Latest / Found in AI: AI Search Visibility, SEO, & GEO / HubSpot's Loop Marketing: Rethinking Marketing for the AI Era
Transcript
- 0:41SPEAKER_01: One idea fans out into multiple use cases.
- 0:44SPEAKER_01: So then you're satisfying people who are looking and watching videos on YouTube, who are reading newsletters, who are asking chat, GPT, and Claude and uh all in the AEO game, uh, people who are scrolling and like the LinkedIn influencer really speaks to them.
- 1:02SPEAKER_00: Marketing has changed a lot in the last few years.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: You really don't need me to tell you that.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: If you've been elbow deep in it, you know.
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: And for marketers, figuring out where to focus our time and resources is getting kind of complicated.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Found in AI.
- 1:19SPEAKER_00: I'm Cassie Clark, an AI Search Visibility Consultant, and on this podcast we talk about how AI is changing the way people discover brands and what marketers can actually do about it.
- 1:31SPEAKER_00: HubSpot recently introduced loop marketing.
- 1:34SPEAKER_00: It's a new framework built around how people actually discover and interact with brands today.
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: And while AI Search Visibility is part of that framework, there's a much bigger conversation to be had about what effective marketing looks like, especially when the traditional funnel doesn't really reflect how people buy anymore.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: So today I'm joined by Caitlin from HubSpot, who's been working on the campaign for HubSpot's new book, Loop, Outlearn, Outmarket, Outgrow.
- 2:03SPEAKER_00: We're breaking down the four stages of loop marketing, how AI fits into each one, and what marketers can do to reach buyers without needing an enormous team or budget.
- 2:12SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my name is Caitlin Milliken Floor.
- 2:26SPEAKER_01: I am a senior project manager at HubSpot.
- 2:29SPEAKER_01: Um, and most recently I've been supporting the loop marketing book campaign.
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: So our chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Agentic AI uh wrote a book called Loop, Outlearn, Out Market, Outgrow.
- 2:44SPEAKER_01: So I've been living, breathing, eating, and sleeping the loop for pretty much a year now.
- 2:52SPEAKER_00: So what is the loop?
- 2:54SPEAKER_00: Let's start there.
- 2:55SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 2:56SPEAKER_01: So HubSwat pioneered inbound marketing.
- 2:59SPEAKER_01: So if you think like 15 years ago, Google exists now.
- 3:03SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to figure out how to get attention on their business.
- 3:08SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that is search.
- 3:09SPEAKER_01: Customers go on Google, they put in a query, usually a few words, and you want your business to rank.
- 3:16SPEAKER_01: So it was a methodology about how you could create helpful content to end up in those blue links.
- 3:23SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of has changed in 15 years, especially in the last few since the launch of Chat GPT.
- 3:31SPEAKER_01: So our executive team decided, hey, we need to update this framework and come up with a new way and methodology behind marketing because what works today is different.
- 3:42SPEAKER_01: And that is the loop.
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: So loop marketing is a four-stage system and it's all about meeting your buyers wherever they are than in the channels they actually spend time in, whether that be uh all over ChatGPT or Answer Engines as a power user, or if you're somebody who needs a more human-oriented approach with influencers that you know or sites that have kind of the service journalism-esque version of doing things to build trust.
- 4:09SPEAKER_01: So loop is all about how do we create a system that way you can show up at all those places and meet all those types of buyers so people discover you today?
- 4:16SPEAKER_01: Because that looks so much different than 15 years ago.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: It does, but like in the context of like AEO, GEO, like I think we still haven't really settled on a name yet.
- 4:26SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like all of those pieces still really align with actually showing up inside of those AI answers.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: So correct.
- 4:34SPEAKER_01: So the loop has four stages.
- 4:37SPEAKER_01: Um, and AEO slash GEO, whatever you want to call it, we say AEO at HubSpot, it is in one of those stages.
- 4:44SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'll just kind of do the overview.
- 4:46SPEAKER_01: The first is um expressing yourself.
- 4:49SPEAKER_01: So every brand has a unique story, a unique reason why they exist.
- 4:54SPEAKER_01: And while what that story is is human-led, you can use AI to help tell that story, capture that story, etc.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: The second is stage is tailoring.
- 5:08SPEAKER_01: So that's basically making every piece of marketing match in persona or like an individual user of one.
- 5:16SPEAKER_01: So you're meeting that person specifically and you're using AI and data that your company has to make every experience personal.
- 5:22SPEAKER_01: Uh, the third is Amplify, and that's like showing up on every channel.
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: AEO is a big part of that.
- 5:28SPEAKER_01: We know that you know, more people are putting in complex queries into ChatGPT, into Claude.
- 5:34SPEAKER_01: And if your brand doesn't show up in the answers, you're missing out on a huge portion of potential customers.
- 5:42SPEAKER_01: Like those are folks who will never even know to look you up, especially because more people are spending time conversing with chatbots before they make a buying decision.
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the fourth stage is evolve, where it's basically like, okay, you have all these different plays going and AEO is a part of that.
- 5:58SPEAKER_01: Let's make sure that we actually look at our data and see, like, okay, this worked, okay, this didn't work, and then adapt what you do based on the information that you actually have instead of flying blind.
- 6:11SPEAKER_00: So let's start with Express because I really like how you mentioned it's human-led.
- 6:16SPEAKER_00: You can use AI to help you care.
- 6:18SPEAKER_00: So if we are using AI to scale everything these days, what does a brand need to do to stand out instead of just sounding like every other brand?
- 6:29SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 6:30SPEAKER_01: So in the book, it talks about creating a taste profile.
- 6:35SPEAKER_01: And that's basically there are all these prompts within on like the history of your brand, your mission, you know, that way you can really define and articulate what makes your brand unique, what makes you you and not a competitor?
- 6:49SPEAKER_01: That way it's you unique and stands out.
- 6:52SPEAKER_01: Uh, another part of that is how you write.
- 6:55SPEAKER_01: I know that a lot of times teams are using large language models for writing.
- 7:00SPEAKER_01: So it's like, what are your no-no words?
- 7:02SPEAKER_01: What are the words that sound like you?
- 7:04SPEAKER_01: What is your tone?
- 7:05SPEAKER_01: Um, and a big part of that is like understanding your customer taste.
- 7:10SPEAKER_01: So you're looking at conversations your team has had with, you know, customers, you're looking at transcripts of sales reps, what are the words, phrases, or approaches that actually resonate with your customers?
- 7:23SPEAKER_01: So you're using that information to feed your language.
- 7:26SPEAKER_01: So not only is it your actual story, but it's this organic approach to how you talk about the brand that resonates with your customers in actuality.
- 7:37SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I really like that.
- 7:39SPEAKER_00: That you lay all of that out with the prompts because I've had a couple different conversations with people who are using AI to really scale their marketing.
- 7:47SPEAKER_00: And one of the big things is you have to have your um, I call it the strategic source of truth, but there's a bunch of different names because if not, then you just sound like everyone else if you're using AI for that.
- 8:01SPEAKER_01: And when I think about that in relation to AEO, um, you know, a big part of what you're doing is you're creating more content than ever to meet very specific use cases.
- 8:12SPEAKER_01: Like I've been in the content marketing game for a hot second.
- 8:15SPEAKER_01: In the past, it was like best CRM on the market.
- 8:19SPEAKER_01: That's all industries, all business sizes rolled up in one.
- 8:24SPEAKER_01: Now the type of articles we might want to create are what is the best CRM for a construction company with 25 employees that expects to scale to 100 in the next two years?
- 8:38SPEAKER_01: Super specific.
- 8:39SPEAKER_01: If you don't know how to speak like your brand and make AI content that, you know, sounds real, if you're using AI at all in the writing process, which almost feels like a necessity with the infinite amount of content and like 200-word keyword prompts that you're trying to rank for or show up for, it's not really ranking, but get cited for by answer engines, you know, AI needs to know how to sound like you, otherwise the scaling for AEO is impossible.
- 9:06SPEAKER_00: Right, right, which kind of brings me to the next stage, which you mentioned is the Taylor stage.
- 9:11SPEAKER_00: So I I got the name right.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 9:13SPEAKER_00: Um, so I had, like I said, had conversations with other people, and when we're talking about personas, a couple people have mentioned just mapping it out to specific personas within your, you know, who you're trying to reach.
- 9:28SPEAKER_00: Some people are, yeah, use your sales calls, some of them are like, well, you already know your customers well enough.
- 9:33SPEAKER_00: You just mentioned though, like the marketing tooth the one.
- 9:36SPEAKER_00: Are you still recommending that?
- 9:37SPEAKER_00: Or are you recommending like branching out to okay, this person might come from a team of 10, this one might come from a team of 200?
- 9:44SPEAKER_00: Like, how does that work with this?
- 9:47SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the interesting thing about loop marketing when you really think about it is it's like, okay, the best practice or the thing that has worked in the past still kind of works, but you have to level up.
- 9:58SPEAKER_01: Like every team should understand personas and the different categories that potential customers fall into.
- 10:06SPEAKER_01: But you also want to be able to speak to Jane, who lives in Connecticut and works in consumer package goods.
- 10:12SPEAKER_01: Like Jane is a part of this persona, but your email, in order to actually be like, wow, this brand knows me, can't just say, hi, Jane, and then have the exact same body text as everybody else has.
- 10:23SPEAKER_01: Um, so when it comes to Taylor, the book walks through how to create a buyer sim.
- 10:29SPEAKER_01: And the idea is you are looking at, you know, buying behavior, customer data.
- 10:34SPEAKER_01: Perhaps if you are using an AI system that is integrated with your CRM, you can pull information about specific accounts to create a digital twin of a potential customer.
- 10:46SPEAKER_01: Um, so as you are brainstorming your marketing campaigns, which is again human, let's say you're experimenting on something new and you're not at a huge company, you're not ready to spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on running a focus group.
- 11:01SPEAKER_01: You now have this digital twin that you can ask certain questions to to help you tailor your content uh in a way that you can actually afford instead of something that has traditionally only been reserved for companies with big budgets.
- 11:15SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
- 11:16SPEAKER_00: I think there are so many different uses for AI, and it's like sometimes it's hard to think about how we can use it exactly because there are so many different use cases.
- 11:27SPEAKER_01: For sure, for sure.
- 11:28SPEAKER_01: Um, and one thing about the book and like how it's set up is you know, I think a lot of stages, AI is there every step of the way as a tool to help with the things that a brand is already good at or that a brand is seeing resonate.
- 11:43SPEAKER_01: And it has additional information on how you can use AI to fill in gaps that either are because of skill set or because of budget.
- 11:52SPEAKER_00: So let's let's pretend that we already have our content strategy ready to go.
- 11:56SPEAKER_00: We already know our personas.
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: Now we want to amplify it.
- 12:00SPEAKER_00: And so we we've been talking about those AI engines, but before we actually start a call, you also mentioned influencers.
- 12:07SPEAKER_00: You've mentioned all the things.
- 12:08SPEAKER_00: Like, what are we doing now?
- 12:10SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
- 12:12SPEAKER_01: Well, I think amplify is my favorite stage because it's about showing up wherever people hang out.
- 12:19SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think this all kind of connects with people shop in different ways or people learn about brands in different ways.
- 12:25SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you're gonna have folks who are like, I only use chat.
- 12:29SPEAKER_01: Like that is the start of everything for me, that is the end of everything for me.
- 12:33SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna have folks on the opposite end of the spectrum who are like, if there is not a human person who I actually trust saying that this thing that I might need is good, I won't touch it because of hallucinations, because I need to know, like, I am a person, I am not a chatbot.
- 12:50SPEAKER_01: Um, Amplify is kind of creating this multi-pronged strategy.
- 12:55SPEAKER_01: That way you can meet everybody everywhere they are.
- 12:59SPEAKER_01: So you might have a podcast like the one we're doing today, which has great conversations, and you're like, okay, that is the main pillar of content.
- 13:07SPEAKER_01: I am now going to turn that into a blog post and a social media post.
- 13:13SPEAKER_01: And if I did the podcast with somebody who has a large social following, I'm gonna have them promote it.
- 13:17SPEAKER_01: I might create a larger partnership with them, right?
- 13:20SPEAKER_01: One idea fans out into multiple use cases.
- 13:23SPEAKER_01: So then you're satisfying people who are looking and watching videos on YouTube, who are reading newsletters, who are asking chat, GPT, and Claude and uh all in the AEO game, uh, people who are scrolling and like the LinkedIn influencer really speaks to them.
- 13:40SPEAKER_01: Um I also think this is the stage where you can have the most fun.
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: Like it uses your creative brain in a very specific way where it's like, oh, that was a great idea.
- 13:49SPEAKER_01: I have taste as a human person.
- 13:51SPEAKER_01: Like, what am I gonna do with that?
- 13:52SPEAKER_01: What's the right thing to do?
- 13:54SPEAKER_00: And the interesting part about all that is everything still feeds into these AI engines.
- 13:59SPEAKER_00: So whether you're posting on YouTube or using a LinkedIn influencer, it's all gonna show up somewhere.
- 14:05SPEAKER_00: And that somewhere is the AI engines.
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: I think it's impossible to remove the benefits of AEO from the benefits Amplify has for AEO from the conversation.
- 14:18SPEAKER_01: Uh, because we know that like earned media or like where you show up, trust, that all feeds into brand sentiment, which is one of the things that people rank for when it comes to AEO and when you're evaluating your performance.
- 14:31SPEAKER_01: So everything that you do in this stage, like you don't have to justify whether or not it's going to be beneficial for how people search today, whether that be, you know, the old school blue links or the new-ish.
- 15:35SPEAKER_01: I feel like this is not so new anymore, but it's evolving landscape of people asking chatbots what they should do.
- 15:42SPEAKER_00: So let me let me ask you this.
- 15:45SPEAKER_00: I feel like, and because you've been in the content marketing game for a while, I feel like you might be the best person to ask.
- 15:52SPEAKER_00: For smaller businesses, I feel like they can really focus on one aspect of marketing, whether that's content or social media, and maybe not have to do the earned PR or do the influencer.
- 16:06SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's the same now, or should they really be expanding out to the different branches?
- 16:13SPEAKER_01: I would say starting with AEO slash content and social is going to be the best thing to do.
- 16:22SPEAKER_01: And if you want to layer in an influencer piece, you know, the budget has to be there.
- 16:28SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 16:28SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to do that if you have a budget of zero.
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: But if you're like, hey, I want thought leadership, I want to have folks that people trust be a part of our brand, start with the faces on your team.
- 16:40SPEAKER_01: Like if you have like a very charismatic founder, or if you're the very charismatic founder in the case of a small business, um, you know, it's a good time to think about what you say and what you believe in the core mission of your business and what makes it stand out.
- 16:53SPEAKER_01: And then think about, okay, like, are there articles from my website on this?
- 16:59SPEAKER_01: Are there posts on LinkedIn?
- 17:01SPEAKER_01: Should I be doing videos?
- 17:03SPEAKER_01: What should I be doing on social?
- 17:05SPEAKER_01: And it's not just brand channel, it's personal channel too.
- 17:08SPEAKER_01: Um, and then once you get to the point where you've grown and you have more budget to play with, then you can start forging really strategic partnerships.
- 17:15SPEAKER_01: Like not everyone should be going after the biggest influencer.
- 17:18SPEAKER_01: It should just be the influencers that make sense in your space.
- 17:22SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you've ever fallen down the infinite scroll rabbit hole, I have, I'm not better than that.
- 17:27SPEAKER_01: Um, you'll be like, wow, there really are influencers for plumbing.
- 17:32SPEAKER_01: And those guys, if you sell plumbing stuff, like that's your market.
- 17:36SPEAKER_01: Uh, so you can really just start with what budget you have, you know, and as you grow and as you diversify, finding the right people to work with if you're gonna go external, um, is a very helpful approach.
- 17:49SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I really like what the start with the people on your team because I think that might be the I mean, unless you're just a you know, a brand of one, which I get it, I get it.
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be all the places all at once if you're just the one person on your team.
- 18:04SPEAKER_00: But um, that's good advice because you do need to have a budget if you're trying to get to some of the bigger, bigger influencers.
- 18:12SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I also recently had a conversation with Sabrina Romanov, uh, and she is an founder of Blotato, which is basically like a they use AI agents to help scale content and on social media, and she's figured out how to turn an idea or a video into like hundreds of pieces of content.
- 18:36SPEAKER_01: Uh, and she did start her whole business as a team of one.
- 18:40SPEAKER_01: So people are doing this in a way that helps rank with AEO, helps get impressions.
- 18:45SPEAKER_01: Like it is possible, you just have to be really scrappy and really savvy, which you know, easier said than done.
- 18:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it takes a lot of brain power to figure it out sometimes.
- 18:56SPEAKER_00: So, so the last stage we have is evolve, and that's really just learning and iterating and doing it faster with AI, which is kind of what you were just talking about with Sabrina's company.
- 19:08SPEAKER_00: Um is there a danger of doing that too quickly, though?
- 19:12SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 19:13SPEAKER_01: So evolve is all about basically the basis for this stage is companies have all these this data, and in the past we would run campaigns for a really, really long time, and then all of this data would come and everybody would look at it, and it would be a little too late because you already spent all the money on the campaign and the campaign is over.
- 19:33SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then sometimes the data just sits in sad CSV files in a back computer of some person and it never gets looked at again.
- 19:42SPEAKER_01: Um part of Evolve is the idea that if we are going to improve on that system, everything needs to be made smaller.
- 19:51SPEAKER_01: Uh, so working in Sprint, something that is legacy from engineering teams, kind of gets adapt in the stage of the book to marketing, where it's like, okay, we want to have kind of a North Star KPI for every campaign.
- 20:06SPEAKER_01: And we're going to make whatever the six-week North Star KPI is very specific.
- 20:11SPEAKER_01: Like the campaign may be longer, but in this chunk, we're focusing on blah.
- 20:15SPEAKER_01: And then you're checking in very frequently and you're seeing, like, okay, are we, how are we doing?
- 20:20SPEAKER_01: What are the blockers?
- 20:21SPEAKER_01: Is it working?
- 20:23SPEAKER_01: So that way, as you get closer to the end of the sprint, you can change things before you've lit a bunch of money on fire for something that isn't actually going to work.
- 20:31SPEAKER_01: Um, so yes, it's really hard to do because it does require you to move fast.
- 20:38SPEAKER_01: But the idea is you're focusing on a smaller number of things in that time frame instead of being like, we are going to get every single element of this right.
- 20:46SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, let's focus on one thing.
- 20:48SPEAKER_01: Does this one thing move if we try this?
- 20:52SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't, you stop doing it before it becomes detrimental to like the brand or the success of the campaign.
- 20:59SPEAKER_00: So I really like that you mentioned that too.
- 21:01SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to like measuring AI answers or AI share voice, what is the sweet spot there?
- 21:10SPEAKER_00: Because I've noticed in my own testing that sometimes um the AI overviews will pull in a new blog post within a couple hours.
- 21:17SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Chat GP takes it a little bit longer, Claude feels like it takes forever.
- 21:22SPEAKER_00: Like, have you found the sweet spot or have your team found the sweet spot of what to measure or how long to measure for those KPIs?
- 21:30SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 21:31SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to AEO, we are using the Sprint model kind of for bigger plays.
- 21:38SPEAKER_01: So if we're going to run an experiment within AEO, so maybe it's like, hey, can we make a bunch of glossary pages and will that rank?
- 21:47SPEAKER_01: We will put that inside of a sprint project.
- 21:50SPEAKER_01: You know, brand sentiment, share a voice, citations, that's always on.
- 21:56SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it's really easy.
- 21:59SPEAKER_01: Uh, I also I recently got my PMP.
- 22:01SPEAKER_01: I think in the project management management world, like some things are not meant to just be we're only going to track it for this long.
- 22:11SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the six-week part, the six-week sprint when it comes to these typical AEO markers, it's a good check-in point if you're not doing it all of the time, or if you're running something very specific to see if you can move the needle.
- 22:24SPEAKER_01: Um, but yes, you're right.
- 22:26SPEAKER_01: It's like you can't just be like, all right, see you in six weeks when it comes to how you're ranking in these different answer answer engines.
- 22:33SPEAKER_01: Their algorithms change, your competitors change.
- 22:36SPEAKER_01: Like teams should be always on about a lot of these metrics that come to AEO.
- 22:42SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you're going to run an experiment, which we highly encourage in the loop model, you know, running that quick and focusing on the one metric is a helpful way to frame those, you know, smaller tweaks.
- 22:54SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want you to take away from today's conversation.
- 22:58SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be everywhere, and you certainly don't have to try every new marketing tactic that comes along.
- 23:05SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's worth looking at how much of your marketing strategy depends on one channel.
- 23:10SPEAKER_00: Here's something though that I think you can try this week.
- 23:13SPEAKER_00: Find one piece of content, one customer question, or one idea that's already resonating with your audience.
- 23:19SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a blog post that consistently brings in new leads, a question your sales team hears all the time.
- 23:25SPEAKER_00: It could even be a LinkedIn post that started a really good conversation.
- 23:29SPEAKER_00: Now think about the other place where that same idea could reach your buyers.
- 23:34SPEAKER_00: Could that blog post become a video?
- 23:37SPEAKER_00: Could you bring that customer question into a podcast conversation?
- 23:41SPEAKER_00: Could someone on your team share their perspective on LinkedIn?
- 23:45SPEAKER_00: Just pick one, give it a try, and decide what you're going to measure before you publish it.
- 23:50SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's one of the most useful lessons from loop marketing.
- 23:54SPEAKER_00: You don't need to completely overhaul your strategy every time buyer behavior changes.
- 24:00SPEAKER_00: You just need to understand what's working, experiment with ways to build on what's working, and then use what you learn to make your next move.
- 24:08SPEAKER_00: Speaking of learning, I'm also hosting a free live training on November 5th at 1 p.m.
- 24:13SPEAKER_00: Eastern Time.
- 24:14SPEAKER_00: If you've been trying to figure out how to approach AI Search Visibility and what it means for your marketing strategy, I would love for you to join me.
- 24:22SPEAKER_00: The registration link is down in the show notes.
- 24:24SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to figure out where AI Search fits into your broader marketing strategy, that's something I can help with through Cassie Clark Marketing.
- 24:31SPEAKER_00: From AI Search Visibility Audits to content strategy to team training, I work with teams to understand where they stand today and then build a strategy for where they want to go.
- 24:41SPEAKER_00: You can learn more at CassieClark Marketing.com.
- 24:44SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're following Found in the Eye so you don't miss what's coming next.
- 24:49SPEAKER_00: Until then, stay visible.