The AI CMO who builds the machine.
Most CMOs buy tools. I build marketing engines that produce outcomes: $15M in inbound pipeline, monthly users up 725%, AI-sourced traffic up 854%. Run by lean teams on near-zero spend, and written down in the playbook.
Author of The Agentic AI Marketing Leader Playbook★★★★★ 5.0 on Amazon · praised by CMOs at Rocketlane, Devicie, Acalvio
CMOs and CEOs on the book.
Verbatim, from the book’s front matter and Amazon. Read every review in full
The definitive playbook for turning scattered, person-dependent tasks into a predictable, compounding system.
Rao AdavikolanuCMO, RocketlaneGaurav writes as an operator, not a commentator, and it shows.
Ankit SomaniCEO, Conifer.ioThe shift from ‘how do we use more AI?’ to ‘how do we redesign the way work gets done so the organization owns the capability?’
Matthew BragstadVP, AI GTM, UKGGaurav brings an operator’s eye to AI in marketing.
Corey McCarthyCMO, DevicieTurning fragmented, person-dependent processes into systems the organization can own, measure, and continuously improve.
Avinash GujjeCEO & Co-founder, zuuz.aiGaurav writes the way good operators talk: plainly, from the field, with the failures left in.
Anand AkelaCMO, Acalvio TechnologiesThe best AI marketing book I read. Must have for founders and tech leaders.
The real maturity test is whether the capability survives the person who built it.
The six-layer operating system is the most valuable concept.
Great book, easy to understand concepts and ideas.
Lots of very useful and salient information for the AI era of GTM.
When buyers ask AI, does your brand come up?
Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews before they ever visit your site. They read one synthesized answer that cites three or four sources. If those sources are your competitors, you lost the deal before it started.
Are you cited?
Your flagship buyer questions, run weekly across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Who gets named, who gets linked, and where you’re missing.
Can engines lift you?
The AEO/GEO audit: schema, claims stated as direct answers, question-shaped headings, real bylines and dates, internal links. Then the test that matters: can a model answer from your page alone?
Will they keep citing you?
Hub content, reviews and earned mentions, refreshed on a cadence. Cited sources get retrieved again. Trust compounds.
Receipts, not frameworks.
Three engines, three industries. Clients are named by industry; every number traces to a dashboard, a client deck or Search Console.
HR tech SaaS company
The CEO was the marketing department. Now there is an engine.
Data & AI services and product company
No team, no blog, no traffic. Two years later, organic search drives half the pipeline.
Agentic AI Revenue Intelligence company
Sixteen weeks from a thin site to a launch engine. Google impressions up 373%.
Fourteen awards. Built, not bought.
Products I positioned and launched won SIIA CODiE, IoT Breakthrough, IoT Evolution, Golden Bridge, MarTech Breakthrough and PersonalizationONE awards across Reflektion, Rockwell Automation and Alight.
Your team didn’t get an AI strategy. It got a scatter of habits.
One writer uses AI for drafts. The one next to them won’t touch it.
Nobody owns it, nobody measures it, and it leaves when they do.
Ask what AI does for marketing and you get a list of tools.
Not a number that ties back to pipeline.
The pilot looked great in the demo.
Then it stalled, because nobody redesigned the work around it.
The fix isn’t more tools. It’s an operating system.
Agents do the work. Humans make the calls.
The same operating system I run every day: AI workflows for research, content, SEO, CRM and outbound, with a human gate on anything that publishes, sends or spends.
Diagnose. Build. Lead.
Start with an audit, have me build the workflows, or put me in the CMO seat. Every engagement leaves you with a system your team keeps.
AI Marketing OS Audit
Find out where you really stand. Leave with a 90-day plan.
Agentic Marketing Build
The workflows from the book, running in your stack.
Fractional AI CMO
A CMO who builds, at a fraction of a full-time CMO.
Hosting a podcast or event? Invite me to speak
The operating manual for AI-native CMOs.
Most marketing teams didn’t get an AI strategy. They got a scatter of individual habits. This book is the operating system that replaces them, and the mindset to run it.
- A six-layer AI Marketing Operating System
- 48 buildable workflows with triggers, gates and metrics
- A human judgment map: where AI stops and leadership starts
- A maturity model to score your team honestly
“Before Gaurav, I was the marketing department. He gave us a growth machine that runs without me having to think about it.”
“On our team, he was the unquestioned leader in utilizing Gen AI.”
“Gaurav writes as an operator, not a commentator, and it shows.”
“Gaurav put our brand on the global map when we needed it most.”
Startup guy. Corporate mindset.
Third-generation Army family. Laid off more than once. Built anyway. These are the rules I run on.
Marketing is a system you build.
Not a budget you spend.
Operators beat procurers.
Procurement-mindset CMOs will lose the next decade.
Gates, not reviews.
Close enough is not open.
Stop buying tools.
Start building libraries.
How AI-native is your marketing, really?
Twelve questions built on the Playbook’s maturity model. Get your stage, your biggest gap, and the three workflows to build first. Most leaders place themselves one stage too high.
Lean brand building, from the field.
How a small team builds a brand that punches well above its budget. A working record of the lean growth experiments I ran, one at a time: the ones that held up and the ones that didn’t.
Field notes on AI search and AI marketing
AI CMO, AEO and the book, answered.
What is an AI CMO?
An AI CMO is a marketing leader who runs marketing as an AI-native operating system: designed workflows with named owners, human approval gates and measured baselines, instead of a pile of AI tools. Gaurav Verma builds and runs these systems himself, and wrote the method down in The Agentic AI Marketing Leader Playbook.
What is AEO, or AI brand visibility?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your brand named and cited inside AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. It builds on SEO: indexable pages, schema, claims stated as direct answers, question-shaped headings, real bylines and dates, and earned mentions that engines trust.
How do I find out if ChatGPT and Perplexity mention my brand?
Write the questions a serious buyer asks before contacting you and run them every week across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Record who gets named, who gets linked and where you are missing. That is workflow #6 in the Playbook, and the starting point of an AEO audit.
What results has this approach produced?
At an HR tech company, monthly users grew 725% and AI-sourced traffic grew 854%. At a seed-stage Agentic AI Revenue Intelligence company, Google impressions rose 373% and clicks 89% over the prior 28 days, with the blog grown from 11 to 87 posts. The full case studies are on the Results page.
Can I hire Gaurav Verma as an advisor or consultant?
Yes. Gaurav advises and consults for B2B SaaS and AI companies: an AI Marketing OS audit, an AEO / AI brand visibility audit, an agentic marketing build, or ongoing CMO-level advice. Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute fit call.
What is The Agentic AI Marketing Leader Playbook?
Gaurav Verma’s book on designing the AI-native marketing operating system: a six-layer framework, 48 buildable workflows with human checkpoints, and a four-stage maturity model. It is available on Kindle, in paperback and in hardcover.
Does an AI CMO replace the marketing team?
No, an AI CMO uses AI to free the team, not to replace people. Agents take coordination and routine execution, while people keep strategy, taste, relationships and the bets you can’t undo. Every workflow keeps a human gate on anything that publishes, sends or spends, because AI frees you for leadership, not from it.
Where should a marketing team start with AI?
Start by making the invisible visible: survey what your team already does with AI and share what works. Then build a few foundation workflows, such as a marketing knowledge base and asset inventory, content quality scoring and new keyword discovery. The free AI Maturity Check shows your stage and the three workflows to build first.
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