Almost every firm I walk into has the subscriptions. Very few have changed a single workflow. The gap isn't the technology.
The subscriptions renew anyway
Over the last two years nearly every firm I've worked with has bought AI tooling. Ask what changed as a result and the honest answer is usually that someone drafts LinkedIn posts faster.
Buy the workflow, not the subscription.
What actually pays back
The real wins are unglamorous: proposal drafting, first-pass lead research, mining sales call transcripts, localising content for different markets, and keeping a technical content pipeline moving without hiring three writers.
None of those are exciting enough to announce. All of them remove hours you can point at.
Start from the job
Map your marketing and sales process, put a time cost against each step, and find the two or three where a machine genuinely removes hours. Build those properly and leave everything else manual on purpose.