How To Use AI To Improve Your Copywriting Workflow

Most copywriters don’t have a writing problem. They have a workflow problem.

You know the feeling. You sit down to write. Hours go by. You’re still stuck on the intro. Or maybe the draft is done, but now you’re wading through edits from three different people, all with different opinions.

The deadline’s tomorrow. Your calendar is full. You’re tired. And this one post has taken up your entire afternoon.

That’s not a writing issue. That’s a bottleneck.

And AI can help.

The five big slowdowns in copywriting

When I look at most copywriting workflows — whether in-house or freelance — the biggest slowdowns tend to fall into five buckets.

The first is idea generation. Coming up with angles, hooks, and frameworks from scratch every week burns time. You end up waiting for inspiration when you should be executing.

Second is research. You’re googling stats, combing through LinkedIn, reading PDFs. And even after all that effort, you still end up with surface-level insight.

Then there’s drafting. Getting from outline to decent first draft takes longer than you think. You second-guess your phrasing, try three different intros, and still feel like the tone’s off.

Fourth is editing. Not just typos — I’m talking about rewriting for clarity, trimming fluff, and making it sound like the client. It’s hard to do quickly and well.

Last is the review process. The feedback loop is long. Everyone has an opinion. No one agrees. By the time the final version is approved, you’ve lost the original point.

If you’re doing all of this manually, it’s no wonder you’re behind.

Why this kills output

It’s not just about being slow. These bottlenecks compound.

You miss deadlines. You get stuck on low-leverage work. You write fewer pieces, which means fewer tests, fewer wins, and fewer chances to grow. Your energy goes toward rewriting the same sentence five times instead of pitching new ideas or building better systems.

Over time, the opportunity cost adds up. That’s what makes AI valuable here. It doesn’t replace your skill. It just lets you spend more time on the parts that matter.

Where AI fits into your copywriting workflow

AI won’t turn you into a better writer overnight. But it will make your process faster, more structured, and easier to repeat. Here’s how I’ve seen it help.

You can use AI to generate outlines for almost any topic in seconds. Instead of staring at a blank doc, you’re refining a structure that already exists.

You can plug in research notes or client briefs and get a rough first draft that sounds pretty close to the real thing. It’s not perfect — and it shouldn’t be — but it gives you a springboard.

You can feed it copy for editing and get back suggestions for trimming, rewriting, or simplifying. You still have to make the final call, but now you’re choosing instead of chasing.

And when the client sends messy feedback, you can paste the comments in and ask for a summary or revision suggestions. Suddenly, the noise gets distilled into action.

That’s the real power of AI. It removes the friction between you and the next step.

Examples of AI copywriting workflows

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post about reducing churn for a SaaS company.

With AI, the workflow might look like this:

Step	Without AI	With AI
Topic Ideation	30 mins browsing Google	5 mins prompting ChatGPT
Outline	45 mins manual structuring	10 mins with GPT draft assist
First Draft	3 hours writing from scratch	1.5 hours refining AI draft
Edits	90 mins self-editing	45 mins using Claude/Hemingway
Review Process	3 days of back-and-forth	1 day with AI comment parsing

Even if you only shave 30% off each task, that adds up to hours saved per project. Which means more output, less burnout, and shorter timelines.

Best AI copywriting tools I recommend

Different tools serve different parts of the workflow. If you’re starting out, here’s what I’d try.

• Use ChatGPT for fast drafts and ideation.
• Claude is better when you need nuance, especially for rewriting or editing longer content. 
• Notion AI is helpful for summarizing client notes or repackaging content into different formats. 
• Tools like Copy.ai and Jasper can help for short-form, high-volume writing, though you’ll still need to tweak heavily. 
• And Hemingway or Grammarly are great for final polish.

If you’re turning long interviews into posts, Descript can transcribe and help extract useful copy in minutes.

What changes when you fix your copywriting workflow

You write faster. You edit smarter. You stop dreading the blank page.

But more importantly, your output increases without your quality dropping. That’s the win.

You go from spending six hours on a single article to doing three or four in a day. That means you can take on more clients, raise your rates, or finally build that content library your company keeps talking about.

It also makes you a better thinker. When you don’t waste energy on low-leverage steps, you have more room to focus on the message, the audience, and the strategy.

And that’s where good writing really comes from — not the typing, but the thinking.

If you want to go deeper

We’re running a course on this. It’s called AI in Content Writing. We built it for copywriters, marketers, and content folks who want to use AI to speed things up without losing their voice.

It’s short, tactical, and taught by people who write every day.

If you want in, join the waitlist.