This interview is part of a series related to Block Club’s 2025 B2B Tech Brand Readiness Report.
When ChatGPT starts driving a meaningful portion of your demo requests, the rules of the game have changed. That’s the reality Alex Esquivel, Head of Marketing at Luma Health, is navigating—and it’s reshaping how his team thinks about brand, content, and what it means to be discoverable.
In this conversation, Alex shares why brand is more critical now that anyone can generate surface-level content, how Luma is tracking and optimizing for LLM search, and why the human touch—from in-person customer summits to authentic video stories—has become their competitive advantage.
Block Club: Your team has been focused this year on “branding big.” What’s driving that focus at Luma?
Alex Esquivel: As a 10-year-old company, everyone on the team recognizes that brand is important, but it takes some time for lean organizations to get there. And when you have limited resources, it’s important to prioritize branding “big.”
The AI and LLM boom is also changing search, so it’s not only how we visually represent ourselves as a brand, but how people interact with us as a company, and what media outlets are saying about us. Where are LLMs finding information when people ask relevant questions about what we do?
We have a field on our demo form that asks “How did you hear about us?” More and more, the response is that they found us through ChatGPT. We just analyzed the past month, and it’s increasing month over month. That’s a major driver for us in terms of brand efforts and where we focus.
BC: How are you optimizing for and tracking LLM search?
AE: We’ve got a dashboard showing which LLMs are driving traffic, and what they’re driving to. We’re also asking inbound leads, “What was your prompt? What were you looking to solve? What did you ask ChatGPT that resulted in it recommending us?” It’s been really fascinating to track.
It’s very fun because it’s not as limiting as SEO. SEO felt very structured, “These are the exact keywords you have to use, and this is the long tail version.” Whereas with an LLM, you can be more free. We can provide helpful, useful content in a way that’s less rigid.
BC: How has this changed your content strategy?
AE: We’ve transitioned our Director of Content to become Director of Brand and Communications.
We’ve launched two podcasts, which has helped us significantly in terms of content volume. We can do the traditional flywheel—the podcast, clips from the podcast, write a blog off of that, social posts. We have a pretty good underlying engine for content production, but we’re truly listening to customers and prospects. What do they care about? What do they want to hear? We’re not creating content just for the sake of having content.
Thought leadership is big for us too. We try to speak at as many conferences as we can and then repurpose that content.
BC: You have a videographer on staff, which is unusual for a team your size. What’s the bet you’re making with video?
AE: Video has been really important for the last ten years, but it’s typically outsourced for a team of our size. Having it in-house allows us to be really nimble and execute quickly on anything and everything. From making our demos more polished to podcast editing—we probably have more customer video stories than anyone in our space right now.
It’s given us the ability to go on-site, talk to customers, and film directly. It enables us to diversify the type of content we’re doing. In our space, it’s impactful when you have a written case study as social proof and then see the video story alongside it. It tells a really strong story.
BC: You mentioned customer summits. How have those helped build community and how does that translate to growth?
AE: Our team has spent a lot of time developing a customer community. Our customers want to hear from their peers, and we know that. We also invite strategic prospects, so they can sit next to real customers and figure out how they’re using Luma and what their experience has been. With new customers, the summits came up again and again. They say, “What convinced me to sign was going to that summit and talking to that person and hearing their real experience.”
BC: How do you think about competitive brand messaging and differentiation?
AE: At Luma, we’re in a fortunate position where we have a strong product with a lot of happy customers. In marketing, there’s no substitute for that. You can have all the messaging and positioning in the world, but if you can’t tell those stories—nobody wants to hear “we’re the best” from us, or that we have the coolest product.
So we try not to talk about ourselves. We try to always position the customer as the hero. We keep our finger on the pulse with what competitors are doing, but we don’t really worry too much about what they’re doing. It’s more about making sure we’re where our prospects and customers are, and that we are letting them tell the stories, not us. They have great success stories to tell. There’s no substitute for that.
BC: What’s your perspective on the opportunity right now for brand in B2B?
AE: With AI, anyone can generate content. Anyone can create something that’s very surface level. So there’s a huge opportunity for brand right now. Owned, earned, and paid media needs to be balanced in order to be surfaced from an LLM perspective.
The component of brand which is creating a human and authentic feel is going to be all the more important. Any opportunity we have to get our sales team out in person, we’ll try to do it. I see that as a component of brand—how do we represent ourselves? What is it like to interact with Luma in person? How do you feel when you interact with the company? We don’t want to be just another vendor. We truly do want to be a partner. We want to come alongside you, we want to understand your problems, and we want to help you solve them. That’s incredibly important to consider when building a brand.
The Luma Brand Playbook: Key Takeaways
In Block Club’s conversation with Alex Esquivel, Head of Marketing at Luma Health, several principles emerged for competitive brand-building in the era of AI:
- Brand matters more when content is cheap. With AI, anyone can generate surface-level content. The opportunity is in creating something human and authentic that can’t be replicated. How does your brand make customers feel when they interact with your company?
- Let customers be the hero. No one wants to hear you say you’re the best. Let happy customers tell your story through video, case studies, and peer conversations.
- Invest in the human touch. In an era where anyone can generate content rapidly, live experiences, in-person events, and authentic relationships become your competitive advantage.
The Takeaway: Brand matters more now that AI can generate surface-level content at scale. The companies that will win are the ones investing in authentic human experiences, customer storytelling, and strategic visibility in the places—both traditional and AI-powered—where their buyers are looking.
This interview was conducted as part of Block Club’s research into how B2B brands are navigating the AI transformation. For more insights from marketing leaders shaping the future of B2B tech, follow our ongoing series and download our 2025 report B2B Tech Brands Have Conquered Product. Now What? surveying 60 VPs and CMOs from leading B2B tech companies.