How Marketing Leaders Must Evolve for Agentic AI

AI agents are reshaping marketing automation. Nicholas Holland, Head of AI at HubSpot, explains the shift from managing people to orchestrating AI agents. He emphasizes that current AI technology isn't the bottleneck - rather, organizations need structured frameworks for agent management, clear guidelines for implementation, and new metrics for evaluating management effectiveness in hybrid human-AI teams. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Nicholas Holland, the Head of AI at HubSpot. And today Nicholas is going to explain how the shift from agentic AI is fundamentally changing marketing automation and what it means for your team's future. What's your game plan for helping marketers transition from managing people to managing a fleet of AI agents?

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  One of the things we were talking about the other day is I think the AI technology, they're going to keep making it better, but I think the AI technology is at a point right now where it's actually not a blocker for a lot of the things we want to do now. What I mean by that is OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, they all have put out incredibly powerful models, more power than even like what a lot of the people who use it even know what to do with. The next wave, in my opinion, is really going to be around the orchestration of all of this stuff. And so we're focusing a lot on out of the box agents. We're focusing a lot on frameworks to help you manage and train the agents. And we're focusing a lot on like a very structured point of view. I think that's like what we see out of customers and marketers more than anything else. Please tell me what I should do next. So that's what we're really focused on.

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  Yeah, I think that the idea that you still have to put in work to manage agents is confusing to people. I think you keep doing what you're doing, but you're not managing a person. And it seems like there's a little pushback where people want to manage people and they want to invest time into the relationships because it's another human being and what you give, you get back. And with agents, you still have to put in work. It's not warm and fuzzy. They're not going to say, thanks, boss. But you still get the same results. So you still have to put in the work to cultivate, not necessarily relationship, but context and guidelines and boundaries. And to me, that's the secret sauce for starting to work on managing agents is you keep managing them kind of like they were humans.

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  There are people now starting to evaluate management requirements. In bigger companies, you only get this role, let's say a director, if you manage this number of people. Well, in a world where teams are hybrid, there are already people looking that says you can get to this role if you're managing this number of people or this number of people and agents. Isn't that crazy?

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  It's almost like a religious shift here where we have to start treating this technology in a way that we treat human beings, which kind of puts it on par with how we treat humans. And the relationship of man and machine is changing because of this technology. And I think that people really kind of struggle with that. And putting it in a work context, not sort of an emotional and, you know, the way of the world and religion, it's hard to think of having to invest time in a relationship with a computer, with a box. All right, that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Nicholas Holland, the head of AI at HubSpot for joining us. If you'd like to contact Nicholas, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. Or you can

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  learn about HubSpot and how they're building AI for marketers by going to hubspot.com/ai. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the MarTech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.