AI's Impact on Marketing: Faster, Better, & Smarter Strategies

Create for attention, not activity

The difference between a social media manager and a creator is the ability to develop ideas that earn attention. Managing a calendar can distribute content, but it does not guarantee that anyone cares. As AI makes production faster, that distinction becomes more valuable. More posts do not solve a lack of premise.

My role at Social Media Examiner was taking shape around that idea. I was not interested in being a topical leader on every social platform. I wanted to create unique concepts and series that marketers would notice, then use AI to help develop and distribute them. A right hook can still be useful when it arrives inside something genuinely interesting.

Use AI to accelerate judgment

AI can help me move faster from an idea to a testable asset. It can turn a rough concept into variations, outline a video, summarize research, or help adapt a story for different channels. But it cannot decide what an audience should care about without context. That is the creator’s job: understand the audience, choose the angle, and recognize when an idea is worth pursuing.

The best workflows combine speed with discernment. Start with a premise, give the model examples and constraints, review the output, and publish the version that feels specific rather than generic. Use the response to learn what people notice, then improve the next idea.

Make the work faster, better, and smarter

Faster means reducing the time between an idea and a draft. Better means using the extra time to edit, test, and add evidence. Smarter means selecting work that moves the business instead of filling a content queue. AI can support all three, but only if the marketer keeps ownership of the strategy.

That is why the AI-driven marketer is not simply the person with the most tools. It is the person who can see where AI creates leverage, where it creates risk, and what human judgment must stay in the loop. I can use the technology to do more creative work while still grounding the message in what I know about the audience.

The market will continue to change, and learning AI may become part of how I pay the bills. The opportunity is to start using it now while the work still rewards people who can combine technical fluency with original ideas. Build the habit, test the premise, and let the results make the strategy smarter.

welcome back to the AI driven marketer I'm Dan Sanchez and today I'm syndicating an interview that I had with Brooks Lockett over at the AI copyrighting Pro newsletter I thought Brooks's interview was so good that I wanted to Syndicate it on my own podcast because he recorded the whole thing I even encouraged him to need to start his own podcast so hopefully Brooks starts his own show but until then go and subscribe to his newsletter over at substack again I will drop a link to the show in the description so after you listen to this interview go over to Brooks's newsletter and subs cribe and here's the interview we kind of already dove into it a little bit but maybe you could go deeper on like what exactly are you thinking for social media examiner and then we can get into some of your other content stuff as well so my my role at social media examiner right now is twofold I am a essentially a content creator um they were going to hire a social media marketing manager and I'm like uh you don't want someone to manage it you need someone to come in and create some unique ideas someone that creates ideas not to promote but to get attention and I think that's the difference between a social media manager and a Creator um someone a Creator is someone with a track record of actually growing an audience and has a discernment of what the audience wants luckily I'm a I'm a I'm a marketer marketer I'm a marketer Creator so like I'm pretty in touch with what marketers like don't like I think it's honestly one of the best audiences to work with because marketers love creative stuff they love novel things yet when you throw in a right hook they don't get mad you know what I'm saying so they actually respect respect the right hook on occasion especially if you can sneak it into something good um yeah so I'm really looking forward to crafting some unique premises and angles for a Content series within social media examiner and not not being like a topical leader face per se on social media marketing but essentially being a Creator coming up with content getting in front of the camera um Ed the videos and doing all the work to create a few content series for social media examiner and promoting their and working those into promoting their conference promoting their paid communities um so that's a big part of it but also like Mike is going big into AI like I I talk about this a lot but I'm like there was a point last year when I started my own AI podcast where it's like I had this writing on the wall moment and I wanted to tell people everywhere like hey AI is going to be a big deal hey AI is going to be a big deal it's coming for all of us kind of like before social media was big I I knew that was going to be big I remember before WordPress popped I'm like WordPress is going to be the thing that controls everything that's the best solution out there and now it you know controls 45% of websites on the internet um but I didn't document my journey on that one I did with AI this time I started getting it I started I got in a it seems weird to say it was like a year after chat gpg came out when I started but it's still really early for AI even now like it's still early um it hasn't crossed over over into the you know the what is it the adoption bell curve it hasn't crossed over into that early majority where most people are using it the all let's say the early the whatever the group is before that is is pretty well and I bet it'll cross the chasm this this next year where like most of the population's using AI in a regular basis or a good majority of them um but Mike saw it too and started doubling down this spring creating his own podcast starting his O Pain Community shoot his social media marketing World Conference is is like half AI driven he's got his own AI ticket if you only want the AI stuff I'm like it's probably the biggest AI marketing conference there is now um and I was I was excited to join him to be to like work alongside Mike and his team to kind of push AI marketing to the Forefront because I think it's it's inevitable that it's going to change everything we do in marketing for sure I mean I think it's G to actually change a lot of things that we do in every part of our lives but in it in marketing it's definitely going to like five years from now marketing will look much different than it does today what's been uh what's been surprising about in terms of learning like you said you're kind of in in touch with what marketers want like when you started hammering the AI angle and going deeper on that refining it what's been like the audience feedback on that like what's in what specific points have you learned you're like oh that's surprising I didn't realize how early I was until I started talking to a lot of myket marketing peers especially in Tech because you know the people who work in SAS and Tech they're usually a little bit more on the're they're more Innovative right they they like Tech Solutions they're more prone to try new things yet I was surprised that like even in Spring of last year most of my peers in marketing Tech uh hadn't even started paying for something like a chat GPT plus yet which is kind of an indicator that you're really starting to use it a lot if you're starting to throw your own money at it I mean 20 bucks isn't a month but it's enough that like if you're not using it a lot you're not going to pay for it um it really started helping me understand like wow like I thought I was actually a little bit behind the ball here but it's super early that's been something that's been surprising like how many people I even have some really really smart peers that are that have I've had on my show talking about like that it's not like ai ai won't be that big it'll be like a subsection of like mtech and marketing Ops maybe it'll be like its own little maybe division at at at its biggest length and I'm like I don't think so I think it's going to change every vertical within marketing like hardcore like everything's going to look different for every single marketer and even the leaders like will will be AI enhanced in a way and we'll have a whole our all the Frontline workers will be AI agents building things in the future and people will be all all what used to be considered like a I don't know like an entrylevel person now be a manager managing an AI team like that'll just be standard but you know that's me thinking out a few quite a few years into the future but I'm pretty confident that'll be the base but not everybody agrees with me so that's how I know that's the thing that surprised me is that this whole conversation around AI in marketing is still super early when I when I think about um you know the emergence of like search engines and the emergence of social media the emergence of like email like just different like you know kind of basic internet platforms that everybody kind of uses and captures those Network effects it seems like over time they just kind of in weird wonky unexpected ways like turn into emergent like marketing disciplines that some people go super hardcore and like do really well at and then and then eventually it seems like it's just a part of the mix you know it's just a big part of the mix that everybody just knows is there yet very few were like a part of that or St you feel like that's sort of happening with llms and agents and workflows and all the different ecosystems popping up yeah absolutely I think there's just a few players at the helm right now um which honestly I I love because you there's always a few people who get in early and Define what the path is going to look like for everybody else um and that's that's why I love being early because you can actually start like cutting for forging your way through the jungle and actually setting a place for people to run behind you and make it easier for others um I think of like like Mike Michael stellner was one of those people who did it for social media marketing not him in particular but he he created the stage for a lot of other thought leaders in the space to come and say like hey this is how we should use social in order to drive marketing results someone's got to do it for AI um and Forge a path through that jungle so hopefully I get to be one of those people uh there will be many um helping people figure it out yeah you seem pretty fired up about it oh yeah no that's fun yeah yeah okay and and and one thing that I think you have sort of cracked a little bit that I think it's hard um as someone who does like written content primarily like you do videos and you're talking about like prompted Jing over video I think that is an interesting way to teach it seems like video is kind of your preferred conduit for communic um which which is hard it's hard to do videos it's not easy to do that especially when like I saw I watched the video of o1 and you were kind of explaining 01 and like the the different like prompting methodologies and like how to even wrap your head around how it works and you've done like lots of other things too but like has that helped you clarify you know like I guess my question is like how has doing videos like really helped you like hone and clar verify like your message and refine with your audience and just kind of like make it sharper over time for marketers to to kind of give some a little bit of backstory I actually picked video for a couple of different reasons one I I like I slept in freaking English class in high school and that was a freaking mistake of all the classes that mattered in grade school it was English like who knew dude like every teacher swore like their class was important English happened to be the one because writing ended up being way more important than any other subject my opinion but I slept uh I do okay writing now but I I knew and this was painful because I'm an introvert so getting in front of the camera is actually kind of intimidating especially like the amount I remember recording my first video it's still live on YouTube somewhere but like the amount of retakes I had to do to get it was really difficult um and it just came with practice now I love it because now with AI you could just turn the transcript into a lot of really good things it's not A+ writing like and good writers know like hey you like you're never going to hit like really great writing but I'm like if you know how to prompt well becomes B writing especially if what you threw down was was actually good you had some good content in there um so now I use that but I also love video because you can I don't know write good really good writers can do this with a written word but I'm not a good great writer so I can't do this with a written word but you can like add inflection into your voice you can pause and make it more dramatic and then bring it down to that fine point you know so like I love being able to do that in video and it's more about the audio though but you know the facial expressions and the hand gestures and all the different things that make video really come alive I love that and it's helped me a lot to do video because really teaching is the ultimate form of like Mastery if you can teach it and try to boil a topic down you're truly mastering it like I I just talked about on an episode I just dropped in my own podcast about this process I have I call the 3033 plan um it's essentially if you want to master and become an authority on any any topic any Niche topic find a topic that has 30 books on the topic or less read them all which it sounds intimidating but I promise like if it's all on one really Niche topic the first three books will have a lot of information and every book after that it will be less and less content in the book that you'll actually have to read because you can skim it and it's all the same information you're just looking for the new stuff so reading 30 books feels more like reading 10 which anybody can do in a year um so read all the content find out where the IND is at and they're thinking find out what gaps are missing go and interview 30 people on the topic to actually work through socratically like right now we're talking about a topic and you you might find you know things that you didn't even know you knew by just having a conversation about it um but then actually going and writing and I used to say 30 blog posts I think you honestly just create 30 pieces of unique content on a topic teaching it like really forces you to master the topic because you're you're you're finding new areas that haven't been talked about before which means you get to be the one to try to break it down and make it simple for people to understand and that process of thinking about it from a beginner's perspective what you didn't know before forces you to think in a way and truly Master a topic when you can teach it well to others so doing that in the video is the way I prefer but honestly you could do it via the written word it the medium matters less than actually going and teaching I just chose video because I feel like we're kind of in a video age where people are scrolling through and I find that video can most easily be converted to the other mediums audio and written word now so definitely definitely it's cool that all the tools are there like it's cool that you I feel like and this is just me talking as somebody who doesn't do video but maybe should do more video in the future is like it's like if you can really hone that you're sitting there you are able to articulate this Niche Topic in a delivery that other people don't have that's engaging that that brings people into your or it it's like you can have a whole structure built around capturing that transcript repurposing that transcript into other channels for even more expanded reaches just like you can give it tentacles like I think the Dr Octopus from Spider-Man 2 it's like you can just add all those claws to yourself and like do kind of 10 xit a little bit I'll to find video just to be more endearing I I went through a long period I think with a lot of other people where my brother introduced me to Casey neistat back in like like 2015 2016 and I started watching his daily Vlogs every single day and what I did like I I fell in love with that guy man he was doing really cool stuff every single day in his daily Vlog um but it really showed me the power of like video and how how much more how much more value you get and how much more um credibility and loyalty you have around like seeing a face every single day it's almost like you know that person when you're seeing them regularly that you can't quite achieve the same level with with writing unless you are really like you're like a master writer like you're writing some of the bestselling books obviously like writers can get in your head and get into that narrative more um but I find videos an easy way to do it we easier way to build that like relational level which is why especially like if you start having some people watch your videos and they jump on a call with you you have this experience sometimes where they're like I feel like I know you and it's it's kind of weird from the other end because you're like oh hi it's nice to meet you um but video does that more than any other medium I've ever I've ever had before because they've been watching you and it feels like they have a relationship with you so it's a powerful medium but like I said Master writers like can really do that really well on a totally different level if you're like I love reading fiction for that level for that reason right because it gets in your head in a way movies can't yeah yeah yeah definitely love that um I do want to shift gears a little bit because it seems like you do some Consulting work as well around AI um at least on your LinkedIn you want to tell me a little bit about that like how does that work it's funny over the last year and a half I've I've been like a solo consultant sometimes freelancer depending on what they needed um I'm doing that less now because of the the new role was social media examiner um but I was I was a mix I was a weird mix of like helping people with podcasting marketing Automation and then over the last year because I started talking more about AI I started helping people with AI and at first I just started blending AI into the other things I did so I'd help people launch a podcast and I'd be like oh cool let's make some AI tools and they'd be like okay so and then I'd make their their their production line for their podcast way more efficient right where I'm like you guys don't need to pay someone to write your show notes like AI is really good at that actually uh let's speed this up instead of coming up with the title have ai come up with five here's a prompt to get the most out of it so you can do it based on the show and make sure it doesn't mix up or doesn't overlap with the other shows you've done um it was stuff like that and then it started becoming marketing automation like how do we inject AI into your Automation in order to 10x your Automation and make it way more effective uh AI even back with like rudimentary AI was like filling in so many gaps that you couldn't achieve with marketing automation marketing automation before to customize and personalize thing was like a game of Mad Libs like you're like okay I'm gonna inject a field here based on a drop- down list I gave them earlier right like there's only so many different things you can do with marketing automation based on like drop- down menus and insert this and AI you like even on my own AI course I personalize every email lesson based on the video based on information they gave me um with a custom lesson and every single lesson's unique B on based on the role who they sell to and what they uh their their role in the company um to give them customized lessons and it's like that was impossible before marketing Automation and then building custom gpts ended up becoming a thing that I was helping people do um I did a case study on that on my show about how I used uh I worked with another marketing consultant who was doing a lot of um Consulting around helping companies prepare for the future really interesting subject he's kind of a futurist so he's he had a method and a model of helping cut paint a picture of different future scenarios and spotting risks and likelihoods of future opportunities as well as risks in order to prepare for them now he had a very clear defined model but it would take him two weeks to walk through the model and to build it and I'm like oh my gosh we can build a whole custom GPT that will do this in like 30 minutes it still was hard but like imagine imagine something that used to take you 80 manh hours now only takes you 30 minutes it's so fast that you could literally just do it live with clients on a call now yeah that's what that's what we built for his business and now he's using that custom GPT with clients and like is uh accelerating his value because you know speed is everything if you can if you could do nothing in an industry but improve the speed of delivery it's a game changer it's it's mindblowing the amount of Leverage you can get out of this and it's crazy how people just don't just don't even realize it they don't even know and it's like it's like and then you see the people who like and I don't blame them I don't blame them I think they'll come around eventually but you see people posting about like they they they put some really generic input in chat gbt and then of course it spits out something generic and then they go see I told you and it's like oh so so no I think I think it's important for there to be a healthy you know sort of Creator economy around these subjects and you can already tell to your point of just so early it's just what what kind of are your you know you don't have to give away like your secret sauce and stuff but in terms of like looking in the next one to three years what what what are your General plans for content and just educating the market and just creating a sort of movement around these things for for marketers um I have no secret sauce if I like as soon as soon as I have a really really good idea that I I feel like people that is useful for me I literally try to publish it as fast as possible there's no secrets because um like anything you figure out somebody else will figure out I just I honestly just try to get it out there faster um but but I think I try to be the really practical person there's all kinds of conversations happening around AI there's the theoretical stuff of like Doom and Gloom and really hyper like Utopia kind of stuff with AI I don't get I don't get into that stuff I'm like screw it that stuff will figure itself out I all I want to know is how can I use AI to like improve my craft and get more results as a marketer like now and maybe around the very near future like in the next couple of months maybe that if I can start preparing for it um and that's what I try to cover so I'm trying to cover the most useful uh most practical use cases that are most helpful for me and other marketers um I'm also trying to not just get like individual use cases but more holistic Frameworks to approach the topic of AI um for example a really helpful framework that was like it it it just made the whole difference for me around digital marketing was Ryan dice's approach to digital marketing he's like look every single channel has a top of the funnel middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel component so so break look at all the different channels in these three buckets and you'll see how all of this can fit together more holistically and then he went through and created courses around like social media top of the funnel middle of the funnel bottom of the funnel email marketing top of the funnel middle of the funnel bottom of the funnel and just kind of put every kind of put a bow on how all these channels could work individually and then together to create a holistic experience so as you were thinking about strategies and weaknesses and where you were falling off or where you were doing well you could actually look at it as a system and approach it that way AI marketing still needs that so I'm trying to come up with Frameworks and tools to help marketers think about this new topic I have a few already around how to approach AI as an individual to Mastery like steps that can be taken um I'll I won't explain it here but I can I can give you a link to a show I did earlier on that even uh I came up with a fi a framework around the five types of AI marketing to consider your your your team and how to approach it I'm also now trying to think about like how to create a framework that leaders can look at in onboarding their team into AI marketing I think a lot of leaders marketing directors VPS are not asking like how do I okay this is clear but I don't know how to like some of my team is like crushing it and some of them aren't what can we do with the whole how can we create a program for the whole team where I can measure everybody's improvements and adopting these new tools because you don't want to get left behind as a department you want to well not everybody will take to it like a duct to water but some people need to be helped and kind of like nudged along while other people need need a space to play so it's coming up with Frameworks to help people's thinking around the topic that I'm most excited about but coming up with the Practical use cases is always fun too is I like to get my hands dirty and trying out little little tactical things that really help it would you say Dan it's like trying just so I understand is it like trying to get people in your audience to see like the second and third order effects of using the tools like I guess if I think of like an example for me it's like two years ago I wouldn't have thought that using Claud will help me write more emails which then means I can do the thing I've always wanted to do was just do a daily email because it's it's it's you either it's either impossible to ignore or you just completely ignore it all together you know it's hot and cold I've always wanted to do that and it's like without AI that would be probably five to 10 times harder to do and to hit quality and volume is that kind of what you're saying it's like that's not necessarily so direct but it's like a second and third order effect of just being more efficient and you know having a system to to put your words on it yeah I think they're two different things I'm trying to come up with Frameworks that give people like a map of even how to navigate this new land um but also one of the things I have been talking about is thinking about even ways can improve AI can improve work um for everybody but even collectively as a team I like to think about AI in three different ways um helping people move faster like you're talking about like it's becomes a quantity game like if I had more time what else would I do well AI is g to help you do that um but Al AI can do more than that it can do more than just help you do more and faster it can help you do better like the stuff I can do now because of AI is drastically better I can come up with much better ideas because I might have a few creative ideas but if I give those as examples to AI and be like okay now let's here's some examples of where I want to go with the show idea uh for a new podcast or something give me some more like this oh so good especially if you have a few like really good ones in the as examples AI will extend them and you might get a new idea that's better than your ideas or you might get some ones that compliment it or you exhaust all the different ideas you're like no I'm feeling good about the ideas I produce it'll just sharpen you and make your ideas and your work better for me who's not I'm an okay writer but I'm not I'm probably like a C+ writer um it elevates me to a B+ writer because now I can write much g chat GPT and CLA can write better than I can I have write a LinkedIn post and be like okay rewrite this and make it more concise and it always does better than my original even my final draft it's better than my final draft I'm like okay like I'm just gonna have to run this through AI every time because it's better than me at this fine um I've written a lot of posts for LinkedIn so it's just sad but it is what it is and I'm not romantic about the craft of writing or even producing video I'm just like hey if it's more effective let's do that um but that was a two like faster better but then there's another category of smarter once you do faster which is where I recommend people start how can you do what you're already doing faster and not how can you use AI to make it better there's this other category of smarter and I kind of think about it in two ways one AI is a really great coach and consultant if you would ask good questions and help help it to guide your cons your thinking and what what things you should are are should be considering for a thing really helpful for that but there's even a new realm of things that are made possible AI that aren't like you could have never considered before like like it's not just faster it's not just better it's it's new it's Innovation now um and I actually think walking through that progression of doing things faster doing things better will begin to train your mind and thinking about things that weren't even a possibility before um if you start to do those things and you start to use AI regularly all of a sudden you'll start to be open up to new possibilities of ways of serving customers and reaching people and even creating ideas and putting out content that were impossible three years ago so that's kind of how I've been coaching people on how to Think Through AI do it faster do it better and then do it smarter yeah that's bullish stuff man that's exciting that's why I can't stop talking about it I'm like yes like that's why honestly why I wanted to work at social media examiner I'm like wait I can get paid to do this full-time now yes please I could have kept going solo but you know even the market for AI stuff is still slow and I'm still doing a lot of marketing Automation and podcasting work to to pay the bills so to be able to do it full-time or nearly full-time is is I don't know awesome I to think about it more now yeah no that's that's that's a really exciting way to just like be excited for what you do every single day even more so Props to you man and and thanks again for this interview thanks again for listening to this interview it comes from the AI copyrighting Pro newsletter go and subscribe over at substock Link in the description