Making $$ with AI Marketing

0:00Today we're going to talk about how you can build anything with AI, but people are going to figure out distribution. How do you actually get customers to the thing that you're vibe coding? I believe that the wealthiest people will be marketers over the next 10 years. But every YouTube tutorial is telling you how to vibe code. So today, by the end of this episode, you're going to have seven really straightforward things that you can do this week. Frameworks, ideas, alpha that's working right now. So that you can actually build a software company, a SaaS, an agent company that actually gets customers.

0:35I'm going to explain how to do it. By the end of this, you're going to get your creative juices flowing. I needed to make this episode. I really needed to make this episode. I'm actually recording at night. I tweeted this that people need to figure out distribution. It hurts me that people don't have the ideas around it. Like and comment if you want me to do more episodes on this. Let's get right into it.

1:07So I believe that there's this great flip happening. I moved to Silicon Valley in 2014. And when I moved, it was all about engineers as number one. I actually studied computer science in university because I was like, engineers are number one on the hierarchy, right? And then it became product and then marketing as at the bottom. Literally, the laughingstock of Silicon Valley were marketing people. Now today, I believe that because of AI distribution, people who understand distribution, how to get customers, you're at the top of the list. Then it's product people and then it's developers. This is a big deal because I actually think that not a lot of people understand distribution.

1:55They don't understand brand. They don't understand advertising. They don't understand content. But I think that if you can, if you do understand it, you are at an unfair advantage. There's 200 ,000 new vibe coding projects being created every single day on Lovable. How many people are actually seeing those products? Probably not a lot. Peter Levels has$3 million plus of revenue. He has zero employees. The reason why he's been able to get so much revenue as a one-person business is he's got 750 ,000 plus followers, I think. And also he's got great SEO. If you look at some of the stuff that he works on, Nomad List, for example, a lot of the tools, these could be copied quite quickly.

2:50It's essentially a directory. I've done episodes and tours on how to vibe code directories before, but he's obviously got good data and data is part of that. But it's also largely he's got an audience, he's got trust, and he's built good SEO. We'll talk more about that in this episode. So the big trap that I think a lot of founders and builders do is they vibe code something. Once they've built the product, they've got this great idea. then they're just going to try marketing things but it's a silence so then they're going to build more features and they're going to launch again and more silence so they basically are just thinking about how do I build a really good product and if you build it they will come but they don't come what smart builders do is they start with the distribution so they'll grow an audience to maybe a thousand people they ask that audience what they need and then they go and build it in a weekend 24 hours, 72 hours a few days.

3:50And then that audience is shocked that, wow, you built the thing that I wanted. And then you launch it to a warm audience, you iterate with real users, and you start making money. So it's distribution first, product second, always. The example of Peter Levels, I think he's tweeted 125 ,000 times in the last eight years. He's put in the consistency and the work to actually go and build that audience. And he's been iterating with users and customers with them. So let's get into the actual tactics. Strategy one is going to be about using an MCP server as your sales team. So if you're listening to Startup Ideas Podcast, you probably know what an MCP is.

4:34But you can think of it as basically like an app. The example I'll use here is plugins and OpenAI use the MCP protocol. So you can just be like at Google Drive, find the right drive, then summarize a doc and update a sheet or edit a slides deck. So there's this massive opportunity to build MCP servers as your sales team. How does it work? Well, a user asks the AI, it could be Claude, it could be ChatGPT, as a question. The AI discovers your MCP server and AI returns your product and the user gets value from it. So there's zero CAC, the AI assistant basically becomes your sales teams. And I have friends who are, I'm actually incubating some things around here.

5:25And actually, if you look at ideabrowser.com, we've been doing some MCP stuff. We also have a lot of friends who just, for example, in the fintech space, 150 plus installations in 30 days,$0 ad spend for something that he vibe coded quite quickly. So I believe that building an MCP server in 2026 is in a lot of ways building like kind of building for mobile in 2010. There's just a lot of opportunities to show up in LLMs in these connections, plugins or MCP servers. So how can you start this week? And by the way, I realize that this, you know, an MCP server, it's not for everyone, right? If you're building a boring business, maybe that's not for you or, you know, even some software businesses might not be for you.

6:12But for some people, for SaaS, if you want to get started this week, what can you do? Identify what question your product answers. That's the first thing you're going to want to do. Number two, you're going to want to build an MCP server that returns that data. You can vibe the code that realistically in 24 hours or less. You're going to want to publish that to MCP registries, Smithery, MCPT, OpenTools. And then every AI assistant that connects to your server is now selling for you 24-7. So that's a bet that you're going to make. And that's strategy number one. Let's get to strategy number two.

6:50Strategy number two is programmatic SEO. So it's how can you create 10 ,000 SEO pages in 48 hours? So you're going to want to look at a keyword pattern. Best X for Y. So best CRMs for dentists, for example. Then you're going to want to look at data sets. I actually did a whole episode on Firecrawl recently, a tutorial on how to use it. Basically, what does that do? If you haven't seen that, it basically goes and scrapes and gets you clean, structured data so that you can actually provide value in your pages. Then you're going to want to use a page template, Next.js. You can use Cloud Code or something to actually go and build this.

7:35Then you're going to want to actually create AI content. and then you're going to go and create 10 ,000 pages. Now, I know there's a big gap. I can see the comment section right now. It's okay, you're just going to press one button and then just automatically create 10 ,000 pages. Well, no, of course not because you do need to make sure that the content is good and doesn't feel like AI. So there's going to be a lot of optimizations that you're going to have to do to actually get it so it doesn't feel like AI. But once you get it to there, you can start with just a few pages. And once you get it to there, then you can start scaling to more pages.

8:14The math is pretty simple. If you end up creating 10 ,000 pages and each page gets 30 visits a month, which is not a lot of visits, that could go up to 300 ,000 monthly visitors. If you convert at 2%, that's 6 ,000 conversions a month. Maybe that's$10 each. and then all of a sudden you're making$60 ,000 a month from pages you built once. Now those 30 visits a month, that's not going to happen overnight. SEO does take some time to compound. But think about it directionally. Directionally, the idea is build a lot of pages, get really good at creating AI content, get structured data that's high quality,

8:58and rinse, repeat. So how can I actually start this this week? If this is something that's interesting to you, How can I go and start this this week? Well, you're going to want to pick a keyword pattern. So like the product type for niche or service in city. Like for example, the CRM for dentists or roofing in Miami. You're going to want to build your data set. So you're going to want to scrape with Firecrawl or you can use existing databases. You can create a template in your framework like Next.js, Webflow, WordPress. Just stick with the thing that you're going to use. And then you're going to want to use AI to generate unique content per page.

9:37So not just variable swaps, actual paragraphs, high quality stuff. And you also might want to have a human in the loop to actually edit and look at some of this content. Publish 100 pages as an MVP, monitor indexation, and then that's when you can go ahead and scale. So that's number two. I think that's applicable to really anyone. It doesn't make a difference if you're building a service, a SaaS, an app. You've got a boring business, you've got an agency, programmatic SEO is still under tap. Strategy number three, three on seven, is doing a free tool for your top of the funnel. So the tool is your marketing.

10:20An example I would use is Ahrefs for a while has had this backlink checker. So you put in your domain, for example, gregisenberg.com. It's going to see what are the different backlinks, like who's connected to me, what links are connected to me. And, you know, it's high quality and stuff like that. And, you know, but the reality is it gives you a taste of their full product. So if I want more, I have to go and spend hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars a month with Ahrefs. So they kind of hook you in through that. So, you know, step one is building a free tool. It could be a grader, it can be an analyzer, it can be a calculator.

11:04Step two is the user gets instant value. So your site scores 43 on 100. Generally what you want to do is obviously grab their data in some capacity, text message, email, in order to get access to that. Step three is the user shares their score. So that's going to help this thing go viral. Social proof, backlinks. and then step four is more users are going to discover it. So you've got this organic viral loop and step five is upsell to a paid product. So you want to fix these issues? Well, we've got the product for you. Now, this strategy has been around for a while, right? But why is it different?

11:47Well, now it's different because you can use Cloud Code to go and actually build these free tools, right? It's now not crazy to build a free tool a week, whereas in the past, these things would have taken you months. So you can Vibe code a free tool in a day, ship it by lunch, and it markets itself forever. So I really like this one. This is something that I'm doing in all my businesses as much as possible. And if you want to get started this week, I would ask your LLM of choice to be like, here's what I'm working on. and give me 10 ideas for free tools that can act as my top of the funnel. You're going to have your 10 tools, you can prioritize the ones that you think are the best.

12:35You can even ask your audience, hey, what would be more interesting, this or that? Get them involved and then go and build it. When you do social media, you think of an editorial calendar or content calendar, but no one really thinks about a free tool calendar. And I really do believe the tool is the marketing. This is working. Don't know why more people aren't doing it. But strategy number three, one of my faves. Strategy number four, answer engine optimization. So you want to be the source that AI cites. So the old way of getting seen obviously was SEO. You just wanted to get on Google page one.

13:17You do 3 ,000 word blog posts. You're doing backlink building, keyword stuffing. Oh my God. Click through your site. I'm just having flashbacks of doing all this stuff. There's still opportunity in SEO. I mean, we talked about it today, but it's declining. And zero click searches are growing, right? So if AEO in 2026 is where SEO was in 2010, first movers will own these niches for years. So the idea is answer engine optimization. How do we get cited by ChatGPT and perplexity? Structured direct answers. You can do an FAQ format, schema markup, comparison tables that AI can parse. So that way you're getting seen a little more.

14:08And then AI is going to send users to your product. So I think it was Peter Levels actually. I believe that he said his AI referrals jumped from 4 % to 20 % in one month. I think that it's only going to increase across the board on e-commerce, SaaS, apps, you name it. So it's worth exploring. So okay, great. You probably already knew this. Obviously you want to be seen in perplexity or chat GPT. But how can you start this this week? Well, step one is to Google the top 20 questions your customer asks. And you're going to, step two, write the definitive structured answers for each. So I'm not talking about 3 ,000 word fluff.

14:56I'm talking about clear, direct, citation worthy. It's all about getting citation worthy content. Then you're going to add, step three, add schema markup and FAQ blocks. Step four, you're going to want to publish on a domain with authority or build authority through the other strategies. Obviously, it's why a Peter Levels could get his SEO and AEO up more quicker than the average person listening to this is because a lot of his domains have built authority over time. So there's no better time. Start building that authority today. And then lastly, monitor your perplexity in chat GPT citations. You can use tools like Otterly.

15:38There's Profound. There's manual testing. but the important thing here is that you're just getting started so get started this week on AEO strategy number five is how can you make your outputs of your product shareable so we all know the end of year December Spotify wrapped they get 100 million shares every December of that thing it's absolutely crazy everyone wants to share it, your mother wants to share it Your sister wants to share it. Your kids want to share it. Everyone is sharing it, laughing about it. It says something about your identity, who you are. So what is that for you, right? So what is the free distribution output shareable thing that you can be creating?

16:25The way I have it in my head at least is ask, what does my user want to brag about? And then make that thing beautiful and shareable. For GitHub, they've got the contribution graph. And then you see devs bragging about sharing those green squares on Twitter. Stripe Atlas, which allows you to create companies, the artifact there is the incorporation milestone. Founders tweet, I just incorporated, or it's been five years since I incorporated. Here's my anniversary post lessons learned. Duolingo, perhaps one of the most famous examples. Daily streak count. And then users are bragging about 365 day streaks.

17:13I don't know if Snapchat was before them. I think they were. But I think that was an original Snapchat thing too. I like to look at what are social products doing? Because you can actually take a lot of that thinking, that psychology and bring that into whatever it is you're doing. So your product, what is the artifact that you're going to create? What is the viral artifact that you're going to create? What do your users want to brag about? So if we want to get started this week, what do we need? Step one, we're going to have to identify the output or milestone your user would screenshot and share.

17:50Step two, let's make it beautiful. Let's make it shareable. Let's make it branded. Your logo actually should be subtle but present. I've seen some examples of artifacts that the logo is super big and no one wants to share someone else's logo. It should feel it's about you. Step three is you're going to want to add a share button that pre-fills the post with the artifact. Step four, every share is free impressions to your exact target audience. So that's a huge win. The user is doing your marketing because they're bragging about themselves. People are going to say, well, these are mostly consumer examples.

18:27examples will this work in b2b um or you know yeah b2b yes you know at the end of the day b2b are people too there's things that these you know people want to share maybe they're sharing it within slack maybe they're sharing it within microsoft teams but just think about what is something that they are willing to share uh with your with a the group that you ultimately want more of. So that is strategy number five. Strategy number six. So you know me, I think audiences are really important. Sometimes it's just hard to build an audience. Listen, a lot of times it's hard to build an audience, more often than not.

19:11It takes sometimes years, it requires daily content. There's no guarantee it works too. Sometimes it doesn't work. and then it's tough right because you have zero subscribers on day one so what if you just acquired a niche newsletter instead of building from zero so this is something a lot of people don't think about but you can go and buy a 10 ,000 subscriber newsletter for five to twenty thousand dollars you inherit that trust from day one you plug in your product immediately and then you can repeat that across niches if you have a product that you believe in and you understand the LTV, this just might make sense for you.

19:56And a lot of these smaller newsletters, they're not really monetizing that well. So they might be stoked to get a$10 ,000 offer from you. So if we want to get this started this week, I would go to deuce.com, which is like a listing of selling newsletters, newsletter investor, or just search. your niche newsletter on Twitter or Substack and just try to find these newsletters. That's step one. Step two is you probably want to look at the 5 ,000 to 50 ,000 subscriber in your target niche. You obviously don't want to buy something so big in the beginning. But listen, if you have the money and you really do understand the LTV, maybe you do.

20:40It's all about confidence, how much confidence that you have. Step three is DM the owner. Have you ever thought about selling? You'd be surprised how many people would take the call. Next step is a lot of these folks, as I mentioned, are not really making that much money. Maybe they're making$0 to$500 a month and they would be open to a fair offer, $5 ,000 to$10 ,000 to$15 ,000 to$20 ,000. And then all of a sudden you own a direct channel to your exact audience. And more importantly, it's not a social media account that could be taken away from you at any point. This is a direct line that you can go and put links to and if you want to put your product in there and say, come buy my product, it's going to get seen, unlike places like social media that could suppress your reach over time.

21:34I think this is something that not a lot of people think of, so I definitely want to throw it in there. The last strategy is thinking about building an AI content repurposing engine. So the way I think about it is this. You can think about creating one hero or pillar piece of content. That could be a podcast episode, a YouTube video, a long blog post, an essay. and that one piece of content ends up becoming a lot more. It could be 50, 75, 20, it depends how much you want to get out of it. So you can actually use AI to take that pillar content, turn it into five to 10 tweets, three to five LinkedIn posts, two to three short form videos, one newsletter.

22:29And the short form videos would be using a re-motion skill on something like a Claude code, a newsletter edition, a blog post, five to 10 quote graphics that you can use creative LLMs to go and create for you, email sequences. And a lot of this stuff can actually, for the people into OpenClaw, they can go and automate with OpenClaw. You can also use just Claude Dispatch and Claude Cowork, Perplexity Computer, any of these to go and automate some of this stuff for you. The big idea here is you get one thing that'll equal a bunch of different contents, and that gives you way more touch points across multiple platforms.

23:14So if you want to get that started this week, I would suggest just starting recording one 30-minute piece of content. It could be a podcast, it could be a video, or just a voice memo. It's way harder to actually go and write a 3 ,000 word essay on something. And I just find if you just voice memo something or you do a podcast, it could also just be an internal podcast or just literally a video of you that you don't end up putting out. And the actual value is in the repurposing that AI is going to do. You're going to want to transcribe it. You can drop the translation into Claude, turn this into five tweet threads, three LinkedIn posts, and one newsletter.

24:00Obviously, it needs to be set up properly. Obviously, you're going to get slop by default. So you have to optimize to not slop. And a part of that is having a really good brand and reference images. A part of that is setting routines so it's going and researching different topics and adding to what you have. Part of it is knowing what skills and having those skills implemented. But you can get started by just getting started and then schedule across platforms. If you do this every week, I think in three months you have more content than your competitors. Your competitors are not putting out this amount of content.

24:49They just really aren't. And where we are with content in 2026 is because of For You pages, you never know when you can go viral in your niche. And you don't need a lot of followers to start. You just need a lot of shots on that. So this is kind of like a shots on net strategy. And I don't know why more people aren't building this out. So those are the seven strategies, growth strategies that I think are interesting and that I think I would pay attention to if I was vibe coding something, if I wanted to build a business, if I wanted customers to that business, if I wanted to build a growth engine.

25:31Code used to be the moat. I think by now, maybe by the end of this, you understand that. Distribution is the new moat. The most important thing is distribution. it's scarce, right? AI can't build it. Product is really important, but in lots of ways it is commoditized and code is fully commoditized. So I've given you seven distribution weapons. Just to summarize, I've given you MCP servers, so let AI sell for you. I've given you programmatic SEO, 10 ,000 pages in a weekend. I've given you free tool, the tool is your marketing. I've given you answer engine optimization, Be the source AI sites. I've given you viral artifacts.

26:13Make your output shareable. I've given you buy a newsletter, acquire the audience, and I've given you AI, repurposing engine, one pillar, and seven channels. So pick two of them. Start this week. Don't just vibe code. I want to see you get customers, make money, grow from there, reinvest, have fun. And I wanted to do this because, like I said, I don't want you just to be vibe coding stuff and no one's seeing it. I think there's too many people doing that. If this is interesting, like I said, let me know and I can do more of these. I have tons of strategies that I use. I can go deeper in the future.

26:56I'm here to help you. The Startup Ideas podcast, I am here to help you increase your odds of success with good ideas, growth tactics, startup ideas. Please share this with a friend. Let me know what you think and I'll see you on the next episode. Happy building.