The 5 Marketing Jobs My AI Agents Run, and How to Set Up Your First One
Most people do every marketing task by hand, every week, from a blank page. Here are the 5 marketing jobs my AI agents do for me, and the exact prompt to set up your first one in Claude Code.
How much time are you spending on marketing tasks that an AI agent could handle?
Here are the five marketing jobs my agents do for me. I bet a few of these aren't on your radar.
None of this replaced knowing marketing. I've been a marketer for ten years. The agents just do the grunt work faster. You still pick what's good, and you still make the call.
The 5 jobs my agents run
1. Finding what's already working. My software pulls the top reels in my niche and ranks them by how far they beat that creator's normal. I only model what's already proven. A reel that got 50,000 views means nothing if that creator always gets 50,000. A reel that did 10 times their normal is telling you something.
The simple version: my POSTS guide sets this up for you. https://zachcrawford.com/guides/posts
2. Research. One agent goes through X, newsletters and YouTube in my lane, and hands me a packet of what people are asking for right now. So I make content about what people want this week, not what I guess they want.
3. Studying the experts. An agent reads the new posts from the people who teach content, pulls out every tip, and flags it when two of them say the same thing. One expert saying something is an opinion. Two saying it is worth testing.
4. Writing in my voice. Claude drafts from my files: my voice, my stories, my real numbers. Then a skill I built checks it for every AI giveaway before I ever see it. Dashes, filler phrases, the words that make people think "a robot wrote this".
The simple version: my NOTES guide builds the files, and my ROBOT guide has the full list of AI giveaways. https://zachcrawford.com/guides/notes and https://zachcrawford.com/guides/robot
5. My weekly ideas. Every Monday morning, a routine sends me a short list of post ideas, so I never start from a blank page.
Which one to start with
Start with the job that eats most of your time, and build from there.
Not sure which one that is? Paste this into Claude Code and fill in your week:
Help me pick the first marketing job to hand to an AI agent. Here is what I do for marketing in a normal week, and about how long each thing takes: [list your weekly marketing tasks and the time each one takes, like "come up with post ideas, 2 hours"] What I sell and who to: [one line] Rank my tasks by how much time an agent could save me. For each one, say in one line what the agent would do and what I'd still do myself. Then pick the one I should start with, and say why in two lines. Use only what I told you. Don't guess my numbers. If you need something, ask me first.
For most people, the easiest first one is the weekly ideas. It's the one I'll show you how to set up below.
Set up your first one: your Monday ideas
One message waiting for you every Monday morning. It reads the newsletters you subscribe to and hands you 6 to 8 post ideas, each with the story it came from.
Make a folder for it on your computer. Open the Claude desktop app, switch from Chat to Code at the top, and pick that folder.
First, connect Gmail: in Claude, go to Settings, then Connectors, and add Gmail. Then paste this:
Set up my Monday brief. Every Monday morning, I want one message waiting for me with 6 to 8 post ideas, built from the newsletters I read. Step 1. Ask me: - Who my audience is and what I sell, in one or two lines. - Which newsletters to read (the sender names or email addresses), or a Gmail label they go under. Then wait for my answers. Step 2. Check that you can read my Gmail. If you can't, tell me to go to Settings, then Connectors, and add Gmail, then come back. Step 3. Write the brief instructions into a file called monday-brief.md in this folder, so it runs the same way every week: - Read only those newsletters from the last 7 days. - Pick the stories my audience would care about. Skip the rest. - Give me 6 to 8 post ideas. For each one: a first line I could say on camera, the one point of the post, and which newsletter story it came from, with the link. - Use only what the newsletters say. Never make up numbers, quotes or news. If a story is unclear, say so. - Keep it short. Plain words. Step 4. Run the brief once now, so I can see it. Step 5. Tell me how to make it run by itself: in the Claude desktop app, make a scheduled task that runs "Run my Monday brief from monday-brief.md" in this folder, every Monday at the time I want. It only runs while the app is open and the computer is awake.
No Gmail yet? Paste this week's newsletters into the chat instead, and say "Run the brief on these, and still save monday-brief.md for later."
Once it's running, read the ideas every Monday and pick the ones you'd really post. The brief finds the stories. You decide what's worth saying.
Then build from there
When the first job runs every week without you, pick the next one that eats your time. One at a time, so each one really works before you add the next.
The limits, honestly
- An agent does the grunt work. It doesn't know your market the way you do. Read what it gives you before you use it.
- The Monday brief needs Gmail connected. Without it, paste the newsletters in and it still works.
- Scheduled tasks only run while the Claude desktop app is open and your computer is awake. If it was asleep, the task runs once when it wakes up.
- It only knows the newsletters you give it. Pick good ones, or you get good ideas from bad sources.
- Start with one job. Five half-built agents save you nothing.