains Stubbornly Human

Contrast all of those essential marketing tasks that benefit from AI with a live event. When I think about how we can leverage AI in an onsite field marketing experience, it’s possible to offer AI-driven bot experiences in booths.

The issue is that people don’t go to live events to talk to a bot. They go to connect with other humans, build relationships, and have real conversations with people who understand their business.

Can AI play a role in a personalized product demo at a live event? Sure. But if the experience becomes “come watch this screen,” we’ve missed the point. The value of field marketing is the personal interaction that includes the ability to read a room, ask the right questions, and answer customer questions in real time.

As marketing and other business processes have become AI-driven and virtual meetings are now commonplace, the need for in-person connections becomes stronger. That’s why I don’t believe the personal connection in field marketing is going away.

The AI Bookends Approach: Delivering Value Before and After Human Moments

The framework I keep coming back to is that AI doesn’t sit in the middle of the field marketing experience. It sits on both ends:

• Before the event: Do the homework that most teams skip. I’m a huge fan of social listening. AI can help me do this faster, more efficiently, and more consistently. For example, I can prompt an agent to scan what a person is discussing on LinkedIn or X, look at company context like quarterly earnings, and determine what the customer or prospect may be worried about. This way, I walk into meetings prepared.

I’ve done this process the manual way. It involved spending significant time reading someone’s LinkedIn page and looking for details to shape the tone of the first conversation. AI can compress that research and help scale it across accounts in seconds. AI doesn’t stop at people. If you’ve ever tried to digest a long annual report before a meeting, you know the pain. AI can summarize key points, such as challenges, successes, and goals, and help prepare relevant questions for a more successful meeting.

• During the event: Protect human value. A live interaction should stay live. I use AI for what it’s good at during meetings, which is supporting the experience in the background. I keep the customer-facing moment rooted in listening, empathy, and a real conversation, knowing I can use AI after the meeting to summarize notes, support problem-solving, and determine how to best meet a specific customer’s needs.
• After the event: Scale follow-up while keeping the personal touch. Post-event is where field marketing often breaks down. A meeting happens, notes get scattered, follow-up is uneven, and momentum fades.

This is an opening for AI. It can draft thoughtful follow-up communications, suggest relevant content based on what was discussed, and recommend next touches that feel organic. For lean teams especially, AI helps marketers be more efficient and more scalable without sacrificing quality.

Elevating Marketing While Keeping Experts in the Loop

The debate about AI in marketing often gets framed as “Will it replace jobs?” A better question is “Where does AI help us do our best work and how can it help us be more effective?”

In field marketing, the answer is clear. AI is a powerful engine for research, content, targeting, and follow-up. The core experience—building relationships, establishing trust, and making a personal connection—still belongs to people.

In a world that’s increasingly automated, the most differentiated thing marketers can offer isn’t another sequence of emails. It’s a real conversation. That’s how modern field marketing remains not just relevant, but also essential.

Regardless of how you’re leveraging AI, whether it’s for marketing or other use cases, reliable data is a must. As we say at Actian, your data is your AI strategy. Our data intelligence platform can help by making data discoverable, trusted, and actionable. Take a personalized demo to experience it firsthand.

About Author

About Liz Brown

Liz Brown is a high-energy, results-driven marketing professional with a proven track record of driving business growth and inspiring, mentoring, and enabling colleagues and peers. Known for her strategic thinking and collaborative leadership, Liz excels at building impactful marketing strategies, ABM programs, and enablement initiatives tailored to top accounts and industries. She has extensive experience in brand positioning, integrated campaigns, and customer engagement, from large-scale events to targeted digital initiatives.