Mike explains the Avenue8 Iron Man Approach to AI with Human-First AI Marketing
Mike Montague, founder of Avenue9, recently joined Jeremy Rivera on the Unscripted SEO Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about Human-First AI Marketing®, AI search, Answer Engine Optimization, content quality, and why small businesses need a smarter way to use AI.
The big idea from the interview is simple: AI works best when it amplifies the people, stories, expertise, and relationships already inside a business. For SMBs trying to compete with bigger brands, AI can create leverage; the human strategy gives that leverage direction.
The Iron Man Approach to Human-First AI Marketing
Early in the conversation, Jeremy asked Mike which superhero he would choose. Mike picked Iron Man, and the analogy became the perfect doorway into Avenue9’s point of view.
The Iron Man approach means using AI like Jarvis in your ear. It gives you insight, speed, memory, structure, and support. The human stays in the suit, makes the decisions, understands the stakes, and owns the outcome.
That is the heart of Human-First AI Marketing®.
AI can help your team move faster, publish more consistently, analyze patterns, repurpose conversations, and create better first drafts. The strategy still needs human judgment, customer understanding, lived experience, and taste. In other words, AI can hand you the wrench; your team still needs to know what engine they are fixing.
Top Takeaways from the Unscripted SEO Podcast Interview
1. AI makes humans more capable when the human stays in control
Mike described AI as a way to “wrap ourselves in technology” and become more capable. For marketing teams, that means AI can support research, drafting, summarizing, ideation, reporting, and repurposing.
The opportunity for SMBs is huge. A small team can start acting with big-brand consistency when they build the right systems. The key is giving AI the right context: your audience, your voice, your offer, your proof, your stories, and your standards.
2. AI gets a “C+” in almost everything
One of Mike’s strongest points in the interview is that AI can produce useful baseline work across many areas. A C+ can be a big improvement when someone is starting from scratch.
The hard part is the final stretch: context, emotional intelligence, storytelling, strategic judgment, and knowing when the “standard answer” is the wrong answer. That last 20 percent is where human expertise earns trust.
For business owners and marketers, this is a practical reminder. Use AI to get moving faster. Use human judgment to make the work worth publishing.
3. Content slop is the new marketing pollution
Jeremy and Mike talked about “Claude hopping,” where people bounce between AI tools and produce piles of output that still need a real strategy. More content only helps when the content is clearer, more useful, more relevant, and more trustworthy.
This is where many companies get stuck. They ask AI to generate more posts, more emails, more blogs, and more campaigns before they clarify the message. That creates a bigger pile of average material.
Avenue9’s approach starts with the real ingredients: customer conversations, founder stories, sales calls, objections, case studies, reviews, and expert insights. Then AI can help turn those ingredients into content that sounds like the business and serves the buyer.
4. Organic traffic is changing, and reputation matters more
Mike and Jeremy discussed the reality that many websites are seeing major declines in organic traffic as AI answers, search summaries, and zero-click experiences reshape buyer behavior.
That shift raises the stakes for Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. Businesses need to become the trusted answer that AI systems can understand, cite, and recommend.
The practical path is reputation building. Document the real work. Publish better proof. Capture customer language. Build case studies. Earn reviews. Show your expertise in public. AI search rewards clear signals, and buyers trust brands that make their value easy to verify.
5. Your online reputation should mirror your real-world reputation
One of the most useful parts of the conversation centered on this idea: make your digital presence reflect the actual quality of your work.
For local and B2B companies, that means documenting projects, highlighting real customer stories, collecting testimonials, showcasing team expertise, and making sure your website answers the questions buyers actually ask.
Think of your website and online presence as the storefront window. If the work inside the business is excellent, the window should show that excellence clearly. AI can help package those signals, but the proof has to come from real work.
6. “Degenerative engineering” turns conversations into marketing assets
Mike introduced the idea of “degenerative engineering,” which means using AI to distill what is already true inside your business.
Instead of starting with a blank page, start with conversations. Record the founder explaining a belief. Capture a client story. Save the questions buyers ask on sales calls. Interview your team about what they know. Then use AI to extract themes, quotes, frameworks, articles, social posts, sales enablement content, and research-backed insights.
Mike compared this to concentrated orange juice. The goal is to reduce the raw material down to the strongest essence, then use that concentrate to create marketing that tastes like the real brand.
7. Original research beats commodity content
Jeremy and Mike also talked about the power of original research. A podcast host who has interviewed 100 experts has something AI cannot fake: a body of real conversations.
That idea applies to any business. Your sales calls, service calls, customer feedback, project notes, team meetings, and industry observations can become original research. AI can help organize and synthesize those inputs, but the source material comes from lived experience.
This is a major opportunity for SMBs. Big brands may have more budget, but smaller companies often have closer customer relationships and better access to the real story.
Why This Matters for SMB Marketing
Most small and mid-sized businesses have a marketing problem that looks like a capacity problem. The team is busy. The budget is limited. The content calendar keeps asking for snacks every week like a very needy raccoon.
AI can absolutely help with capacity. The bigger opportunity is capability.
With the right Human-First AI Marketing® system, SMBs can:
- Turn sales conversations into content ideas
- Repurpose podcasts, webinars, and interviews into blogs and social posts
- Build stronger AEO and SEO assets from real expertise
- Create consistent messaging across channels
- Support sales with better follow-up and buyer education
- Help employees use AI without losing the company’s voice
That is the Avenue9 sweet spot. We help businesses use AI to amplify authenticity, create practical marketing systems, and show up with more clarity in the moments that matter.
Links and Resources Mentioned:
- Listen to the Unscripted SEO Podcast
- Learn more about Jeremy Rivera
- Explore human-certifiedcontent.com
- Related Unscripted SEO interview: Patrick Stox on Building in the GEO Era
- Related Unscripted SEO interview: Grant Simmons on Entity SEO, LLMs, and the Future of Search Visibility
- Learn about Rob Bonham
- Visit PureAire
- Visit SEOteric
- Learn about Project Kilby
- Visit Raven Tools
Ready to Build Your Human-First AI Marketing System?
This Unscripted SEO conversation is a great example of what Avenue9 helps clients do every day: turn real conversations, expertise, and customer insight into scalable marketing assets.
If your business is ready to use AI with more clarity, confidence, and human connection, Avenue9 can help you build the system. We use our A9^Factor Framework™ to align your audience, brand voice, tools, workflows, and storytelling so AI becomes a practical growth engine for your team.
Let’s talk about how to build your own Human-First AI Marketing® system.
