How marketers are actually using AI
HubSpot's 2025 State of AI for Marketers survey, reported in its article on AI in content marketing, found that 55% of marketers use AI for content creation and just over 47% use it for research. The same report says 56% significantly revise or completely rewrite AI-generated text, 38% make minor tweaks, and 7% publish it without editing.
That editing habit is the difference between AI that helps and AI that embarrasses you. The techniques below are built around it.
Six AI techniques worth adopting first
1. Mine your own customer language
Export reviews, emails, and call notes, remove names and personal details, and ask AI to list the top recurring questions, objections, and phrases. Those become headings, FAQs, and ad copy in the words your Michigan customers already use.
2. Cluster keywords by intent
Give AI a raw keyword list and ask it to group by intent (ready to buy, comparing, learning) and by location. Confirm volumes in a keyword tool, because language models can misjudge or even invent numbers, a caution repeated in Search Engine Journal's guide to ChatGPT for keyword research.
3. Build briefs before drafts
A brief lists the reader, the goal, the primary phrase, the questions to answer, and the local details to include. AI drafts briefs quickly from top-ranking pages; a person trims them to what your business can credibly say.
4. Draft, then rewrite in your voice
Use AI for the first pass on structure and wording. Then rewrite the opening, add a real example, and cut anything generic. If a paragraph could appear on any competitor's site, it is not done.
5. Repurpose one asset into many
One well-researched article can become a newsletter, three social posts, a Google Business Profile update, and a short FAQ. AI is very good at this kind of reformatting because the substance already exists.
6. Summarize your reporting
Paste your monthly Search Console and analytics numbers into an AI assistant and ask for a plain-English summary of what changed and what to test next. Then check the figures yourself before the summary goes to a client or your boss.
A prompt template you can copy
Good prompts share five parts: a role, context, a task, constraints, and an output format. Here is the structure we start from.
Prompt template
You are an editor for a [industry] business in [Michigan city]. Context: [two sentences on the business and audience]. Task: draft an outline for a page targeting [primary phrase]. Constraints: plain language, no claims we cannot back up, include local details for [neighborhoods]. Output: H2 and H3 headings with one sentence under each.
Swap in your own details, then edit what comes back. Save the prompts that work in a shared document so the whole team gets the same quality.
What to keep human
Strategy, facts, voice, and compliance. Google's guidance on people-first content frames quality as a question of who wrote a page, how it was made, and why it exists, and it suggests being transparent about how content was produced. Its generative AI guidance adds that AI is fine for research and structure, while low-effort pages produced at scale risk violating spam policy.
Our rule of thumb: AI proposes, a person decides. That is also how we run every Michigan SEO workflow.
Matching AI techniques to Michigan industries
The same techniques apply everywhere, but the emphasis changes by industry. Here is where we would start for some of the most common Michigan business types.
Home services
Demand swings with the seasons: furnace repair and snow removal in winter, cooling and lawn care in summer. Use AI to turn last year's Search Console data into a seasonal content and Business Profile calendar, then have a person adjust it for your real capacity.
Restaurants and hospitality
Reviews and menus drive local search. AI can draft review replies and turn common menu questions into a helpful FAQ page, but every reply should be read and personalized before it is posted.
Manufacturing and B2B
Buyers search for technical capabilities. Record a short interview with an engineer, use AI to transcribe and outline it, and have the engineer approve the final explainer. The expertise stays real, and AI just speeds up the writing.
Healthcare, legal, and financial services
These topics affect people's health, money, or safety, and Google's guidance on helpful, people-first content gives extra weight to strong E-E-A-T for them. Use AI only for research and structure, and have a qualified professional review every claim.
Building a shared prompt library
Prompts that work are an asset. Store them in one shared document so the whole team gets consistent results, and treat each one like a small piece of process documentation.
Name and purpose: what the prompt is for, in one line.
Inputs: what the person must fill in, such as city, service, or audience.
Owner: who maintains it and approves changes.
Last tested: the date someone last checked the output quality.
Frequently asked questions
Begin with customer-language mining, keyword clustering, and brief building. They are low risk, save real time, and improve the quality of everything you publish afterward.
Not to start. A general AI assistant plus Google Search Console and a keyword tool covers most of these techniques. Paid tools help once your volume grows.
Add first-hand detail: real customer questions, local places, prices, and photos. Rewrite openings and conclusions yourself, and cut any sentence that could fit any business.
For most small teams, summarizing research and building first-draft outlines save the most hours, as long as someone still edits the output before it is used.
Insights · AI toolkit
