Why Most Marketers Feel Behind on AI and Aren't

Feeling behind on AI has become almost a default setting for marketers. The problem is not that we are ignoring the change. It is that the news cycle makes every model update, agent demo, and competitor announcement feel like proof that everyone else has already figured it out.

That impression is distorted. AI is creating real gains, but the hype curve is moving faster than the practical productivity curve. A tool can make a task easier without turning a small marketing team into a fully autonomous company overnight.

More announcements do not mean you missed the moment

The major AI companies are competing in public now. That means a steady stream of announcements, including updates that would once have happened quietly. It is easy to confuse that volume with a widening gap in skill.

The early agent conversation makes the distortion worse. Marketers should ask for the evidence that matters: a case study over time, a benchmark, a real before-and-after, or revenue data. General claims about efficiency are not the same as proof that a workflow is reliable.

Consider an AI-generated design that can be moved into Canva as editable layers, avoiding the manual rebuilding of elements. That is a meaningful gain for a marketer and a design team. It is also a specific gain, not evidence that all marketing work is suddenly solved.

The fundamentals are the advantage

The durable advantage is not knowing every new tool first. It is knowing how to give AI a job. A useful handoff includes the end goal, the context, the relevant resources, and an example of what good looks like.

Think about delegation. A human teammate building a landing page would need the objective, approved copy, visual reference, access to the right files, and a review. AI needs the same handoff. When we skip that work, we get generic output and blame the tool. When we supply it, the first draft can become a shorter review-and-refine process, even if it still needs corrections such as linked buttons.

Use the noise as a cue to get specific

The answer to AI FOMO is not to collect more tools. Choose a real assignment and improve the handoff. Identify the objective, gather the material, give an example, decide who reviews the result, and measure whether the workflow saved time or improved quality.

Context, process, and delegation are not temporary prompt tricks. They are operating skills that will still matter when agents become more reliable. You are ahead when you can turn a clear business need into well-scoped work and keep enough human judgment in the loop to know whether it actually worked.

Speaker: We're getting to the point where even the experts around AI are having a hard time keeping up with all the news. And then general marketers are just like, I feel so far behind. But is that actually the case?

Speaker: In today's episode, I wanted to walk through some dynamics that I think are playing out across the tech landscape when it comes to AI that's making us all feel this general sense of FOMO, even if your full-time job is paying attention to the development of ai so Welcome back to the AI Driven Marketer. I'm Dan Sanchez. My friends call me Danchez. and Today, we're to be covering some news that's going on. It's kind of a general episode because I'm not going to be covering really specific news items, but a general feeling that's coming across in the articles today. and I'm going here to tell you that like you're not crazy for having that sense of FOMO when it comes to feeling behind When it comes to AI, even I feel it. Other people are feeling it. And today i want to address what's going on and i have a few practical things to pay attention to or what I'm going to be just calling the AI fundamentals because the fundamentals are actually carrying the pros farther and faster than all the new tips, tricks and tools out there. But I'm going to cover what those are in a minute. Some of you longtime listeners probably already know what they are.

Speaker: But let's talk about what's actually going on in the news cycle. We are seeing an increasing amount of news. Every single.1 update is getting tons of coverage, whether it's coming from Claude with Anthropic or ChatGPT with OpenAI or Grok or Facebook. It doesn't really matter. Everybody's pumping out major announcements.

Speaker: And one of the things I think is going on is that because there's so much hype around it, because the news cycles are getting crazy, we're like making more and more hype about smaller and smaller updates. Believe it or not, last year we still had 4.0, very popular model from ChatGPT, and they updated it like three, four times in major ways and never really sent out a press release about it. They just updated it quietly behind the scenes and it just got noticeably better because I was paying attention. I noticed it would bump. And if you were watching the API, it would give you like all these different variations in when you were choosing a model with the API. So you could see like, oh, look, they have and a new bench, a new thing you could choose that was updated last November in like 2024, right? Like they they made a bump to 4.0 and it got better.

Speaker: Did they make a big press release about it? No, 4.0 was drastically different. from when they had released it in the summer of 2024 to when they finally deprecated it or replaced it with 5.0 in the summer of 2025. There was a number of drastic changes to where that thing had gotten much better, but they didn't really make news about any of them until they came out with 4.1 in the spring. It's like a half-stop thing before they released 5 because they they knew 5 was taking a little while longer than they thought, so they released 4.1.

Speaker: But this year, every tiny little iteration they put out is being pumped out as a huge media release because now ChatGPT isn't the obvious winner anymore. They're all pretty freaking amazing. So they're trying to just edge each other out news. And it's this big news battle. And that leaves the rest of us feeling like, wow, maybe I don't know what's going on as much as I thought. And that's just not true. There's just more news than anything.

Speaker: ever before. So if you're feeling left out, just know that, well, there's like five, 10 times the amount of news coming out because everyone's trying to win in this new AI race. The other big thing in the news, of course, is agents and not just kind of agents, not automation pretending to be agents, but actual agents. We're kind of in the beginning stages of it, but it's rough.

Speaker: Open Claw, it seems like to be sucking up. If they open claw or clawed, like clawed agent, whatever, I don't know. Like there's so much hype between these two things that I promise, like unless you're a freaking tech wizard, don't play with them.

Speaker: They're just not ready. And they're not as reliable as everybody claims they, they, they, They are. And they're they're making tons of progress on them. Little tiny wins are happening every single week with these more agentic systems.

Speaker: But it's not ready for prime time yet. I'm very technical, and it's not even close to ready for me to begin utilizing, and I wouldn't even trust it yet. so But all the talk about it, like everybody's freaking killing it with these agents and running their whole companies out, of it's I promise, it's mostly just smoke and mirrors.

Speaker: I don't see a lot of real case studies coming out from marketers saying like, oh, we did this over the last three months and here were the results. We started with this and then we replaced it. You know, like actual case studies with real benchmarks and real revenue data and real things.

Speaker: Nobody's talking about that. Everybody's speaking in generalities. All the tech companies are laying off people and getting rewarded and clapped on the back for efficiency and it's AI. and It's just smoke and mirrors, guys. A lot of this is just not reality. So there's this, again, at On top of all the AI announcements, all this stuff happening is just making it us feel like we're behind. Like, oh my gosh, like where everybody's so efficient with AI. I'm like, they're laying off people that are even good with AI. like they're just They're just laying off people from overhiring, I guess. And they probably are becoming more productive with AI. I'm not going to lie to you and say AI isn't making people more productive. It is, but the like the hype curve is way more exponential than the actual progress curve that it's or productivity curve for the rest of us

Speaker: broad productivity is absolutely going up. As AI improves, my productivity is going up like that update I gave last week on Canva. That's really cool. The fact that I can make an AI chat GPT design and then bring it into Canva and turn it into layers and be able to move it. Well, guess what? My productivity as a designer has gone up because I used to have to hand remake. I used to have to go in and Photoshop those elements out and then bring them back in. And even though there were AI tools involved, it was still kind of a hard process that most people couldn't replicate.

Speaker: This new thing of like create something with ChatGPT and then create layers in Canvas so I can manipulate it. That's a game changer, not just for me, but for my team who are professional designers can now make really cool things with thumbnails, with chat GPT and and edit the layer in Canva. It's a big deal, not just for me, but for everybody else who's making, you know, quasi designs with AI.

Speaker: That's real productivity gains. But is it exponential? Not really. Like, it's not making that big of a difference. Will it eventually? Yeah, like over time, each each little productivity gain, you know, if we keep making them every year, multiple times a year, then it adds up. But is it exponential, like the way the hype cycle is making us believe it is?

Speaker: No, it's just not. It's just not. There's a lot to be had with AI. I freaking love way a AI. I love what it's doing for marketing, but it's not, it's not like the crazy town where you can just have a whole marketing team with just a couple couple agents or a swarm or a cluster of agents. That's freaking not happening. And anybody who's doing that is in a really rare situation where that's actually possible and they're highly technical. There's little pockets where it might actually be happening. The rest of it smoke and mirrors, and it's not actually true.

Speaker: It is just hype. It's vapor. It's nothing. So, I'm just telling you these things so that you can relax a little bit. Take a deep breath. You're not behind. You're in good timing.

Speaker: The fact that you're listening to this show and probably listen to other shows like it and other YouTube channels and exploring and experimenting and pushing it means that you're in with the best of us trying to figure this out. So...

Speaker: What's actually making a difference? I'm telling you, there are fundamentals that I just see missing across the board. Lots of people are playing with the tools, but we're missing the fundamentals. have a whole course on just the fundamentals of how to think about AI, and I'll link to it in the show description, but you can go to danchez.com slash courses, and you'll see it right there. It's the top course. It's free. It's even powered by high-levels technology.

Speaker: I don't know, email sequence. You'll see each lesson is customized just for you. It's a little five day course. Take it. It's a little dated now, but it's actually because the fundamentals are fundamentals. Like they haven't changed much. Learn how to prompt well. Learn how to give the right context. Learn how to think through the end goal you're trying to create and then think about using AI like you're delegating to a human. The more you think about delegating to AI like you're delegating to human, the more your brain starts to kicking, oh, if this were a person, they would probably need to know A, B, and C. And I'd probably have to give them access to this resource and I might show them an example. You start thinking about it like that.

Speaker: And AI will start to work wonders for you and will become 10 times more capable than it was the way you're currently using it. And I promise those fundamentals of thinking through what does AI need when I give it something to do and what's the objective I'm trying to accomplish here are the fundamentals.

Speaker: thinking through process, thinking through systems, thinking about how to delegate well. These are the fundamentals. The more you can do that well, the better AI is going to work for you, the better it's going to work for your whole team.

Speaker: So focus on those things. Don't get lost in the hype and the agents and the open clause and the blah, blah, blah, all this crap that's floating around on the Internet right now. Focus on the fundamentals. They will serve you well. And when agents are actually accessible and safe and ready to be used, those fundamentals are going to work even harder for you. They're not going away. They're not going to change anytime soon. That's why they're fundamentals. Now, I did want to talk about one other thing, one other piece of news that I did think was really cool this week. I'm not going to give a demonstration of it.

Speaker: because it's still kind of a beta feature and I'm like I'm gonna work this out a little bit more before giving a full walkthrough of it but I do want to tie it back to our sponsor right high level because this feature is freaking awesome i've been waiting for this for a while but essentially you can now vibe code in high level not anything not you can't just vibe code anything like a general vibe code tool build a whole iPhone app no Not that kind of stuff, but you can now vibe code essentially your landing pages and your websites in high level.

Speaker: I don't know if you've ever spent time like sitting down building a a landing page, but it is it is a time-consuming endeavor. Even if you know how to design, even if you can have AI write your copy, just doing the drag and drop thing of assembling it all...

Speaker: even for me, and I'm really good at it, and I've done it many times, it would just take four, five, six hours sometimes just to create a single page. And you know, the other pages, because you start duplicating it and putting it to work other places, but man, it would take forever. And that's why I started using tools like Replit to just build all my landing pages, because I could just give it a prompt, a design, again, context, delegation, right is fundamentals, I'd give it something like replet, be like, hey, this is the objective of the page, here's all the copy for it, here's a screenshot of what I generally want it to look like, so use this image as inspiration for what the design should look like, and then it would go and knock out the whole landing page. And of course, I'd have to tweak it afterwards, because it wouldn't link a few buttons and stuff.

Speaker: But it was so much faster. It took what took usually five, six hours of building a landing page and would get it done in 30 minutes instead. So much faster. And generally would look even better than what I could do myself. Its design skills got better than what I could do web design wise. So I've been using Replit to design all my microsites and my landing pages. even little miniature applications like i built a a coach directory my company recently and it's been really helpful with a lightweight cms very cool very awesome to be able to make things like that really quickly but now high level can do it inside and that's helpful because they're not just doing it with code they're doing it with their drag and drop builder so if you need to come in and click around and quick and drag and drop and move something around it's like now i got the best of both worlds in it and that's why i love high level So it has all the basic tools, but they just keep seeing what's working in the market, and then they just add it as part of the package. It's a full-feature CRM marketing automation system. and It has all the website building and landing page and funnel tools. It's got all the stuff. It's actually part of the reason why i love it. It's probably part of the reason why...

Speaker: I don't love it because it's not as simple as it probably needs to be for someone who's new. But if you're pretty good at marketing and you've like worked through systems like ActiveCampaign or you're pretty more advanced with MailChimp or those kinds of things, like you should probably take a look at HighLevel.

Speaker: It's $100 a month. It comes with all the tools, so you'd have you don't have to pay for all the different tools out there. all the all But it could probably consolidate five or six of your tools or more. And it doesn't cost more or hardly cost more the more like users you add to it or emails you add to it. You don't get charged for list size. You don't get charged for users. You get unlimited users, unlimited list size. You do have to pay some consumables for the amount of emails or text messages you send, but it's cheaper than every other provider out there. You're talking like 0.65 cents

Speaker: a text when normally the rate for texting I think some vendor right now one of the companies I work with like nine cents or text or maybe seven cents a text think about point five six five cents a text versus seven or nine cents a text it's crazy cost so check out high level go to danchez.com slash high level and you can get a 30-day trial I promise like you will not be disappointed by the amount of features you're getting for 100 bucks a month And now with this vibe coding tool, it's nice to be able to just go to a landing page and be like, hey, this is what I need. Here's the copy. Here's an image to check out. It's still kind of a beta feature. it broke on me the first time I did it. i ran it again. It worked fine.

Speaker: But it's cool that they've combined what is essentially vibe coding, like just prompt your way through a whole landing page with its own drag and drop builder so you can have the best of both worlds. Drag and drop so you can edit manually and have an AI agent kind of build out the whole thing for you on the first pass. It is changing my world already. So thank you for listening. Don't feel behind. You are where you need to be. Keep learning. Stay steady. Master the fundamentals. And check a high level. That's it.

Why Most Marketers Feel Behind on AI and Aren't

More announcements do not mean you missed the moment

The fundamentals are the advantage

Use the noise as a cue to get specific

My Favorite AI Tools

Resources Mentioned

Timestamps