AI Shifts Marketing Focus from Funnel Optimization to Business Objectives

At the ET MarTech Summit 2026, Nishant Kalra of Salesforce South Asia delivered an address titled 'The New Imperatives for Marketing Growth', discussing how AI is transforming marketing practices. Kalra highlighted a shift in consumer behavior, citing McKinsey data that states up to 70% of consumers globally use AI search tools for top-of-funnel discovery before reaching out to brands directly or visiting their websites.

The first imperative Kalra discussed was managing how AI perceives a brand. Salesforce's Palmata tool assesses brand perception across frontier large language models, including mentions, sentiment, and category positioning. The tool aims to address the gap between a brand's intended positioning and how AI models interpret its products or services.

Kalra also talked about moving beyond predefined customer journeys towards more adaptive, goal-oriented campaign execution. Traditional campaign setup cycles can span six to ten weeks due to manual segmentation, fixed pathing, and prolonged approval processes. Salesforce is positioning AI agents with Marketing Cloud Next and Campaign Agents to manage campaign execution against defined business objectives.

The third imperative focused on closing the gap between active buyer intent and timely sales engagement. Kalra cited a figure indicating that 93% of organisations fail to respond to active buyer inquiries within five minutes, highlighting how delayed responses can affect conversion rates. Salesforce showcased two AI agents designed to address this challenge: Piper, an inbound agent handling product enquiries, and Hunter, an outbound agent identifying prospects and initiating personalized outreach.