By the end of this article, you as a (content) marketer or business owner will have a better understanding of how to use AI day to day, at a deeper level. Also, I have something to give away at the end of the article.

Last year, I wrote twice a week about AI.

It almost burned me out.

New models.

New tools.

New features that went viral on Tuesday and felt outdated by Thursday.

I could always find something to cover: reasoning, agents, image editing breakthroughs, and whatever else the week served up.

I enjoyed it, honestly. There is a satisfaction in being the person who is on top of it.

But somewhere along the way, I realized I was telling myself this: if I keep up with everything, I will succeed, and I cannot fail.

I grew an AI community from 0 to 850 members.

That made me run faster and faster. A recipe for disaster.

My weeks fell into a rhythm:

• Monday: What happened?

• Tuesday: Test, prompt, test again, make screenshots

• Wednesday: (My day off!)

• Thursday: Write, rewrite, polish, publish, share

• Friday: Brace for next week

And then another model, another feature, another “this changes everything.” (insert vomit emoji)

I could name the releases, explain the differences, compare, benchmark, and predict which features were coming in a couple of weeks or months.

But my actual work, my writing, my research, was not improving at the same rate.

Tools: just a snapshot

Here is what I learned the hard way:

Tools matter.

But tools are not the point.

Tools are just a snapshot of what is possible today.

I started to see AI as a capability. This changes how work can be done, regardless of which tool happens to be hot this week.

Once I saw that, I started organizing everything in a better way. I discovered three stages of AI use.

Stage 1: Tools

This is where all of us start.

You try ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity. You test new features. You compare outputs. You bookmark prompts. You follow the news.

This stage is useful, up to a point.

You become excellent at knowing what exists, without changing how you operate.

Stage 2: Workflows

Stage 2 is where the magic begins. You start thinking about your work and pick a couple of processes that are excellent candidates for AI (hybrid) workflows.

Yes, start with the process and the work, not AI.

You design a repeatable process. For example, copywriting for a landing page becomes this:

• Define your goals for this landing page, and write them down. (Human)

• Generate a first draft, including your Brand Voice System and very specific instructions. (Human + AI)

• Improve. (Human)

• Run a critique. (AI)

• Revise, fact-check, ship. (Human)

AI becomes “a reliable teammate”. This is because the work is broken into steps and you, yes you, control the quality.

Hey, I’m Wilbert. 👋 I teach marketers AI skills that don’t expire and last a lifetime, so you are strategising and shipping better work with AI.

Decode: AI in Marketing 👩🏻‍💻 is putting AI to work with: inspiration, frameworks, and tools you can apply right away, all built around a community of marketers growing together.

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Stage 3: Capability

Stage 3 is the real upgrade. You, as a person and in your job, become better with AI.

You implement the workflow, and after that you use AI to:

• Ask sharp follow-up questions

• Make decisions with less noise and more clarity

• Reason through trade-offs and list pros and cons

• Evaluate sources thoroughly

• Dissect claims (are they true or not?)

A huge amount of publicly available knowledge is accessible through leading LLMs. On top of that, you can use recent web sources. Plus, you can add your own context in inputs.

You have superpowers.

And if you treat AI right, it will open up countless possibilities.

For example: in the case of a landing page, it can significantly improve conversion. You can compare it with a landing page you created earlier, or one from a competitor, and see which best practices you could implement and what you should leave out. It can also tell you why, so you learn from it.

This is the stage that sticks. A skill for a lifetime.

What AI actually changed about my work

AI did not make me a better writer. I did that myself through writing for countless hours.

But it did push me to become a better editor and director.

Drafting, giving me solid critique, structuring things, coming up with image ideas, and more.

A writer and marketer on steroids.

Yes, I write (as a human).

And more than that, I direct (with AI).

The robotic work that should disappear first

My next step as a marketer was this: automate the boring stuff.

Some tasks are simply robotic.

They are predictable, repetitive, and often have standard formats.

Here are examples I kept seeing, in my own work and in my team.

Content

• Creating variants of the same message (LinkedIn, email, website)

• Turning meeting notes into action items and decisions

Research

• Looking for the latest AI news (features, communication, opinions, benchmarks)

Operations

• Weekly performance reporting (Google Analytics and more)

• CRM (HubSpot): enriching data

• Standard status updates

Quality

• Does it follow our brand voice?

• Persuasiveness (Ogilvy) checkup

I thought about ways of automating this, and then taking the next step and actually doing it.

The verdict

Here is where I landed after a year of running:

In the end, AI creates space.

Not automatically, but only if you use it right.

When robotic work takes less time, you open up your human capabilities more:

• Judgment

• Taste

• Strategy

• Empathy

And most of all:

This year, my role was a creator, combined with an editor and director.

It makes you the owner of the full marketing process, and that is truly liberating.

The practical takeaway

If I could give my past self one piece of advice, it would be this:

Pick three recurring tasks in your job.

Build AI workflows for them.

Measure the impact.

Repeat.

Learning tools is only the start.

Giveaway / freebie

As a giveaway, I listed 50 common marketing tasks that have high potential to be automated. You can use this as a starting point to figure out which task to semi automate first.

If you want it, send me a private message and I will gladly share it with you.