In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Agentic Marketing, Explained
We unpack how agentic AI shifts marketing from reactive prompts to proactive systems that watch behavior, answer real questions, and stretch budgets. Hope Bellair joins us to map practical steps for independent jewelers, from product data hygiene to Reddit-driven relevance, plus a few warnings about AI ads and synthetic influencers.
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Welcome to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. This week, after a nice little two-week break, I'm joined by my friend Hope Belair, the digital marketing manager at PunchMark. And we're talking about agenc AI marketing. So agenc is this really cutting-edge marketing technique. It kind of reminds me of SEO, when SEO was kind of breaking as this marketing technique. And it feels like the wild, wild west right now. What's interesting about it is that because it's so open, there are a lot of ways to capitalize on it, but also the ways that you capitalize on it are probably going to change over the course of the next several months. So it's about being nimble and staying on top of what's going on to be able to capitalize on as much as possible for your business. So I speak with Hope to have her explain it to me like I'm five. Alright, enjoy!
SPEAKER_00:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, Punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, PunchMark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical world in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01:What is up, everybody? My name is Michael Purple. I'm joined by Hope Bel Air. How are you doing today, Hope?
SPEAKER_02:I'm doing well. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:Doing all right. Digital marketing uh leader at Punchmark. Uh, we're gonna be talking all about agentic marketing. And this is, it's so funny. I've been doing in the loop long enough. We're going into our seventh season next year, and season one was all about SEO. And now, I if I had to guess, season seven is going to be all about agentic. Um it SEO still important, but it almost is kind of like taking on a new flavor. For the people listening at home, Hope, can you explain maybe the fundamental explain like I'm five, uh agenc marketing?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So I think everybody at this point knows what AI is. And basically, you go to ChatGPT, you search something, and it gives you a response. Very reactive type of stuff. Agentic AI in regards to marketing, um, is basically an agent that is a bit proactive. So what you do is you take your AI model, whether that be let's say a chat GPT agent in this case, you go ahead and you train it and say, Hey, I want to know um, you know, add to current behaviors on my website and and know what to do from there when someone's adding to a wish list, if there's any snags on websites or marketing, etc. And basically optimizing budgets to make an a thousand dollar budget make it work like a five thousand dollar budget type of thing. So agentic AI is cool, and you can kind of what I like to think is it's kind of like a little beehive. You've got your agents running around the beehive, and you are the queen. You are just, you know, kind of manning the ship and your worker bees are doing everything else for you.
SPEAKER_01:It's really interesting. So I have been using AI a ton lately. Um, I've been using it a lot of the times. It's just for rewriting some of my copy. But the thing that's really fascinating is that uh increasingly, sometimes I just like it's not a hundred percent the right solution. It doesn't give me the right solution every single time. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll just pull up the app on my phone and I'll just ask it something that's like, uh, you know, what's the fastest way to get to this location? And it if it's like an hour away. And they'll give me two different options, but it'll also explain it a little bit more to me. But it also does it with shopping as well. And I had a I've been buying a lot of stuff for my house um this this holiday season because I try to get the deals when I can. And I have found that the AI suggestions and then going to the website and then talking with a bot. And I used to hate it being a bot, and now I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, oh, I don't, I don't actually mind it. What's your feeling when it comes to like interacting with AIs in a shopping behavior? You personally, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:So me personally, I like it because you can kind of get that comparison across multiple different websites, stores, etc., without having to be like, okay, well, I'm on this webpage here, and then this tab, I have this webpage. And basically, it's just kind of bringing everything together. And honestly, it's kind of funny because as we're sitting here talking, I've got my two screens, and on my second screen where I have AI pulled up, it literally says, shop smarter this season. Let Chat GPT do the digging for you with in-depth research into the best deals and gifts. And honestly, just across the board, that's enticing. Keeping my time valuable more to my family and personal relationships while AI figures out my shopping guide. I'll take it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You know, it's really uh here's an example. Just for people that are are listening in, uh, if you haven't done this yet, I assume most people have flirted with AI at some point, like gotten a chance to kind of see how the uh how it can fit into your life. Uh, I've done a ton of episodes on it, so you know, maybe go back and check out one of those. But what's fascinating is I wanted to see in preparation for this episode, what would a uh like a shopper around my area see if I searched uh engagement rings? So I was like, hey, uh ChatGPT, what um I'm looking to buy an engagement ring um in the next you know little while. I want to capitalize on deals, which I do. So first it gives me the uh the store down the way, and then it gave me secondary, it gave me uh Zales, which is you know, bigger. We like independent jewelers over here. Uh no offense, maybe offense, I don't know. Um and then the third option that it gave me was a pawn shop, which I think is fascinating because it nails the answer, and then it gives me an option that like maybe I don't like, but like someone would like. And then it gives me one that uh, in my opinion, was a miss. Like uh, I don't know. It seemed like it was kind of like a flyer answer. So you can see how it's tangentially related, but at the same time, maybe it's not always the answer. I'm sure that there's other examples with like buying like sofas and stuff like that, that like this would be even a better expressive answer. Like maybe it starts suggesting stuff off Facebook Marketplace. But that was my kind of like two-second interaction with it in preparation.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's very interesting just to kind of see because AI does like to have a comprehensive answer for sure, just across the board and make sure that they make everybody happy. And yeah, some some folks might be looking at that pawn shop for an engagement ring.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So when it comes to these types of things, everybody's trying to get an edge. When when I did my first episode on SEO, one of the things that we had talked about was like the history of SEO and how like the original way, uh search engine optimization, so we're optimizing for the search engines, usually Google. And what was funny about it was the Google rolls out this way of um indexing all these websites. And then what do people do? They uh, I mean, they're looking for keywords. What do people do? The original SEO was cramming just tons of keywords into your footer or into your head, or sometimes putting them in invisibly as like a non-clickable object in the background. That was the original one, and then Google, it's like a cat and mouse, and then Google would be like, oh, you it has to be relevant words, and it has to be you can't pack them or whatever it is. All these different things. I feel like we are in the early, early arms race of the cat and mouse game that is agenc AI or agentic um marketing. Can you just kind of give me an idea of where we're at when it comes to optimizing for AI and agenc uh use? And then if you're able to, maybe just like predict like kind of what what techniques are going to have a longer shelf life?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I know I've touched upon this a couple times already in in previous podcasts, but make sure you're answering a question on every single landing page. Um better for you to have kind of a couple answers to a couple different questions in that same in the same, you know, vein. Um, if it's about engagement rings, let's say um maybe you have five different paragraphs, and in those five different paragraphs you have a question or rather an answer that answers why Oval might be best for someone versus a round or you know, a marquee or something like that. Basically, having answers on your landing page to help. Now, when it comes to products and such, basically how your website overall ranks in AI, which there are a ton of different platforms now to check where you rank in AI, and also it's kind of a little subjective based on where you're looking at that point too, but I digress. Um your products will then be showcased and promoted on that specific um engine that you're using. So whether it be ChatGPT, Gemini Claud, all the big you know, different AIs and stuff. But my prediction is for AI, it's only gonna make things easier for independent jewelers for sure. Obviously, I can't speak to the searcher. Obviously, I think you know, chat GPT is pretty easy for us right now to just be like, hey, what am I gonna do tonight after work? Or like give me some suggestions on restaurants to go to tonight because I'm hungry and I've been craving XYZ. But for for jewelers and specifically with agentic AI, cleaning up product data is gonna be huge. Um getting summaries of how certain products are performing online. So, like, let's say you should preemptively stock more lab grown studs because last year, you know, you guys sold out XYZ at this date. Um, you know, getting trends on yellow gold versus white gold and what's performing better in your area and in your demographic that you're you're targeting. Um and then from there it's just going to you know promote cleaning up Google listings, add added structure to your content, again, kind of answering a question for certain landing pages, but for products specifically, what makes it unique and why is it related to you and why should they buy it from you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean there's a quickly ask this question. So you say um answering a question. So do you mean like my mind immediately goes to FAQ um accordions, you know, like the ones that can expand um FAQ accordions on like every every landing page, just towards the bottom. Is that gonna kind of uh like help with that? I guess I don't or would that ding you are they looking at that kind of information?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, so they are looking at that kind of information. Um it can be beneficial, obviously, if you have a fact page, that's great. If you're answering questions in blogs specifically on trends that are, you know, skyrocketing, that's the kind of thing that I'm thinking like something that's not necessarily frequently asked. So, like, you know, um pearl necklaces were big in baseball a couple years back, right? And then we obviously saw that in the jewelry industry. If you had a landing page, let's say, that answered a few questions about maybe why those baseball players were chose to wore pearls or why your pearls are different than you know, other pearls, etc., AI would benefit that. So just kind of having a it's it's very structural because AI doesn't necessarily, you know, it's not gonna play the SEO game the traditional way where it's like, oh, you just bunch put a bunch of fun keywords in this one paragraph, yay. It's gonna be like, no, actually, what information in this paragraph is relevant to the search that I just got, and why should I pick you? So that's kind of the answering the question portion of things, and keeping everything relatively up to date. So AI doesn't love to put anything outside of the last 10 months. It doesn't even like to pull from a year ago. Wow. So whereas Google SEO sometimes honestly you can wait years for something to take.
SPEAKER_01:Self-life is better, actually, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. But AI is like, oh, okay, well, that might be outdated, so let me actually search the other millions of websites, you know, that I have that maybe something's a little bit more up-to-date and relevant for this specific um answer or question, rather.
SPEAKER_01:That's really really quite interesting. To me, it's almost like thinking about the same problem uh just differently, in that SEO was always about like proximity. It was like always about like uh being as close to the search as possible. It seemed like it's like um that's why people were always making like best Charlotte jewelry page and best Charlotte place place to get engaged in Charlotte, because they were always just trying to get as close as possible to these searches because then you get served higher. Now it seems like it's almost like about relevancy, which is similar, but now it's like the content is actually the relevancy. And in talking to um uh to Stone Algo about this uh in my uh in my interview with them, it was really fascinating because he used the term uh source of truth, and I find that term uh very um fascinating but provocative because anybody who's making content and uh just interesting information is going to be the what everybody is drawing from and mimicking. So I think to me, if I was going to be making an approach to like how can I get these things to appear better, it's about putting my name in the same conversation as often as possible. Not necessarily like nailing the words, to me, it's like about just like being in the same room and eventually it'll like recommend you. Is that kind of all in the same kind of stratosphere of what you're kind of targeting?
SPEAKER_02:A little bit, yeah. Because I mean, I like that you said, you know, obviously relevancy and everything like that. And it is true because AI is again kind of going off of user intent and user content. So kind of back to that Reddit thread. I will beat this drum until I'm blue in the face because of what I found at Inbound in September and here at the Digital Summit marketing conferences a few weeks ago. Reddit is actually surprisingly huge for AI. And that is what is going to just because that is like the town square, if you will, of reviews and you know, um, is this a good jewelry store to do? Oh, I'm looking for a XYZ engagement ring. Where are some good spots? You know, um, that's where people ask questions for other humans really to answer. So AI loves that, right? They're asking the question and they're getting the answers, so then they're like, oh, well, a hundred people said that this place was good to go in Charlotte, but 250 people said that this was a better place to go. So I'm gonna recommend both, but I'm obviously gonna prioritize the 250 over the 100. So that's that's kind of yeah, I think a little bit more of that same vein relevancy and asking questions and making sure that the answers are relevant for sure.
SPEAKER_01:What a really interesting kind of thought, though, is Reddit right now. So I'm a huge, huge fan of Reddit, huge uh huge user, have been for a really long time. And what I find interesting is that I think the way that I use Reddit and how most people use Reddit is very much in a similar vein to how I think uh like ChatGPT is actually digesting information, which is it's kind of like like squinting at the threads and just scrolling really fast and seeing what sticks and bubbles to the top. Of course, it's much more complicated and in-depth than that. But to me, it's like uh yeah, I've seen I've I've made purchases off of Reddit threads um by being informed. And you go on, here's an example. I uh love that thread that's like, what's the most what's an expensive item that you bought that is worth it? And I I love those ones because I'm all about that. And I went through and I found a uh a whole thread on Red Wing boots, and they're these boots that have like a lifetime warranty, they're made in Detroit, and they are uh a classic design and they are um like really well designed. And it's funny because I I read through it, someone suggests Red Wing boots, and then there was like 50 comments that were talking about them, but like giving really detailed and in and in good explanations about like what was nice about them. Oh, yeah, like one time I ripped the soul off and they replaced it, and stuff like that. And I think that that is kind of like the content that you're looking for these days, as opposed to just like 500 landing pages that say engagement rings in Charlotte, North Carolina, uh, over and over again, which is kind of what the game used to be, more or less.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. It was like, oh, I'm here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we are the best in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is very yeah, yeah. Making sure that we're relevant.
SPEAKER_01:Do you think that this is gonna be the next frontier of marketing? Is it feels increasingly that uh how AI is going to, you know, show information is going to be so important to the immediate future of businesses. They've already talked about how they're gonna start having ads in them. And the thing that's scary to me is that uh you're not even gonna sometimes know if they're ads. I I I bet. I bet you they're who's to say that they can't just slip it into an article and make it. X, you know, say like, oh yeah, this is a good one. I start getting skeptical of that kind of information, but for the time period, uh time being, it's very wild west. This is kind of what Google felt like in 2013 through 2017. But I don't know. I'm I is this where you think we're going?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the things that I took away from Digital Summit was specifically, I was in this seminar and we were talking about meta-ads specifically, and how AI is changing the game for that. So one of the things about agent agentic AI just in general is it's great once you have trained it, but you have to train it, and you really have to make sure, like, hey, this is my brand voice, this is what I want to do, this is the audience that I'm targeting. Nobody else but that. So agentic AI, it's getting there. It is, you know, it's kind of like a baby. You've gotta make sure that it can walk and talk a little bit on its own before you're like, okay, yeah, go do this for me, right? Meta-ads specifically, they're changing the game because now it's almost a little bit um more difficult, I'd say, on the marketer side, on on our side, just because AI will sometimes some take something and just run with it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Regardless if that is your your brand voice or that's what you even put out there. You have to make sure that there's a lot of things checked off before you launch a campaign to get everything out there because all of a sudden then you're gonna see some random it might be your product, but it might be some random background that Meta deemed worthy of putting on this picture because it was going to then reach someone that might be, you know, miles away from the target audience that you're trying to get to. So it is a little bit like a wild, wild west, both on I'd say meta ads and obviously once because it's inevitable at this point to me, in my opinion, that every search engine or um every AI engine will have ads eventually. I mean, it's it's a matter of time at this point, I I believe, because everybody's like everybody is searching on on Chat GPT. What did you say? It was I think it was prior to the call that um searches on Chat GPT for gifting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What was it?
SPEAKER_02:Like 1600%.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the um I think it was the number of people who purchased items recommended from a AI was up 1600%. And that was from uh I I followed this guy, uh Scott Galloway. He's a um a business guy, and he seems like he believes that increasingly the space is going to be um where people start getting suggested. It's like the voice of uh, you know, it's it's there, it's the advice, it's what Google was before it started. You know, honestly, like I feel like Google has fallen off. I the only reason why I've been using Google is when I am I have Google Chrome. And even that, I'm actually trying to switch away from Google Chrome because it tanks my computer so much from so much processing. I just think that AI is so without guardrail right now that eventually someone is going to capitalize on it. And I'm personally hoping that some our government will step in and make it um make it have guardrails, some type of guardrails. You know, I think that there's it it freaks me out how easy it would be to um convince my parents of something. You know, I for sure I've I've set up um safe like uh security words uh with them if I ever go to ask them for money. And if I uh if if you even if it sounds like me, I want you to ask me this question. And we're never gonna put it in writing, but I want you to ask it. And I think it just increasingly AI is just uh it's so wild west. It it's kind of I was I wasn't around for the um like the advent of the internet. But from what I've gathered from reading books is that people thought the exact same thing. I mean, we had the entire dot-com um boom back in the 2000s, and you could see where that resulted. But at the same time, uh this isn't just about the the dollar principles of it or like the the dollar effect of it. To me, it's just like almost like the winners here are going to be people who find a way to capitalize on it. And I'm just I really would would make me feel feel a lot safer at night if they were to make it so that there are some type of restraints or guardrails on these tools, or like make it so that you're guaranteed to know if this is an ad and not just a suggestion. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah, I know. It's it's tough. And I mean, honestly, even too with ads and influencer marketing, that's been oh definitely yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Have you seen AI influencers? That's the that is gonna be the future, I think.
SPEAKER_02:They haven't popped up on my algorithm yet, so I'm hoping that that that's not right.
SPEAKER_01:There's this one girl, there's this one girl who I am certain is AI. And I I went through her account to see if it said, like, oh, this is AI. It's not, but something is off. And I think what tells me that it's the size of her eyes in her head. They are slightly too big. And I'm like, oh, maybe she's just like, but I think that the I think the eyes are just a little bit too big. And but I don't know if you've seen it, but like, um like some of these global global um design houses are starting to build their own AI ambassadors. And I can just probably see why. I'm sure that they have to pay a gajillion dollars to have you know Lisa from Blackpink representing Louis Vuitton or having um, you know, and and name who you want as far as a celebrity. If I was a celebrity, I'd feel, you know, maybe a little threatened by that, but uh how dystopian is that to have an AI influencer? Yikes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, obviously, and I I tell clients this all the time, I you know, try to be a little bit more optimistic with it. Human nature is always going to prefer actual humans, for sure. There's no, you know, there's obviously there's outliers. But generally speaking, when you're scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, the nine, you're gonna look for someone that you at least perceive to be real. And hopefully, you know, it is. I know AI is getting pretty good here with their imagery and their videos and stuff like that. Um, but you know, I think there's ways like agentic AI that can, you know, capitalize on the the tasks that we want them to focus on, just because I know AI obviously is taking big strides in the creative and entertainment types of industries, but what AI can do that would make your life better, like um optimizing target audiences and product feeds and all the things that you don't want to be sitting behind your computer doing all the time. Let's let your worker be do it. So that's where I think AI is gonna be great, and especially when it comes to client telling. Um obviously, you know, if your email marketing is pretty good um and you're you've got flows set up, think of it as an abandonment cart checkout flow. That's actually probably the best way I can I can describe agentic AI. So obviously you set it up, you say, hey, after this amount of time delay, or they did this, send this email. If they don't respond in three days, send this email, and if they do respond, send this email. Agentic AI kind of works in that same vein, and you have to work, work really hard for it, like obviously in the training portion of it. But that's the AI that I'm excited about because then it's just making everybody's life easier, not the oh, I'm not sure if this is an actual person sitting behind my screen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And there was this, I saw this thing, it was like, I want AI to, you know, do the laundry and and wash the dishes so I have more time to do art instead of doing the art for me, and so I can have more time to do the dishes and the laundry. And I don't know, I just increasingly am um there's going to be a point when I get got by a uh a really convincing uh bot situation. I know it's coming, it's coming for all of us where we're going to like I'm gonna think something's real and it's not, whether it's a news article or you know, someone tries to like fish my password, something like that. I know it's going to come, but it hasn't gotten there yet. And I think that's a that's a good thing. But at the rate that it's progressing, it might, it might be this time next year. So the good news is is that um I do think it does it serves independent jewelers more than it does the big boxes. It levels the playing field a little bit more, and anything for for independent stores to to make them have more of a dog in the fight would be great. But when it comes to um, you know, like the AI influencer stuff, it's a little bit dystopian for me. So we'll see how it progresses, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. So if you take anything away from this podcast, don't create your own AI influencer.
SPEAKER_01:And if you do, maybe send it to me and I'll take a look. And I I'll I'll let you know what I think of it. But hope, I really appreciate it. Anything before we uh wrap things up?
SPEAKER_02:I don't think so. I think that's kind of the gist. Obviously, you know, we'll be expanding expanding more on the entire thing here in 2026, both at Punchmark and in our marketing department. So excited to see what's coming down the pipe.
SPEAKER_01:I can't wait to look back on this episode in one year, two years, five years, and be like, wow, we were doing things totally. This was the stone age. And that's kind of what it was like uh for SEO. It's like, man, things were totally different when we started, and now it's you know, we gotta play by the rules that we're that we're playing in. So uh can't wait to see where we go from here and um yeah, see how how the stores kind of adapt with it. But thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, bye. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This week my guest was Hope Belair, the digital marketing manager at Punchmark. And we were talking about agentic AI marketing. And this episode is brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Roth Cockroom. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash loop. That's L O U P E. Thanks, we'll be back next week with another episode. Cheers. Bye.
