Beginner’s Guide: What We Learned About AI at the 2026 AAM Summit

Across multiple sessions at this year’s AAM Summit, one theme came through clearly: AI is no longer a future trend for accounting marketers—it is actively reshaping how firms create content, drive growth, support business development and show up in search. But the most impactful sessions weren’t about tools—they were about building systems, redefining roles and making deliberate shifts to stay relevant in an AI-driven world. Here are the key lessons from five standout sessions.

Building a Scalable Growth Engine with Agentic AI

Stacy Dreher, CGO of James Moore & Co., presented a session titled “Agentic AI in Practice: Lessons Learned from James Moore’s Growth Experiment.” Her session talked about her “moonshot” project to create a structured, agentic AI system that would dramatically accelerate content creation. By designing a multi-agent workflow in which AI handles research, content creation, and distribution, and humans provide quality control, Stacy’s team was able to scale content efforts and significantly increase traffic, visibility, and conversions.

But her biggest lesson wasn’t just about results—it was about persistence and design. The team faced issues with quality, hallucinations and workload before refining the system, ultimately deciding to outsource parts of the build and continuously iterate.

Takeaway: AI success doesn’t come from experimenting once—it comes from building repeatable systems and committing to iteration until they work.

From Prompting to Scalable Sales Enablement

In the “Sales Wingman” session, Sam Coursey, Head of Sales and Revenue Operations at Armanino, highlighted a common challenge: firms have access to AI tools, but lack structure and consistency in how they use them for business development. He argued that one-off prompting produces inconsistent results, while role-based agents create repeatable workflows that scale across teams. His thesis? It is easier to teach an agent how to understand repeatable tasks than it is to teach 100 users how to use LLMs consistently.

By introducing frameworks like CRIT (Context, Role, Instructions, Task) and centralized “guru” agents, firms can standardize outputs and support sales teams with consistent, high-quality insights—whether for meeting prep, research or proposals.

Takeaway: Stop relying on individual prompting skills—build structured, repeatable AI workflows that scale your BD efforts.

Content Strategy in an AI-First Discovery World

Nathan Kamradt from Greentarget’s session focused on how AI is transforming buyer behavior—and what that means for content strategy. With 93% of buyers using AI tools to research firms and topics, visibility is no longer just about ranking in search results; it’s about being included in AI-generated answers.

The key shift is from producing more content to producing authoritative content. Buyers (and AI systems) prioritize relevance, practical value and original insight—while generic or overly promotional content gets ignored.

Takeaway: Winning in the AI era isn’t about volume—it’s about authority. Firms must create original, credible content that both buyers and AI recognize as valuable.

Agentic AI as a Capacity Strategy

Apoorv Dwivedi, Founder and Strategic Marketing Advisor at Fixyr Marketing, reframed the AI conversation from technology to capacity. His session emphasized that firms don’t have an AI access problem—they have a workflow and prioritization problem. Agentic systems allow teams to delegate repeatable work (research, drafting, formatting, distribution) and reclaim significant time for higher-value activities.

He also stressed that AI doesn’t replace marketers; it elevates them. As agents take on execution, teams shift toward orchestration, strategy and oversight—supported by governance models and new roles like an AI Workflow Operator.

Takeaway: Shift your mindset. Stop thinking “What can I ask AI?” and start thinking “What do I repeat every week that I could hand off?”

Positioning Your Firm for AI-Driven Discovery

Brian Swanson, Chief SEO Strategist at Flashpoint Marketing, led a session highlighting how search itself is evolving. Traditional search engines return links, but AI-powered search tools synthesize and deliver answers—meaning firms must rethink how their content is structured and surfaced.

To stay visible, firms need to create content that AI can easily interpret and reference: question-based formats, clear answers, strong author credibility and third-party validation. At the same time, marketers must begin tracking new metrics like AI citations and mentions to understand performance.

Takeaway: SEO isn’t dead—but it is evolving. Firms that structure content for AI and measure visibility beyond clicks will have a competitive advantage.

The Big Picture

Taken together, these sessions point to a broader transformation: marketing teams are moving from creating content and executing campaigns to designing systems, orchestrating workflows and building authority. AI is accelerating what great marketing has always required—clarity, consistency and credibility—but it is also rewarding firms that rethink how work gets done. For accounting marketers, the opportunity isn’t just to use AI—it’s to redesign your approach around it.