September 1 · Tools & Models
⅓ Are Building vs. Buying with AI
32% of companies are building software with AI instead of buying it. Start with one workflow that is wasting your time.
The Archive
Every post, in one place.
AI marketing tested on real budgets: tools, workflows, creative, and the calls behind them. Newest first. Prefer it organized by the job you're trying to do? Browse by topic.
2026
August 26 · Tools & Models
Sol, Terra, Luna: Which one?
OpenAI cut prices again. Here’s when to use Sol, Terra, or Luna, plus the costly switching mistake to avoid.
August 18 · Tools & Models
AI Is About to Become a Multiplayer Game 👥
AI work is becoming multiplayer. Here are five truths about agents, models, harnesses, cost, and organized data—and what I'm testing now.
August 11 · Tools & Models
A Beginner's Guide to AI Agents for Marketers
I run the most complicated agent setup I know, and I'd still tell most marketers to start elsewhere. Four starting points, ranked by what they cost to run.
July 26 · AI Marketing
Google Says 86%. Anthropic Says 35%. Both Are Right.
Three AI labs measured how people use AI and got answers 51 points apart. None of them is wrong. Here's how to read every AI usage stat you'll see this year.
July 24 · Strategy & Growth
The New Rules for Claude Opus
Anthropic deleted 80% of Claude Code's instructions and lost nothing. Six rules for what to cut from yours, and the 90,000 words I'm cutting from mine.
July 20 · Automation & Workflows
You Don't Need More Data. You Need an AI That Can Read It.
Marketers aren't short on data — they're short on pattern recognition. Here are 5 AI analysis workflows you can set up this week without a data scientist.
July 13 · Tools & Models
What is your AI Delegation Layer?
Your AI advantage won’t come from better prompts. It’ll come from better delegation.
July 1 · Strategy & Growth
Stop Blaming Your AI Bill. Start Educating Your Team.
A $40K AI bill isn't a spending problem, it's an education problem. Here's how to teach your team the real cost of chat vs. agents vs. automations.
June 26 · Strategy & Growth
A higher bar
The real AI debate isn't about technology, it's about leadership. AI can be a pink-slip machine or a ladder for the people carrying your company. You choose.
June 22 · AI Marketing
49% Use Chatbots. 71% Fear Them.
Pew finds 49% of Americans use AI chatbots while 71% fear for their data. The trust gap is the marketing lane almost no brand is running in.
June 15 · Tools & Models
Last Friday an AI Model Just Vanished
Everyone's asking how to squeeze more intelligence out of their AI budget.
May 22 · Tools & Models
Why Model Routing Is Now a Marketing Skill
I cut my model bill 64% by routing every job to the right model instead of defaulting to the expensive one. Here is the map: Opus, Sonnet, Haiku, and more.
May 15 · Strategy & Growth
Stop Reporting, Start Predicting: The AI-Era Marketing Dashboard
AI moved the buyer journey, so traffic stopped being proof. The dashboard that predicts the next sale: market visibility, buyer quality, and net lifetime value.
May 8 · AI Marketing
The AI Divide in Marketing: Operators, Experimenters, and Holdouts
The real AI gap in marketing is not access, it is behavior. Why Operators pull ahead, Experimenters stall, and Holdouts wait, and how to switch lanes.
May 1 · Tools & Models
Split-Mind: Why I Run ChatGPT and Claude Side by Side
Stop choosing between ChatGPT and Claude. The marketers who win route each job to the model that owns it. Here is the split-mind workflow I run daily.
April 24 · Tools & Models
Claude Cowork vs Claude Code: Same Engine, Two Doors
Claude Cowork and Claude Code run the same agentic engine. Here's how to pick the right door for your team, governance needs, and terminal comfort.
April 17 · Strategy & Growth
iOS 26 Killed Your Last-Click Attribution. Here Is the Fix.
iOS 26 strips gclid, fbclid, and msclkid from Safari, breaking last-click attribution in GA4. Here is how to rebuild a truer read of demand.
April 10 · Tools & Models
Your AI Has a Single Point of Failure (And How to Fix It)
If your cloud AI went dark for 48 hours, what happens to your work? Build a three-tier AI stack with a local fallback so no single outage can stop you.
April 3 · Strategy & Growth
The 6x AI Performance Gap Nobody's Talking About
Stanford researchers proved the code wrapping your AI model creates a performance gap 6x bigger than the model itself. Here's the marketer's harness playbook.
March 27 · Strategy & Growth
Stop Prompting, Start Skilling: How to Build AI Skills on Every Platform
Agents get the hype, but skills are what actually ship. A practical guide to building reusable AI skill files in Claude Code, ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini.
March 20 · Creative & Content
Perfect Is the Enemy of Your Brand: Why Shipping Beats Polishing
While you polish, competitors publish, and the data says they win. Three tiers of AI-assisted content (with prompts) to ship faster and let testing sharpen it.
March 18 · Creative & Content
Power Prompt: Why Your Ad Creative Matters More Than Your Targeting
Creative quality explains 56% of Meta auction outcomes, more than bid, targeting, and placements combined. Here is the power prompt that ships winning variants.
March 13 · Creative & Content
1.24 Billion AI Videos in 30 Days: What $0.05/Second Means for Your Ad Creative
xAI's Grok Imagine made 1.24 billion videos in one month at about $0.05/second. Here's what dirt-cheap AI video means for testing your ad creative.
March 6 · AI Marketing
Stop Making AI So Complicated: 3 Simple Steps That Actually Work
You don't need 47 prompts or another framework to use AI well. Here are the three simple steps I teach marketers that you can start this week.
February 27 · Automation & Workflows
The Bottleneck Is You: How to Get Out of Your Own Way with AI
Your business stops the moment you close your laptop because you are the bottleneck. Here is the AI automation ladder that removes you from the loop.
February 20 · Strategy & Growth
Don't Let Your Team Run Out of AI (Build a Three-Tier Stack)
Teams are hitting their AI plan limits mid-project. Here's the three-tier routing setup and OpenRouter playbook I use to stay running and cut costs.
February 13 · AI Marketing
Daycare for Teenage AI: A Calm Plan for the Frontier-Model Era
Frontier AI is brilliant in flashes and confidently wrong the rest. Treat it like a gifted teenager: supervise it, build the skill, use your runway wisely.
January 30 · Tools & Models
Claude in Excel: The $80/Month Feature That's Now $20
Claude's Excel add-in went generally available in May 2026 and still costs $20/month on Pro. Updated August 2026 with what it can do now, what it can't, and the governance gap nobody mentions.
January 23 · Tools & Models
AI Agents Are Shopping for Your Customers: Are You Ready?
AI-driven retail traffic jumped 693% last holiday. Here is what Google and Shopify's Universal Commerce Protocol means for your brand and why it matters.
January 9 · Tools & Models
Claude Code Reality Check: The Good, the Messy, and the Surprising
Eight months and 33 agents with Claude Code: the wins, the disasters, the governance I bolted on after things went sideways, and where I am going deeper in 2026.
January 6 · Strategy & Growth
Your Prompts Are Too Short: The Data Proves It
OpenRouter's data shows average prompt length grew 4x in a year, driven by developers loading context. Here's why marketers should follow their lead.
January 2 · Tools & Models
My AI Marketing Stack: The 3 Tools I Reach For First (Voice, Code, Automation)
The three AI tools that actually changed how I work: Wispr Flow for voice, Claude Code for shipping, and n8n for automation. Why each one earned a permanent seat.
2025
December 19 · Strategy & Growth
AI Is Mandatory, Yet Your Budget Isn't Growing: How to Fund It Anyway
AI is now mandatory but marketing budgets stayed flat. Stop adding tools and start reallocating. A practical playbook for CMOs and small business owners.
December 5 · Automation & Workflows
Does llms.txt Help AI Cite You? The Data Says No
A study of nearly 300,000 domains found zero correlation between llms.txt and AI citations. Here is what the research, the labs, and server logs actually show.
November 28 · Strategy & Growth
A Prompt for Every Meeting: The Pre-Meeting Intel Brief
The AI prompt I run before almost every meeting that matters. Paste it, fill the brackets, and walk in with a tight briefing memo about three minutes later.
November 14 · Strategy & Growth
Turn One Offer Into 5 Pieces of Content: The Micro-Wins Prompt
One copy-paste prompt that turns a single offer into 2-3 standalone micro-wins you can ship as content this week. Steal it, run the 10-minute test.
October 31 · Tools & Models
From Zero to Hero With Claude Code: Your AI-Powered Operations Partner
I went from zero to automated workflows with Claude Code in a weekend. Here is the 30-day path from one-off prompts to a self-running factory.
October 17 · Creative & Content
ChatGPT Ads: Your Brand's New Battleground
Ads have arrived in ChatGPT, and it's the desktop-to-mobile shift all over again, only faster. Here's the 5-action playbook to move before CPCs spike.
September 12 · Tools & Models
Own Your Marketing Infrastructure: The Ownership Audit Before You Get Locked Out
Two businesses nearly lost everything switching agencies because they did not own their stack. The exact ownership audit and offboarding checklist I now run.
September 5 · Creative & Content
Walk Away or Dance: Your AI Content Crossroads
With AI in the room you get two good moves: walk away from the channel or learn to direct the machine. The mediocre middle is where all the slop comes from.
August 27 · Creative & Content
Nano Banana and the Rise of Conversational AI Image Editing
Google's Nano Banana lets you edit images by describing the change, not learning the tool. Why conversational editing stuck, and how to use it this week.
August 25 · Strategy & Growth
Stop Writing Prompts. Have ChatGPT Do It Instead.
Quit playing part-time prompt engineer. Ask the model to write the prompt for you with this meta-prompt framework, then keep and reuse the winners.
August 22 · Tools & Models
How We're Actually Using AI at ScaledOn (and How You Can Too)
The 7 AI workflows we run every week at ScaledOn, plus 4 quick wins you can try this week. Built inside ChatGPT and Claude, not pricey wrappers.
August 20 · Automation & Workflows
5 AI Connectors to Set Up Today: Gmail, Calendar, Canva, Drive, and HubSpot
Stop using AI like a smarter Google. Wire ChatGPT and Claude into Gmail, Calendar, Canva, Drive, and HubSpot with copy-paste prompts you can run today.
August 18 · Automation & Workflows
The Power Prompt That Turns Email Chaos Into a Priority List
One paste-and-run prompt sorts your inbox into an Eisenhower Matrix task list in about a minute, using the ChatGPT or Claude Gmail connector.
August 15 · Automation & Workflows
Stop the Excuses: An AI Action Checklist for Marketers
A short, do-it-this-week AI checklist for marketers. Ten reps to close the AI skill gap, from blocking daily practice to automating your first task.
August 13 · Strategy & Growth
You're Getting Lapped by People Making $5 an Hour
Frontier AI is free for a billion people, and the ones grinding reps on it are pulling ahead. The bottleneck stopped being access. It's effort now.
August 11 · Tools & Models
I'm Testing ChatGPT 5 With These 5 Prompts
I run the same five prompts against every new AI model. Here are the exact prompts, what each one tests, and why your workflow matters more than the model.
August 1 · Automation & Workflows
I Was Wrong: You're Going to Lose More Traffic to AI Search
I told a room of marketers their organic traffic would drop 20 percent as AI search took hold. I was wrong. It is worse, and faster. Here is the plan.
July 21 · Tools & Models
The Big Prompt Shift: From Orders to Agents
From wishes to briefs to whole jobs: the prompt skill that actually matters now is knowing how much of a marketing task to hand an AI agent.
July 18 · AI Marketing
Stay Skeptical, Save Budget: The Marketing Replication Crisis Exposed
Most "proven" marketing tactics fail a second look. Here is how to spot fragile evidence, re-test claims on your own audience, and protect your budget.
July 11 · AI Marketing
Your AI Compliance Checklist: 4 Pillars Before You Publish
The AI marketing rules keep shifting. Here are the four compliance pillars I run before publishing any AI campaign, plus the red flags that mean call a lawyer.
June 20 · Tools & Models
My AI Tool Graveyard: $7,337 in AI Subscriptions I Stopped Using
I burned $7,337 on AI tools I no longer use. Here is the full breakdown, why each one failed, the five that survived, and how to run your own audit.
June 18 · Tools & Models
The 3 AI Tools I Still Use (After Testing Over 200)
I've tested 200+ AI tools. Only three earned a permanent seat next to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude: NotebookLM, Notion, and Sider.ai. Here's why.
May 30 · AI Marketing
When AI Makes Billion-Dollar Brands Look Stupid
Five times a real brand let confident AI output ship without a human check, the four ways AI embarrasses marketers, and a QA habit your team can keep.
May 21 · Creative & Content
Stop Creating Ads the Old Way: The AI-Native Creative Process
Most teams use AI to speed up a broken ad workflow. Here is the AI-native process I run instead: more good creative, fast, and the platforms pick the winners.
May 19 · Creative & Content
The AI Ad Prompt That Lifted Meta Performance 71%
A copy-and-paste prompt that turns a blank canvas into four testable Meta ads built on Self-Determination Theory, so each click is worth more than the last.
May 2 · Automation & Workflows
Zero-Click Search Hits 60%: Your 2025 Survival Guide
Six in ten Google searches now end without a click. Here are the five moves and new KPIs I would use to survive the zero-click, AI-answer era.
April 30 · Automation & Workflows
Stop Overpaying for SEO: AI Content Will Not Tank Your Rankings
No, AI content will not tank your SEO. Here is the real data, the fear agencies sell you, and a 15-minute sprint to rank without a five-figure retainer.
April 18 · AI Marketing
AI Can Supercharge Your Brand or Sink It: The Line Not to Cross
The same AI that scales your marketing can scale a mistake to millions. Here is the line not to cross, plus the truth and disclosure rules that hold it.
April 16 · Automation & Workflows
The AI Subject Line Testing Framework I Run Before Every Send
How I use AI to generate and pressure-test email subject lines, then A/B test them against my own data so each send beats the last one with less effort.
April 11 · Tools & Models
AI's 10M Token Leap: The Marketing Edge Nobody's Talking About
AI context windows leapt from 8K to 10M tokens in two years. The real marketing edge isn't the model anymore. It's the data pipeline you feed it.
April 4 · Strategy & Growth
Why P&G Got 39% Better Outcomes From AI (And Most Teams Get 5%)
P&G's field study found AI-paired teams produced 39% better work on the same tools you already pay for. The difference isn't the software. It's onboarding.
March 26 · Strategy & Growth
Beyond the Basics: 10 Advanced ChatGPT Hacks That Save Me 10 Hours a Week
Ten advanced ChatGPT techniques I use on real marketing work, from picking the right model to custom instructions and multi-prompt workflows that save hours.
March 21 · Tools & Models
Claude vs ChatGPT for Marketing: Which One Wins Each Job
Claude vs ChatGPT for marketing, updated for July 2026. I run both every day and route each task to the one that does it best. Here's the current split.
February 19 · Automation & Workflows
How to Use AI for Search: A No-BS Guide for Marketers
68% of Google searches now end without a click. Here's how I use AI for search every day, the four moves that matter, and my free no-BS guide to steal.
February 12 · Automation & Workflows
AI Chatbots Are Replacing Google Search: What to Do Now
37% of consumers and 51% of B2B buyers now start with AI, not Google. Here is what that does to your traffic, and the four moves I'd make now.
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