Spoiler: If your lead gen still relies on guesswork and long-form Sundays in Notion, you’re playing the game in hard mode.

Welcome to the midway point of 2025. Here’s what we’ve learned so far in this year of marketing distruption with tech and AI.

Smart marketers aren't “creative geniuses.

They’re systems designers using

AI agents as collaborators.

This isn’t a future pitch. It’s a now reality.

In this piece, I’ll break down some key points we’ve learned in the marketing trenches.

Are you ready to take action?

The Problem: Marketing Is Too Damn Manual

Every marketing task has become a time sink:

Good luck scaling that.

But here’s what’s wild: most of these can now be automated,

templatized and personalized.

And without losing quality.

Heck, you don’t even have to code.

You just need to know what to automate, and what to human.

Shift: From Crafting to Orchestrating

Let’s be honest — ChatGPT isn't “replacing marketers.”
It’s justreplacing lazy a*s marketers who write like 2016 Facebook ads.

Here’s what actually matters now:

The 3-Step AI Marketing Stack (Used by a Real Solo Founder)

Let’s look at a playbook from a real founder in B2B coaching who turned a chaotic funnel into a compounding flywheel.

It’s like turning spaghetti code into a sleek API stack.

Step 1: Insight Mining with GPT + Reddit + Product Reviews

Pull raw customer language from niche forums, review sites or your own call transcripts.

Prompt Example:

“Summarize top frustrations and desires of [persona] based on [X subreddit / Trustpilot / app reviews]. Break into fears, desires, and ‘stuck points.’”

Output? Clear value props. Ad copy gold.

I wanted to know the frustrations of crypto traders based on the subreddit cryptocurrency.

Have a look at the video to see the results from this prompt:

https://youtu.be/3Ktx_pBp9_U?embedable=true

Step 2: Asset Generation with Copy.ai + Notion AI

Take insights, feed into AI content tools. Generate:

Each variant gets A/B tested.

Human touch comes last, not first.

Step 3: Outreach at Scale with Clay + Lavender

Plug in your CRM. Clay enriches contact data (title, city, tech stack).

Lavender.ai rewrites your outreach with tone, brevity and personalization. |

Working with a new client, we quickly tuned it to outperform their agency.

Result: 50%+ open rates, 20%+ reply rates in under 2 hours of setup.

Your Stack (mid-2025 Edition)

Mix. Match. Ship.

Bonus Dev Layer: Codex Turns Content into Code into Conversion

OpenAI Codex is the quiet powerhouse that turns “AI-generated ideas” into real, executable systems.

I like to think of Codex as the bridge from prompt → code → campaign.

Let’s say you want to:

Here's a simplified Codex-powered script:

import requests
import openai

# Get top Hacker News stories
res = requests.get('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json')
top_ids = res.json()[:5]

# Generate tweet hooks with GPT
for id in top_ids:
    story = requests.get(f'https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{id}.json').json()
    prompt = f"Write a viral Twitter hook for: {story['title']}"
    response = openai.Completion.create(
        engine="text-davinci-003",
        prompt=prompt,
        max_tokens=50
    )
    print(response.choices[0].text.strip())

Now imagine that running daily. With Zapier, CRON jobs, or your own AI ops agent.

Codex Unlocks “Marketing Engineering”

This is the future:

No more “waiting on dev.” Codex gives marketers their own deployable backend.

Final Warning

“If the rate of internal change is slower than external change, the end is near.”
– Jack Welch (and probably your ghosted leads)

Don’t get buried under a stack of Google Docs and "pending review" Trello cards.

The future of marketing isn’t genius.

It’s systems thinking + AI fluency.

PS: I’m building a live AI marketing agent that could re-engage dead leads, qualify them and turn them into appointments, and turn them into sale. Plus it can audit your CRM to give a projection on potential results.

Want access? Hit me up @normbond or drop #LEADGEN in the comments.