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I run a zero-employee marketing agency entirely with AI tools — here’s how

Uncategorized
June 13, 2025/by
I run a zero-employee marketing agency entirely with AI tools — here’s how A few years ago, I was head of content at a health insurance company — a role that required a team of full-time employees and freelancers to get the job done. But once ChatGPT hit the scene, I realized I could strike out on my own. Managing people is hard, messy, and expensive. I wasn’t always doing the part of the work that I enjoyed. When I saw what AI could do, even in the early stages, I thought, “Wait, what if I can just do this myself without hiring anyone?” I started small, but even from our first client, I realized it was feasible. Then, with OpenAI’s improvements and the progress in artificial intelligence, I realized that I could scale my agency exponentially with just these tools. How My AI Agency Works Day-to-Day Before I go any further, let me explain my agency model. I work with startup founders who have limited internal headcount and time. Many of them don’t have a marketing team, so I am it. I need to make content that would normally take an army of creators to produce and actually deliver results. Here’s how I do it. 1. I build workspaces with ChatGPT Projects. I never just open ChatGPT and start asking it for content without context. Instead, I use ChatGPT Projects to create a custom GPT page that actually reflects the brand I’m working with. I give the...
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AI can boost conversions from your web page — HubSpot’s CMO shows you how [tutorial]

Uncategorized
June 10, 2025/by
AI can boost conversions from your web page — HubSpot’s CMO shows you how Look, we‘ve all been there — you know your website could be converting better, but figuring out exactly what to fix feels like solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded. You‘re running A/B tests, analyzing heat maps, and guessing at what’s actually going to move the needle. Well, AI just unlocked the process and can become your team’s new superpower. LLMs with browsing capabilities, like OpenAI’s Operator, can analyze your website performance and give you actionable insights to optimize your online presence. It’s fast, easy, and will completely transform your marketing efforts. This killer technique lets you gather data, test user experiences, and increase conversion rates. All of that means more revenue faster. Here’s how it works, all in a fraction of the time. My Three-Step Guide to Website Analysis If you’re a marketer or business owner, you’re always looking for ways to get better conversion rates from your website. Normally, that means you have to: Comb through data. Do user research. Hold focus groups. The problem? That all takes time. Long processes mean lost revenue while you scramble to understand what the data shows. That’s where AI comes in. With an AI agent working in the background to analyze your website, you can get actionable results in just a few minutes. While you can use Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen 2.5, I’ll be working through this process with OpenAI’s Operator. This...
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The state of inclusive marketing in 2025 [new data + expert insight]

Marketing Strategy
June 10, 2025/by
The state of inclusive marketing in 2025 Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. The Unstereotype Alliance studied 300+ global brands and found that those who create inclusive advertisements brought in 5% higher short-term sales and 16% higher long-term sales, as well as a 62% higher likelihood of a brand being a customer's first choice. The study results tell me that inclusive marketing resonates with consumers. It shows them that marketers understand their needs, how to meet them and care about their experiences. It's also clearly good for business. Despite this, inclusive marketing isn't a commonplace practice. So, for this piece, I surveyed 100+ marketing and advertising professionals about whether they practice inclusive marketing and how they implement it and got tips from inclusivity experts on how businesses can create an effective inclusive marketing strategy. Table of Contents State of Inclusive Marketing in 2025 Goals, Benefits, & Impact of Inclusive Marketing How Companies Are Practicing Inclusive Marketing Challenges and Barriers of Inclusive Marketing Inclusive Marketing Best Practices The Future of Inclusive Marketing What inspired me to conduct this research? Inclusive marketing recognizes consumers' different identities (like race or disability status) and...
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Zappi’s CMO shares her secrets for building AI agents that nail brand voice, manage compliance, and more

Uncategorized
June 9, 2025/by
Zappi’s CMO shares her secrets for building AI agents that nail brand voice, manage compliance, and more “I tried using AI for our marketing content, but it just doesn't sound like us.” I hear this constantly from marketing leaders who've experimented with AI tools only to get results that feel generic or off-brand. The problem? Most are approaching AI wrong, treating sophisticated technology like a vending machine. Insert prompt. Receive output. Hope for the best. Exceptional marketers take a different approach, viewing AI as a team member who needs proper training, clear examples, and ongoing feedback. I‘ve seen this pattern in my work at Zappi and throughout my career in machine learning. Having worked with translation engines at HubSpot long before ChatGPT existed, I’ve developed a methodology for training AI agents that transforms them from generic content generators into true extensions of your team. My Experience with AI Marketing Agents For those new to this space, AI agents aren‘t just fancy chatbots. They’re specialized helpers that can work proactively on their own or as part of a team, unlike regular AI tools that just wait for instructions. At Zappi, an AI-powered consumer insights platform, I've watched successful teams create specialized agents for specific tasks. These agents are more reliable than all-purpose AI assistants. Our customers use these specialized agents for concept development across different pieces of the product innovation process. For example, one agent analyzes consumer feedback while another develops packaging concepts. A third focuses on in-store displays,...
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Deep research in content marketing: Using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for strategy

Content Marketing
June 7, 2025/by
Deep research in content marketing: Using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for strategy   Since late 2024, major players in the chatbot game have been rolling out a deep research feature designed to provide what they call “expert-level analysis.” With a focus on multi-step research tasks and more source transparency, this new capability promises to deliver data-rich reports with applications in a variety of industries. Let’s explore what this means for content marketers. Table of Contents What is deep research? What is deep research useful for? Is deep research free? Who are the major players? Using Deep Research for Content Strategy What’s next? What is deep research? Deep research is a new AI tool designed to solve complex problems and behave similarly to a research analyst. It tracks down and analyzes large amounts of text and visuals. Then, it synthesizes the most relevant information into a comprehensive report. One of the most useful improvements comes through better source transparency and citations. Since LLMs can produce hallucinations (nonexistent or nonsensical items) and around 60% of queries generate inaccurate answers, the work of human editors and fact-checkers has always been crucial. But it’s harder to fact-check something if the source isn’t obvious or if it’s quoted as coming from a fabricated link, so more transparency is likely to quicken the editing process. What is deep research useful for? Generating reports with clear citations from various sources is bound to help users...
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Behind the Viral Post Generator: How I reverse-engineered LinkedIn virality (and went viral myself)

Uncategorized
June 5, 2025/by
Behind the Viral Post Generator: How I reverse-engineered LinkedIn virality (and went viral myself) LinkedIn is full of narcissists, and I have the data to prove it. It all started when I wanted to go viral on LinkedIn. Rather than simply guessing what might work, I took a data-driven approach, scraping posts and analyzing what drives engagement. What I discovered was surprising (and depressing): The most successful posts are overwhelmingly self-centered, with people talking about themselves in supposedly “inspirational” ways. Instead of joining the self-congratulatory parade, I decided to call it out. I built the Viral Post Generator, a tool that automatically creates eye-roll-worthy posts, making the formula painfully apparent to everyone. In a delightful twist of irony, this tool mocking viral content went viral itself. In this post, I'll share how that happened and what I learned about product-market fit, distribution, and modern virality along the way. The Birth of the Viral Post Generator About two-and-a-half years ago, I decided I wanted to go viral on LinkedIn. That was my goal: to write a post that would take off. Naturally, I started wondering what truly makes a LinkedIn post go viral in the first place. So, I did what any curious marketer would do. I scraped over 200,000 posts and filtered them based on engagement metrics to identify distinct patterns among the most successful ones. I specifically checked if keywords were causing them to go viral. After analyzing all that data, it was pretty obvious what was...
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OpenAI secretly launched a sales agent — here are the details

ai news
June 4, 2025/by
OpenAI secretly launched a sales agent — here are the details In February, OpenAI gave a two-minute demonstration at a private event in Tokyo. The demo didn’t stay quiet for long. It set off a firestorm in the sales industry. The short demo, which isn’t available yet, was for an AI sales agent. This AI agent can perform autonomous tasks to help sales teams qualify, enrich, and follow up with leads. You can watch the full leaked demo here, but I’ll break down all the information you need — and what it means for everyone doing knowledge work — below. OpenAI’s Entry Into Vertical Agents First of all, OpenAI has mostly focused on consumer products to this point. They created their foundational model, which companies can build on with an API. This is really the first example of OpenAI building a vertical agent. They've built an agent that helps knowledge workers do their work, with use cases specific to certain verticals. How It Will Work According to the demo, here’s how OpenAI’s virtual sales agent will work: A customer fills out a Contact Sales form. That request comes into the OpenAI task pane as a lead. The sales agent calls up multiple tools to analyze the lead and take action. For example: OpenAI’s Deep Research tool analyzes the lead to fill in enriching information like role, sector, company size, etc. It calls up calendar availability to check time slots available...
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How I applied the 95-5 rule to build Gong’s brand from the ground up

Content Creation
June 2, 2025/by
How I applied the 95-5 rule to build Gong’s brand from the ground up When I stepped into my role as head of content at Gong, I didn't come with a decade of marketing experience. I came with a sales background and a whole lot of time spent chasing leads. That experience turned out to be my unfair advantage. Here‘s what I knew from the trenches: Most people aren’t ready to buy when you reach out. Most of them don‘t care about your product, at least, not yet. They’re not waking up hoping for another cold email or wondering if they should check out one more demo page. They're busy doing their jobs. That mental model led me to a question that changed everything. What if we could earn attention before someone was in-market? What if, instead of trying to “capture demand,” we could create it? That's what we set out to do at Gong. And, we did it by flipping the typical SaaS playbook on its head. What is the 95-5 rule? The 95-5 Rule, popularized by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, came out a few years later and instantly validated everything we’d been doing. Here’s what it says: At any given time, only 5% of your total addressable market is actively buying. The other 95% isn’t. Yet, most marketing teams invest heavily in bottom-funnel, high-intent tactics targeting just that 5%. This approach is shortsighted and easily exhausted. When I joined Gong, we took a completely different path. For...
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How one co-founder runs a zero-employee marketing agency with AI tools

Uncategorized
June 2, 2025/by
How one co-founder runs a zero-employee marketing agency with AI tools Running a marketing agency used to mean juggling a small army of freelancers, risking missed deadlines, and spending more time managing people than creating content and building strategies. That’s how Barbara Jovanovic of Startup Cookie used to operate. She’s now built a streamlined operation that generates six figures annually with a tech stack that costs less than one grand a year. There’s no team behind her — just Jovanovic, her AI tools, and a process that turns one hour-long conversation into weeks of high-quality content. Here's exactly how she did it — and how you can replicate her success, whether you’re an aspiring solopreneur or just want ideas on streamlining your workflows with AI. Table of Contents 6 Tips for Running a Marketing Agency with AI Tools How to Maximize Your Resources with AI 8 Top Startup AI Tools for Content Creation 6 Tips for Running a Marketing Agency with AI Tools 1. Never start with a blank page — context is everything. “We never start with just prompting AI by itself to do anything, even the simplest social media post. We always have something to start with,” says Jovanovic. In her view, the biggest mistake people make when they use AI for content creation is asking it to write about a topic from scratch. Jovanovic’s secret weapon? She starts with human interactions. That might mean feeding the AI...
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