Three weeks ago, a marketing manager asked me about Jasper. Two days later, she asked about Copy.ai. Yesterday, she wanted my take on ChatGPT Plus versus Claude Pro.

She's not alone. Marketing teams are drowning in 100+ AI tools, each promising to solve a different problem. HubSpot reports that teams waste 26% of their budgets on tools that don't work. Gartner found that 47% of marketers cite tool overlap as their biggest resource drain.

The issue isn't choosing wrong tools. It's choosing tools wrong. (Like that?)

Most marketing leaders buy tools backward. They see a demo, get excited about features, and sign a contract. Then they try to retrofit the tool into their workflow. Six months later, the tool sits unused while the team returns to their old Google Docs process.

I built this scorecard because my team was making the same mistake. We had 12 tools. We used 3. We were paying $4,800/month for software that made our work harder, not easier.

Marketing tool selection follows a predictable pattern:

Someone sees a new AI tool on LinkedIn. The demo looks incredible. The pricing seems reasonable. They sign up for a trial.

Then reality hits. The tool doesn't connect to their CRM. It requires data they don't track. The output format doesn't match their approval process. The team has to learn a new interface while deadlines pile up.

According to research from BizTech Magazine, SMBs don't think in terms of systems or workflows. They see a need and buy a product to fill the gap. The result? Tool sprawl. You end up with redundant tools that do 90% of what you already have, costing you money twice.

The Drum reports that 97% of marketers use fragmented systems. Their top pain point isn't features. It's integrating disconnected tools and juggling cross-channel execution.

Here's what actually matters: A tool is only "good" if it strengthens a workflow you already run.

This ladder flips the buying process. Instead of starting with features, you start with your workflow. Instead of asking "What can this tool do?", you ask "What process needs strengthening?"

The ladder has five rungs. Climb them in order. If a tool fails any rung, stop evaluating. Move to the next tool.

Before you look at any tool, document your current workflow in painful detail.

For ad creative, this looks like:

Current State:

Time investment: 4 hours of active work + 2 days of wait time

Bottleneck: Designer bandwidth and feedback loops

Pain point: Junior team member writes creative brief without strategic context, leading to 2-3 revision rounds

Now you have clarity. You're not buying "an AI creative tool." You're buying something to either: (a) speed up brief writing, (b) reduce revision rounds, or (c) eliminate designer bottleneck.

What you're about to get:

This ladder turns tool evaluation from guesswork into a repeatable system.

Let’s go…