Field notes · Daniel Liu · Senior Marketing Manager, ThinkingAI

Insights from the
growth engine room

Six years of B2C affiliate at ToLocal, 2015–2021, then cross-border payments at PingPong 2021–2025, and AI GTM at ThinkingAI, where I have been Senior Marketing Manager since 2026.

Marketing Ops

How I run website projects without due dates

I size the cards and drop the dates. One board, two views.

Aug 15, 2026 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

How I manage trade shows from one page per show

Every show gets one page and the same five sections. It has held up for three shows.

Aug 15, 2026 · 6 min read
Growth

Search Ads competitor research, rebuilt as an agent pipeline

Every keyword in one bucket, totals reconciled, 47 went live.

Aug 6, 2026 · 7 min read
Growth

Building an ABM list from technology signals

Six rounds of filtering took net-new precision from 2% to 31%.

Aug 4, 2026 · 7 min read
AI & Automation

The trade-show follow-up system: badges to CRM

46 booth badges checked against HubSpot during the show, 11 already in it, 35 to add.

Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read
SEO & Content

Slicing a 14-chapter whitepaper into a lead engine

One chapter becomes four assets; the gated playbook turns readers into leads.

Aug 1, 2026 · 7 min read
AI & Automation

How I built an AI lead scoring assistant for B2B fintech, twice

I scored leads with five questions, no engineers and no black box behind the number.

Sep 19, 2023 · 7 min read
SEO & Content

How I use ChatGPT for SEO: intent, metadata, audits

ChatGPT checks intent and drafts metadata. I write the page.

Mar 27, 2026 · 6 min read
SEO & Content

AI search optimization (GEO): what actually matters now

I checked robots.txt on my own domains. Mentions beat backlinks, 0.664 to 0.218.

Mar 27, 2026 · 7 min read
SEO & Content

Two listicles beat my whole site: notes from a GEO log

Months of GEO log: 7 of 8 mentions came from two listicles.

Apr 14, 2026 · 5 min read
AI & Automation

Two Zapier + GPT flows for a one-person support desk

One rep, one inbox, four departments' mail.

Dec 11, 2025 · 5 min read
SEO & Content

How I use data + AI so my content team writes articles that rank

My team writes in a second language, so no draft starts until the outline scores 40–50.

Dec 12, 2025 · 5 min read
AI & Automation

How I automated a messy monthly report using an LLM

I turned a two-hour monthly close into five minutes with Zapier, a schema and a custom GPT.

Dec 11, 2025 · Updated Jun 2026 · 6 min read
Growth

From B2C traffic buying to a B2B fintech affiliate program

I ran B2C affiliate for six years, then B2B fintech taught me volume you can't qualify is volume you pay for twice.

Dec 23, 2025 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

Scaling a new product launch on record design

A referral launch breaks on the data first.

Dec 23, 2025 · 6 min read
Lifecycle

Designing a referral-driven lifecycle without breaking trust

Suppliers first saw us when a payment landed.

Dec 23, 2025 · 6 min read
Growth

Building a referral-led growth system for a new B2B payment feature

At PingPong I grew it through customers we already had, and one email program became three.

Dec 23, 2025 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

Email intake, rebuilt: one form, one board, one launch sequence

Email worked. Intake broke.

Dec 22, 2025 · 5 min read
Lifecycle

Rebuilding onboarding email: 140 hours to 48

One shared MailChimp account, three regions, no owner.

Dec 9, 2025 · 5 min read
Lifecycle

Email marketing: timing beats copy

I keyed the sends to account state and the copy stayed the same. Timing did.

Dec 11, 2025 · 5 min read
Marketing Ops

Fixing a cross-domain tracking problem that shouldn't have taken two months

Paid attribution died for two months. Every UTM dropped when a visitor crossed domains.

Dec 11, 2025 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

How I approach landing page testing (without overthinking it)

I test the angle before the phrasing, and the angle I bet on lost.

Dec 9, 2025 · 6 min read
SEO & Content

Keyword research for a fintech company: clicks, compliance, intent

I discount each keyword by what an AI Overview eats, then run the survivors past compliance.

Dec 11, 2025 · 8 min read
SEO & Content

Running notes on GEO, AI search, and what actually matters

One claim at a time on my own site. Bing indexed 30 pages; ChatGPT hasn't cited me.

Dec 9, 2025 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

Running social solo: a system and a $20 test loop

I tested three angles at $20 an ad set, and social proof won CTR by 15%.

Dec 9, 2025 · 6 min read
Marketing Ops

Marketing ops that replaced chaos with a queue

One door for every request. Lead handoff went from 12 hours to minutes.

Dec 22, 2025 · 7 min read

The engine room, monthly

One email a month. The playbooks and numbers that survived contact with reality.