How to Future-Proof Your Marketing for an AI-Centric Search World? | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Today, Google’s search results still look (mostly) like lists of snippets and links, e.g. But, plenty of search marketers and industry observers suspect we’re in the closing days of this format, and the future holds something closer to how AI-tools like ChatGPT and Bard answer user-inputted prompts, e.g. If that’s the case, what can/should marketers do to give themselves a…

The 3 Big Problems with Asking “How Did You Hear About Us?” | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Marketing attribution is dying. Ad blockers. Privacy laws. The death of third-party cookies. Keyword (not provided). Dark social. It’s an attribution-trained marketer’s nightmare. Knowing which channels and tactics truly had an influence on every sale is next to impossible. Unfortunately, many folks think the remedy lies in a simple survey question at the end of a signup or checkout process.…

If Your Marketing Mix Doesn’t Match Your Customer’s Journey… You’re Gonna Have a Bad Time | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Imagine that you have perfect knowledge of how every potential customer starts their journey to learn about the kinds of solutions your business offers. And that in that hypothetical, 25% of those potential customers learn about solutions in your space by typing keywords into Google. That’s a pretty reasonable average across most industries, but… guess what? You’re putting 75, 80,…

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…