Hunting Leads is a private newsletter for B2B founders and marketers. If this was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

Hi! This is Moby.

Maybe I’m losing it, but the rate of change with AI feels frantic at this point.

That presents threats to what we’re doing. Let's talk about it.

What you can expect today:

  • The 4 parts of a marketing engine

  • The threats of AI to each

  • How to create overlap

Enjoy!

P.S. If this email was useful to you, please consider forwarding it to someone who might find this helpful as well.

The 4 Digital Growth Engines in a Business

When a company is growing to $5-$10M, there’s almost always an overreliance on 1-2 channels out of these 15+:

Outreach, Ads, Content, and Events are what I consider the 4 Horsemen of B2B Marketing

At the early-stage, a B2B company usually grows through Founder Network (which falls under Direct Outreach & Content).

As the company starts crossing that $2M+ mark, they start leveraging another channel.

This could be Google ads.
Prospecting.
SEO/AEO.
Anything.

That channel gets results, and you start pouring in more and more money into it, and it keeps performing.

Until it doesn’t.

Marketing reasons aside, it does feel like every single channel is under threat with AI.

(by the way, these visuals are heavily inspired by Matt McGary’s recent framework on media businesses. Credit to him)

There’s Threats to Every Channel

Content is easier to make for every single human, as we get closer and closer to a zero-click world:

  • Slop is up

  • Website traffic is down

  • Anyone can make written content more easily

  • Why watch a video when I can get the transcipt and put it into Claude?

AI-callers + slop in prospecting calls/emails are increasing with “Revenue Agents”:

  • Slop is up

  • Everyone is touting their agentic-revenue-agent-to-agentically-transform-prospecting-and-outreach-and-marketing-agentically-with-agents 🤮

  • Who picks up unknown numbers now? Who likes talking to an AI? No one

Paid Ads aren’t getting any cheaper:

  • Slop is up

  • Every platform is automating more and more, making it easier for more advertisers to pop up everyday

  • We as humans are clicking less and less on everything, including ads

Real Life Events are still solid, but hard to do:

  • In-person isn’t threatened by AI as much

  • But who’s not facing the pressure of leveraging AI to focus on more digital content because we can?

Don’t Put Your Eggs In 1-2 Channels Only

The problem isn’t the channel, it’s the overreliance on one channel.

  • What happens when everyone can connect their Claude to LinkedIn’s API, drop a voice note via Whispr Flow, and post 3 times per day? Will your following on LinkedIn be as valuable?

  • What happens when more people start using ElevenLabs to churn out multi-host podcast episodes in their own voice? Is doing a podcast worth it?

  • What happens when everyone can make slop 24/7?

With AI, the noise in each channel is increasing.

That’s happening because of AI, but standing out in a world of slop is a marketing problem that we’ve been facing forever.

I believe the best marketing engines will be diversified across multiple channels.

It's like investing in the market. You don't want to be overexposed.

You don’t need to be the most innovative marketer in the world. You have to diversify.

What Marketing Diversification Looks Like

I don’t claim to have the answers. I don't think anyone really does, but I know my incentive is to make sure my business survives.

And that's likely your incentive as well.

I see it in 2 parts:

  • Expanding into new channels

  • Having the channels work together

1) Having More Channels (because you can do so more easily now with AI)

If you’ve been doing only a few of these, can you add 1-2 more and do them well?

  • Cold Calls

  • Prospecting

  • Mktng Emails

  • SEO

  • Video

  • Podcasts

  • Social Content

  • Email Marketing

  • Meta Ads

  • Reddit Ads

  • Google Ads

  • Youtube Ads

  • LinkedIn Ads

  • Dinners

  • Meetups

  • Webinars

  • Trade shows

2) Creating More Overlap With What You Do

Can you create more overlap between channels?

  • Can your dinners benefit from your LinkedIn Ads?

  • Can web content be repurposed for tradeshows, podcasts, ads?

  • Can you bring sales enablment into any events you’re doing?

  • Can outbound + ads be synced more?

Examples that I’ve been lucky enough to see:

  • Fibbler does LinkedIn organic, LinkedIn ads, Influencer Marketing and Community really well

  • Austin Business Review does Email Marketing, Webinars, Community, IRL events really well

  • Storylane does LinkedIn ads, Customer Marketing, Virtual Roundtables, Organic LinkedIn really well (and is branching into Meta)

Until next time,

- Moby | LinkedIn

P.S. I work with a handful of clients at a time to make their paid ads program succeed. Below are some results, and if you would like one-on-one help, you can reach me by DMing me on LinkedIn.

👉 Scaled paid ads program from $6k to $2.5M revenue (acquired)

👉 Consulted on LI ads for Venafi (acquired, $1.56B)

👉 Ran Google ads for Final Inventory (acquired)

👉 Scaled SaaS from $2M to $3.7M ARR in 6 months

Keep Reading