Marketing in the AI Era — A Playbook
For operators leading marketing when half the team is agents
Every framework you learned for marketing got rewritten when AI agents joined your team. This playbook is the new one. How to design tests, run channels, brief agents, and measure outcomes when your stack does the execution and you set the rules. Built from $100M+ in revenue across companies that ran the old playbook before the new one.
How to read this playbook · The AI-Era Lens
Marketing when half your team is AI agents
The foundation in this playbook (budgeting, goals, attribution, demand-gen architecture) is timeless. What changed when AI agents joined the team is the shape of how each one gets executed. Hold these six shifts in your head as you work through every module — the framework stays, the implementation looks very different.
Shift 1
Channel testing got cheap, not free
Old playbook: pick 3 channels, go deep. New playbook: spin up 12 in a week, kill 9 by week 2. The cost per channel test dropped 90%; the cost of attention didn't. Read the channel modules as 'how to design the kill criteria,' not 'how to commit.'
Shift 2
Persona research became an output, not an input
Generating 50 personas before lunch is now a 20-minute exercise. The skill moved from research to filtering. Read the ICP and persona modules as scoring rubrics for the personas you already have on hand — not as exploration to do for the first time.
Shift 3
Content velocity went 10x; judgment is the bottleneck
Forty posts a week is the new four. The team's job moved from writing to editing-and-killing. Read the content and SEO modules as editorial system design — the question is which draft to ship, not how to make one.
Shift 4
Email moved from craft to test design
Subject lines used to be a copywriting craft. They're now a test you design and an agent runs. Read the email and nurture modules as 'set the rules an agent uses,' not 'sit down and write the next campaign.'
Shift 5
Paid optimizes for cost-per-learning, not CPA
Half your paid spend is buying data the team will use for the next six months of channel and message decisions. CPA still matters, but cost-per-learning is the new top-line measure. Read the paid module as a learning-rate exercise as much as a customer-acquisition exercise.
Shift 6
Reporting became exception-driven
Monthly dashboards are dead. Every metric should have an agent watching it and a rule for when to ping a human. Read the dashboards and reporting modules as 'design the exception triggers,' not 'design the review meeting.'
How to read the foundation modules
Read every framework in this playbook through these six shifts. The Goal Cascade, the 70-20-10 budget rule, the persona scoring system — none of them go away. What changes is who executes them (you + agents, not a team of 6 humans) and how fast the loops run (weekly, not quarterly). When you do an exercise, fill it in assuming agents handle the execution and you set the rules.
What's Inside
27 interactive modules — first 3 are free to preview.
Why this playbook?
Actionable exercises
Not theory — hands-on activities you complete for your business.
Scoring frameworks
Rate where you stand today and track improvement over time.
Battle-tested frameworks
Built and refined inside real operating businesses, not theory.
Walk away with a plan
By the last page, you have a concrete action plan ready to execute.
Who is this for?
Written by Tiago Santana
Growth operator. $100M+ in revenue generated across companies. Founder of Gardenpatch and The Cooling Co.
I've spent the last decade running marketingfor companies at $1M–$100M ARR. When AI agents joined the team, almost everything I knew got rewritten. This playbook is what I'd hand a new marketingleader on day one in the AI era — not what worked in 2019. Every module is something I'd actually use, today, in my own companies. Money-back if it doesn't help.
More about Tiago →Founding members get a free copy
The honest version: these playbooks launched in May 2026. No reviews here yet — because the first ten people are still reading them.
First 10 reviewers · honest feedback wanted
Free copy of any playbook in exchange for an honest review.
Read it. Use it on a real problem you're working through. Tell us what landed, what didn't, and whether it was worth it. Your review goes on this page (with your name + role, or anonymous — your call).
Who this is for: operators running a real team (any size, any industry) who would actually use a framework like this and tell the truth about it. Not for resellers, not for AI-generated reviews, not for five-star-as-default. Critical reviews are more useful than glowing ones.
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