We’re all inundated with AI tools and features. Nearly every week, a new platform appears, promising sharper personalization, faster content creation, smarter targeting, or fully automated execution. Marketing is at the forefront of this wave, testing, piloting, and purchasing AI solutions faster than any other function. Yet there’s a significant gap between acquiring AI and actually operationalizing it. Salesforce’s latest State of Marketing Report shows that while 75% of marketing teams have adopted AI, most still find it difficult to integrate in a truly impactful way. The core issue: the systems, data, and workflows needed to support AI aren’t evolving as quickly as the tools themselves. That gap will only grow wider unless tool adoption is treated as a strategic, operational commitment. Here are five questions I urge every marketing leader to consider before investing in any AI tool. 1. Is our data truly ready? Many teams define data readiness as basic hygiene: standardized fields, clear naming conventions, and deduplication. But being AI-ready goes further, requiring identity resolution, integration pipelines, and real-time data sync so information is actually usable the moment an AI workflow is triggered. Assess whether your data: Is available across all relevant systems. Is fresh enough to power real-time decisions. Maintains a consistent customer identity across every touchpoint. If the answer is no, your AI workflows will likely fail by generating outputs that appear correct but lead to misguided actions. This is where I see most AI investments fall apart. AI amplifies poor data, but when data is optimized, it shifts from reactive to proactive and becomes a true driver of…