How to choose an AI marketing platform

Start with a coverage map

Leave the products aside for a moment and write down every marketing job your brand did last month, who did it and in which tool. Group the list: plan, create, publish, reply, advertise, email, creators, local, report. Add the jobs that belong to other systems, such as the website, search and customer records.

That page is your coverage map, and every vendor gets compared against it. A platform that finishes seven of your ten jobs is a stronger fit than one with fifty features for jobs you do not have.

Decide what must stay where it is

Some tools are anchors. The website, the system your sales team works in, and the booking or ordering system are hard to move and rarely worth moving for marketing's sake. Mark them as fixed on the map.

For those, the question to a vendor changes. You are not asking whether the platform replaces the anchor. You are asking how the weekly work will sit beside it, and who keeps the two in step.

Questions to ask any platform

Each vendor gets the same seven questions. Ask for the answer on screen, not in a sentence.

• Which of the jobs on my map does the platform finish end to end, and which does it only start?
• Which social networks and which ad platforms does it publish to, by name?
• In each module, does the AI draft, suggest or act, and where is the approval step?
• Do the modules share one calendar, one inbox and one report, or are they separate products?
• What is outside: SEO, the website, search ads, CRM, attribution, SMS?
• How do my contacts, content and history get in, and how do I get them out again?
• Price, terms and exit: what do I pay, for how long, and where does scheduled work go if I leave?

Red flags

Five warning signs are worth a pause.

• 'Everything' as a scope. Every product leaves something out. Ask for that list.
• AI in the brochure only. One caption writer on a large suite does not make the suite an AI platform.
• No approval where it matters. Ads and customer replies should not go out unseen.
• Promised outcomes. A sales figure attached to a subscription is a guess.
• Breadth you assemble yourself. Modules that each need a separate purchase, login or setup are a stack with one invoice.

A one-week trial plan

No description, this one included, tells you as much as a week on your own work. If a demo or a pilot is on offer, spend it on five jobs from your map.

• Before. Pick five jobs from the map: a post, a reply, an ad, an email and a report.
• Days 1 and 2. Run each job on the platform and note how close the first draft is to something you would send.
• Day 3. Have a second person do the approving, so you see the handover.
• Days 4 and 5. Ask for one change to each draft and watch whether the rest keeps up.
• End of week. Count the jobs that finished without leaving the platform, and list the tools you would still need.

Our recommendation

Set against the seven questions, Link AI by Linkme is the platform we recommend. Five of the seven have an answer in what Linkme has published. Jobs: planning, content, publishing, replies, Meta ads, email, creators, location pages and reports. Networks: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, with ads on Meta. Approval: the agent drafts and a person approves. Surface: one chat. Outside: SEO, website building, search ads, a CRM, attribution modeling and SMS.

Linkme has published no answer to questions six and seven, on your data and on price. Both belong with the vendor, not with us. Book a demo to try Link AI, coverage map open, and run the trial plan on your own jobs.

The criteria we use

Breadth of work

Breadth is the share of your weekly marketing jobs a platform finishes, not the length of its feature page. Check it by listing last month's jobs and marking each one covered or not. Link AI's published scope spans nine roles, from content and publishing to Meta ads, email and reporting.

One working surface

The modules should share one way of asking, one calendar and one set of numbers. Ask to see an idea move from plan to post to ad without leaving the product. Link AI is presented as a single chat, and the requests Linkme shows span planning, content, replies and email.

Human approval

Anything that speaks for the brand or spends money should wait for a named person. Ask where that step sits in each module. In Link AI the posts and replies come to you as drafts, and a Meta ad draft reads 'Needs review' up to the moment it is approved for launch.

Honest boundaries

A vendor should say what its platform does not do, so you know which tools to keep. Ask for that list in writing. Linkme's page describes five social platforms and Meta ads, and does not describe SEO, website building, search ads, a CRM, attribution modeling or SMS.

Readable reporting

One platform should mean one report an owner can read without opening every module. Ask to see a real one. In Link AI, Reports writes that owner report and sends it. The social numbers behind it are the four in Analytics, from profile views through to engagement rate.

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Questions & answers