What’s Working in Marketing as AI Fills the Feed
Key Takeaways
- Start with where your buyers are. Marketers are combining established channels like email and LinkedIn with in-person events and experiments in AI search.
- Give customers something AI can’t manufacture. Customer stories, firsthand experiences and original perspectives help brands stand out as content gets easier to produce.
- Measure more than reach. Repeat purchases and inbound conversions reveal business results, while shares and saves help identify content people value.
November 6 (Hypepotamus) – We’re all collectively over the AI posters on our social media timelines and AI slop on our LinkedIn newsfeeds, right?
Producing more content is getting easier. Giving customers a reason to care is still hard. For marketers competing in crowded feeds, it means changing tactics…and changing what metrics matter.
Hypepotamus asked agency owners and marketing leaders what’s working now. The answers we heard? AI is essential. But so too are emails, customer stories…and conversations over dinners.
Find Your Buyers Before Adding Another Channel
The marketers interviewed aren’t abandoning established channels, even if they are competing against more content on social channels. But they are choosing them based on how their customers discover, evaluate and buy products.
ZÉORA, a Florida-based skincare brand for sensitive skin, is building around email, Amazon and search, while courting retail buyers as it grows beyond direct-to-consumer. Sarah Zaide, Founder & CEO, said that earned media and PR are also big for the brand, as they are leaning into the company’s founder story and its history.
Marketer Julia Maldonado, who runs Atlanta-based InTandem Digital Consulting, told us that email one of the most under-appreciated tools and says founder-led, short-form video and blogs are pulling people back in.
“My clients who are reengaging their current, previous and prospective customers via regular email campaigns are seeing consistent recurring revenue and are able to scale their businesses by staying top-of-mind,” she told Hypepotamus.
For B2B companies, the mix looks different. Nicole Taylor, vice president of marketing at supply chain software company ketteQ, says her buyers are on LinkedIn, making it a priority for her team. Small executive dinners and in-person events supplement that digital presence.
“Those face-to-face conversations are hard to replace,” she says.
Make Your Content Answer Real Questions
AI search is changing how B2B and B2C brands produce content.
Infinite Giving’s Lauren Patrick says her team refreshed cornerstone content and rebuilt pages using Claude to address buyers’ actual questions. She reports that direct search is now driving new inbound conversions, and credits Atlanta-based Nexus Marketing with getting Infinite Giving, a FinTech startup out of Atlanta, up-to-speed when it comes to GEO.
Maija Ehlinger
The team is also adding client testimonials linked to case studies, giving prospective customers evidence behind the company’s claims.
“Let your clients do the talking,” Patrick says.
Her advice for marketers considering an AI-focused strategy: “You don’t have to start over.”
B2B Buyers Still Need a Reason to Care
Reaching buyers is only the first challenge. B2B marketers also have to persuade a lot of people with competing priorities.
“You're often trying to influence multiple decision-makers, each with different priorities, budgets, and concerns,” Maldonado told Hypepotamus.
That complexity can push companies toward strictly technical content. But explaining a product’s capabilities and making someone interested in it are different jobs.
“There's this misconception that because you're selling to another business, your marketing needs to be strictly technical or transactional,” she says.
Maldonado mixes educational and entertaining content, although clients sometimes resist lighter posts. Those posts, she says, can help break up dry business content and connect with audiences.
Prime Security CMO Vicki Michaeli, who is based out of New York, is making memorability central to her approach. Working with a creative agency as a marketing team of one, she has used Greek mythology and cultural references to “disrupt the boredom.”
Prime Security
Examples include 3D-printed gods at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference and a Cybertruck topped with an inflatable, Superman-clad deity in San Francisco.
Metrics That Matter
So, what are CMOs, marketing leaders, and marketing agencies measuring these days?
Prime doesn’t talk internally about MQLs and SQLs. Website traffic is falling industry-wide, Michaeli notes, and nobody has fully cracked answer engine optimization. They are also taking a page out of the traditional B2C playbook when it comes to creating content online and IRL.
“Being human might be your single biggest competitive advantage,” Michaeli added.
The skincare brand that Zaide runs tracks repeat orders, a particularly meaningful signal for a brand serving customers who may have had bad experiences with other skincare products. Customer questions and feedback about how their skin feels provide another view of trust.
“Reach is nice, but it doesn't tell you whether someone with reactive skin actually trusts you enough to put your product on her face every day,” she says.
Maija Ehlinger
Atlanta-based marketer Ari Rollnick, founder and CEO of OneTeam, watches shares, saves, comments and engagement rate to understand which social content resonates. Shares and saves indicate that someone found a post useful or interesting enough to pass along or revisit. Those signals help assess content; repeat purchases and inbound conversions help assess business outcomes, he added.
And just because it is easier to create content doesn’t mean companies should be creating more content, the experts we talked to said.
Rollnick’s team uses AI for brainstorming and research. Its public-facing work emphasizes behind-the-scenes content, real photos and videos, customer contributions and a recognizable brand voice.
“AI has absolutely made it a ton easier to produce content at scale, but that doesn’t automatically make the content better,” he says.
Maija Ehlinger
Weaver Ellard, a VC-turned agency owner who runs Dodeka Digital, sees a similar problem. Easier production has filled the market with work that looks and sounds alike. Companies need “stronger positioning, deeper customer insight and more original perspectives, not simply more output,” he says.
His advice is to concentrate on proven channels and reserve part of the budget for experiments. He considers AI advertising experimental, while established channels should continue earning their place through measurable revenue.
Jack Fleming, Founder & CEO of Socialry Marketing, a social media marketing agency in Wilmington, North Carolina, said it is important to focus on the next step.
"Social media has always been a place to be a starting point, and push a viewer somewhere else. So, conversion metrics will always remain important. The Call-To-Action (CTA) really matters! Whether you are pushing consumers to click a link to a landing page, click a link to a funnel, send a DM, do a phone call, or complete info through a contact form, these are by far the best metrics to focus on. Engagement metrics like shares, likes, and comments are secondary. General metrics like views are last," he told Hypepotamus.
Another metric that is helping marketers win? Community management.
Noelle Aladesuyi, founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based digital marketing firm We Thrive Media, created a playbook that helped ONE Musicfest turn its social channels into an extension of the festival experience, generating 36,400 new followers, 38.4 million video views, nearly 20 million content impressions and more than 957,000 engagements. For Aladesuyi, it is not just about using social media as a place to post, but rather as a place that is an extension of the brand experience. That, she says, can help drive better product decisions and ultimately customer retention.
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Featured Photo by Melanie Deziel / Unsplash
