✍️ how to market an ever-changing product

Here’s a riddle for you: How do you market when the market won’t sit still?

It’s a question worth asking, because anyone who’s trying to market an AI product right now is up against two major speed challenges:

1. AI products evolve at warp speed as users ask for adjustments and expansions. How the product looks today is not how it will look in a month. (Or maybe even a minute.)
   

2. AI buyers are making decisions, like, now. They’re tired of testing out new tools and making shorter shortlists, and 95% of them select their initial top choice. You have less time to catch their attention.

In 2026, the AI tools buyers choose will become part of the DNA of their company. Once they're locked in, they're nearly impossible to replace.  

The window’s closing fast, but many marketers feel stuck in a loop—juggling constant product roadmap updates and chasing clarity instead of leading with it. 

As CMO advisor to G2, Sydney Sloan has a front-row seat to how millions of buyers research, test, shortlist, and ultimately decide which tools earn a permanent place in their tech stack. 

This week’s playbook is about what happens before the decision windows close. How to design positioning that keeps pace with AI development cycles—and GET. ON. THAT. LIST.

The market’s moving faster than traditional marketing rhythms were designed to support. 

When customers see value in one workflow, they immediately push for more. Product decisions follow. Positioning shifts. Before the new messaging settles, the cycle repeats. 

From Sydney Sloan’s vantage point: AI products don’t evolve like traditional SaaS. 

At the same time, shortlists are shrinking. If you don’t secure a spot—while buyers are still testing and exploring AI tools—it’s going to be harder to break in once the “playground” phase ends.

The marketing teams that hold their ground don’t try to freeze messaging in place. They plan for change. 

They align four decisions on a regular cadence:

• Swim lane + expansion pull: Define the workflow you own today and track where customers expect you to expand next.
  

• Build vs. partner decisions: Be part of the “are we building this in-house or partnering with a vendor” conversations, because those choices help shape what you can really promise.
  

• AI buying committee: Position for a new IT-heavy buying committee where technical fit rules product consideration.
  

• Layered positioning: Align messaging for IT, business decision makers, and practitioners so each audience sees clear value. (And so you sound like the same company to everyone you talk to.)

Faster development cycles mean marketing needs to be in the room with product, engineering, and IT as they debate expansion paths, not after the decisions have been made. 

That cross-functional coordination keeps products relevant during this closing window where buyers are still exploring new AI tools.

We break down what it takes to market with clarity, stay on top of product changes, and earn your spot on buyers’ shortlists in our latest playbook.

Campaigns that got us talking: Calm learned that blanket re-engagement can backfire, and waking up “quiet” users did more harm than good. Knowing who you’re reaching out to > reaching out to everyone.  

AI Spotlight: Two-thirds of Americans now use AI chatbots to get information. Those tools rely heavily on news outlets to answer questions. Some newsrooms are blocking bots. Others are leaning in, treating AI as earned distribution. In 2026, that divide is must-see TV.

Stuff that makes us scroll back up: 50+ growth experiments: Outbound, ABM, partnerships, events—all the usual suspects. All powered by content. The kind that gives context before the outreach and momentum after.

Over the past year, we’ve been doing what we ask marketers everywhere to do: Testing our own content systems and tracking what actually moves pipeline, showing up deep in client work that makes us grin, and building a team that finally got together IRL and remembered why this work is so freakin’ fun. 

The work is clicking, the people behind it care how it gets done, and that right there is why we’re growing. We’re looking for:

A Content Strategist
⚡the superpower: turns big ideas into clear, cross-channel strategies that perform

A Copywriter 
⚡the superpower: makes complex ideas sing across formats

A Client Success Manager
⚡ the superpower: turns great work into lasting client momentum and growth

Open roles are here.

There's good content, great content, and then there’s the content feedback we are sick and tired of:

“Can we make this sound less like AI?”

Said about copy written by a human who just enjoys clarity and punctuation. And fine, maybe a little parallelism. Sue me.

We’re gonna say this hard thing because we care: No one is excited to test 47 new AI tools in 2026.

The “shopping window” on AI tools is closing, as shortlists get shorter and buyers double down on their final answers. Meanwhile, products continue to change in the blink of an eye.

Markets don’t wait for marketing to catch up. The advantage right now isn’t louder messaging or faster pivots. It’s clarity, flexibility, and being in the room earlier—being part of the decisions shaping the business before they happen. 

That’s the work that ultimately closes the deal.

See y’all next time. 

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing... Even Oxford has a shortlist. Before naming its 2025 Word of the Year, it floated contenders like aura farming and biohack. The final pick, rage bait, is memorable, but the almost-winners are just as revealing. Shortlists tell you where culture is headed, not just where it landed.