AI Marketing Strategy
Where your growth actually comes from, what to stop doing, and where AI genuinely helps.
Read more →SYSTEM ONLINE // PITTSBURGH, PA
You're not hiring a startup.
You're hiring a CMO.
SteelAIQ is new. The person running it has spent twenty years building marketing systems for enterprise software, global manufacturing, and consumer brands. Now that playbook runs for small businesses, powered by AI, at a scale that actually fits.
Pittsburgh built. Working anywhere.
THE STACK WE BUILD ON
OpenAI · Anthropic · Google · HubSpot · Shopify · Klaviyo · Meta · Semrush
Not a client list. SteelAIQ is new and we are not borrowing anybody's logos to hide it. These are the tools we have been running inside enterprise marketing organizations for years, which is a very different claim.
THE ACTUAL PROBLEM
Nobody is coming to fix your marketing.
AI-powered marketing is the use of artificial intelligence tools to plan, produce, and measure marketing work that a small team could not otherwise sustain. For a small business it means one person can produce the output of a department, but only if a human sets the strategy and enforces the quality.
You know what you should be doing. Post consistently. Email the list. Fix the site. Follow up. Track what worked.
You do not have a department. You are the department, in the ninety minutes a week that the business does not need you for something else.
AI was supposed to solve that. What most owners got was six subscriptions, forty open tabs, and content that reads like a machine wrote it, because one did. Their audience noticed immediately.
Here is the part nobody selling you software will say out loud: AI amplifies judgment. Good judgment gets multiplied. Bad judgment gets multiplied faster and published at scale.
The tool was never the strategy.
GROUND RULES
Four things we won't do to you.
- 01
We won't sell you a subscription and call it a strategy.
Tools cost forty dollars a month. Knowing what to do with them is the entire job.
- 02
We won't publish slop under your name.
Every word carries your reputation into your customer's inbox. The machine does not care about that. We do.
- 03
We won't make you dependent on us.
Half this job is teaching. If that means you stop needing us, good. Agencies that build dependency on purpose are a business model, not a service.
- 04
We won't pretend software knows your customer.
It does not. You do. That knowledge is the asset. AI is just the multiplier on it.
TWENTY YEARS OF RECEIPTS
None of these numbers came from SteelAIQ. All of them came from Eric.
SteelAIQ launched this year. The person running it has been producing results like these since 2006, across enterprise software, industrial manufacturing, eCommerce, and consumer brands. Every figure below is published in full at theerichoward.com.
730%Website traffic growth, Simio
413%Organic search impression growth
51.4%Lead growth in six months, TROY Group
20+Years running marketing organizations
Those results came from rebuilding systems, not from clever campaigns. The same systems work at your scale. They just cost a fraction as much to run, because you do not have six stakeholders who need to approve a headline.
CAREER RESULTS OF ERIC HOWARD, FOUNDER. NOT STEELAIQ CLIENT ENGAGEMENTS.
FULL DETAIL AT THEERICHOWARD.COM
WHAT WE DO
Four ways we put AI to work.
AI Content and SEO
Content that ranks, gets cited by AI search, and sounds like your business.
Read more →
Marketing Automation
The follow-up you keep meaning to send, running without you.
Read more →
AI Training and Enablement
Hands-on training on your business, not a generic course.
Read more →HOW THIS WORKS
Learn it, or hand it off.
Agencies want you dependent. Courses take your money and leave you with a login. We do both sides on purpose.
Show me how
We train you and your team on your actual business. Prompts, workflows, and quality standards, written down so they outlive the session. When you are running it properly, we leave.
Right for you if: you have someone in-house with time and appetite, and you want the capability to stay in the building.
Do it for me
We run it. Strategy, content, automation, reporting. You get output and results without hiring anyone or learning a tool stack. You stay in on decisions, out of execution.
Right for you if: you are the bottleneck, and getting your calendar back is worth more than mastering another platform.
Plenty of clients start at one and move to the other. That is fine. It is your business, not our retention number.
THE ENGAGEMENT
How this actually runs.
- 01 TEARDOWN
Everything you are doing now, what it costs in time and money, what it returns. No diplomacy. If something is wasting your money you will hear it inside two weeks.
- 02 BLUEPRINT
The three to five moves that matter, in order, with the tools mapped to each. You own the document whether or not you hire us past this point.
- 03 FORGE
We build it. Content systems, automation, tracking, campaigns. Beside your team while we train them, or on our own while you run the business.
- 04 PROOF
Numbers, monthly, in plain English. What moved, what did not, what changes next. When something is not working we kill it. Defending a bad campaign is how agencies protect retainers, not results.
THE WORK
One client. We built all of it.
IT'S BY JENNA // SEWICKLEY, PA
Two brands, one owner, one storefront
Glossed By Jenna, a lip and cosmetics line, and Skin by Jenna Marie, a licensed esthetician practice. One person running product, services, and a full appointment book, with marketing competing for whatever hours were left.
We built the entire presence. Positioning that lets two brands share one storefront without confusing anyone. The Shopify store, product and service merchandising, booking integration, the content system, email capture, the FAQ, the journal, and the local search foundation for Sewickley and greater Pittsburgh.
Read the full case study →One client, built end to end. Not a portfolio yet. It is the whole thing, which is more than most agencies will show you about any single account.
WHO YOU'RE ACTUALLY HIRING
You're not hiring a startup. You're hiring a CMO.
ERIC HOWARD // FOUNDER // MBA, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
I've spent over twenty years running marketing. Currently as Chief Marketing Officer at Simio, an enterprise simulation software company, and before that at TROY Group, Orange Logic, and GNC. Consumer brands first, then enterprise B2B, then both.
Here's what that actually means. I've rebuilt websites and migrated companies off legacy platforms. I've stood up CRMs and built attribution models that held up to a CFO's questions. I've grown organic traffic 730 percent, run a Shopify store to 125 percent of budget, and taken a 75-person event to 800 attendees. I ran the programs that brought SAP, Microsoft, Bayer, and Accenture in as customers. I sit on the University of Pittsburgh's CMO AI Roundtable.
None of that is the reason to hire me.
The reason is this: I know exactly what the enterprise playbook looks like with the committees, the procurement cycles, and the six-figure retainers stripped out. Most of it still works at your scale. What was missing was someone who had actually run it, and enough leverage to deliver it for less than the cost of a full-time hire. AI is that leverage. That is the entire reason SteelAIQ exists.
SteelAIQ is new. I'm not.
The full track record · LinkedIn · Why our logo is a bridge
CAREER RESULTS OF ERIC HOWARD, FOUNDER. NOT STEELAIQ CLIENT ENGAGEMENTS.
FROM THE CLIENT
“He didn't sell me software. He taught me the parts I needed and skipped the parts I didn't. That has not been my experience with marketing people.”
Jenna, Owner // It's By Jenna, Sewickley PA
WORKING TOGETHER
No packages. No price list.
We do not publish pricing because we do not sell a product. A business doing eighty thousand a year and one doing eight million need different things. Three tiers with checkmarks would be a lie told for conversion rate.
The Teardown
Fixed scope. We audit what you are doing and hand you a written blueprint of what to do next. Weeks, not months. Yours to keep and execute alone if that is what you want.
For you if: you want a straight answer before committing.
Training Engagement
Structured sessions on your business, your customers, your tools. Playbooks and prompt libraries included, so the capability stays in the building after we are gone.
For you if: you have the people and need the know-how.
Ongoing Partnership
We run marketing with you, monthly. Strategy, content, automation, reporting. Scope set at the start, revisited quarterly, because your business will change.
For you if: you are the bottleneck and want it off your desk.
Limited number of ongoing partnerships at any one time. That constraint is deliberate. It means we say no to work we cannot do properly.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Questions we get, answered without the sales voice.
Will AI replace my marketing person?
No, and anyone selling you that is lying to close a deal. AI replaces tasks, not judgment. What actually happens is that one good person starts producing what took three. If that person does not know what good looks like, AI just helps them publish bad work faster and in higher volume.
Is AI marketing worth it on a small budget?
Yes, and more so than on a big one. Leverage matters most when you do not have headcount. The businesses getting nothing out of AI are the ones who bought five subscriptions before deciding what they were trying to accomplish. Strategy first. The tools are the cheap part.
How long before I see results?
Automation and follow-up show up in weeks. Content and search take three to six months, because that is how search works and nobody can shortcut it honestly. If someone promises you page one in thirty days, ask them to put it in the contract and watch what happens.
Do you only work with Pittsburgh businesses?
We are based in Pittsburgh and we like working with people we can drive to. The work is remote-capable and we take clients anywhere. Pittsburgh is where we are from, not a restriction on who we serve.
What if I do not know anything about AI?
Normal starting point, and not a problem. Our clients are business owners, not technologists. We start from what you are trying to accomplish and work backward to the tools. Nobody is getting handed a login and wished luck.
Why should I trust a new company?
SteelAIQ is new. I am not. I am a sitting chief marketing officer with twenty years of results you can verify at theerichoward.com, an MBA from Pitt, and a seat on the University of Pittsburgh CMO AI Roundtable. You still get a free first conversation and a fixed-scope audit before any commitment, because you should judge the thinking, not the resume.
Are you not a full-time CMO somewhere else?
Yes, at Simio, and we are not hiding it. SteelAIQ is scoped so the work fits: fixed-scope audits, structured training engagements, and a limited number of ongoing partnerships. That constraint is a feature. It means we turn down work we cannot do properly, and you are never somebody's twelfth account.
NEXT STEP
Tell us what's broken.
Free first conversation. No deck, no demo, no discovery call that is really a sales call. If AI does not move the thing you are trying to grow, you will hear that instead of a proposal.
Start the conversationPITTSBURGH, PA // REPLY IN ONE BUSINESS DAY // NO OBLIGATION