If you think AI is just a tool to help you create content marketing, you’re limiting yourself. That’s one of our biggest takeaways from talking to Hiten Shah, a serial entrepreneur who’s cofounded multiple SaaS companies and is currently working on AI products at Dropbox.

Hiten was a recent guest on our Best Story Wins podcast, and during our chat about all things AI, he called out one of the biggest and most pervasive myths in marketing today: that AI is simply a substitute for human labor. As Hiten points out, AI should not be viewed as a replacement for humans but as a thought partner that enhances human creativity and decision-making. 

Smart marketers who adopt this perspective can totally transform the way they do marketing, moving beyond content creation and into a space where they can outstrategize and outperform their competitors. 

If you want to make the most of AI, these are Hiten’s tips to work more intimately and effectively with AI. 

1) Use AI to shape your ideas, not just execute them.

Most marketers start with an idea, then ask AI to execute it by writing the content. But what if you flipped the script?

Hiten says he spends 3+ hours a day using AI chat tools, but he doesn’t use AI to generate content. He uses it to help clarify, challenge, and strengthen his own ideas. In essence, he sees it as a partner to help him find ideas worth creating content about. 

For example, if you’re trying to come up with an interesting article idea, you can start a dialogue with AI about a marketing problem you’re facing, but don’t ask for a solution right away. Instead, ask it to help you explore the problem from multiple angles or play devil’s advocate against your current assumptions. These conversations will give you better and more unique ideas than if you just asked AI to spit out a list of 10 blog ideas. 

2) Use meta-prompting to get better results.

One of the most powerful AI techniques Hiten shared is “meta-prompting.” Essentially, it’s using AI to create better prompts for itself. 

“If you’re not getting outputs you want, tell AI to tell you how to get the outputs based on the prompt, and have it help you make the prompt,” Hiten says.

This approach saves time, clarifies your own thinking, and helps you more effectively communicate. (We know from personal experience it also sharpens your ability to write future prompts.) 

For example, when you need to research a marketing topic, don’t just prompt AI with “Tell me about XYZ marketing trends.” Instead, say: “I need comprehensive research on XYZ marketing trends. Can you help me craft an effective prompt that will give me detailed, nuanced information on this topic?” Then use that AI-generated prompt for your actual research request.

3) Focus on augmenting specific tasks, not replacing entire jobs.

Hiten emphasizes that AI excels at enhancing specific marketing tasks rather than replacing entire roles. By viewing AI through this lens, you can better identify where AI can add value to your team. 

“If I were running an agency, I would look at all the jobs which are human jobs, and then I would look at all the tasks that each human is doing, and then I would look at which of these should we augment with AI,” Hiten says. 

(Again, he emphasized these tasks can be augmented, not replaced.) 

Not all tasks can or should be automated. For example, Hiten points out that he has yet to find an AI program that can edit his YouTube videos or write scripts as well as his team can. But they still use AI where it adds value (e.g., research or initial drafts).

To make the most of AI, audit your marketing workflows to identify specific tasks that are time-consuming but don’t require deep creativity or judgment. These are prime candidates for AI augmentation. But you’ll still want to keep creative direction, final editing, and strategic decisions in human hands, where nuance and intuition matter most.

The One Thing AI Can’t Replace: Human Intuition

It’s tempting to try to augment everything you can, but there’s a fine line between an AI-driven brand and a human brand supported by AI. (Spoiler: Human brands are still going to win in the future.) One of the most important skills to develop is the ability to determine where and how your own intuition and experience should shape your marketing vs. AI tools. Intuition is the one thing AI can’t replicate (and Hiten questions if the technology will ever get to that level), so it’s important to build a marketing ecosystem that strikes the balance. 

If you want to learn more about leveraging AI effectively in your marketing strategy, check out our full conversation with Hiten on the Best Story Wins podcast, where he shares more insights on avoiding “AI slop,” the emerging role of AI managers, and more.