For B2B marketers, it can feel as if all anyone is talking about these days is AI.

It's all over LinkedIn, filling up our inboxes, and getting added to just about every tool in our martech stack.

But, setting aside all the hype, is AI actually enabling B2B marketers to accomplish more?

At AgileSherpas, we've been surveying marketers around the world for eight years asking questions to understand what makes them effective. This year's report found some surprising insights around AI and what kinds of mindsets, practices, and tools are really setting effective marketers apart from the competition.

Are Effective B2B Marketers Actually Using AI?

The first question we had was just how many marketers are actually using AI. If you had to guess how many marketers have fully integrated AI into their marketing processes, what would you say the number is? 20%, 40%, maybe even 50%?

Our data found that just 17% actually had. Most wanted to integrate AI, but few had managed to get there.

However, one type of marketer was more than twice as likely as the average to be in that AI pioneering group: fully Agile ones:

AI implementation also strongly correlated with overall marketing success:

So the best—most successful—marketers were far more likely to be using AI.

But is that just correlation? Our data says no: Two-thirds of fully Agile teams report that AI has significantly enhanced their agility.

In other words, being fully Agile and fully implementing AI both make marketers more effective. That's all the more true because agility has made it easier for marketers to implement AI, and that AI implementation has made them more Agile.

It's a virtuous cycle that B2B marketers should absolutely take note of.

Why Does Agility Make AI Implementation Easier?

Our data (and experience implementing AI as B2B marketers) points to three key Agile practices that have an outsized impact: experimentation, autonomy, and focus.

Considering the avalanche of AI tools and their ever-increasing list of capabilities, it's hardly surprising that marketers need freedom to test and iterate to figure out what works. Trying to implement AI based on a dictate from leadership, or being asked to try 10 different applications at once, makes it nearly impossible to really figure out how to make AI work for you.

But when marketers have a culture built around experimentation and continuous improvement, they're far better able to test and integrate AI tools. After all, they've likely been doing the same thing with other marketing tools and process improvements for ages already.

Most Extremely Successful B2B Marketers Are Fully Agile

Looking at a variety of metrics, our survey found that being fully Agile both within single teams and across multiple teams within an organization corresponded strongly with overall success.

Nearly 9 in 10 fully Agile teams considered themselves extremely or very successful. You can see this trend when you look at productivity:

A B2B marketing function that fully implemented Agile across all teams was over 5x more likely to report significant increases in productivity compared with those with just a few Agile teams. That trend only became more pronounced when we looked at things like stress levels:

What Practices Drive this Success?

Saying that agility drives AI implementation, productivity gains, lower stress, etc. is great, but for many B2B marketers that's just not specific enough.

Agile comes in many forms, so what actual practices really made the difference?

Across the board, practices like Kanban boards, WIP limits, and retrospectives all correlated with success.

Interestingly, the biggest gap came from full AI integration. Extremely successful marketers were 8x more likely to have fully integrated AI into their marketing processes.

Overall, though, the story was clear: The most successful B2B marketers use Agile practices.

Getting Beyond Practices

It's easy for B2B marketers to get caught up in practices, but mindsets tend to get less attention.

Mindsets like autonomy and focus resulted in similar patterns: The most successful marketers were given greater autonomy by their leaders and allowed to focus on the work that really matters.

Having the autonomy to really experiment and figure out what works, alongside the focus that enables you to cut through the avalanche of options, makes an enormous difference.

That helps explain why these B2B marketers were so much more likely to have implemented AI.

The Elephant in the Room: Regulation

A common complaint of B2B marketers is the difficulty of dealing with regulation. Concerns about compliance and the need to implement processes to get approval from regulators or compliance teams all slow marketers down.

Our data found that 91% of Agile marketers reported that Agile ways of working actually helped them meet regulatory requirements. This is likely due to Agile's focus on serving stakeholders (including Legal or Compliance).

Working closely with those groups enables Agile teams to work quickly while handling compliance issues with ease.

That's another reason that explains the strong correlation between fully Agile teams and overall B2B marketing success.

How B2B Marketers Can Join the 'Most Effective' Club

If you're a B2B marketer who's ready to improve AI integration, improve productivity, and help with regulatory compliance (to name a few benefits) what can you do?

Fortunately, the report also asked marketers about how they educated themselves on Agile marketing and which methods were the most valuable. The most common responses were free self-paced video learning, Agile certification courses, and written content.

Which of those options was the most valuable? There was a clear standout:

92% reported that Agile certification courses were valuable.

Another 76% said the same of paid self-paced video learning.

And free self-paced video learning was a close third at 71%.

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For enterprise marketers, the report offers clear ways to develop the Agile skills that are so valuable for implementing AI (and more). Whether your organization is interested in improving compliance, reducing stress, or just improving productivity, the data points to best-practices you can implement.