The four AI tools every working marketer should be using by now
It's not about replacing what you do. It's about doing the same work in half the time. Practical picks from our AI for Business tutors — what we actually open every day.
Most marketing teams I talk to fall into one of two AI camps. Either they paid for ChatGPT Plus a year ago and haven't really used it since, or they've adopted six different tools and can't keep track of which does what.
Neither is good. So here's the short version of what I tell every cohort in week one of the AI for Business bootcamp: there are four tools that cover 90% of what a marketer needs. Pick those four, learn them properly, ignore everything else for now.
1. Claude (Anthropic)
For long-form writing, analysis, and anything that requires reasoning over a lot of context, Claude is the strongest model on the market right now. The Projects feature lets you upload your brand guidelines, past content, and brief templates once, then reuse them across dozens of conversations.
What we use it for daily: editing, summarising long documents, structuring strategic thinking, working through complex briefs. £18/month for Pro.
2. ChatGPT (OpenAI)
Still the best at code (including the bits of code marketers actually touch — pixel tracking, GTM, light JavaScript) and the most flexible for image generation via DALL-E. Custom GPTs let you build little assistants for specific repetitive tasks.
What we use it for: data analysis via Code Interpreter, generating quick visuals, light coding for tracking and tagging. £20/month for Plus.
3. Gemini (Google)
If you live in Google Workspace, Gemini's integration is now properly useful. It reads your Drive, your Gmail, and your Sheets. For research, it's the best at pulling real, current information from the web with citations you can actually verify.
What we use it for: research, summarising Gmail threads before a call, working with sheets and docs without copy-pasting. £19/month for Advanced (often included in Workspace plans).
4. Make.com (or Zapier)
The one that isn't a chat model. Make and Zapier let you connect AI to the rest of your stack — form submissions, CRMs, spreadsheets, email tools. This is where "I asked ChatGPT" turns into "we have a process that runs every Tuesday."
What we use it for: lead enrichment, automated content briefs, post-event follow-ups. Free tier is enough to get started; paid plans from £9/month.
The marketers who win the next 5 years aren't using one tool. They're using all four, fluently, and stopped subscribing to LinkedIn newsletters about "the next big AI tool."
How to actually start
If you're at zero: pick Claude. Use it for everything for two weeks. Once it's second nature, layer in ChatGPT for the things Claude can't do. Then Gemini for the research piece. Then Make once you have a process you want to automate.
If you're already across all four but not getting much out of them: the issue is almost never the tools. It's that you haven't built the muscle of asking them well. That's most of what we spend the bootcamp on.
What we deliberately left off
Perplexity, Notion AI, Jasper, Copy.ai, the Adobe Firefly suite, Midjourney. Not because they're bad — some are excellent. But they're all serving narrower use cases than the four above, and you don't need them until you've got the basics in your hands.
If you want to learn this properly, our AI for Business bootcamp is the 8-week version of what's in this article. Free to UK adults 19+. Next cohort starts 2 June.
