AI Tools for Productivity

As part of our blog series on AI tools for marketing teams, Rowan Banham shares her feedback on AI for productivity.

When it comes to efficiency within a marketing agency, the balance between administrative tasks and client work is crucial. As explained in the HubSpot State of Marketing 2024 report [1], ‘there is no time to waste’, a phrase that resonates with me; Personio, a top HR company in Europe, estimated that more than 300 hours a year are wasted on repetitive administrative tasks [2].

AI tools are widely hailed as a solution to this problem, possessing the potential to save marketers hours of manual tasks every week. The breadth of AI tools to support team productivity are vast, ranging from note taking through to project management, however all elements of manual work cannot be completely removed, we still need to spend time reviewing outputs from AI tools.

Let’s take note!

One challenge we face is the mountain of work associated with scheduling meetings, preparing agendas, taking notes during meetings, and then sending succinct actionable follow up. A large proportion of AI tools focus on speeding up notetaking, with many highlighting that “you don’t have to do a thing”. Personally, I am a little sceptical of this; however, I’m that person that finds making notes helpful, and would still be taking notes alongside the tool. There are occasions where it is difficult to keep up with the notes, but relying on a tool to take notes feels risky to me.

However, if this is something that would save you time, AI tools such as CoGram [3] and Fireflies AI [4] work across multiple platforms (including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet) and provide access to transcriptions, notes, and actions within minutes of the meetings ending. It’s worth considering how to integrate these tools, for example Fireflies AI must be invited to the meeting, and therefore may be confusing, especially for a client who sees another ‘person’ in the meeting. Other tools explored, particularly Rewind [5] felt very invasive, “a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard”, a tool that is installed and runs in the background… all the time!

Starting from scratch:

Our previous blog post, “AI Tools for Content Writers” reinforced the concept of AI tools as a starting point for generating ideas, not for writing good content. This is particularly poignant for productivity, with tools for proofreading, SEO, and expected performance outlined in our previous post.

Taking it one step further, AI tools can support with idea creation at different stages in the marketing process. For example, Genei [6], an AI tool used to summarise background reading to help produce blogs, articles, and reports. Being able to digest content more efficiently and find information needed to draft content cannot be underestimated; there’s nothing worse than reading through a 20-page document knowing that a small, vital piece of information is in there somewhere. I am particularly excited by Beautiful.ai [7] a tool that can help create visually stunning presentations in minutes. As someone who spends a lot of time gathering data in spreadsheets and then preparing presentations, the ability to speed up this process would be greatly appreciated, allowing more time to focus on the content included, rather than having to spend lots of time fiddling around with cropping images and adjusting text sizes.

Onto the next task!

One area that I felt was underrepresented by the “120 Mind-Blowing AI Tools” visual, (which we’ve used as our starting point to explore the various tools), was project management! Working in an agency, we’re working on a number of different projects, and being able to clearly track progress without lots of manual work would save quite a bit of time.

Generally, what we’re seeing from these project management tools is established tools such as AirTable [8], Trello [9], and Asana [10] introducing AI assistants to support their existing user base. The message received from AirTable at a talk I attended at Technology for Marketing in 2023 was very clear: you need to use AI in a way that supports your existing workflows. Understanding and adopting AI is not an easy process sometimes, especially when having to learn a new tool as well, having an AI assistant built into apps you are currently using as an organisation can increase the adoption of AI.

Getting started

In putting this blog together, as we’ve seen in previous posts, many tools overlap in their functionality and effectiveness. Pricing varies greatly depending on team size as well as features included. Starting with free options and free trials can be a good way to test out what might work for your team. As you’re trialling these tools, it’s worth considering how they will fit into your existing organisation workflow, how easy they are to use, and are they saving you time, both in the short- and long-term. We’re excited to see where these tools can take us in 2024.