# Bret Starr

Bret Starr writes about B2B marketing and tests how AI, changing buyer journeys, and new marketing channels affect demand generation. Starr's work includes newsletters, client campaign experiments, and tools for sales and marketing teams.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/bret-starr/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-starr
- LinkedIn followers: 19,776
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, b2b-marketing, demand-generation, marketing-measurement, ai-marketing
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-10-01

## Summary

Bret Starr is most useful for expert commentary and reported AI demand-generation experiments, not proven channel results.

- Best for: B2B SaaS marketing agencies seeking a keynote or advisory on AI-era demand generation.
- Not for: Brands seeking sponsored posts, disclosed rates, reach targets, or conversion accountability.
- Check first: Confirm audience roles and seniority, plus any paid partnership formats, rates, and inquiry route.

### Takeaways

- The B2B funnel is a 19th-century model, not a law of buying.
- ChatGPT campaigns generated strong impressions but weak conversions; sponsored-agent tests were still to come.
- AI search is already breaking the traffic assumptions that marketing plans rely on.

## Main ideas

- **The B2B funnel is a 19th-century model, not a law of buying**: Bret Starr traces the linear funnel and AIDA to door-to-door sales scripts from 1898 and argues the modern version arose by accident: SaaS data architecture, Taylorist management thinking, and a preference for tidy dashboards forced buyer behavior into shapes the systems could handle. When conversion rates fall, more performance optimization can miss the problem: the model, not the execution, may need to change.
- **Individual buyer journeys are chaotic, but aggregate patterns are not**: This is the mechanism behind the critique: individual paths are unpredictable, yet the moments most buyers pass through are stable. The work is to identify those moments instead of enforcing a fixed sequence. The proposed replacement for the funnel is a model defined by ten demand states, which Bret Starr says reframes labels such as "closed lost" as artifacts of a single-threaded, linear system.
- **AI search is already breaking the traffic assumptions that marketing plans rely on**: Bret Starr argues that organic web traffic and paid ad clicks are declining and that AI summaries produce no-click searches, shrinking the channels inbound and paid plans were built on. Their position is not that AI search should be resisted, but that its effects have already arrived and testing has to start now.
- **Test AI ad channels, then report the weak results publicly**: Bret Starr describes running ChatGPT campaigns for a baker's dozen of clients over a couple of months, finding them strong on impressions but poor on conversion, then starting tests of OpenAI's sponsored agents. The post also questions what paid AI programs can offer that a good answer-engine optimization program cannot, without undermining search credibility, and concludes that traditional search engine marketing is dead.
- **Metrics follow the money: AI marketing budget lines are coming in 2027**: Bret Starr predicts that 2027 will be the first year B2B marketing budgets carry named line items for AI marketing, reasoning that measurement follows budget allocation. The post points readers to tips on preparing to measure AI marketing initiatives; ask for the measurement model.
- **Fixed publishing cadences and free tools are how the ideas reach people**: Bret Starr's output model combines owned publishing with useful free products. Two newsletters have assigned days: AI Marketing Weekly lands on Tuesdays, B2B Marketing Weekly on Thursdays, and readers are invited to suggest topics. The Starr Conspiracy also released a free Battle Card Builder that takes three competitors and returns a competitive intelligence report for each. The tool launch openly invites negative as well as positive feedback, in contrast with the unhedged vendor advocacy in the sponsored newsletter issue.

## Work to read

- [The Cage Door Is Open: why the B2B funnel is a 19th-century model](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_ive-spent-25-years-watching-b2b-marketing-activity-7423883798179827712-cOaV)
- ["Creatio can fix your HubSpot problem": how they handle a sponsored argument](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_ai-b2bmarketing-noregerts-activity-7374619895533256705-QFD4)
- [First-hand testing of ChatGPT ad campaigns](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_reimagining-advertising-with-ai-activity-7506166851861663744-tUM5)
- [Battle Card Builder, a free tool from The Starr Conspiracy](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_battle-card-builder-gtm-kernel-activity-7509000661997350912-2B8U)
- [A short bet on AI marketing budgets in 2027](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_2027-will-be-the-first-year-of-b2b-marketing-activity-7508324998202146816-XJNv)
- [Two new newsletters: B2B Marketing Weekly and AI Marketing Weekly](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bret-starr_weve-been-testing-two-new-newsletters-b2b-activity-7506378991805710336-cQyt)

## Brand relationships

- **Creatio** (disclosed_partnership)
- **HubSpot** (mention)
- **The Starr Conspiracy | TSC** (disclosed_partnership)
- **The Cage Door Is Open** (owned_business)
- **B2B Marketing Weekly** (owned_business)
- **AI Marketing Weekly** (owned_business)
- **OpenAI** (mention)

## Partnerships

The material reviewed documents no paid partnership formats or sponsored posts. A post about Creatio praises its AI-native marketing platform but does not disclose a commercial relationship. Bret Starr also announced The Starr Conspiracy’s free Battle Card Builder, a company product rather than a partnership offer. Brands should ask about availability, pricing, deliverables, timing, distribution and how to inquire; no public inquiry route is established here. See the Creatio post and Battle Card Builder announcement.

## Alternatives

- Sam Hirbod: Choose Sam Hirbod for a keynote-and-advisory engagement when the agency's clients already run on HubSpot and the real question is which AI features to turn into billable services. The posts cover HubSpot's releases in partner terms: the Deep Research Connector for ChatGPT is broken into sellable work such as AI-powered audits, personas, journey mapping, sharper QBRs, and automation workshops. An INBOUND recap walks through Breeze AI, Smart CRM data controls, and the event's move to San Francisco, thanking named partners and colleagues along the way. A working session drawn from those posts gives a HubSpot-heavy audience something to package for clients the same week.
- Omprakash Karuppanan: Choose Omprakash Karuppanan when the agency wants mid-funnel operating detail instead of a broad thesis. The posts work through the account stack its clients already own: five named Claude skills for deal reporting, cutting ad spend against non-ICP accounts, account research, field-marketing attribution, and stall diagnosis. They then walk through what to pull from call recordings, webinar Q&A, and sales email threads to catch deals quietly stalling. The posts cite specific figures, including an audit of 31 stalled accounts where 17 had an unworked trigger event in the prior 60 days, making this a better fit for a hands-on working session than a stage keynote.
- Emilia D'Anzica, ACC, MBA: Consider Emilia D'Anzica for the same agency only if the need is retention or hiring. The posts show operating work rather than marketing theory: a nine-month fractional leadership role at Anagram, closed with thanks to named executives and a handoff to a hired successor; and a first-person test of an AI career agent (Jack & Jill) describing how its questions compared with a typical recruiter's and how quickly relevant openings landed in the inbox. For an agency whose clients are losing accounts through weak onboarding or struggling to hire, that offers a different, directly useful session.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/