3 tips for getting your team...

I’ve written a few articles about my favorite genAI marketing use cases, from creating custom personas to provide feedback on your pre-launch marketing efforts to streamlining document development and more. All of these non-copywriting use cases increase my productivity without jeopardizing the quality of the work—and they can do that for you, too. 

None of them is difficult. What can be difficult is figuring out how to get started on a path to use cases like this, rather than just fooling around with it. 

1. Goal: Having every team member use AI at least once a day

The objective here isn’t perfection. It’s frequency.

You want every team member using AI at work daily; if that feels like a stretch, weekly at a minimum. Because regular use is the fastest way to build fluency, it’s also how you move from “this is interesting” to “this is useful” to “this just saved me two hours.”

I wasn’t using AI to build personas or generate message maps when I started. I used it to plan a long weekend in Copenhagen. Was it polished? Not especially. But it got me comfortable with the format, tone and give-and-take of prompting and once I had that muscle memory, I was ready to apply it to client work.

If you’re rolling this out with a team, set the bar low on complexity and high on consistency. Have people pick one small task to tackle with AI each week. Research, brainstorming, drafting or outlining—it doesn’t matter what it is; what matters is that they’re doing it.

Because, like any tool, AI only works if you use it.

2. Get the paid version of your preferred AI for your whole team

Yes, it’s worth the $20/month – or more (I share a workspace account with an industry colleague – we each chip in $30 a month, but it’s well worth it). 

Even the base-level paid access to ChatGPT gives you powerful tools like access to custom GPTs. You can access ones created by others (public) and create your own (private). And the ability to upload documents and images makes it much more useful for marketing, especially anything involving analysis or iteration.

Side note: This tech will only get more expensive over time. Get in while the barrier to entry is low, especially if your company isn’t covering it yet. (Consider it a professional development write-off. Your future self will thank you.)

3. Have team members use AI for tasks they already do without it

Don’t start with something new. Start with something familiar.

The easiest way to integrate AI into your workflow is by using it for something you’re already doing regularly. Whether it’s building a creative brief, brainstorming campaign themes, pulling insights from audience research, or drafting benefits and key messages… pick one.

For me, that first task was research. I was already digging into client audiences and offerings; I just let AI help accelerate the process. Once that felt solid, I moved into document development. Then message maps. 

Dig deeper: What marketers can learn from manufacturing’s shift to precision CX

The trick is not to try to AI-ify everything at once. That’s how you end up frustrated, with a weirdly formal email draft and a new appreciation for how unprepared some tools are.

Instead, choose one task. One thing you already know how to do. Use AI to support it. Then compare the results, tweak your prompts and get better. Then do it again with a different task.

Because AI isn’t magic, but it is a skill. And like any skill, mastery starts with repetition.

Quality: You won’t get there without the tips above

We’ve all seen the LinkedIn posts where someone asks ChatGPT to “write a launch email” and calls it a day. And the result? About as compelling as a hotel hairdryer: functional, but forgettable.

If you want output that’s actually good, not just good for AI, you need to invest in the time, the tools and a thoughtful approach to achieve it.

The three steps above (use it often, invest a little and go narrow to go deep) unlock that kind of quality. They also make AI an actual productivity booster, not just another shiny object you’ll abandon after a week.

Training: Skip prompt engineering 101. Go for use cases instead

There are a lot of “Prompt Engineering Masterclass” courses out there right now. And if your goal is to spend your days writing the world’s most elegant AI prompts… sure. Take one.

But for a team of marketers? Most of these generalist training courses aren’t that useful. Your marketing team doesn’t need to learn how to reverse-engineer a chatbot with a 27-line nested prompt structure. Your team needs to get work done — better, faster and with fewer headaches.

Dig deeper: 3 marketing tasks genAI can help with — no copywriting involved

So here’s my advice: if you come across a course or tutorial focused on specific use cases (like writing a campaign brief, optimizing a subject line, or generating ideas based on a customer persona), then jump on it. Sign up your team.

The closer the training is to your day-to-day, the more value you’ll get. Especially if it includes real-world examples, outputs and even some messy middle moments (because those are where the real learning happens).

Bottom line 

Learning to use AI well is like learning to cook. You don’t start by attempting a Turducken and you don’t need to master molecular gastronomy to create a lovely meal. You need to find a few solid recipes that work for you and build from there.