Nick Lafferty is the Founding Marketing Engineer at Profound, where he was the company’s first marketing hire and built its marketing function from the ground up. He focuses on AI search, answer engine optimization, growth, and how brands can understand, improve, and scale their visibility across platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Nick’s work is heavily research-led, drawing on data from billions of AI responses and hundreds of thousands of citations across multiple AI search engines. His talks and published insights cover topics including how to rank in ChatGPT, earned media’s influence on AI visibility, retail discovery in AI shopping, agentic commerce, AEO team structures, no-code automation, and the role of marketing engineers in modern growth teams.
He has delivered more than 25 talks, panels, and webinars on AI search and AEO, including appearances at SXSW, brightonSEO, OMR, NY Tech Week, and dentsu’s B2B Executive Summit. His sessions include “What Analyzing 250M+ AI Responses Taught Us About How to Rank Better in ChatGPT,” “Conversation Culture: A Live AEO / AI Search Audit for Brands,” and research based on more than three billion AI citations.
Before joining Profound, Nick led growth marketing at Loom, where he built paid media, SEO, affiliate, and account-based marketing programs before the company’s acquisition by Atlassian. He previously led growth marketing at Mailgun as the business expanded from $30 million to $70 million in annual recurring revenue and later built a solo consultancy generating $30,000 per month while driving tens of millions of dollars in pipeline for B2B SaaS companies.
Nick also founded the Early Exit Club, a newsletter documenting how he built his consulting business, and hosts The Marketing Engineer podcast. His work and commentary have appeared in Adweek, Ad Age, PitchBook, Marketing Brew, and several marketing and growth podcasts.
