How to Scale Growth Marketing with AI

We asked EM Community experts how they are putting AI to work in their own practice. In Part 2 of this series, we cover Demand Generation & Paid Media. Previously in an EM Lunch & Learn, Mark Harnett had shared hands-on lessons from automating parts of his Google Ads workflows with Claude Code.

The consultants featured here implemented other AI systems running at a volume that saved significant time, drove sales, and improved ROI. One built a LinkedIn pipeline engine and one used a third-party AI dashboard to optimize dozens of paid media accounts. Here’s how they did it.

A Growth Engine That Hit $7 Million in Pipeline

Julian Alvarado, a fractional GTM engineer, was brought in by a Series A travel-tech company pivoting from a sustainability focus into an AI platform. The project goal was to establish a new inbound pipeline, starting from one of the founder’s large LinkedIn following.

Julian built a six-part AI-powered system. It included a content engine that codified the founders’ voices from thousands of sales call transcripts, social listening, five sellers, and 15 industry influencers. In turn, they automated lead scoring in HubSpot and routed hot leads immediately to sales reps via Slack.

Monitoring that many people at once isn’t realistic for a human team to do in a timely manner. Lead scoring that used to take hours in a spreadsheet now takes about five minutes. Julian built most of the system in Claude Code and Codex. The system hit their $7 million pipeline target and became a repeatable channel the company now owns.

Optimizing Paid Ads and Seeing ROI Jump Up to 600%

Eduardo Castro specializes in paid media, managing 30 to 40 client accounts across Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Local Service Ads and representing roughly $500,000 to $1 million in monthly spending. At that scale, catching underperformance in any single account before it burns budget is nearly impossible to do by hand.

Eduardo partnered with an AI-native analytics platform called Prism AI to evaluate and improve its UI. Layered on top of native paid ads reporting tools, it identifies funnel weaknesses and optimization opportunities. In addition, he employed other AI agents, including a budget-pacing tool that automatically pauses or reactivates campaigns to keep spending on target. Several of his accounts saw ROI improve by 100% to 600% within two to three months.

Similarly, for a healthcare industry client, Eduardo built out AI-driven ad and email workflows that contributed to a roughly 10x increase in ROI. Google’s AI-powered Performance Max helped improve ad conversions. Another AI system, HighLevel automated email content workflows. Eduardo was careful to note that AI did not directly lift ROI but played a significant role in synthesizing data and running the campaigns.

Want This Kind of Thinking on Your Team?

EM Marketing’s experts know how to put AI to work on everyday marketing problems. Just as importantly, they know where their own judgment still has to lead. If your team needs that kind of thinking, on a project or full engagement basis, let’s talk about which of our consultants is the right fit for what you’re building next.

This is Part 2 of a four-part series. Catch up on Part 1: Strategy, Positioning & Research. Next up: Content, Creative & Editorial Quality, where we look at how EM consultants scale content production without losing the brand voice.