"AI will revolutionise your marketing." "Automate everything with AI." "10x your productivity." You read this everywhere. We use these tools every day. Here's what we actually observe, far from the promises.
Promises vs reality
What they sell us:
What we observe:
The problem: many AI marketing tools add an interface and a margin to a language model you can already use directly. Before paying for one more subscription, one question is enough: what does this tool do that the general-purpose assistant doesn't?
The 3 categories of AI marketing tools
After exploring dozens of tools, we see three categories. We describe them by use rather than by name: products change quickly, uses stay.
1. The genuinely useful
2. The "it depends"
3. The nonsense
Why 100% AI content is a dead end
Google said it as early as February 2023: appropriate use of AI is not against its guidelines, and its systems reward high-quality content however it is produced. In March 2024, it added a policy against content mass-produced to manipulate rankings, again no matter how it is created. So AI content isn't penalised per se. Mediocre content is, and a lot of AI content published as-is is mediocre.
The problem: AI content published without human work is often:
What it means:
Google doesn't punish AI, it punishes mediocrity at scale. Publishing hundreds of generated articles to fill a site is exactly the case its March 2024 policy targets.
The real cost of AI (not the one they tell you)
Visible costs:
These are the only ones you're told about, and not the heaviest.
Hidden costs:
Our observation: For simple, repetitive tasks, AI saves time. For complex tasks requiring expertise and nuance, it often wastes it.
Learning time, on the other hand, can be shortened: that's what our Claude training is for.
What actually works (our experience)
In daily use, here's what we've found useful:
It works:
It doesn't work:
Our rule: If the AI output can be published as-is, it probably doesn't bring anything new.
Sorting what can be delegated from what stays with you is also where our AI integration work starts.
Our position
We explore AI every day. We see its potential. We also see its limits.
What we think:
AI is an amplifier. It amplifies the skills of those who have them. It doesn't create skills in those who don't.
An SME that uses AI without a clear strategy will produce more mediocre content, faster. An SME with real expertise can go further, more efficiently.
The nonsense is promising that AI replaces thinking. It replaces nothing. It accelerates. And accelerating in the wrong direction is still going in the wrong direction.
Key takeaways
Many AI marketing tools add an interface and a margin to a model you can already use.
Google doesn't penalise AI: it demotes mediocre content produced at scale, however it is written.
The real cost includes learning, verification and correction.
AI amplifies existing expertise; it doesn't replace it.
The nonsense: promising that AI does the work for you.