Enterprise marketing teams know AI is reshaping the playbook, but uncertainty about tools, skills, workforce impact, and governance can freeze progress. The worst move is no move. Specialized talent platforms give you a practical way to get in the action today by playing offense and defense at the same time.    

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Play Offense: Bring in AI Specialists to Set a Foundation Across Key Domains

By sourcing marketing experts with AI know-how from a category-focused talent platform, you gain access to talent that is leading the way in AI.  These independent professionals can help you get ahead of the AI curve by tackling foundational work across marketing domains, without having to overinvest in full-time resources.  

Marketing AI experts to consider engaging include:  

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AI Marketing Strategist / Program Lead

• What they can help with: Define and prioritize use cases, establish governance, evaluate and select required tools, and ensure alignment with the broader organization’s AI strategy and policies.  
• Key output: AI program management structure and process, prioritized use cases, stack and data requirements, marketing-specific policies, and a roadmap with pilot plans, including agreed-upon outcomes, scope, and KPIs.  

Marketing Ops Automation Engineer  

• What they can help with: Build working automations across the MarTech stack (e.g., CRM/MAP + AI) and web, ensuring integration across the stack results in AI that drives the desired impact.  
• Key output: AI-enabled workflows (e.g., lead routing and scoring, nurture flows, and dynamic content) and AI agents for deeper automation.  

Marketing Data Analyst (data engineering knowledge)  

• What they can help with: Ensure there are clean data inputs for useful AI and centralize marketing data and measurement so models and automations have a proper foundation/truth to learn from.  
• Key output: Unified KPI layer, clean product and campaign data, and prompt-ready knowledge base.  

GenAI Content Lead  

• What they can help with: Building content scale, efficiency, and effectiveness.  
• Key output: Content-specific use cases, inventory and data readiness assessment, content parameters (taxonomy, metadata, and component content model), editorial and prompt standards, AI-optimized content workflow, and team upskilling plan.  

Performance Media Automation Expert  

• What they can help with: Create quick, measurable impact through platform automations across the media value chain.  
• Key output: Media investment plan across platforms, experimentation plan, creative and copy gen pipelines, and audience/feed hygiene.  

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To start playing offense and building out a well-rounded AI foundation, take the following steps:  

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• Determine what focus areas require the most attention to develop mission-critical AI capabilities in marketing.  
• Define the key initiatives for each focus area and prioritize based on potential impact, feasibility, and risk.  Don’t try to boil the ocean but also don’t pick initiatives that fail to provide demonstrable benefit in the near term.  
• Assess internal team members’ AI knowledge to determine gaps and which outside AI-experts are most critical for success across prioritized initiatives.
• Create briefs to guide the sourcing of required outside AI experts.  Using a specialized talent platform will make finding and onboarding the right talent fast, easy, and less risky.
• Set up a program management office to create a cohesive team and plan to guide efforts, establish accountability, and establish shared understanding of desired outcomes and success metrics.

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Play Defense: Backfill Core Marketing Work So Nothing Slips  

While you experiment and build a strong foundation for the AI future, the day-to-day still matters. To make sure your baseline performance doesn’t suffer while you ramp up AI capabilities and conduct AI knowledge transfer/upskilling, you can turn to a marketing-focused talent platform to find the required supplemental experts.  

Depending on priorities and team make-up, needs will vary, but a few clutch roles to consider engaging to keep the day-to-day humming include the following:  

• Campaign Managers & Producers: Keep launches, nurture streams, and keep media calendars on track.  
• Content Managers & Editors: Maintain quality and cadence across channels while you test AI-assisted creation.  
• Marketing Ops & Analytics: Sustain reporting, tag hygiene, and SLA compliance as teams reshuffle time toward AI pilots.  
• Designers & UX Writers: Guard the customer experience and brand integrity as automation ramps up.  
• Marketing Project Managers: During a time of change, a ninja marketing PM can keep order and ensure teams deliver efficiently, on time, and with the desired outcomes.

We spoke to Aby Varma, Founder and CEO of Spark Novus, a consulting, training, and implementation firm for AI adoption for marketing leaders. He said,

“The worst risk in AI is not moving too fast but standing still. Strategic and responsible AI adoption means balancing experimentation with accountability, while building foundations that create measurable outcomes today and keeping day-to-day performance strong.”

Why a Specialized Talent Platform is Right for This Moment  

Curated Talent Pools:  Create talent pools on a private talent cloud to engage priority talent as needed with greater speed and flexibility:

• Offense Pool (AI strategist + Gen AI Content Lead, AI Media Specialist, etc.)
• Defense Pool (campaign manager + content editor to protect BAU, etc.)

‍‍‍Precision Matching: Find niche skills (APIs, governance, model evaluation, MarTech orchestration) that typical agencies or job boards can’t deliver.  ‍

Lower Risk: Trial run new AI capabilities without a permanent headcount; exit cleanly if a direction isn’t working. ‍

Hedge Uncertainty: Access to flex talent can help overcome hiring constraints brought on by current economic headwinds and unknowns. ‍

Operational Ease: Relax knowing that a talent platform can handle everything soup to nuts—ensuring compliance with laws, streamlining onboarding based on company policies, and making sure everyone gets paid on time.

 
Waiting For Greater Certainty is Not an Option

Two things are certain in today’s world. The pace of change brought on by AI is unprecedented and economic uncertainty is not going away anytime soon. If you let the massive nature of AI’s scope overwhelm your team’s ability to move, you will quickly be left behind. If you let economic uncertainty shut down efforts to build for the AI future and keep the day-to-day on track, you will also put your organization at a great disadvantage.

No doubt, everyone faces budget and resource constraints, but the opportunity cost of doing nothing is too great. By working with a specialized talent platform, you can fuel your AI learning curve with real outcomes, while not giving up any ground in your day-to-day operations.