Why the Worst Search Marketers Start Content Strategy with “SEO Keywords” — 5-Minute Whiteboard

I’m worried. Worried that thousands of agencies, in-house practitioners, and even marketing leaders who should know better are STILL prioritizing their content efforts based primarily or entirely on keywords for search. I get it. 10 years ago, that practice worked. It still technically works in a number of fields. Prioritize keywords, create content, publish, get links and ranking signals, earn…

5-Minute Whiteboard: Is Generative AI in Search Results the SEO Apocalypse?

In the not-too-distant future, we’ll look back at the days when a full 1/3rd of Google searches resulted in a free click to the open web and marvel at how good we had it. For the last few months, Google’s been telegraphing that generative AI answers will soon appear in search results. These pieces of content will be drawn from…

5-Minute Whiteboard: Why You Can’t Just Crank Up Marketing to Get More Sales

CEO/Sales Leader: “Hey marketing team! We’re behind on our quarterly sales goals and only have 3 weeks left. Do some marketing why doncha?! Crank up them SQLs!“ Marketer: “Yeah, that’s not really how this discipline works. It’s a long lead cycle between awareness, branding, and conversion, and…“ CEO/Sales Leader: “Sorry exec team. Marketing underperformed and that’s why we didn’t meet…
Marketing Startups Tactics

How One Media Placement Led to 1,600 Customers — And How You Can Do It Too

“But, customer acquisition isn’t how you measure the success of public relations.” I didn’t have formal PR or marketing training and still, I knew it was a ridiculous KPI. This was during my time at direct-to-consumer (DTC) healthy snack startup NatureBox. We were a series A startup, a lean team that needed to grow our business quickly. It just wasn’t…
Marketing

A Marketing Team’s FAQ for Meta’s Threads App (Plus, Findings From Our Survey!)

If you work in marketing, there’s a good chance your leadership has asked you about Threads. If you work in social media marketing, then leadership has almost certainly asked for your early reaction to Meta’s Twitter clone. Should we make an account? Should we cross-post from our top-performing social media channel? What’s our content strategy? Whew. Take a deep breath,…

How Do You Create a Great Marketing Strategy? | 5-Minute Whiteboard

This week, I’m going back to basics. Not because you need a refresher course, but because so many of us are frustrated in the weeds of marketing precisely because we can’t see the strategy forest for the tactical trees. I’ve written before about how too few marketers grasp the difference between strategy and tactics. If you’re struggling to get a…