Building AI-First Marketing Skills: Insights from Professor Kate Busby
Here at ESEI International Business School we continue to strengthen our focus on hands-on, industry-led education with the help of professors who are also working professionals. One of them is Kate Busby who teaches AI for marketers having spent over a decade working with startups and scale-ups, particularly in the EdTech sector.
As Kate explains, “I’m a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer and Adjunct Professor of AI Marketing at ESEI. Over the past decade, I’ve partnered with startups and scale-ups, particularly in the EdTech space, helping founders validate and grow their ventures in competitive markets.”
Her work includes “designing marketing strategies with AI and RAG, automating customer journeys, and building growth frameworks that scale”, and she also notes, “I also passionate at coaching marketers who want to move into fractional portfolio work, especially as post-pandemic layoffs and global competition for roles have transformed the marketing profession forever.”
This ongoing involvement with companies strongly shapes her teaching approach. “I bring real-world, hands-on experience into the classroom,” she explains. “My approach is very much ‘practice over theory’” and she adds that she does not “just talk about marketing concepts” but instead “demonstrate[s] how to apply them using AI tools and frameworks that are shaping the future of the industry”.
In practical terms, this includes showing students “how to use LLMs for customer interviews, predictive modeling and architecting marketing funnels, or how AI-first products like StudyHall.Ai and JackandJill.ai are leveraging adaptive learning to improve user outcomes”. For her, this is also about making sure that “this experience allows me to bridge the gap between the new demands of the workforce and where traditional education stops”.
What Kate Busby Teaches at ESEI and How Her Courses Evolve
At ESEI, Kate teaches across several business and applied marketing programmes, combining strategy, practical application. “But most important of all, I teach that marketing is a game of iteration. Marketing is not about being rewarded for simply building stuff, it’s ‘let’s test this idea based on our research, read the data then make it better. Rinse, repeat. Marketing is a risky profession.”
In these courses, her “classes cover everything from AI-driven customer segmentation to predictive analytics for marketing campaigns”, and she also integrates “frameworks like CREED for prompt engineering excellence and AI adoption frameworks to help students structure their growth strategies.”
Because the field is changing quickly, Kate ensures her courses evolve alongside the industry. “The world of AI marketing moves fast, so my course content evolves with it,” she notes. “Initially, the focus was on digital marketing fundamentals, but over time, I’ve integrated AI and Automation tools plus case studies from startups using AI to scale quickly.”
She also adapts the content to each cohort: “If a cohort shows interest in generative AI or automated marketing analytics, I create mini-projects around Nano Banana for visuals, Apify to build intent engines or Bricks for dashboards,” which, as she points out, “keeps learning relevant, interactive, and aligned with trends.”
This approach ensures that students are not only learning current practices but are also equipped to anticipate and respond to the next wave of industry developments.
Practical Outcomes for Students
A central focus of her courses is what students are able to do by the end of the term. In her words, “By the end of my course, students should have their own business brought to life through using AI and Automation tools confidently.”
She also wants students to “develop a product-first mindset, understanding not just marketing, but how marketing interacts with product strategy and customer experience” and to “think critically about AI and automation, not just as tools, but as opportunities to innovate in business models whether it is creating AI-first EdTech products or leveraging personalisation at scale”. Finally, she emphasises the importance of being able to “apply data-driven decision-making in fast-moving, startup-like environments, using KPIs and dashboards to continuously validate assumptions.”
The Skills Students Need for the Next 5 to 10 Years
Looking ahead, Kate is clear about where students should focus their efforts. She highlights the importance of “product and marketing integration, where marketers think like founders and understand the role of AI in product-market fit”, as well as “ethical AI and human-centred automation, ensuring technology enhances human creativity and empathy rather than replaces it.”
Advice for Future Students
For those considering taking her course, her advice is direct. “Come with curiosity and a willingness to roll up your sleeves. This is 100% learning by doing, and entrepreneurship is the curriculum.”
She also stresses that “AI and automation are powerful tools, but their true potential is unlocked when you combine technology with strategy and creativity”, and encourages students, “Don’t just learn tools; think about how AI can help you solve real problems for users, scale products, and innovate in ways that are faster, less expensive and simply not we’re not possible before.”
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