How to Build an AI-Forward B2B Marketing Function in 120 Days
- Chris McLellan
- Oct 7
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 17
Through Friends Electric, my personal AI marketing consultancy, I recently helped a client build a B2B marketing function from the ground up. The experience made it clear just how profoundly AI is reshaping the structure and development of the marketing stack. To put those learnings into practice, I created this updated version of a classic '120-Day Marketing Plan', a practical, AI-forward guide that be used by small businesses and startups as a reference when building or modernizing their marketing function.
At a Glance
This post outlines a practical, AI-forward guide that small businesses, startups, and scale-ups can use for building a modern B2B marketing function from scratch. It's a 120-day roadmap that outlines how to build an AI-forward marketing function that blends human creativity with intelligent systems. It provides a practical, structured, and insight-driven framework for teams modernizing fast.
Key concepts:
• Structured transformation: Four 30-day phases create a clear, time-bound path to modernize a marketing function from strategy to automation.
• AI as infrastructure: Artificial intelligence is built into workflows, insights, and decision loops, not added later as a tool.
• Reference architecture: Each phase aligns to standard Product Playbooks and Go-To-Market motions such as Strategy, Product, Marketing, Demand, Sales, and Tracking.
• Collaborative intelligence: Encourages teams to treat AI systems as collaborators that learn and improve over time.
• Platform potential: Designed to evolve into a living system or playbook that continuously improves through data and feedback.
This is a guideline for small business and startups, not a rulebook. The timeline depends on available resources and team size, it’s completely reasonable for a solo marketer to stretch this plan across six to eight months.
Try this: Copy and paste this post into ChatGPT and ask it to tailor the activities and sequencing to your business and team.
Stage 1: Build Foundations of an AI-Forward Marketing Function
Stage 1 is where strategy meets structure. The goal here is to build your marketing foundations fast without getting mired in too much detail or massive docs that few people ever read. Timeframe: 1–30 days
The first month is about creating clarity around your brand, product, and marketing operations. You define what you are building, who it is for, and how AI will accelerate the process. A key deliverable is an AI Research Assistant (let's name it 'Growth Advisor') that will support cross-team transparency and support faster and better decision-making with data-driven insights.
Strategy & Planning:
Create simple Marketing Plan in Canva and Marketing Budget in Google Sheets.
Select the optimal data management tool. Bootstrappers can use Google Sheets, whereas true startups and scaleups should consider a more robust tool like Airtable
Product Readiness:
Develop your data-centric Product Playbook to clarify positioning, personas, value props, messaging, GTM Plan and more. THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT STEP IN THIS GUIDE.
Marketing Execution:
Build Brand Kit / Style Guide via 'Magic Design' feature in Canva
Create Content Plan in Google Sheet. Plan the first 12 weeks of content.
Create Custom GPTs for major content formats (e.g. LinkedIn posts, case studies), add instructions and templates.
Open Google Doc to storyboard Explainer Video. Generate in Canva, Sora or Synthesia.
Open Google Doc for website copy. Invite collaborators, including Gem or ChatGPT.
Connect Figma to ChatGPT to draft early web page designs, share with designer.
Publish website via CMS e.g. Framer, Webflow, or Wix. Add waitlist form if pre-launch
Standup HubSpot, leveraging HubSpot Breeze AI capability Create and embed forms for newsletter and sales
Kickstart AIO with simple presence on YouTube and Reddit.
Sales Enablement:
Create a NotebookLM called 'Growth Assistant', add instructions, Product Playbook Marketing Plan, Marketing Budget, Style Guide, website URL, and market research (PDFs, YouTube URLs) as sources. Record a video tour of the resource and share with customer-facing stakeholders.
Tracking & Optimization:
Set up Google Tag Manager, adding GA4 tag. Set up Looker Studio to monitor web traffic (sessions) and conversions (sales enquiries, newsletter signups, chat sessions).
Add UTM tracking tags in HubSpot CRM.
How AI Accelerates This Phase 👉 By introducing AI tools like a Growth Advisor powered by NotebookLM or ChatGPT Projects, you can capture insights faster, structure your strategy docs, and build a single source of truth that aligns everyone early.
Stage 2: Shift Into Gear with Content, Storytelling, & Feedback Loops
Congrats, you've built a really solid 'AI-forward' marketing foundation that will pay future dividends in terms of productivity and scale. So, take a short breather and get ready because it's time to start directly engaging the market and finding your weekly rhythm. Timeframe: 31–60 days
Stage 2 is where things shift from planning to action, and from research to experimentation. The AI Research Assistant and Custom GPTs you've created become key collaborators, helping draft content across channels. Start with a short AI-assisted content sprint or social experiment to see what works.
Strategy & Planning:
Adjust messaging based on early traction data gathered through HubSpot Breeze AI.
Product Readiness:
Re-review product/platform web pages. Consider adding 'solutions' pages that focus on specific industries, roles, or use cases.
Marketing Execution:
Start executing on Content Plan, using the Custom GPTs build in Stage 1 and AI tools like Canva, Gamma, and Descript to generate visuals and videos. Try This: Adopt a 'content lifecycle' approach that reuses, repurposes, and recycles content.
Introduce list segmentation to HubSpot workflows to increase personalization and response rates.
Sales Enablement:
Deploy your first AI-powered web sales agent using a tool like HubSpot's Breeze Customer Agent or Voiceflow
Create a Product Story video with tool like ScreenSpace, using Product Playbook to inform the flow. Publish full version to YouTube and clips to socials.
Tracking & Optimization:
Add new sources to Looker Studio, including YouTube. Data from apps may need to be downloaded to a Google Sheet, or integrated via Funnel IO.
Start conducting quarterly stakeholder interviews with sales, customer support, customer success, exec team, and partners using Google Meets or Granola. Add transcripts to AI Growth Advisor. Pro Tip: Consolidate transcripts in a single Google Doc to minimize impact on NotebookLM source limits.
Launch Customer Feedback Loop via Google Survey or TypeForm, even if just an NPS embedded in your newsletter or post-sale emails. Add survey data to AI Growth Advisor, and add insights pulled from the data to Product Playbook.
How AI Accelerates This Phase 👉 By using Custom GPTs and creative tools like Canva, Gamma, and Descript, you turn brainstorming into production, generating visuals, posts, and videos in hours instead of days.
Stage 3: Turbocharge with Social Proof & Conversion Optimization
It's been two months, and the marketing function is hopefully starting to generate early results. Now is the time to layer in social proof to increased conversion rates and start opening up new growth channels such as sponsorships, hosted events, and tactical experiments with paid media. Timeframe: 61–90 days
Stage 3 is when you start validating the foundations you've built in Stages 1-2, identify what's working, and start thinking about new channels. Your AI Research Assistants transition from partners to analysts, providing insights that shape strategy and experiments.
Strategy and Planning:
Refine goals, budgets, and KPIs with data-backed adjustments.
Product Readiness:
Create Google Forms and Google Sheets to create a customer feedback loop. Request shareable quotes that align to value props in the Product Playbook.
Start capturing key processes such as event planning, sales funnel management, and customer on-boarding as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which will fuel automation experiments in Stage 4.
Marketing Execution:
Introduce new growth channels like Google AdWords, webinars, sponsorships. Create Tracker docs in Google Sheets where required.
Expand use of AI tools for image and video generation. Try adding the Canva plugin to ChatGPT.
If video content is starting to scale, activate the 'chapters' and 'cards' features in YouTube
Add thought leadership activities to Content Calendar, likely taking over the posting for company leaders. Tip: Record regular leadership interviews with tool like Granola and feed transcripts into Custom AI bots to spin out dozens of content ideas.
Start a Media List (journalists, youtubers, podcasters, writers) and begin the long-term process of getting coverage o fuel citations for Wikipedia (company and leadership pages); key to organic traffic via SEO and AIO.
Sales Enablement:
Introduce Lead Scoring in HubSpot to better identify MQLs/SQLs, powered by buyer intent data
Create and deliver the first in a series of regular Growth Meetups (inviting sales, product, CS, and success) to share insights from website engagement, customer feedback, and marketing channel successes/ failures.
Tracking & Optimization:
Add tracking tags for new performance marketing channels to GTM.
Create a 'Marketing Insights' Custom GPT (with custom instructions and a template) to draft bullets reports that highlight leads, conversions, patterns, and anomalies. Add screengrabs from Looker Studio and HubSpot as sources.
How AI Accelerates This Phase 👉 With HubSpot Breeze and Looker Studio, you start turning performance data into real-time insights, helping you double down on what works and cut what doesn’t.
Stage 4: Hit Top Gear with Marketing Agents and Scale
It’s only been three months, but thanks to solid upfront planning your marketing engine is starting to find its rhythm. The real world, however, is rarely neat and tidy, so don’t worry if you’re running a few weeks behind, especially if you’re a solo operator or part of a small team. Timeframe: 91–120 days
Stage 4 is all about scaling up the marketing function. AI tools move increasingly from advisors analysts to contributors. This is the time to start identifying SOPs and introducing AI agents to automate workflows and helping prioritize what to double down on. This is when you transition from testing to continuous improvement and experimentation.
Strategy & Planning:
Update your Product Playbook with data insights gained from marketing campaigns and activities.
Product Readiness:
Collaborate with product team to conduct customer interviews and record transcripts with Google Meet or Granola. Use insights to inform marketing strategy, tactics, and product lifecycle. Add transcripts to Growth Assistant.
Marketing Execution:
Start collaborating with your 3rd parties on content e.g. super users, influencers, supply chain partners.
Add new case studies to website
Identify use cases for further marketing automation and get to know AI agent platforms like ChatGPT Agents, N8N, Make, or GumLoop.
Sales Enablement:
Scale up lead gen by testing your first sales bot with a tool like AI SDR (integrates with HubSpot).
Tracking & Optimization:
Use HubSpot Breeze AI and Looker Studio to automate performance dashboards and anomaly detection.
How AI Accelerates This Phase 👉 By introducing automation tools like N8N or GumLoop, parts of your marketing engine start running themselves, connecting apps, automating reports, and freeing your team to focus on creativity, strategy, and customer experience.
The 120 Day AI-Powered Marketing Function
At this point, your marketing function operates less like a department and more like a growth engine, one that learns, adapts, and scales with every campaign.
By using this framework as a rough guide you have built a marketing function that never stops learning. You have replaced random acts of marketing with a living, adaptive AI system that captures insights, creates content, and optimizes performance while you focus on strategy and growth.
The outcomes across the GTM motions are significant:
Strategy & Planning → clarity in strategy, tactics, and sequencing
Product Readiness → market aligned capabilities
Marketing Execution → consistency, impact, and experimentation
Sales Enablement → greater customer empathy, less wasted sales time
Tracking & Optimization → shift from instincts to insights
Work With Me
I'm Chris, an experienced growth marketer and early adopter of AI marketing technologies. I collaborate with founders, startups, scale-ups, and established businesses to build AI-first marketing functions that help teams punch above their weight and spend more time on improving the customer experience. If you’re ready to explore how to stand up a marketing function like this, don't hesitate get in touch for a free discovery call.
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