AI use
Your weakest area
AI use
You scored lowest here. That usually means AI is either being avoided, or everyone is using it differently with no plan behind it.
What it looks like when it’s broken
You might hear some version of these.
AI does not fix a broken system. It speeds up whatever system you already have.
Why it happens
AI tends to get adopted from the bottom up. Individuals start using it for their own tasks, and nobody sets direction for the organization as a whole.
No strategy
AI gets used for whatever feels useful that day, with no connection to what marketing is trying to achieve.
No guardrails
Without standards for voice and quality, output drifts into generic content that resonates with no one.
Goals that keep shifting
It is hard to build automations for a long-term campaign when the goals change from month to month.
No systems underneath MOST COMMON
You cannot automate a process that does not exist, or one built on data nobody trusts.
What good looks like
Without a plan for AI
Scattered use, generic output, unclear rules about data, and automations that create more work than they save.
With a plan for AI
AI used for specific jobs inside documented processes, with clear rules, in your company’s voice.
Your team spends less time on repetitive work and more time on the work that needs a person. And your content still sounds like you.
The first move
Pick one repetitive task that already has a clear process and good data behind it, and use AI to make it faster.
Start small and prove it works before expanding. While you do it, write down the rules: who can use AI, for which tasks, what information should never go into these tools, and who reviews the output before it goes out.
One task. A clear process. Written rules.
How you’ll know it’s working
That one task takes noticeably less time, and the quality holds.
Your team knows the rules. People use AI confidently for the jobs it is good at, and nobody has to guess what is allowed.
What this looks like in my own work
The best example I have is the page you are reading right now.
In about a week, I rebuilt my own marketing from the ground up: new website pages, the Marketing System Scorecard, the automations that connect it to my email platform, and the eight pages in this series, including this one. Done the old way, that is weeks of work, if not months.
I did it with AI. But here is the part that matters. Every strategic decision was mine. I wrote the thinking behind every one of these pages myself: the symptoms I have heard from clients, the causes I have seen, and the stories from my own work.
AI took those drafts and built them out. It polished the language, designed the pages, and handled technical setup I would otherwise have spent days on. It also caught details I would have missed and asked good questions along the way.
That is how I think AI should be used. I am still the driver. AI just makes the driver a lot faster.
And if I had built all of this the slow way? You probably would not be reading it yet. You might not have found me at all.
AI did the building. I did the thinking.
Where I lead
Strategy, the first draft, and the final call on whether the work is right.
Where AI helps
Brainstorming, automating repetitive work, and polishing a draft that already has a direction.
Where this sits
AI sits on top of the rest of the system. Used without a plan, it makes four other areas worse.
Dashed areas are not directly affected by this one.
AI can help a lot with content. Without a strategy and guardrails, it produces generic output that resonates with no one because it does not sound authentic.
What are the rules around AI at your organization, and who is allowed to use it? Without answers, people either avoid it or use it in ways that create risk.
Without good systems and processes in place, there is nothing to automate, so follow-up and data entry stay manual.
AI tools get added to the stack like any other. Without a plan for them, you end up paying for ones nobody uses well.
Give AI a clear job and clear rules, and those four get lighter. Leave it unmanaged and it multiplies whatever is already broken.
Your weakest area is where to start. It is not the whole picture.
The Scorecard rates eight areas because they fail together. You scored lowest here, but there are often others already under strain. Worth reading the neighbors before you decide where to spend the next quarter.
Click any highlighted area to read it.
- Goals & prioritiesRead →
- Audience & positioningRead →
- Content & conversionRead →
- CRM & handoffsRead →
- Reporting & attributionRead →
- People & ownershipRead →
- Tools & dataRead →
- AI use · You are here
Want someone to look at the whole system?
The Scorecard tells you where it hurts. A Diagnostic tells you why, and what order to fix it in. I look at your setup properly and give you a sequenced plan rather than eight separate problems.