Introducing Smarkly: the marketing co-pilot I wish I'd had

Key takeaways

• Smarkly is an AI marketing co-pilot for small teams and founders: it researches, plans and drafts, and you make the calls.
• It's built for the important work that slips from hours to days to weeks until it's gone.
• It writes from a company profile built from your own sources, and marks any claim those sources don't back.

On this page⌄

1. The work that quietly falls off the list
2. What I've learned from both sides of the table
3. What I'd do on day one
4. Why a co-pilot, and not an autopilot
5. Knowing your role
6. Try it, and tell us what to fix

Today we're launching Smarkly, the AI marketing co-pilot for small teams and founders.

It learns your company from the sources you trust, keeps up with your competitors and your industry, plans your launches on one shared calendar and drafts for every channel in your voice. It does a lot of the work. You still make every call.

Here's why we built it.

The work that quietly falls off the list

You know the tasks I mean. Checking what your competitors shipped this month. Turning the launch into a blog post, an email and a week of LinkedIn posts. Updating the positioning doc after the last pricing change. Reading the three industry newsletters you subscribed to for exactly this reason.

All of it is important. It just isn't due today. So it slides a few hours, then a few days, then a few weeks, and one day you notice it has dropped off the calendar entirely. Nobody decided it didn't matter. There simply wasn't anyone free to do it.

Big teams have people for that work. Small teams usually don't, and it shows. (I wrote more about why that work slips and what it costs.) That's the idea behind Smarkly:

Small teams don't need more AI. They need the work that quietly falls off the list to get done. That work is what separates big teams from small ones, and it's what Smarkly picks up.

What I've learned from both sides of the table

I've spent my career in marketing, working for and partnering with some of the biggest companies in the world. My work has helped companies get to IPO and win million-dollar deals against their closest competitors. I've also been a marketing team of one, covering every channel and every task that could fall through the cracks.

In both settings, the same things got too big to keep up with: the market, the competition, the story we were telling and whether everyone was still telling it the same way. And I know exactly what I wished someone would take off my plate when a month's worth of work was due on Friday.

I've also learned what actually moves a company. The wins I'm proudest of didn't come from a lucky viral moment. Viral moments are rare precisely because they can't be repeated. The wins came from planting seeds early and building a foundation: knowing your customer, telling a consistent story, showing up week after week. That's slower than catching lightning in a bottle, but it's the investment that pays off every time.

I'm a Bay Area guy, so I think of Joe Montana. Bill Walsh's 49ers didn't win with the long bomb. They won with short, high-percentage passes and a quarterback who ran the plan without giving the ball away. Montana won four Super Bowls and threw 122 passes in them without an interception. Some people would call that a game manager. Four rings say otherwise. Marketing works the same way.

What I'd do on day one

When I created Smarkly, I thought about what I'd do, as a marketer, on day one at a new company.

First, I'd learn the company: the website, the documents, everything the team had already written. I'd ask my own questions, then turn them into a research path to understand the market, our competitors and the customers we're competing for. That research becomes the foundation for everything that follows, from the topics I recommend to the content I create.

Once I felt comfortable, I'd ask a different question: what should I work on to keep the company current and earn attention? I'd plan around the dates that matter, help onboard new teammates and introduce them to our branding, tone and industry terminology. I'd recommend the plans I thought were the best strategic plays for the goals we'd made our priority.

That's what Smarkly does:

• Learn. Smarkly reads your website, your documents and the content you've already written, and builds a company profile from them. Smarkly uses it right away to draft the content it recommends. Correct anything it got wrong, add what it missed and confirm the facts that matter most so they carry the most weight.
• Track. Your competitors are checked on a schedule, and articles from your industry's publications are scored for how much your company should care. Ideas drawn from an article link back to it.
• Plan. Launches, events and the dates that matter in your industry go on one shared calendar for your team, with posts planned around them.
• Write. Blog posts, emails and social posts for LinkedIn, X, Instagram and Facebook, written in your voice from your company's facts. Ask for changes in plain English and it rewrites (here's how to ask well). A claim your sources don't back is marked for you to check instead of going out as fact.
• Align. A new hire, a contractor or an agency works from the same company profile you do, so everyone tells your story the same way from day one.

Smarkly doesn't post for you. What goes out under your name stays your call.

Why a co-pilot, and not an autopilot

AI is useful today, and it still can't do everything a skilled marketer does. It doesn't know your customers the way you do. It doesn't have your judgment about what's worth saying. And left to itself, it will confidently make up a fact about your company.

Most teams have the human component. They just lack something else. It could be experience. It could be knowledge. Or likely, it could be time. Smarkly fills those gaps. It co-pilots your marketing, takes the time-consuming work off your plate and frees you up for the bigger questions: what's working, what's missing and where to go next.

I believe Smarkly is the tool that will help you get there. That's why I created it.

Knowing your role

Andre Iguodala was an All-Star in Philadelphia and had never once come off the bench in the NBA. Then, in 2014–15, the Warriors asked him to be their sixth man, and he didn't start a single regular-season game. In the Finals he became the first player to win Finals MVP without starting a game during the regular season, largely for guarding LeBron James. He won four championships in Golden State doing the work that doesn't make the highlight reel.

That's the job we built Smarkly to do. You're the one with the vision, the customer relationships and the judgment. Smarkly is the teammate that does the prep work, keeps the facts straight and makes sure the important stuff doesn't fall through the cracks.

Try it, and tell us what to fix

We market Smarkly with Smarkly, which is how we find where it's still rough. If you try it, we want to hear what to fix and what to build next. Write to us at hello@smarkly.com. We reply within two business days.

Start with your website. Your first 14 days are free, and you don't need a card. If you want to see how it fits a team like yours, we have pages for small teams, startups, marketing agencies, credit unions and entrepreneurs.

Joe

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