With all of my blogs I try to offer something of use, which is helpful in some small way, whether you are a business owner, leadership team or marketer. Many of the articles I write are informed by conversations I have on regular occasions with clients and this one is no exception.
This topic crops up a lot with various teams across businesses in all types of industries that are all hearing the same thing.
They must use AI or get left behind.
In many senses I think there is some truth to this, however I strongly feel there are limitations to how and where you should be using AI in your company.
AI is not magic. It’s not going to write your whole business strategy or suddenly make you a tech genius. It’s just a tool. Like when businesses moved from typewriters to computers, or from filing cabinets to spreadsheets.
The question is not whether you should use AI, but if there is a justifiable cause and benefit to introduce it into your business? Would it allow you and your teams to operate more efficiently by freeing up your time to become even better at what you do best?
The Problem with AI Hype
The tech industry loves to overcomplicate things. They talk about transformation and disruption when what most business owners really need is someone to take meeting notes or tidy up a messy spreadsheet.
You don’t need to become a tech expert and you certainly don’t need to know how every AI tool is built and operates to the most intimate of detail, but you do need to know which buttons to press to get your time back.
Think of AI as a junior member of your team who often gets thrown the boring, menial work. You wouldn’t ask a junior to write your entire pitch deck alone, but you would ask them to summarise a long document or draft a standard email.
That’s exactly what AI is good for. The initial rough draft or gathering of information.
A Practical Toolkit of AI Platforms
You only have to do a Google search today and you’ll be overwhelmed with the different types of AI tool available from notetaker to hairstylist visualiser. To give a bit of steer if you’re sat looking at the laptop wondering where to begin, here are some of the mainstream tools that I’ve tested and my honest thoughts of where they save time and the benefits they offer.
Meeting Memory: Otter.ai or Fireflies
What it does: Records your meetings and gives you an instant summary with action points.
We’ve all been in online meetings with that client that loves to talk and talk. They often flit from one detail to the next and you find yourself scribbling frantically away on a sheet of paper that’s half the size you need it to be, to capture all of the juicy notes, while you’re trying to listen and make eye contact and smile every now and again.
Instead you let the AI notetaker record everything. Ten minutes after the call ends, you have a clean summary of what was agreed, who’s doing what, and when things are due. Sure you can still make the odd note by hand during the call, but you’ll find your mind is a lot clearer to just listen and talk.
Time saved: You never need to type full meeting minutes again. That’s at least an hour a week back in your diary.
Best for First Written Drafts: ChatGPT or Claude
What it does: Creates rough drafts of standard business documents and emails.
Not every business is organised with templates and standardised docs and even so, these might become quite wooden and you need something with a bit of personality.
You need to write a job description for a new team member for example; instead of staring at a blank page for 45 minutes, you ask the AI tool to draft something based on the role requirements. Two minutes later with something like Claude (in my opinion the best AI tool for drafting copy), you’re editing a decent first pass instead of starting from scratch.
Another example might be that you have 50 customer enquiries in your inbox, to which you can ask the tool to categorise them by service type or location. Suddenly you can see which areas are most profitable and where to focus your energy.
Time saved: Thirty minutes per document. If you write three standard documents a week, that’s 90 minutes back.
Quality Control: Grammarly
What it does: Catches typos and awkward phrasing before you send anything important.
I’m no wordsmith and like many, I have days when I’m up against the clock. You might find yourself sending a proposal to a potential client at 11pm because it’s the only time you have free time after juggling getting dinner ready, putting the kids to bed and now you’re propping those eyelids up with matchsticks. Luckily with tools like Grammarly you are saved from those two or three embarrassing mistakes you would have missed, that could have made things look a little unprofessional.
Time saved: The five minutes it takes to proofread everything properly, plus the hours you’d spend cringing if you sent something with a glaring error to an important client.
Support for Design Basics: Canva Magic Studio
What it does: Handles basic design tasks without needing a designer.
As someone who is trained and worked for years in agencies and inhouse teams as a marketing designer and still supports clients with this as part of my fractional marketing services, I see AI design tools as great additions but not replacements for designers.
They are fantastic at being able to speed up the creative idea generation and testing phase, but will always need a designers eye to gauge whether the creative is fit for purpose or simply AI slop. For time poor business owners or
For tasks like needing to resize your event poster for three different platforms, or remove the background from a product photo, tools like Canva’s Magic Studio are great. Instead of paying an agency or spending an hour wrestling with complicated software, you do it in two clicks.
Time saved: Twenty minutes per design task. If you’re creating social posts or updating marketing materials weekly, that adds up fast.
Voice Note Processor – Descript or Letterly
What it does: Turns rambling voice notes into structured plans.
If you’re anything like me, you can find yourself throughout the day having many ideas that you want to action, yet keeping up with all of the jumble of thoughts and turning them into structure can be a challenge.
Imagine you’re driving between meetings and have a brilliant idea for improving your service about how best to deliver cheese by mail to peoples homes. You record a 20 minute voice note with all your thoughts. Later, you ask AI to turn that stream of consciousness into a structured project plan with clear next steps. This is the skillset of AI tools like Descript or Letterly.
Time saved: The hour you would have spent trying to remember what you said and organising it into something useful.
Where AI Stops and You Start
As a fractional marketer I use AI tools daily and in my honest opinion they are brilliant for the baseline work, but terrible at anything that requires genuine human judgement, creativity or emotion.
The fear that AI will make your business sound robotic is completely justified. It will absolutely let you write your client emails verbatim or create your marketing content without accurately checking the facts.
But AI cannot write well with emotion or draw on personal experience. Even after being trained from human content and creativity, it cannot understand the nuance of your specific client relationship or know when a situation calls for empathy rather than efficiency.
What AI can do is give you a starting point so you’re not staring at a blank page and handle the tedious data processing that used to take hours. It can transcribe and summarise so you can focus on the actual conversation rather than note taking.
The work that makes your business special, the personal touch that wins clients, the creative solutions that set you apart, those still need you. AI just clears the admin clutter so you can do that meaningful work. This is where I recommend to businesses that they bring AI into their team’s toolkit for creating the first drafts, or for the data sorting and meeting summaries.
But the final version, the client facing work, the decisions that matter, those are still yours. That’s where your expertise and personality need to shine through.
Do you really need AI training?
Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need weeks of training to use these tools. If you can send a text message, you can use AI.
Most of these tools work immediately and it’s simply a case of signing up and follow the basic setup to start using them. The learning curve is more like ten minutes rather than ten weeks.
Yes, you can get fancy with it and yes, there are advanced features, but for reclaiming your time from getting bogged in spreadsheets and notes, you just need the basics. Start with one tool, get comfortable and add another tool when you’re ready.
If you’re still not confident there are some incredible resources and trainers out there. One of my favourites is AI for Non Techies led by the brilliant Heather Murray or there are many courses offered by the likes of Google or collections gathered by companies like Code Academy.
Balancing Time When Starting with AI
The reality is that time is the only resource you cannot buy more of and if you are able to save just 5 hours a week by using AI tools to undertake some of the heavy lifting, that equates to 20 hours a month. That’s 240 hours a year.
In a small business that can have a huge value, giving you the ability to spend time more wisely on things like strategy instead of admin or attending networking events instead of manually sending marketing emails one at a time.
Pick one tool, one task and try it for a week. You don’t need to overhaul your entire business, but you do need to stop doing the one task that’s eating hours of your week for no good reason. You’ll likely find that you do actually have a lot more time for tech.
Looking for more practical tips or need a bit of guidance when it comes to implementing AI into your business marketing? Explore our marketing insights or get in touch to discuss how we can help streamline things for your team.
