With all the hype around AI, it should be no surprise that I’ve run into many less tech-savvy marketing team members who think AI does everything now. However, there are limitations to its capabilities, and wise marketers will combine AI’s capabilities with their existing technology to — as the mechanic’s motto dictates — use the right tool for the right job.
To begin, let’s distinguish between AI and automation, which are often confused because they share capabilities that can appear to be similar.
Automation is like an if/then statement. It lets humans set conditions that, if met, tell a platform to behave in a certain way. It’s the technological way of telling the cashiers at a retail store, if you have three or more people waiting in your line, pick up the intercom and call for additional cashiers.
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A marketing example might be a paid search campaign where spend should not exceed $100 per day. Exactly how you would do it varies by platform, but you can set up instructions to check daily spend every hour and, if it ever meets or exceeds $100, pause the campaign and alert you. Once activated, you no longer need to check platform spend every hour, as the automation will handle it and take action if spend triggers a response. Marketers have been using automations like this for quite some time.
Faux human intelligence vs. real human insight
However, AI is different because we ask it to display faux human intelligence and make decisions for us. In the search campaign example, we use automation to pause the campaign and notify us when spend exceeds a threshold, but we might use AI to determine that threshold based on historical data or reallocate channel spending as it assesses real-time performance.
These examples show how automation and AI can operate together, but you may not want to let them run amok. Many platforms offer AI-enabled automation that lets you run an entire campaign with very little human intervention. The only issue I’ve run into is that it can quickly become obvious that AI is only mimicking human intelligence, not employing it.
I won’t rehash my recent article on biased decision-making from AI (you can read it here), but there are very real dangers to letting AI run everything for you. Smart marketers will find the middle ground where we can use AI to make these decisions while automating checks and balances.
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Back to our search campaign, an example might be giving AI more freedom to decide on search terms and landing pages. However, we can create automated notifications if the conversion rate drops below a threshold or the cost per conversion exceeds another threshold. This will trigger you to bring in your authentic human intelligence to assess the situation and potentially redirect before things get too out of hand.
Once you have this type of system in place, one person can conceivably manage many more campaigns than they could previously, which shows the biggest benefit of this setup – increased efficiency and accuracy for the organization. Alternatively, there may be things you weren’t doing (as much) before because they were more ‘nice to have’ than a requirement, but now we humans have time back to manage these campaigns effectively when we are supported by technology. When used properly, technology supports us so we can get out of the mundane and into where we really make a difference.
The bottom line
Ultimately, the real power of AI and automation lies not in replacing marketers, but in amplifying what we do best. When AI and automation tools are thoughtfully combined and guided by human oversight, they create a system that is both efficient and resilient. By applying the right level of control, marketers can avoid the pitfalls of overreliance on AI while still benefiting from its speed and analytical strength. The end goal is to make the tech work for us, freeing human intelligence to focus on strategy, creativity and judgment where it matters most.
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