When COVID-19 hit, many advertisers suspended their media buys. It’s an understandable, knee-jerk reaction to economic uncertainty. It’s also often the right call. But because we’ve entrusted AI-powered intelligent marketing automation machines, we were able to let the system we tuned for our needs learn how best to cope with the massive changes impacting each of the individual ad-buying platforms. AI analyzes a complex array of consumer behavioral data and bidding environments in real-time — running calculations 24/7 with a level of accuracy and at a volume humans just can’t compete with. As a result, we saw our customer acquisition costs drop, allocations shift, and saw our revenue accelerate significantly without making a human decision to either pull back or press on the gas pedal. And as more companies take advantage of applied AI in all aspects of their operations, I’m hopeful we’ll emerge faster from this crisis — and be in even better shape to stem the next crisis in ways previous generations could only have imagined.

Brian Balfour shares his growth meeting process from HubSpot/Sidekick.