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AI is now at the center of modern marketing, shaping what people see, where they go, and how they make decisions. It’s powerful, visible, and should feel like low-hanging fruit for marketing teams. So why are so many organizations still stuck on the sidelines?

Because uncharted territory comes with fear, hype, and a quiet kind of paralysis. Teams worry about doing the wrong thing, so they do nothing. Or they spin up scattered pilots with no clear goal, no guardrails, and no connection to actual revenue.

To cut through the noise, Arnaud Desprez, CEO and founder of HexaGroup, spoke with Nick Caruso, Chief Revenue Officer at KnowledgeNet.ai and a generative AI veteran with nearly 30 years of experience helping companies use AI to find better answers faster. 

Nick spends his time helping organizations grow sales pipelines, clean up data, and win more deals without losing control of their brand or their customer relationships.

Here’s what he has to say about why bot traffic matters, how AI changes top-of-funnel work, what to watch in your KPIs, and how to keep quality high. 

More of a press-play person? Listen now

"One of the biggest risks is not doing anything."

The biggest rookie mistake you can make in the AI game isn’t a bad prompt or overused tool. It’s total inaction. 

If you wait for the “perfect” AI strategy, faster competitors will test, learn, and move ahead. We’ve seen this movie before with the internet, search, and social media. It’s happening again with AI (only faster).

That doesn’t mean you need a massive AI program on day one. It does mean you need a clear starting point and intention. A simple way to frame it:

  • Pick one real business problem: It’s not “AI in general.”
  • Tie it directly to money: More qualified leads, shorter sales cycles, cleaner data, or less manual labor.
  • Set guardrails: Define privacy rules, access levels, review steps, and approval flows so people feel safe to experiment.

What doesn’t work? Dropping random “shiny” tools into the stack and hoping for magic. AI should extend priorities you already care about—revenue, retention, customer experience—not create disconnected vanity projects that no one owns.

"Mirroring human behavior at scale."

Bots are not new. Search engines have used spiders for years to read websites and rank pages. The change now is speed and reach. Large language models send their own agents to read, extract, and answer questions on top of your content.

Those visits often look like human traffic in your analytics. They read pages, follow links, and pull answers, but no human ever sees your layout or forms. This breaks old habits where "sessions" and "page views" felt like a solid signal.

So you need to adjust how you read traffic:

  • Expect a higher share of non-human visits.
  • Track and label known bots wherever you can.
  • Focus less on raw visits and more on actions that humans still take, like form fills, meeting requests, or trial starts.

Bots are now part of your audience. The goal is not to block them by default, but to understand them and design for both humans and machines.

"Find the right person at the right time."

Traditional outbound starts with a big list from a data provider, then a "spray and pray" push. This wastes time and annoys people. AI lets you treat prospecting more like a careful search.

You can use AI to:

  • Scan large lists for true ICP fit, not just job title.
  • Read public signals like posts, news, and filings.
  • Draft short, sharp messages that speak to what someone cares about now.

A good system behaves like your best BDR on their best day, just on a far greater scale. It reads what targets share, picks up change events like promotions or role moves, and suggests timing and angle.

The point is not fake "personalization" that just inserts a school name. The point is real context. Right person, right moment, right value. Humans still decide tone and limits. AI simply does the heavy lifting in the background.

"A treasure trove of data."

Most companies sit on years of CRM and contact history they barely use. Past customers, old champions, warm deals that went cold, people who moved on to new firms. This is the "treasure trove of data" that AI can bring back to life.

Practical ways to use it:

  1. Map your past reach: Identify everyone tied to closed-won deals over the last 5–10 years.
  2. Track where they went: Use AI to follow role changes and new employers at scale.
  3. Trigger smart touchpoints: Congratulate people on new roles and link back to shared work.
  4. Spot hidden patterns: See which sectors, roles, or deal sizes keep repeating.

Layer in social listening and you get even richer signals. AI can watch likes, comments, reposts, and mentions around your content and your clients’ content, then flag people who look like your ICP but have never talked to sales.

Humans could never track that volume of movement and behavior. AI turns it into a steady, prioritized stream of people who actually make sense for your pipeline.

"The best output is when there's a human in the loop."

AI is fast. It can summarize, structure, and draft at a speed no team can match. But speed without judgment is a liability. The strongest results happen when AI handles the heavy lifting and humans stay in charge of nuance, promises, and risk.

Good collaboration patterns look like this:

  • Sales calls: Record key conversations, then let AI transcribe and extract direct quotes about pain, impact, and urgency.
  • Proposals: Feed those quotes into proposal templates so each document sounds like the client, not a generic brochure.
  • Review: Have a human refine language, tighten commitments, and check pricing and scope.
What used to take half a day now takes under an hour, with proposals that feel more tailored, not less.

Content teams can follow the same model:

  • Train AI on your brand voice, positioning, and proof points.
  • Let it produce first drafts of blogs, landing pages, and outreach sequences.
  • Have a real editor or strategist refine structure, examples, and calls to action.

AI doesn’t replace expertise; it amplifies it. When humans stay in the loop, quality goes up, risk goes down, and teams regain time for strategy and creative thinking.

"Brand awareness is the transformative piece. There are new rules of engagement."

AI is changing not just how you reach people, but how they reach you. In many buying journeys, decision-makers may never touch your website directly. Their AI assistant gathers information, compares options, and surfaces a shortlist.

Brand awareness now has two layers: 

  • Human awareness: Do buyers know who you are, trust your expertise, and feel confident putting you in the mix?
  • Machine awareness: Do AI systems recognize your company as a credible source, understand what you do, and surface you as a relevant option?

The fundamentals still apply to your human viewers. You need: 

  • A clear, differentiated story
  • Helpful content by role, problem, and stage
  • Consistent presence across the channels your buyers actually use

For machines, a new set of best practices takes center stage: 

  • Structured, machine-readable content: I.e., clear headings, clean copy, and logical architecture that’s easy for models to extract meaning 
  • Distributed credibility: Extra credit for being referenced on trusted sites, platforms, and publications
  • Fresh, accurate facts: Machines know what’s new and prioritize information in this way. Keep product details, pricing ranges, and positioning current

Your KPIs should evolve accordingly. Instead of chasing raw lead volume, many teams are focusing on MQL-to-SQL conversion, account-level engagement across channels, and pipeline value tied to marketing efforts, rather than siloed metrics.

AI won’t replace strategy. It will expose a weak strategy faster than ever. Strong teams use AI to amplify already sharp positioning, well-defined ICPs, and honest measurement. And the people in charge keep trust, ethics, long-term relationships, and creative ideas flowing long-term. 

Explore more ideas and practical advice on AI in B2B marketing

Catch the full conversation with Nick Caruso on The HEX-Files, HexaGroup’s energy marketing podcast for leaders who want real results.

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