Three AI tools to Help a One-Person Marketing Team

Three AI tools to Help a One-Person Marketing Team

By: Blythe Brumleve, Digital Dispatch Founder & Logistics Podcaster and Host of Cyberly on Freightwaves

For most of us in freight marketing, we’re used to being a one-person show juggling the website, social media, recruiting, customer service, email, and acting as a sales liaison – all while begging the executive team for a slightly higher budget.

It’s tough out here. Faced with deciphering trends and determining where attention should be focused at any given time can prove challenging enough, but when you add resource constraints into account, the pressure is on to deliver results.

As demand for marketing effectiveness increases, fortunately there are new tools available to give you a helping hand – without needing to increase headcount.

The only caveat is you have to shake the feeling of handing your role off to a…robot?

Marketing Dive recently sent an email about automation entering the space. In that email, they stated 11% of creative and media agency tasks are expected to be automated by 2023 and 23% of the overall agency to be automated by 2032, as these technologies extend their reach into areas like finance, HR and account management.

That means the role of marketing is only going to get more demanding. However, demanding doesn’t mean impossible. With the growing number of automation technology solutions, it means that solo marketers and small teams can now utilize this technology to increase their own efficiency and as a result, increase their brand awareness.

Let’s talk about a few of my favorites:

Copywriting Tools

Copy.ai
Jasper (formally Jarvis)
Copysmith

• How They Work:

○       Enter a few words into their respective text generator, tell the software what you’re trying to write (blog post, service/product description, social media caption, etc.)

• Cost

○       Around $500/year

○       Monthly options are also available starting at around $35/month

• Things to think about:

○       Ideal for folks who have a general idea of what they want to talk about but need some extra ideas

○       Change the tone of the text you want to be created such as educational, bold, witty, happy, etc.

○       Also helps those who may be the only creative person in the office

○       Best money you can spend out of all the tools mentioned in this post

Say you purchase one of these tools but then need help with video content because no one in the office feels confident on camera yet.

That’s where the next tool comes into play…

On-Camera Video AI

Synthesia

• How it works:

○       Choose between 40 different AI personalities to read a script you paste/type into their software

• Cost:

○       Starts at $30/month for about 10 videos per month

• Things to think about:

○       These aren’t “real” people but rather AI-generated talent. Custom avatars are available for a higher fee.

○       It’s a good mid-tier tool for businesses that haven’t started making video content yet.

• Another use case is if you’re lucky enough to work at a company where the executive team is comfortable getting on camera, you can save your real talent for higher impact videos while Synthesia is used for lower-tier videos e.g. an FAQ series.

Now that you’ve got copywriting and on-camera talent covered, let’s talk about what to do with that content after you’ve created it.

Distribution is where most marketers fall short but there are better tools on the market to help you reach those distribution goals.

AI-Powered Content Distribution

Lately.ai

• How it works:

○       Basically, it takes your content and then creates social media messaging/transcripts, etc... for your content and then schedules it to your social accounts.

○       Upload videos or paste your blog link

■       From there it uses AI to generate captions and posts

• Cost:

○       Starts at $9/month but the most valuable plans are around $100/month

• Things to think about:
  • Ideal for folks who are already creating high-value content.
  • The more content/words you give the Lately AI the more it can pick the right verbiage
  • Can split up vertical or horizontal video clips (dependent on the format you upload)
  • Lately.ai doesn’t have editing video capabilities. They just use AI to pick the most engaging soundbites, then attach the video to your posts.

A few other tools to enhance your productivity:

• Canva: helps with quick graphics and making graphic design easier for social media posts, blog graphics, etc.
• Descript: all in one video and audio editing tool, plus transcriptions. Makes it super easy to remove filler words like “ummms” and “uhhhs” from the conversation.
• Lumen5: turns a blog post into a text-based explainer video that you can add to the post and YouTube. This service also helps if you work at a company with a team that doesn’t want to be on-camera.

More and more is being asked of marketing with a lower and lower budget. So if you’re experiencing bandwidth issues, hopefully, these tools help you as much as they have helped me.

Want to hear more from Blythe? Register for the upcoming "Cutting-Edge Trends in Marketing" webinar on Tuesday, April 12 at 1 p.m. ET.

About the Author

Blythe Brumleve got her start in freight marketing as an executive assistant working for a large 3PL in North Florida where she would eventually be tasked with handling the company’s digital media strategy. This is where she earned her chops as a marketer forced to do it all with a limited budget around the time when the inbound marketing concept was born. It was this job and a side-hustle blog that earned her eventual roles with a B2B marketing agency, on-air radio talent, and TV talent.

In 2019, she launched Digital Dispatch helping freight companies get online and grow. In addition to being a creative founder in freight, she hosts Cyberly on Freightwaves, is cofounder of Jax Podcasters Unite, and board member of the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association.

Check out the Digital Dispatch podcast for more freight marketing insight and follow her on Linkedin and Tiktok.