My AI Marketing Playground: What Tinkering Taught Me About Modern Marketing

The Digital Age is absolutely fascinating to me. I’m enthralled by the possibilities of AI—and, ultimately, how it’s going to affect my career.

So, I’ve been spending my nights and weekends learning how to set up marketing automations and using Claude to write code for a niche website I built.

I essentially developed an AI-Marketing playground.

Here's what I've discovered: the future of marketing isn't just about adopting shiny new tools—it's about fundamentally reimagining how we connect with audiences. My side project, www.digitalmarketingcalculators.com, became my sandbox for testing ideas that I couldn't always implement in my day job.

Through this hands-on exploration, I've identified five key pathways that have helped me modernize my approach to marketing.

1. Develop AI Literacy and Application Skills

The integration of artificial intelligence into marketing isn't just a trend—it's reshaping the entire discipline. Forward-thinking marketers must move beyond surface-level AI engagement to develop genuine literacy in these technologies.

Start by experimenting with AI platforms like ChatGPT or Claude for more than simple content creation and ideation. True modernization means going deeper: learn prompt engineering techniques, understand how to evaluate AI outputs critically, and identify opportunities to automate routine tasks while elevating work.

For example, Claude wrote the code for my interactive calculators to help users calculate their campaign ROI and determine how much ad spend was required to reach their targeted sales goal. I tweaked the code to match brand colors—and a few other tweaks here and there—and added it to my website.

2. Build Integrated Marketing Technology Ecosystems

Rather than viewing marketing tools as separate solutions, modern marketers need to architect connected ecosystems where technologies enhance each other. This means developing a deeper understanding of API integrations, workflow automation and custom solution development.

My experience building complex Make.com automations taught me that the most powerful marketing operations combine multiple platforms into seamless workflows. It took me two weekends—and countless “how do I” prompts—but I eventually created a fully-functional automation:

• The automation is triggered when I add a new entry into my Google Sheet.

• It pings ChatGPT to generate a relevant fact about the topic I added as the new entry.

• The automation then automatically populates the adjacent column with this fact, creating an efficient knowledge-building process without manual intervention.

I tried to hook this up to my website, but the coding was too complex for my skill level (for now).

3. Embrace Continuous Learning as Strategy

The traditional marketing career path—where you learn a set of skills and apply them throughout your career—is disappearing fast. My nights and weekends of experimentation taught me that continuous learning isn't just nice to have—it's a core marketing skill.

Every time I figured out how to make an automation work or tweaked code to function properly, I was doing more than solving immediate problems. I was building learning muscles that help me adapt quickly to new marketing technologies and approaches.

This adaptability is perhaps the most valuable skill in modern marketing. The tools will continuously change, but the marketer who can learn, unlearn and relearn quickly will always remain relevant.

Where I'm Going Next

This AI-marketing playground has been more than just a side project—it's been a career compass pointing toward where marketing is headed. I'm continuing to expand my automation skills and looking for ways to integrate AI more deeply into the marketing processes.

I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible. With generative AI developing at lightning speed and new integration capabilities emerging almost weekly, the possibilities for reimagining marketing are endless.

Whether you're just getting started with marketing modernization or looking to level up your existing skills, I encourage you to create your own playground. Start small, embrace the failures as learning opportunities and build something that excites you. The future of marketing belongs to the curious and the experimental—those willing to play at the cutting edge until they find breakthrough approaches that deliver real results.