I Tried Google's New AI Marketing Tool for Small Businesses — Here Are 3 Surprising Takeaways

I Tried Google's New AI Marketing Tool for Small Businesses — Here Are 3 Surprising Takeaways

For any small business owner, the story is often the same: not enough time, not enough budget, and a constant struggle to create professional marketing content that looks consistent. The rise of AI promised a solution, but often delivered generic, "out of the box" results that felt disconnected from a company's unique identity. While many AI tools are simply thin wrappers around large language models, Google's Pomelli takes a more foundational approach by first building a deep understanding of a business's unique identity.

Developed by Google Labs and DeepMind, Pomelli is an AI-powered marketing assistant designed specifically to help small and medium-sized businesses create branded content quickly and easily. After testing it out, I came away with three surprising takeaways that suggest this is more than just another content generator.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. It Finally Solves AI’s “Generic” Problem with ‘Business DNA’

Pomelli's most significant innovation is a feature Google calls "business DNA." Instead of starting from a blank slate, the process begins when you input your website URL. From there, it performs an automated brand audit by scraping your website's front-end, extracting key design tokens—logos, color palettes, and typography—and performing a semantic analysis to codify your brand's tone of voice. During my test, the tool explicitly identified and listed my site's "brand values" and "tone of voice," creating a dynamic brand kit that becomes the foundation for everything it creates.

This is a massive step forward. By grounding its output in your actual brand, Pomelli ensures the content it generates feels personalized and authentic. The visuals and copy it produces feel like they come directly from you, not from a generic template.

This step alone solves one of the biggest problems with AI tools at the moment, which are that they are generic out of the box feeling.

2. It’s Not Just a Writer or a Designer—It’s Both

Pomelli operates as a hybrid creative partner, combining the roles of a designer and a copywriter into a single, collaborative workspace. It doesn’t just write your social media captions or just design your ad banners—it does both simultaneously. When you give it a prompt, like "Help me advertise my new mug collection," or select a proactive suggestion like "Pumpkin spice season is back," it generates a complete set of matching visuals and written copy.

Crucially, it doesn’t just pull existing assets. In my test, it generated entirely new images that matched my brand's aesthetic. As I noted during the demo, "...the second and fourth ones are not from my website. So it's generated that by itself." This is not just a generator but an interactive environment; you can then tweak the text, swap images, and even add a call to action button, making the process feel like an on-demand brainstorming session with a full marketing team.

It really feels like a mix between Canva and chat GPT but tailored specifically to your business identity.

3. This Isn’t Just a Tool; It’s a Glimpse into Google’s Future

Beyond its impressive features, Pomelli signals a major strategic move for Google. The company is clearly expanding its AI ambitions beyond its traditional strongholds of search and productivity and into the creative space. By systematically codifying a business's brand identity, Google is also gaining deeper, structured insights into branding that could inform its advertising products for years to come.

Pomelli is a foundational piece in Google's effort to build an "all-in-one ecosystem for business growth." By offering powerful, accessible creative tools, Google makes its platform more indispensable for the small and medium-sized businesses that rely on it. While the tool is still in beta (currently available in English in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), it offers a clear look at where the company is heading and its commitment to owning a larger slice of the business toolkit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion: A Smarter Partner, Not a Replacement

Pomelli is significant because it represents the next wave of marketing technology: tools that are brand-aware, multi-skilled, and fundamentally more collaborative. It’s not about replacing human creativity but about freeing up time for business owners to focus on what matters most—connecting with customers.

Of course, the tool is still early. Its effectiveness depends on having a website with a clear brand identity, and there's a risk that as more people use it, some of the outputs could start to feel kind of similar. But its potential to change how small businesses market themselves is undeniable.

It leaves us with a critical question for the future of business:

would you let AI run your marketing, or do you still think creativity should stay human?