You’ve tried it. Now give it a job.
Finding customers, writing first drafts, following up after calls, digging out old emails, checking your prices and making images. It won’t run your business for you, but give it the right jobs and it hands you back hours every week.
Henny Maltby25 years in marketing · Growth Hub Premier Partner · 20 October 2026
!Sound familiar? You’ve got an AI account, but it hasn’t got a job yet.
Plenty of business owners have tried AI. They typed a few questions in, got an answer that sounded like a brochure, and left it there.
A 2026 Simply Business survey found 47% of UK small businesses now use AI tools, more than double the year before. But only 19% feel very confident using it day to day. The UK government’s own research found the most common reasons businesses hold back are not seeing a clear need for it and not having the skills.
That matches what I hear on my calls every week: “I know what I want to do, I just don’t know how to get there or what to do next.” Nobody has shown them the jobs. So let’s skip the theory and look at real ones.
AI drafts, a person decides.
The jobs I hand over
These are the ones I use most, in my own business and with the businesses I work with.
AI scores my leads each morning, suggests who I should contact that day and drafts the emails. Marketing is telling people you exist, and this is the research part done for you. Our course Put AI in Charge of Finding Sales Opportunities shows you how.
Your part: Read, change what needs changing, press send
AI drafted four of my courses while I slept. Writing them myself would have taken about a month. It sometimes states things that aren’t true, so every draft gets checked.
Your part: Check facts and make it sound like you
After a client call, AI takes the notes, writes the follow up email around what we actually agreed and adds it to my CRM, the system where I keep track of every customer and enquiry.
Your part: Read it and press send
My AI is connected to my email, CRM and Zoom. Ask for every past conversation with wedding venues or accountants and it finds them in about 30 seconds. That used to be an afternoon of scrolling.
Your part: Decide who to get back in touch with
On a call with a farm venue owner in Gloucestershire, I compared similar local venues in a few minutes while we talked. They were charging far too little and had no idea.
Your part: Decide your new price
I can take a client’s photos of a room and show it dressed for a wedding or a workshop, for about 3p an image using a tool called fal.ai. Compare that with booking a photo shoot.
Your part: Make sure it matches what customers really get
My honest answer
I used to employ a designer, a web developer and a PA. As each one moved on, I didn’t replace them, because AI now does that work alongside me and Chris, our web developer. Pink Elephant is now two people, and we build more than we did before.
I also build a client’s home page live on a one hour call, with AI following my own rules for what makes a page sell. The farm venue owner watched me rebuild her site during the call and said she’d been told things she didn’t even know existed.
But none of it works without a person deciding. AI is fast, tireless and sometimes wrong. You stay in charge.
Two people, more work done
Who does what
That one rule is the difference between AI that saves you time and AI that embarrasses you.
The fix
Out of the box, AI knows nothing about your business, your customers or how you talk. So it writes like everyone else. That isn’t a flaw in the tool, it’s a lack of information.
Give it that knowledge, plus a few rules, and it writes like you. In the Academy we call this your AI Marketing Brain: one place that holds what you sell, who buys it, why they choose you and the words you use. Every job you hand over after that gets better, because the AI is working from your Brain, not guessing. The Your AI Marketing Brain course walks you through building it, and you keep it for good.
It matters for Google too. Google has said it judges content on quality, however it was produced. It doesn’t punish AI, it punishes average. A Brain is how you stop being average.
Want AI doing these jobs for you?
The Pink Elephant AI Marketing Academy opens on 14 November. You build your AI Marketing Brain, then set it to work finding customers, writing content and following up enquiries.
Try it today
Open ChatGPT or Claude, copy this prompt in and fill in the gaps. It gives you a short list of jobs to hand over this week, based on your own business.
Pick the top job, do it, and check the result properly. That’s how you build confidence: one real job at a time.
I run a small business. Here is what you need to know:
What I sell: (your products or services)
Who usually buys from me: (your typical customer)
How people find me now: (word of mouth, Google, social media and so on)
The jobs I never get round to: (for example follow up emails, social posts, updating my website)
Based on this, suggest five jobs you could help me with this week. For each one, tell me in plain English what I would give you, what you would give back, and what I should check before I use it. Put the job that would save me the most time first.
Where to start
If you’ve never used AI for your business before, this is the order I’d do it in.
Not sure which job to start with? Our free marketing review takes about 8 minutes. It looks your business up and shows you where you’re losing customers, which tells you where AI will help most.
Your questions answered
The questions I’m asked most when business owners first start using AI.
No. If you can write an email, you can use AI. You type what you want in plain English and it replies. The skill is knowing which jobs to give it and what to tell it about your business, and that’s what the Academy courses walk you through.
Either will do the jobs in this post. Pick one, use it properly for a month and get to know it, rather than paying for several tools you only half use. I use Claude for most of my own work because it connects well to my email and CRM, but the method is the same whichever you choose.
It changed how I staff Pink Elephant, but it still needs a person deciding. AI drafts, you check and decide. Most owners find it takes away the jobs they never get round to, rather than the parts of the work their customers value.
You can start free. Full membership is £45 a month on a 12 month sign up, or £75 a month month by month, both including VAT. The AI tool itself is paid separately to the provider you choose. Pink Elephant website clients get the Academy free.
Where to start
The businesses that start using AI early will win. Not because the tools are magic, but because every month you use them, your AI knows your business a little better.
That’s how I’ve built the Pink Elephant AI Marketing Academy. You start by getting clear on your customers and your offer, build your own AI Marketing Brain, then add the jobs in this post one at a time.
A free start, then step by step to your own AI marketing team. The first course, How Marketing Really Works, is free.
Want to talk it through first?
My private 1:1 marketing sessions are worth £150 an hour, and your first hour is free. We’ll look at your business and pick the first jobs AI could take off your plate.
Pink Elephant AI Marketing Academy
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