The impact of AI in action
What makes AI so powerful is that it’s not just for show. It delivers real business impact.
Let’s take a look at how a real brand used AI to transform the way they work and grow. Watch the video below to learn how Criquet Shirts achieved meaningful results with AI, and explore what’s possible for your business.
Evaluate the impact of AI on your business
To understand the true impact of AI on your business, you need to measure it. Tracking key metrics helps you see what’s working, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate the return on investment of AI across your marketing efforts.
Browse the dropdowns below to explore the most important metrics to track when evaluating your AI initiatives.
Adoption
Measure how widely AI is being used across your team. Look at company-wide adoption by measuring how often tools are used, which tasks they support, and how confident team members feel using them.
You can also assess individual AI fluency by asking employees to place themselves on the following scale:
- AI-blind: Unaware or uncertain about AI’s potential
- AI-curious: Starting to explore AI
- AI-adopter: Using AI tools regularly for specific tasks
- AI-first: Turning to AI as the first step for most tasks
Example: A coffee shop starts with just 1 or 2 employees experimenting occasionally with AI. After a few AI enablement sessions, the entire team uses AI weekly for tasks like social media planning, email copywriting, and data analysis. The time saved allows the team to focus more on coming up with creative campaign ideas and engaging with customers in-store.
Incremental revenue or increase in marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Track the business outcomes directly tied to AI adoption. This could include an increase in click-through rates, conversion rates, or revenue growth after introducing AI into your workflow.
Example: After implementing AI-powered product recommendations in their post-purchase flow, a shoe brand saw a lift in repeat purchase rate and incremental revenue from returning customers. The additional revenue is reinvested into loyalty initiatives and product testing, helping the brand strengthen retention and accelerate future growth.
Operational efficiency
AI can save time by automating repetitive or manual tasks. Measure how many hours you’re saving each week and how that time is being reallocated to higher-impact work.
Example: A marketer who used to spend 5 hours a week manually segmenting audiences now uses AI to complete the task in under 30 minutes, freeing up time for strategy and testing new ideas.
Cost savings
Evaluate how AI helps reduce costs by automating tasks or improving efficiency. This might include saving on outsourcing, minimizing the need for new hires, or reducing ad spend through better targeting.
Example: A hair salon uses AI to analyze audience data and automatically optimize ad targeting, reducing wasted spend on low-performing audiences and lowering overall customer acquisition costs by 20%. The savings are reinvested into higher-performing campaigns, seasonal promotions, and new customer acquisition initiatives.
AI is ultimately about possibility. When AI saves you time or money, think about how you can reinvest those gains into higher-impact work like testing new ideas or building stronger relationships with customers. That’s the real value of AI: creating the space to focus more on the work that truly matters.
Establish your baselines
To measure the impact of AI, you need to know where you’re starting from. Establish clear baselines before implementing AI by mapping your workflows and tracking how long key tasks take today. Time yourself, record your current performance metrics, and note where bottlenecks exist.
When you revisit those same tasks after adopting AI, you’ll have concrete before-and-after data to show results and identify where AI is driving the most value (and where it’s not).
Pro tip: Use our AI adoption workbook to keep track of key metrics, baselines, and recorded change after implementing AI.