Marketing
Sheet 3/12 · Low · 1–4 weeksPosts go out when someone has time; the brochure is from 2023; nobody measures anything.
Symptoms
- Social posts appear in bursts, then silence for a month.
- Every price list, flyer and product description is rewritten from scratch by whoever is free.
- Content is in English only; the customers who write to you in Shona get English brochures.
- You cannot answer "which post brought the enquiries" because nothing is tagged.
- A "digital marketing agency" is charging monthly for posts that get eleven likes.
What AI can do here
- Turn one source (a product sheet, a voice note from the owner, a photo of the new stock) into ten drafts — post, caption, WhatsApp broadcast, brochure text — in minutes.
- Draft in Shona and Ndebele as well as English for a person to check.
- Keep a content calendar and a reusable library of approved descriptions so staff stop rewriting.
- Summarise what worked from the platform's own numbers every month.
What it cannot
- Know what to say; it drafts, your people decide. Unreviewed AI copy reads like everyone else's.
- Replace photographs of your actual products and premises — do not use generated images of "African businesses".
- Improve results if the offer, the price or the location is the problem.
- Guarantee reach; platforms decide distribution, not your tool.
Spec
| Effort band | Low · 1–4 weeks |
|---|---|
| Data you need | Product list with photos; brand voice examples; past posts that worked; a calendar |
| Integration points | Usually none; scheduling tool; WhatsApp broadcast lists |
| People | One owner of the calendar; one reviewer per language |
| Measure | Posts per week; enquiries per post (tagged); time to produce a campaign |
| Zimbabwe constraint | Three-language market; Facebook and WhatsApp dominate; use real photos of real premises |
Service shapes that fit
| Code | Shape | Fit | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| S-05 | Training | Primary | Two days teaching the team to draft, translate and plan with general AI tools on your own material beats any build. |
| Tool | General AI writing tool + a scheduling tool | Primary | Subscription tools cover drafting and scheduling for a micro or small firm. |
| S-02 | Pilot | Secondary | A 6-week content pilot with a measured goal (enquiries per post) if you doubt it is worth staff time. |
| S-03 | Implementation | Later | Only when you need a system — product library, approval flow, multi-branch scheduling — not a person with a good tool. |
Ask the vendor
- Will our staff be able to do this themselves after training, or does it require your team every month?
- Show a Shona draft and explain how a human checks tone and idiom before it goes out.
- Which of our data (customer lists, sales figures) will be pasted into which tool, and what does that tool do with it?
- How do we tag campaigns so that lead capture (P-02) can tell us which post produced which enquiry?
- What does the monthly report contain, and is it based on the platforms' numbers or yours?
The full bank of 60 questions, grouped by risk, is at /vendor-questions/.
The honest verdict
Marketing is the problem on this catalogue where a build is least often the answer. The bottleneck is a person’s time and confidence, and a two-day training on your own product sheets fixes that for a fraction of any implementation. Buy training first, tools second, a build last.
A one-week production line (illustrative)
| Day | Input | AI output (drafts) | Human step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Owner’s 2-minute voice note on the week’s offer | Post copy ×3, WhatsApp broadcast, Shona and Ndebele versions | Reviewer picks and corrects idiom |
| Tue | Photos of stock on the shelf | Captions and product descriptions for the library | Approve into library |
| Wed | Last month’s platform stats | Plain-language summary: what got enquiries | Owner decides next week |
| Thu | Approved drafts | Scheduled posts, tagged with campaign code | Schedule |
| Fri | Enquiries with tags (from P-02) | Count per campaign | Report |
This is a workflow, not software. If your team cannot run it with subscription tools after training, the problem is not AI.
Watch for agencies re-selling AI
Some monthly “digital marketing” retainers now consist of unreviewed AI posts. Ask who reviews Shona copy, whether the photographs are of your premises, and what the per-post cost is once you know a tool drafts it in seconds.
Zimbabwe constraintThree-language market; Facebook and WhatsApp dominate; use real photos of real premises