How to Tell If Marketing Is Actually AI-Directed
Five questions you can ask any marketing provider, including us, and what a real answer sounds like versus a rehearsed one.
Every agency now claims to use AI responsibly. The claim is unfalsifiable unless you ask something specific. These five are specific.
1. Who chose this topic, and why this one?
You are listening for a reason that is about your business rather than about search volume. "It ranks well" is a fine secondary reason and a terrible primary one.
- "It came out of our keyword research."
- "It's a high-intent term in your vertical."
- "The tool flagged it as an opportunity."
- Names a specific thing you do better than competitors.
- Explains which buyer objection it is aimed at.
- Can say what it would have written instead, and why not.
2. Show me the positioning brief.
Not the strategy deck. The working document a writer actually consults. If it does not exist as a file someone opens, every piece is being positioned from scratch, which means it is being positioned by whatever the model assumed.
3. Who read this before it published?
A name, and what they changed. "Our team reviews everything" is not an answer. "I cut the third section because the claim was not defensible" is.
If nobody can name a single thing they changed in the last month, nothing is being reviewed. Review that never changes anything is not review.
4. What did you decide not to publish?
This is the question that separates judgement from throughput. A provider exercising judgement has a list of things they killed. A provider running a content mill does not, because nothing gets killed when volume is the metric.
5. What happens in month nine?
Ask what the work looks like three quarters in. You are listening for compounding — the archive doing more work, the positioning getting sharper, the cadence steady. If the answer describes the same activity at the same volume, you are buying rented attention on a subscription.
- They can name the edge in one sentence without reading from anything.
- They have killed something recently, and will tell you what.
- Their description of month nine differs from their description of month one.
- Every answer routes back to volume, speed or price.
Ask us these five. If we cannot answer them properly, that is useful information about us, and you should act on it.
Ask number four. "What did you decide not to publish?" is the hardest question to answer convincingly without a real process behind it, and the easiest one to ask.
Find your edge
A short, outside-in read on what already makes you the obvious choice.
