Build your confidence by bringing human know-how together with AI

There’s no question that AI tools have transformed modern marketing. With the power to analyze vast data sets, optimize campaigns in real time, and even generate creative assets, AI can move faster and at a larger scale than any human ever could.

But despite these capabilities, AI isn’t meant to replace marketers: it’s meant to enhance them.

The real magic happens when humans and machines work together, combining AI data analytics with strategic thinking, brand expertise, and creative flair. This collaborative approach, sometimes called co-intelligence, is what separates average results from breakthrough outcomes.

Still, just 46% of marketers say they’re confident in their team’s ability to use AI tools to optimize channel selection. That confidence gap suggests something important: AI might be powerful, but it’s only as effective as the people using it, and how well it’s integrated into day-to-day workflows.

In this article, we’ll explore how to build that confidence, how to work in harmony with AI, and how AI training, strategy, and the right tools can unlock better results.

Humans and AI: a partnership, not a rivalry

There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty around AI replacing marketers. And it’s understandable. Generative AI for marketing can now write copy, build personas, analyze trends, and even create visual assets in seconds. But here’s the truth: while AI can reach speeds and scale no human can match, it still lacks one essential ingredient. And that’s human judgement.

That’s why achieving co-intelligence is the key to successfully using AI for marketing. Working with AI isn’t about letting it take over. It’s about letting it handle the time-consuming, repetitive tasks so you can focus on high-impact work. AI can scan millions of data points to find correlations, but it can’t tell you which message will resonate emotionally with your audience. It can suggest audiences to target, but it can’t always understand your brand nuance or campaign goals.

In that sense, AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. And this partnership works best with co-intelligence:

• AI delivers speed, scale, and pattern recognition.
• Humans provide context, critical thinking, and creativity.

So what can AI help you with?

If you’re still getting comfortable with AI for marketing, here are a few practical ways to use it:

• Audience creation: Generate AI personas for B2B marketing by analyzing behavioral data and firmographic inputs.
• Channel optimization: Use AI to identify the best-performing platforms for different segments, based on real-time data.
• Creative testing: Run A/B tests faster and more accurately using machine learning to analyze engagement.
• Reporting: Let AI build custom dashboards and surface key insights automatically.
• Data harmonization: Combine first and third-party data to uncover patterns you might miss manually.

Want to see how leading marketers are building confidence in AI? Read our AI confidence curve report to explore how they’re closing the gap between potential and performance.

Training AI and yourself to work smarter

Using AI successfully isn’t just about knowing what it can do. It’s understanding AI training, including when to trust it and where to guide it.

Just like people, AI systems need the right context, input, and direction to work well. That’s where AI model training and AI training data come in. A generic tool trained on broad datasets might be useful for basic tasks, but if it hasn’t been tailored to your business, your vertical, or your objectives, its output may fall flat.

Similarly, AI training for marketing teams is just as important. The more your team understands how the tool thinks, what data it’s drawing from, what decisions it automates, and where human oversight is needed, the more effective and creative your outputs will be.

Here are a few key areas where you can focus your training efforts:

• Tool capabilities: What is your AI designed to do and not do?
• Data inputs: What kind of data should you feed it to get better outputs?
• Workflow integration: Where in the process should AI take over and when should you step back in?

MiQ Sigma: AI that empowers human creativity

MiQ Sigma isn’t just another AI marketing tool. It’s an AI-powered AdTech platform built specifically for marketers, and backed by real human trading and strategy expertise. That means it understands the nuance, pressure, and complexity of live marketing campaigns and uses that context to support, not override, human decisions.

Unlike standalone tools or fragmented data dashboards, Sigma brings everything together in one place:

• Real-time campaign data
• Audience modeling
• Automated reporting
• Performance optimization across platforms.
  

Sigma is transparent, intuitive, and built to give you control. You can pull reports, explore insights, and build audiences with clarity. And because it’s designed to complement rather than replace marketers, Sigma helps you strike that perfect balance between automation and instinct, speed and strategy, machine logic and human creativity.

Book a Sigma demo to see how co-intelligence comes to life when the right platform meets the right people.

Confidence grows when you understand co-intelligence

At its best, AI gives marketers the tools to do more, see more, and move faster. But tools alone don’t build confidence. Confidence comes from understanding your audience, your strategy, and your AI.

When marketers take the time to learn how to use their tools, train their models, and blend automation with intuition, they unlock the full potential of AI for marketing. And that leads to better results, faster decisions, and greater creative freedom.

When you stop thinking of AI as a threat and start thinking of it as a teammate, you open the door to more agile, effective, and inspired marketing.

Read our AI confidence curve report to discover how co-intelligence can take your programmatic campaigns even further.