Marketing

Generative engine optimization (GEO) software, in the form most tool lists recommend, asks AI assistants your buyers' questions every day and records whether your brand appears in the answers. For a solo business in September 2026, I would choose between three entry plans by the engines you need: HubSpot AEO at $50 a month, Otterly.AI Lite at $29 and Peec AI Starter at $95.

A good New York Instagram caption says what is in the photo, then adds one detail only you noticed. "Brooklyn Bridge at 7 a.m., before the crowds" tells people more than "concrete jungle". Below are 30 captions sorted by the kind of photo you took, ready to copy. After them come the three checks before you post: first line, place name, five hashtags at most.

An AI marketing newsletter is a recurring email that explains what changed in AI and how to use it in marketing work. For a solo marketer in September 2026, four deserve a trial: This Week in AI for weekly news, Almost Timely for long how-to essays, Growth Memo for AI search, and The AI Marketing Newsletter for daily news. Start with two: one for news, one for method.

An AI marketing agency is a marketing firm that builds its offer around AI, as the tool it works with or the channel it targets. The label covers three different purchases: done-for-you marketing where AI speeds up the staff, automations built to keep running in your accounts, and work to get your business cited in ChatGPT or Google's AI answers. Ask what you keep if you stop paying to see which one is on offer.

ManyChat and Chatfuel both automate Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp conversations, but they bill for different things. ManyChat charges by Active Contacts, the distinct people who interact in a billing month: 25 free, then paid tiers up to 7,500. Chatfuel charges a flat $20 a month with unlimited contacts and caps AI usage instead. Your comment volume and your channels decide which costs less.

The best AI for marketing is two purchases made in order, not one product picked off a list: a general assistant that researches, drafts and reasons with you, then a publishing app that holds the access tokens for your channels. No assistant posts to LinkedIn or Instagram by itself. Both platforms put publishing behind permissions only a reviewed application can hold.

A marketing automation specialist builds and runs campaign workflows inside a platform you already chose: email sequences, segmentation, lead scoring, the CRM sync and the reporting on top. It is an execution role, not a strategy role, and the published job listings say so plainly. What you get back depends almost entirely on the brief you write before the first call.

An email template for cold email is a reusable first message with the changing parts left open: why you chose this person, what you offer, one request and who you are. Pick the template by what you need back: a yes to a free sample, an interview, the right contact, a partnership or a call. Then replace every example detail with a fact you have checked about that person.

LinkedIn post sizing depends on the post type, and ads follow separate specs. A photo needs a width to height ratio between 3:1 and 4:5, ideally 1080 pixels wide, and 5 MB at most. A video must stay between 1:2.4 and 2.4:1 and under 5 GB. A document has no page size, only 100 MB, 300 pages and the same size for every page. Article, newsletter and event covers use 16:9.

An AI marketing cloud is a vendor suite that stores customer data, runs campaigns across channels and reports on them, with AI attached to five tasks: writing content, choosing who receives it, deciding when and where, explaining results, and answering replies. Salesforce sells its version from $1,500 per org per month; HubSpot from $7 per seat. The data underneath is priced separately.