The AI Marketing Journey: My Q1 Learnings and Predictions

By Dan Sanchez · Episode published April 12, 2024

The AI marketing journey is about learning to direct AI tools, redesign workflows, and become more valuable as marketing work changes.

The AI marketing journey is no longer about whether marketers should use AI. The real question is how quickly marketers can learn to direct AI tools, redesign workflows, and become more valuable as the work changes around them.

This post began as a Q1 reflection, but the core lesson has only become more important: marketers who learn to manage AI systems, break work into repeatable processes, and keep improving their judgment will have an advantage over marketers who only use AI for quick drafts.

If you want help applying AI to your marketing team or workflows, see Dan Sanchez’s AI Marketing Services or read what an AI marketing consultant does.

We’re now a quarter of the way through 2024, and I have some news for you: AI is absolutely coming for your marketing job.

Don’t panic just yet. I’ve spent the last few months intensely studying and experimenting with AI for marketing, and I’ve discovered both concerning and exciting insights that I want to share with you today.

2026 Update: The Prediction Is Turning Into A Workflow Problem

The early fear was that AI would simply replace marketing tasks. The more practical reality is that AI is changing how marketing work gets packaged, delegated, reviewed, and improved. The marketers who win are not just better prompt writers. They are better workflow designers.

That means the useful question is not “Will AI take this task?” It is “How should this task change now that AI can research, draft, summarize, classify, repurpose, and automate parts of it?” That question belongs inside campaign planning, content production, sales follow-up, research, and reporting.

The Hard Truth About AI and Marketing Jobs

Let’s not sugarcoat this. There are roughly 400,000 marketing jobs in the US right now, and I believe a significant portion of those are going to disappear as AI advances. Will new jobs be created? Absolutely. But I’d be surprised if even half as many new positions emerge as those that vanish.

Why am I so certain? Because I’ve spent the past quarter diving deep into what these tools can do, and the capabilities are staggering:

Social media management
Email marketing campaign creation
Content writing and editing
Video editing
Media management
Landing page design
Ad campaign optimization

These are all things I’ve learned how to do over my career—from running AdWords campaigns for summer camps to growing LinkedIn followers from 0 to 25,000—and AI is rapidly becoming capable of handling many of these tasks.

Learning AI Is Easier Than You Think

Here’s the good news: mastering AI isn’t nearly as difficult as learning to code. Trust me, I’ve done both.

When I learned to code websites years ago, it was painful. One misplaced semicolon would crash everything. Just connecting your domain to your host was a challenge, let alone getting WordPress up and running.

AI, on the other hand, is forgiving. It’s fluid. There’s plenty of room to experiment, make mistakes, and gradually improve your skills. You don’t need a computer science degree or coding background. What you do need is:

A willingness to experiment
The ability to break down complex tasks into small steps
Effective delegation skills (yes, you’re basically delegating to a machine)
Patience to test, refine, and iterate

The Hidden Figures Lesson

One of my favorite movies is “Hidden Figures,” which tells the true story of African American women who computed calculations by hand for NASA’s early space missions.

In the film, one character sees IBM machines being installed and immediately recognizes that these computers will replace human computers like herself. But instead of giving up, she gets her hands on a book about coding, teaches herself the programming language, and ends up leading her entire department into the future.

I believe we’re at that exact moment in marketing right now.

The marketers who roll up their sleeves and learn how to effectively prompt, craft, and direct AI will be the ones who thrive. You’ll become the manager of AI tools rather than the person being replaced by them.

What I’m Building Now

After exploring the current AI landscape, I’ve realized that while the underlying AI technology is impressive, many of the tools built on top of it are still rudimentary. That’s why I’m creating my own tool specifically for podcast marketing.

Podcasting has been my bread and butter for years, and despite great recording and hosting platforms like Zencastr, there are still significant gaps when it comes to distribution. My tool will address that by applying AI to podcast transcripts in ways that current solutions don’t.

I’m also working on documenting everything I’m learning about AI marketing to create a comprehensive guide for marketers who want to future-proof their careers.

Join Me on This Journey

The point still holds: now is the time to master AI before it masters your job. Here’s how you can join me:

Follow me on LinkedIn for regular updates and insights
Test and experiment with AI tools in your current role
Break down your marketing tasks into steps that could be automated
Start thinking like an AI manager rather than a task executor

Remember, somebody has to pull the trigger and manage all these AI tools that are in development. Why not you?

The future of marketing is being written right now. Let’s make sure we’re the ones holding the pen.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should marketers learn first about AI?

Marketers should first learn how to break their work into clear steps, give AI useful context, review outputs critically, and turn repeated tasks into reusable workflows.

Will AI replace marketing jobs?

AI will replace some tasks and change many roles, but marketers who learn strategy, judgment, workflow design, and AI direction can become more valuable.

What is the biggest AI marketing skill?

The biggest skill is directing AI systems well: defining the goal, providing context, setting constraints, reviewing outputs, and improving the process over time.

How can a marketing team start using AI?

Start with one repeatable workflow such as audience research, newsletter drafting, podcast repurposing, campaign briefs, or reporting summaries. Improve that workflow before chasing more tools.

Where does AI marketing consulting help?

AI marketing consulting helps teams identify the highest-leverage use cases, choose practical tools, document workflows, train marketers, and implement systems that fit the team’s real work.

[Music]

hello Dan Sanchez here with the AI

driven marketer when I started this show

in December it's because I could not

really find a clear path for mastering

AI for marketers I I looked I searched

and most of what I could find were like

courses from MIT uh all the way down to

you know play with chat GPT and it was

either one or the other and I was so

frustrated that I couldn't really find

an option that could

help me bridge the gap between what I

knew which was just I'd already played

with chat GPT and wanted to go deeper

and really kind of a have a a like a

path that I could follow uh or take a

course that was way over bloated and

probably taught by people who weren't

actually dealing with it and learning

how to do things with it marketing wise

uh on a daily basis you know it's the

problem with higher red and professors

sometimes maybe they're good I just I

didn't want to go that route I usually

find I learned stuff better through

little pieces on YouTube or well-written

blogs or a podcasts and while there's

some decent podcasts out there about AI

I couldn't find one that worked for me

so in 2024 I set out on a mission to

master AI this year and now it's it's

April what is it April 9th um in the

time of this recording and I'm like I'm

well I'm pasted third or sorry fourth of

the way through I'm I'm finished quarter

1 and I wanted to report back on what

I've learned so far because the more one

thing I have learned for sure is that

the more I study AI the more I realize

that it's very powerful it's only in the

beginning stages still even as powerful

as it is and I am com more and more

confident that it is it is coming for my

job it is coming for a lot of things

that I could do could do before as a

marketer and I know how to do a lot of

different things you know I got my start

running AdWords campaigns and setting up

landing pages and building websites for

a summer camp uh that I was the was the

first time I got to be the marketer in

charge of that th and I've I've worked

at a couple of different startups from

very Beginnings down to venture funded

um to bootstrapped ones to nonprofits to

higher red to you know B Toc B2B I've

done a lot of different things run a lot

of different channels I've grown social

media accounts I've run very

sophisticated email marketing campaigns

I've managed Facebook pages and the

hundreds of thousands of fans I've built

my own following from zero to you know

25,000 followers on LinkedIn I've made

and grown media departments I've learned

how to shoot Video Edit podcasts I gosh

I've done so many different things and

the one thing I've learned is that AI is

coming for a lot of all this

stuff and it's honestly it's it can be a

little discouraging sometimes and you

realize like wow this is really powerful

but the one thing that gives me a lot of

Hope is that there's always going to be

someone learning how to deal with the

tech as it comes there's a great movie

out there called hidden figures where uh

like a number of African-American women

were discredited for their math skills

and were kind of put down into like the

basement version part of like NASA and

eventually they were the computers back

before machine computer machines were a

thing they were the ones literally

Computing the math you know by hand and

some you know maybe some very

rudimentary calculators um for the first

moon landing for the first or first

people sent in space it's a great movie

watch it sometimes what I love about

that movie is one of the main characters

and this is a true story like sees them

rolling in these IBM machines and she's

like she sees the writing on the wall

when they rolling these massive machines

and it takes them forever to put

together and these guys from IBM are

trying to put it all together she's like

this is going to replace us this is

going to take all me and all my

co-workers jobs from all the Computing

we have to do but she doesn't let that

stop her she has a growth mindset and

she's like well somebody get to learn

how to run these machines so she goes

and finds a book on I think it's uh I

can't remember the name it's not Cobalt

it's like kran or something like that

the coding language from back then and

learns how to code and then finally like

sneaks into the room when the IBM guys

aren't there and having a hard time

putting turning on the computer and

troubleshoots it figures out how to

actually turn it on since the IBM

installers didn't know how um because

she's read the book and then she starts

to run some computations and the guys

come back and they're like how did you

do this how how did you fix it are you

supposed to even be here she's like I

turned it on didn't I you know and then

she it makes history when she like

teaches the rest of her Department how

to code and leaves everybody else in the

dust because she taught her and her

friends how to code um ends up being

this little really triumphal moment when

she moves her whole office and her whole

team into the IBM room to actually deal

with the computer because they have

upskilled I think there will be a a

whole class of marketers that are

wrestling with AI now learning

developing and growing in it now that

will be prepared for that day when AI

takes more and more jobs to the point

where you know I I did a Google Search

and I found that there are about 400,000

marketers uh employed uh right now in

the US today that's a lot of that's a

lot of jobs I think a lot of those jobs

are going to go away though as AI comes

and automates a lot of the work that

needs to be done for marketing now of

course new jobs will be created but i'

I'd be surprised if it made back had

half as much as it lost so if we lose

200,000 jobs I'd be surprised if even

100,000 new jobs are made by AI these

are just some rough predictions I could

be way off I hope I'm way off I would

love to be way off on it because I'd

like to see not so many jobs go away I'd

like people to keep their jobs and

continue doing their jobs one thing is

for sure though there will be new jobs

created I know because I started my

career what when social media was

becoming a thing and I rode that way of

digital marketing I rode it past you

know past the career past of many of my

my older uh co-workers in marketing

because they didn't take the time to

learn the new thing and their old

marketing skills became outdated and

they didn't know how to run the split

test and make the landing pages and put

together the email sequence the way I

did because I was rolling up my sleeves

and learning new things AI is the new

thing learning how to properly prompt

and craft and direct AI will be the new

job you will be the manager of a bunch

of AI tools and

somebody's going to have to be there

running it so this is where I'm at today

and I'm so excited that I've been

working and trying and experimenting and

testing and testing and testing so many

different AI prompts and custom gpts in

order to learn and I can tell you now

today with confidence that it is

possible to learn and it's not even

really that hard of a subject I've

learned multiple subjects and many of

which are much harder than AI like

coding learning how to code a website

it's really a pain it's there's a lot of

components to Cod a website and when I

learned it it was it was harder because

there wasn't any of these like you know

put in your credit card bam pick a

website domain and it's up and live and

you pick your theme and it's ready to go

like you used to had to just connecting

your domain to your host was a pain and

then getting it to the point where you

could even see Hello site or hello world

as your first WordPress post was a

freaking pain it was hard um now playing

with AI is so fluid and it's even very

forgiving unlike code you got one

semicolon off in your code that

website's going down um but AI very

forgiving there's lots of room to grow

and learn and play with it and get

better and better at getting the results

you want out of out of AI that being

said there's a lot of subskills for

learning how to deal with AI and a lot

of like macro skills that I feel like

work really well like learning how to

delegate effectively honestly is is one

of the things learning how to take a

complex project and break it down to

tiny little baby steps so that AI can

actually execute it because you're

really just delegating to a machine if

it doesn't understand what you want it

can't make it there are clear steps to

learning Ai and now now that I'm like

well into it and I have my own Road uh

road map um which I will not cover in

this um episode I think it will cover in

next week's episode like a road map for

how you can Master AI in 2024 and come

join me on the journey I'm only a few

steps ahead of you so come with me um

this is more of an update of where I'm

at because you know it's been three

months and now I I feel like I've made

some significant progress and now I have

actually Vision to go even further

because after playing around with AI I'm

not even satisfied with where AI is at

right now I mean I think the AI is fine

but the tools that use AI are still very

rudimentary people are everybody's

developing on it but it's taking time

for the tools to catch up to be able to

leverage this new tech um with that

being said I am helping more and more

people craft custom gpts craft Ai and

it's becoming a big part of my

Consulting work so if you need help you

can certainly let me know and I could

point you in the right direction even if

it's just a free meeting where I say hey

yeah that that's totally doable by

Custom Custom GPT and I'll point you in

the right direction to help you learn to

do it yourself or but of course if you

want some help I'm glad to get hired to

help you do it too um but even more fun

is I'm building my own tool because I

wasn't happy with anybody else's tool

and I just wanted to make one myself um

so there's more information coming about

that in this and eventually I will be

publishing a lot about this AI tool that

I'm making and it's not even it's hard

to even call it an AI tool because every

tool is an AI tool now if it's a

software tool it's probably an AI tool

so to be more specific this is a podcast

marketing tool this is podcasting is my

bread and butter has been since I've

since my sweet fish days and it's going

to continue to be because I freaking

love podcasting while there's some great

tools out there like Zen Caster what I

like uh record and host and publish on

even for Clips uh there's still some

gaps when it comes to actually getting

your podcast out there you could spend a

lot of time creating fantastic episodes

and not get enough traction when it

comes to the distribution that's what

this tool is going to address more to

come on that in another episode but I'm

I'm Now setting my sites on being able

to create a custom AI tool and really

take advantage of AI plus you know like

old Tech just old you know not old but

like JavaScript using using code to make

the most of what AI can get out of even

something as simple as a podcast

transcript there's a lot more to come

there so I'm excited to hone my skills

farther now and automating it and

putting the prompt skills I've learned

over the last couple of months to work

and even honing it further in order to

truly Master AI the other thing I'm

working on is I'd really love to finish

this year by publishing like a pseudo

book uh to refine all the lessons I'm

learning on prompting in order to hand

it off to you and it it will it'll

probably have the same name as the show

the AI driven marketer um I'm going to

build it and write it in public or try

my best to write it in public probably

by publishing like a c a public like

notion doc that people could just kind

of track the progress on I already have

the table of content so I'm hoping to

share those I'll have a link in the show

notes of this episode where you can see

that I'm excited about it and I hope to

even like co-write bits and pieces of it

with other people as I interview them

specifically to fill in gaps of my own

knowledge and what can be done with AI

in in the book to help lead and guide

others as they go about this journey of

of mastering AI because like I said the

world AI this Tech is coming for your

job so the safest bet the safest bet is

to master the tech before it replaces

you because somebody's got to have to

pull the trigger and manage all these AI

tools that are in development now and

they're getting they're only going to

get better even just as chat GPT gets

better and the other AI tools get better

let alone the developers means of

implementing it to do more and more

useful things within their own apps that

we're all already using so this is the

future I'm trying to prepare for it join

me 2024 is only just starting let's

Master it together follow the show

follow me on LinkedIn check out this

book that I'm writing um again it's just

the outline I'm going to start filling

it in with content and that's going to

be the goal of the podcast now all my

interviews are going to be interviews in

order to uh fill in the gaps of my own

knowledge for this book and then I'll

hopefully hire a ghost writer at the end

to smooth it all out write it properly

publish it so I can put a solid

Benchmark down as far as like this is

the path to learning so that my future

self I don't know so I'm leaving a path

for others to follow that's the goal

that's the whole goal of this podcast is

to give others what I didn't have or

wanted to find but couldn't find is a

solid path to follow in order to master

AI as so let's