MM #14 - You're an AI marketer.

Welcome to Marketing Mondays.

The FOMO (fear of missing out) on AI is real. With people around you attending AI events and masterclasses. And you're not. Then something must be wrong with you, right?

There's a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) marketing around AI. But don't blind yourself from the truth. You're still needed as a marketer.

Here's the scoop this week.

• You're already an AI marketer – Every marketer kinda is.
• The reason why marketing projects fail – It has nothing to do with the tools you use.
• Quote of the week – You gotta be known for something.

🧠 You're an AI marketer.

"Why don't you run an AI marketing conference?"

I got asked last week, during a meeting. This is in response to our plan to running an influencer marketing conference in September.

Call me weird, but I don't have the FOMO to rush into AI. The stuff is only 7 months old. Nobody is an expert, yet. People who say they are AI experts are only playing experts online.

If you do any marketing at all – you're actually using AI already, although you might not see it that way.

• Grammarly is an AI tool.
• Gmail helps you with predictive typing.

Grammarly & Gmail are super useful. They've saved me 1,000 times before I hit send. But will they replace me?

AI will never replace human creativity and connection. An employee can't be mentored and managed by an AI.

What AI replaces are mundane tasks.

A quick list of AI tools that I use to save time:

• Canva – I use Canva to put up quick designs. But their text-to-image generator is amazing.
• Photoshop's Generative Fill – When you have a picture but it's missing something or cut short? Photoshop's AI is really cool.
• ChatGPT – Mainly use this for research, generating brief templates, etc. Will share some tips on prompting in future newsletters.
• Fathom AI – Like having a meeting assistant that takes down minutes during a meeting. Not a big fan of meetings though.
• Frase – I got this through AppSumo, a long time ago. Basically, it generates SEO writing briefs (that you send to writers) for you.

See how I used Photoshop AI generative fill to fill a photo below:

Closing thoughts:

As we go further in this AI era, people will seek depth in content and experience. The kind of stuff that AI cannot copy or easily mass produce. Seek to create personalization and make sure your audience feels heard.  

📍 How do you manage your team?

One of the biggest reasons why marketing teams fail – is because of bad project management.

Someone posted the wrong creative. Someone put up the old logo. Another person forgot to update the pricing or turn off ads.

Sound familiar?

I've seen this again and again within my internal team. It's worse with clients. Especially the Chinaman companies. Everybody communicates on Whatsapp groups. No surprise why deadlines are missed and things go missing!

I've been geeking out searching for a project management tool.

As a marketer, you do many things – manage campaigns, plan strategy, meetings, design a graphic banner, etc.

I used to be able to pull all-nighters and hustle like mad. Now, as I get older, I'm beginning to appreciate the value of time. You have to build a team, manage, and leverage systems.

For months, I've been trying to make Notion work for my team. Here's what I would do for a typical ad campaign project:

1. Write a project brief in Notion.
2. Send the link to project brief to in-house team and contractors.
3. Get them to write/post updates in Notion as they progress.
4. Happy days.

Didn't work though.

In reality, everyone had their own way of writing and formatting. Due to Notion being highly customizable, it became messier and messier as more information was added to the Notion. It came to the point where I don't even want to use it anymore.

So goodbye Notion. And hello Basecamp.

I've explored Basecamp in the past. When I revisited it last week, I'm pleasantly surprised to see how it has become a very well-thought-of project management tool.

Few reasons why I think Basecamp will stick:

1. With Basecamp, you chunk projects down into a few projects.
2. To-dos, schedules, notes, files, messaging – all in one place.
3. Perfect for agencies! You can control what your client is able to see.
4. Your clients can comment on stuff and send you updates.
5. You create to-dos for your clients!
6. The interface is gorgeous.

It's built by the very inspiring team at 37 Signals. Read the ideas on their website!

⭐️ Nuggets

Things that might be useful for you:

• State of AI marketing by Hubspot. Get a good idea of what marketers around the world think about AI.
• Captions.ai allows you to correct your eye contact to the camera when recording videos. Freaky.
• I browse Reddit for entertainment and research. When Reddit started charging for its API, people were not happy. (My Personal POV: I think it's fair for Reddit to charge, but not at that kind of prices!)
• The Futur is dropping a free course for creative entrepreneurs to get over their doubts and fears. I'm joining and I think you should too.

💬 Quote of the week

Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us. - Steve Jobs

Put simply. Marketing is a game of being first. You want to be known for something.

What are you most known for?

Check out Purple Cow by Seth Godin.