THE AI MARKETING PLAYBOOK: 5 WAYS TO USE AI AS A MARKETER

Morning!

Spring is coming, the sun is out, and half the internet thinks AI is going to take their job… and they might not be wrong.

AI is the talk of the town this week, and it has been for the last year. But things are changing, and marketers might need to start getting worried.

Today, we’re going to be breaking down the AI Marketing Playbook.

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BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY

Last week, I was scrolling through Twitter on my way to the gym when a post stopped me..

This guy I’d never heard of before was going viral with these ads that he was claiming were made by AI.

At first, I giggled. I’d tried to use AI to make images before, and they were terrible. 7-fingered humans, insanely dismorphed photos, the result was unusable.

I couldn’t believe more people weren’t calling this guy out for lying.

But the more I scrolled, the more I realised what was going on. ChatGPT had just released their latest image generation update, and from what it seemed, it was incredible.

Yet, the sceptic inside me doubted. So as I sat down on a gym bench, I thought “F*ck it, I’ll prove to myself it’s still bad.”.

So, I scrolled through Google and found a good ad and then picked out the worst photo I could find in my camera roll - which happened to be a pic of my dinner a few nights back - and threw them both in ChatGPT with a tiny two-line prompt…

Then I threw my phone on the floor and got back to the workout.

10 reps later and a prolonged few sips of water, I reached back for my phone.

“Jesus…” I couldn’t believe it.

A terrible photo of my dinner had been turned into a full-blown ad.

• The photo was crisp.

• The noodles looked delicious.

• And the ad… was actually quite good.

I’d already been deep down the AI rabbit hole, but it was in that moment I realised that marketing really was about to change forever. Not because my AI tofu ad was the best ad I’d ever seen, but because if it could create an ad like that off minimal effort… it was about to shake up the entire industry.

Ever since, I’ve been dabbling with the different use cases of AI in marketing and particularly with image generation.

I have a feeling what I write in this breakdown will change very quickly, but for now…

Here’s the playbook on how to market with AI:

1) Testing Ad Creatives At Scale

Traditionally, testing creatives was slow and expensive.

Even in performance-led teams, you could only really run 5-6 variants of a single ad.

• You could switch out the headline.

• Tweak the CTA slightly.

• Shuffle the hero image.

But it took hours for designers to create just 1 creative, let alone 10+. Which meant you essentially had to sacrifice some optimisation for speed.

AI completely eradicates that problem.

Now, you can generate 100 variations of an ad in under an hour. Visual changes, new copy angles, different layouts, product mashups, backgrounds - all of it. At scale.

And the real unlock here isn’t just speed. It’s feedback.

One marketer I saw recently used ChatGPT to do exactly this. He created a brand-safe design template, dropped in 20 product images, wrote five headline angles, and ran it through image generation. The result? Over 100 tailored ads, each with slight creative variations.

He didn’t guess what would work (or need to pay some highly expensive designer to guess for him).

He could simply test everything at once.

This changes how we think about media buying. Instead of over-optimising one perfect ad, you run volume. Let the platform tell you what the market responds to.

The winners get scaled.
The rest cost pennies to learn from.

And when every creative test costs less than a coffee, you test more, you learn faster, and your team focuses on what actually moves the needle.

This doesn’t just increase output, but completely upgrades how we think about creative strategy.

2) Repurposing High-Performing Content

There’s a myth in marketing that your audience wants something new every day.

But if you’ve ever built a large audience, you know that’s not true.

What your audience really wants is more of the same - more of what resonated, what helped, what made them feel understood. The smartest brands don’t reinvent the wheel every time. They build on ideas that already worked.

Over the last 90 days, I’ve had over 6 million views across my content.

That didn’t happen because I kept coming up with brand new concepts. It happened because I doubled down on a few series and repeated core ideas in slightly different ways.

• Like “Good vs Bad Content.”

• Or the “Brands doing content right.”

• Or graph breakdowns of industry tactics.

Each time one of those hit, I made it a series. Not because I lacked new ideas, but because I’d already proven those ideas were the right ones.

That’s where AI comes in.

AI makes it 10x easier to spin variations of a winning idea. You can take a single post and have it restructured into:

• A carousel

• A video script

• A Twitter thread

• A newsletter segment

• A cold outbound message

All saying the same thing - just framed differently for the format or the moment.

The key is pre-validation. AI isn’t there to replace your thinking. It’s there to scale what’s already working.

If something hits, use AI to squeeze the juice out of it.

Less MVPs. More repetition of what works. AI makes that easier than ever.

3) Deconstruct Competitors’ Entire Approach

Competitive research used to be long, slow, and underused.

You’d assign it to a junior, get a Notion doc a week later, and maybe glance at a few LinkedIn screenshots before forgetting about it altogether.

Now? You can drop a competitor’s name into ChatGPT - and in under 15 minutes, get a full-channel breakdown that reads like it was done by a strategist.

It doesn’t just summarise their website.

It analyses their entire content strategy across LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, email - or whatever platform you want it to focus on.

Then you can ask it:

• What are their top-performing post formats?

• How often are they posting, and on which channels?

• What topics do they repeat?

• What’s their visual identity like?

• How consistent is their tone of voice?

• What hooks or CTAs are they using most often?

You can even prompt it to write in their exact style, then generate better versions.

• Want to out-position them? Ask ChatGPT for messaging angles they’ve missed.

• Want to stand out visually? Get it to describe their design language and suggest alternatives.

You’ll quickly see what’s working, what’s stale, and where there’s a gap your brand can fill.

4) Create Lead Magnets In 1 Day

A few months ago, we launched The State of B2B Marketing in 2025.

It pulled in over 1,100 leads in two weeks.

And it worked because it wasn’t just a gated PDF - it was a proper campaign. Original insights. Expert contributions. Great design.

But the whole thing took a month to produce.

• Days of research

• Weeks of writing and refining

• Endless rounds of layout and design edits

It paid off, but it was slow, painful, and resource-heavy. Most B2B teams would’ve shelved it halfway through.

But today, AI can speed up 80% of that process.

You can:

• Ask ChatGPT to summarise industry trends from 50 articles

• Generate frameworks, headlines, and expert-style commentary

• Use AI tools like Gamma to design the full deck

• Write landing page copy, email sequences, and LinkedIn promos - all in minutes with AI.

You still need to apply your judgment. But now you’re editing, not starting from scratch.

That same report could’ve been mocked up in a day, refined in a week, and launched 3x faster.

All that’s left is deciding what you want to say.

5) 10x Visual Designs

A year ago, I’d avoid posting infographics.

Not because they didn’t work - they did - but because they were a pain to make.

If I wanted to share a framework or a stat visual, I’d need to brief a designer, go back and forth on layout, tweak the branding, resize for LinkedIn… all for one graphic.

Now? I can make three in under ten minutes.

I drop my rough idea into ChatGPT, give it a few past examples of our brand style, and let it generate clean, on-brand options instantly.

And the quality is solid. Not “replace your design team” good, but “90% of your LinkedIn graphics” good.

Here’s what I’ve been using it for:

• Turning frameworks into carousels

• Turning posts into quote cards

• Turning reports into visual stats

The difference is speed.

You don’t wait two days for a single graphic anymore. You spin out five, pick the best, and move on.

Looking premium matters and now, every brand can look premium - without the bottlenecks.

What about copywriting?

I’ve deliberately avoided the most obvious use case of AI.

We all know AI can write blogs, emails, landing pages, captions… and do a decent job of it. I use it for that stuff all the time - especially for first drafts and ideation.

But let’s be honest, that’s where 99% of the conversation has been for the last year.

So instead of repeating the same advice, I wanted to focus this playbook on the next layer - the newer use cases that most teams aren’t fully taking advantage of yet.

Everyone’s using AI to write. But hopefully this opens your eyes to its other use cases.

 🌱 THE GREENHOUSE

Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:

• Great person to follow for AI marketing updates. (See here)

• My thoughts on what’s next. (See here)

TL;DR

1. Test ad variations at scale.

2. Repurpose what already worked.

3. Break down your competitors’ strategy in 15 minutes.

4. Create lead magnets in a day, not a month.

5. Spin up on-brand visuals in minutes.

I’m far from an AI expert, but it’s safe to say I am incredibly impressed by how it’s evolved over the last few years. No, I don’t think it’ll replace human creativity, but god will it remove the blockers around it.

Let me know if you try any of these. Would love to hear what you find.

If you enjoyed this breakdown, feel free to share it with someone who’d get value from it - please do : )

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

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