You're used to wearing all the marketing hats. Planning, writing, proofing, posting - it's been on your shoulders for years.
Now the industry is handing you a new team: AI agents that never sleep, never take PTO, and learn at the speed of a prompt. But they're not plug-and-play.
Like any team, they only thrive when you give them a clear brief, tight guardrails, and a feedback loop.
TL;DR
- Doing all marketing by hand is slowing you down, and keeping you stuck in low-leverage work (Also: you deserve better)
- The upside is in a system where AI agents execute against your strategy
- When that system's in place, output multiplies, quality sharpens, and you get your time back for high-impact work (like thinking, not tweaking headlines at 9pm)
Here's what I'm seeing play out across the board:
I'm watching two patterns unfold:
- Some teams treat AI like a shortcut: They toss prompts at ChatGPT, ship generic content, then wonder why nothing is working. We call this, hamster wheel.
- Others treat AI like a system: They lock down brand docs, outline workflows, build marketing plans, train AI and use it to extend their strategic thinking. Output gets sharper. Execution gets easier. And work actually moves the needle.
Stat worth noting:
Marketing AI Institute’s latest report says 80% of marketers want AI primarily to wipe out repetitive busywork, yet 43% still cite “lack of strategy” as a top barrier to adoption.
Your Agent-Oriented Operating Model
1 / Codify the Brand (Human + AI)
Write the internal doc that lays out your strategy, explains your positioning, tone of voice, customer POV, brand values and promises.
If an intern couldn't nail it after reading it, it's not ready for agents.
AI Agents can't hit a target they can't see
2 / Train the Agents
Onboard each model like a junior teammate.
Start by giving it your brand voice doc. Then feed it 2-3 examples of "good" outputs and explain why they work for you.
Set up a review loop: Prompt > output > feedback loop until revision rounds shrink.
Over time, you'll spend less time correcting and more time directing.
That's how you go from general drafts to brand-fit deliverables.
3 / Assign Clear Roles
I've found it works better to treat AI tools like specialists, not generalists.
Instead of one agent doing "marketing," try splitting tasks across roles - content, SEO, social, design, etc. - giving each a clear job to do.
It's a small shift, but it helps everything run smoother (and keeps expectations in check)
4 / Measure Throughput
We've started tracking not just what gets done, but what gets easier.
How many hours are saved? What actually ships? What strategic items move forward?
Because activity is easy to measure. But impact is what pays off.
What you gain:
- Strategy that actually gets implemented
- A system that can now scale even if your team doesn't
- Time back to focus on high-impact work
- A role that evolves with the industry - not behind it
Most of the small business teams we work with are still armies of one (sometimes zero) on the marketing front.
The strategy is usually clear enough - the friction is turning that strategy into something that ships week after week.
That's why our own work is tilting hard toward operationalizing the plan.
Lately, we've been:
- Experimenting pairing clients' brand strategy and marketing plan with GPT Teammates to support execution
- Building simple review loops so the human catches nuance while the agent does the heavy lifting
- Tracking throughput, not just output, to be sure the system actually frees up headspace instead of adding another shiny tool to the stack
Early signs are promising: fewer last-minute scrambles, more energy left for the big decisions humans still need to make. I'll keep sharing what's working (and what's not) as this all unfolds.
All of this to say, now is not the time to dismiss the tech. Now is the time to be experimenting, testing, and building.