This week we attended AI Unlocked, an event held in Wakefield at the new WX venue. It had a jam-packed agenda filled with industry experts, practical insights, and important discussions around the impact of AI on businesses, and how we can use new tools to our advantage.
Amongst the highlights was Alexis Bradbury taking part in the panel “Next Gen Marketing: AI Tools for Today’s SME”. He sat alongside Tom Howson (Founder of VidPlate – which looks like a really exciting new platform), Jonny Ross from Fleek Marketing, Helen Hartley (who chaired the panel), Georgia Halston from Halston Group, and Nick Washbourne from Let’s Run Marketing.
The discussions delved into everyone’s favourite AI tools and explored the nuance around prompting for success. As with all new tools, it’s important to note that there are some ethical questions around the use of AI – and we would advise everyone to proceed with caution – always making sure work goes through a ‘human-guided process’. Whilst we’re seeing great results from these new and exciting platforms, a good level of understanding of manual processes will guarantee the output is of a high quality.
To finish the day, we joined Jonny Ross’s session “AI SEO: Supercharge Your 2026 Visibility Strategy” – which served as a great reminder of those little SEO hints and tips that we should all be following, as well as confirmation that while AI is causing a stir in the SEO landscape, the core principles that we operate on are very much the same, and still as effective.
Throughout the day, we heard about a whole list of tools worth exploring – from ElevenLabs for voiceovers and ComfyUI for creating video and image content, to NotebookLM for pulling research together. Another time-saving platform recommendation was Quso.ai, which automatically generates clips from long-form content.
Other handy platforms mentioned included Writesonic, Surfer SEO and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest for visibility tracking. Fyxer AI was recommended as an executive assistant tool that can manage your inbox, reply in your tone, and even make meeting notes.
Of course, Google’s own tools are still invaluable – Search Console remains a must-have, and SEMRush continues to add new AI-driven features (which we’re already making good use of).
Some key takeaways from the day:
- In our view, the most important thing to remember is that AI is only as good as what you put into it. You need to craft strong, detailed prompts, and guide the whole process so that it is human-led from start to finish.
- Google reviews are more important than ever, as AI tools increasingly use them for context and recommendations.
- Local SEO – is also growing in importance thanks to the rise in users asking AI for recommendations and suggestions. Make sure your website clearly states whether you’re a local or national business. If you only serve certain areas, mention them – better yet, build specific landing pages for each (get our guide to location-based landing pages here).
- Video content has been increasingly important in your content strategy for a few years, but as Google now ranks YouTube content, and search engines utilise its videos for trust signals, including them is essential.
- SEO still loves a ‘how-to’, so include step-by-step content where you can.
- Your Google Business Profile should be fully filled in – add detailed service descriptions, at least five photos, and even get your own FAQs started to encourage engagement (a tip directly from Google).
All in all, the event was a brilliant opportunity to meet new people, learn about AI tools, and share ideas with others within the marketing and business community. We had some great chats with copywriters, business owners, the teams from Wakefield Council and Ad:Venture, as well as several clients past and present.
