How AI is (and isn’t) Changing the Rules of Marketing. Here's What Matters Now.

Summary

AI is fundamentally disrupting marketing — changing how buyers discover companies, how teams prove ROI, and what "growth" actually means. In this post, Mike Trigg, former CEO/CMO and entrepreneur coach, breaks down the three shifts marketing leaders must make to stay relevant:

(1) building positioning and narrative that works for both human buyers and AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude

(2) moving beyond activity metrics to clearly connect marketing work to pipeline and revenue

(3) ensuring marketing teams look beyond acquisition alone to optimize customer retention and engagement.

The core argument: AI raises the stakes on marketing fundamentals — clarity of message, accountability for outcomes, and customer relationships that extend well past the initial sale.

For the last decade, marketing leaders have operated from a relatively stable playbook. Build a strong digital presence. Invest in the channels that drive discovery, demand, conversion, and retention. Use data to move people from awareness to action, whether that meant handing qualified leads to sales, converting self-serve buyers, growing product-led adoption, or deepening customer loyalty.

The channels evolved, but the underlying mechanics stayed largely the same.

Today, AI is calling into question many of those tried-and-true rules. Buyers find and evaluate companies differently than they did just a few years ago. Some of the tactics that once fueled predictable growth are now less effective.

Mike Trigg, a man of many talents: CEO, CMO, Coach, Author

We sat down with Mike Trigg, former CEO and CMO, entrepreneur coach and author, to discuss how marketing teams can adapt their approach. "Marketing has been turned upside down by AI," says Trigg. "It's reshaping both the work marketers do and the way customers buy."

Ultimately, Trigg sees opportunity in the disruption: more than ever marketing teams need to provide the critical connective tissue between narrative, revenue, customer engagement, and growth marketing strategy into consistent, compounding progress, without starting from scratch.

To get there, marketers need to rethink three things:

1. Your Narrative Has to Work for Humans and Machines.

AI changes more than how marketers create content. It is radically altering how buyers discover companies in the first place.

For years, marketing teams focused on optimizing for search engines and human readers. Increasingly, they now have a second audience: large language models (LLMs). Buyers use ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools to research vendors, compare solutions, and understand categories before ever visiting a website. As Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) become a bigger part of marketing strategy, companies need to think about how they're represented not just in search results, but in AI-generated answers.

"If AI is summarizing your category, comparing vendors, and helping buyers conduct research, your positioning needs to survive that process," says Trigg.

At the same time, AI makes differentiation harder. The barriers to building products and entering markets are lower than ever. New companies can establish a presence with fewer resources, putting market leading companies on their heels more quickly than ever before.

Navigating these waters again starts with a compelling narrative. The companies that stand out won't necessarily be the ones with the most content or the biggest budget. They'll be the ones that clearly define who they are, what they do, and why they matter, making it easier for both buyers and AI systems to understand, categorize, and recommend them.

2. Showing Marketing Activity is No Longer Enough.

AI changes marketing tactics and it changes expectations. As accountability and efficiency increases across the business, marketing teams face greater pressure to prove their value.

It starts with understanding how your team contributes to growth. "Marketing teams gain influence when they can clearly connect their work to product adoption and revenue generation," says Trigg. "If marketing isn't tied to those outcomes, it gets marginalized."

Marketing leaders need to understand which activities drive pipeline, what channels create customers, and how marketing contributes to the bottom line. The specifics may vary, from PLG and ABM to enterprise sales and D2C ecommerce, but every business needs a clear path from marketing activity to revenue.

"Marketing doesn't need flawless attribution," says Trigg. "But it does need a credible framework for understanding what's working and what's not. AI can help by connecting signals across channels, surfacing patterns in customer behavior, and giving teams more confidence in where to invest, even if it can't deliver a perfect answer."

3. Marketing Can’t Stop at Acquisition.

AI makes it easier to identify behavioral signals, personalize engagement, and support customers throughout the lifecycle. Yet many organizations still treat marketing as an acquisition engine alone: generate awareness, drive demand, deliver leads.

"The strongest marketing teams expand beyond lead generation and partner with customer success to drive ongoing engagement," says Trigg.

As AI shrinks the barriers to entry and customer acquisition becomes more competitive than ever, companies can no longer rely on new customers to offset churn. Teams that focus only on acquisition will keep working harder (and spending more) to replace customers they could have retained.

“Efficient growth depends on strong unit economics,” says Trigg. “As investors and leadership teams place greater scrutiny on CAC-to-LTV ratios, retention is becoming just as important as acquisition.”

The teams that win will recognize that growth doesn't stop at conversion and use AI tools to build stronger customer relationships long after the initial sale.

What’s Old is New Again.

AI may be rewriting the rules of marketing, but the fundamentals haven't changed. What's changed is the speed and scale at which marketers can execute.

The risk is that teams become so focused on the latest tools, channels, and AI capabilities that they lose sight of the underlying principles that drive growth.

"The marketers who win won't be the ones chasing every new AI feature," says Trigg. "They'll be the ones who use AI to get better at the fundamentals, understanding customers, communicating value, and building relationships that last."

In a market defined by constant disruption, that may be the biggest competitive advantage of all.

Ready to adapt for the AI era? 621 Consulting helps companies develop the growth strategies, positioning, and go-to-market tooling needed to thrive in a changing marketing landscape. Get started.