How Lickly uses AI to ground marketing decisions in evidence

The idea behind Lickly goes back more than a decade. Our co-founder, Bradley Silver, was working at Atomic Reach, where he was studying how language and content influence audience behavior. Through that work, Bradley saw how much of marketing decision-making still relied on experience, relationships and instinct, often without enough data to understand what was really influencing an audience. Bradley went on to co-found Lickly with Jeremy Barnett, recognizing an opportunity to bring a more rigorous, data-driven approach to marketing decisions, starting with influencer marketing. Traditionally, influencer marketing has started with the creator. Brands look at follower counts, engagement rates and who they’ve worked with before, then try to determine whether those creators are right for their audience. We approach it differently. We start by understanding the audience, what matters to them, which communities they’re part of and who actually influences their decisions. From there, we can evaluate which creators make sense, what content is likely to resonate and what outcomes a brand can reasonably expect. As the platform evolved, we recognized that the same challenge exists across marketing. We have more data and AI tools than ever, but marketers still need help determining what to do next. Our focus on Decision Intelligence grew out of that need. Lickly brings audience, creator, competitive and predictive intelligence together to help marketers make better-informed decisions, backed by evidence they can understand and defend, before committing their budgets. And as a CMO, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. When I’m making decisions about where to spend our marketing budget, I want evidence I can trust and a clear understanding of why a particular approach makes sense.

We’re still building the market for Lickly, so a big part of our focus is helping potential customers understand what Decision Intelligence means and how it applies to the decisions they’re already making. Our go-to-market approach combines relationships, partnerships, content, PR, events and digital marketing. We’re also learning which audiences and messages create genuine interest, rather than simply generating traffic or leads. Where I’d like to see more of our business come from is marketers who already recognize the problem we’re solving. People who are questioning how they’re selecting creators, allocating budgets or evaluating campaign recommendations and want a more informed way to make those decisions. That requires us to do a better job of educating the market. I want someone to encounter our research, watch a product demonstration or read an article and recognize a problem they’re dealing with in their own organization. For me, that’s a much stronger starting point for a customer relationship than reaching someone through a generic sales pitch.

One of the most valuable things we’ve done is use Lickly, our AI-driven Decision Intelligence for marketing platform to inform our own marketing strategy. We’re using the platform to understand our audiences, identify the topics they’re engaging with and evaluate which creators and communities make sense for us to reach. We call it building Lickly with Lickly, and it’s been an important exercise because we’re putting the platform through the same process we’re asking our customers to trust. What I haven’t handed over is the final marketing judgment. I’ve experimented with using generative AI for writing, particularly thought leadership and executive communications. It can be useful for organizing ideas or getting an initial structure in place, but I’ve found that it often produces something technically polished that doesn’t sound like me. It tends to smooth out the point of view, over-explain things and make everything sound equally important. So I’ve gone back to doing more of that thinking and final writing myself. I’ll use AI to challenge an argument, identify gaps or help with research, but I still want the opinions, the judgment and the voice to be mine.

I think the biggest change is that buyers have more ways to research a company before they ever speak to someone in sales. They’re reading articles, comparing platforms, watching videos and increasingly using AI to help them understand their options. As buyers increasingly research companies through articles, third-party reviews, videos and AI assistants, marketers need to ensure their positioning is clear and consistent across every channel, not just their website. We’re paying close attention to how AI is changing discovery, but I wouldn’t claim that ChatGPT is already a significant source of new business for us without the attribution data to support it. What I do believe is that buyers are going to arrive with more information and more specific questions. The opportunity for marketers is to make sure the information they’re finding is accurate, useful and consistent with what the product actually delivers.

I’d encourage marketers to be practical about where they use AI. Look at the areas where your team spends the most time, where you’re making significant investments and where better information could help you make a more informed decision. Start there, test what works and build on it. You don’t need to introduce AI into every part of your marketing operation to see real value. I’d also encourage teams to test the technology on their own business before making big promises about what it can do for customers. It’s one of the reasons we’re using Lickly internally. You learn a lot when you’re accountable for the outcome yourself. As for what to ignore, I’d spend less time worrying about which AI tool is getting the most attention this month. There will always be another model, another feature and another company promising to change everything. I’d pay much more attention to whether the technology is improving the quality of the decisions your team makes. A faster answer isn’t necessarily a better one. If you’re putting a meaningful amount of money behind a recommendation, you should still understand why it makes sense. I think helping marketers make those decisions with greater confidence is where AI has the most potential.