5 ways AI it can help your marketing
AI in marketing (in fact, in almost all thought fields) is having its “spreadsheet moment”.
Just like Excel didn’t replace finance teams - it replaced slow, inefficient finance - AI won’t replace marketing. But it will replace average marketing; the generic, repetitive, low-judgement stuff that drains time and produces little commercial impact.
The problem is most SMEs ( in fact, most of us in general) are using AI in the most obvious way: writing more content, faster.
But that’s not where the real value is.
AI is most powerful when it improves decisions, speed, and consistency. It’s most damaging when it replaces thinking, positioning, and brand judgement.
Where AI genuinely helps marketing (the high-value use cases)
1) Turning messy information into clarity
Marketing is often chaotic: scattered notes, half-written briefs, inconsistent messaging, sales decks from 2019, CRM data sales doesn’t trust.
AI is brilliant at taking a pile of inputs and turning it into something usable.
It can:
Summarise customer interview notes into patterns
Extract themes from sales calls or support tickets
Create first-draft messaging frameworks from real-world inputs
Convert meeting notes into action lists
Benefit: faster strategic clarity
Risk: only if you accept AI’s output as truth without validation
2) Accelerating research and competitive analysis
Most SMEs don’t do competitor research properly. They do a “quick scan”, then write the same vague copy as everyone else.
AI can accelerate:
Competitor messaging analysis
Feature/benefit comparisons
Pricing and offer structures (based on public info)
Review scraping for common pains (especially in SaaS or service categories)
Used properly, AI helps you define points of difference and find the gaps your competitors leave open.
Benefit: better positioning and differentiation
Risk: brand damage if you don’t cross-check facts
3) Improving campaign performance through iteration
Good marketing is rarely about a genius first attempt. It’s about smart iterations.
AI is excellent for:
Creating ad variations (copy, hooks, CTAs)
Suggesting new landing pages
Generating alternative email subject lines based on audience segments
Stress-testing offers (“what objections might a buyer have?”)
This is where AI should live: helping you generate options, not handing you “the answer”.
Benefit: more testing, more learning, faster optimisation
Risk: you still need a strategy so don’t get carried away
4) Better reporting, insight and decision-making
This is the most underused one - and it’s where we see the biggest commercial upside.
Most marketing reporting is either:
Too basic (“traffic is up!”), or
Too complicated (dashboards no one can make any sense of)
AI can help marketing leaders translate performance data into:
What changed?
Why did it change?
What should we do next?
It can also spot patterns we basic simple homo sapiens, can miss:
A channel sending loads of leads but no sales
A drop in conversion linked to a form change
A segment that converts disproportionately well
Benefit: faster, clearer decisions
Risk: the data needs to be clean enough to trust
5) CRM + pipeline momentum (yes, marketing owns this too)
The moment AI connects to CRM and your pipeline, it becomes far more valuable than “content automation”.
AI can support:
Lead scoring and prioritisation
Follow-up prompts when leads go cold
Identifying deals at risk based on activity patterns
Suggesting next actions based on what similar deals needed
This is where SMEs can win quickly: not by producing 10 blogs a week - but by tightening the system that turns interest into revenue.
Benefit: improved conversion + sales velocity
Risk: bad CRM data = wrong answers
The CopsonRae rule: Use AI to amplify judgement, not replace it
Here’s the simple guideline we recommend to SMEs:
Use AI for speed, structure and iteration.
Keep humans accountable for positioning, proof and commercial outcomes.
If AI helps your team make better decisions, faster - it’s a win.
If AI helps your team publish more generic output - it’s a loss.
