AI Strategies For Marketing Automation

If you’re not showing up in AI search right now, the problem might not be your website. You might be invisible in the places that train the algorithms. Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even DuckDuckGo are pulling data from dozens of places to decide which brands show up. Here’s how to gain real visibility in 2025: 1️⃣ Brand presence = AI visibility Most generative search tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) pull from: • Directories (eg. Yelp) • Trusted third-party sites (Crunchbase, BBB) • Review platforms (Trustpilot, Google Reviews) • News outlets (TechCrunch, NYTimes) • Niche forums (Reddit, Quora) If your name isn’t mentioned across the right sources, you simply won’t be part of the answer. Start with: ✅ Industry-specific directories ✅ Review platforms ✅ Reddit, Quora, niche communities ✅ Press mentions & guest posts ✅ Listicles (e.g. “Best X in [City]”) Pro Tip: Run your target keywords through ChatGPT/Perplexity/Gemini, and scroll to citations. If you're not already listed, those citation sources become your priority. 2️⃣ Create linkable assets that work Build tools and resources people actually want to link to. Examples that consistently work: • Industry statistics reports • Free calculators • Interactive tools • Original research data These assets get you mentioned across multiple key platforms simultaneously. 3️⃣ Build topical clusters Every business needs a content map that answers: • What services do you offer? • What locations do you serve? • What problems do you solve? Then build: • Dedicated commercial pages • Supporting blog content • Internal links tying it all together This is how you prove relevance and expertise - across AI and Google alike. 4️⃣ Multi-channel content Google’s increasingly prioritising video content in their search results. To capitalize on this, shoot quick clips answering questions related to your niche.  Publish them where Google heavily crawls: • Instagram • TikTok • Facebook Shorts • YouTube Shorts These are now SEO assets. You don’t need perfect production. Just relevance and consistency. 5️⃣ Schema isn’t optional anymore AI and traditional crawlers rely on structured data to understand who you are and what you do. No schema = no context = no inclusion. Cover the basics: • Organization schema • LocalBusiness schema • Product / FAQ / Article schema • Dataset schema (if applicable) Pro tip: Use ChatGPT to write your schema in seconds. Verify with Google’s Schema Validator. The businesses that win in 2025 will: ✅ Show up across all search layers ✅ Build trust signals across the web ✅ Create content built for both humans and machines

Two forces are colliding in B2B go-to-market: the decline of the traditional playbook and the meteoric rise of AI. In 2006, we founded Marketo and I helped create that traditional playbook — the one built on MQLs, marketing automation, and tracking every click. For years, it worked brilliantly… until it didn't. Now, the “gum ball machine” approach to marketing (“budget in, MQLs out”) has become unsustainable. Buyers are burned out by relentless outreach, and trust is at an all-time low. It’s time to reframe marketing’s role in revenue and lean into brand-building as a long-term differentiator. At the same time, AI agents are reshaping how we work and buy. They’re handling repetitive tasks like qualifying leads and building campaigns, and helping us make purchases by filtering and summarizing information. In this world, experiences that can't be filtered or summarized will become marketing's new currency. These two trends are driving the most profound transformation in B2B marketing since the advent of marketing automation. And they work together. As AI finally delivers on the promise of “automation” in marketing automation, it will free us to focus on the strategic, creative work that truly moves the needle. Put another way, if AI can handle the "-ing" in marketing, then we can focus on the "market": understanding our buyers, crafting compelling narratives, and building memorable experiences. This shift is at the heart of my 11 predictions for how B2B will evolve in 2025 and beyond. Here's a sneak peek: 1. Companies will slowly break from their "gumball machine" MQL addiction 🍬 2. CMOs will work to reframe marketing's role in revenue 📈 3. Marketers will rebalance budgets toward brand 🌟 4. AI agents will gain early real traction in the enterprise 🤖 5. MOps teams will use AI to trade tactical tasks for strategic impact 👩💻 6. AI will start to replace junior sales roles but augment strategic sellers 🤝 7. Companies will adopt AI SDR agents — but automated cold prospecting will fall flat ❄️ 8. Seat-based pricing will give way to value-based models 💺 9. Agents will begin to transform how we buy — and how we go-to-market 🛍️ 10. Experiences, relationships, and original content will stand out as AI filters out traditional marketing 🎉 11. Marketing automation will be reimagined for the AI era 🚀 The full definitive article, shared in comments, dives into each prediction and what it means for you. Found this valuable? Please leave a comment or repost to let me know what you think and help drive visibility for these ideas! Do you agree or disagree? What are you seeing in your own business? 🙏 #B2BMarketing #MarketingAI #MarTech #CMO #MOps #SalesAI #MarketingAutomation #Predictions #Marketing2025

OpenAI dropped something big: retailers can now embed AI shopping agents into their Shopify stores - in just a few clicks. Through a new integration between the Storefront Managed Compute Platform (MCP) (Shopify’s tool for powering custom storefront features) and the OpenAI Responses API (controls how AI agents understand and respond to users), building a shopping assistant no longer requires authentication, custom code, or complex setup. By adding a store URL to the OpenAI Playground (an easy-to-use web interface for testing and deploying AI agents), a fully functional assistant can be deployed almost instantly. Once live, the AI assistant is capable of: - Searching the store’s live product catalog - Adding selected items to a shopper’s cart - Generating checkout links in real time The interaction is seamless. A shopper might type, “I’m looking for a lightweight men’s button-up shirt for a vacation,” and the agent responds with curated options. Upon selection, the item is added to cart - autonomously and without delay. The launch marks more than a product update - it’s a strategic step toward agentic commerce, where AI doesn't just inform but acts on behalf of the shopper. While OpenAI provides the intelligence and interface, Shopify is laying the groundwork for retailers to operationalize it at scale through tools like the Storefront Managed Compute Platform (MCP). And it’s not alone. - Perplexity offers one-click purchasing via Buy with Pro and is onboarding merchants through a free product data program. - Google is enhancing Search and Bard with shopping intelligence, making results more shoppable — though still not fully agentic. - Amazon is using generative AI in listings, reviews, and its Rufus assistant to improve discovery and streamline decisions. - Startups like Cocoon and Cartwheel are building white-label AI agents for brands, turning chat into personalized storefronts. We are clearly moving from search engines to shopping agents. Opinions: my own, Video source: Shopify Developers 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

Your marketing playbook just expired. AI has rewritten every rule while most brands are still playing by 2019 strategies. The companies adapting fastest aren't the ones with bigger budgets or better tech teams. They're the ones who understand how AI has fundamentally changed customer behaviour. Here's what the winners are doing differently: 1. The New Search Landscape: SEO meets LLM Traditional keywords are the past. Conversational queries are everything. Example: REI shifted from keyword-stuffed descriptions to contextual content addressing specific use cases, increasing AI-summarised results visibility by 47%. Reality check: Google's AI Overviews now appear in nearly half of all search results. 2. AI Assistants as Gatekeepers Your brand must be recognised by AI as a category leader to enter consideration sets. Example: Best Buy organised product attributes to match natural customer questions, achieving 35% increase in organic traffic from voice searches. The shift: AI now filters options before consumers see them. 3. Attention Compression Consumer attention spans shrink as AI summarises everything instantly. Action point: Front-load your value proposition in all communications. The pattern: Customers want to digest information about products quickly, not hunt to understand what’s in it for them. 4. Hyper-Personalisation Without Creepiness AI enables true 1:1 marketing at scale, but only if you balance customisation with transparency. Example: Sephora's Skin IQ tool provides personalised skincare recommendations, driving 35% growth in skincare sales. The principle: Use preference-based content sequencing with full transparency about data usage. 5. Multi-Modal Content Strategy AI-driven consumers expect seamless experiences across text, voice, and visual channels. Example: Domino's "AnyWare" approach allows ordering through voice assistants, text, social media, and apps. The requirement: Build centralised content hubs ensuring consistent messaging across all channels. 6. The Human Advantage As AI handles transactions, authentic human connection becomes your competitive edge. Example: Lululemon's in-store community events resulted in 25% higher repeat purchase rates compared to online-only shoppers. The opportunity: Community-building programs generate 23% higher customer lifetime value. The brands that thrive won't be those with the most sophisticated AI tools. They'll be the ones that use AI to enhance human connection rather than replace it. Which of these shifts will you implement first? ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost to share with your network.  ⚡ Want more content like this? Hit follow Maya Moufarek.

Marketers don’t need another AI tool. They need a strategy that protects their #uniqueness in a world busy cloning itself to death. *** Last week, we held a special #CMO panel as part of an exclusive gathering for marketing leaders, hosted at WiseStamp’s offices in collaboration with the English Speaking Networking community. We talked about addiction. Not to caffeine, to AI ☕🤖 While AI helps us move faster, it’s also spreading into every professional discipline, quietly threatening one of marketing’s most essential principles: 📌 To stand out 📌 To disrupt 📌 To challenge the status quo The question of whether to use AI is no longer on the table. That debate is over. The real question is #how to integrate it wisely, in a way that truly benefits the organization. *** Here are 5 key points I shared during the panel: 1️⃣ Set clear KPIs Implementing AI without defined KPIs is like putting on a Band-Aid. An expensive one. Define success metrics for each marketing discipline to make sure the impact is real, not cosmetic. 2️⃣ Allocate a learning budget Upskilling and reskilling aren’t “nice to have”. They’re the only way to make marketing change management fast, structured, and effective. 3️⃣ Track the traffic It’s no secret the search landscape is shifting. Google is losing ground, while ChatGPT and friends are rapidly taking over. The transition from #SEO to #GEO accelerated throughout 2025, shaping new best practices. Traditional traffic metrics are turning red and that can easily panic leadership. Marketing leaders must not only adapt but also educate their executives about this change and its implications for content strategy, community building, and PR. 4️⃣ Set boundaries Define where AI begins and ends, and identify the critical points in your marketing value chain where the human team steps in. That’s the essence of “human-in-the-loop”, a term that’s gaining traction as #AI_Agents enter our workflows. Automation should amplify creativity, not erase it. 5️⃣ Stay curious, not complacent Experiment. Break things. Rebuild. Curiosity is what keeps your marketing alive. Everyone’s busy adding more and more AI tools into marketing, but the real smart move is learning how to create #human_bubbles inside the automation machine - spaces where we challenge paradigms, sharpen our unique voice, and talk about ethics and people. That’s where #differentiation, and real brand power, still live. *** Huge thanks to my brilliant fellow panelists Emmanuel Cohen, Michael Yehoshua, and Angie Geffen, for the insights, the laughs, and that pre-panel brainstorm that could have been a masterclass of its own…💪😎 A special thank-you to Shira Levy Barkan, for brilliantly leading and moderating the discussion! 👑 And to Helena Baker and the WiseStamp team - thank you for hosting an evening that reminded us all that the best marketing still starts with human energy 😌🙏 Photos credit: Bar Cohen • בר כהן *** Tomer Zuker - Pave Your Way

🚀 AI is now my go-to travel planner I travel extensively—both for work and personal vacations. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that planning a trip can be exhausting. From picking a destination to figuring out flights, hotels, visa requirements, and local transport—travel research used to take hours, sometimes days. Now? AI does most of the heavy lifting for me. It’s like having a personal travel assistant that helps with every step: ✅ Shortlisting destinations – I just describe what I’m looking for, and AI suggests options based on preferences, budget, and time of year. ✅ Weighing pros and cons – Instead of going through multiple websites, I can ask AI to compare weather, cost, activities, and travel restrictions. ✅ Planning the details – Flights, hotels, visa requirements, local transport—AI pulls up all the relevant information instantly. ✅ Creating itineraries – It suggests the best places to visit, organizes the days efficiently, and even provides tips on local customs, packing lists, and food recommendations. Memory in AI tools like ChatGPT is making this even better. Instead of starting from scratch every time, AI remembers my family’s preferences. 💡 It knows we love cultural experiences over adventure sports. 💡 It remembers we prefer apartment stays over hotels. 💡 It factors in that we like planning buffer time in itineraries. So now, when I ask for travel suggestions, I don’t get generic recommendations. I get suggestions tailored to my family's travel style. And Google is taking AI-powered travel a step further: ◾ Google Maps now automatically organizes your trip research. It identifies places you’ve searched for and groups them into lists—so you don’t have to manually save them. ◾ Gemini now lets users create their own AI travel expert for free. Want a custom trip planner? You can build an AI assistant that understands your preferences, suggests destinations, helps with packing, and even gives real-time tips. ◾ Google Lens is adding more languages for instant translation of signs, menus, and more—making international travel even smoother. New languages include Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. For travelers like me, this means less stress and more seamless experiences—no more juggling multiple apps and websites. For companies in the travel space, AI is reshaping how people plan and book trips. Businesses that integrate AI-powered recommendations, itineraries, and real-time assistance will have a clear edge in delivering personalized and frictionless experiences. The future of travel is AI-powered, and it’s already here. I write about #artificialintelligence | #technology | #startups | #mentoring | #leadership | #financialindependence   PS: All views are personal Vignesh Kumar

How to Stay Relevant in Marketing Marketing has always been about one thing—connecting with people in a meaningful way. But the tools we use to make those connections have changed dramatically. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, automation platforms, and endless martech tools, the question many marketers are asking is: How do I stay relevant? The answer isn’t about chasing every shiny new tool. It’s about staying grounded in timeless marketing principles while building new skills and perspectives that keep you ahead of the curve. 1. Focus on Strategy, Not Just Tools Technology will continue to evolve, but the need for strategy never goes away. Marketers who can link technology to business outcomes—like growth, engagement, and profitability—will always be in demand. AI can generate content, optimize ads, and crunch data, but it can’t replace the ability to craft a compelling brand story or understand customer psychology. 2. Embrace AI as a Partner, Not a Threat AI isn’t here to take your job—it’s here to change your job. Think of it as a creative and analytical partner that can handle the heavy lifting, so you can focus on higher-value work. From predictive analytics to personalized content recommendations, AI enables marketers to be faster, smarter, and more precise. 3. Prioritize Human Creativity and Empathy The one thing technology can’t replicate is genuine human creativity, empathy, and intuition. Great marketers will always stand out because they can connect with people on an emotional level, spot cultural shifts, and tell stories that inspire. 4. Keep Learning, Keep Experimenting Relevance comes from curiosity. The marketers who thrive are those who continuously explore new technologies, test fresh ideas, and adapt quickly. You don’t need to master every tool, but you do need to understand the possibilities and stay open to change. 5. Build a Future-Ready Mindset AI and new technologies are transforming not just how we market, but also what customers expect. Personalization, speed, and seamless experiences are no longer nice-to-haves; they’re the baseline. Staying relevant means building a mindset of adaptability, where you’re always ready to evolve alongside customer expectations. Staying relevant in marketing today isn’t about being the first to adopt every new piece of technology. It’s about being adaptable, customer-centric, and strategically minded. AI will change the landscape, but it won’t replace the fundamentals: empathy, creativity, and the ability to solve real business problems. The best marketers will be the ones who can blend timeless strategy with the power of new technology—turning disruption into opportunity. #marketing #ai #strategy #cmo #leadership

🤖 1 in 3 travellers have turned to AI for recommendations when booking travel. This came out of a survey we ran amongst 2000 Americans (split evenly between travellers and hotel employees). Personally I use ChatGPT when I need inspiration for a leisure trip and don't have a specific destination in mind. It has gotten so good recently in recommending destinations with great beaches, close to coffee shops that serve flat whites (usually a sign of cooler neighbourhoods) and within 30 minute drive from the airport with direct flight connections to Amsterdam. How can hotels benefit from this new trend? A lot of the Large Language Models in AI feeds from customer reviews and social media, so you want to own that conversation. 1️⃣ Map our the buying personas for your brand. Who are the travellers you aim to attract to your hotel and what do they care about most when searching and booking accommodation? 2️⃣ Once you know which buyers, understand their motives. Do a qualitative and quantitative survey amongst those travellers, to understand what they are looking for when they book your hotel. What are the specific words/attributes they search for when booking a destination/hotel. 3️⃣ Set up smart online advertising campaigns that attract these customers that fit the buying personas. The more travellers you bring in with the right profile, the larger the pool of potential customers using the right language when talking about your hotel afterwards. 4️⃣ Have an online content strategy that accentuates the usage of those attributes in online media by travellers in both reviews and social media. Have a solution in place that drives more reviews from the right customer segments (volume matters in large language models) like Shiji ReviewPro, Revinate or TrustYou. 5️⃣ Make sure you have team members engage with the reviews, again using the right language that supports the strategy. Also hotels that engage positively with reviews, generally see that customers are more likely to leave a review, knowing that the hotel is paying attention. 6️⃣ Ensure you have a website with lots of content and blogposts leaning into all the same buying personas. For example if you are targeting someone like me, write a blog about the best flat whites within a 15 minute walking distance. Most hotel websites are basic and I often turn to the OTA's if I want to find out if the hotel has a gym or allows for dogs. There is no acceptable reason your own website should have less content than a 3rd party. These are all very deliberate strategies, and it takes a lot of hard work. But it is clear that travellers are moving in this direction fast, and traditional marketing needs to shift. This is a really exciting opportunity for our industry!

I spoke last week with a GM who was losing organic traffic. The reason: their site wasn’t indexed in Bing, so ChatGPT simply didn’t see them. Back in the day, most people didn’t pay attention to Bing. Today it matters, because ChatGPT’s web answers are powered by Bing’s index. Quick context: Google still carries ~90% of global search, Bing ~4%. But if guests plan with ChatGPT, being invisible to Bing means you won’t be recommended. 5-minute fix for hotels: Search site:yourhotel.com on Bing. If nothing shows, you’re not indexed. Add your property to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.xml. Make sure your robots.txt allows crawling and your Hotel/LocalBusiness schema is clean. Keep Bing Places updated for NAP, hours, and amenities. Publish helpful planning content guests ask for: how to get there, parking, spa hours, nearby dining, 48-hour itineraries. That’s what AI pulls into answers. Optional: allow OpenAI’s crawler if you want to appear in ChatGPT Search features. Trend: more travelers are comfortable using AI to plan, especially younger segments. If you’re not in Bing, you may be handing those bookings to competitors.

There's a quiet revolution happening in the world of content and discovery, and we're barely talking about it. 🚨 SEO as we've known it is quickly becoming obsolete. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Claude are reshaping how buyers research, especially in high-involvement e-commerce sectors like consumer tech. Andrej Karpathy recently highlighted this perfectly: "It’s 2025 and most content is still written for humans instead of LLMs. 99.9% of attention is about to be LLM attention, not human attention." Imagine a buyer exploring a high-value product—say a premium smartwatch or a flagship smartphone. Rather than sifting through dozens of links, they're now simply asking: "Which smartwatch is better for health tracking: Fitbit Sense or Apple Watch Ultra?" This isn't hypothetical; it's happening right now. AI assistants are increasingly trusted as expert advisors that simplify complex product comparisons. For brands, this changes everything: ✅ Traditional SEO and "ranking #1 on Google" is no longer enough. ✅ AI agents handle the discovery process, dramatically shortening the consumer journey. ✅ Businesses must now optimize their content not only for human eyes but also for AI interpretation. (As Erik Wikander put it beautifully) A few eye-opening shifts already happening: 📉 Review platforms like G2 and StackOverflow have lost significant traffic post-ChatGPT. (Elena Verna) 📉 Big players like HubSpot, Figma, and Canva are seeing declining organic traffic as AI directly answers user queries. (Oliver Molander) 📉StackAI now receives more inbound from ChatGPT & Perplexity than from Google (Antoni Rosinol) The implications for Ecommerce and consumer tech brands are massive: Your product content must become "AI-native," meaning it's structured clearly enough for AI tools to pull and recommend. Content needs precise differentiation and expert-level detail because the AI gatekeepers are getting smarter at recognizing genuine value vs. fluff. As Tomasz Tunguz has highlighted, expect the emergence of AIO (AI Optimization)—the next evolution of content strategy where you're optimizing not just for search engines but for a multitude of personalized AI assistants serving diverse ICPs. In short, the future belongs to those who understand how to capture the attention of AI agents first, and users second. Traditional SEO is fading. We're entering a world where personal AI agents will act as gatekeepers, curating hyper-relevant content tailored exactly to individual needs and preferences. This demands a radical reimagining of CX tech stacks, particularly around product discovery, comparison, and commerce journeys. At Swirl®, we're addressing precisely this challenge by building specialized AI Agents—transforming customer experience into dynamic, personalized, and AI-optimized experiences. If your brand is navigating this shift and looking for ways to stay ahead, let's talk. #artificialintelligence #Ecommerce #AIO #SEO