The gentlemen’s agreement that netted 210,000 subscribers. [Steal this play.]

“SMASH that like button,” the host says, and your eyes roll back so far you can see your own medulla. “And don’t forget to subscribe!”

If you make videos, podcasts, or social media posts, you know you should be encouraging engagement. But if doing so makes you feel like you need a shower, this story is for you.

Today, the producer of My First Million shares how they turned boring engagement farming into shared language that their audience willingly (and joyfully) spreads — netting 200k subscribers in the process.

The team calls it “The Gentlemen’s Agreement.” And you should absolutely try something similar.

Gentlemen, behold.

Entrepreneurs Sam Parr and Shaan Puri didn’t set out to be podcasters or YouTubers.

“They were operating in the mindset of ‘We’re creating this for us, and if people watch it, great,’” says Arie Desormeaux. “They weren’t identifying as content creators.”

So when the show started to organically pick up followers, they had to decide whether to do all the things that content creators are “supposed” to do: Ad breaks. Engagement farming. Begging for subscribers.

Desormeaux is a senior producer for HubSpot Media and one of the minds behind the ongoing success of My First Million, which currently boasts almost 900,000 followers.

But it didn’t start that way, and she shares with me the thinking behind one of their early moments of explosive growth.

“Instead of doing something we should be doing, just by default, we decided to make it a funny exchange, and then turn that into a bit that’s also a value add. We’re going to turn it into something that becomes part of the language of the audience.”

So, instead of the typical ‘like and subscribe,’ Parr and Puri came up with the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Here it is in Parr’s words:

“If this is the first episode you’re listening to, you get this one for free. But if it’s the second episode or more that you’ve listened to, here’s our Gentlemen’s agreement. You go to whatever app you’re on, and you click ‘subscribe’ or ‘follow’ or whatever it is.

“We make this for you. We’re your little laboratory rats. We’re doing all this crap for you, just go and do that for us.”

The Inclusion Factor

The effect was nearly immediate, with the show picking up 210,000 subscribers within a matter of months.

And while it’s nearly impossible to say this was the sole reason in isolation, Parr himself described the Gentlemen’s Agreement as “the biggest needle mover.”

It wasn’t simply that listeners were honoring the agreement. They were sharing it.

“You’ll see it in the YouTube comments. You’ll see it on LinkedIn,” Desormeaux says. “It becomes almost inside baseball for people who know. It’s become a proper noun. And that creates an inclusion factor.”

That inclusion factor is what she attributes the success of the tactic to. The very words “Gentlemen’s Agreement” have become a way for listeners to identify with each other. It has transcended engagement farming to become community building.

“‘Like and subscribe’ is such an anonymous way of communicating to people. It’s transactional. I’m talking to you like you’re only what’s on the other side of a button. It’s a signal for the brain to check out,” she explains. “[Whereas,] the Gentlemen’s Agreement is a relationship-building tactic. It’s a goodwill agreement between us and the audience.”

Creating Your Contract

Now, you shouldn’t copy this tactic word-for-word. Not only would that be ungentlemanly, but it would also be ineffective. Your unique audience needs your unique language.

But Desormeaux shared some thoughts on how to find the lingua franca for your listeners.

1. Focus on the essential value exchange.

“Everyone who is creating content on the internet is doing the same value exchange with their audience. Whether it’s entertainment, tutorials, interviews, it’s all the same.” You’re exchanging your content for their attention.

But when you simply ask for likes, you’re presenting it as a one-sided equation. Instead, remind your potential audience that the exchange goes both ways.

Parr and Puri make no secret of the amount of effort they’re offering in return.

2. Stay in character.

By now, you can probably spot engagement farming just by the change in tone, without even listening to the words. So many content creators treat these moments as a chore, so that’s what listening feels like.

“It becomes part of the noise of the internet. It’s the same as, ‘Hey, let’s take a quick ad break.’ They’ve heard it so many times, it’s lost its potency.”

Instead, find the wording that matches the soul of your content.

“What is the tone that your audience responds to? My First Million is entertainment first, nerds second, and business third.”

That’s why the Gentlemen’s Agreement is presented as a funny, kinda-nerdy business proposition. It probably wouldn’t work for, say, a podcast about knitting grannies.

3. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

“If we had done it one time, it would have just been a novelty. Doing it consistently is what creates a movement. Bringing it back from episode to episode is what lodges it in the brain.”

And they don’t just mention it in each episode. They also use it in their social media posts, create tongue-in-cheek shareable content, and even slap it on their merch.

The result? “The audience recognizes it and uses it in situ.”

4. Don’t worry about being repetitive.

During one episode, Parr mused that the Gentlemen’s Agreement may have lost its novelty, but Desormeaux isn’t worried.

“It’s novel for whoever is hearing it for the first time, for people who haven’t subscribed yet.”

In other words, if you’ve heard it enough to tune it out, you’re probably already a subscriber. (Or you’re breaking the agreement. Tsk, tsk.)

5. Acknowledge the awkwardness.

“There’s value in the subversive. It IS cringe and unlikeable to ask for subscribers,” Desormeaux admits. “But somehow, making fun of the economics of being a content creator helps to claw away the objections of the audience.”

If you acknowledge that it’s cringey, they can’t call you cringey. Part of the success of the Gentlemen’s Agreement is that it disarms the transactional nature by acknowledging the transactional nature.

And, hey, if you’ve made it this far… do a gentleman a favor? Go click on that subscribe button.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-gentlemens-agreement

“SMASH that like button,” the host says, and your eyes roll back so far you can see your own medulla. “And don’t forget to subscribe!”

If you make videos, podcasts, or social media posts, you know you should be encouraging engagement. But if doing so makes you feel like you need a shower, this story is for you.

Today, the producer of My First Million shares how they turned boring engagement farming into shared language that their audience willingly (and joyfully) spreads — netting 200k subscribers in the process.

The team calls it “The Gentlemen’s Agreement.” And you should absolutely try something similar.

Gentlemen, behold.

Entrepreneurs Sam Parr and Shaan Puri didn’t set out to be podcasters or YouTubers.

“They were operating in the mindset of ‘We’re creating this for us, and if people watch it, great,’” says Arie Desormeaux. “They weren’t identifying as content creators.”

So when the show started to organically pick up followers, they had to decide whether to do all the things that content creators are “supposed” to do: Ad breaks. Engagement farming. Begging for subscribers.

Desormeaux is a senior producer for HubSpot Media and one of the minds behind the ongoing success of My First Million, which currently boasts almost 900,000 followers.

But it didn’t start that way, and she shares with me the thinking behind one of their early moments of explosive growth.

“Instead of doing something we should be doing, just by default, we decided to make it a funny exchange, and then turn that into a bit that’s also a value add. We’re going to turn it into something that becomes part of the language of the audience.”

So, instead of the typical ‘like and subscribe,’ Parr and Puri came up with the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Here it is in Parr’s words:

“If this is the first episode you’re listening to, you get this one for free. But if it’s the second episode or more that you’ve listened to, here’s our Gentlemen’s agreement. You go to whatever app you’re on, and you click ‘subscribe’ or ‘follow’ or whatever it is.

“We make this for you. We’re your little laboratory rats. We’re doing all this crap for you, just go and do that for us.”

The Inclusion Factor

The effect was nearly immediate, with the show picking up 210,000 subscribers within a matter of months.

And while it’s nearly impossible to say this was the sole reason in isolation, Parr himself described the Gentlemen’s Agreement as “the biggest needle mover.”

It wasn’t simply that listeners were honoring the agreement. They were sharing it.

“You’ll see it in the YouTube comments. You’ll see it on LinkedIn,” Desormeaux says. “It becomes almost inside baseball for people who know. It’s become a proper noun. And that creates an inclusion factor.”

That inclusion factor is what she attributes the success of the tactic to. The very words “Gentlemen’s Agreement” have become a way for listeners to identify with each other. It has transcended engagement farming to become community building.

“‘Like and subscribe’ is such an anonymous way of communicating to people. It’s transactional. I’m talking to you like you’re only what’s on the other side of a button. It’s a signal for the brain to check out,” she explains. “[Whereas,] the Gentlemen’s Agreement is a relationship-building tactic. It’s a goodwill agreement between us and the audience.”

Creating Your Contract

Now, you shouldn’t copy this tactic word-for-word. Not only would that be ungentlemanly, but it would also be ineffective. Your unique audience needs your unique language.

But Desormeaux shared some thoughts on how to find the lingua franca for your listeners.

1. Focus on the essential value exchange.

“Everyone who is creating content on the internet is doing the same value exchange with their audience. Whether it’s entertainment, tutorials, interviews, it’s all the same.” You’re exchanging your content for their attention.

But when you simply ask for likes, you’re presenting it as a one-sided equation. Instead, remind your potential audience that the exchange goes both ways.

Parr and Puri make no secret of the amount of effort they’re offering in return.

2. Stay in character.

By now, you can probably spot engagement farming just by the change in tone, without even listening to the words. So many content creators treat these moments as a chore, so that’s what listening feels like.

“It becomes part of the noise of the internet. It’s the same as, ‘Hey, let’s take a quick ad break.’ They’ve heard it so many times, it’s lost its potency.”

Instead, find the wording that matches the soul of your content.

“What is the tone that your audience responds to? My First Million is entertainment first, nerds second, and business third.”

That’s why the Gentlemen’s Agreement is presented as a funny, kinda-nerdy business proposition. It probably wouldn’t work for, say, a podcast about knitting grannies.

3. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

“If we had done it one time, it would have just been a novelty. Doing it consistently is what creates a movement. Bringing it back from episode to episode is what lodges it in the brain.”

And they don’t just mention it in each episode. They also use it in their social media posts, create tongue-in-cheek shareable content, and even slap it on their merch.

The result? “The audience recognizes it and uses it in situ.”

4. Don’t worry about being repetitive.

During one episode, Parr mused that the Gentlemen’s Agreement may have lost its novelty, but Desormeaux isn’t worried.

“It’s novel for whoever is hearing it for the first time, for people who haven’t subscribed yet.”

In other words, if you’ve heard it enough to tune it out, you’re probably already a subscriber. (Or you’re breaking the agreement. Tsk, tsk.)

5. Acknowledge the awkwardness.

“There’s value in the subversive. It IS cringe and unlikeable to ask for subscribers,” Desormeaux admits. “But somehow, making fun of the economics of being a content creator helps to claw away the objections of the audience.”

If you acknowledge that it’s cringey, they can’t call you cringey. Part of the success of the Gentlemen’s Agreement is that it disarms the transactional nature by acknowledging the transactional nature.

And, hey, if you’ve made it this far… do a gentleman a favor? Go click on that subscribe button.

via Perfecte news Non connection

Why Loop Marketing matters in 2026, according to our State of Marketing report

HubSpot’s latest State of Marketing data shows that 65% of companies exceeded their goals last year, and 93.7% improved lead quality. Should the industry celebrate and prepare for a relaxed 2026? Barely.

The current state of marketing mirrors what happens to an Olympic athlete who hits a personal best — the reward is a higher bar. Coaches expect more. Training intensifies. When everything goes well, expectations and performance pressure keep rising.

So marketing teams succeed, but they succeed inside systems that demand speed, iteration, and tight data feedback cycles. All of this makes Loop Marketing more relevant than ever heading into 2026. Here’s what teams need to know.

Table of Contents

• What is Loop Marketing?
• Why Loop Marketing Matters for Teams.
• How Teams Use the Loop (Without Even Knowing It).

What is Loop Marketing?

Loop Marketing is a repeatable, four-stage approach where every marketing action feeds the next one, creating continuous, compounding growth instead of one-off campaigns.

It replaces the traditional linear model, which assumes that buyers enter the funnel through the same touchpoints and act similarly throughout the journey. Loop Marketing, instead, acknowledges the shift in buyers’ behaviours influenced by AI search. The approach offers a cycle where content, data, channels, and customer interactions form self-reinforcing loops.

How does Loop Marketing work?

Loop Marketing works by cycling teams through four repeatable stages. These stages are not new marketing ideas. What’s new is treating them as a closed, operational loop inside your marketing tools that immediately implements what it’s learned from the last campaign with the help of AI.

Stage 1: Express

Oftentimes, marketing teams skip this stage and rush into tactics. Wrong. Loop Marketing forces teams to slow down and align before execution. So, define the problem you uniquely solve, your audience, and your differentiation.

Stage 2: Tailor

Make the message relevant to each audience — at scale, with AI, to deliver experiences that truly feel personal to each customer. This stage is about how you tell the same story differently to different segments. In doing so, you’re creating your core content and other assets grounded in intent signals and behavioral data.

Stage 3: Amplify

Get the message out, everywhere it needs to be. This includes:

• Paid media.
• Social.
• Email newsletters.
• AEO.
• Events.
• Trade shows.
• Outdoor, physical, and digital spaces.
• LLMs.

Stage 4: Evolve

This is classic “test and measure,” but iterate quickly with AI. Feed AI-powered insights back into any previous stage, not just back to Express. Simply put, this stage is continuous optimization for:

• Testing campaigns.
• Measuring performance.
• Learning what works.
• Feeding insights back into earlier stages.

Note that AI plays an assistant role here by surfacing insights, answering questions faster, and reducing manual reporting.

Why Loop Marketing Matters for Teams.

1. AI personalization creates more signals than teams can handle without loops

AI personalization is the top trend of this year, with 49% of marketers already using AI to tailor content. On its own, personalized content performs well. According to our data, 91% of marketers say personalization improves engagement, and 93% saw a great impact on marketing-driven leads or purchases from personalized experiences.

But as teams ship more targeted content, the volume of data (a.k.a. signals) grows fast. That’s where AI personalization can start to break down.

Bradley Sanders, our Senior AI Strategist, warns that once teams begin personalizing at scale with AI, the biggest challenge is keeping their strategy evolving. Without a looped system, personalization becomes static, signals fragment across tools, and outputs are no longer informed by what actually works. Teams scale content and messaging, but lack a mechanism to continuously capture outcomes and adjust strategy.

AI-powered loops make personalization scalable. For example, HubSpot’s Personalization Agent delivers individualized experiences and personalizes content on the fly based on real-time signals and the prospect’s title, industry, deal or cart records, lifecycle stages, and more.

2. Repurposing overwhelms teams unless loops turn one asset into many

Content repurposing is now the backbone of marketing efficiency, with 35% of marketers repurposing assets across channels. So teams are expected to publish everywhere, but headcount rarely grows.

Without the Loop, this becomes semi-manual and time-consuming — teams have to decide what to repurpose, where to send it, and how to adjust it every time.

Loops make this simpler. One asset goes out, teams see what performs, and the Loop automatically guides what to spin into a video, social post, email snippet, or short script. This is Amplify in action.

Tools like HubSpot’s Content Remix make this even easier by turning long-form assets into multiple formats in minutes. A podcast into a blog post, short clips, social posts? Say no more.

3. Brand-value content gets harder to manage as channels multiply

Almost half of marketers now create content tied to their brand’s values. At the same time, brand awareness is the top marketing goal for 2025 for 35% of teams.

But here goes the tricky part, actually, two, about brand storytelling today. Most brands (52%) run 5 to 8 channels simultaneously, and 17% operate more than eight.

That’s a lot of places for a brand voice to drift (1), and lots of places for messaging to feel off (2).

And the people? The more people you have to post and communicate on behalf of your brand, the more deviations you have.

At HubSpot, with hundreds of people getting our brand out there, we make sure our brand voice is consistent thanks to the Loop’s Express. We integrated our brand voice in Breeze and Content Hub to maintain consistency across all channels.

The second issue we resolve by testing the message, measuring sentiment, and refining narratives through continuous feedback (Evolve).

As a result, we make each brand iteration stronger.

“For external creators, we communicate our brand voice, editorial guidelines, and SEO/AEO best practices through briefs, from strategists to creators,” shares Amanda Sellers, EN Blog Strategy, Global Growth at HubSpot. “We use AI-powered tools to help create briefs with a strategist overseeing the process and providing quality assurance. Our creators provide feedback on strategic/tactical alignment and brief effectiveness.”

4. Search disruption requires real-time Loop adjustments

Search is in the middle of its biggest shift in years. AI overviews and LLMs now sit between brands and their audience, changing how people discover, compare, and evaluate products. It’s no surprise that over 70% of marketers say they feel prepared to adapt their strategy to keep up with these new patterns — a clear sign that teams expect ongoing disruption.

But is that enough?

Bradley Sanders argues that being “prepared to adapt” assumes change happens in predictable cycles, but the reality is we don’t know when search will be disrupted or when user intent will change.

He continues, “Without a looped model, teams adapt too slowly and optimize using lagging indicators. Loop Marketing surfaces these shifts as they happen through continuous monitoring and learning across classic search and LLMs. Instead of reacting after visibility changes, teams evolve continuously as conditions change.”

The Loop serves as both Discovery and Amplification layers and assumes that:

• Buyers enter at different points.
• Learn continuously from AI, people, and platforms.
• Re-encounter brands repeatedly before converting.
• Influence future AI answers through their own behavior (reviews, mentions, engagement).

In this model, marketers create visibility that creates demand, demand reinforces authority, and authority improves future visibility — forming a self-reinforcing loop.

5. Consumer behavior shifts too fast for manual strategy updates.

Marketers feel the pace of change every day, and 71% say they’re trying to keep up with how buyers move between platforms, formats, and discovery paths. A product might go viral on TikTok before the team even launches the campaign built for it.

That’s why teams ranked “creating content that receives high levels of online engagement (clicks, shares, comments, etc.)” as the biggest challenge they’ve been facing throughout this year.

Unpredictability has become marketing’s new pet peeve.

Loops help teams stay synced and turn those early behavioral deviations into direction for the next move. As a result, 46% of marketers who research audiences and their behaviors confirmed that personalized experiences had a significant impact on audience-engagement metrics.

6. Loops help you build the consensus AI models need to cite your brand

AI search has changed the rules of brand visibility. Today, a single Reddit thread or a community comment can influence how (sentiment) and how often ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini describes your brand.

Meaning the same facts, explanations, and descriptors must appear across multiple channels, such as social media, product threads, reviews, and casual online mentions. They all feed into one ecosystem.

Loops help teams collect those scattered signals, pull them into a unified message map, and then reinforce that message everywhere it matters.

Reddit plays an outsized role here.

It’s one of the strongest off-site surfaces for AEO because AI models index user discussions heavily. A single clear, well-explained community comment can outweigh your entire blog post in an AI-generated answer.

Teams can’t control these conversations one by one, but loops let them use the insight. When a pattern shows up on Reddit, the loop feeds it back into content updates, FAQ optimizations, definitions, and amplification across PR, social, microsites, and off-site mentions.

7. Loops help fix messy data by filling in the gaps that teams can’t

For all the dashboards and tools marketers use, data quality is still one of their biggest obstacles. Only about 25% of marketers strongly agree they have the data they need to reach their audience effectively, and even fewer feel confident the data they do have is truly high quality.

As you’ve already guessed, the fix is Loop Marketing, where real-time data and AI processing are central to the method.

How Teams Use the Loop (Without Even Knowing It)

When we first introduced Loop Marketing, many teams weren’t sure how to recognize it in their own work. But, some teams are already running loops without realizing it.

1. Turning one idea into a multi-channel content pack with AI

This is the easiest loop teams run today. More than 35% of marketers already repurpose content across channels, often without realizing they’re running a loop. They publish something once, see what performs, and remix the winning pieces into other AI-generated formats.

Teams think they’re just “repurposing,” but they’re actually running the loop in four stages:

1. Create — Develop any starting content asset to fuel the following.
2. Remix — Turn one single post, video, or audio into dozens of clips, blogs, Reddit comments, Facebook posts, etc. AI tools like Breeze: Content Remix make the process easy.
3. Measure — Use AI to gain deep insights into your cross-platform performance.
4. Repeat — Feed the insights back into AI and ask it to refine your strategy.

Hint: Use HubSpot’s Loop Marketing Prompt Library with field-tested 100 prompts tailored to each stage of the Loop. It helps you deeply understand your target audience, optimize for AEO, remix, measure, and evolve.

2. Using AI to research audiences and build messages that kickstart the Loop

Nearly 40% of marketers use AI to research audiences and summarize insights. Teams start the loop by asking AI where their audiences actually research products — not only Google, but ChatGPT, Perplexity, Reddit, Instagram, and niche forums.

Marketers gather prospects’ shopping habits, where they consume content, employment information, basic demographic information, and more.

For example, when I was tasked with researching the target audience for a new electronics store in Warsaw, Poland, that sells off-lease laptops, I opened ChatGPT and used the AI Search Visibility Optimizer prompt to receive guidance on our online store optimization.

Here’s a prompt sample:

# ROLE

You are an AI search optimization strategist and AEO (AI Engine Optimization) expert who specializes in optimizing content and brand presence for AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview to increase brand visibility and citations.

# CONTEXT

I need to optimize our content strategy and brand presence for AI search engines, ensuring our brand gets mentioned and cited when potential customers ask AI tools questions related to our industry, solutions, and expertise areas.

# TASK

Create a comprehensive AI search optimization strategy that increases brand visibility in AI search results through content optimization, topic authority building, and strategic content creation that AI engines cite and recommend.

# AI SEARCH OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK

Optimize across:

1. **Content Authority:** Building topical authority that AI engines recognize

2. **Citation Optimization:** Creating content that AI engines cite and reference

3. **Query Coverage:** Covering questions customers ask AI engines

4. **Source Credibility:** Building credibility signals that AI engines trust

5. **Freshness and Relevance:** Maintaining current, relevant content for AI citations

3. Using AI to optimize for answer engines

About 24% of marketers are already updating their SEO for generative AI, asking LLMs how to optimize for answer engines. They use prompts to:

• Find high-intent questions.
• Generate short question-first blogs.
• Rewrite FAQs.

Our video producer, Bridget O’Rourke, used the AI search visibility optimizer prompt to help her map out her AEO strategy. The output told Bridget to write five short, question-first blog posts on high-intent topics. Mention her brand naturally and link each post in FAQs.

Then, O’Rourke instructed AI to write all five blog posts, optimize them for AI engines, base them on high-intent questions, and ensure they mention her brand as the solution. Human editing was necessary, of course.

Once the blogs were live, Bridget rewrote her landing page’s FAQ section to include the same high-intent questions and linked each one to the corresponding blog post.

Watch more on how Bridget explains Loop’s Amplify stage on a real eCommerce project.

4. Using AI to scale content production

Our study found that 42.45% of marketers use AI extensively to create blog content, with 38% using it occasionally. Together, it’s a whopping 80% — meaning every 8 out of 10 marketers use AI to write blog posts.

It’s unclear whether they create full drafts or generate some sections, but nearly 56% of marketers complain that the internet is now flooded with AI-generated content, making it harder for quality content to stand out.

Top-of-funnel content suffers the most. Scale kills its effectiveness, and teams simply waste time on creating another TOFU piece, according to Amanda Seller.

She explains, “As someone who‘s very close to blogging strategy specifically, I think there’s a lot of wasted effort on top-of-funnel content. We know that with AI Overviews and user behavior changing with LLMs and AI engines, a lot of TOFU content has been disrupted. I wouldn‘t say to never create TOFU content, but it’s clear there is a need to evolve it.”

5. Using AI to create, automate, test, and interlink assets before launch.

Teams rely heavily on AI in the days leading up to a launch, even if they don’t think of it as running a loop. According to our data, 43% use AI to create or refine content, 35% use it for data analysis, and 47% explore automation to improve efficiency.

Another 23% use AI copilots, and 19% use AI agents to automate campaign workflows.

Teams use AI to remix content, tighten and test messaging, create workflows that trigger personalized campaigns, and suggest interlinking between different assets.

Consider HubSpot’s landing page optimization. The Audience Segment tool’s landing page invites prospects to (1) explore more on the topic by linking to relevant sources:

(2) The same page is optimized for AEO with FAQs.

The team used AI suggestions to optimize these blocks.

6. Testing brand positioning and refining it continuously

As our report found, 40.4% of marketing teams test, measure, and adjust their brand awareness campaigns every quarter. With 45.38% choosing annual review and refinement. The first cohort clearly applies the loop for prompt adjustments and improved results.

Here’s how the brands measure brand awareness for informed decision-making:

• 34% run A/B positioning tests
• 61% run brand perception surveys
• 56% watch for engagement changes
• 36% gather sales team feedback on prospect reactions

7. Measuring performance and letting AI surface what worked.

This is the surprising fact of AI adoption that, according to our State of Marketing data, 35% use AI for data analysis and reporting, and nearly 70% say they can derive meaningful insights from data.

That puts AI right at the center of the Evolve stage of the loop.

Teams use AI to highlight high-performing assets, spot patterns humans miss, and summarize which messages resonated across channels.

However, only 47% say they understand how to use AI strategically. Loop Marketing bridges this gap.

Loop Marketing is a new blueprint for 2026

The rise of AI, shifting search behavior, fragmented channels, and nonstop content demands have made it impossible to operate using classic inbound playbooks. Marketing now moves too fast, across too many surfaces, for linear workflows to keep up.

Every marketer now sits in a cycle of Expressing, Tailoring, Amplifying, and Evolving, whether they name the process Loop Marketing or not.

Those who’re ahead in the game see revenue growth as never before.

For a deeper look at the trends shaping these results, winning and losing tactics, explore HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/loop-marketing-trends

HubSpot’s latest State of Marketing data shows that 65% of companies exceeded their goals last year, and 93.7% improved lead quality. Should the industry celebrate and prepare for a relaxed 2026? Barely.

The current state of marketing mirrors what happens to an Olympic athlete who hits a personal best — the reward is a higher bar. Coaches expect more. Training intensifies. When everything goes well, expectations and performance pressure keep rising.

So marketing teams succeed, but they succeed inside systems that demand speed, iteration, and tight data feedback cycles. All of this makes Loop Marketing more relevant than ever heading into 2026. Here’s what teams need to know.

Table of Contents

• What is Loop Marketing?
• Why Loop Marketing Matters for Teams.
• How Teams Use the Loop (Without Even Knowing It).

What is Loop Marketing?

Loop Marketing is a repeatable, four-stage approach where every marketing action feeds the next one, creating continuous, compounding growth instead of one-off campaigns.

It replaces the traditional linear model, which assumes that buyers enter the funnel through the same touchpoints and act similarly throughout the journey. Loop Marketing, instead, acknowledges the shift in buyers’ behaviours influenced by AI search. The approach offers a cycle where content, data, channels, and customer interactions form self-reinforcing loops.

How does Loop Marketing work?

Loop Marketing works by cycling teams through four repeatable stages. These stages are not new marketing ideas. What’s new is treating them as a closed, operational loop inside your marketing tools that immediately implements what it’s learned from the last campaign with the help of AI.

Stage 1: Express

Oftentimes, marketing teams skip this stage and rush into tactics. Wrong. Loop Marketing forces teams to slow down and align before execution. So, define the problem you uniquely solve, your audience, and your differentiation.

Stage 2: Tailor

Make the message relevant to each audience — at scale, with AI, to deliver experiences that truly feel personal to each customer. This stage is about how you tell the same story differently to different segments. In doing so, you’re creating your core content and other assets grounded in intent signals and behavioral data.

Stage 3: Amplify

Get the message out, everywhere it needs to be. This includes:

• Paid media.
• Social.
• Email newsletters.
• AEO.
• Events.
• Trade shows.
• Outdoor, physical, and digital spaces.
• LLMs.

Stage 4: Evolve

This is classic “test and measure,” but iterate quickly with AI. Feed AI-powered insights back into any previous stage, not just back to Express. Simply put, this stage is continuous optimization for:

• Testing campaigns.
• Measuring performance.
• Learning what works.
• Feeding insights back into earlier stages.

Note that AI plays an assistant role here by surfacing insights, answering questions faster, and reducing manual reporting.

Why Loop Marketing Matters for Teams.

1. AI personalization creates more signals than teams can handle without loops

AI personalization is the top trend of this year, with 49% of marketers already using AI to tailor content. On its own, personalized content performs well. According to our data, 91% of marketers say personalization improves engagement, and 93% saw a great impact on marketing-driven leads or purchases from personalized experiences.

But as teams ship more targeted content, the volume of data (a.k.a. signals) grows fast. That’s where AI personalization can start to break down.

Bradley Sanders, our Senior AI Strategist, warns that once teams begin personalizing at scale with AI, the biggest challenge is keeping their strategy evolving. Without a looped system, personalization becomes static, signals fragment across tools, and outputs are no longer informed by what actually works. Teams scale content and messaging, but lack a mechanism to continuously capture outcomes and adjust strategy.

AI-powered loops make personalization scalable. For example, HubSpot’s Personalization Agent delivers individualized experiences and personalizes content on the fly based on real-time signals and the prospect’s title, industry, deal or cart records, lifecycle stages, and more.

2. Repurposing overwhelms teams unless loops turn one asset into many

Content repurposing is now the backbone of marketing efficiency, with 35% of marketers repurposing assets across channels. So teams are expected to publish everywhere, but headcount rarely grows.

Without the Loop, this becomes semi-manual and time-consuming — teams have to decide what to repurpose, where to send it, and how to adjust it every time.

Loops make this simpler. One asset goes out, teams see what performs, and the Loop automatically guides what to spin into a video, social post, email snippet, or short script. This is Amplify in action.

Tools like HubSpot’s Content Remix make this even easier by turning long-form assets into multiple formats in minutes. A podcast into a blog post, short clips, social posts? Say no more.

3. Brand-value content gets harder to manage as channels multiply

Almost half of marketers now create content tied to their brand’s values. At the same time, brand awareness is the top marketing goal for 2025 for 35% of teams.

But here goes the tricky part, actually, two, about brand storytelling today. Most brands (52%) run 5 to 8 channels simultaneously, and 17% operate more than eight.

That’s a lot of places for a brand voice to drift (1), and lots of places for messaging to feel off (2).

And the people? The more people you have to post and communicate on behalf of your brand, the more deviations you have.

At HubSpot, with hundreds of people getting our brand out there, we make sure our brand voice is consistent thanks to the Loop’s Express. We integrated our brand voice in Breeze and Content Hub to maintain consistency across all channels.

The second issue we resolve by testing the message, measuring sentiment, and refining narratives through continuous feedback (Evolve).

As a result, we make each brand iteration stronger.

“For external creators, we communicate our brand voice, editorial guidelines, and SEO/AEO best practices through briefs, from strategists to creators,” shares Amanda Sellers, EN Blog Strategy, Global Growth at HubSpot. “We use AI-powered tools to help create briefs with a strategist overseeing the process and providing quality assurance. Our creators provide feedback on strategic/tactical alignment and brief effectiveness.”

4. Search disruption requires real-time Loop adjustments

Search is in the middle of its biggest shift in years. AI overviews and LLMs now sit between brands and their audience, changing how people discover, compare, and evaluate products. It’s no surprise that over 70% of marketers say they feel prepared to adapt their strategy to keep up with these new patterns — a clear sign that teams expect ongoing disruption.

But is that enough?

Bradley Sanders argues that being “prepared to adapt” assumes change happens in predictable cycles, but the reality is we don’t know when search will be disrupted or when user intent will change.

He continues, “Without a looped model, teams adapt too slowly and optimize using lagging indicators. Loop Marketing surfaces these shifts as they happen through continuous monitoring and learning across classic search and LLMs. Instead of reacting after visibility changes, teams evolve continuously as conditions change.”

The Loop serves as both Discovery and Amplification layers and assumes that:

• Buyers enter at different points.
• Learn continuously from AI, people, and platforms.
• Re-encounter brands repeatedly before converting.
• Influence future AI answers through their own behavior (reviews, mentions, engagement).

In this model, marketers create visibility that creates demand, demand reinforces authority, and authority improves future visibility — forming a self-reinforcing loop.

5. Consumer behavior shifts too fast for manual strategy updates.

Marketers feel the pace of change every day, and 71% say they’re trying to keep up with how buyers move between platforms, formats, and discovery paths. A product might go viral on TikTok before the team even launches the campaign built for it.

That’s why teams ranked “creating content that receives high levels of online engagement (clicks, shares, comments, etc.)” as the biggest challenge they’ve been facing throughout this year.

Unpredictability has become marketing’s new pet peeve.

Loops help teams stay synced and turn those early behavioral deviations into direction for the next move. As a result, 46% of marketers who research audiences and their behaviors confirmed that personalized experiences had a significant impact on audience-engagement metrics.

6. Loops help you build the consensus AI models need to cite your brand

AI search has changed the rules of brand visibility. Today, a single Reddit thread or a community comment can influence how (sentiment) and how often ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini describes your brand.

Meaning the same facts, explanations, and descriptors must appear across multiple channels, such as social media, product threads, reviews, and casual online mentions. They all feed into one ecosystem.

Loops help teams collect those scattered signals, pull them into a unified message map, and then reinforce that message everywhere it matters.

Reddit plays an outsized role here.

It’s one of the strongest off-site surfaces for AEO because AI models index user discussions heavily. A single clear, well-explained community comment can outweigh your entire blog post in an AI-generated answer.

Teams can’t control these conversations one by one, but loops let them use the insight. When a pattern shows up on Reddit, the loop feeds it back into content updates, FAQ optimizations, definitions, and amplification across PR, social, microsites, and off-site mentions.

7. Loops help fix messy data by filling in the gaps that teams can’t

For all the dashboards and tools marketers use, data quality is still one of their biggest obstacles. Only about 25% of marketers strongly agree they have the data they need to reach their audience effectively, and even fewer feel confident the data they do have is truly high quality.

As you’ve already guessed, the fix is Loop Marketing, where real-time data and AI processing are central to the method.

How Teams Use the Loop (Without Even Knowing It)

When we first introduced Loop Marketing, many teams weren’t sure how to recognize it in their own work. But, some teams are already running loops without realizing it.

1. Turning one idea into a multi-channel content pack with AI

This is the easiest loop teams run today. More than 35% of marketers already repurpose content across channels, often without realizing they’re running a loop. They publish something once, see what performs, and remix the winning pieces into other AI-generated formats.

Teams think they’re just “repurposing,” but they’re actually running the loop in four stages:

1. Create — Develop any starting content asset to fuel the following.
2. Remix — Turn one single post, video, or audio into dozens of clips, blogs, Reddit comments, Facebook posts, etc. AI tools like Breeze: Content Remix make the process easy.
3. Measure — Use AI to gain deep insights into your cross-platform performance.
4. Repeat — Feed the insights back into AI and ask it to refine your strategy.

Hint: Use HubSpot’s Loop Marketing Prompt Library with field-tested 100 prompts tailored to each stage of the Loop. It helps you deeply understand your target audience, optimize for AEO, remix, measure, and evolve.

2. Using AI to research audiences and build messages that kickstart the Loop

Nearly 40% of marketers use AI to research audiences and summarize insights. Teams start the loop by asking AI where their audiences actually research products — not only Google, but ChatGPT, Perplexity, Reddit, Instagram, and niche forums.

Marketers gather prospects’ shopping habits, where they consume content, employment information, basic demographic information, and more.

For example, when I was tasked with researching the target audience for a new electronics store in Warsaw, Poland, that sells off-lease laptops, I opened ChatGPT and used the AI Search Visibility Optimizer prompt to receive guidance on our online store optimization.

Here’s a prompt sample:

# ROLE

You are an AI search optimization strategist and AEO (AI Engine Optimization) expert who specializes in optimizing content and brand presence for AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview to increase brand visibility and citations.

# CONTEXT

I need to optimize our content strategy and brand presence for AI search engines, ensuring our brand gets mentioned and cited when potential customers ask AI tools questions related to our industry, solutions, and expertise areas.

# TASK

Create a comprehensive AI search optimization strategy that increases brand visibility in AI search results through content optimization, topic authority building, and strategic content creation that AI engines cite and recommend.

# AI SEARCH OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK

Optimize across:

1. **Content Authority:** Building topical authority that AI engines recognize

2. **Citation Optimization:** Creating content that AI engines cite and reference

3. **Query Coverage:** Covering questions customers ask AI engines

4. **Source Credibility:** Building credibility signals that AI engines trust

5. **Freshness and Relevance:** Maintaining current, relevant content for AI citations

3. Using AI to optimize for answer engines

About 24% of marketers are already updating their SEO for generative AI, asking LLMs how to optimize for answer engines. They use prompts to:

• Find high-intent questions.
• Generate short question-first blogs.
• Rewrite FAQs.

Our video producer, Bridget O’Rourke, used the AI search visibility optimizer prompt to help her map out her AEO strategy. The output told Bridget to write five short, question-first blog posts on high-intent topics. Mention her brand naturally and link each post in FAQs.

Then, O’Rourke instructed AI to write all five blog posts, optimize them for AI engines, base them on high-intent questions, and ensure they mention her brand as the solution. Human editing was necessary, of course.

Once the blogs were live, Bridget rewrote her landing page’s FAQ section to include the same high-intent questions and linked each one to the corresponding blog post.

Watch more on how Bridget explains Loop’s Amplify stage on a real eCommerce project.

4. Using AI to scale content production

Our study found that 42.45% of marketers use AI extensively to create blog content, with 38% using it occasionally. Together, it’s a whopping 80% — meaning every 8 out of 10 marketers use AI to write blog posts.

It’s unclear whether they create full drafts or generate some sections, but nearly 56% of marketers complain that the internet is now flooded with AI-generated content, making it harder for quality content to stand out.

Top-of-funnel content suffers the most. Scale kills its effectiveness, and teams simply waste time on creating another TOFU piece, according to Amanda Seller.

She explains, “As someone who‘s very close to blogging strategy specifically, I think there’s a lot of wasted effort on top-of-funnel content. We know that with AI Overviews and user behavior changing with LLMs and AI engines, a lot of TOFU content has been disrupted. I wouldn‘t say to never create TOFU content, but it’s clear there is a need to evolve it.”

5. Using AI to create, automate, test, and interlink assets before launch.

Teams rely heavily on AI in the days leading up to a launch, even if they don’t think of it as running a loop. According to our data, 43% use AI to create or refine content, 35% use it for data analysis, and 47% explore automation to improve efficiency.

Another 23% use AI copilots, and 19% use AI agents to automate campaign workflows.

Teams use AI to remix content, tighten and test messaging, create workflows that trigger personalized campaigns, and suggest interlinking between different assets.

Consider HubSpot’s landing page optimization. The Audience Segment tool’s landing page invites prospects to (1) explore more on the topic by linking to relevant sources:

(2) The same page is optimized for AEO with FAQs.

The team used AI suggestions to optimize these blocks.

6. Testing brand positioning and refining it continuously

As our report found, 40.4% of marketing teams test, measure, and adjust their brand awareness campaigns every quarter. With 45.38% choosing annual review and refinement. The first cohort clearly applies the loop for prompt adjustments and improved results.

Here’s how the brands measure brand awareness for informed decision-making:

• 34% run A/B positioning tests
• 61% run brand perception surveys
• 56% watch for engagement changes
• 36% gather sales team feedback on prospect reactions

7. Measuring performance and letting AI surface what worked.

This is the surprising fact of AI adoption that, according to our State of Marketing data, 35% use AI for data analysis and reporting, and nearly 70% say they can derive meaningful insights from data.

That puts AI right at the center of the Evolve stage of the loop.

Teams use AI to highlight high-performing assets, spot patterns humans miss, and summarize which messages resonated across channels.

However, only 47% say they understand how to use AI strategically. Loop Marketing bridges this gap.

Loop Marketing is a new blueprint for 2026

The rise of AI, shifting search behavior, fragmented channels, and nonstop content demands have made it impossible to operate using classic inbound playbooks. Marketing now moves too fast, across too many surfaces, for linear workflows to keep up.

Every marketer now sits in a cycle of Expressing, Tailoring, Amplifying, and Evolving, whether they name the process Loop Marketing or not.

Those who’re ahead in the game see revenue growth as never before.

For a deeper look at the trends shaping these results, winning and losing tactics, explore HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report.

via Perfecte news Non connection

Best loop marketing tactics for the era of AI-powered marketing

Marketing funnels aren‘t cutting it anymore, and you’ve probably felt it in the form of declining traffic, scattered buyer journeys, and tactics that worked last year falling flat today. That's why HubSpot introduced loop marketing tactics, a four-stage framework designed to help you adapt and grow in the AI era.

Unlike traditional funnels that assume buyers follow a linear path, Loop Marketing creates continuous cycles of learning and optimization that become sharper with every use.

In this guide, I‘ll break down exactly what loop marketing tactics are, why they outperform funnels, and how to implement them step-by-step, even if you’re still running funnel-based campaigns. Let's dive in.

 

Table of Contents

• What is loop marketing?
• Why loop marketing tactics beat funnel marketing tactics in the AI era
• Loop marketing tactics by stage
• Stage 2: Tailor (Personalize Your Messaging)
• Stage 3: Amplify (Expand Your Reach)
• Stage 4: Evolve (Optimize Continuously)
• Frequently Asked Questions about Loop Marketing Tactics

What is loop marketing?

Loop Marketing is a four-stage playbook that combines artificial intelligence with human strategy to drive growth. The loop marketing playbook relies on teams of humans and AI to work together to reach and delight consumers in a world where AI answers questions before potential buyers have a chance to click on a website for answers.

The four stages of loop marketing are as follows, and I'll dive into them in more detail later in the post:

• Express
• Tailor
• Amplify
• Evolve

Why loop marketing tactics beat funnel marketing tactics in the AI era

While funnel marketing was once a tried-and-tested method, the marketing landscape has changed, and what worked even a few years ago no longer works today. Here are the facts:

Funnels Assume Linear, Predictable Paths

The classic funnel represents the awareness-to-consideration-to-decision stages, assuming that buyers follow a set journey that business owners can control. However, today‘s buyers aren’t as linear in their path to purchasing; instead, they hop between channels, ask AI assistants questions, browse Reddit threads, watch YouTube reviews, and text friends for recommendations.

Your target audience may discover you on TikTok or research you through ChatGPT before they arrive ready to make a purchase.

Funnels Are Static

Traditional funnels typically run in quarterly or semi-annual cycles. Normally, you plan a campaign, execute it, and wait for results before analyzing and adjusting months later. In the AI era, that's far too slow. Customer preferences shift rapidly, and competitors can spin up campaigns in days using AI tools.

Now you know why the funnel model is becoming obsolete. Here's how Loop Marketing will help you win in the era of AI.

Loop Marketing Meets Buyers Where They Actually Are

Loop Marketing's Amplify stage explicitly addresses multi-channel reality. Instead of funneling everyone to your website, you optimize for:

• AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude)
• YouTube and TikTok for video discovery
• Community platforms, forums, and Reddit, where buyers seek authentic opinions
• LinkedIn for B2B decision-makers

By optimizing for multi-channel discovery, you're making your brand visible across all the places your target audience naturally searches and explores.

Loop Marketing Leverages AI for Speed and Scale

The Express and Tailor stages use AI to:

• Generate personalized content variations for different segments in hours, not weeks
• Analyze customer data to identify high-intent audiences automatically
• Create multi-format content (articles, videos, carousels, ads) from a single campaign brief
• Personalize at scale by making every email, landing page, and CTA feel individually crafted

Loop Marketing Learns and Improves Continuously

The Evolve stage is where Loop Marketing becomes truly powerful. Rather than waiting for quarterly reviews:

• AI monitors performance in real-time and flags anomalies
• You can run rapid A/B tests on headlines, offers, and audiences
• Each campaign immediately informs the next one, creating compound learning
• Predictions help you optimize before campaigns launch, not just after

This creates a compounding advantage: every cycle makes your marketing sharper, faster, and more efficient.

Loop Marketing Creates Self-Reinforcing Growth

Unlike funnels, where customers “exit” after purchase, Loop Marketing makes use of every customer interaction as fuel for the next cycle:

• Customer feedback improves your brand expression
• Purchase data refines your personalization
• Engagement patterns inform your amplification strategy
• Results continuously optimize your evolution speed

We call it a “loop” because it builds momentum with each completion, rather than starting from scratch with each new campaign.

Loop marketing tactics by stage

Stage 1: Express (Define Your Brand Identity)

Create Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Identify exactly who you're targeting by learning their goals, challenges, needs, and the language they use. Use AI to efficiently analyze reviews, customer calls, comments, and community discussions to extract patterns.

Craft Your Style Guide

Define your brand‘s unique value proposition, mission, tone, dos and don’ts, and non-negotiables. This becomes the instruction manual that ensures AI-generated content sounds authentically “you” rather than generic.

Generate Campaign Concepts

Develop creative campaign ideas informed by your style guide that clearly communicate why buyers should choose you over competitors. Claim your distinctive corner of the market.

Key Tools: Breeze Assistant (for ICP analysis), Brand Identity (for style guide creation), Marketing Studio (for campaign asset generation)

Stage 2: Tailor (Personalize Your Messaging)

Enrich Your Data

Gather behavioral signals, intent data, firmographics, and contextual information from your CRM, call transcripts, and website behavior. Fill gaps in customer records so you understand precisely where each buyer is in their journey.

Build Audience Segments

Utilize enriched data and intent signals—such as pricing page visits or email engagement—to create targeted customer segments based on behavior, industry, role, and buying stage.

Make Content Personal

Create individualized content that resonates with each segment's unique needs and interests. Create landing pages, emails, ads, and CTAs that dynamically adjust based on industry, role, stage, and even time of day.

Ensure Human Quality Checks

Layer human review on AI-generated personalization to maintain accuracy and ensure content feels genuinely helpful rather than creepily automated.

Key Tools: AI-Powered Contact Enrichment, AI Segmentation, Personalization Agent, AI-Powered Email

Stage 3: Amplify (Expand Your Reach)

Build Your Content Strategy

Plan how your campaign will come to life across different formats (articles, videos, carousels, podcasts) and channels (owned, earned, paid).

Optimize Your Channel Mix

Diversify where you show up to reach new customers and create competitive moats. Prioritize:

• LLMs and AI search (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity)
• Video platforms (YouTube, TikTok)
• Community platforms and forums (Reddit, G2)
• Professional networks (LinkedIn)

Extract More Format and Channel Value

Remix every piece of content into multiple formats optimized for each channel—turn one blog post into an AEO-optimized article for ChatGPT, a vertical video for TikTok, a carousel for LinkedIn, and a podcast script.

Activate Targeted Ads and Creators

Combine smart ad targeting with partnerships from subject matter experts and creators your audience already trusts. Ads get you in the proper feed; creators get you in the right conversation.

Use AI to Scale Content Creation

Deploy AI tools to automate production and repurposing of promotional assets at scale, turning hours of manual work into minutes.

Optimize Each Channel for Conversion

Design each touchpoint with clear, contextualized CTAs and friction-free flows so every click feels like the natural next step.

Key Tools: Marketing Studio (for multi-channel planning), Customer Agent (for 24/7 engagement), AEO Grader (for AI search optimization)

Stage 4: Evolve (Optimize Continuously)

Predict Before You Publish

Use AI to predict which customers and campaigns are most likely to convert, and identify potential issues or weak spots before campaigns go live.

Monitor Real-Time Performance

Track engagement and conversion signals as they happen. Let AI highlight anomalies and patterns, so you can spend time adjusting your strategy rather than digging through data.

Run Rapid Experiments

Launch quick A/B tests on headlines, offers, CTAs, audience segments, and creative elements. Test multiple variables simultaneously to learn faster.

Never Stop Optimizing

Apply learnings from each experiment immediately to your creative, targeting, and budget allocation. Each tweak makes your next campaign sharper, faster, more economical, and harder for competitors to imitate.

Key Tools: Marketing Analytics (for performance dashboards), ChatGPT Deep Research Connector (for pattern analysis), Email Engagement Optimization (for predictive sending)

Frequently Asked Questions about Loop Marketing Tactics

How do I start loop marketing if I’m still using funnels?

Fortunately, you don't need to scrap your funnel to start with Loop Marketing.

Pick the stage that solves your most significant pain point—whether that‘s inconsistent messaging (Express), generic content (Tailor), declining traffic (Amplify), or slow optimization cycles (Evolve)—and layer it onto what you’re already doing.

Your existing CRM data, email sequences, and content library plug right into the loop, and most teams see improvements within 30-60 days of implementing their first stage.

Do I need unified data to personalize at scale?

Yes, unified data is essential for personalization at scale, but “good enough” beats perfect every time. Here's what unified records matter:

When customer data is scattered across your CRM, email tool, and analytics platform, you risk awkwardly welcoming long-time customers or promoting products they already own. A unified record creates one source of truth, so you actually know if, say, someone visited your pricing page twice and opened every email this month. Unified data takes the guesswork out of personalization.

To get started, connect your three core systems first:

• CRM (customer info)
• Marketing automation (campaigns)
• Website analytics (behavior tracking).

These three give you enough data to build segments, personalize emails, and create landing pages that speak to where customers actually are in their journey. Layer in sales platforms, support tickets, and purchase history as you grow.

Don't worry too much about perfection at the start, because the goal is to have enough unified data to stop sending the wrong message to the right person.

What is AEO in loop marketing?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is a method for getting your brand mentioned when people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude a question, rather than searching for it on Google.

It‘s a critical piece of the Amplify stage because nearly 60% of searches now end without a click. People get their answers directly from AI, so if you’re not optimized for these tools, you're invisible.

To show up in AI responses, structure your content with clear Q&A sections that directly answer common questions, use consistent language that matches how your customers actually talk, and make it easy for AI engines to pull and cite your information.

Think of it this way: SEO got you ranked on Google, but AEO gets you recommended by AI.

How is loop marketing different from the flywheel?

The flywheel is a growth philosophy that illustrates how customer momentum drives business growth through the attract, engage, and delight process. Loop Marketing is the tactical operating system that makes the flywheel spin faster.

Basically, the flywheel tells you why customer success creates more customers, while Loop Marketing tells you how to actually do it through four continuous stages (Express, Tailor, Amplify, Evolve).

The loop provides a practical framework for creating content, personalizing it at scale, distributing it across channels, and optimizing it in real-time. They're not competing strategies; rather, Loop Marketing is how you operationalize the flywheel in the AI era, adding speed and AI-powered efficiency to your growth engine.

Which stage should I prioritize first?

Start with whichever stage fixes your most significant pain point; there's no “correct” order here.

If your brand messaging feels inconsistent or AI tools like ChatGPT are misrepresenting you, start with Express to refine your voice and ideal customer profile. If your brand is solid but everything you send feels generic, and engagement is declining, consider using Tailor to build segments and personalize at scale.

Struggling with declining traffic or not showing up where your customers actually search? Amplify will help you diversify channels and optimize for AI search engines. And if you're already seeing success but your optimization cycles take forever, Evolve lets you test, learn, and adapt in days, not quarters.

Most teams see improvements within 30-60 days of nailing their first stage, so pick the gap that‘s costing you the most right now and start there. You can always add the other stages once you’ve got momentum, because Loop Marketing is modular by design.

Loop marketing is a modern, AI-powered approach that replaces linear funnels with a continuous cycle of four stages: Express, Tailor, Amplify, and Evolve. Unlike traditional funnels, loops learn and improve with every cycle, compounding results over time.

Each stage has specific tactics: define your brand voice and ICPs, personalize with unified data, diversify and optimize distribution for AI engines, and rapidly test and adapt.

Start by identifying your biggest bottleneck and apply the right stage tactics using tools like HubSpot’s Smart CRM and Breeze AI. Ready to build your loop? Start free with the Loop Marketing playbook.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/loop-marketing-tactics

Marketing funnels aren‘t cutting it anymore, and you’ve probably felt it in the form of declining traffic, scattered buyer journeys, and tactics that worked last year falling flat today. That's why HubSpot introduced loop marketing tactics, a four-stage framework designed to help you adapt and grow in the AI era.

Unlike traditional funnels that assume buyers follow a linear path, Loop Marketing creates continuous cycles of learning and optimization that become sharper with every use.

In this guide, I‘ll break down exactly what loop marketing tactics are, why they outperform funnels, and how to implement them step-by-step, even if you’re still running funnel-based campaigns. Let's dive in.

 

Table of Contents

• What is loop marketing?
• Why loop marketing tactics beat funnel marketing tactics in the AI era
• Loop marketing tactics by stage
• Stage 2: Tailor (Personalize Your Messaging)
• Stage 3: Amplify (Expand Your Reach)
• Stage 4: Evolve (Optimize Continuously)
• Frequently Asked Questions about Loop Marketing Tactics

What is loop marketing?

Loop Marketing is a four-stage playbook that combines artificial intelligence with human strategy to drive growth. The loop marketing playbook relies on teams of humans and AI to work together to reach and delight consumers in a world where AI answers questions before potential buyers have a chance to click on a website for answers.

The four stages of loop marketing are as follows, and I'll dive into them in more detail later in the post:

• Express
• Tailor
• Amplify
• Evolve

Why loop marketing tactics beat funnel marketing tactics in the AI era

While funnel marketing was once a tried-and-tested method, the marketing landscape has changed, and what worked even a few years ago no longer works today. Here are the facts:

Funnels Assume Linear, Predictable Paths

The classic funnel represents the awareness-to-consideration-to-decision stages, assuming that buyers follow a set journey that business owners can control. However, today‘s buyers aren’t as linear in their path to purchasing; instead, they hop between channels, ask AI assistants questions, browse Reddit threads, watch YouTube reviews, and text friends for recommendations.

Your target audience may discover you on TikTok or research you through ChatGPT before they arrive ready to make a purchase.

Funnels Are Static

Traditional funnels typically run in quarterly or semi-annual cycles. Normally, you plan a campaign, execute it, and wait for results before analyzing and adjusting months later. In the AI era, that's far too slow. Customer preferences shift rapidly, and competitors can spin up campaigns in days using AI tools.

Now you know why the funnel model is becoming obsolete. Here's how Loop Marketing will help you win in the era of AI.

Loop Marketing Meets Buyers Where They Actually Are

Loop Marketing's Amplify stage explicitly addresses multi-channel reality. Instead of funneling everyone to your website, you optimize for:

• AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude)
• YouTube and TikTok for video discovery
• Community platforms, forums, and Reddit, where buyers seek authentic opinions
• LinkedIn for B2B decision-makers

By optimizing for multi-channel discovery, you're making your brand visible across all the places your target audience naturally searches and explores.

Loop Marketing Leverages AI for Speed and Scale

The Express and Tailor stages use AI to:

• Generate personalized content variations for different segments in hours, not weeks
• Analyze customer data to identify high-intent audiences automatically
• Create multi-format content (articles, videos, carousels, ads) from a single campaign brief
• Personalize at scale by making every email, landing page, and CTA feel individually crafted

Loop Marketing Learns and Improves Continuously

The Evolve stage is where Loop Marketing becomes truly powerful. Rather than waiting for quarterly reviews:

• AI monitors performance in real-time and flags anomalies
• You can run rapid A/B tests on headlines, offers, and audiences
• Each campaign immediately informs the next one, creating compound learning
• Predictions help you optimize before campaigns launch, not just after

This creates a compounding advantage: every cycle makes your marketing sharper, faster, and more efficient.

Loop Marketing Creates Self-Reinforcing Growth

Unlike funnels, where customers “exit” after purchase, Loop Marketing makes use of every customer interaction as fuel for the next cycle:

• Customer feedback improves your brand expression
• Purchase data refines your personalization
• Engagement patterns inform your amplification strategy
• Results continuously optimize your evolution speed

We call it a “loop” because it builds momentum with each completion, rather than starting from scratch with each new campaign.

Loop marketing tactics by stage

Stage 1: Express (Define Your Brand Identity)

Create Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Identify exactly who you're targeting by learning their goals, challenges, needs, and the language they use. Use AI to efficiently analyze reviews, customer calls, comments, and community discussions to extract patterns.

Craft Your Style Guide

Define your brand‘s unique value proposition, mission, tone, dos and don’ts, and non-negotiables. This becomes the instruction manual that ensures AI-generated content sounds authentically “you” rather than generic.

Generate Campaign Concepts

Develop creative campaign ideas informed by your style guide that clearly communicate why buyers should choose you over competitors. Claim your distinctive corner of the market.

Key Tools: Breeze Assistant (for ICP analysis), Brand Identity (for style guide creation), Marketing Studio (for campaign asset generation)

Stage 2: Tailor (Personalize Your Messaging)

Enrich Your Data

Gather behavioral signals, intent data, firmographics, and contextual information from your CRM, call transcripts, and website behavior. Fill gaps in customer records so you understand precisely where each buyer is in their journey.

Build Audience Segments

Utilize enriched data and intent signals—such as pricing page visits or email engagement—to create targeted customer segments based on behavior, industry, role, and buying stage.

Make Content Personal

Create individualized content that resonates with each segment's unique needs and interests. Create landing pages, emails, ads, and CTAs that dynamically adjust based on industry, role, stage, and even time of day.

Ensure Human Quality Checks

Layer human review on AI-generated personalization to maintain accuracy and ensure content feels genuinely helpful rather than creepily automated.

Key Tools: AI-Powered Contact Enrichment, AI Segmentation, Personalization Agent, AI-Powered Email

Stage 3: Amplify (Expand Your Reach)

Build Your Content Strategy

Plan how your campaign will come to life across different formats (articles, videos, carousels, podcasts) and channels (owned, earned, paid).

Optimize Your Channel Mix

Diversify where you show up to reach new customers and create competitive moats. Prioritize:

• LLMs and AI search (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity)
• Video platforms (YouTube, TikTok)
• Community platforms and forums (Reddit, G2)
• Professional networks (LinkedIn)

Extract More Format and Channel Value

Remix every piece of content into multiple formats optimized for each channel—turn one blog post into an AEO-optimized article for ChatGPT, a vertical video for TikTok, a carousel for LinkedIn, and a podcast script.

Activate Targeted Ads and Creators

Combine smart ad targeting with partnerships from subject matter experts and creators your audience already trusts. Ads get you in the proper feed; creators get you in the right conversation.

Use AI to Scale Content Creation

Deploy AI tools to automate production and repurposing of promotional assets at scale, turning hours of manual work into minutes.

Optimize Each Channel for Conversion

Design each touchpoint with clear, contextualized CTAs and friction-free flows so every click feels like the natural next step.

Key Tools: Marketing Studio (for multi-channel planning), Customer Agent (for 24/7 engagement), AEO Grader (for AI search optimization)

Stage 4: Evolve (Optimize Continuously)

Predict Before You Publish

Use AI to predict which customers and campaigns are most likely to convert, and identify potential issues or weak spots before campaigns go live.

Monitor Real-Time Performance

Track engagement and conversion signals as they happen. Let AI highlight anomalies and patterns, so you can spend time adjusting your strategy rather than digging through data.

Run Rapid Experiments

Launch quick A/B tests on headlines, offers, CTAs, audience segments, and creative elements. Test multiple variables simultaneously to learn faster.

Never Stop Optimizing

Apply learnings from each experiment immediately to your creative, targeting, and budget allocation. Each tweak makes your next campaign sharper, faster, more economical, and harder for competitors to imitate.

Key Tools: Marketing Analytics (for performance dashboards), ChatGPT Deep Research Connector (for pattern analysis), Email Engagement Optimization (for predictive sending)

Frequently Asked Questions about Loop Marketing Tactics

How do I start loop marketing if I’m still using funnels?

Fortunately, you don't need to scrap your funnel to start with Loop Marketing.

Pick the stage that solves your most significant pain point—whether that‘s inconsistent messaging (Express), generic content (Tailor), declining traffic (Amplify), or slow optimization cycles (Evolve)—and layer it onto what you’re already doing.

Your existing CRM data, email sequences, and content library plug right into the loop, and most teams see improvements within 30-60 days of implementing their first stage.

Do I need unified data to personalize at scale?

Yes, unified data is essential for personalization at scale, but “good enough” beats perfect every time. Here's what unified records matter:

When customer data is scattered across your CRM, email tool, and analytics platform, you risk awkwardly welcoming long-time customers or promoting products they already own. A unified record creates one source of truth, so you actually know if, say, someone visited your pricing page twice and opened every email this month. Unified data takes the guesswork out of personalization.

To get started, connect your three core systems first:

• CRM (customer info)
• Marketing automation (campaigns)
• Website analytics (behavior tracking).

These three give you enough data to build segments, personalize emails, and create landing pages that speak to where customers actually are in their journey. Layer in sales platforms, support tickets, and purchase history as you grow.

Don't worry too much about perfection at the start, because the goal is to have enough unified data to stop sending the wrong message to the right person.

What is AEO in loop marketing?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is a method for getting your brand mentioned when people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude a question, rather than searching for it on Google.

It‘s a critical piece of the Amplify stage because nearly 60% of searches now end without a click. People get their answers directly from AI, so if you’re not optimized for these tools, you're invisible.

To show up in AI responses, structure your content with clear Q&A sections that directly answer common questions, use consistent language that matches how your customers actually talk, and make it easy for AI engines to pull and cite your information.

Think of it this way: SEO got you ranked on Google, but AEO gets you recommended by AI.

How is loop marketing different from the flywheel?

The flywheel is a growth philosophy that illustrates how customer momentum drives business growth through the attract, engage, and delight process. Loop Marketing is the tactical operating system that makes the flywheel spin faster.

Basically, the flywheel tells you why customer success creates more customers, while Loop Marketing tells you how to actually do it through four continuous stages (Express, Tailor, Amplify, Evolve).

The loop provides a practical framework for creating content, personalizing it at scale, distributing it across channels, and optimizing it in real-time. They're not competing strategies; rather, Loop Marketing is how you operationalize the flywheel in the AI era, adding speed and AI-powered efficiency to your growth engine.

Which stage should I prioritize first?

Start with whichever stage fixes your most significant pain point; there's no “correct” order here.

If your brand messaging feels inconsistent or AI tools like ChatGPT are misrepresenting you, start with Express to refine your voice and ideal customer profile. If your brand is solid but everything you send feels generic, and engagement is declining, consider using Tailor to build segments and personalize at scale.

Struggling with declining traffic or not showing up where your customers actually search? Amplify will help you diversify channels and optimize for AI search engines. And if you're already seeing success but your optimization cycles take forever, Evolve lets you test, learn, and adapt in days, not quarters.

Most teams see improvements within 30-60 days of nailing their first stage, so pick the gap that‘s costing you the most right now and start there. You can always add the other stages once you’ve got momentum, because Loop Marketing is modular by design.

Loop marketing is a modern, AI-powered approach that replaces linear funnels with a continuous cycle of four stages: Express, Tailor, Amplify, and Evolve. Unlike traditional funnels, loops learn and improve with every cycle, compounding results over time.

Each stage has specific tactics: define your brand voice and ICPs, personalize with unified data, diversify and optimize distribution for AI engines, and rapidly test and adapt.

Start by identifying your biggest bottleneck and apply the right stage tactics using tools like HubSpot’s Smart CRM and Breeze AI. Ready to build your loop? Start free with the Loop Marketing playbook.

via Perfecte news Non connection