The reality of AI in marketing (Exit Five Newsletter)

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TOGETHER WITH QUALIFIED

⁉️ Agentic Marketing: What is it and should you have it in your marketing strategy?

Agentic Marketing isn’t just another AI trend, it’s how smart B2B teams are actually using AI inside their GTM.

Think AI agents that run campaign orchestration, lead routing, sales handoffs, and never sleep. (Seriously.)

Qualified is hosting a virtual event on November 18 from 10 AM - 1PM PT to break it all down. They’re bringing in top CMOs + their “30 Agentic Marketers to Watch” to show exactly how this is working right now. What’s hype, what’s not, and what they wish they knew before getting started.

You’ll see how real teams are using AI to drive pipeline and how to plug it into your own GTM.

✍️ 3 Real AI Workflows That Actually Work (And How to Build Your Own)

Editor's Note: Dave here. So obviously AI is the big thing right now, but I think there’s a growing gap between what people think they should be doing with AI and what people are actually doing. Everyone's talking. Not many people are building. There's a big difference between people who get paid to make content about AI and the real marketers inside of Exit Five. So we hosted a live session with two marketers from AirOps and Compound Growth Marketing and 406 people joined us live. Below I recap our notes from this session and share the 3 examples they gave - a webinar system that saves 10+ hours, a workflow for turning sales calls into content gold and a content refresh system that brings dying blog posts back to life.

Everyone's hyped about AI. But most people aren't doing much with it beyond writing copy or generating images. I’m just calling it how I see it! Myself included. I get halfway on a lot of things…

So I asked people why they took an hour out of their day to show up.

The answers? "Make AI actually useful." "Help me scale." "Show me the best ways to use it in my world."

Not theory. Not hype. Just show me how it works.

Because here's the thing about learning. At least for me…I need to see how others do it first. Then I can figure out how to apply it to my situation.

So that's what this newsletter is. Three real workflows. Running in actual businesses right now. Not everything will be perfect for your exact situation. But you'll get ideas.

📺 The Webinar Production System (That Saves 10+ Hours Per Event)

Dan walked through a workflow that automates most of the grunt work around webinars.

Here's how it works:

Someone registers for a webinar. That triggers a Clay workflow that pulls their LinkedIn profile, company info, and recent activity. It figures out what they care about and what questions they might ask.

Before the webinar even starts, the system creates a briefing doc for the host. Who's attending. What they do. What problems they're probably trying to solve.

During the webinar, transcripts get captured automatically. After it ends, another workflow kicks in. It analyzes the transcript, pulls out key moments, generates social clips, writes follow-up emails, and creates summary content for the blog.

What used to take a small team days now happens in minutes.

Dan's not replacing people. He's giving them back their time so they can focus on strategy instead of busywork.

The key insight: This isn't about being fancy. It's about identifying repetitive work and building a system that handles it.

📞 Turning Sales Calls Into GTM Gold

Most companies record sales calls. Some even transcribe them. But hardly anyone does anything meaningful with them.

Eoin built a workflow that takes those transcripts and extracts:

• Common objections across deals
• Feature requests that keep coming up
• Language prospects actually use (not marketing speak)
• Patterns in what's working and what's not

This feeds directly into content creation, messaging updates, and product marketing.

Think about it. You already have dozens, maybe hundreds of sales conversations sitting in your system. They're packed with insights about what your market actually cares about.

The workflow pulls those insights automatically and surfaces them where they're useful.

No more guessing what messaging will land. You're using the exact language your prospects already gave you.

♻️ The Content Refresh System That Drives More Traffic

Here's a workflow that makes a ton of sense for anyone doing SEO.

Eoin's team built a system that automatically identifies blog posts that are declining in traffic. It analyzes what's changed in the search landscape, what competitors are doing differently, and what's missing from the existing content.

Then it generates updated sections, suggests new angles, and flags opportunities to improve the post.

A human reviews and approves everything before it goes live. But the heavy lifting of research and drafting is automated.

The result? Content that was slowly dying gets refreshed and starts ranking again. Without anyone spending hours manually researching and rewriting.

✅ Where Most People Get Stuck (And How To Actually Start)

The biggest question from the session: Where do I even start?

Dan and Eoin both said the same thing: Start stupidly small.

Don't try to automate your entire marketing operation on day one. Pick one annoying, repetitive task. Something that happens weekly. Something where the output is predictable.

Dan suggested thinking in three categories:

• Speed to value: Can AI help you get from zero to one faster? (Like that webinar briefing doc.)
• Enhance the experience: Can AI make something you're already doing better? (Like auto-generating restaurant recommendations for event attendees based on venue location.)
• Increase scope without increasing bandwidth: Can AI help you do more with the same team? (Like refreshing old content or analyzing sales calls.)

Pick one thing. Build the simplest version possible. Iterate until it actually works.

And here's something Dan said that really landed: Your first result is probably going to underwhelm you. That's fine. Keep iterating. The first build is always the hardest.

🛠️ The Tools They're Actually Using

People kept asking: What tools should I use?

Here's what came up most:

• Clay for data enrichment and workflow automation
• Zapier (especially Zapier Agents, which launched recently) for connecting systems and building automated workflows
• AirOps for content operations and AI-powered workflows with human oversight
• Standard AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for the actual generation

But here's the thing. The tools matter less than understanding where AI fits in your workflow.

Figure out the process first. Then find the tool that makes it work.

👩‍💻 What This Means for You

AI isn't magic. It's not going to replace your job. It's not going to write your entire marketing strategy.

But it can absolutely help you scale what you're already doing without burning out your team.

The marketers who figure this out first are going to have a massive advantage. Not because they're using fancier tools. Because they're getting more done with the same resources.

So here's my challenge to you: Pick one repetitive task this week. Just one. And try to build a simple AI workflow around it.

You probably won't get it right the first time. That's fine.

Six months from now, you'll look back and realize you've built systems that used to feel impossible.

– Dave

P.S. Here's the thing about learning AI (or anything in marketing, really): someone can show you how it works, but it doesn't click until you actually go and try it yourself. Move the pieces around. Break something. Fix it. That's when it becomes real. So don't just read this and move on. Pick one workflow. Log into Zapier. Try the free version of AirOps. Just start.

And by the way, the team has been blowing up Slack saying we need to do way more of these live AI workshops. So what do you want to see next? Can’t wait to see your ideas.

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

Open to all

• TODAY: The B2B Buying Experience With AI: What Changes? (exitfive.com/live)

Exit Five Pro Members Only

• October 31st: B2B Influencer Marketing & Creator Relationships for Services-Based Businesses: Non-SaaS Marketing Meetup
• November 6th: Local Meetup: Denver, CO
• November 13th: Map Your IT Services Buyer Journey: Peer Roundtable and PlayBook Swap
• November 17th: Fix Your Paid Ads: AMA with Rex Gelb (Former Head of Paid Media at HubSpot)
• November 22nd: Local Meetup: Phoenix, AX

Marketing Leaders Club Only

• November 11th: AI On a Budget: Marketing Leaders Club Roundtable

Not a member yet? Learn more about an Exit Five Membership here.

If you are an Exit Five member, click here to RSVP to these events.

📚 LATEST CONTENT

Here's the latest from the Exit Five content library:

• 🎧 I Answered 15 Questions About Work and Life from the Exit Five Team
• 🎧 From Growth Marketer to CMO: How Kelly Cheng Leads Marketing at Goldcast
• 🎧 Live from LGA my NYC Recap
• 📰 Marketing Is Broken: Why You’re So Busy and Still Not Getting Anything Done
• 📰 How to Put On a Virtual Event People Actually Want to Attend
• 📰 How to Lead a High Functioning Marketing Org

✍️ NEW FROM EXIT FIVE

Do you need to learn more about AI in Marketing?

Our head of marketing, Jess, just launched a new newsletter devoted entirely to AI. She’s sharing what she’s doing running marketing here and also talking about everything she’s learning about AI, new tools, workflows you can steal, etc.

Click here to subscribe to The Prompt and we can help you get an A in AI. 🍎

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