How I’m Using AI to Enhance My Marketing Workflow—And Where It's Falling Short (For Now)

AI is the worst it will ever be right now—and it's still a total game changer. The paradigm shift we’re experiencing with AI is as transformative as the internet, computers, electricity, and the industrial revolution—and we’re only at the beginning. It’s crucial to start integrating AI into your workflow—or risk being left behind.

As a fractional CMO, brand strategist, copywriter, and entrepreneur, I’ve started to embrace AI as part of my daily tech stack. While it hasn’t replaced my 20+ years of experience, creativity, or subjective taste, AI has become a valuable tool for improving my efficiency and lightening my mental load. Simply put, it’s allowing me to enjoy my work more and get more done.

In this article, I’ll share how I’m currently using AI to enhance my marketing workflow and where I’ve found it lacking (at least for now).

1. Copywriting

Despite my years of copywriting experience, I love using ChatGPT as a writing partner. It's become a daily go-to for me. You know that synergy with a favorite work collaborator? The one who, when you brainstorm with them, you leave with stronger ideas than either of you could have come up with alone? That’s kind of how it feels for me. While ChatGPT doesn’t always save time, it significantly reduces my mental load. I often rework the drafts it provides, but having a starting point or brainstorming partner makes the process feel like a much lighter lift.

Where AI-generated copy stands right now, I still find it needs a human touch. I can often spot AI-written content that hasn't been edited. ChatGPT is powerful, but it’s not a replacement for human creativity. Like Photoshop for designers or ProTools for music producers, AI is an incredible tool—if you know how to use it effectively. That's where a human's professional expertise, coupled with knowing how to prompt effectively comes in.

That being said, I’m currently experimenting with creating custom GPTs for my brand voice to cut down on the amount of manual edits needed. Between using a custom GPT and as AI technology advances, I expect the manual work needed to get lighter and lighter.

2. Customer Interviews & Research

AI has been a game changer when it comes to customer interviews, research, and case study development. One of its biggest advantages is in transcription. With recording approval, you can quickly generate transcripts from your meetings using AI tools like Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai. Feeding these transcripts into tools like ChatGPT allows you to instantly generate summaries and extract key data points.

In addition to speeding up transcription, AI can spot patterns and themes across multiple customer interview transcripts. While a human with marketing experience is still needed to unearth hidden insights and details AI might miss, I find AI gets me about 75% of the way there— significantly cutting down the time I'd otherwise spend manually sifting through data.

3. Visuals & Video

For creating visuals and video content, tools like DALL-E (through ChatGPT) and Runway have been valuable assets. Whether I’m working on a client pitch, building a campaign, or creating content, these tools have helped me generate engaging and cost-effective visuals quickly.

The key here is in prompting and patience. It can take some time and luck to get a visual that feels right and doesn’t have that typical AI-generated look. However, there are still times when I turn to Canva or Photoshop to get exactly what I need for a client. For in-depth design work, though, it is still absolutely critical to have a talented creative director or graphic designer in the mix. So for now, knowing when and where to use AI for visuals is important.

Where AI Falls Short (For Now)

1. Campaign Ideation

While AI is great for generating content like copy and visuals, I find it still struggles with high-level campaign ideation. The creative process behind developing a strategic, innovative marketing campaign requires deep insights into brand values, target audience psychology, market trends, and creating large creative ideas from scratch.

In my current experience, AI excels at executing and refining tactical elements. However, when it comes to developing overarching campaign concepts, human intuition, creativity, and experience is still imperative. Building a compelling narrative, understanding cultural nuances, and predicting how consumers will respond emotionally to a campaign requires the kind of abstract thinking that AI can’t fully grasp (yet).

That’s not to say AI can’t play a role in the brainstorming process. It can certainly provide inspiration, offer data-driven insights, and give you references. But when it comes to developing the initial concept and ensuring it aligns with a brand’s deeper purpose, mission, and vision, I haven't been able to use it to get anything close to what I can do as a fractional CMO.

That being said, I was recently introduced to Google AI Studio and how it excels at analyzing video, and this feature can be used to create alternative hooks or approaches to campaigns. This is something I want to explore more, and as AI continues to advance, I think AI-assisted campaign work will get better and better and become more common. I also wonder if I can train a custom GPT to help me with these challenges.

2. TikTok Content

When it comes to creating content for TikTok, I find that ChatGPT still struggles to write effective video hooks. My experience so far is that AI-generated hooks and ideas often miss the mark, lacking the cultural nuance and real-time awareness needed to engage TikTok’s audience effectively. Similar to high-level campaign development, the short-form, highly dynamic nature of TikTok content requires a level of creativity and trend-awareness that is hard to achieve with AI at the moment.

The caveat to this is that I haven’t yet experimented with training AI specifically for TikTok hooks or created a custom GPT for this. I do wonder if I spend more time experimenting, if I could crack this, and it's on my to-do list the next time I’m ideating TikTok content.

3. Social Media Calendars

While AI can be helpful in writing social media content, I’ve found that AI-generated social media calendars often feel too generic. AI is a great tool for refining first drafts, brainstorming, and copy editing, but creating post ideas and calendars that are truly engaging and tailored to specific audiences still requires a human touch.

As with other areas, my current take is AI can assist in expanding or improving ideas, but when it comes to developing high-level concepts for marketing and communications from scratch, it’s not quite there yet. This of course could all change tomorrow with a single update, new start-up, or if I can train a GPT to help with this more accurately.

Final Thoughts

AI is transforming the way I work, helping me boost productivity and reduce the mental load in several areas of my marketing workflow. From copywriting to customer research to visuals, AI is a powerful tool. But there are still areas—like campaign ideation and social media strategy—where I find AI to currently be more limited. However, regardless of how AI is used, I find human insight and creativity combined with prompt engineering to be an essential part of the equation.

As AI continues to evolve, and as I delve into creating custom GPTs, I expect all of these limitations to be nonexistent. But for now, the balance between AI, human creativity, and prompt engineering is key.

How are you using AI in your workflow? Where has it helped and where has it not? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

About Jennifer

Jennifer Quiroz is a seasoned fractional CMO with over 20 years of experience across industries like B2B, SaaS, tech, radio, and entertainment. I excel at distilling complex brands into clear, compelling messaging that resonates with target audiences.

If you're looking to simplify your brand’s message or simply want to say hi, connect with me here on LinkedIn or visit www.jenniferquiroz.com.