Use This Free Tool To Win Traffic From ChatGPT - Marketing Against The Grain

Summary

Marketing Against The Grain: Episode Summary – "Use This Free Tool To Win Traffic From ChatGPT"

Release Date: June 19, 2025

In this insightful episode of Marketing Against The Grain, hosted by HubSpot Media, Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (HubSpot's SVP of Marketing) delve into the evolving landscape of search marketing. They explore innovative strategies to harness AI-driven search traffic, particularly from platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other Large Language Models (LLMs). The episode centers around a groundbreaking free tool designed to optimize content for AI search engines, offering marketers a competitive edge in the digital arena.

The Decline of Traditional Search Traffic

The episode kicks off with a candid discussion about the diminishing returns from conventional Google search traffic. Kipp Bodnar highlights the pressing need for marketers to pivot towards AI search engines to maintain and grow their online visibility.

Kipp Bodnar [00:00]: "One of the biggest things happening in marketing right now is the evolution of search. And people's traffic from old school Google search is going down, down, down."

Introducing AI Search Optimization

Recognizing the shift towards AI-driven search, Kieran Flanagan emphasizes the importance of adapting content strategies to cater to AI search engines. He underscores that succeeding in this new landscape requires a deep understanding of AI SEO principles.

Kieran Flanagan [02:13]: "The first thing you need to do is understand how to do that. If you haven't already, go back and watch our show with Asia Frost. We do a massive deep dive in AI SEO."

The Free Tool: AI SEO Content Builder

At the heart of the episode is the introduction of a free tool designed to help marketers create AI-friendly content effortlessly. Kipp Bodnar walks listeners through the process of building a custom GPT agent within ChatGPT, termed the AI SEO Content Builder. This tool aims to generate content that AI search engines can easily cite and summarize, thereby enhancing visibility and traffic.

Kipp Bodnar [02:13]: "I'm gonna show you how to make a custom GPT to do that and a custom GPT setting an agent inside of ChatGPT."

Step-by-Step Creation Process

Kipp provides a detailed walkthrough of creating the custom GPT using the O3 Pro model. He explains how to input specific instructions and prompts to ensure the generated content aligns with AI SEO best practices. The process involves:

Defining Clear Instructions: Setting the GPT’s mission to produce comprehensive articles that AI assistants can reference verbatim.
Incorporating Research: Uploading extensive research on AI SEO to inform the GPT’s content generation.
Optimizing for AI Consumption: Ensuring the content structure, keyword density, and formatting are tailored for AI readability and ranking.

Kipp Bodnar [04:30]: "It's telling it your mission is to write one source article so thoroughly that leading AI assistance... can cite it and hopefully even say it verbatim when answering the target query."

Demonstration and Results

To showcase the tool’s efficacy, Kipp demonstrates generating content for a specific query: "How is HubSpot CRM better than spreadsheets in 2025?" The AI SEO Content Builder produces a well-structured, keyword-optimized page complete with JSON formatting suitable for web editors.

Kipp Bodnar [09:54]: "It gave you that tldr, right? That's part of the instructions. It followed it really well."

He highlights the quality of the output, noting aspects like word count, reading level, and keyword density, all of which are crucial for AI search optimization.

Emphasizing Quality Over Speed

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the trade-off between speed and quality in AI content generation. Kipp advocates for prioritizing high-quality content to achieve better rankings, even if it requires more time.

Kipp Bodnar [09:04]: "I love O3 Pro. O3 Pro has been great and I've been using it for a lot of tasks. It's very, very smart. But that smartness comes at a trade off. It is not that fast relative to all the other AI models."

Practical Applications and Accessibility

Kipp underscores that the AI SEO Content Builder eliminates the need for hiring consultants by automating the content optimization process. He encourages listeners to utilize the tool by providing a link in the podcast description, offering a hands-on approach to enhancing their AI search presence.

Kipp Bodnar [09:54]: "You can go and put it in your website builder, add a couple images and have a really good and compelling page that can start ranking in AI search engines, all for free if you want."

Conclusion

This episode of Marketing Against The Grain serves as a crucial guide for marketers navigating the transition from traditional to AI-driven search. By introducing and demonstrating a free tool for AI SEO content creation, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan equip listeners with the necessary strategies and resources to thrive in the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape.

Listeners are encouraged to implement the AI SEO Content Builder to stay ahead of the curve and secure their online visibility in the era of AI search engines.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Hey, everyone. One of the biggest things happening in marketing right now is the evolution of search. And people's traffic from old school Google search is going down, down, down. Today I'm going to walk you through how to get your AI search traffic, your traffic from ChatGPT, perplexity and the LLMs to go up, up and up. I'm going to give you a free tool to help you make AI search friendly content. I'm going to show you how to do it all. Let's get into today's show.

B (0:28)

We'll be right back to today's show.

A (0:30)

But first I gotta tell you about.

B (0:32)

A week that you're not gonna wanna miss. It is a highlight of my year. Every year. It is inbound, which is HubSpot's annual event where we bring together the best attendees, the best speakers, the best experts in sales, in marketing, customer success, in AI. We all learn together and we all figure out how to grow our businesses.

A (0:52)

Better in the coming year.

B (0:54)

And this year, it's no exception. It's a fire lineup. It's going to be at the Moscone center in San Francisco, California, September 3rd through the 5th. So it's a great way to kind of close out Q3 and kick off Q4 really strong and have your heads right for 2026. Because you're going to learn and hear from Amy Poehler, Dario Amadi of Anthropic, Darkesh Patel, Sean Evans from Hot Ones, Marquise Brownlee, Glennon Doyle, and the world's best speakers and experts across marketing, sales, customer service, AI. They are all at Inbound. Hundreds of amazing sessions. And you know, it's more than just the sessions. It's about the networking. It's about learning from your fellow attendees, your peers, understanding what people are doing really well, where people are getting stuck. That is how you break out. That is how you are going to grow better and faster in 2026. You're not going to want to miss it. You can go to inbound.com register to secure your ticket and your spot for Inbound 2025.

A (2:13)

Okay, so the show is all about how do I get more visibility in AI search engines? And the first thing you need to do is understand how to do that. If you haven't already, go back and watch our show with Asia Frost. We do a massive deep dive in AI SEO. The trends, the fundamentals that you need to understand to be successful in this new era of AI search. Okay. I want to go through with you kind of the next natural iteration here. And that is now that you understand the principles we talked about that episode. You're gonna wanna go and create content for these AI search engines. And to do that, I thought I would help you today. I thought I would show you how to make a custom GPT to do that and a custom GPT setting an agent inside of ChatGPT. I'll be honest with you, I was kind of struggling at what to do for a show today and I was going back and forth and I got this idea from a conversation and ChatGPT says, hey, build a zero click content optimizer. And that's like kind of a dorky way of saying it. And I was having a conversation with it around. What is this new O3 Pro model which we have yet to talk a ton about on the show? What's it really good at and what parts of marketing should it really be helping with? So I was in O3, just a regular O3 and it gave me an idea to create this optimizer agent. It gave me some code, gave me instructions, it was great. Then I said to O3Pro, make this even better. And O3Pro thought for 24 minutes and 21 seconds. And what it did is it made a full markdown prompt. This is a very technical way of saying a set of technical instructions for, for custom GPT to make this zero click content optimizer agent. It gives it all the rules, it gives it the exact workflow it wants to do. It is pretty awesome. And so what I'm doing now is I'm gonna take all this entire prompt and I am going to just drop it here in my custom GPT. And again, for those who aren't familiar, you can go to ChatGPT on the left hand sidebar, hit create a GPT and this is the screen that comes up and this is configure. And so I'm calling this an AI SEO content builder. And this GPT creates AI friendly content to increase the likelihood of showing up in zero click search results. And so I've added this prompt and this is basically a set of instructions. It's telling it your mission is to write one source article so thoroughly that leading AI assistance ChatGPT perplexity Gemini Claude quote and summarize it verbatim when answering the target query. So it's really looking at these conversations, the specific subset of them as search conversations here. So this is really good. It's got some very interesting rules in terms of oh, start with a less than 45 word answer that directly answers the question around the topic, right? And so these are pretty cool. The other thing I like about custom GPTs is that you can upload knowledge. And so one of the other things I did is I did a deep research project in ChatGPT on AI SEO best practices. And one of the things we also haven't talked about on the show yet, but I love now when you have it do deep research, it puts it in a canvas like this detailed kind of text box. And in this canvas you can easily share a link just to the deep research or download a PDF of the deep research, which I love. So I had chat GPT do it. I'm giving this GPT all of the knowledge that we have found about AI SEO best practices so that when it's making decisions and following these instructions, it has the context to do so. Recommended model. We're gonna say O3 Pro. This is really important work. If this work is sloppy or low quality, we're not gonna get ranking. We are not going to be successful. So you would rather aim for high, higher quality than speed in this type of work. Cause you are trying to get better rankings on these really important search queries. We don't need to create a new action. So we're gonna go and now create this. I will let anyone with the link use this GPT. Maybe I will share it with all of you. Leave the comments if you want me to share this with you, but I'm showing you exactly how to build it yourself as well. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna view my GPT and now I have some topics to test this with. Here is an example of a topic that people would search in a search engine. How is HubSpot CRM better than spreadsheets in 2025? And I say, hey, highlight. Easy setup and our unified data. So now putting this into our brand new GPT. Look, I, I'm gonna get real with you all. I love O3 Pro. O3 Pro has been great and I've been using it for a lot of tasks. It's very, very smart. But that smartness comes at a trade off. It is not that fast relative to all the other AI models. I think it's hilarious, right? I'm like, oh, this model's kind of slow and not that fast. I'm like three years ago me would have thought this was the most life changing output of all time and would have been fine if it took a week to, to have happen, right? And now I'm like, oh it's like 10 minutes, I don't know, like I just need to get a grip. So what is this doing? Just to make sure everybody understands, I gave it a set of instructions and then I could take anything that I either think or know my audience searches for in these AI search engines. And I just put that topic right into my custom GPT and it will write a custom page of information that is reverse engineered to give a remarkable answer on this topic so that those AI tools and the LLMs will find this information and use it and cite it and hopefully even say it verbatim, because it's saying the stuff that I believe to be true in the world about, in this case, HubSpot CRM. And that will be really, really remarkable. And that is is a really powerful way to win the AI search game in a way that nobody's thinking about right now. Have you been thinking about building web pages for robots and LLMs, or have you been thinking about building those pages for traditional Google search and for humans versus the AI search engines? And that's what today's show is all about. Hey, everyone, if you're like me, you.