Surviving (and Winning) in AI Marketing
The marketing skills and habits that will still matter in in the AI era
This past week, the ‘Great AI layoff’ talk has started to ramp up.
I’ve started to get a lot of emails from marketers asking, “What skills should I master before I lose my job to AI?”
I am writing this out as I have genuine empathy for people who are nervous about their future marketing career.
It’s easy for me to say, all disruption brings opportunity, but disruption is hard.
My career path wasn’t linear, and it deeply frustrated me for years. I graduated with an honours degree in computer science. I launched my first business at university. I always expected to work hard and have a successful career. I didn’t consider that might not happen.
I left university, went to work as a software engineer, and realised something jarring: “I was an AVERAGE coder.”
Every night I went home, I read books, I wrote code, and I stayed average. At work, I felt average. And soon, that ‘average’ turned into a feeling of being ‘lost’.
So, I turned to drinking, partying, and doing anything but focus on my career.
I sank into a hole.
Eventually, through grit, focus, and luck, I found my way out. After four years of working as a software engineer, earning ‘ok’ money, I took a graduate role in marketing. It meant having no money, eating 99p noodles to afford my rent, but I had never been happier. I instantly felt like I had a path to being ‘great’.
I tell that story to say that doing something we feel motivated by is an incredibly important part of our lives and our happiness, and I want all marketers to have that feeling in the AI era.
Marketing is changing at a rapid pace.
Look at what’s happened since ChatGPT was launched three years ago.
- SEO has been heavily disrupted; the value is moving to AI engines; marketers need a new set of skills so their product/service appears in answers. LLM > SEO in a small number of years.
- Google’s AI Max automates paid marketing work. It expands keywords. It generates Ad copy. It selects the best landing pages for user intent. Paid marketing is being automated by AI.
- Educational content used to grow leads. That traffic is gone. It disappeared into the AI abyss. Influence content matters more now.
These are the foundational skills I’d invest in to succeed in this next era:
1. Curiously & Grind:
These aren’t specific to marketing- curiosity and grind are two of the most critical behaviours right now.
I’ve had a career already. I was fortunate to be early on the inbound wave and then the product-led growth wave.
Now it’s the AI wave, and I’ve never worked so much. It’s because I see this wave changing everything about how we work. Part driven by the motivation to win, part by the fear of being made obsolete, it’s 12am and here I am writing this Substack, hoping my 16-month-old doesn’t get up again for 3 hours, or it will be another 4am bedtime for me!
I don’t think 9 to 5 cuts it for the initial part of this wave. I know some people will hate that. I know people value work/life balance. I get it. I had planned to have some by now.
But, that’s where we are.
2. Prompt Engineer / LLMs as a Partner
On a recent episode of Marketing Against the Grain with Kyle Poyar, he gave us an incredible stat from a study he just did:
The number one most used tool by marketers is ChatGPT.
There is no question that being an expert at using AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini is now a critical part of how you do work. That’s your knowledge of the tool itself, including all the features they have to offer and how you prompt the LLM to work as an assistant for you.
For example, marketers are using ChatGPT to:
#Note: Paid subscribers will get some of the below use cases as full tutorials in the next post for them
1) Digital twin of your customer
Create a digital twin of your customer using internal and external data. Role-play your ICP and test copy/offer fit before you ship.
Prompt: “Act as a [role @ company size]. Read this page + email draft and tell me if you’d buy, why/why not, and what language would flip you.
2) Persona research from real language
Upload Gong calls, G2/Reddit quotes, and win/loss notes to extract pains, triggers, and objections.
Prompt: “From these files, list top 10 pains, exact phrases, and ‘buy/no-buy’ signals.”
3) Differentiated product positioning
Find the white space your competitors aren’t claiming for the persona that matters.
Prompt: “Using this persona summary + these 5 competitor pages, identify 3 defensible positioning territories and write a category narrative.”
4) Content outlines from primary sources
Turn SME interviews, podcasts, and YouTube transcripts into publishable outlines.
Prompt: “From these transcripts, produce an outline with thesis, pull-quotes, data cites, and 5 spicy take subheads.”
5) Programmatic landing pages from community questions (AEO > SEO)
Scrape community/FAQ threads to build many niche pages that match how buyers actually ask.
Prompt: “Cluster these 300 questions. For each cluster, draft an FAQ LP: headline, answer, proof, CTA.”
And so on.
To get better at prompting, just follow my post all about ‘Vibe Prompting’.
3. Code-powered lead magnets:
Marketers used to create downloadable PDFs and ebooks to capture demand.
AI coding assistants now enable marketers to create code-powered experiences just as easily.
Static content turns to interactive tools.
For example, here’s a quick 2-minute video on a ‘lead magnet’ I created using Google’s new coding app. I’ll be doing a whole post on how to build code-powered experiences to capture demand in the next couple of weeks.
4. Agentic Workflows:
Maybe I’m biased from my days working at Zapier, but I’m a believer that every marketer will need to understand how to build agentic workflows to do their work.
- OpenAI launched its Agentic workflow tool last month.
- Google has Opal and Vertex AI builder
There’s a reason this is happening. Orchestrating work across agents will mean the human has a team of agents working for them. It’s transformational for their productivity.
On the Marketing Against the Grain YouTube channel, we’ve recently shown people using these tools to create virtual social media teams, creative teams, and agents that can remix content across many channels.
A hugely powerful skillset to have.
5. Human-led Content
There are two key trends here. Educational SEO content is dead. Swallowed by AI.
AND
We are now seeing that the majority of content published on the internet coming from AI.
People will want authentic voices. They’ll want to connect with the individual and their content, not something generated by a brand or AI.
Traditional branded content like blogs will die away. Content that builds influence matters more. Content with personality. Hot takes. Stories only you can tell.
You’ll need to learn how to build influence, not page views.
6. Product/Brand Storytelling:
AI is leading to the saturation apocalypse. Every category is awash with competition.
Product positioning and Brand messaging will never get out of style. Both of these are just different forms of copywriting. Crafting narratives that resonate. How those narratives demonstrate customer transformation and how they foster emotional connection.
Your story is your moat. These skills are timeless. Copywriting has been a timeless skill for over a century.
It’s a chaotic time. But all disruptions brings opportunities. You need to position yourself correctly to take advantage of them.
Until Next Time,
Happy AI’fying.
Kieran
Love this!