James Dickerson (The Boring Marketer), interviewed by Greg Isenberg. Demos "vibe marketing" - using Claude Code + custom skills + MCPs to build a complete revenue-generating marketing system live in ~1 hour.
tldr
- •"vibe marketing" makes marketing feel like vibe coding - fast iteration, low friction, high leverage via Claude Code
- •deep research first (most people skip this - leads to generic "AI slop")
- •stack skills (positioning - copy - design - lead gen - orchestrator) for compounding quality
- •one skilled person with Claude Code replaces entire marketing teams
- •everything lives in one terminal - build product + marketing simultaneously
the workflow
- •uses Claude Code with custom skills (pre-trained prompt frameworks) + MCPs (Perplexity for research, Playwright for browser automation/screenshots, Firecrawl for scraping)
- •demo target: fictional AI agency for "boring" local service businesses (plumbers/HVAC doing $2-10M revenue)
- •full funnel built live: positioned offer, site, lead magnet, ads, SEO content
deep research first
- •Perplexity MCP - analyze competitors, market gaps, underserved angles
- •Playwright MCP - open sites, take screenshots for design/copy inspiration
- •skipping research is why most AI marketing output is generic slop
positioning & copy
- •custom "positioning angles" skill trained on classic frameworks + personal taste
- •output: emotional transformations, unique mechanisms (e.g., "AI responds in minutes vs hours - wins 35% more jobs")
- •winner: "Boring Money" - anti-corporate, speed-focused, "unsexy gold mine" for overlooked trades
- •"direct response copy" skill trained on Hopkins, Schwartz + modern updates
- •feed competitor screenshots + positioning - generate confident, non-corporate copy
landing page & lead magnet
- •Anthropic's "front-end design" skill - clean, conversion-optimized HTML/CSS/JS (anti-AI-slop aesthetic: no purple gradients/emojis)
- •orchestrator skill helps decide next steps when stuck
- •lead magnet: "5-Minute Marketing Audit" interactive checklist scoring response time leaks, follow-ups
- •embedded as modal/pop-up - captures emails - offers full report + call booking
ads & traffic
- •Remotion (code-based video tool) - generate short video ads (square/vertical/landscape) in terminal
- •DTC ad skill - pull high-performing hooks from ecom - adapt for B2B/services
- •keyword research skill - programmatic SEO for local niches (e.g., "HVAC marketing Phoenix")
- •SEO content skill - auto-generate optimized pages - push to site
- •combine organic + paid (Meta ads) pipeline
bottom line
- •do boring upfront research - avoid generic outputs
- •stack skills for compounding quality at each step
- •James claims this replaced much of his old $100M+ ad spend workflow
- •result: full funnel ready to test/launch fast and cheap vs hiring agencies