Skip to main content

The Marketing Equalizer: Leveraging AI for Mid-Market Growth

Download our research report with WARC to benchmark your marketing team against your peers, assess your AI readiness, and close your capability gaps.

Key Findings that Pave the Path to Impact

We partnered with WARC, the global authority on marketing effectiveness, to look at how marketing teams are structured, which channels marketers are adopting, and how marketers are using AI.

Laptop displaying "The Marketing Equalizer" whitepaper on blue background, with ceramic bowls on wooden surface

The Marketing Equalizer, based on a survey of 1,205 mid-market (companies with 10–499 employees) marketers across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, provides a comprehensive snapshot of teams, challenges, and a playbook that turns optimism into impact.

  • Lean teams
51%

    of mid-market companies have marketing departments with 10 or fewer employees.

  • A gap in AI expertise
32%

    of mid-market marketing teams cite customer-facing AI tools as a significant capability gap—the highest ranked skill gap in the survey.

  • Near-Unanimous optimism

    of mid-market marketers believe AI will drive an uplift in marketing effectiveness.

Oliver Feldwick

“If you’ve got a human team using AI brilliantly...the humans plus AI team have an edge that would make them grow faster.”

Oliver Feldwick | Chief Innovation Officer, T&P

AI is the New Equalizer

It’s not a silver bullet.

It's a powerful tool that transforms your lean team into unparalleled effectiveness, but most don't know where to start.

This report cuts through the noise so you can:

Assess how your marketing team compares

Benchmark the size of your team, your marketing budget, specialty areas, and skill gaps against our global findings.

Bar chart showing marketing department sizes in mid-market companies: 32% have 6-10 employees, 29% have 11-20, 19% have <5, 12% have 6-10, 8% have >31

Evaluate your AI readiness

Expand your AI capability by gauging where your company stands with our AI Maturity Checklist.

Bar chart showing global AI maturity stages: embedded 35%, applied 47%, emerging 15%, and absent 3% of organizations

Implement the 4-step AI Roadmap for Mid-Market Companies

Evolve from minimal AI adoption to an AI-embedded system that drives sustained, measurable growth.

Four blue rectangular blocks showing AI implementation stages: Impact, Readiness, Adoption, and Implementation, connected by arrows
Jose Miguel Belloso

“AI will no longer be just a content generation tool, but a strategic partner that designs, executes, and continuously optimizes for your desired outcomes.”

Jose Miguel Belloso | Principal Product Marketing Manager, AI, Intuit Mailchimp

Hear from the experts

  • Oliver Feldwick

    Oliver Feldwick

    Chief Innovation Officer, T&P

  • Caroline Giegerich

    Caroline Giegerich

    VP, AI & Marketing Innovation, IAB

  • James Hurman

    James Hurman

    Founder / Co-founder Previously Unavailable, Tracksuit, Toothcrush and Storytech

  • Nicole Leffer

    Nicole Leffer

    CMO, AI Advisor A Catalyst LLC

  • David Tiltman

    David Tiltman

    SVP, Lions Intelligence

  • Jose Miguel Belloso

    Jose Miguel Belloso

    Principal Product Marketing Manager, AI, Intuit Mailchimp

  • Jack Tam

    Jack Tam

    SVP, Engineering, Intuit Mailchimp

  • Javier Moral

    Javier Moral

    CEO, Disruptivos

  • MaryAnn Pfeiffer

    MaryAnn Pfeiffer

    Founder, 108 Degrees Digital Marketing

Nicole Leffer

“AI can improve the speed at which you get the same or higher quality of work. And because you’re able to do certain things quicker, you now open up the possibility to do more of the things on your marketing wish list. That impact cascades.”

Nicole Leffer | CMO AI Advisor, A. Catalyst LLC

Smarter Marketing Starts Here

With smaller headcount and budgets, plus myriad tasks on their plate, you have high hopes that AI can make you more competitive. But you also know you need to improve your AI literacy.

Ready to get started?