A good AI workshop for a marketing team is built around the team's own work, not a tour of tools. In one day people should leave with a few working AI workflows for their real tasks, agreed rules on what AI can and can't be used for, and a short plan for what happens on Monday.
Most marketing teams have already tried ChatGPT. Someone uses it for social captions, someone else for blog outlines, and the rest quietly avoid it. A workshop is worth running when it turns that scattered use into a shared way of working that saves the team time every week.
Here's what I'd expect a useful one to cover, and how to tell a good workshop from a long demo.
Start with the work, not the tools
The best sessions begin before the day itself. Whoever runs it should ask the team what eats their week. For most marketing teams the answers are familiar: first drafts, repurposing one piece into many, reporting, briefs, research, and replying to the same questions over and over.
Those tasks become the agenda. Tools only come in when they help with one of them. If a workshop opens with twenty tools on a slide, people remember the slide and forget the tools.
What a one day AI workshop for marketing teams should cover
- A shared starting point. What the main assistants are good at, where they make things up, and why that matters for anything published under your brand.
- Prompting for your voice. How to give an assistant your tone, your audience and your examples so the drafts sound like you, not like everyone else.
- Three to five real workflows. Built live, on the team's own tasks, so people leave with something that runs.
- Checking and editing. A simple review step for facts, claims and tone before anything goes out.
- AI search visibility. How assistants such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews describe your business, and what the team can do about it.
- Rules and safety. What customer or company information never goes into a public tool, and who signs off on AI-assisted work.
- A plan for next week. Who owns each workflow and when the team checks how it's going.
Half day, full day or a series
| Format | Works for | What you'll get |
|---|---|---|
| Half day | Teams new to AI who need a common starting point | Basics, safe use and one or two workflows |
| Full day | Teams already experimenting who want shared workflows | Several working workflows and agreed rules |
| Series of short sessions | Teams who learn best by trying things between sessions | Workflows built, tested and improved over a few weeks |
If your team is small, a series often beats one long day. People try the workflows on real work, bring back what broke, and fix it together in the next session.
Why AI search belongs in a marketing workshop
Marketing teams spend most of their AI time on producing content. Fewer ask what the assistants say about their own business. That's a gap, because buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers who to hire before they ever visit a website.
I teach this part from my own site. Between January and September 2026, visits from AI assistants to my site grew from 32 a month to 3,599, and average Google position moved from 27.2 to 16.5. The method behind those numbers is laid out in my own AI search case study, and it's the part of a workshop teams tend to remember, because they can check their own brand on the spot.
Mistakes that waste the day
I've seen teams come out of AI sessions with lots of notes and nothing running. The causes are nearly always the same, and they're easy to avoid once you know them.
Want AI doing the heavy lifting in your marketing?
I build the systems that handle the boring 80 percent, so you get your week back. Done properly, with the human kept in.
- Too many tools. Each new tool needs a login, a habit and an owner. Two or three well used assistants beat ten tried once.
- No real examples. Practice on a made up brand and people won't trust the result on their own work.
- Skipping the review step. Fast drafts with wrong facts take longer to fix than they saved.
- No rules. If nobody agrees what can go into a public assistant, people either stop using it or use it carelessly.
- No follow up. Without a check in, old habits come back within a couple of weeks.
How to choose who runs it
- Ask what they'll need from your team beforehand. If the answer is nothing, the day will be generic.
- Ask to see a workflow they've built for a marketing task similar to yours.
- Check they'll cover safe use and review steps, not only speed.
- Ask what support there is after the day, even if it's a short follow up call.
- Make sure they talk in plain English. Your team should leave more confident, not more confused.
If you're weighing a workshop against other routes, this comparison of in-house AI training and hiring a consultant walks through the trade offs.
Getting the most from the day
- Bring real briefs, real drafts and real reports, not made up examples.
- Make sure the person who signs off marketing work is in the room, so the rules agreed on the day stick.
- Pick one owner for each workflow before everyone leaves.
- Book a short check in two to four weeks later to see what's still in use.
The measure of a good workshop isn't how impressed people were at the end of the day. It's which workflows are still running a month later.
Talking it through
I run talks and workshops on AI and marketing for teams and events, and you can read more about my speaking and training work. If you'd like to talk about what your team needs, I'm happy to have a relaxed chat first. Here's how I work with businesses.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an AI workshop for a marketing team be?
A half day suits teams who need a common starting point. A full day suits teams who want several working workflows. Many small teams do best with a short series, so they can try things on real work between sessions.
What should a marketing team bring to an AI workshop?
Real briefs, drafts, reports and the tasks that take the most time each week. The workshop should be built around that work, so people leave with workflows they can use straight away.
Does an AI workshop cover AI search and ChatGPT visibility?
A good one should. Buyers now ask AI assistants who to hire, so a marketing team needs to know how ChatGPT and Google's AI answers describe the business and what it can do to improve that.
How do we make AI workshop learning stick?
Give each workflow an owner before the day ends, agree simple rules for safe use and review, and book a short check in a few weeks later to see what's still in use.
