Using AI to scale doesn’t mean we’re letting go of the wheel. We’re just driving a whole lot faster.

AI is a force multiplier more powerful than any tool we’ve used before. But if it’s not applied thoughtfully and intentionally to the marketing mission, it can turn into a problem multiplier, taking you in the wrong direction at breakneck speed.

When I joined TurboTenant, I was clear that marketing needed to own revenue for the company, not just leads or traffic or even sign-ups. That influenced the approach to AI. It had to be answerable to business impact, which meant scaling without losing the qualities that help us differentiate in the market and stay ahead of competitors.

In other words, using AI to scale doesn’t mean we’re letting go of the wheel. We’re just driving a whole lot faster. Here’s the three-point framework we use to maximize speed without losing control.

Our team saves nearly 30 hours of effort per month by automating tasks.

Deciding: Humans define the strategy

We hand off a significant amount of the workflow to AI, but strategy, prioritization and creative judgment stay with the team. AI sifts through data, assigns tasks and drives workflows, but humans decide what’s interesting, what we should try and what we should pursue. Our team defines the problem, the audience, the opportunity and the standard for success so that we’re clear and aligned on what matters before AI enters our workflow.

The same is true for creativity. Early on, we outsourced content creation to AI; we saw small, initial wins in terms of Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”), but the quality wasn’t there and the wins didn’t last. Now, we keep content creation in the hands of human creators and take pride in the creativity, originality and humor in our work. AI can get you to competent, but in a market flooded with average output, human opinion, context and judgment are what differentiate your content.

Retaining total control over creativity and quality doesn’t mean throttling output. Our team saves nearly 30 hours of effort per month by automating tasks such as creating concepts and briefs for agencies and contractors, testing concepts on live audiences at scale, managing the workflow and publishing content on various platforms. We’re now able to publish more content—120 pieces per month—while giving our team more time for strategy, research and other activities that add incremental value.

This process isn’t just faster, it’s better, helping us isolate meaningful signals from the millions of data points our marketing activities generate.

Building: AI accelerates the middle work

The structured, repetitive, time-consuming work that happens around the strategic, creative and analytic work is where AI is delivering meaningful leverage to TurboTenant. This is the force multiplier effect. Where AI compresses the time between question and answer, idea and test, insight and action.

AI lets us analyze large data sets, identify patterns and opportunities, prioritize keyword lists, draft tickets, route work to the right person, summarize reports and turn audits into actionable next steps. For example, we can connect data across our ad, search and webmaster platforms and perform an analysis that’s both faster and more open-ended using prompts. Which of our landing pages or ad campaigns are performing best? Which have seen a drop in conversion? How does performance break out by channel mix? If we’ve changed things up, which changes have hurt us? Which competitors have overtaken us and what are they doing differently?

AI can perform the analysis at a speed that humans can’t match. We’ll often run an analysis at the start of a meeting and get answers by the end that we can verify, summarize and share with the rest of the organization. And the process isn’t just faster, it’s better, helping us isolate meaningful signals from the millions of data points our marketing activities generate.

We have found that AI can get us 80% of the way there, but that additional 20% is crucial.

Refining: Humans protect quality

When you relinquish human control over reviewing, editing and pressure-testing, you get into trouble. This is how a workflow designed for efficiency starts scaling sameness, errors and quality issues. Human quality control may be time-intensive, but it’s not a bottleneck; it’s the difference between winning and participating.

We have found that AI can get us 80% of the way there, but that additional 20% is crucial. For example, our team uses AI to analyze the performance of our creative content on our connected TV (CTV) platform over a 45-day period, but we’ll never use it to drive decision-making or external reporting before we verify the data, contextualize it and decide how it should inform our next steps.

Similarly, humans review every piece of content we produce to ensure it captures original thinking, aligns with the brand and reflects the interests of our audiences. At a time when AI is placing the power to produce limitless content in the hands of every brand, human experience, input and discernment are the only elements that allow us to differentiate and compete.

Here’s the bottom line.

AI is a powerful force multiplier in marketing. But it’s not always a force for good. Get it right, and you scale business impact. Get it wrong, and you end up eroding the quality of your marketing output and analysis at speed. With each step forward, ask yourself whether AI is deciding or building. If it’s the former, step back and recalibrate. Never hand the keys to AI. Humans drive; AI just accelerates the journey to the destination you choose.