HubSpot’s New Loop Marketing: Beyond the Funnel Model

Traditional funnels no longer capture how customers engage. HubSpot’s new playbook introduces Loop Marketing, a continuous cycle of attracting, engaging, delighting, and growing customers. The shift from funnel to loop reflects how modern buyers interact in an ongoing, non-linear journey.

At Inbound 2025 in San Francisco this week, HubSpot unveiled a new growth playbook for the AI era: Loop Marketing. This launch comes at a critical moment when the traditional marketing funnel, once the go-to model for attracting, engaging, and delighting customers, is starting to collapse. As HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan noted, the familiar growth playbook simply "is not working anymore." The digital world has shifted dramatically, and marketers need to adapt fast.

The Collapsing Funnel: Why the Old Playbook is Failing

A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with my CEO about this exact topic. We were both saying that the funnel, as we know it, is falling apart. What used to be a neat, linear path from awareness to purchase is now more scattered, unpredictable, and fragmented than ever. We knew it was a warning bell, and this week, HubSpot confirmed it on the big stage.

For years, the inbound methodology provided a clear path: attract buyers through content, nurture them into leads, and convert them into customers. This linear journey worked because information was primarily discovered through Google search. Buyers searched, clicked, landed on a site, and moved down the funnel.

But AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) have completely shaken up that journey. Earlier this year, HubSpot’s own blog saw a big dip in traffic after a Google update, something many marketers also experienced. Why? Because people are getting their answers directly from AI, not from websites.

Here’s what’s really changing:

• Zero-Click Searches: Over 60% of Google searches now end without a single click, thanks to AI overviews that deliver direct answers. Your content might be great, but users often never reach your site.
• Scattered Awareness: Instead of starting on your website, buyers are now everywhere - TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, podcasts, and newsletters. They scroll, swipe, and switch apps constantly. As Yamini Rangan put it, “Buyers used to start with your content on your website. Now they are everywhere but your website.”
• Broken Consideration: The middle of the funnel, where buyers once explored content in detail, is fractured. AI is delivering the answers, and fewer people feel the need to click.
• Hourglass Funnel: The old inverted pyramid is giving way to an hourglass shape. The top of the funnel now heavily influences the bottom, putting brand awareness and storytelling at the centre of growth strategies.
• Over-Automation: Many teams are stuck tinkering with endless nurture sequences and email workflows, while neglecting the bigger picture, which is all about building strong brands and memorable stories.

In short, the funnel isn’t just leaky, it’s reshaping into something else entirely. And that’s why HubSpot has introduced the Loop.

Loop Marketing: HubSpot’s New Growth Playbook

To adapt to this new reality, HubSpot has introduced Loop Marketing, a playbook built for a world where humans lead with creativity and AI accelerates the process. Unlike a rigid funnel, the Loop is continuous, dynamic, and always learning. It’s about combining human ideas with AI’s scale and speed.

The Loop still honours Inbound’s principles, such as educating, adding value, and building relationships, but reframes them for a buyer journey that’s happening across platforms and powered by AI-driven discovery. The Loop has four stages: Express, Tailor, Amplify, and Evolve.

1. Express: Defining Your Brand’s Point of View

The first step in the Loop is Express, and it’s all about clarity. Before AI touches your content, you need to set the foundations: your brand’s voice, perspective, and style.

Why? Because AI can produce content in seconds, but without clear direction it risks sounding bland, generic, or even off-brand.

How to nail this stage:

• Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Be really clear about your audience’s goals, challenges, and intent. AI can even scan reviews, surveys, or call notes to surface insights you may have missed.
• Create a Style and Brand Guide for AI: Spell out your tone, personality, and mission in a way AI can understand. This keeps your messaging consistent across every channel.
• Test and Refine Content: Keep checking that what AI generates resonates with your target audience. If it doesn’t feel authentically “you,” tweak your guide and iterate.

Getting Express right means faster content creation, lower costs, and more authentic output.

2. Tailor: Achieving One-to-One Relevance at Scale

Personalisation used to mean adding someone’s first name to an email. Today, that doesn’t cut it. Buyers expect messages that feel like they were written just for them, and with AI, that’s finally possible.

The Tailor stage focuses on delivering one-to-one relevance at scale.

Here’s how it works:

• Use Intent Signals: Track key behaviours like visiting your pricing page, engaging with competitors, or opening support tickets. These signals reveal what’s on a customer’s mind.
• Craft Hyper-Targeted Messages with AI: HubSpot’s AI-powered email feature uses CRM data to generate personalised emails for each contact and even predict the best send time. HubSpot claims they had an 82% increase in their own conversion rates with this method.
• Keep Humans in the Loop: AI drafts the message, but people validate it for accuracy and brand alignment.

So, in other words, tailoring is about showing people the exact value they’re looking for, in real time.

3. Amplify: Diversifying Reach in a Multi-Channel World

Your audience is no longer just on Google or your blog. They’re on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, newsletters, podcasts, and countless social feeds. Amplify is about meeting them wherever they are.

How to Amplify effectively:

• Spread Your Presence Across Channels: Whether it’s video, audio, or text, be ready to show up in all the formats your audience loves.
• Build an AEO Strategy (Answer Engine Optimisation): This is the new SEO. Instead of fighting for blue links, you’re aiming to be included in AI-generated answers. HubSpot’s AEO tool scores your visibility against competitors and suggests ways to improve.
• Track AI Referrals: HubSpot now shows when LLMs are sending traffic your way. Those referrals often convert three times better than traditional leads.

Amplify is proof that when you diversify reach, you multiply results.

4. Evolve: Iterating and Learning Fast

Finally, Evolve is about turning every campaign into a feedback loop. Instead of setting and forgetting, you measure, adapt, and improve continuously.

Think of it like this: before AI, campaigns were cruise ships - slow, heavy, and hard to steer. With AI, they’re jet skis - fast, nimble, and constantly adjusting.

How to Evolve:

• Measure What Matters: For each Loop stage, track the right metrics, such as content speed and cost (Express), engagement (Tailor), conversions and AI share of voice (Amplify), and velocity (Evolve).
• Sharpen Strategy with AI Insights: AI can scan campaign data to find hidden patterns and suggest optimisations you’d never spot manually.
• Learn Fast, Act Faster: Every insight feeds back into the next campaign cycle. The more loops you run, the smarter your marketing becomes.

The Loop never really ends. It’s a continuous cycle of learning, adapting, and improving.

Conclusion

The funnel is no longer enough to guide growth. HubSpot’s Loop Playbook offers a smarter, more flexible framework that reflects how buyers actually behave today. By cycling through Express, Tailor, Amplify, and Evolve, businesses can combine human creativity with AI efficiency to stay relevant, visible, and trusted.

The funnel may be collapsing, but the Loop gives us a way forward.