This week’s edition of Let’s Talk brings together our experts to answer a burning question for business owners everywhere: Can AI help you market your business without hiring an agency?
We’re diving deep into the practical realities of using AI tools for social media management, content scheduling, audience engagement, and performance analytics. Our panel shares real-world examples of what’s working, where AI falls short, and how savvy businesses are combining automated tools with strategic thinking to build their brand presence online.
Let’s Talk!
Read also: Let’s Talk: How can AI help small businesses read their customers’ minds?
Nicole Birbas, Senior APAC customer success director, Klaviyo
“For small businesses running lean, the question isn’t whether AI can replace an agency, but whether it can replace the manual execution that drains their time and budget.
“That is precisely what Klaviyo’s Marketing Agent does. Think of it as instantly hiring an expert to do your grunt work. You provide your website URL, and the AI autonomously crafts an on-brand integrated communications strategy for email, SMS, WhatsApp and push notifications. That includes things like your email welcome series, your SMS flows, your first month of campaigns — all in minutes.
“This moves small teams from being ‘doers’ trapped in operational tasks to ‘strategists’ focused on the brand and growth. It’s about automating the essential 80% of marketing so you can focus your limited resources on the creative 20% that only a human can deliver.”
Alexander Concannon, Chief Marketing Officer, Valiant Finance
AI is completely changing how businesses can market themselves by enabling quick, high quality execution. In mid-September we launched our first radio campaign entirely generated, voiced, and produced in-house using AI, which went live in Brisbane and Sydney.
We still used our in-house copywriter to shape the message but we were able to turn around the entire production in days rather than weeks. Since launch we’ve been able to deliver rapid creative refreshes without repeat production costs. Or the use of an agency.
While cost and complexity used to be real barriers to producing campaigns in-house, these are now dramatically reduced. With the right AI tools, teams can ideate, produce, and optimise creative in real time, responding directly to performance data. This model is quicker and more scalable than the chain of briefs required to coordinate agencies and comply with SLAs. It’s created a new foundation of in-house marketing.
That said, AI doesn’t replace creative partnership entirely. Agencies will continue to play a role, particularly on complex projects or ideas that stretch beyond an internal team’s wheelhouse. But for everyday work, AI is speeding up the BAU.
Ginger Kidd, VP Marketing and Communications APAC, Sinch
The short answer is yes, if you use it as an assistant and not a replacement, AI can be a strong tool to market your business without an agency. Let AI support with customer communication, including promotions, updates and reminders, but always apply human judgment.
Think about the communication channels your customers like and match their preferences. In Australia, 84% prefer email for promos, and 49% want to choose their communication channel when they sign up. Consider using AI to power preference centres so you avoid customers’ top three turn‑offs: messages that are too frequent (44%), irrelevant (36%) or unsolicited (35%). AI can cap frequency, optimise send times and segment automatically, so you stay helpful, not noisy.
Make sure you build trust into every moment of communication. To do that, ensure you clearly label when AI is being used, keep a fast ‘talk‑to‑a‑human’ path for questions, and use verified sender IDs as shoppers are more likely to trust verified messages. Start small by automating low‑risk jobs, slowly increasing what AI covers and then scale what works.
Done right, AI gives small businesses agency‑level speed without losing the human connection that wins loyalty.
Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia and New Zealand, Thryv
AI is fast becoming the quiet engine behind small business growth. It listens, learns and acts – turning everyday customer interactions into clear direction. From the tone of a review to the timing of a booking, it uncovers patterns that reveal what customers value most and where attention is needed next.
For business owners, that intelligence translates into sharper decisions and stronger relationships. Marketing becomes less about guesswork and more about precision – knowing who to reach, when to reach them and how to make every message count. It also exposes the blind spots that rarely make it into spreadsheets – missed calls, unanswered enquiries and customers who nearly booked but didn’t. AI fills in those invisible gaps, helping business owners recover lost opportunities and deepen loyalty where it may quietly fade.
This is where Thryv is changing the game. Its connected platform brings together reputation management, communication, social scheduling and email marketing into one intelligent system. AI weaves through it all, surfacing insights, crafting personalised responses and helping business owners act on data in the moment. The result is a business that runs smarter, looks sharper and stays closer to its customers – without the heavy lift of traditional agency support.
Michael Russell, Managing Director, Finwave Finance
Yes, AI can absolutely help small businesses market themselves without hiring an agency.
Today, AI tools can help you write ads, create graphics, build social media posts, and even suggest when and where to publish them. At Finwave, we use AI to quickly test different messages and designs, saving time and money while still reaching the right people.
If you’re a small business owner, you don’t need a big team or a big budget to get started. Tools like Canva (with AI design), ChatGPT (for writing), and email platforms like Mailchimp with AI subject line testing can help you create marketing that looks professional without the price tag.
The secret is staying clear on who you’re speaking to, what you’re offering, and using AI to speed up the work, not replace your voice. With a few smart tools, you can launch campaigns, test ideas, and reach your customers faster.
In short: AI won’t replace strategy, but it makes doing the work much easier and cheaper.
Tash Rahalkar, General Manager, Customer Strategy & Performance, MYOB
Today, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are discovering that AI can be a practical and affordable way to build a brand, save time, and connect more meaningfully with customers.
When it comes to optimising AI for your marketing, the key is to start small – and smart.
1. Deliver Hyper-Personalised Customer Experiences
AI enables SMEs to create personalised campaigns that speak directly to individual customer needs. AI-powered chatbots can answer questions, recommend products, capture leads, book appointments, and respond to queries and reviews around the clock.
2.Turbocharge Your Content Production
Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Canva, and Jasper can generate blog posts, ad copy, or social media captions in minutes.
3. Stretch Your Ad Budget Further
Paid advertising can stretch small budgets, but AI makes it more predictable and effective. SMEs can leverage AI-powered analytics to see which messages resonate and which audiences convert, transforming guesswork into data-driven precision.
4. Turn Raw Data Into Smart Decisions
AI tools can analyse data quickly and intelligently, not only explaining what’s already happened but also forecasting what’s likely to happen next. The result: more effective campaigns, stronger customer relationships, and better use of time and budget.
5. Automate the Mundane, Amplify the Human
Automating repetitive tasks such as email follow-ups or CRM updates. Customers appreciate knowing when they’re interacting with an AI system. Make this clear, and frame it as an innovation advantage.
Azadeh Williams, Managing Director, AZK Media
As a leading B2B Public Relations Agency we have actually tested a number of AI platforms that claim to replace our agency. What we found were those so-called PR replacements agents didn’t fact check marketing and PR copy at a deeper level, opening up brands to risk having copyright and fake citations in their press releases and thought leadership articles. They also concocted media pitches to journalists that would risk brands being blacklisted for annoying journalists with the wrong angle and off the mark, inhuman feel.
What we have found more powerful instead, is leveraging AI platforms and insights to help our clients navigate the new ways of AI search. This AI-driven approach works in harmony with human marketing and PR strategy, strengthening strategic efforts for more impactful results.
Iris Chan, B2B Marketing Leader, Resultation
There is a common misconception that AI tools are for larger companies with generous budgets to invest. In reality, the most significant benefit of AI for growing businesses or smaller teams is that you can now access resources and scale without an agency. AI has democratised solutions that were previously only available or accessible through outsourcing.
Here are some practical real-world examples of how AI can help market your business.
- Need to dub a corporate overview video from English into a different language? Tools like Adobe Express can simulate the voice and tone of the narrator and produce a voice-over sounding just like the CEO or founder speaking except in the target language. Based on first-hand experience of the output being vetted by native speakers of the destination language, the quality is high enough to go to market. This could be a cost-effective and agile alternative to engaging voice-over talent via agencies.
- Solutions like Relevance.AI or n8n enable you to create AI agents without coding knowledge. You could potentially create a sales development representative (SDR) to do active outreach. The SDR agent will conduct research and identify prospective buyers aligned to your ideal customer profile, then intelligently craft personalised emails to engage the prospect. The agent can keep the conversation alive and nurture the lead by sharing relevant collateral, with the ultimate goal of generating enough interest for the prospect to request a live demo. Voice-based communication is also now emerging for experimentation in more transactional scenarios to accelerate the buying process.
- AI can generate multiple versions of creatives and copy for paid social advertising to increase market awareness of your products or services. This is a viable option if you do not have the budget to work with an agency.
The key consideration is to be very deliberate about determining the right juncture to insert the human factor into the interaction or workflow. It might be at the start point training the AI and contextualising the framework.
It could be for quality assurance and control purposes. You can train the AI to listen for specific signals or reach specific milestones that would require human intervention. You can also set up mechanisms for the AI to consult with human experts if there are questions they are not able to immediately address independently, so there is still human input even if AI is fronting the interaction. AI should be an extension of human ingenuity, not a replacement.
Bottomline, it is important to find the Goldilocks zone to introduce the human element in the journey because the best customer experiences are the ones that balance efficiency with personal touch.
Geoff Main, Marketing Director & Founder, Passionberry Marketing
AI can absolutely help you market your business without an agency – but only if you understand what you’re trying to achieve. It’s not a shortcut for strategy; it’s an amplifier of it.
The best results I’ve seen come from founders who pair AI’s speed with human direction – people who know who they serve, what they stand for, and how they create value.
AI can help you test ideas faster, automate the repetitive parts, and create more content than you ever thought possible. But it can’t define your positioning or build an emotional connection with your audience. You need to give it the latest information and data, share sales call transcripts, brand tone of voice for each persona, all the information great marketers use to build marketing that moves the needle.
So if you can’t share that info, then AI will be limited to the simple things and you still need an agency or CMO (full-time or fractional) to set the foundations and adapt the plan as you get results (good or bad).
Most businesses don’t fail because they lack tools – they fail because they lack clarity.
Start with clarity, then use AI to multiply your effort – not to mask your uncertainty. That’s how you use it to truly scale, even without an agency.
Dr Anna Harrison, Founder, RAMMP
Obituary: Marketing Agency, Born: 20th Century – Died: 2024
It is with a mix of indifference and relief that we announce the passing of the traditional Marketing Agency, which quietly expired in 2024 after a prolonged struggle with irrelevance.
Born in the mid-20th century, Marketing Agency thrived on hefty retainers, flashy slogans, and dubious ROI. Industry veterans, blind to the brewing storm, were caught off guard as AI swiftly delivered the final deathblow with merciless precision. A tearful Jeff Bezos, always the empath, summed it up perfectly: “Your margin is my opportunity”.
Marketing Agency leaves behind a bloated portfolio of overpriced campaigns, vague metrics, overstaffed brainstorming sessions, and underperforming media buys. It is survived by a long-lost, rebellious child, Dr Anna Harrison , whose creation—ironically—may have been the very twist of fate that sealed Marketing Agency’s demise.
The Life and Times
Marketing Agency began life in a simpler era when the Don Drapers of the world thrived on charisma, catchy jingles, and opaque metrics. For decades, it held sway over corporate executives, convincing brands to pour millions into amorphous notions of “awareness” and “engagement.” Client relationships were built on three-hour lunches and the art of dodging accountability.
“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative,” remarked a somewhat shaken David Ogilvy. Yet toward the end of its life, Marketing Agency sold less, strategised more, and was ultimately gazumped by AI-powered solutions less sensitive to the whims of billable hours.
Upon hearing of Marketing Agency’s demise, Simon Sinek reportedly muttered, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. Unfortunately for Marketing Agency, its “Why” had become lost somewhere between “brand alignment” and “demand generation”.
Seth Godin was mooved by the news. Friends reported that he is still cowering, and a deep shade of purple.
Gary Vaynerchuk may have foreseen the inevitable back in 2019, when he said, “The market is the market is the market”. Alas, the market spoke. Marketing Agency will be missed, by at least one.
Cause of Death
The official cause of death has been listed as “LLM-Induced Irrelevance”. Marketing Agency could no longer justify bloated retainers when new players offered real-time diagnostics, content creation, and campaign optimisation for a fraction of the cost. It is speculated that Marketing Agency was aware of its declining health but chose to focus on “strategy workshops” rather than seek treatment.
Witnesses report that Marketing Agency suffered a final, fatal stroke after discovering that RAMMP could do in seconds what their teams needed weeks to achieve—all while providing actionable insights backed by actual data. It simply couldn’t compete with RAMMP.AI’s ability to deliver measurable ROI, a concept with which the deceased had always had a strained relationship.
A Complacent Legacy
In its twilight years, Marketing Agency grew complacent, resting on its laurels of long lunches and fuzzy creative ideation. Bill Bernbach once noted, “Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make”. Sadly, the lasting impression Marketing Agency left was one of bloated billing.
Final Words
And so, we say farewell to Marketing Agency, a once-powerful force that, in its later years, became more focused on maintaining appearances than delivering results. As Peter Drucker wisely observed, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”. Marketing Agency, through its relentless pursuit of inefficiency, became the very embodiment of this wisdom.
RIP Marketing Agency. May your powerpoint slideshows, branded stress balls, and overpriced retainer agreements find peace in the annals of history.
Jokes aside, we’ve proven that AI can help market a business without an agency. At RAMMP, more than 200 businesses are already using AI to do what agencies used to charge huge retainers for: strategy, content, and customer insights.
The secret isn’t the tech, it’s the process. When you train AI to think like your best marketer, it becomes your in-house growth engine, minus the agency fees and the attitude. Ironically, we are tools for pro-marketers, so rather than replacing marketers, we simply take THEIR hassles away!
Satya Upadhyaya, Marketing Technology Leader
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, customers increasingly expect real-time responses and seamless interactions. Many leading technology companies are shaping these expectations, which in turn raises the bar for speed and quality in customer service. However, when organisations focus solely on efficiency, the quality of customer interactions can suffer, potentially impacting both revenue and long-term relationships, hence there is an experience gap between what customers expect and what they receive.
Implementing AI-driven solutions that can engage customers promptly, accurately, and as a first point of contact can be highly beneficial, especially when services are not available 24/7, when support is needed outside business hours, or when delays and hand-offs hinder issue resolution.
Conversational AI offers a solution by managing complex conversations, accurately interpreting customer intent, and providing instant, helpful responses. Automating routine communications and integrating AI with systems such as CRM platforms enables teams to concentrate on closing deals and resolving more intricate issues.
However, it is crucial to recognise that not all customer interactions can or should be handled by AI. Certain scenarios, such as highly technical issues, ongoing complaints, billing disputes, or situations requiring genuine empathy and ethical judgement, demand human intervention. In these cases, prioritising human involvement is essential to deliver exceptional service and resolve complex problems effectively.
Furthermore, conversational AI technology has not yet reached full maturity. Over-automation, poor data quality, insufficient human oversight, and the inability to manage emotional or complex situations have led to failures in some implementations. Therefore, maintaining a “human in the loop” approach is non-negotiable for safeguarding service quality and customer trust.
For organisations beginning their journey with conversational AI, it is advisable to start small, blend AI with human support, continuously monitor and optimise processes, establish a robust data foundation, and focus on delivering practical value rather than experimenting for the sake of innovation.
To end, AI can significantly enhance customer communication, human intervention remains indispensable for complex, sensitive, or emotionally charged interactions. A balanced approach, leveraging both AI and human expertise, ensures organisations meet customer expectations while maintaining high standards of service.
Yema Akbar, Director, Andiron Group
AI is an accelerant. But accelerants only matter if there’s already a carefully crafted spark.
For businesses in stable markets with clear value props, AI can take over much of the operational marketing load. But for the disruptive ventures we work with, those entering new markets, shaping investor perception, or building entirely new categories, more finesse is required to cut through while still driving efficiencies.
These businesses aren’t just selling products. They’re establishing trust, signalling credibility, and building movements. In these cases, AI is best used to accelerate the parts of the process farthest from their competitive edge, automating routine tasks, generating broad content support, and surfacing insights, while preserving human time and energy for what matters most. That includes shaping a narrative that earns belief, building relationships that unlock traction, and positioning the company carefully within rapidly shifting dynamics like volatile regulatory environments, emerging stakeholder ecosystems, or industries still in flux.
In our view, AI won’t replace the agency. But it will reshape it. Agencies must now play dual roles: introducing and managing the right AI tools, while elevating the distinctly human empathetic capabilities like strategic GTM clarity, editorial sharpness, and the ability to guide founders through high-stakes inflection points
AI will speed things up. But human insight still decides whether you’re steering the right way, and humans must remain accountable for the outcome.
Sandy Colombo, Travel Coach, Aussie2italia
Travel is a fast-changing and competitive industry, and for small players like myself at Aussie2Italia, standing out without big budgets can be tough. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how travel coaches, planners, and boutique travel agencies work – helping us operate more efficiently, especially in marketing.
AI bridges the gap by automating busy work and boosting creativity. Sometimes it’s a starting point, but often, it’s a lifesaver!
Getting onboard with AI helps me
- Save time
- Cuts costs
- Boosts personalization
- Keeps me visible
- Offers creativity on demand
- Automates routine tasks
- Provides smart insights
AI isn’t about replacing people — it’s about empowering them. I don’t need to hire a marketing assistant to get professional results (and honestly, I never would!). Think of AI as your creative collaborator – part strategist, part designer, and part data expert – quietly working behind the scenes.
With AI, I can spend less time managing marketing tasks (which I’ll admit aren’t my strength!) and more time doing what I love most: inspiring Aussies to explore Italy in meaningful and memorable ways.
Julie Lawrie, CEO / Co-Founder, Amplifyo
Yes! AI is helping to level the playing field and enable SMEs to do marketing without the need for an agency if their budgets are tight.
At Amplifyo we built our AI marketing manager software off the back of 12+ years of successfully helping SMEs in our growth-marketing consultancy (yes, we automated our agency!). We’re saving customers ~90% of the time spent on marketing strategy, planning & campaign messaging…from $58/month.
Amplifyo CEO, Julie Lawrie says “We still think it’s important to have specialists in the loop, but the practical reality is that many SMEs can’t afford traditional agency / retainer models. We believe the right AI tools can take the place of traditional marketing, to deliver results.”
We believe that the best AI marketing tools:
· include inbuilt workflows (so you don’t need to spend time and money on building out every pathway yourself)
· utilise safe AI + responsible data security
· give you access to the latest in generative, conversational and other AI – no extra training or costs required
· deliver strategy + tactics across online & offline channels
AI should be an enabler in your marketing + a path to reduce overhead costs while still achieving revenue, customer, and brand growth.
Peter Curran, Founder & Business Development Manager, Digital Surfer
Let’s say you have a gym membership. It gives you access to all the amazing equipment to build muscle and get in shape. However, you need to know how to use the equipment, put together a training plan, and then actually invest the time in doing said plan, as well as having the right nutrition and lifestyle to get results. If you don’t have that, you just have a shiny card.
This is what marketing with AI without an agency is like. You have the tools. But do you know how to use them? Do you have the time to use them, tailor what it gives you, know how to look at when it’s working or not and make adjustments? It’s not to say you can’t use AI and end up with some great results, but then wouldn’t every business with access to these tools be rolling in the dough and laughing straight to the bank? The reality is, a lot of agencies have tested our AI tools to support their clients themselves, some even cutting back on human resources, just to have to bring them back in as the tools rely on people to use them and need the knowledge behind them to be powerful. AI isn’t a one-stop-fix-it-all-done-and-dusted stop. It’s a tool, just like a chef’s pans, a builder’s hammer or a personal trainer’s knowledge.
Sue Ralston, Senior Communications Director, Einsteinz Communications
Short answer: No. Long answer: Still no, but with caveats.
AI tools are great at the heavy lifting. They can streamline production, surface keywords, and speed up research. But they don’t build strategy. And they certainly don’t replace the market insight, creative instinct, or brand nuance that successful marketing demands.
AI also lacks nuance. It won’t understand cultural context, customer pain points, or that a campaign that works for Facebook would flop on Reddit, or that a story that works for one publication could never work in another.
Think of AI as being like a slow cooker. It’ll get the job done if you add in the right ingredients, in the right order, for the right amount of time. But it won’t tell you what to cook, what those ingredients should be, or whether your audience is gluten-free and indeed hates stew. That’s where agencies come in—adding experience, objectivity, and a results-first mindset to the job.
Marketing done well relies on creativity, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking. It’s about positioning, timing, storytelling, and knowing when to pivot. It’s about the human touch and wisdom to know how and when to use AI.
Janet Moeller, Founder and CEO, Teacher PA
AI can replace a marketing agency’s output, but only if you understand your customers deeply enough to do the strategic thinking yourself. Professional communication without the agency price tag requires you to bring the expertise. AI just amplifies it.
After 30 years as a teacher and principal, I know education stakeholders intimately. That domain knowledge makes AI work for marketing Teacher PA. Here’s my approach:
Target your ICP precisely. Connect customer data with your message and prompt AI to focus on client value. Generic marketing fails whether humans or AI create it.
Repurpose strategically. I write 600-800 word Substack articles, then determine the tone each platform requires. LinkedIn gets business-focused depth. Instagram needs motivational brevity. I determine strategy; AI executes the repurposing. Humans verify, ensuring we’re always in the loop..
Match visuals to brand. AI image generation aligns visual assets with copy for coherent messaging. I’m still learning here, but the capability exists without hiring designers.
The irony? I now teach these same workflows to schools for stakeholder communications. The strategies I use for marketing would have transformed my life as a principal.
Can AI replace agencies? Yes, if you’re willing to be the strategist.
Quentin Aisbett, SEO Strategist, Searcht
AI can absolutely help you market your business without an agency, but only if the right person is leading it. We’re now in an environment where product discovery is fragmented across Google (traditional results, AI Overviews and AI Mode), ChatGPT, YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit, etc. To compete effectively, every business needs a marketing professional who understands how brand awareness, clarity, trust, and reputation drive discovery and who has the technical skill and curiosity to keep learning and adapting.
If you have that person in-house, AI can amplify their impact and reduce your reliance on an agency. But if that capability isn’t there, the opportunity cost is too high. Without someone to guide the strategy and execution, AI alone won’t bridge the gap.
Greg Wilkes, CEO, Develop Coaching
Most small businesses struggle with marketing for one reason: time. You know you need consistent content, SEO, and social posts, but agencies are expensive and results vary wildly.
That’s where AI changes the game. Tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Canva’s Magic Write can help you brainstorm ideas, write copy, and design campaigns in minutes. They’re not replacing human creativity – they’re making it affordable.
Start with your content calendar. Ask AI to create a month of post ideas, then refine the tone to match your brand. Use it to draft blog outlines, ad copy, or email sequences. Platforms like SurferSEO or MarketMuse can optimise your content for search without the agency retainers.
For visuals, tools like Midjourney or Canva can create social graphics and videos in the right format for LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube Shorts.
Let’s be honest: AI can’t replace your strategy or your story; but it can free you from the daily grind of content creation. Treat it as your digital assistant, not your marketer.
If you’ve ever wished you could clone yourself to handle the marketing side, this is the next best thing. Learn to work with AI, not against it, and you’ll create sharper campaigns, save thousands, and still sound like you. The future of marketing isn’t automated – it’s augmented by smart owners who know how to use the tools.
Tim Kroeger, Luxury Wellness & Active Travel Specialist and Founder, Universal Traveller
“When I pivoted Universal Traveller into luxury wellness and active travel, I didn’t have an agency on retainer.
That’s where AI slipped in, not as a replacement for a marketing team, but as a brainstorming partner. I feed ChatGPT everything that matters. Who my audience is, my brand story, what makes a specific hotel or trip special, and ask for a rough first draft: a caption, an email outline, a few hook ideas.
But nothing goes out untouched. I manually rewrite every piece so it sounds like me, aligns with my strategy, and fits my audience.
Can AI help you market without an agency? Yes, if you treat it like a smart intern in the room, not the CMO. You still own the story.”
Lauren Clemett, CEO, The Audacious Agency
AI isn’t a magical tool – it’s more like a spotty teenager intern sitting at your desk. It’s incredibly fast and eager, but it only does what you tell it to do. With the right prompts, it can quickly become a highly personalised ‘mini-me,’ learning your unique tone, language, and all those little foibles and flaws. Just ask your team to each craft some content about the same topic and see the personalities come through!
The core value of a creative agency is genuine original thinking – creating something that has never existed before. This initiative is what makes agency output distinctive from the generic noise created by AI.
The industry is being reshaped, just as music and photography were, but the real artistry is in the lived experience and quirky human perspective that creatives tap into, like crafting a new joke, an unforgettable anecdote, or a viral meme.
AI can produce content, but a human expert finds the angle. Agency teams possess the ability to look at the world, and your business, in a way an algorithm just can’t… yet. AI certainly helps speed up the repurposing of an original idea into multiple formats, so you need both to stand out.
John Hubbard, CEO, Push Button Webinars
Push Button Webinars is proof that you don’t need to hire an agency to market your business. You also don’t need technical skills if you learn how to use AI if you train it with your unique intellectual property and expertise. The biggest mistake business owners make is overthinking where to start.
Start by uploading your knowledge base, breaking your process down into core components, such as the biggest pain points, the ramifications of those pains, and the boldest promise you can make about your solution. Next, refine this by incorporating deep avatar analysis and psychographics. Use AI to capture the authentic voice of your audience and identify their fears, aspirations, and internal conflicts, along with some resistance analysis to neutralise potential objections.
Once your AI is trained with your specific expertise, voice, and your ideal audience’s needs, and it has the practical domain experience to guide and refine its output, you can create content that communicates your individual IP into the prospect’s internal conversation better than they could articulate it themselves. This approach responds exactly as you would, making agency reliance optional.
Leanne Bawden, Founder & Business Coach & Systems Strategist, Wild + Co Studio
Absolutely AI can help you market your business if you give it the right inputs. Tools like GPT can plan your content calendar, repurpose posts, draft emails and even outline ad copy but only after you feed it your strategy – audience, offers, brand voice, messaging pillars and proof. Otherwise, you’ll get generic output that sounds like everyone else.
As a business coach and agency owner, I’ve spent countless hours refining custom GPTs and chatbots so they “think” like my clients’ brands. The secret? Upload your brand assets (tone of voice, frameworks, FAQs, case studies), set clear objectives and build reusable prompts as systems (briefs, checklists and workflows), not one off questions. Pair that with a simple review loop, AI drafts, you edit for accuracy and story and you can ship high quality marketing in school hours, without hiring an agency for every task.
So yes, AI can’t replace strategy but with your strategy loaded, it can replace a lot of marketing execution and reduce fee spend.
Luke Frost, Managing Director, PR Deadlines Pty Ltd
Yes, AI can certainly HELP you market your business, but not at the expense of an agency – not if you want to achieve consistent results, anyway.
AI is a hugely useful tool. In the right hands, it can be a very positive force for good – increasing business productivity, adding depth to analysis and research, answering queries quickly and accurately. However, as with all industries, marketing and marcoms also requires a human touch. Above all other industries, marketing requires an innate understanding of how humans work, and how they think. Can a machine replicate that? Simple answer is ‘no’. An accurate guess based on millions of data points can certainly help inform decisions, but marketing needs more.
Networking and hands-on experience are also essential. As Ai and LLMs become more prevalent, the real value that an agency brings is the networks they have – media contacts, influencers, stakeholders in the public sector. More than that, it is knowing what these individuals NEED from the company – what information will interest their readers, what constitutes valuable news, how and when to put marketing content in front of them. A machine cannot make those choices, it requires human knowledge and an understanding of how individuals work. So yes, AI will have a large impact on businesses and take up much of the heavy lifting – but it needs to work in conjunction with experienced, intuitive individuals in order to be truly productive.
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