“Can’t AI just do my marketing now?”
I get asked this a lot. Fair question. AI can write ad copy, draft blog posts, analyse data and build campaigns in a fraction of the time a person takes. I use it every day myself.
So why would you still pay someone like me? Because writing the ad was never the hard part.
AI doesn’t know your business
AI knows a lot about everything in general and nothing about you in particular. It doesn’t know that your best customers come from two suburbs, that your margins on one service are terrible, that your biggest competitor just went bust, or that you can’t take on more work until your new apprentice starts in March.
A good marketer asks those questions. That context is what turns generic marketing into marketing that makes you money.
AI can’t make judgement calls
Should you spend on SEO or Google Ads first? Should you stop advertising a service that gets lots of leads but low-value jobs? Should you respond to a competitor’s price drop?
AI can list the pros and cons. But making the call means weighing up things that aren’t in any dataset: your goals, your risk appetite, your cash flow, your gut feel about your market. That’s judgement, built from years of seeing what actually works.
AI is confidently wrong (a lot)
Ask an AI tool a marketing question and you’ll get a confident, well-written answer. Sometimes it’s spot on. Sometimes it’s outdated, made up or just wrong for Australia. It’ll cite Google features that don’t exist, or suggest tactics that breach advertising rules for your industry.
If you don’t know enough to spot the mistakes, you won’t. An experienced marketer does.
Everyone has the same AI
If you and your five competitors all ask the same AI tool to write your ads, guess what? You’ll all sound the same. AI tends to produce the average of everything it’s seen.
Standing out comes from things AI can’t copy: your story, your personality, your real reviews, your actual expertise. A good marketer helps you find and use those.
AI isn’t accountable
When a campaign goes sideways, AI won’t call you to explain what happened and what it’s doing about it. It won’t notice something’s off on a Friday afternoon and fix it before the weekend burns your budget. It won’t lose sleep over your results.
I will. That’s the difference between a tool and someone who’s responsible for your results.
The platforms’ AI works for the platforms
Google’s AI is very good at spending your budget. That’s partly because Google makes money when you spend. Its AI optimises for the goal you set, but it’ll happily take more of your money if you let it.
A good marketer works for you. Sometimes that means switching off Google’s suggestions, pulling budget back, or telling you a channel isn’t worth it.
So what’s the future?
It’s not AI or marketers. It’s marketers who use AI well. AI handles the repetitive stuff, so the human can spend more time on strategy, creativity and the things that actually move the needle.
The marketers who should be worried are the ones who were only ever doing the repetitive stuff. The ones who understand businesses, think strategically and own their results? They just got a lot more productive.
My approach
I use AI to work faster and dig deeper, not to cut corners. You get 15+ years of SEO and Google Ads experience, backed by the best tools available, and a real person who answers your emails.
If that sounds like what you need, get in touch and I’ll put together a quote, or have a look at the industries I work with.
