Agentic AI lets one marketer run a group of software agents that handle most of the daily work, and that simple change opens up far more than a saving in time. Work by McKinsey, led by Dianne Esber, Eli Stein, Julien Boudet, Kelsey Robinson and Nilay Shah, puts as much as two-thirds of marketing work within reach of these agents, speeds up campaigns by between 10-15x, and links them to 10 to 30% revenue growth from marketing that is greatly personalised.

A founder with a small team can now produce and test the volume of work that used to need a whole department, which changes who gets to compete. A leader running a larger organisation can start to think of marketing as a steady source of growth rather than a cost that comes round each year. The businesses that gain the most are the ones that treat the technology as a chance to rethink how the work is done, and that is good news, because the door is open to almost anyone willing to walk through it.

creating one connected system

Plenty of businesses have tried generative AI and felt a little anti-climactic, which can be understandable. Each tool was designed to perform a specific task, often in isolation. As a result, teams found themselves busier without seeing a meaningful improvement in results. McKinsey describes this as the “gen AI paradox”, a situation where AI is widely adopted, yet its impact fails to show up in the metrics that matter. In many cases, the problem lies with legacy content, customer data and analytics systems that were never designed to share information or operate in unison.

Agents change the feel of the work because they pass jobs between each other inside one connected system, all under human control, so ideas, content, selling and results start to feed into one another. The value keeps building, since one improvement helps the next, and the gains spread across the whole team instead of staying confined to a single area in the business.

New businesses can build this approach from the start, while established organisations can adopt it over time. Either way, it can help turn those isolated initiatives into value across the business.

larger reach for smaller teams

For smaller businesses, AI agents have the potential to significantly extend what a team can achieve. By taking on routine and repetitive tasks, they allow a single person to oversee work that would previously have required far greater resources. As a result, founders and lean teams can operate with a level of scale that was once reserved for much larger organisations.

With agents handling production-heavy workloads, people are able to focus their attention on the areas where they add the most value: strategy, creativity and decision-making. These are often the qualities that enable smaller businesses to move faster, adapt more quickly and compete effectively against larger rivals.

The impact is often felt within teams as well, as routine tasks no longer consume large parts of the working day, and roles become more focused on judgement, ideas and collaboration. Rather than replacing meaningful work, agents can create more space for it. Teams that have this mindset are often more willing to embrace change, removing one of the most common barriers to adoption and helping organisations realise the benefits more quickly.

Keeping pace with the market

Businesses using these systems are seeing campaigns move significantly faster, with some reducing content production timelines to a fraction of what they once were. Greater speed creates more operational efficiency and allows teams to test more ideas, gather feedback sooner and refine their approach in order to grasp opportunities that arise.

Consumers divide their attention across more channels than ever before, while expectations around relevance and responsiveness continue to grow. With this, organisations need to be able to quickly test, adapt and act to gain ground. The shorter the distance between an idea and its execution, the greater the opportunity to learn, improve and capitalise on what works.

Personalisation drives growth

The clearest route to higher revenue is personalisation that finally works at full size, and businesses using these workflows can add 10 to 30% to revenue. Much of that comes from always-on campaigns that adjust to each audience without constant manual effort, which lets a business treat every customer as an individual on a scale no manual team could ever keep up with. Platforms including Adobe and HubSpot already build in agents that fit copy and design to each audience and refresh content as behaviour changes, while the marketers keep firm hold of brand and strategy, and early pilots are already showing shorter production times.

Steady, personal contact builds loyalty and repeat custom, and it gives a business a much clearer view of what each audience truly cares about, which loops back into better products and sharper positioning. For a leader working out where growth will come from, the mix of more revenue and a deeper understanding of customers makes this one of the most direct returns on the table.

McKinsey sets out five steps that work nicely as a plan. Understand how the work is done now, sort the tasks into patterns that repeat, pick the agents needed, redesign the workflow around people and machines together, then roll it out in waves. Each step rests on the one before it, and a leader who follows it sidesteps the disconnected pilots that have let so many early efforts down.

What people do best

As agents take on more of the day-to-day work, the people guiding them matter more, because the choices that shape a brand and the instinct for what an audience will love stay firmly human. People also look after the systems behind the work, including the quality of the data, the standards content has to meet, and the rules that keep agents running safely and consistently, and all of that takes real skill and care.

Building these skills early is where a leader gains an edge that lasts. The new abilities run from writing clear instructions for agents and managing the handovers between them, through checking quality and catching problems, to improving outputs with hard-won experience and building genuine know-how in data, AI and machine learning. A team that picks these up can direct the technology with confidence, and that confidence is the quiet difference between a business that simply uses agents and one that truly leads with them.

Protecting the brand

Marketing shapes how customers see a brand, making trust one of the most valuable assets any business has. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in marketing, the organisations seeing the greatest success are not those moving fastest, but those putting the right structures in place from the start. According to a McKinsey survey of 35 chief marketing officers across consumer and technology companies, concerns around brand integrity, legal oversight, skills, technology investment and data quality remain top of mind.

With clear direction from leadership, well-defined standards and appropriate oversight, businesses can move quickly while maintaining control. In many respects, these foundations are what make scale possible. They give teams the confidence to experiment, adapt and grow without losing sight of the brand they are building.Nearly 90% of CMOs are already using AI somewhere within their organisations, yet fewer than 10% have integrated it across their wider marketing workflows.

Where to start

For most organisations, the best place to begin is with the areas where the benefits are easiest to see, whether that means improving efficiency, accelerating production or supporting growth. Starting with a handful of well-defined use cases allows businesses to build momentum while working within the capabilities of their existing systems and data. As confidence grows, the impact can extend across the wider organisation.

The longer-term opportunity lies in combining human expertise with the speed and scale that AI agents can provide. While technology can take on routine tasks and connect complex workflows, people remain responsible for judgement, creativity and strategic direction. Together, they create a more effective way of working, one that allows marketing to contribute more directly to business growth while giving teams greater freedom to focus on higher-value work.