Hey Marketing Bestie,

Ari and I are in Chicago this week and decided to bring our son on his 1st flight here.

He got to meet his Uncle, Aunt and cousins for the 1st time as well.

The reason I came here in the first place is I am moderating a panel at Salesforce at CNX. If you are in Chicago, you should come.

And yes, Ari made me promise the baby could try pizza if she let him come. She wants us to find a red and yellow outfit for him today. It's a little much but I just smile and wave.

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5.5 Ways to Make AI Worth the Budget

Quick question.

How many AI tools is your team paying for right now?

Now how many are you actually measuring?

Here's the truth I am hearing from Marketers I chat with: we are in the last few months where you can spend on AI without someone in finance asking what it did. That window is closing fast. And "we're still experimenting" isn't going to cut it in Q4.

So here are 5.5 tips that might help you:

Tip 1️⃣: Fix the workflow before you touch the tool.

AI on a broken process is just a faster broken process. That's it.

Before buying anything, ask: is this workflow actually good? Are there approvals that exist for no reason? Handoffs nobody can explain? Fix those first. Then automate.

The order of operations matters more than the tool.

Tip 2️⃣: Build a measurement layer on day one. Not day 90.

Pick 2 numbers before you turn anything on. Time saved per task. Output volume. Campaign performance. Something real.

Because when finance walks in and asks what AI did for the business this year, "it feels faster" is not a budget defense.

Tip 3️⃣: Build vs. buy is now actually a real question.

2 years ago this was easy. Problem exists, find vendor, swipe card.

Now you can build internal tools in days that used to take quarters.

The rule: build when it's specific to how YOUR team works. Buy when you need governance, security, or someone else to have already solved the hard stuff at enterprise scale.

Both are right. Doing only 1 of them is expensive.

Tip 4️⃣: Your 1st-party data is the moat.

Everyone has the same AI tools now. Which means the output is starting to look the same.

The differentiator is the stuff AI can't find on the internet. Your proprietary research. Your customer stories. Your actual point of view. That's what makes content worth reading and ads worth clicking. AI amplifies it. It can't replace it.

Tip 5️⃣: Hire curious. Not certified.

Forget the AI certifications. Forget the tool-specific LinkedIn badges.

The tools from 6 months ago are already different. What doesn't change is whether someone has the instinct to find the new thing before it gets a case study written about it.

Hire for that. Teach everything else.

Tip 5️⃣ and a half: Create an internal AI win channel. Like do so today.

Slack channel. Notion doc. Whiteboard in the kitchen. Doesn't matter.

DON'T USE AI IN A SILO. Share what's working.

1 person figures something out on a Tuesday. The whole team runs it by Friday.

Don't repeat failures and do extra work figuring out something that's been figured out.

MEME OF THE WEEK

🎙TUNE IN

Podcast to listen to this week: 

The Truth about Your ICP with Hailey McDonald

What you will learn:
🎙: The 5-minute audit that reveals your ICP is completely broken
🎙: How to tell if your "account-based marketing" is actually just lead gen with a spreadsheet
🎙: How to reverse-engineer your real ICP from your happiest customers

Listen Here

JUST FOR FUN

🤩: Brand of the week: Roland Garros
😛: Favorite meal I ate: Pequods
🎵: Favorite song this week: 1979
💍: What I bought my wife: Summer Fridayseye patches. So many eye patches. She's trying to get me to wear them but I've held her off.
🛠️ Tool of the Week: Robots are terrible writers. Get an editorial fix-it checklist, page 5-6.*

*This one is brought to you by one of our awesome brand partners.

What's your pizza topping(s) of choice? I'll tell you if you tell me.

Your friend,

Daniel