This isn't SEO anymore... (Exit Five Newsletter)

Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter — read by 42,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 5,700 other members at exitfive.com.

By the way — this email was designed in Knak, which helps you create email and landing pages in minutes without having to write code. Learn more about Knak here.

TOGETHER WITH REACHDESK

🛍️ The ABX + Gifting Combo That’s Driving 165% More Wins

The best B2B teams aren’t just running campaigns, they’re designing experiences.

ABX (Account-Based Experience) brings marketing, sales, and CS into alignment to make every touchpoint count. Pair it with strategic gifting, and the results speak for themselves:
→ 447% more opportunities
→ 165% more closed deals

In this new playbook from Reachdesk, you’ll learn how to bring ABX + gifting into your strategy, including:

• Gifting ideas mapped to every stage of the buyer journey
• How to use data to personalize outreach in a way that feels relevant, not invasive
• How to use gifting to revive stalled conversations and win competitive deals
• How to tie gifting efforts to real pipeline impact (and grow your budget)
• Real-world examples from brands like Cognism and ServiceTitan

Grab the free (and ungated!) ABX Gifting Playbook and see how top teams are turning experiences into revenue.

🔍 What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Getting Found in AI Search

What if you could drive 20% of your leads from ChatGPT? (No, seriously…)

While most B2B SaaS companies are seeing 2-3% of traffic from LLMs (likely 6-7% when you account for untracked visits), the conversion rates are matching or beating your best Google Ads campaigns.

But most marketers are completely missing this channel. Because they have absolutely no idea where to start.

So Ishaan Shakunt (founder of Spear Growth and Chosenly) dropped the tactical playbook for capturing this demand. Here's what you need to know.

Focus Only on Bottom-Funnel Searches

Don’t waste time on top-funnel content. LLMs rarely mention specific companies in educational content, even when using your pages as sources.

Instead, optimize for 3 types of high-intent searches:

1. Recommend software like this ("Best financial reporting software for fintech companies")
2. Help me choose between X and Y ("Bamboo HR vs Zoho People for 300-person logistics company")
3. Tell me about this company ("Is Chosenly.com good for demand gen teams?")

How to Actually Show Up

Step 1: Map your citations

• Search for your target queries in ChatGPT
• Document every source/citation that appears
• Create a spreadsheet showing which sources appear most frequently
• Focus on the sources where you're NOT currently mentioned

Step 2: Get into existing sources

• Reach out to competitors: “I’ll mention you in my top 10 list if you mention me in yours”
• Contact non-competitors: “I’ll create content for your industry if you include me in mine”
• Get reviews on G2, Capterra, and (surprisingly) SelectHub
• Wikipedia shows up constantly, get listed there if possible

Step 3: Create criteria-based content

LLMs make decisions based on specific criteria. Ask your sales team: “What do prospects use to compare us to competitors?” Then create pages that directly address these criteria:

• Support response times and team structure
• Integration capabilities
• Pricing philosophy and value proposition
• Compliance certifications
• Industry-specific features

The Tactical Playbook

Don’t just update your website. LLMs pull from your entire “web presence”:

• PR articles about your company strengths
• LinkedIn posts highlighting key differentiators
• Reddit/Quora answers (if your audience is there)
• Medium articles explaining your approach

Track 2 key metrics:

1. How many searches you appear in as a recommendation
2. Your ranking in “top 5” or “top 10” style results

Who Should Own This?

Product marketing leads content creation (support pages, pricing philosophy, etc.). Content teams handle new articles for weak citation opportunities. SEO teams coordinate everything from there.

The bottom line? AI search isn’t SEO 2.0. It’s about becoming the obvious choice when buyers ask contextual questions about their specific needs. Start with your highest-intent searches and build from there.

PS: Seeing any wins with LLM traffic? Or just vibes? Reply and let me know.

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

[COMMUNITY EVENT] CustomGPTs in B2B Marketing: Everything You Need to Know

CustomGPTs are one of the most powerful (and underused) tools in B2B marketing right now.

On August 14th, Jake Heaps, AI Marketing Operations Manager at Domo, will show you what they are, how to build one, and how to actually use it in your workflow.

Jake lives and breathes AI in his day-to-day role at Domo, where he’s actively building real marketing workflows with these tools. He’ll walk you through:

• What CustomGPTs actually are (and what they aren’t)
• How to build one from scratch
• Best practices to make them more useful, reliable, and efficient
• Inspiration from real-world marketing examples

Whether you're brand new to them or already using CustomGPTs in your workflow, you’ll leave this session with a sharper, more strategic understanding.

Not a member yet? Learn more about an Exit Five Membership here.

Save Your Spot

🏢 Open Roles

Who's hiring right now?

🔥 HOT JOBS OF THE WEEK:

BrightHire is hiring a Social and Community Marketing Manager to lead LinkedIn strategy, grow their B2B fanbase, and turn customers into public champions. The ideal candidate is creative, scrappy, and knows how to turn social content and community moments into real brand momentum.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Opus is hiring a Senior Manager, B2B Product Marketing
• Directive is hiring a Demand Generation Manager
• NewtonX is hiring a Strategic Marketing Advisor
• RightRev is hiring a Marketing Manager
• Tiugo Technologies is hiring a Senior Web & Brand Designer
• Paramark is hiring a Marketing Manager
• Paramark is hiring a GTM Engineer

See all open roles

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it? Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 42k+ marketers.

🪪 BECOME AN EXIT FIVE MEMBER

What’s actually inside the Exit Five Membership?

We made you this 131-second video to show you around. Have a peek. 👀

Join 5,700 Other Exit Five Members

Thanks to our friends over at Knak for being our 2025 newsletter sponsor.

‍