Most Marketers Are Using AI Wrong
And where I think you should be using it instead.
Every week, there’s a new headline:
“AI built a full campaign in 10 minutes.”
“AI translated an entire website overnight.”
“AI increased our conversion rate by 400%.”
It’s impressive, but misleading.
The biggest shift AI has brought to marketing isn’t the tech itself - it’s the speed expectations that come with it. Everyone wants more campaigns, content, outputs faster.
But is more truly the best way marketers should be using AI?
In my opinion - probably not. Instead, here are the places I’m putting my AI bets on 👇
Automate the Bullshit. Not the Thinking.
On my team, we have a simple mantra: Automate the Bullshit.
Translation: use AI to remove the repetitive, manual pain points that slow people down. Not to outsource creativity or judgment.
Lead operations? Automated.
UTM tagging, campaign cloning, data cleanup? Automated.
Anything that keeps people busy but not better — gone.
That’s where AI shines: freeing up time for the work that actually grows the business.
But there’s a catch.
AI will only scale what already exists.
If your systems are messy, your data incomplete, or your direction unclear, you’ll just scale the chaos.
AI should scale your strategy, not your dysfunction.
The 3-Step Automated the BS Adoption Play
Want to bring this mindset to your team? Here’s how to get started:
1. Audit the Pain.
Ask your team: “What are the top three manual tasks slowing you down every week?”
2. Test the Tool.
Pick one process and run a two-week AI experiment to remove friction. Document what worked (and what didn’t).
3. Share the Learnings.
Hold a 30-minute “AI Show & Tell.” Reward curiosity, not perfection.
You don’t need an AI roadmap. You need an AI habit.
Ideas to Start with AI (Without Burning the House Down)
Need some inspiration on where to start? Here are simple, high-impact plays that most teams probably would love to automate and can build momentum fast with AI:
Campaign Ops
Use AI to support execution, not lead it.
→ Have ChatGPT or Claude check links, summarize assets, and generate copy variants for testing.
Sales Alignment
Create a shared prompt library for SDRs to personalize outreach while staying on brand.
→ It saves marketing hours while giving sales guardrails and flexibility.
Analytics
Feed campaign results into AI to summarize performance narratives.
→ “What’s working, what’s not, and what changed?” becomes a 2-minute task.
Internal Enablement
Use AI to write FAQs, onboarding guides, or campaign recaps.
→ Knowledge compounds instead of vanishing in Slack threads.
Start with one workflow that frees up five hours a week — not five new AI projects that add five more meetings.
Leaning into AI Without Fear
When encouraging teams to utilize AI, here is where I see many leaders go wrong: they talk about AI like it’s a replacement.
It’s not. It’s an assistant.
Telling your team that AI will “take over” is the fastest way to kill innovation.
It creates fear where you need curiosity.
The truth is, many execs have unrealistic expectations about what AI can do.
They see viral posts about how one prompt generated $100M in ARR overnight and forget that enterprise-level marketing isn’t a hackathon — it’s a system.
AI can be transformational, but only when the foundations are strong.
Trash in, trash out.
Encourage experimentation, but also reward realistic feedback.
Ask your experts to tell you when something should be automated and when it shouldn’t.
And remember: the goal of AI is not to replace people, but to amplify them.
Judgment Is the New Differentiator
And in the same way, the marketers I see thriving with AI aren’t the ones using the most tools — they’re the ones using them wisely.
A mistake I see marketers make is trying to use too much too fast. Using AI just for the sake of using AI, rather than thinking through the outcomes they want.
Judgment is the new differentiator.
It’s knowing what not to automate.
It’s recognizing when a “good enough” output will hurt your brand more than it helps.
It’s pausing to ask, “Is this solving a problem or just creating noise?”
AI gives you a thousand options. Judgment tells you which one matters.
Questions to Spark AI Curiosity in Your Team
If you’re not sure where to start, try these in your next team meeting:
“What’s one thing we do manually that we could automate this month?”
“What’s the most creative AI use case you’ve seen lately — and could we adapt it?”
“If AI gave us back five hours a week, where would we reinvest that time?”
The marketers who win won’t be the ones with the longest prompt libraries.
They’ll be the ones who know which lever to pull and why.