If you only check one highlight this week:

• You lead a marketing team? » Maturity stages

• You lead a sales team? » the last tip - how to automate tasks

• Everyone else: when to use custom GPTs vs ChatGPT Projects

🔝 The maturity stages of AI proficiency for marketing - How to get to phase 2

Here’s how I think about the maturity curve for AI in marketing, based on my work with many B2B marketing teams and discussions with their CMOs.

1. Beginner: Everyone’s prompting on their own

2. Intermediate: Shared marketing knowledge, prompts and automations start showing up

3. Advanced: Centralized, comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge. Consistent brand styles. Lots of automation.

4. Expert: Full-stack AI workflows, some autonomous agents, internal SaaS tools built with AI

Most teams still operate at the beginner phase.

They use ChatGPT to create content and images and do research and planning. They use AI notetakers and try other tools.

But it’s still a solo sport. There’s no shared system or strategy. Few automations using AI are set up yet.

How do teams graduate from Beginner to Intermediate?

1. They try and use AI to augment most tasks

2. They master using reasoning models and deep research

3. They start building and using some shared context across their AI tools

4. They run and maybe share some automations - can be shared Custom GPTs, Projects, Zapier-like automations with an AI as a central step - i.e. workflows that save hours

5. They create some personalized assets for customers

Once those two are in place, things seem to accelerate.

The big unlock from Beginner to Intermediate is when the team’s AI tools can tap that “central marketing brain”—not just a single person’s context and prompt history.

In that brain: central assets (e.g. personas, messaging, battlecards, brand style and voice, product messaging, central prompts) that change the game by giving clear directions and parameters to the tools.

It is the same as putting a new hire through a multi-week orientation where they learn (and scrupulously remember!) all marketing foundations.

How to get closer to Intermediate level

1. Appoint someone who will be the central curator. I wrote about that Marketing Intelligence Engineer role earlier. Can be in Product Marketing initially

2. Document and centralize your key messages and foundations. What does your AI need to know to create assets like senior members on your team?

3. Spin up your first Custom GPT or Projects (see below how to choose) with access to that context. Can be Gemini Gems or Claude Projects

4. Create a shared prompt library so everyone stops reinventing the wheel

5. Show your team how to tap that to create their own assets (e.g. event copy, onboarding emails)

6. Review the results as a team, weekly. Iterate. Repeat.

7. Save a ton of time

Happy augmentation!!

My selection of tips, news and workflows

🛠️ ChatGPT Projects vs GPTs: When should you use which?

Nicole Leffer explains:

“GPTs are best when you’re:

• Sharing tools with others

• Integrating with external apps (like Zapier via Actions)

• Automating simple, repeatable tasks with consistent output

Projects are ideal if you’re:

• Working solo and want persistent files/instructions

• Needing built-in chat organization and model flexibility

• Handling complex tasks with shared context but varied prompts

In other words:

» Use GPTs for collaboration, integrations, and simplicity

» Use Projects for personalized, flexible workflows with memory”

🛠️ Using David Oligivy's copywriting principles to grade a web page

Kieran shares a prompt that will:

1. Take a URL

2. Extract the web copy

3. Run it through 15 principles based on David Olgiviy's work

4. Score the web copy across those principles

5. And suggest edits on how to reach a score of 100.

🛠️ How to identify and automate the right tasks of a role

Sam (co-founder and CEO of Madkudu), tired of AI vendors’ over-promises, details their process to, task by task, use AI and automations to make their sales people a lot more productive.

» They have freed up about 18 hours per AE per week so far!

Apply their process to any role with repetitive tasks.

1. List key activities of the role - Be as granular as possible.

2. Score each activity by automation level - Use a simple 0%, 20%, 80%, 100% scale.

3. Pick one activity to automate - Focus on the low-hanging fruit.

4. Build a quick prototype - Start with tools your team already knows.

5. Polish and roll out

Final Words

Thanks for sharing these highlights with busy marketing execs around you.🙏 

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François | LinkedIn 

I'm a CMO, advisor, and "CMO Wingman". Yes, that's a thing :-). Ask my clients: in this AI era, CMOs need a strategic and supportive advisor more than ever. I’m former CMO at Twilio, Augment Code, Apollo GraphQL, Decibel, Udacity and Head of Marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.