Beyond random acts of AI: Where to Start With GTM AI

Marketing leaders today face a daunting paradox: the C-suite expects them to deliver unprecedented impact, believing AI is the magic bullet to compensate for dwindling resources. But as Lisa Cole, a battle-tested marketing veteran with over two decades in the trenches, cautions—"This unfair expectation...that a human is not needed...is putting the pressure on steroids."

Cole is no stranger to the AI revolution. As the Chief Marketing, Product, and AI Officer at 2X, she's on the frontlines of building and scaling AI-powered marketing functions. Her journey has revealed a critical insight: the path from AI chaos to strategic control is paved not with shiny new tools, but with a fundamental rewiring of how we approach marketing operations.

In a recent conversation with Nathan Thompson, Head of Content Strategy at Copy.ai, Cole outlined a blueprint for CMOs to move beyond the hype and harness AI as a force multiplier for their teams. Her message is clear: it's time for marketing leaders to shift from tactical experimenters to strategic architects, leveraging AI to amplify human expertise rather than replace it.

As we'll explore, this transformation starts with a deceptively simple step: mapping your marketing workflows. By identifying the bottlenecks and repetitive tasks that consume your team's time and energy, you'll uncover the high-impact opportunities where AI can drive real, measurable results. Let's dive in.

The Trap of 'Random Acts of AI'

Why Your Team Is Drowning in Subscriptions But Starving for Results

Many marketing teams are stuck in the "experimenter" phase, adopting dozens of AI tools for discrete tasks without a unifying strategy. This leads to wasted spend, a lack of measurable ROI, and frustration for both leaders and their teams.

As Lisa Cole observes, "They didn't get an increased marketing budget for AI. They took it from program spend, which should be fueling growth, because they're not sure yet if they can trust the productivity gains."

It's a common scenario: teams can wake up with 24-40 different AI subscriptions but can't answer the simple question: "What lift are you getting?" Without a clear strategy tying tools to outcomes, marketing leaders find themselves with a growing tech stack but minimal to show for it.

Become the Architect: Your Blueprint Starts with a Map

How to Find Your Biggest AI Opportunities in Your Daily Workflows

Uncovering your most significant AI opportunities starts with deeply understanding how your marketing work gets done today. Leaders must map their core workflows (e.g., campaign creation, content production) to identify the true bottlenecks and pain points where AI can have the most substantial impact.

As Lisa explains, "You actually have to know… how marketing gets done day to day. If it takes four weeks to get an asset through one function because of poor handoffs… that's what should be used to inform the use cases you prioritize."

Consider the story of one client whose campaign process took 90-110 days. They identified intake, review, and asset creation as key areas to apply AI by mapping the workflow, drastically reducing time-to-market. The power is in the process, not the tool.

To start, pick one high-impact workflow—the one that consumes the most time or causes the most headaches. Trace it from start to finish, noting every handoff, approval, and iteration. Look for the steps that create delays or require repetitive, manual effort. Those are your AI opportunities.

However, workflow mapping is just the beginning. The real transformation happens when you reimagine the process entirely, with AI as the catalyst—not just a tool to automate existing steps.

Elevating Your Team from Doers to Orchestrators

Using AI to Amplify Human Expertise, Not Replace It

The purpose of AI isn't to replace marketers but to liberate them from mundane, repetitive tasks. This allows them to operate at a higher, more strategic level—as orchestrators, strategists, and arbiters of "taste." AI handles the "how," so humans can focus on the "why" and "what if."

As Lisa puts it, "Use your people as orchestrators and strategists—get them out of the mundane task execution so they can focus on bigger things. They should be applying that 24 years' worth of taste to shape the output."

Consider a typical content workflow: instead of 8 different specialists handing off a blog post, an AI-powered process generates the drafts and derivatives, allowing one or two experts to guide, refine, and approve the final output. The result is not just faster turnaround, but a more strategic use of human capital.

Naturally, this shift requires a change in mindset—for both leaders and their teams. Marketers may fear that AI will make their skills obsolete. But the reality is quite the opposite: AI makes their expertise more valuable than ever.

The crucial element is to position AI as an accelerator, not a replacement. It's a tool that helps marketers do their best work, faster and at greater scale. But it still requires human judgment, creativity, and strategic vision to wield it effectively.

Champion this mindset shift. Help your team see AI not as a threat, but as a superpower. Empower them to experiment, to learn, and to focus on the work that truly creates value. Give them the tools and the permission to be strategic orchestrators, not just task-doers.

This is the essence of the "Architect" approach: designing a system that elevates human expertise, rather than a collection of tools that automates tasks. It's a subtle but profound shift, one that will define the next era of marketing leadership.

As marketing leaders navigate the AI revolution, Lisa Cole's insights offer a clear path forward. By shifting our mindset from buying tools to designing systems, we can harness the power of AI to elevate our teams and drive unprecedented impact for our organizations.

The journey begins with a deep understanding of how marketing work gets done today. By mapping our workflows, identifying bottlenecks, and prioritizing high-impact use cases, we can deploy AI strategically to automate the mundane and amplify the expertise of our human marketers.

In this new paradigm, our role as leaders is not to replace our teams with algorithms, but to empower them as orchestrators and strategists. By leveraging AI to handle the "how," we free our people to focus on the "why" and the "what if"—the realms where human creativity, judgment, and taste are irreplaceable.

As Cole puts it: "This is the moment for marketers to not just earn their seat, but really, really lean in and become the growth drivers of their organization." Let's seize it.

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