How to Build AI Agents for Marketing & Business Automation

What can AI agents actually automate in your day-to-day marketing, business & operations work? In this WTSTalk, Erin Simmons, Ray Grieselhuber & Nick Lafferty share real AI agents and workflows they’ve built and use — including community event management, competitive intelligence, email and Slack workflows, content systems, podcast management and personal productivity. Rather than focusing on theory, they walk through what they built, how they approached it, where things went wrong and what they learned along the way. You’ll learn: → How to spot tasks that are good candidates for AI agents → How Erin built a WTS event agent using ChatGPT, MCPs, Gmail, Google Calendar, Tightknit and Sanity → Why testing workflows manually can help you uncover the logic an agent needs → How Ray thinks about agent harnesses, context, human-in-the-loop workflows, security and failure modes → How Nick uses agents for competitive intelligence, podcast management, research and everyday productivity → How to think about guardrails, permissions and agents that manage other agents → Practical ways to start building without getting stuck chasing every new AI tool Speakers: → Erin Simmons — Managing Director, The WTS Community → Ray Grieselhuber — CEO & Founder, DemandSphere → Nick Lafferty — Founding Marketing Engineer, Profound Hosted by: → Areej AbuAli — Founder, The WTS Community Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 10:17 Erin Simmons: Building an AI agent for WTS community events 26:45 Ray Grieselhuber: Agent harnesses, context & business workflows 40:58 Nick Lafferty: AI agents he actually uses 55:54 Q&A: Security, guardrails, multi-agent systems & more Women in Tech SEO (WTS) is a global community for women and marginalised genders working across SEO, marketing and technology.