AI & the Modern Marketing Team
How to Structure a Modern Marketing Team with AI
In today's webinar we're breaking down what a modern marketing team looks like with AI in the mix.
Beth and Keyiera share how to use AI as a tool, integrating it into your team culture, and keeping human connection at the core of it all.
For multi-layered brands, franchises, multi-location companies, dealer networks, and parent-child brand families, connection and trust are what move the business forward. We help you maximize your tools while creating stronger more consistent connections with your audience.
Speakers:
Keyiera Wright: Social Media Coordinator at Chatterkick
Beth Trejo: CEO and Founder of Chatterkick
Chapter 1: Introduction & The Shift in Marketing Teams
Keyiera: All right. Hi everyone, welcome back! I'm Keyiera, Social Media Coordinator at Chatterkick, and today we're diving into a conversation that honestly everybody's been talking about lately: how to structure a modern marketing team with AI in the mix.
There's a lot of talk about the tools, or the productivity hacks, and prompts, and we've seen time and time again that I think now people are starting to wonder what a marketing team looks like with AI as a teammate, and how leaders should restructure things without losing the human side of their brand. That's something that really has been coming up a lot in our conversations.
So, there's nobody better to have this conversation with than Beth! I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself.
Beth Trejo: Yeah, well thank you so much! It's great to have a podcast with you. I'm Beth Trejo, CEO and founder of Chatterkick if we haven't met before. I started the company about 14 years ago, and I think I had a natural tendency at that time to always chase what was new. Social media is constantly changing and evolving, and I think it was just a natural fit as AI came onto the scene that we would try to figure out how to leverage it, how to integrate it, and how to keep the human in the right spot—because that is one of our biggest missions at Chatterkick is human connection. So, I'm excited to talk a little bit more about that today.
Keyiera: Yeah, I'm excited too! Thanks for chatting with me about this. Let's start pretty broad, because I feel like a lot of people just need help envisioning this and putting themselves into the situation. So let's talk about how someone could envision what this would actually look like for them and their team. Like, what does the day-to-day work inside a marketing team look like right now with AI?
Beth Trejo: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've noticed—even over the last probably 10 years, let's even go 5 years—is a lot of marketing leaders, CMOs, or leaders heading up departments, or maybe they're a small department trying to figure out how to bring in partners and contractors, there still was a lot of traditional structure.
That typically looked like your creative team in one silo or category, your paid media team in another category, your email team, and maybe you'd have a creative director that would coordinate all of it. The actual structure of marketing departments really didn't vary that much, and a lot of it was based in channels and roles—like a social media role, or a direct marketing role, or whatever it was—or you would have them in teams.
At Chatterkick, several years ago, we made that move into the "pod model," which really broke the boundaries of the traditional role of marketing. We kind of said, "You know what? This is what we need for social: we need someone who knows audiences and analytics (that's one person), we need someone who knows community and engagement and could actually interact (another person), we needed somebody who could be that creative vision but also have the actual ability to do the things (our visual content strategists), and then we needed someone to help glue it all together (and then maybe a couple people to help glue it all together—our customer success managers)."
So that particular model had been floating around in some companies in the past, but I think when you look at how AI came so fast—and is still coming so fast at teams—it really is making these marketing leaders understand, and really question: Should we just build it better? Could we build it better?
I think that is really what we want to answer today: How can you build it better so that the tools take up the right spots and the right space, and the people are still there and able to do the best things that really only humans or humans are better at these days?
Keyiera: Yeah, I think it's important to make the distinction that the marketing team had changed a little bit before AI even came into the mix, because I think people assume that with AI coming in, it automatically means people are getting replaced. A lot of teams are still trying to figure out how the work is getting redistributed without AI. So I think it's just a part that people underestimate—that the output can change with AI in the mix, but it's more about how teams are spending their time, how the people are spending their time, and what their roles and responsibilities are within the work that they're doing. It's not taking human beings away.
Chapter 2: How AI is Evolving Marketing Roles
Keyiera: Let's build on that a little bit and take it to the next level with AI in. How are marketing roles then evolving with AI? Do you see any roles or responsibilities growing, or anything shrinking, or disappearing altogether—which I think is everybody's worst fear?
Beth Trejo: Right. Well, I think, obviously, different businesses are approaching this in multiple ways, and I do think that there are businesses that are looking to reduce headcount. I'm not necessarily saying that's the right or the wrong thing to do, but it would be ignorant to say that that's not happening in some organizations.
But one of the things that I think is the most interesting that is happening in teams is just the drift of role clarity. So, there's a lot of creative people that maybe were really good at copywriting, right? But they also could do email marketing because they could write the emails and figure out how to deploy the email, and they could also tinker a little bit in design work, right?
In the past, there would be kind of those bold lines on the side where maybe that team couldn't do it fast enough, couldn't do it well enough, or couldn't get it shipped to the next stage of the marketing process. What's happening now with these tools is they're taking that bold line and dampening it a little bit.
So the individual's skill sets are going wider within roles. In a positive sense, they get to try, learn, build, and do new things. On the shadow side of that, it becomes a lot of context switching because now you're doing a lot of things, and you have to remove some of the things from the plate if you want to keep piling on—even if you have an AI tool in the mix.
So I think those are kind of the two dynamics that we're seeing: roles are getting a little bit wider. On the good side, it can really increase creativity and innovation; on the other side, it can lead to a little bit of mental overload, overwhelm, or honestly, cost, if you're using these tools because they can get expensive really quickly.
Chapter 3: Key Traits of Early AI Adopters
Keyiera: When you think about teams that have adapted the fastest using AI, what kind of things do you feel like they understand or catch on to really quickly that helps them move quickly like that? Maybe there are things that people are understanding earlier than everybody else?
Beth Trejo: I think the teams that are getting the most from AI—and I don't like to only focus on efficiency, because I don't think efficiency is actually the fun part of AI, I think creativity is the best part of AI—but I think the teams and individuals that are getting the most out of it are those that are just used to friction. They're used to friction in their job, they're used to friction maybe in their life, and they're not afraid to go through some annoying work because they see the end and what it could be. Those are the individuals that I feel like are just taking these tools and running with them.
I think some people are doing it in small doses, and that's not a bad thing either. I think we need the people to kind of pull the ones that go fast and furious, and those that kind of keep the consistency and the steadiness within an organization. But I do see that trait of just seeing before doing, and then trying to figure out how to get there, as one of those that really make someone able to leverage the tools and get really good output.
Chapter 4: Common Misconceptions & Customer Service
Keyiera: Are there any roles that you feel like you hear people panic about the most that they think AI is going to completely change or take away, but you don't actually think is a possibility of going anywhere anytime soon?
Beth Trejo: I think that the customer service angle is where a lot of people are trying to automate—meaning whether that's answering phone calls, chatbots, self-serve information—and I think that that's valuable to a point. But I predict that there's going to be companies that just totally revert and push against that. It's their decision on, again, where to place the technology and the humans. If they place the humans a little closer to their customers, they actually might win, even though the time isn't necessarily the lever—it's the experience.
I think there's going to be some businesses that see that earlier, and they're like, "You know what? Our value is you call us, you get a human." I know I would pay more for something like that in some instances, right? I'm so sick of phone trees! In other instances, I'm like, "You know what? Just give me an FAQ article, I'll figure it out myself."
So I do think that the customer service element is one that is overly weighted as the best spot for AI.
I also think that there are roles that are changing in more of an editing space. They are doing less of the doing and building and becoming more of an editor. I do think that some people love that because they're like, "You know what? I like that. I feel like I get to direct and be the person that steers the ship." And there are some people that really don't like it because their craft was in the build. So I think that some people may shift in terms of their preferences or how they want to take roles on.
Chapter 5: Emergent Job Roles & The Need for Context
Keyiera: With all of the changes like we're talking about, it seems like there are a flood of new job titles popping up from companies and businesses that want to hire a person to do this, but they really don't know how to list out what the roles and responsibilities are yet. There's just like a big umbrella of like, "Can you do marketing, and do you know how to use AI?" What new roles have you seen that are a good example, or that you think would be a really valuable add to a business versus just overall, "Do you know how to use these things? Come in and run the show, we trust you."?
Beth Trejo: Regardless of the title of the roles, I think there's a couple commonalities that I see. One is the ability to direct. I don't mean that in just the sense of what some people would call a strategist; I'm talking about being able to understand the weeds enough to really be specific about how you think a problem could be solved, and then being able to be very good at communication skills in making that happen. Then you have to communicate that to the rest of your team.
So I really think high-quality communication skills—and that doesn't need to be verbal communication, it can be a lot of forms of communication—are still going to be extremely valuable, and we see that with different roles.
I see digital storyteller roles, which I think will stand the test of time, because the tools and technologies can come and go, but telling a really compelling story is an art. Even though there is formulas for it, and tools and technologies to support, it's still really hard to tell a story and keep people's attention, even for the best narrators out there. So I think those roles are really interesting in the digital storytelling space.
And then I also think that people and businesses are trying to hire people who know AI to come in and solve problems, but I think that sometimes that's a really hard position to take if I was going into that company, and also to hire for, because you have to know the problems you're going to solve regardless of the AI tools.
Externally coming in, sometimes it's hard to really unearth all of the problems, and you may be better off finding just the person who's a really good problem solver that just can't get the problems solved yet. They could be a starting point for really helping to build some of your systems and tools using AI.
Keyiera: I'm glad you said that about the AI strategist, because it does seem like that's what everybody wants or is saying that they want, but I think on both ends it's difficult to understand what that actually means yet to be an AI strategist!
Chapter 6: Guardrails & Cautionary Advice
Keyiera: One thing I think that a lot of people are struggling with right now is where AI stops, and where the guardrail is between the human and the AI—whether it's creativity, or where the nuances and the judgment matter the most. I think it would be helpful to have people understand what the humans own and hard-stop what AI could take.
Beth Trejo: Understanding where AI starts and stops—or should start or stop within a company—is a question that I don't have the answer to, and so many businesses don't either, because these tools are continuously improving, they're evolving.
I think the best-case scenario for businesses is to stay curious, help support your teams so that they can handle the changes that come their way (because that's also exhausting, these constant changes are exhausting for leaders and for teams), and to just be aware and evaluate some of what I'm just going to call "the vibes." What feels right? What feels off?
A perfect example of that is I am building a tool that now will be able to communicate internally, like within a Slack channel or within a Teams channel. One of the things I realized was, because it was going to be coming from me, I wanted to make sure that the team knew that that message was actually sent by Claude, not by Beth! It was sent on behalf of Beth, but it's just those little nuances of like, "Hey, this message is sent by Claude from Beth, if there's anything that feels off on this, please respond here." Deploying things blindly feels terrifying to me, and that does feel where we need to have some human oversight, because you've seen lots of stories where things have gone wrong.
Keyiera: Speaking of things that could and have gone wrong, do you have any cautionary tales for things that you've seen, heard about, or experienced yourself when companies might be ready to lean into AI, but they may lean too heavily in one way or another?
Beth Trejo: I have been—and I'm a pretty fast and furious person when it comes to taking risks and letting technologies do things on my devices or my computers—pretty conservative in how far I'll let the AI tool go in one swoop.
So I always like to start in a planning mode scenario, regardless of the tool. Let's get a plan here, and—as someone who isn't high detail, but this is really important—you have to read the output! You cannot scan the output before you go on to the next step. It takes discipline, I know from my end, because I just want to go. I want to build, I want to do these things, and consuming and editing of the information is not the fun part for me. But I think it's the critical part.
There are times when I didn't read all the fine print, or I look at a recommendation from a plan and I'm like, "I don't really know what it's talking about, seems okay," and then I'll ask a follow-up question and it'll be like, "Actually, that's a great question, maybe we shouldn't do that!" I'm like, "Oh jeez, well I'm glad I asked that question!"
So I really think that:
Start in plan mode before you have it take any action on your behalf.
When you have it start taking action on your behalf, do it in a very safe environment—meaning it doesn't have a lot of access, or it wouldn't be a high risk if things went off the rails.
You don't want to just plug it into a system and say, "Hey, why don't you go ahead and draft all those emails for me and responses?" because that terrifies me!
Keyiera: Yeah, that would scare me too. I do understand that being the editor for the output does get to be a bit much, especially when you're using it quickly or trying to get to the end, but that is really important because it's going to assume that whatever you just replied to is completely fine and doesn't need edits before you keep going! So step-by-step, making sure that you slow down no matter how fast you're going—slowing down the process is really good advice.
Chapter 7: Building a Human-Centric, AI-Integrated Team
Keyiera: Let's help everybody paint the picture a little bit more clearly. In contrast to what we talked about earlier with what a marketing team looks like now and how that's evolving, what does a team who wants to stay human-centric but include AI actually look like in practice? Are there any tips or things that should be top of mind?
Beth Trejo: I would think less about the traditional marketing channel silos or roles, and think more about how you bring small teams together that have complementary personalities so they don't need to all be the same type of people.
How are those small teams going to work together and support them with agents, AI, or prompts that can be better versions of themselves?
Oftentimes that looks like:
Visibility with data.
Helping them make decisions from a clarity perspective.
Getting some of the admin stuff off of them. (People spend so much time moving data from one spot to another spot—those are great first spots to optimize and organize!)
Then also make sure that even though those roles have drift from one specialty to another, I think it's going to be important for all of us to bring that back to the table often and say: "Okay, realignment. We went three months, we went six months. What do we need to have clarity on?" because I do think that these roles are going to bleed more and more into each other.
Groupings of small teams have always been extremely not only efficient, but there's amazing work that can happen when you put people together and support them with the technologies that will hopefully make them more innovative, not just more efficient.
Chapter 8: Final Takeaways for Business Leaders
Keyiera: Last question, and honestly probably the biggest one if there are any leaders listening right now: If a leader of a company wants to restructure their business and their marketing team right now, what's their next baby step? What's the next easy first step that they could take toward their goal of doing that?
Beth Trejo: If you are a marketing director or a marketing leader and you're trying to figure out where to start, my first recommendation is talk to your team.
Try to understand their usage of these AI tools. It might be one tool, it might be four tools, but you really need to get a foundation of how much the individual users are comfortable, fluent, and ready to experiment with these tools. I think that baseline alone will help you get a good understanding of where you're at, and then you can decide where you want to be and how you want to start structuring things—either differently, or maybe it's a slower transition if you're a big enterprise, or you can go faster if you're a smaller business.
Keyiera: Perfect! Well, thank you Beth. This was a great conversation, and I think people are going to get a lot of value out of it because people honestly—no matter how fast AI is moving—I think people are always wondering, "Well, what do I do now? What do I do next?" It's a lot to keep up with!
I appreciate that what we added to the conversation was that it doesn't have to be fear-based, it doesn't have to be big and scary, and there's opportunity for everyone and for teams to be more intentional about the work they're doing. They can still stay creative and human in the way they work, and as long as the leaders approach it thoughtfully and carefully, there's a lot of opportunity for everyone.
So thanks for sharing your perspective on this today! If anyone is watching or listening, don't forget to connect with Beth on LinkedIn and follow Chatterkick for more conversations like this about marketing, leadership, and the future of social media. If there's a topic you'd love for us to cover, just let us know in the comments. Thanks everyone, we'll see you next time!
Beth Trejo: Thanks!