After spending 200+ hours with Agent A, Ahrefs’ AI advertising and marketing assistant, I’m nonetheless unsure whether or not it’s my finest good friend or my greatest menace—it’s that succesful.
Right here’s me letting my AI assistant code one thing for me, whereas I ponder the AI doomsday situations.
However debating the impression of AI on our jobs solely will get you to date. A greater use of your time is determining find out how to reinvent your position with this know-how. I imply, use it to do the belongings you by no means had sufficient time, expertise, or sources to do earlier than—and create extra worth in your crew within the course of.
On this article, I’ll present how I take advantage of Agent A for advertising and marketing: constructing small instruments, automating web optimization analysis, enhancing my writing, organizing data, working recurring checks, and connecting the instruments I already use. Every part features a immediate you’ll be able to attempt, plus the frustrations and limits I’ve discovered alongside the approach.
An AI advertising and marketing assistant is a devoted workspace for advertising and marketing duties that may use instruments, work with recordsdata, hook up with information sources, keep in mind preferences, and automate repeatable workflows.
It appears to be like like a typical AI chatbot on the floor, however that’s simply the way you discuss to the agentic AI know-how “below the hood”.
You possibly can arrange your first agent utilizing Claude Code or the ChatGPT Brokers characteristic in minutes utilizing a single sentence, no coding expertise wanted.
In contrast to a chatbot that primarily solutions questions, or a general-purpose AI agent that begins from scratch, a advertising and marketing assistant comes with built-in advertising and marketing experience, specialised instruments, and integrations with the platforms you already use.
Agent A, for instance, comes with advertising and marketing apps and expertise constructed by the Ahrefs crew primarily based on mixed years of expertise in advertising and marketing.
Agent A additionally has direct entry to Ahrefs information, and is designed to work with it natively. Meaning much less setup, fewer workarounds, and a a lot quicker path from concept to execution.
What’s Agent A?
Agent A is a advertising and marketing agent from Ahrefs—an AI assistant with direct entry to the total Ahrefs dataset that may perform advertising and marketing duties autonomously, fairly than simply reply questions.
Agent A contains:
- Unrestricted entry to Ahrefs endpoints. Each endpoint we use to construct Ahrefs is obtainable, together with many you can not attain through API or MCP.
- Severe tech stack beneath. Postgres for state, Flask for UIs, an OpenRouter proxy with 300+ fashions, net fetch with full-page parsing, PDFs, OCR, scheduled jobs.
- Native connectors to advertising and marketing instruments. Slack, HubSpot, GitHub, Notion, Linear, Mailchimp, Resend, SendGrid, Stripe, Gong, WordPress, Airtable, Apify, and even Semrush.
- Knowledgeable talent library. The Ahrefs crew has contributed pre-built advertising and marketing expertise and purposes that encode how we truly work.
Since early April, I’ve accrued 248 chat classes, roughly 17,000 messages, 41 apps, 57 artifacts, and 17 automated jobs in Agent A, my AI assistant.
That’s why I now not consider it as a chatbot. It feels extra like a workshop—a spot the place work will get accomplished. I can construct, experiment, and remedy issues there, then invite others in to collaborate or discover what I’ve created.
Right here’s how I take advantage of it in my day-to-day work.
Advice
To have your assistant construct issues like these for you, you don’t even want a particular immediate: simply describe it in pure language, and even higher: present it a hyperlink to this text.
My assistant retains me from burning out on repetitive web optimization work
web optimization includes lots of repetitive work: pulling information, cleansing it up, evaluating experiences, checking assumptions, and determining what to do subsequent. It’s necessary work, however it shouldn’t take over your day. My AI assistant handles a lot of that busywork, so I can concentrate on technique and decision-making.
One instance is a key phrase analysis hub I constructed. It brings collectively the frameworks, shortcuts, and processes I’ve developed over time right into a single workflow. As a substitute of ranging from scratch, I get a prioritized record of alternatives, enterprise potential scores, and matter relationships that make the subsequent steps a lot clearer.
If you wish to copy the logic of my app, present this GitHub link to any AI agent. I encourage you to remix it so it feels tailored—as a result of that’s the entire level.
In case you’re utilizing Agent A, you can too attempt the Content material Key phrase Analysis app by Sam Oh, which you’ll know from our YouTube channel.
My assistant displays metrics I might in any other case neglect to examine
Many advertising and marketing experiences are solely helpful in the event that they preserve working after the primary evaluation. My AI assistant turns one-off investigations into recurring programs with scheduled checks, historic monitoring, alerts, and experiences. Issues that used to reside on a to-do record change into processes that run robotically.
For instance, for one of many AI web optimization experiments I did, I constructed a customized dashboard displaying citations and mentions earned by the pages I constructed, i.e., the AI protection.
The assistant can then message me on Slack each week with a simplified model of the report:
My assistant remembers product data and distinctive step-by-step guides
Product particulars, buyer insights, choices, and classes realized usually get buried in chat threads and forgotten paperwork.
My AI assistant acts like a librarian that retains monitor of this data and makes it simple to retrieve later. Meaning much less time trying to find context and fewer errors brought on by lacking data.
For instance, I can use the app to get information for a presentation and ask my AI assistant to create an infographic from it:
The immediate I used to create the infographic.
And the fast one-shot infographic I pasted proper into the webinar deck.
If you would like an app precisely like that, present this GitHub link with all of the directions to your AI assistant.
By the way in which, collating the entire directions and pushing them to GitHub was additionally accomplished by Agent A. I simply described what I wished to attain.
My assistant remembers how I wish to write
One of many greatest frustrations with AI is having to repeat the identical stylistic preferences time and again. So, I taught my agent what to keep away from and what to emphasise, so these preferences turned a part of its default conduct.
The type reference works like a talent contained in the software, so I can name on it anytime by saying one thing like, “use my editorial information.”
To make this work, I merely gave the assistant hyperlinks to my favourite articles and some pointers on how I like to put in writing. From that, it constructed a writing profile that I can preserve refining over time.
You are able to do the identical. Present your assistant examples of labor you admire—or your personal finest work—and it may possibly study the patterns, preferences, and elegance that make your writing really feel like you.
My assistant helps me apply nice concepts and practices I’ve seen on-line
There’s extra helpful content material on-line than anybody can learn, not to mention put into apply. Most of us are consistently saving articles, guides, and frameworks with each intention of coming again to them later however we hardly ever do.
An AI assistant may help with that. You present it a helpful information or framework, it learns the method, and the subsequent time you want that method at work, it already is aware of find out how to run it.
For instance, my colleague Louise wrote a terrific information on YouTube monitoring, however the sensible steps have been rather a lot to recollect. So, I requested my agent to show the step-by-step directions from the information right into a reusable talent.
Have a look at the immediate within the picture—you don’t have to be an AI immediate engineer to make your assistant immediately extremely helpful to you.
Since my assistant has entry to web optimization information, it may possibly autonomously run the directions given within the article.
On a sidenote, LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude Opus present the intelligence, however we nonetheless want to provide them the proper context. That may be so simple as displaying your assistant the content material you want. Join the assistant to the proper set of knowledge, e.g., web optimization information, and
My assistant runs content material analysis within the background and tells me when it’s accomplished
As a content material creator, what you really want is a customized content material feed: the necessary indicators from the week that might encourage your subsequent piece.
An AI agent may help rather a lot right here. It will possibly plan the workflow, run it on a schedule, and message you when one thing is value studying.
I’ve at all times felt behind on what’s occurring on Reddit, so I requested my assistant to construct a Reddit listening app. It checks r/web optimization, r/bigseo, and r/SEO_LLM for posts about AI search, generative engine optimization, and AI visibility.
As a substitute of scrolling manually, related posts are collected day by day, matched in opposition to key phrases, saved in a searchable format, and become a weekly report. I take advantage of it to maintain up with a fast-moving matter with out having to reside on Reddit.
However in fact, I are likely to neglect to examine the app. Good factor my assistant sends me experiences straight to Slack.
My assistant builds webpages for me (CMS too)
Once you want a webpage, what you really need is to launch pages rapidly with out ready on a designer’s queue or a developer dash.
An AI assistant may help with that. It will possibly plan the web page, construct it, publish it someplace shareable, and allow you to preserve making modifications in plain English even after it’s reside. It will possibly even construct a fast CMS for that web page.
In Agent A, I may also purchase a brand new area proper within the software and have the Agent publish to it for me.
Get an agentic AI software like Agent A and describe the web site you need as should you have been briefing a teammate or a contractor. Share examples, temper boards, competitor pages, or the rest that helps talk the look, really feel, and function of the location. The extra context you present, the simpler it’s for the AI to grasp what you’re making an attempt to construct.
My assistant pulls information from the instruments I already use (so I don’t have to)
Content material usually relies on information saved throughout analytics platforms, CRMs, spreadsheets, and different instruments. Reasonably than manually pulling every little thing collectively, I can ask the AI to gather the related information and put together an preliminary evaluation.
From there, it may possibly floor tendencies, spotlight notable findings, and generate charts or visuals that can be utilized immediately in a report or article.
For instance, my newest article on Moltbook was virtually totally accomplished inside the AI workspace, together with pulling information from Ahrefs and visualizing it.
My assistant builds instruments tailor-made to precisely how I work
After doing one thing for years, you develop your personal approach of working. The issue is that almost all software program is designed for the typical consumer, not in your particular workflow. AI modifications that by making it simple to construct instruments round the way you already work.
For instance, impressed by my colleague Louise, I constructed a Scrapbook app. It takes articles, movies, hyperlinks, or notes, summarizes them, generates associated content material concepts, and shops every little thing in GitHub so I can entry it from anyplace and share it with my crew.
It’s half second mind, half analysis library, and half quotation vault for future writing initiatives.
So each time I come throughout inspiring content material, I can simply come to the Agent and say “scrapbook URL”.
My assistant connects my complete advertising and marketing stack
Some apps have been a part of my day by day work for years. Now I don’t must preserve leaping between them, as a result of AI acts because the glue between these programs.
My assistant helps transfer data between instruments, remembers choices, checks standing updates, and retains workflows working.
- Ahrefs: every little thing web optimization and AI search, together with reporting, key phrase
analysis, competitor evaluation, and rather a lot extra. - Apify: scraping net pages and SERPs for information that isn’t in any
software but—helpful for one-off competitor pulls, constructing customized datasets, and watching pages that change. - Github: the place my notes, data bases, and small app code reside.
Markdown recordsdata sync there robotically, so I at all times have a clear backup and teammates can learn or edit the identical content material. - Linear: my work log. Each process, concept, and follow-up goes right here so
I can see what’s in progress, what’s ready on me, and what’s accomplished. - Slack: the place the agent talks to me when one thing wants consideration—day by day digests, completed jobs, alerts from recurring checks. Saves
me from having to recollect to examine each dashboard. - WordPress: posting articles for opinions, updating articles.
The toughest a part of utilizing a robust AI assistant is noticing when my very own considering begins bending to suit what it produces. A couple of patterns I preserve catching myself in and find out how to repair them.
Considering extra AI output means higher work
Extra output doesn’t equal higher work.
One of many greatest traps with AI is assuming that producing extra robotically creates extra worth. It doesn’t. In case you’re not cautious, you find yourself constructing extra issues whereas sustaining fewer of them. High quality slips, possession turns into fuzzy, and your consideration will get unfold too skinny.
The reply isn’t to create much less. The entire level of utilizing AI is to do extra, in spite of everything. The hot button is to start out small. Earlier than constructing an app, automation, or content material engine, create the minimal helpful model first—a immediate, guidelines, word, or proof of idea. Then scale solely what proves genuinely helpful.
The identical applies to web optimization and content material advertising and marketing. Publishing plenty of AI-assisted content material isn’t robotically unhealthy. Publishing plenty of content material with out human supervision, unique perception, or actual worth is. That’s when Google’s spam programs—and human readers—begin to discover.
Letting the mannequin do my considering for me
One of many best errors to make with AI is handing over the considering, not simply the work.
The mannequin isn’t the sensible one on this duo. It’s good at producing potentialities, recognizing patterns, and filling in gaps, however it doesn’t have your judgment, expertise, or style.
Once I rely too closely on its framing, I cease bringing my very own perspective to the desk and find yourself making edits contained in the assistant’s worldview as a substitute of creating my personal.
I’ve discovered the very best outcomes come after I begin with a tough take first. What do I believe? What am I not sure about? What would a great reply truly seem like? As soon as I’ve that, I take advantage of the mannequin to problem my assumptions, floor blind spots, or prolong my considering—not substitute it.
Mistaking velocity for progress
AI makes it extremely simple to create issues rapidly. The issue is that creation is just one a part of the job.
I’ve realized that transferring quicker doesn’t at all times imply making progress. Typically it simply means accumulating extra issues to handle later—new instruments, automations, paperwork, and workflows that appeared helpful within the second however by no means turned a part of a sustainable system.
The actual price reveals up later as workspace litter, half-finished initiatives, and background work that nobody truly owns.
To keep away from that, I deal with administration as a part of the creation course of. I take advantage of AI to assist preserve monitor of what’s being constructed by Linear—overview queues, work logs, supervisor checks, and common cleanup cycles. Creating one thing is straightforward. Ensuring it stays helpful is the place the true work begins.
No person talks about “laptop use circumstances” as a result of the pc is a general-purpose surroundings. An AI agent feels comparable. The actual worth usually seems solely after you attempt a process and see whether or not the agent can work out the steps, use the proper software, or construct the lacking piece.
See what my colleagues do with their brokers and get some extra inspiration in these guides:
On prime of that, there are a lot of different instruments you’ll be able to hook up with your AI assistant. As an illustration, you’ll be able to join Agent A to HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, Google Adverts, Mailchimp, Stripe, Gong, and dozens extra.
It’s in all probability not an accident that OpenAI and Anthropic are forming partnerships to assist corporations undertake their know-how.
Even when the know-how is that this good, it doesn’t clarify itself. You possibly can present somebody an AI agent, inform them it may possibly plan, use instruments, construct apps, keep in mind context, and work within the background—and the plain query continues to be: Okay, however what do I truly do with it?
After spending time with Agent A, I perceive the issue higher. Everyone knows that the tech is highly effective, the arduous half is studying find out how to suppose with it.
Thanks for studying! Be happy to attach with me on LinkedIn or Substack.
