Every Wednesday, one essay on what's actually working in Marketing with AI — tools, workflows, and mindset shifts you can apply immediately.
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(NB: The video is at the bottom of this article, but I think you will get better context by reading this quickly before watching the video)
A lot of marketers I speak to about AI marketing have hit the same wall with AI.
They learn ChatGPT. They pick up some prompts. They get decent results.
But most of their single work session starts from scratch.
You have to re-explain your brand voice. You re-paste your formatting rules. You re-describe your audience.
And the output drifts.
What was on-brand on Tuesday sounds generic by Thursday.
This is the problem Claude Skills solve. And once you understand them, they change how you think about AI entirely.
What Are Claude Skills?
A Claude Skill is a reusable set of instructions that teaches Claude how to do a specific job - your way, every time.
Think of it as onboarding a team member once instead of re-briefing a freelancer every morning.
Getting technical for just one second, a Skill is just a folder.
Inside that folder, there’s a markdown file (SKILL.md) with your task instructions, and optionally some reference files which could include:
Style guides
Templates
Example output
Criteria documents
When you ask Claude to do something that matches a Skill’s description, it loads those instructions automatically and gets to work. No copy-pasting. No prompt libraries. No starting from zero.
The simplest way to understand the difference:
A prompt dies when the chat ends. A Skill persists forever. You write it once, Claude follows it every time.
Beyond that persistence, Skills are consistent (same standards applied every time, no drift), shareable (teams can use the same playbook), and require no coding.
If you can write a brief, you can write a Skill. It really is that easy.
Why Should Marketers Care?
For me, the biggest friction for using AI for marketing isn’t the technology. It’s the re-explaining.
Every Sunday I create a newsletter. It has a specific structure:
10 stories, a particular mix of news and practical AI Marketing content, a tone that’s authoritative but accessible, British spelling, and a closing that ties back to the bigger theme of thinking in AI systems rather than just using AI tools. That’s a lot of context.
Before I built a Skill for it, I’d spend the first 10-15 minutes of every session getting Claude back up to speed.
Now I type “create this week’s newsletter” and Claude already knows the structure, the tone, the research criteria, the formatting rules, and even which stories I covered recently so it doesn’t repeat itself.
The time savings are real - I’ve seen 60-80% reductions on repetitive workflows. But the bigger win is consistency. Your brand voice doesn’t drift. Your reporting format doesn’t change depending on which prompt you remember to paste in. Your campaign briefs follow the same structure whether you write them at 9am or 11pm.
And here’s another huge benefit when you use Skills: Skills compound. Each one you build makes the next piece of work faster. A library of 10-15 marketing Skills can genuinely transform your daily productivity.
How I Built My Newsletter Skill (And How You Can Build Yours)
In the video at the bottom of this article, I walk through my actual weekly newsletter Skill as a real-world example.
Here’s what’s inside it:
The SKILL.md file contains the full workflow — a two-phase process where Claude first researches and shortlists stories, then writes the complete newsletter after I approve the selection. It references four supporting files: a newsletter template, research criteria, a tone and style guide, and a tracker of recent coverage to avoid repeats.
That’s the structure of any good Skill: a clear workflow in the main file, with detailed reference material in supporting files so Claude can load what it needs without bloating every session.
Creating your own Skill is simpler than you think. There are two approaches:
The easiest way is to just have a conversation with Claude. Describe the task, share examples of good output (real examples beat generic instructions), describe your standards, and ask Claude to create a Skill from it. Claude builds the files, you select “Copy to your skills,” and it’s available in every future session.
To get started, head to Settings → Capabilities → Skills and make sure Skills are enabled. That’s your starting point for everything that follows.
The manual approach gives you more control: create a folder, write a SKILL.md file with a description (which acts as the trigger) and your instructions, add any reference files, and place it where Claude can find it.
I’d recommend starting with the first option before considering the second.
Either way, the process is the same: identify a workflow you repeat, document how you want it done, and let Claude handle it consistently from that point forward.
Where Marketers Should Start
Pick the one task you do most often that requires the most context-setting.
For many marketers, that’s content creation - blog posts, social media, or emails where brand voice matters. For others, it’s reporting, campaign briefs, or meeting follow-ups.
Start there. Build one Skill. Use it five times. Refine what doesn’t work. Then build the next one.
The marketers who struggle with AI are trying to learn tools. The ones who thrive have made a different shift entirely - they’re building systems and workflows.
Skills are how you start making that shift practical.
This Is Part One of Three
This video is the first in a short series I’m doing on the tools that are quietly changing how marketers work with AI.
The way I think about it: Skills teach Claude your processes. But what if Claude could also work directly with your local files - read them, build outputs, save them for you?
That’s Cowork. Chat is conversation; Cowork is delegation. That’s the next video.
And after that: Marketing Plugins - pre-built bundles that combine Skills, file access, and integrations specifically for marketing workflows. Skills are your processes, Cowork is your files, Plugins bring both together.
If you’re a subscriber, you’ll get all three as they drop.
Here’s the Claude Skills Video Walkthrough:
Want hands-on help with Claude?
I work with marketers 1:1 in Claude Marketing Power Hours and help teams embed Claude into their workflows from first steps to full-scale systems. Book a call using the link below.
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