Want better marketing output from your AI Tools? Give it real data about your customers.

An overwhelming number of marketers are using AI tools to bolster their campaigns, their tactical output, and even their strategic ideas. I don’t actually recommend all of those (AI can seriously mislead you on strategy, and using it to write anything you’re going to publish directly is a recipe for unsubscribes), but there are some clever, high-quality marketing use-cases out…

Demand-Creation vs. Demand-Converting Marketing

One of the fundamental mistakes I see executives and marketing leaders make over and over is investing in the wrong part of the demand funnel. In this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard, I’ll walk through an example of demand creation at the top vs. middle/bottom of the funnel, and explain why it’s critical to understand whether you have one of two problems:…

How to Use Mental Jujitsu to Convince Your Boss/Team/Client to Make the Right Marketing Investments

“How do I convince my boss/team/client to invest in my audience’s true sources of influence? Especially when those sources are so hard to prove attribution?” Friend, I hear you. So, for this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard, how about we try a little mental jujitsu to get everyone aligned on the reality of how the modern web works, and how people make…

Unpopular Opinion: Public Relations is the Future of Marketing

Public relations is a dying trade. Mainstream media has less influence than ever. Pitching for coverage is a thankless, fruitless task. Yeah, well, I think PR is poised for a massive comeback. Here’s why: Traditional media may have less influence, but diverse, distributed sources of influence have never, NEVER held more sway over opinions and buying behavior. The 2.5 hours…

Traffic Is Down; Revenue Is… Up?

It’s weird times in the digital marketing universe. For decades, traffic and sales went together like peanut butter and jelly, cacio and pepe, palak and paneer. But, in the last few years, we’ve seen a deeply strange trend where the two have become unbound. In example after example, traffic can fall while revenue rises. Why is this happening? And is…

Why Do We Need Zero Click Marketing?

You’ve heard of zero click marketing — and yes, you definitely heard it here first. We’re talking about creating standalone value in the platforms where people hang out, instead of dropping teasers and links in hopes that people will be compelled to click over to your site. It’s marketing where people already are and speaking to them in a way…

The Biggest Mistake We Make When Asking: “Where Are My Customers?”

It’s January, and that means many marketers are tasked with a project to identify new channels and sources of influence for new potential investments. This year is likely more active than most given the decline of Google search traffic, the rise of AI, the Twitter exodus, and the meteoric growth of Threads and Bluesky. But, far too many times, we…

How Can My Brand Appear in Answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Other AI/LLM Tools?

It’s no surprise that marketers, founders, and business owners are starting to ask how their brands can be returned in the answers given by AI/LLM tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. But it’s downright shocking how difficult it is to find high-quality, accurate information about how to do this. Granted, you could just ask ChatGPT (the first answer is decent,…

Is Google Losing Search Market Share?

A recent Wall Street Journal made the top of feeds in the digital marketing world, claiming that Google is on the precipice of losing the lead in the search advertising wars. Supposedly, in 2025, for the first time, Google may fall under 50% of market share in search advertising (according to an eMarketer report the WSJ cites). The WSJ points…