How a Marketing Automation Expert Uses AI To Maximize Productivity and Earnings

Marcus Grimm is an Expert-Vetted marketing automation expert with more than 20 years of experience. Throughout his career, Marcus has always been eager to stay on top of trends in marketing automation and embrace the latest technology.

Marcus spent most of his career in full-time roles and made the switch to freelancing in 2020 after the agency he worked for downsized at the beginning of the global pandemic. At the time, he faced challenges finding a new full-time role and started to build his freelance client base through local and network connections. Marcus soon turned to Upwork to continue scaling his business, find new clients, and increase earning potential.

“I joined Upwork and discovered that a lot of clients need what I do,” shared Marcus. “I have a local network, but I quickly saw that Upwork enables me to ramp up or ramp down work however I wanted. It worked out extremely well and I’m thrilled.

“Upwork offers so many opportunities, I have to make sure I don’t fill my calendar with too much work,” Marcus continued.

Marketing automation expertise

Marketing automation involves using software and technology to automate and measure different aspects of marketing workflows. Marcus partners closely with enterprise software, financial technology, and software as a service (SaaS) clients to help drive efficiencies and quickly achieve marketing goals.

Marcus specializes in inbound and outbound marketing automation. He uses tools such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), SharpSpring, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Zoho, and MailChimp for inbound and Apollo, Smartlead, and Clay for outbound. Many of these tools are increasingly integrating AI, which helped Marcus see the potential to leverage AI for his business.

After launching his independent marketing automation business on Upwork in 2020, Marcus’s earnings surpassed his former full-time salary within the first year. While his client base varies from time to time, many of Marcus’s projects involve long-term projects. He attributes much of his success to showcasing his strongest skills and focusing on solving client problems.

“A lot of people try to launch their own businesses without specific skills,” explained Marcus. “If you have proven skills and understand what clients need, building a successful business on Upwork isn’t difficult. You simply need to focus on solving your customers’ biggest problems.”

Embracing AI to maximize productivity

When artificial intelligence (AI) started seeing widespread adoption across businesses and industries in 2023, Marcus embraced AI to increase productivity and continue growing his own business. While many AI tools are available, Marcus has seen the most success with ChatGPT and compares the tool to “the brightest intern, capable of saving a lot of time and value.” He also believes AI will continue to improve and become more beneficial to businesses and professionals over time.

In addition to leveraging the AI features integrated into his day-to-day marketing automation tools, here are some other ways Marcus uses AI to increase productivity:

• Client research. When Marcus starts a project with a new client, he prompts ChatGPT to research the company, including identifying competitors, evaluating the client’s current marketing tools, and understanding how the company is positioned from a branding and marketing perspective. AI tools like ChatGPT can scrape content from client and competitor websites to discover details about their existing marketing strategies, which speeds up the initial research process. When Marcus onboards new clients, they also frequently share spreadsheets of relevant data. He uploads the data to ChatGPT and asks questions about results and trends, significantly reducing the time it takes to understand clients’ existing marketing efforts.
• Outline development. ChatGPT can quickly review and summarize large volumes of information. While Marcus prioritizes human expertise and doesn't believe current AI models should be relied on for final drafts for most use cases, AI tools like ChatGPT save a significant amount of time with initial outline development, idea generation, and other marketing tasks. Marcus reviews all AI-generated content to ensure information is accurate, presentable, and aligned with clients’ goals and expectations.
• Data analysis. As a small business owner, Marcus also leverages ChatGPT to review and analyze monthly business results. He simply downloads a spreadsheet with details such as hours worked and shares the spreadsheet with ChatGPT, which then outputs a summary. AI simplifies data analysis by helping Marcus determine the most productive days of week, best billing days, and other insights.

Increasing clients and earning potential with AI

AI tools help Marcus increase his overall productivity by 30 to 40% on average, which enables him to engage more clients and earn more income—without significantly increasing his working hours.

For example, Marcus used to work with about four clients at a time for 10 hours a week. Given the time saved using AI tools, Marcus now partners with upward of eight clients at once and spends about five hours on each client per week while delivering the same value and level of service to clients in the same forty-hour work week.

Marcus has experienced both an increase in demand from new clients for his services and heightened income stability compared to before he started using AI tools.

As a result of increased demand, Marcus has also raised his rates by about 20% for new clients, while maintaining the same rates for some existing clients, enabling him to increase overall earnings. His adjusted rates also offer net savings for clients, as Marcus works fewer hours for each while delivering the same agreed output.

Advice to other freelancers interested in exploring AI

Other freelancers and business owners like Marcus may be interested in exploring and implementing AI tools to support their business but unsure where to start. Marcus offered advice to help others explore AI tools:

• Play around with AI tools directly and don’t be afraid to experiment. Most learning with AI comes directly from taking a hands-on approach with tools like ChatGPT.
• Research how others in your industry or area of expertise are leveraging AI and apply best practices at your own business.
• Ask AI to help out with tasks you’re not interested or skilled in. For example, while Marcus is a marketing expert and strategist, he uses AI to quickly resolve challenges related to Excel or HTML code.
• Be realistic and don’t expect AI to completely automate your work. Even a 10% increase in productivity can go a long way while enabling you to focus on what you’re best at.
• Leverage AI to help you deliver more value and output to your clients. Many freelancers worry that because work is faster with AI, they’ll earn less income. However, by providing more value, your clients are likely to give you more work.
• Don’t allow your opinions about and knowledge of AI to become too stagnant. AI models are simply changing too fast. Tasks that AI failed to complete only a year ago are now showing excellent results.

Continuing to work with a diverse and growing client base

Marcus has completed more than 50 projects on Upwork and along with increased earning potential, he’s motivated by the freedom of working on multiple projects without time or geographical constraints. He describes himself as a curious person and says the diversity of brands he can connect with on Upwork keeps him stimulated.

“Upwork has opened doors for me outside of my geography,” said Marcus. “My local clients come to me because they know me, but on Upwork, clients hire me because of my skills.”

He continued, “When I want to make more money now, I don’t look locally, I go to Upwork.”

Marcus offers several options for clients to get in touch and partner with him. You can book a marketing consultation or SharpSpring consultation, purchase a fixed-price brand identity project, or invite him to work on one of your projects.