How to build a shortlist of AI marketing tools

What a shortlist is for

A shortlist exists to make demos manageable. Every demo costs an hour and some attention, and after the fourth they run together. Three candidates are enough to show real differences and few enough to remember. The method below takes a research page of five to eight names and cuts it without opening a single dashboard.

Step 1: write the job list

Write each marketing job as a verb and an object: plan the week's posts, make short videos, publish to every platform, answer comments and DMs, run a small ad, email the list, write the monthly report. Keep to the work your business needs. Ten lines is plenty.

Beside each job, note who does it today and roughly how many hours it takes. That column becomes your baseline later.

Step 2: mark the must-haves

Mark three to five jobs as must-haves: the ones that are failing now or eating the most time. Everything else is a nice-to-have. Add two conditions that are not jobs. A person must be able to approve before anything is published, and the product must name the platforms you use. A candidate that fails a must-have or a condition comes off the list, however good the rest of it looks.

Step 3: score coverage from the vendor's own words

For each candidate, read the official product page and mark every job on your list in one of three ways. Then count the gaps in the must-have rows. The result is your own tally of coverage, not a quality score.

• Finished. The product returns the completed work for approval.
• Assisted. The product helps, but a person still assembles or publishes.
• Absent. The page does not mention it. Treat silence as a no until a demo says otherwise.

Step 4: cut to three

Keep the three candidates with the fewest must-have gaps. If two are tied, prefer the one that finishes jobs over the one that assists, because assisted jobs still cost you hours. If a single product covers most of the list, weigh that heavily. One rollout and one approval habit are easier to manage than three. Where a product leaves a clear gap, write the gap down as a separate, later purchase instead of stretching the shortlist.

Where Link AI fits

Our pick for a place on the shortlist is Link AI by Linkme. Scored by this method from Linkme's own page, it finishes a wide set of jobs: planning the week, making images and videos, posting to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, drafting replies, drafting Meta ads, setting up DM Automations, sending email Campaigns and writing the owner report. It meets both conditions, since you approve the work and the platforms are named.

Mark as absent anything outside that description, such as search-engine work or your website. Then test the tally against the real thing. Book a demo to try Link AI, and keep the job list in front of you.

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