AI in marketing: what actually works for a £5m+ business

If you run a £5m+ business across Rotherham and the surrounding areas, you have probably had this conversation in the last six months: "should we be using AI in our marketing?"

The honest answer is yes — but probably not in the way the LinkedIn gurus are telling you. Most AI marketing advice falls into one of two camps. Either it is so generic ("use AI to create content faster!") that it is useless, or it is so specific to consumer brands that it does not apply to a £5m B2B business serving the local market.

Here is what I am actually seeing work, and not work, with the £5m+ clients I coach.

Where AI is earning its keep right now

Drafting and editing, not writing from scratch. AI is brilliant at taking a rough voice memo and turning it into a clean first draft. It is terrible at sounding like you. The owners getting real value record themselves talking through an idea for two minutes, drop the transcript into ChatGPT or Claude with a "write this up in my voice, keep my phrasing, do not embellish" prompt, then edit hard. The result is publishable in 20 minutes instead of two hours. The result is also clearly theirs, not the AI's.

Customer research and competitor analysis. An hour with an AI research tool and a list of five competitors will tell you more about their positioning, pricing and messaging than a day on Google. The owners doing this best use it before writing any campaign — get the AI to summarise what each competitor leads with, find the gaps, and brief their marketing person against the gap, not against a guess.

Lead-scoring and pipeline triage. If you are running HubSpot or any decent CRM, modern AI scoring on your inbound leads is genuinely useful. It will not replace your salespeople's instinct, but it will stop them spending two days on a tyre-kicker and missing the £200k opportunity that came in on the same day. The marketing team gets the prioritised list every morning. Easy to set up. Visible payback inside a month.

Personalised follow-up at scale. Drip sequences that adapt the next message based on what the prospect opened or clicked. This is not new technology, but the AI layer on top of it is now mature enough that you can run sensible automated nurture without it sounding robotic. Best for owners with a long-cycle B2B sale who are losing prospects in the gap between first meeting and signed deal.

Where AI is overhyped for £5m+ B2B

AI-generated content with no human edit. If you publish raw AI output, your audience knows. The cadence gives it away — the three-word lists ("faster, smarter, better"), the "in today's fast-paced world", the smug closing lines. It reads like a thousand other LinkedIn posts because it was trained on a thousand other LinkedIn posts. For a £5m+ business selling on trust and expertise, raw AI content does more damage than not posting at all.

AI for the hard strategic thinking. AI can summarise. It can pattern-match. It cannot tell you what to do with a struggling product line that 40% of your revenue depends on, or whether the right move is to push margin or push volume next year. That work is still done in the room, with people who understand your business. Do not ask AI to make those calls for you.

Replacing the marketing person. Every owner I have spoken to who has tried to "use AI to replace the marketing manager" has come back six months later wanting their marketing manager. AI is a multiplier on a competent human, not a substitute for one. The owners getting real ROI from AI in marketing are the ones who have a good marketing person now better-leveraged, not no marketing person.

What this looks like in practice

Take Holistic Care 4 U — a care services business based in Rotherham, working across domiciliary, residential and training. When Taurai first came to me, the business had no real business plan and no working profit model. Busy day to day, but not building anything that compounded. Since we started working together, the business is back into profit, with a solid business plan and a clear methodology for growing margin. AI was not the magic in that story — disciplines were. But once those disciplines were in place, AI tools became force-multipliers on a now-clear plan rather than an excuse for the plan not existing.

“Working with Tim has been a game changer for our business. He has a real talent for cutting through the noise and helping us clearly identify what truly matters. What sets Tim apart is his ability to bring structure to our thinking—turning ideas into clear priorities and actionable plans. He doesn’t just advise; he challenges, guides, and holds us accountable to the standards we set. If you want a coach who will help you focus, think better, and actually execute, Tim is the one.” — Taurai Tongoona, Director, Holistic Care 4 U

How to think about AI in your marketing next quarter

Three questions, in this order. None of them are "which AI tool should I buy".

1. What is the biggest gap in our marketing right now? If it is that you have no clear positioning, AI will not fix it. Fix the positioning first. If it is that you publish nothing and the website looks dead, AI can help — but only with a human editor. If it is that the inbound leads are not converting, AI scoring + better follow-up will move the needle.

2. Who is using the AI? Is there a person on your team who genuinely understands the tool, knows what good output looks like, and will edit ruthlessly? If yes, you can experiment. If no, do not start with AI — start with hiring or upskilling that person.

3. What does success look like in 90 days? Specific numbers, not "better marketing". More qualified leads per month. Higher conversion rate from inbound. Shorter sales cycle. Without a defined target, AI tools just generate activity without outcomes.

Are your sales and marketing actually working?

If this article has prompted you to look hard at your marketing function — what is working, what is not, where AI fits in — the next step is to get specific.

Step 1: Get your data. Take 7 minutes to score your sales and marketing performance across the disciplines that actually move revenue. You will get an instant, personalised report on where the biggest gaps are. Score your sales and marketing →

Step 2: Let us talk. Book a 30-minute Discovery Call directly into my diary. We will look at your scorecard, talk about where AI realistically fits in your specific business, and decide whether it makes sense to dig deeper. Book a discovery call →

Alternatively, if you are based in Rotherham or across South Yorkshire and want a quick chat first, call the office on 01709 242751 or email me at timcoleman@actioncoach.co.uk.