Hiring is often the first answer when a growing business feels stretched. Before you add headcount, it’s worth fixing the process the new person will inherit, and seeing how much of the admin AI can take on first. That way the hire you make is worth more.
Most small businesses know they should be posting more, emailing customers more and keeping the website fresh. Nobody has the time, so the plan becomes hiring a marketing executive.
Before you advertise, separate the thinking from the producing. Deciding who you’re talking to and what you want to say is a job for people. Turning that into first drafts of blogs, posts, emails and reports is now something AI does quickly and well, with a person editing the result.
Done right, it means one person, or even a busy owner, can keep up a steady flow of marketing without it taking over the week.
What a marketing executive role usually involves
1. Writing blog posts and website content
2. Social media posts
3. Email newsletters and campaigns
4. Reporting on what’s working
5. Keeping product and service pages up to date
1. A month of content from one planning session
Give your AI assistant a few of your best past posts, who your customers are and what you want to promote this month:
“Using our past posts as a guide to tone, plan four blog posts and twelve LinkedIn posts for next month around these three themes. Then write the first blog post in full, in plain British English, with a clear call to book a call at the end.”
You edit and approve. The blank page has gone.
2. Email campaigns
Ask for a newsletter draft, three subject lines to test and a short follow-up for people who didn’t open it. Paste the result into whichever email platform you already use, check it and send.
3. One idea, used five ways
Turn each blog post into three social posts, a newsletter section and a short summary for your website. We do exactly this for our own marketing every week.
4. Reports you’ll actually read
Upload the exports from your website, email and social accounts and ask what worked, what didn’t, and what to do more of next month, in a few plain-English lines.
5. Website copy
Ask for clearer product or service descriptions, page titles and meta descriptions in the same tone. A person checks every word before it goes live.
What it saves: a typical example
Say a business wants four blog posts a month. With AI drafting, each goes from three hours to about one: 8 hours a month back.
Add twelve social posts going from 30 minutes to 10 (4 hours), two newsletters going from four hours to 90 minutes (5 hours) and a monthly report going from three hours to one (2 hours). That’s around 19 hours a month, worth about £380 a month at £20 an hour, and far more content going out. This is a typical example, so swap in your own numbers.
Hire, automate, or both?
It depends on what you need. If the gap is producing content, AI plus a few hours of someone’s time may be enough. If the gap is strategy and ideas, hire for that, and let AI make that person far more productive.
Keep a person in charge of your brand voice, anything that makes a claim about your business, and the final approval on everything that’s published.
Want it set up for you?
We’re not IT people or a traditional agency. We’re business people who’ve put AI to work in marketing, sales and operations, and we’ll talk to you in plain business terms. We can set up your content and email routine, train your team and hand it over, or run it for you each month. See how our marketing service works: £995 + VAT to set it up, or from £695 + VAT a month for us to run it. Take the 3-minute AI Readiness Check to see where you stand.
Growing pains like this are normal in a business that has grown quickly, and they’re fixable. Take the free Growing Pains Check to see where your business stands in three minutes, or book a free call about a Growing Pains Diagnostic: half a day with you and your business, then a written 90-day plan with the three changes that matter most.
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