Most marketing agencies think they’ve made the shift. They’ve added “AI-powered” to their website, run a few ChatGPT prompts for client deliverables, and nodded along at the last industry conference when someone said the future is now.
It’s no secret that AI is reshaping marketing agencies, but we wanted to know how.
In our latest survey, we identified that clients aren’t just expecting AI fluency anymore. And agencies that haven’t made the hard structural shift from execution to strategy are losing ground, not gradually, but fast.
To access our marketing agency AI report, we asked you to answer one simple question:
- If you work at an agency → what skills will matter most going forward?
- If you work with agencies → how have your expectations changed?
And a lot was revealed.
Table of contents
What the data actually showed
We didn’t just want theory. So we asked, and here’s what the data revealed.
- How have your expectations towards agencies changed?
On the client side: Expectations are moving toward:
- More speed
- Lower costs
- A growing willingness to bring execution in-house
This all hinges on the fact that AI can now handle a big part of execution, which is a huge plus for lean internal teams.
- What skills matter most for agencies moving forward?
On the agency side: The value proposition is moving toward strategy, consulting, and anything AI still struggles with, plus some new capabilities.
The work that retains (and grows) client relationships is moving toward three things:
- Strategic consulting: Helping clients figure out what to do, not just doing it
- AI orchestration and agentic workflow design: Building and managing the systems that make AI output useful at scale
- Mindset, expertise, and AI validation: Taking the flood of AI-generated content, data, and analysis and turning it into decisions
None of that is surprising. What’s surprising is how few agencies are structurally repositioned to deliver on it.
How AI-ready is your agency?
We didn’t want this to just be insights, so we turned all of this into something usable–an AI marketing agency assessment.
Here’s how it works:
- It asks you a few focused questions about your team, your workflows, and how you’re actually deploying AI day-to-day.
- Then it scans your website to see how AI shows up (or doesn’t) in your positioning.
What you get back is a breakdown of:
- Your readiness level
- Specific gaps
- The opportunities you’re likely missing
- How you stack up against the data we collected from agencies and their clients.
It takes a few minutes. The output is direct. If you’re curious about where you actually stand, you can take the assessment here.
If your scorecard surfaced real gaps, the next move is structured learning, not more content to read and forget. And CXL’s B2B Marketing and AI and AI Agents for B2B Marketing programs are the perfect place to start.
For live and on-demand AI-focused sessions:
- Measuring the modern AI-powered funnel
- Build content automations for lead generation with n8n
- SEO automation with n8n and Claude Code
- B2B buyer pain-led GTM strategy
- B2B ad campaigns with Claude Code and n8n
- Optimizing B2B content funnels with AI
- Build apps as content with AI
- AI ready agencies: what clients see
- Unique positioning for agencies
→ Don’t miss out on our 5-day n8n webinar series — ditch manual tasks and lean into automation with leading B2B marketing experts.
