How Claude Code Can Replace Your Marketing Team

Neil and Eric break down how cloud code and AI tools are reshaping marketing teams, using real examples from go to market planning, SEO, sales outreach, and internal automation. They explain why junior marketers are most at risk, why high agency talent still wins, and how tools like cloud code, ClickFlow, and AI agents compress months of work into hours. This episode explores leverage, execution, and what modern marketers must master to stay relevant as AI accelerates speed, scale, and expectations. Key Takeaways Cloud code replaces tasks, not high agency people AI shrinks marketing teams but raises the talent bar Execution speed is the real competitive advantage Chapters (00:00) Cloud code and marketing jobs (01:18) AI go to market planning (02:25) Senior talent leverage (04:17) Why AI copy fails (06:49) High agency marketers (09:45) AI in SEO workflows (13:02) Building prototypes with AI (16:42) Deals vs automation leverage

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. All right, Neil, let me tell you this, okay? Let me tell you how Claude Code will replace your marketing team. Let me give you some examples here. Because I've been on this Claude Code train. One of our mutual friends, he's messaging me every day now. He's like, "I wish I could just replace everyone."

• 0:44Speaker 00

  He's like, "These 400 people, gone. All these people gonna be fired soon," right? And I'm just like, I ran this because we just relaunched Clickflow today. Remember the SEO product that we had? So I wanted a go-to-market plan for Clickflow. But you know how much a go-to-market plan would typically cost? If you have someone that's writing your email funnels, like onboarding emails, abandoned emails, you know, churn, save, and all these emails, right? The landing page copy, all these things. You're probably paying a go-to-market person who's good, maybe 20 to 30 grand for this, right? So at minimum. So I basically had it interview me. I said, "Here's what I'm trying to do. Here's what the goals for this thing are." And it asked me like 10 questions. And I used Claude Code to spit this out. And it put it in these neat folders, okay? And I read through the onboarding emails, abandoned cart, all these things.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  It basically was 95% there. It doesn't even look like AI copy. Even the sales emails, the pre-sale emails were good. I'm like, "Oh, my God." So the prompt I put out to X is like, "If I can create this go-to-market plan quickly, like what happens to, not all marketers, what happens to most marketers, right?" And I just threw this out there because it's like, you still need people to do this stuff, right? But you need very high-agency people to manage these things. And I was like, that is just one example where I'm just like, you know, the coders have already seen the light, right? They've already seen that. Jensen said this. Jensen Huang from Nvidia, he was like, you know, "If people are still coding," he was like, "I would prefer my engineers don't code, so they can work on higher-leverage things," right? And so my question is, you know, what happens to most marketers? So before I answer that question, I'm going to give you the code example.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  And this is a little bit tangent, but then I'll answer the marketing one. I was talking to Heathany yesterday, and we were talking about, you know, all these apps, right? Like Claude and all this kind of stuff that helps engineers and people just be more efficient.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  And he was telling me something interesting. He's chosen historically as an entrepreneur to mainly only hire senior level engineers. He doesn't like dealing with junior level or mid-level as much, so he prefers senior level.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Why? You should explain why.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And the reason being is he finds it much more efficient use of his time. They can just figure things out on their own. You need less of them. And now with AI, he's just like, they're so much more efficient. You don't need big teams. It's not about just hiring tons of engineers. It's about hiring the best ones and then giving them these tools and letting them go. And the reason I bring up this tangent, I think marketing is going to be somewhere similar. So I'll give you an example between me and my co-founder, Mike Camo. He understands marketing. That's not his specialty.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  He's a pretty good marketer.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  But would you agree he's really good at sales?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  He's an excellent salesperson.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  And persuasion and figuring out what to say to convince people?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  So sometimes when I'm writing out emails for partnerships and stuff like that, I will send it to Mike. Cause all cold emails still to this day. I don't know if I told you, I probably send at least one cold email a day. It's on my like to do every day. I try to send that minimum one cold email.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Really? I didn't know that. But most of it's for partnerships or maybe sometimes a deal?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  No, no, this is for revenue generation.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  So it could be partnering with a company that could drive revenue. Or it could be pitching a company and trying to get them as a customer.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, got it.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Those are usually the main two. So I send some of my emails to Mike when they're really important. And I know the person probably has a high likelihood of responding. And it's a big company, like let's call it, you know, 20, 30, 50, 100, multiple hundred billion, even trillion. And I know the person who's in charge. I know they're probably going to respond. I'll have him review it and find to them. He loves taking everything and running it through AI. Chat GPT, Grok, you name it. He tries them all. How many times do you think I use his email copy when he modifies mine through AI?

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Through AI? I don't. You're a really picky person. Maybe 50% of the time?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Close, but in a different way.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I never really use any of his copy. But AI sometimes words, things in a different way or adds another point.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And then I may take that.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  You'll build on it.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I'll build on it.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you're really using it to help form or give you ideas, like you're pulling ideas from it and you're building on those.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yes. The problem with AI that I see right now in marketing and junior level marketers and entry level marketers and maybe some mid-level marketers. What they don't understand on certain things like copywriting, and that's an easy one to use because everyone uses AI for text-based copy or a lot of people do. It makes crap too wordy. It adds in too many dashes and fluff. It tries to sell you sometimes too hard. Instead of just being very direct and showing that I'm coming from a place of authority or confidence or people should just want my product and here's why. I found that it does a terrible job in copywriting.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  A lot of junior people send me stuff and mid-level and they don't know, I'm not talking about people in my company because they've learned their lesson by now. I'm talking about from external people and I can tell it's written by AI and they don't know that I know. And it's just so obvious for me and I'm like, dude, this is just crap. I do think it'll replace the junior level people really much more easily. I don't see AI replacing the high level like people like you and me. And I don't see it replacing the good mid-level people. I think it just adds to it like, you know. I think what we should talk about next is you've used AI for a year, two years heavily. I would say a year really heavily. Like super heavily, maybe a year.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  I would say I've been pretty big on it. Yeah. Let's just go a year heavily, but pretty heavily already the last two, three years.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Okay. So I want to ask you something and I want you to really describe it. Go and describe your day in detail. Not the cold plunges. I get the screenshots from you sometimes in the morning.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  I don't send screenshots to you. That's weird. Guys, I posted Instagram stories.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's very interesting. But it's a sauna and you'll put like a time on there like 5 a.m. or 5:05.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like that stuff.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Okay, which I actually think is really good for you. At least the articles you sent me show it is. Talk about how your life used to be on a daily basis, okay? Like really daily basis as a marketer, not running your company, but what you would do in marketing? And now break down what your life is in a daily basis now from a marketing aspect a year later. Not the in-between, but that way we can see the drastic difference.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. So this is good because a year ago we had the fires going on. So it's a nice starting off point.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Minus the fires. Eric is not saying the fires are not.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  I'm just saying I just remember that. So and thank you for that. One thing before I answer Neil, so just to just to kind of close the loop on how Claude code can replace your marketing team. What we're really saying is high agency people will never be replaced. And what it really comes down to, when you say good, my definition of good ultimate comes down to someone who has a bias to action. Because if you think of all the good people you work with, like, you know, in the past, you would say execute, actually quick executor, fast executor, right? Everything comes down to bias to action. Mike, strong bias to action, right? Anybody you worked with that you worked with for a while, I would say has had that strong bias to action, correct?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  That's what we really mean by good. And so anybody that has strong bias to action, you're not going to get replaced. You're going to be fine. Why are you smiling?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  No, it just gives me, I'm actually thinking of a scenario of someone. When you're talking about replacing, I'm actually thinking of someone right now.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Okay, all right. Well, anyway, okay, so let me ask you a question. So a year ago, let me think about this. So when I was using AI a year ago, there was no Claude code. I was mainly using it to, because ChatGPT had recently introduced memory. And so I was going through like a like a relationship thing. Okay, so I was constantly using it as my therapist at the time because I had memory, right? I was using it for advice. I was using for basic use.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Sorry, can we slow back and go back because I missed like half of it. I didn't understand what you were saying.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  You were saying there was no Claude code a year ago and then you started using it for what?

• 8:39Speaker 00

  Okay, let me back up. So a year ago when I was using AI, let's just call it 2025 Eric, okay? I was using AI mainly to use ChatGPT for therapy. Okay, I was using it to track my diet. I was using it for calorie counts, things like that. Very, I would say rudimentary stuff. I might use it for copy and things like that. I might, and as the year went by, I started to use it for helping me scan, you know, legal documents and things like, just to give me the key takeaways and things like that, right? From a marketing angle, yes, it helped me with copy, but to your point, the copy was very, there's a lot of M dashes. You can just see the very first sentence, it reads like an AI, you know, piece of content. It wasn't until, and I'll be very honest, it wasn't until actually four or five weeks ago,

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Neil, during the holiday break, when Claude Code actually unlocked everything, right? Maybe, maybe I can hold off a little bit, but it was at that point where I was like, oh my God, I can build anything now. And that has what changed my workflow completely. I would say in the last four or five weeks ago, now I get anxiety if I don't get to use Claude Code, at least for a little bit, for at least two, three hours a day. One out, like you think you're gonna use for thirty minutes and ends up being like three to four hours.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  So, so let's go back and let's make this a little bit actionable. Okay.

• 9:52Speaker 00

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• 10:28Speaker 01

  You do more than marketing, but you do marketing yourself and you have employees who are marketers. What are you, what are you expecting from an employee right now? Let's say someone doing SEO. Let's, let's just use that example, because that's where we both started. Using SEO, what would you expect them to use AI on a daily basis for specifically?

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna answer this and then I'm gonna give you, because now I'm thinking about specific use cases. For me in the last year, so I'll come back to that. But this one I'll answer. So our SEO team right now, they're expected to use Click Flow, which is our internal SEO tool. So I was actually sitting in an SEO meeting this week because I wanted to ask them about product feedback. I'm like, okay, guys, you guys are using this. How much percent of the time, right? They're like, oh, like eighty, ninety percent of the time. I'm like, okay, how much time are you saving with this, this Click Flow thing? Copywriters, ninety hours a month, okay, per person. And then, so they're using a combination of Click Flow to help with content with internal linking and things like that. And we're also, they're also using Manus, which is a general agent to help with keyword research. Manus just, you know, did a partnership with SimilarWeb.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Didn't they get bought out by Facebook?

• 11:31Speaker 00

  They did, but then, you know, China is trying to stop that, right? It was like, whoa, you didn't quite, you know, divest properly, so we don't know. We're gonna have to invest, investigate this. So all that to say, it's really those two things right now. So any keyword research strategy stuff, hey, what's happening with these competitors? That kind of happens with Manus. Obviously, they still need to talk to clients and things like that, too. And then I would say the other piece around content mainly comes from Click Flow, internal linking, and, you know, updating, deleting, consolidating.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. But that was very recent, maybe the last couple of months or so. Now, now that I remember some of the things I did last year, do you want me to answer some of those?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Okay. So in twenty twenty five, I was, and Neil pays for all these things too, I think, even though we're both cheap. So.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Sadly, I do. I see the bills. It makes me cry every month.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  So we both pay, I, I'm speaking for you. We're both paid two hundred dollars a month for ChatGPT, the, the pro version, just because you can, there's. You pay two hundred bucks a month?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I don't know how much I pay. I just know it goes on the corporation and I just know it's expensive.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So two hundred bucks a month is the individual plan, okay? We both, so I pay, I was already paying, I think, a hundred dollars a month for Claude, for Max, okay? And then I was paying Perplexity twenty bucks a month because the deep research is really good. So I use Perplexity for deep research, finding things quickly. I use Gemini for image generation and VO, and then for studying YouTube videos too, right? This was twenty twenty five, Eric. And then ChatGPT is, it's more like general questions, or let's say if I'm, I use Granola. So if I'm arguing with you about something, I might just turn Granola on and I was just. See who's right. It pisses people off. It pisses in relationships. It really pisses people off. So I don't try to do it that much.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna try that one. I'm married.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, you didn't do that one. That'll get you in trouble no matter what.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  I'm gonna lose either way.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  So it's like I just give it up on that in relationships. But what I did, by the way, like I used granola yesterday. Like I was having a debate with someone and like it called out where I was wrong or where they were wrong. And we talked about today and we both apologized for where we were wrong, right? So it's good for solving problems. Yeah. So, because you have like a, you know, an arbiter in there that doesn't really care about you or the other person. It's just listening. So all that to say, that was last year. Okay. Now, and there's other tools too, but we'll just leave it at that. In the last four weeks or so, I use Claude Code and all these, these MCPs where it connects with like the tools like HubSpot, Atrus, Gong. And I built, I built like a deal reviver that will surface, you know, deals that we lost maybe 12 months ago or so. It'll show the deal size and it'll show why we lost the deal.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  And it has an email crafted that looks like it's a, it's a very good email. It, you would open it, right? It's like, hey, you know, you know, Neil, we connected 12 months ago. I just saw the announcement on this funding round. Congrats. Does it make sense for us to reconnect? Eric, that's, that's not bad, right? It's not a hundred percent, but it's not bad. And so the, the team now can click in Slack. They could select what they want and they can just hit send email. And they'll send the email out and then it'll record it to HubSpot. But that's, that's an MVP. That's a prototype that I built. Just like sometimes I'll be in line at Sweetgreen. I'll just be building, right? Or I'll be on my couch. I just open my phone. It's building, right? And then I sometimes I can't stand watching TV anymore and I'll just go to my computer until it's about time to go to bed. And like the other day I was gonna watch TV. It was 6:00 PM.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Then it's, holy shit, it's 9:30 and I was just on Claude Code the whole time, building stuff in parallel. So my point now is the way I use it is to solve problems in my organization, which I couldn't do before. It's extremely high leverage. And I was asking it. I was like, I was like, hey, the work that we did today, how much? How much work did I do as one person? What did it, what is it equivalent to? It's like you did the work of five engineers today, right? I was like, okay, break down the math for me. It's like, well, you know, X, Y, and Z. But also I think I broke down the math to you last time. How long did it take for you to get a prototype done before, like a working prototype where you can mess around with for software?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Uh, for me, are you talking about using AI or having my team do it?

• 15:21Speaker 00

  Just having your team build it in the past, like a year ago.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  So working prototype being designed that you can click around? Or one that actually functions? Cause you know, in the design apps, I forgot what the one we use.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Envision or?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Not Envision.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Uh, Balsamic?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Not Balsamic, is it Envision?

• 15:36Speaker 00

  The wireframe stuff?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it's actually a design you can click around.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  You're talking Figma.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Figma, there you go.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Um, so usually I'll see stuff in less than a week.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's for a, like a Figma.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Uh, for a Figma.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Okay, how about a click around, you can do stuff?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Click around and do stuff where you actually see different results? Like if you put in a URL?

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Usually thirty to sixty days sadly.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  So let's just say thirty days, okay? Now get this. I'm being, okay, let's say I can get these prototypes out in twenty percent of the day, okay? We can be conservative here, but if twenty percent of a day on thirty days, thirty days divided by point two is one hundred fifty, okay? So you can say I'm either a hundred fifty times faster, or you can argue that I'm infinitely faster now because I don't have coding abilities, right? Uh, but you and I do have strategic abilities and we see the entire battlefield with our companies. And so to me, that working prototype, the deal reviver, the ability to spot client expansion, client churn, all produce and see what exactly they said and why we should be pitching this or whatever? And then sending that to the team and seeing if they take action on it? I, I built all that. All of that, right? And that's why I'm so excited for you because once I inject you with this drug

• 16:41Speaker 00

  or you inject yourself with this drug, there's no turning back. You're gonna be messaging me, we're just gonna be doing this all the time because our mutual friend, we're just doing that every day. And he's like, I feel like a loser right now. I can't believe I'm in these meetings. I'm like, I can't believe I'm in these meetings too. Um, it's just so fun right now.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  You know, for the sake of me, and you've known me for a long time. I don't know how many years, but it's well over ten. Fifteen plus?

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Fifteen, sixteen years, yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Okay. I can't get the life of me to spend more than thirty minutes a day using these tools.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I agree they make me more efficient as a marketer, but I find my highest use of time just doing deals. More than anything else. So. These tools are great and I have my team using them all day long. Engineers, marketers, product people, even customer success. Cause we can input all the satisfied people, all the unsatisfied people, learn from it. Have AI help with the responses and train our people. There's a lot that you can end up doing with these products. But I still find my highest use or best leverage for my time is just focusing on closing deals.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  I don't disagree with you, but I'm willing to bet you. I'm willing to bet you a really nice meal in 12 months or so, you're going to be using this because. And this is, and let me come back to your response too, because I do. I will say Neil typically is, I'm more on the optimistic side, sometimes too optimistic. Sometimes Neil's on the pessimistic side, sometimes too pessimistic. It's a good balance, right? But what I would say is.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Let's say I agree with you. Your highest leverage thing is doing deals, right? Whether it's, you know, whether it's an M and A transaction or like a deal, like a business transaction, like a sales transaction or a partnership. I do agree with that. This type, like, let's say that's true. What are all the things that bother you with that process right now? That would be able to help you gain even more leverage there. That's how I look at it. How can I gain leverage on all these things? And that's how my friends look at it. I'm like, what are you building right now? Cause arguably he should, he shouldn't be doing what he's doing right now. But I'm like, so what are you building? He's like, everything's around product right now. And it is, it's going to save him a lot on headcount, but he's like, dude, this is, this is supercharging everything we're going to build.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So my team, Caio helped build a lot of the automation to scrape, get lists, send first cold emails for M and A. So we've already built a lot of this stuff and we're using AI for a lot of the grunt work that we hated hiring people for. Or, you know, that I would just manually go on LinkedIn and go look for companies. And a lot of that's done. The main way I use AI to make deals happen is I go and do research. And when I say research is I'll ask chat GPT questions or, you know, AI mode questions or Gemini, whatever you want to end up calling any of these products. And what I found is they're off in many cases.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  So for example, sometimes I'm doing deals where you're structuring them and it involves tax consequences. And I was talking to ChatGPT a few days ago about a potential deal. And it was just like, oh, it's not gonna be tax favorable for you. Cause with the Trump tax bill, bonus depreciation in 2026 is only 40%. And I'm like, what the heck are they talking about? It's been known for a long time that he renewed the bill and it's now 100% for bonus depreciation. Right? And it carried back all the way towards, I think, Jan 20 or something like that of, or whenever he got signed into office. But I was like, what the heck is ChatGPT talking about?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  What I find is these tools produce a lot of inaccurate information. Luckily for me, I'm using them for research on topics that I'm already familiar with. But there's nuances on laws and taxation for states versus federal. And every state is different, but I'm able to catch some of this stuff.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  But other than that, like, that's the main thing I want fixed. And I hope that they'll be able to fix this stuff within a matter of a few years. I find that Google, though, tends to actually be more accurate than ChatGPT, believe it or not. All right, guys, we'll catch you later. Goodbye.