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Hey Marketing Bestie,

Ari and I went car shopping yesterday and she said that we can get the car I like if 2,000 people sign up today ONLY for Marketingland 2027. It's free, unlike the car she wants. FML.

The car she likes is not practical and it is ugly. The car I like is safe and cute.

Help me.

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Marketing says the campaign worked. Sales says the leads were junk.
Don't tell Sales I said this, but...usually BOTH teams are right.

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If you're looking at individual form fills, you miss that entirely.

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6 Marketing rules I’m rethinking

Marketing has changed more in the last 2 years than it did in the previous 10. I know because I was working in Marketing for that entire decade. Yes, I'm old.

A lot of the tactics Marketers like all of us spent years perfecting are becoming less effective. 🙁 Publishing more blog posts, personalizing thousands of emails, ranking on Google, building elaborate attribution models. All of it is being challenged.

Meanwhile, Marketing teams are under pressure to produce more content, launch campaigns faster, and figure out where AI fits into their day-to-day work.

It's one of the reasons I'm so excited about Marketingland Festival 2027 (our free Marketing conference that's on it's 4th year and Weezer isn't playing but someone cool is and maybe it is Weezer? No! It's not). There's a lot happening in Marketing right now, and some of the most valuable lessons are coming from marketers who are actually experimenting, figuring things out, and sharing what's working.

And there's a huge opportunity here for Marketers willing to rethink how they work.

Below, please find 7 changes worth paying attention to, along with some practical ways to adapt. And, sign up here please. I do NOT want Ari to pick our car. Sorry for begging.

1️⃣. Content got cheap. Taste got expensive.

You can generate 50 blog posts before your 2nd cup of coffee.

So can every competitor in your category.

AI has made producing content ridiculously easy. The internet is filling up with articles, emails, and LinkedIn posts that all sound like they came from the same Marketing department.

You know the 1's. Lots of words about unlocking potential, driving innovation, and navigating an evolving landscape. Somehow, after reading 1,500 words, you've learned absolutely nothing.

The brands that stand out will be the 1's with interesting perspectives, original research, and actual experiences worth sharing.

3 things I would do:

• Interview your internal experts. Record a 20-minute conversation with your founder, sales leader, or best customer. Use AI to pull out interesting stories, opinions, and lessons. Turn those into articles, emails, and social posts.

• Build a brand voice library. Collect 10 examples of your best-performing content. Include phrases you use, phrases you hate, your strongest opinions, and examples of your writing style. Give AI that context before asking it to create anything.

• Make every piece earn its place. Include at least 1 original insight, specific example, customer story, or actionable takeaway in everything you publish.

The more content everyone produces, the more valuable original thinking becomes.

2️⃣. Search is becoming a recommendation engine.

For years, SEO followed a familiar formula. Find keywords, publish content, build authority, rank higher, and collect traffic.

Now buyers can ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Mode to recommend products, compare vendors, and explain which solution makes the most sense.

They can research an entire category without visiting a single website.

That changes the way brands need to think about visibility.

Your company needs to be part of the information buyers encounter while researching their options, including the sources AI systems use to generate answers.

3 things to try:

• Run an AI visibility audit. Write down 20 questions buyers ask before purchasing your product. Test them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Record which brands appear, which competitors get recommended, and what sources are cited. Repeat the exercise monthly.

• Create content around specific buyer questions. Build pages that answer comparison questions, explain use cases, address objections, and include original data. Structure each page with clear headings and direct answers.

• Build authority beyond your website. Pitch your experts to industry podcasts, contribute to relevant publications, participate in credible communities, and publish research other people want to reference.

Organic traffic still matters. Brand visibility across AI-assisted research deserves a place on the dashboard, too.

3️⃣. Personalization is getting smarter. Buyers are getting pickier.

"Hey Daniel, noticed you're the founder of The Marketing Millennials. Love what you're building!"

Thanks, robot.

AI has given marketers access to more prospect information and made it easier to create personalized campaigns at scale.

And somehow, everyone's inbox is full of emails that sound exactly the same.

A first name, company name, and generic compliment aren't particularly compelling reasons to open an email.

Relevant timing, a specific business challenge, and a useful idea are much more interesting.

3 things to try:

• Build campaigns around buying signals. Use AI to research company announcements, new hires, product launches, and market expansion. Connect those events to specific challenges your product helps solve.

• Segment audiences by actual problems. Group prospects based on their likely priorities, industry challenges, or stage of growth. Create different messaging for each segment.

• Use AI to prepare better outreach. Have it summarize relevant company information, identify potential pain points, and suggest messaging angles. Verify the details before sending.

1 simple exercise is to remove the recipient's name and company from your email and read it again.

If the message could go to hundreds of unrelated prospects, there's probably room to make it more relevant.

4️⃣. Trust is becoming a competitive advantage.

AI can write articles, generate product photos, create videos, and produce thousands of ad variations.

That makes authentic expertise and credible recommendations even more valuable.

Think about the brands you genuinely trust.

There's usually a person, a story, a recommendation, or an experience behind that relationship.

It's why founders with recognizable voices, niche creators, customer communities, and industry newsletters can have so much influence on purchasing decisions.

People develop familiarity with the people and brands they consistently learn from.

3 things to try:

• Turn employees into subject-matter creators. Identify three people inside your company with interesting expertise. Interview them twice a month and turn those conversations into LinkedIn posts, short videos, and newsletter content.

• Create a customer proof library. Collect real customer quotes, results, stories, and common objections. Organize everything by industry, use case, and buyer persona so your team can easily incorporate it into campaigns.

• Partner with niche creators. Identify newsletters, podcasts, and creators your buyers already follow. Build educational content together that speaks directly to the audience's challenges.

A trusted recommendation can accomplish what dozens of generic impressions never will.

5️⃣. Marketing teams are being rebuilt around better workflows.

Think about everything that happens between having a campaign idea and actually launching it.

Research. Briefs. Copywriting. Design. Revisions. Approvals. Landing pages. Emails. Reporting.

A surprising amount of Marketing time gets spent moving information between people and tools.

AI creates an opportunity to speed up that process and give teams more room for strategy, creativity, and experimentation.

Specialists will still matter. Their ability to direct AI, connect disciplines, and execute ideas will become increasingly valuable.

3 things to try:

• Audit your campaign workflow. Map every step from idea to launch. Identify repetitive tasks such as research summaries, first drafts, formatting, reporting, and content repurposing.

• Create shared AI workflows. Build reusable processes for campaign briefs, competitive analysis, email creation, and reporting. Document the prompts, inputs, review steps, and expected outputs.

• Protect time for experimentation. Use some of the hours saved through automation to test new messaging, creative concepts, offers, and distribution channels.

The biggest gains will come from improving the entire process rather than speeding up individual tasks.

6️⃣. Attribution is getting messier.

Someone discovers your company through a podcast.

A few weeks later, they see a LinkedIn post from your founder.

Then a coworker recommends your product in Slack.

Eventually, they ask ChatGPT to compare your company with two competitors.

A few days later, they Google your brand and book a demo.

Your attribution report gives all the credit to Organic Search.

Beautiful.

Buyers have always interacted with multiple channels before making decisions. AI assistants, private communities, and zero-click content are making more of those interactions difficult to track.

Marketers need a broader view of how demand is created.

3 things to try:

• Add self-reported attribution. Include an open-text "How did you hear about us" field on demo and signup forms. Review responses monthly and look for recurring channels, creators, and content.

• Track demand indicators. Monitor branded search volume, direct traffic, newsletter growth, qualified demos, and the frequency with which prospects mention your content during sales conversations.

• Run incrementality experiments. Test campaigns with defined audiences or geographic markets and compare results against a control group or baseline. Look for changes in overall demand and conversions.

Attribution models can help explain part of the buyer journey. Customer conversations and controlled experiments can help fill in the gaps.

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Just got my brand profile back.
Now that I've seen it, I can definitely say: you HAVE to get yours done, too.

Why? Because it...
👻....is CREEPY good. 10+ pages, outlining my voice & tone, my "fingerprints," and audience personas. They also just added the ability to INFER rules, like things I'd never say/always say, without me ever spelling it out.
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🎙 TUNE IN

Podcast to listen to this week: 

My new 12 min or less podcast

What you will learn:

🎙: The subject line tactics still crushing it right now
🎙: Why LinkedIn’s new collaborative post feature is the easiest distribution hack you’re not using yet
🎙: The Instagram Edits update that tells you exactly what to post

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JUST FOR FUN

🤩: Brand of the week: Eight Sleep
😛: Favorite meal I ate: Taco Bell
🎵: Favorite song this week: Honeybee
💍: What I bought my wife:  perfectwhitetee sweatshirt. It's nice. She looks great in grey.

My best friend Jay Schwedelson and I have the #8 Marketing podcast in the country and it's not The Marketing Millennials.

I'm embarrassed to say the name of the new show. And, I've learned that click bate will get you very far if you work it right.

Reading back the above, I'm not sure what is more embarrassing actually. The fact our new show is called [REDACTED] or that I called Jay my best friend and I'm not sure I'm his best friend.

I'm also not sure I want to find out. Jay, if I'm your best friend, text me. If I'm not, please pretend you didn't see this.

Your friend,
Daniel