#324: How Marketing Leaders are Thinking About AEO

#324 | Dave is joined by three marketing leaders from different industries to talk on a live session about AI and SEO and what they've learned over the last year. Dave Steer (CMO at Webflow),  Marcy Comer (CMO at EagleView) and Clare Schmitt (VP, Marketing & Communications at Piedmont Global) break down how buyers are learning about products through ChatGPT and why traditional SEO fundamentals still matter. The group shares real examples of how they’re approaching content, prompt tracking, PR, and brand authority, plus advice for marketers on where to focus, what to ignore, and how to guide their teams through this search shift.

Timestamps

• (01:06) - Why AI + SEO is the hottest (and most confusing) topic in B2B marketing right now
  
• (05:37) - Meet the panel: marketing leaders from Webflow, EagleView, and Piedmont Global
  
• (09:15) - How AI search is changing buyer behavior vs traditional Google search
  
• (12:58) - EagleView’s real approach to AI search, greenfield opportunities, and prompt tracking
  
• (16:05) - What “black hat” vs “white hat” tactics look like in AI-driven search
  
• (20:12) - Webflow’s take: integrated marketing, generosity, and building useful tools
  
• (29:33) - Getting past high-level advice and into real execution
  
• (34:33) - “Circle the buyer”: how content builds demand before buyers are in-market
  
• (38:16) - Why PR is back: long-form press, citations, and brand credibility in AI search
  
• (45:16) - What to do if you’re a startup with no budget: focus on positioning first
  

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***

Brought to you by:

Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive

AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.

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Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to The Dave Gerhardt Show.

Dave [0:00:17]: Okay.

Dave [0:00:17]: Alright.

Dave [0:00:18]: Here we go.

Dave [0:00:18]: I read live, check check one two, Mike Mike check one two.

Dave [0:00:21]: I got my whole webinars.

Dave [0:00:24]: Matt's in the building, so I got this whole situation dialed now.

Dave [0:00:27]: I'm in the webinar studio today.

Dave [0:00:29]: Damn.

Dave [0:00:29]: I already called the webinar right off the bat.

Dave [0:00:32]: I need to be able to talk to the team internally as things are happening right here, so I have that.

Dave [0:00:36]: I have my notes.

Dave [0:00:37]: I have you all right here.

Dave [0:00:39]: I did see one person one time was, like, he's not even looking at the camera.

Dave [0:00:43]: Well, like, Trying to do a.

Dave [0:00:44]: I'm your host.

Dave [0:00:44]: I'm not the talent today.

Dave [0:00:46]: My name is Dave Gerhardt.

Dave [0:00:47]: I am the founder of Exit Five.

Dave [0:00:49]: Exit Five is the top community for B2B marketers and twice a month, we do these five live sessions.

Dave [0:00:55]: I usually say don't you dare call them a webinar, but I've already broken that rule.

Dave [0:00:59]: And they're are a lot of fun.

Dave [0:01:01]: People like them because we bring on subject matter experts to go deep in a particular topic.

Dave [0:01:06]: This topic is probably the hottest topic in marketing.

Dave [0:01:09]: All, I say the newer thing that seems even hotter, which I cannot...

Dave [0:01:12]: As anybody feel this way.

Dave [0:01:13]: I go anywhere online and all I can see is cloud code right now.

Dave [0:01:16]: That's just my answer.

Dave [0:01:17]: To problem in life is just cloud code.

Dave [0:01:19]: But separate from that, it's Ai, Ai and Seo, Ae, and we pulled together a panel of marketing leaders from three different companies, three different industries, three different stages to talk about what they've learned over last year because we wanna take you beyond the hype.

Dave [0:01:34]: We wanna go and help you separate the signal from the noise from all the stuff you see on Linkedin that makes me feel so completely inadequate and dumb, and I'm not doing enough with Ai to...

Dave [0:01:44]: Let's actually bring some actual marketing leaders and hear about what they're doing inside.

Dave [0:01:48]: Of their company.

Dave [0:01:49]: So we're gonna get get to that in a minute, I'm gonna bring up the panel.

Dave [0:01:52]: If you could just go in the chat right now.

Dave [0:01:54]: I wanna know why did you...

Dave [0:01:54]: Where you are, and I also wanna know why did you take the time out of this day to come to this session.

Dave [0:01:59]: So, like, I'm Dave in Vermont.

Dave [0:02:01]: I came here because I still don't really know what I should be doing with Ae.

Dave [0:02:04]: Those are really helpful for us, and it's just good to see some names in here.

Dave [0:02:07]: Also, during this session today, the chat is honestly one of the best parts.

Dave [0:02:11]: So you're all marketers being in there, ask questions, help each other, back, give us ideas of questions you wanna do you wanna hear us dig into.

Dave [0:02:19]: And then real quick before we get started, Just wanna give a shout out to Webflow.

Dave [0:02:22]: There are a sponsor for this session and a lot of us marketers right now.

Dave [0:02:26]: We're dealing with the same reality, which is smaller teams tighter budget, but the same pressure to grow pipeline and amen to that.

Dave [0:02:33]: Right?

Dave [0:02:33]: And the website is still expected to carry a lot of the load.

Dave [0:02:36]: The bar has changed too.

Dave [0:02:38]: It's not enough just for your site to look good.

Dave [0:02:40]: It actually has to perform for not only humans, but now these L, is there gonna be a world by the way, where we're, like, we have these agents that do b to b buying for us that that is a possible theory.

Dave [0:02:50]: And that's where flow comes.

Dave [0:02:52]: It's a website platform that lets you build, manage and optimize your site in one place without having to wait on developers or duct taping together a bunch of tools.

Dave [0:02:59]: I can even log in and do stuff, which is amazing.

Dave [0:03:02]: Their platform makes it easy for you to test and personalized pages, optimized for Seo and Au and move faster while staying on brand.

Dave [0:03:08]: Speaking firm experience, we are constantly tweaking the Exit Five site, which, by the way, runs on Webflow, which is really cool.

Dave [0:03:14]: And it's made it really easy gives us a flexibility across our whole team.

Dave [0:03:17]: So go and check it out.

Dave [0:03:18]: Thank you to Webflow for sponsoring this session, good taste in being in front of the right marketers, and I'm excited to to be here today talking about this topic.

Dave [0:03:25]: So without further or do Aaron.

Dave [0:03:27]: Producer Aaron behind the scenes.

Dave [0:03:28]: Can you roll out our three marketing leaders that have been hanging out eating green.

Dave [0:03:32]: They all have very strict green room.

Dave [0:03:33]: What do they call it?

Dave [0:03:34]: Requirements?

Dave [0:03:34]: Dave Steer only wanted green M and M's.

Dave [0:03:38]: I don't know why green because Webflow is kinda like blue?

Dave [0:03:40]: Clare was just, like, whatever's is back there and and Marcy requested roti chicken, which I thought was a strange request, but otherwise we're...

Marcy [0:03:48]: All about Antibiotics.

Marcy [0:03:49]: So like...

Dave [0:03:50]: It's all Yeah.

Dave [0:03:50]: Anyway Alright.

Dave [0:03:51]: So enough of my small talk.

Dave [0:03:52]: Let's get into it.

Dave [0:03:53]: Let's go around the room quick intro, and then I got my first question lined up for you.

Dave [0:03:56]: So Who are you explaining what does your company do so we can get a a sense of the stage and size and and your mission, and let's go Marcy Clare dave?

Marcy [0:04:04]: Great.

Marcy [0:04:04]: Thanks for having me.

Marcy [0:04:05]: Long time listener our first time call.

Dave [0:04:07]: I was you're gonna say something like that.

Dave [0:04:09]: Thank you.

Marcy [0:04:10]: So my name is Marcy Comer.

Marcy [0:04:11]: I'm CMO at Eagleview.

Marcy [0:04:13]: I've been with Eagleview now five years, which I think is a milestone in and of itself for any marketer.

Marcy [0:04:18]: What we sell is Ariel imagery and data extracted from that imagery.

Marcy [0:04:23]: And we sell it to lots of different industries, namely roofing, insurance, carriers, government agencies and so forth.

Marcy [0:04:31]: And so my job is a marketer is extremely complicated to understand all of those industries, especially when previous industries were, like, hot dogs.

Marcy [0:04:38]: So had to really dig deep to understand these industries, but thanks for having me.

Clare [0:04:44]: And I am Clare Schmitt.

Clare [0:04:45]: I'm head of marketing and communications at Piedmont Global, and we are a strategic globalization organization, and Dave told me that I had to enter this simply.

Clare [0:04:54]: So I'm gonna take a stab at that.

Clare [0:04:56]: But we have a very complex buyer journey from language access and education all the way to helping organizations expand into new markets helping them incorporate Ai into their cross cultural workflows.

Clare [0:05:09]: I like to explain it or a healthcare staffing, and miss that one that's a new offering for us this year.

Clare [0:05:14]: I like to say anywhere there's a component of cross cultural operations for our clients, we make it easier for them.

Clare [0:05:21]: So whether that's across the globe or across the street in a healthcare care setting where they have multilingual ling customers or if they're expanding into a new market, like, nairobi.

Dave [0:05:32]: Can you share the anecdote that you shared behind the seats about your daughter texting you, please?

Clare [0:05:35]: Just...

Clare [0:05:35]: Oh, yes.

Clare [0:05:36]: Moment.

Clare [0:05:36]: So this is the first time that I've been on a totally not a webinar and my daughter who is a sophomore in college studying engineering texted me, like five minutes beforehand to be, like, good luck.

Clare [0:05:47]: And I hope you're not nervous.

Clare [0:05:48]: Well

Speaker_4 [0:05:49]: cute nervous.

Speaker_4 [0:05:50]: Dave's Steer.

Speaker_4 [0:05:50]: Well, I mean, that story warms my heart.

Speaker_4 [0:05:53]: I'll tell you, but the version that I said, you know, in the green room as well.

Speaker_4 [0:05:57]: I have a daughter who's in college in tu lane and I shared our latest advertising campaign with her yesterday and or her text back to me was hey, looks good.

Speaker_4 [0:06:06]: Cool, but can I start in the next one that you create?

Speaker_4 [0:06:09]: And I thought, well, that's a dream job when you can have your kid kinda lobby to be your creative talent next?

Dave [0:06:15]: I heard a story actually, Ben A athletic like was talking about watching a movie with his kids.

Dave [0:06:18]: And there's, like, one of the best movies of all time.

Dave [0:06:20]: And he's like, yeah, it's pretty good.

Dave [0:06:21]: I think you should really hire, like, some of the Tiktok directors though, to, like, help make the the cuts for this and he's like, oh.

Dave [0:06:27]: Alright, Dave.

Dave [0:06:29]: Who are you who are you, man CMO

Speaker_4 [0:06:31]: at Webflow?

Speaker_4 [0:06:31]: Same Webflow.

Speaker_4 [0:06:32]: I've been a marketer for about twenty years or so.

Speaker_4 [0:06:35]: I've been in seat over here for about seven months.

Speaker_4 [0:06:38]: You did a great job dave here hard and and sort of the table read of of what we do.

Dave [0:06:43]: Thank you.

Speaker_4 [0:06:43]: I'll just sort of expo on that, which is, you know, we're classically known.

Speaker_4 [0:06:46]: As a platform that helps, companies build amazing brand forward and growth forward websites, but as channels fragments, especially on the web, we're increasingly being used to think about us as a central part of the web, marketing stack.

Speaker_4 [0:07:03]: So Ai, answer engine optimization, All these topics are are salient into the audience over here, and we talk to customers about it all the time.

Speaker_4 [0:07:11]: So thanks for having.

Dave [0:07:12]: Yep.

Dave [0:07:12]: I'm happy to do this.

Dave [0:07:13]: I think the...

Dave [0:07:14]: One of the lines that we had is, like, and this is the thing that's been coming up a lot is you're writing for two audiences now, which is humans and L.

Dave [0:07:21]: My question, I'm not an expert in this area at all, and I I hope we can get into this today is, like, how much of that is different than writing for, say, Google.

Dave [0:07:30]: But I wanna start off here.

Dave [0:07:31]: We pitch this as, like, getting into the weeds, sharing what real marketing leaders are really doing.

Dave [0:07:36]: So tell me, over the past year, let's rewind twelve months ago, maybe fourteen months ago.

Dave [0:07:41]: Thanksgiving of last year.

Dave [0:07:42]: You're heading into twenty twenty five.

Dave [0:07:44]: It's obvious that things are shifting with search.

Dave [0:07:48]: I noticed it within the last year or so, you know, my default is not even a Google search anymore.

Dave [0:07:53]: It's talking to Gemini on my phone, I'm talking to Chat.

Dave [0:07:56]: And so I'm curious about each of you inside of your companies, What have you learned about Ae over the last year.

Dave [0:08:02]: What's changed?

Dave [0:08:03]: And then maybe how is this different than how you're thinking about ranking for for Google?

Dave [0:08:07]: Especially at Webflow being a website company?

Dave [0:08:10]: I'm sure you...

Dave [0:08:11]: You've had to have some hard questions about having strong opinions here.

Dave [0:08:14]: So I'm just curious which your marketing team is the gave out.

Speaker_4 [0:08:17]: Yeah.

Speaker_4 [0:08:17]: Well, I'm very fortunate to work what I consider really an All star marketing team.

Speaker_4 [0:08:22]: And yet, I think many marketing teams kinda suffer from the same thing, which is increasingly siloed activity inside the team, lots of specialties, but not a lot.

Speaker_4 [0:08:32]: Of I was sort of, like, how do we integrate our work together.

Speaker_4 [0:08:35]: And it really comes to the head when you think about things like Ai and answer engine optimization.

Speaker_4 [0:08:40]: There's the stuff that you can do to optimize your website and your web experience, such that both humans and agents can do a great job at reading and understanding your brand and your offering.

Speaker_4 [0:08:54]: And yet there's also the how you do the work And today, I think the thing that has changed for me and my outlook is the need to be integrated in approach is now paramount.

Speaker_4 [0:09:05]: Like, we have to be integrated.

Speaker_4 [0:09:07]: I tell my team everything integrated all the time.

Speaker_4 [0:09:09]: Which is to think about the entire channel strategy and the website as a component of your web marketing channel approach.

Dave [0:09:17]: When you say, like, everything integrated?

Dave [0:09:19]: Can you give me a specific example?

Dave [0:09:21]: So, like, understand from, like, a messaging standpoint.

Dave [0:09:23]: We got this brand campaign.

Dave [0:09:25]: We want this message to be true across all of our channels, but what does that mean for the team?

Speaker_4 [0:09:30]: Yeah.

Speaker_4 [0:09:30]: What I mean is sort of integrated thinking.

Speaker_4 [0:09:32]: And Para is Alex Schultz.

Speaker_4 [0:09:33]: He's the CMO at Facebook or meta right now.

Speaker_4 [0:09:36]: He recently came out with a book and one of the central premises of the book that really landed with me is the technology is is changing, Like, the tools are changing, but the principles of marketing are the same.

Speaker_4 [0:09:48]: And, you know, some people say, like, the funnel is dead.

Speaker_4 [0:09:51]: I actually think the funnel is a really great framework for us to think about.

Speaker_4 [0:09:54]: And as simple as it sounds, how as a marketing team because it is a team sport.

Speaker_4 [0:10:00]: How you move your audience from awareness to consideration to conversion, etcetera, etcetera becomes important.

Speaker_4 [0:10:06]: So when I think about everything integrated all the time?

Speaker_4 [0:10:09]: I mean, actually taking that full funnel view of everything that we do.

Marcy [0:10:14]: Are you measuring the full funnel view?

Speaker_4 [0:10:16]: Great question.

Speaker_4 [0:10:16]: Yes.

Speaker_4 [0:10:17]: I think the the challenge that I think a lot of teams particularly in marketing phase?

Speaker_4 [0:10:23]: Is there so much data in front of us?

Speaker_4 [0:10:25]: The question isn't, are you measuring it, but what signal should you look at?

Speaker_4 [0:10:29]: And how deeply should you look at all of them.

Speaker_4 [0:10:32]: And so one of the things that I talked to to our team a lot about.

Speaker_4 [0:10:35]: And then when I talk to customers is the importance of really establishing what your North star goal is for any integrated campaign and really assigning a metric or to based on that goal.

Speaker_4 [0:10:45]: And then using all other data points as telemetry to understand whether you're making progress towards that goal.

Dave [0:10:53]: Marc, wanna talk about what what you've learned last year.

Marcy [0:10:55]: Okay.

Marcy [0:10:55]: So when I think about what happened in last year, it's kind of bananas because so much has happened.

Marcy [0:11:01]: So my role is twofold.

Marcy [0:11:03]: So I have to deliver revenue for Eagleview.

Marcy [0:11:06]: I also have to manage our relationship with the board.

Marcy [0:11:09]: So there's sort of twofold fold things that I'm trying to manage at the same time.

Marcy [0:11:14]: At the beginning of the year, I sat down with our Seo agency and I'm, like, I need a plan, a literal plan for how we're going to address A, and at the time I didn't know what to call it.

Marcy [0:11:25]: Ai stuff.

Marcy [0:11:26]: Ai o.

Marcy [0:11:27]: I don't know, Geo, agent.

Marcy [0:11:28]: What are we calling it?

Marcy [0:11:29]: If we can align at this webinar live session on what we're calling it.

Marcy [0:11:33]: I think that's a great outcome for us.

Marcy [0:11:35]: So we sat down and we started figuring out together with our Seo agency who maybe didn't have this expertise at that moment, like, how we were going to address this for the year.

Marcy [0:11:47]: And the first thing was to get a handle on our traffic.

Marcy [0:11:50]: And so we looked at all of our traffic figured out what was coming from L that we could measure, and then maybe what wasn't attributable.

Marcy [0:11:58]: And what we discovered is that the traffic isn't even a top five channel for us.

Marcy [0:12:02]: So that we didn't necessarily have to worry about.

Marcy [0:12:05]: Everything wasn't completely falling for us.

Marcy [0:12:07]: But that said, we did wanna make sure that we are taking advantage of Greenfield.

Marcy [0:12:11]: So I felt very strongly in the beginning of the year that there was an opportunity for us to grab greenfield from our competitors because if we just focused on it.

Marcy [0:12:20]: And thought about what the opportunity was.

Marcy [0:12:22]: And so the way that we did that was simply lay out what the top prompts were for us that mattered to our buyers and then track the position over time.

Marcy [0:12:33]: And we had to go find software to help us do that.

Marcy [0:12:35]: We had to figure out dashboards for what that might look like.

Marcy [0:12:38]: And what we realized is that much of the same work that we were doing for Seo applied for Ae and that what we should focus on was not just driving traffic, but making sure that we were represented appropriately.

Dave [0:12:52]: So was it less about, like, hey, we wanna a book an incremental?

Dave [0:12:56]: I don't know how your revenue function works.

Dave [0:12:58]: Let's just call, like, sales meetings.

Dave [0:13:00]: We we want ten more sales meetings this quarter?

Dave [0:13:02]: Was it less about that and more of, like, because you talk about Greenfield.

Dave [0:13:06]: It kinda seems like in my mind, Was like, you're taking it bet on, like, this is where this is going.

Dave [0:13:10]: I don't need to tie this directly back to sales right now, but it does seem like, we should start to plan a flag here because we wanna influence how these you know, Elements think it's like, being early on in search.

Dave [0:13:20]: You were the only company that had a blog about a certain topic in two thousand six.

Dave [0:13:23]: Like, you probably rank for those keywords.

Dave [0:13:24]: Is it...

Marcy [0:13:25]: Exactly.

Marcy [0:13:25]: Okay.

Marcy [0:13:26]: Well, so it was, like, what are some of the tactics that we can do to take all of the decisions?

Marcy [0:13:31]: And it ranged right?

Marcy [0:13:32]: From, like, what could potentially be black hat methodologies to standard methodologies.

Marcy [0:13:37]: And so we decided we're not gonna do any

Dave [0:13:40]: Can you can you actually dive into that that's so, like, what are some of the standard place to run and then what would be some of the Black hat stuff?

Marcy [0:13:46]: Standard play would be writing a blog, addressing a topic and many topics around a topic.

Marcy [0:13:51]: Standard Seo stuff.

Dave [0:13:53]: And did they say, like, writing that blog, Does that change because you wanna rank in L m's versus Google or is it just write the same blog the same timeless list principles like Dave mentioned apply of what a good article?

Marcy [0:14:04]: I think the same timeless principles apply.

Marcy [0:14:06]: That could be debated for different things.

Marcy [0:14:08]: And you could look at different Ll too.

Marcy [0:14:10]: Right?

Marcy [0:14:10]: So, like, chat you could eat it for us?

Marcy [0:14:12]: It's the highest traffic Ll versus, like, a cloud or per complexity.

Marcy [0:14:15]: I don't know if that's true for all businesses, but that's what we looked at.

Marcy [0:14:19]: A black hat tactic could be.

Marcy [0:14:21]: You can pay agencies to go and pay off the sources.

Marcy [0:14:25]: For Reddit, for example, you can change your responses.

Marcy [0:14:29]: So everyone's like, really

Dave [0:14:32]: right stuff.

Marcy [0:14:33]: It's possible.

Marcy [0:14:33]: There's truth and advertising problems, though.

Marcy [0:14:35]: So you need to think, consider that.

Marcy [0:14:37]: We do not do that just for the record.

Dave [0:14:40]: You know.

Dave [0:14:41]: I'm just I'm just shit.

Dave [0:14:42]: It's good.

Marcy [0:14:43]: Well, you could also sponsor list, which is a heavily source for L as well.

Marcy [0:14:47]: So anything that you can do to change sort of the sources that result in the prompts that you're tracking to favor your brand is something you can do.

Dave [0:14:57]: Sorry.

Dave [0:14:57]: Are we back to, like, writing list again?

Dave [0:14:59]: Like, if I own No.

Marcy [0:15:01]: No.

Marcy [0:15:01]: But someone else rights list, you can pay them to put you on top.

Dave [0:15:06]: Got it.

Dave [0:15:06]: Okay.

Dave [0:15:07]: I wanna get clear in here and then I Wanna come back to some of this specific?

Dave [0:15:10]: Because people love this specific?

Dave [0:15:11]: So you mentioned, hey, we worked with this agency?

Dave [0:15:13]: Like, what did you talk them about?

Dave [0:15:15]: How did you set goals around this?

Dave [0:15:16]: What are the actual tactics?

Dave [0:15:17]: You mentioned software and tools?

Dave [0:15:18]: I wanna come back to that in a second, but Clare, I know you have some opinions on this?

Dave [0:15:21]: And what have you learned over last year?

Clare [0:15:23]: Yeah.

Clare [0:15:23]: And I was gonna say, yes, we are back to writing list.

Dave [0:15:28]: Well, like, everything's back.

Dave [0:15:29]: P r is back.

Dave [0:15:30]: I started my career P, and I wrote this thing about Linkedin and P r this morning into someone was, like, So should we start putting, you know, our press releases out on, like, P r news wire again?

Dave [0:15:38]: Like, is that a tactic?

Dave [0:15:39]: I mean,

Clare [0:15:40]: you know, it's all bets are off, but I still think though, I'm gonna go back to something Dave S said is that the principles haven't changed as much as the surface has.

Clare [0:15:49]: Like, that's the way I think about it.

Clare [0:15:50]: That's the way I start the team is terms of what I've learned over for the last year.

Clare [0:15:53]: And I said yesterday, I think in our call, like, Prep call but, you know, I feel behind the eight ball little because of we didn't really start paying attention to this as much until Q four because we had the brand that we launched September t and Dave was like, I think we're all new to the game wherever we are.

Clare [0:16:07]: So some of the stuff that, you know, Marcy talked about, we aren't as far along on that, but I still think I've held these principles sort of all this year as I've been watching all of the fad and the trends and people saying, oh, Ai is gonna destroy marketing, and we're all gonna be out of jobs and all that stuff.

Clare [0:16:21]: But so instead of sort of chasing every new thing, and I'm lucky.

Clare [0:16:25]: I don't have the same thing that a lot of people have as far as board.

Clare [0:16:28]: I answered directly to the Ceo we're a single owned company and I have a very good relationship with him, we kinda hash everything out.

Clare [0:16:34]: So...

Clare [0:16:34]: But to get to your point of what I learned over the last year is, we've kind of gone back to the basics.

Clare [0:16:40]: So making sure that content is king, it's useful it's structured.

Clare [0:16:43]: And, of course, it's a challenge.

Clare [0:16:45]: It's easy for both humans and Ai to understand.

Clare [0:16:48]: But I think that if you're using things, which I think are useful to humans too, like, the Tl, this is really tactical.

Clare [0:16:55]: You said it I could get technical.

Clare [0:16:56]: Faqs, you know, comparison content on each of our, like, high traffic pages, great content still wins.

Clare [0:17:02]: I think there's just, like, a little bit of a, maybe higher or somewhat argue lower bar for sort of the clarity and structure now.

Clare [0:17:10]: So we're seeing things like that once we started implementing that, and, of course, you can check our website and tell me which ones we're missing.

Clare [0:17:16]: But having those accordion style I think use was like, some it does feel like I'm going...

Clare [0:17:21]: I feel like I did this back in, like, two thousand ten.

Clare [0:17:24]: But it's some of those same things going back to the basics, making sure our content is useful, making sure that we're answering those questions that are Ic are asking in the way that they're asking and being just sort of expanding that surface area.

Clare [0:17:38]: So whatever Gp or per complexity or Ai tool you're using, making sure that we're answering those questions that they may be used to take Google, and then also to your point Marcy making sure that the narrative.

Clare [0:17:50]: If that actually is accurate.

Clare [0:17:51]: That whatever Chat Or, and nuts I use at the most is actually answering the question correctly in the way that we want that matches our positioning a narrative.

Dave [0:18:01]: Dave About, let's bring you in, but I also wanted...

Dave [0:18:04]: This point is landing in the chat, which is great.

Dave [0:18:06]: Jessica said love this reit kind of tired of all the new marketing tactics and definitions when basic marketing still works.

Dave [0:18:12]: Always good to hear that But felt like you wanted to say something either there.

Speaker_4 [0:18:15]: Yeah.

Speaker_4 [0:18:15]: Well, it's interesting here, Clare story and virus story.

Speaker_4 [0:18:18]: Right?

Speaker_4 [0:18:18]: Because it all comes back to...

Speaker_4 [0:18:19]: I think, like, a fundamental principles?

Speaker_4 [0:18:22]: So it's easy to have this top line technology is changing, but the principles stay the same, But what are the principles that actually stay the same.

Speaker_4 [0:18:28]: From what I'm hearing from sort of the two of you and from our experience over here, now is the time to be very generous with your content.

Speaker_4 [0:18:35]: Now is the time to think about content, marketing from the perspective of, like, am I providing value to the people who I'm putting the content in front of.

Speaker_4 [0:18:44]: And so as an example over here, late last year, we really understanding that that our customers and the prospects that we talked to have lots of questions around Ae, we put together this free Ae assessment tool that anybody could come in our website, they put in their Url, and then we would feed feedback to them based on our understanding of the technology and their website, and we've got, like, a special, you know, kinda sneak peek of things.

Speaker_4 [0:19:11]: Here's where you score and sort of your evolution and Au and hear the things that you can fundamentally do to fix it.

Speaker_4 [0:19:18]: And so I bring that up a to invite anybody in the audience to take that kind of free assessment, but b, it stands for a principle of making sure that you're helping the audience with whatever problem they're going through.

Speaker_4 [0:19:31]: And content marketing and content development is a great way to do that in a very kind of authentic way.

Dave [0:19:37]: So you mentioned this greater that you build tools are great.

Dave [0:19:40]: People love hearing about tools.

Dave [0:19:41]: I wanna circle back to Marc, you mentioned tools Like, let's dive into your tech stack for this.

Dave [0:19:47]: Once you start deciding you wanna go after Ae.

Dave [0:19:50]: What do you bring in?

Dave [0:19:51]: You got your Seo agency.

Dave [0:19:53]: Okay.

Dave [0:19:53]: Cool.

Dave [0:19:53]: What else?

Marcy [0:19:55]: Yeah.

Marcy [0:19:55]: So we use...

Marcy [0:19:56]: The tools through our Seo agency our agency is Vi, which I think I got from y'all.

Marcy [0:20:00]: As a recommendation and the Exit Five group.

Marcy [0:20:02]: And the tools that we use are Pk, which you can go to the website.

Marcy [0:20:07]: It's hard to...

Marcy [0:20:08]: It just a tough branding name.

Marcy [0:20:09]: That's Pe E, Ai, and they have lost validation from brands they represent.

Marcy [0:20:16]: There's another tool at a company called Scrunch as well, and that's a startup up, but Kevin White, he's a marketing guy he went there as well, and they have a really good report as well, and they can give you sort of competitive intelligence along with your own company intelligence.

Marcy [0:20:29]: So here's the thing though.

Marcy [0:20:31]: These tools are very nascent.

Marcy [0:20:33]: And very much so evolving with this because we all started, like, at the beginning of the year trying figure this out.

Marcy [0:20:39]: So what I know for sure is we're missing a lot of attribution, which is the old problem.

Marcy [0:20:44]: And so we cannot fix it on the numbers that are coming out of it.

Marcy [0:20:48]: We have to know that everyone we know is looking at them.

Marcy [0:20:52]: And to make sure our brand is showing up as we wanted to show up.

Marcy [0:20:56]: And so, yes, track the numbers report to the board exactly what you're seeing, but do your due diligence as a marketer and make sure that we're providing accurate answers and positioning your brand for success.

Dave [0:21:08]: What would be the, like, holy grail that you're trying to get to is...

Dave [0:21:12]: I mean, it's probably attribution?

Dave [0:21:14]: Is it knowing exactly how often you're you're showing up in L?

Dave [0:21:17]: What would be the closed loop thing here?

Marcy [0:21:20]: Well, I we hear it from the salespeople.

Marcy [0:21:21]: So your prospects are customers that are going to Elements are very high intent.

Marcy [0:21:27]: They're looking for answers, and then they show up in sales calls later on.

Marcy [0:21:31]: It takes longer.

Marcy [0:21:32]: They convert at a much higher rate than any other channel.

Marcy [0:21:35]: Like, for us it's, I think I mentioned, it's point one percent traffic, but it's, like, five percent conversion rate on that traffic.

Marcy [0:21:41]: So it's pretty high.

Marcy [0:21:43]: They're very informed.

Marcy [0:21:44]: They're researching who they're going to go with, and then they could show up to the demo later talking about it.

Dave [0:21:50]: Marcy, anything else in the stack.

Dave [0:21:51]: The reason I'm asking is I wanna give people...

Dave [0:21:53]: I think we can go back to the content and the structure in a second.

Dave [0:21:55]: I I have some questions on that, But I I think there is a lot of noise around tools and what should you be using?

Dave [0:22:00]: I don't even care so much as to, like, the name I'm obviously people in chat wanna know, like, oh, she said this tool.

Dave [0:22:05]: Like, I'm gonna go try out.

Dave [0:22:06]: Like, I need shovel to shovel my driveway?

Dave [0:22:08]: I need a snow blower gets really heavy.

Dave [0:22:10]: Like, what are the jobs to be done that marketers need to attack this problem.

Dave [0:22:14]: I guess is kinda where I'm coming from.

Clare [0:22:16]: I think one of the things I'll say, and I also got a recommendation from CMO Counsel, so shout out to Dave is not paying me to say this by the way.

Clare [0:22:23]: But

Dave [0:22:24]: I I...

Dave [0:22:25]: I will now.

Dave [0:22:25]: I gonna send you check Whistler after this.

Clare [0:22:28]: But yes Joyce, I think it's just jess joyce dot com.

Clare [0:22:31]: She has been a really great hands on, and she's actually mentored some of my team who are kinda new to Seo and a or the combination.

Clare [0:22:39]: I'm treating them as one thing internally.

Clare [0:22:41]: But she helps us.

Clare [0:22:43]: So...

Clare [0:22:43]: And we have access to some of her tools, plus we have our own.

Clare [0:22:45]: So she's been great.

Clare [0:22:47]: She's kind of, like, the guide that helps says, hey, yes.

Clare [0:22:50]: This is a fad.

Clare [0:22:50]: She kinda can be a gut check for me.

Clare [0:22:52]: Helps prioritize and leads some of the team on some of the more technical mechanic stuff.

Clare [0:22:56]: So I think she's a great partner.

Clare [0:22:57]: We also use...

Clare [0:22:59]: So she uses peak Ec, and then we use Ahrefs and Sem.

Clare [0:23:04]: They track different things and get different answers.

Clare [0:23:07]: I kinda would recommend picking one and sticking to it because then if everybody has access, then you're gonna get one person going, well, why did our Ai visibility this month.

Clare [0:23:15]: It didn't rise at all.

Clare [0:23:16]: Oh, we were acting at an ahrefs and we rose six points.

Clare [0:23:18]: You get those kinds of things.

Clare [0:23:20]: So I think it's best to kind of...

Clare [0:23:21]: Unless you're just having an agency manage it and use their tools stack.

Clare [0:23:25]: I think it's best to pick one of those.

Clare [0:23:27]: I don't really have a strong opinion on which ones better.

Clare [0:23:30]: They they track different things.

Clare [0:23:31]: There's different things to, like, pros and cons.

Clare [0:23:33]: It's just test them both do a free trial and pick which one works for you.

Clare [0:23:36]: But we use those to sort of track the Ai visibility, the prompt rankings, things like that.

Clare [0:23:40]: Send us a monthly view.

Clare [0:23:42]: We just got the Ai version kinda to test them for a quarter.

Clare [0:23:46]: We just got the sort of Ai upgrade for both of those.

Clare [0:23:49]: I think we got some in November.

Clare [0:23:50]: So still testing haven't really made a final decision on that.

Clare [0:23:54]: I do think this is a little off topic day.

Clare [0:23:56]: So stop me if you want...

Clare [0:23:57]: If I'm going too far, But it seems to me, like, the volume from Aa o is still tiny.

Dave [0:24:03]: Oh, yeah.

Dave [0:24:03]: I I have a sample size of one,

Speaker_4 [0:24:06]: but just like, for

Dave [0:24:06]: our business, I will go and look at...

Dave [0:24:08]: Oh, some of those tools.

Dave [0:24:09]: Sometimes, like I I use Ahrefs and I'll go in there.

Dave [0:24:12]: And I think part of me is just like, everyone's talking about it.

Dave [0:24:15]: And so it's like, cool to be, like, check this out, and then it's...

Dave [0:24:17]: Oh we got two leads last month from this source and that's compared to hundreds on other channels or whatever.

Speaker_4 [0:24:23]: I'll, jump in on that front.

Speaker_4 [0:24:24]: I I think it's marketers, we have a long history of.

Speaker_4 [0:24:27]: The impact of new technology.

Speaker_4 [0:24:30]: Again, I go back to this same principles different tools, but we're guilty.

Speaker_4 [0:24:34]: I'm guilty of, hey, there's new technology that's gonna up and the everything that we do.

Speaker_4 [0:24:39]: When the reality is to the point that y'all are bringing up, they're, of course, early adopters But the rest of the market takes a little while to sort of catch on.

Speaker_4 [0:24:48]: If you live in San Francisco, I live in San Francisco, you'd think based on Highway one zero one and two eighty and all the billboards that are around that the entire world is Ai native.

Speaker_4 [0:24:58]: Every company out there is Ai powered in Ai native and the reality is things feel like they're moving faster than they probably are.

Speaker_4 [0:25:06]: I also think that not all traffic is the same.

Speaker_4 [0:25:08]: Clear to the point that you brought up either type of traffic that comes to our website.

Speaker_4 [0:25:12]: From an answer engine is just a different type.

Speaker_4 [0:25:15]: They're actually lower in the funnel.

Speaker_4 [0:25:17]: And so the job to be done of a website at that point is much more about, like, conversion rate optimization and making sure that you've got the rate experience set in front of people than almost kind of anything else.

Speaker_4 [0:25:30]: And then in terms of tools, I think there's is a master proliferation of tools out there.

Speaker_4 [0:25:34]: And so my guidance to everybody here now is is choose the right one that fits you We're giving best practices.

Speaker_4 [0:25:40]: We use graphite, by the way, great agency.

Speaker_4 [0:25:43]: And I'd say the the principle that I would adopt over here is, like, trust your Seo.

Speaker_4 [0:25:48]: Your Seo expert is also gonna likely be on the front end of changes that are happening with Ae.

Speaker_4 [0:25:55]: And they're gonna be the right ones to understand which shovel should we buy...

Dave [0:26:00]: Yeah.

Dave [0:26:00]: We...

Dave [0:26:00]: When we were talking about of that stuff earlier, I forget who said it in Chad.

Dave [0:26:03]: I wouldn't given the credit.

Dave [0:26:04]: But the real name for this Ae o A I o stuff should really just be, like, this is search marketing.

Dave [0:26:10]: Right?

Dave [0:26:10]: It's just the new wave of, like, figuring out.

Dave [0:26:12]: Yeah.

Dave [0:26:12]: Okay.

Dave [0:26:12]: There's the comment that I wanna address and we can push on it.

Dave [0:26:15]: This is all great, but this is all too high level.

Dave [0:26:17]: Use agency, use a tool, make great content.

Dave [0:26:19]: So, like, Let's up our game and, like, prove that we're not just calling the shots from the the ivory tower over here.

Dave [0:26:25]: One thing I wanted to get back to in the in the content was...

Dave [0:26:28]: I wanna hear...

Dave [0:26:29]: What does that mean?

Dave [0:26:30]: What content are you creating?

Dave [0:26:31]: What is the content strategy there's so many approaches from over the years it used to be just be like, volume wins.

Dave [0:26:37]: We need blog posts, you know, every day.

Dave [0:26:39]: Then it was, like, this other pivot to, like, we're gonna focus on...

Dave [0:26:42]: I used to call, like, pillar content, ten content.

Dave [0:26:44]: We're not gonna do a lot of content, but when we do it, we're gonna write media research reports.

Dave [0:26:48]: But now today, you look at it, it's like, you gotta be on Linkedin.

Dave [0:26:51]: You gotta be on Youtube.

Dave [0:26:52]: You gotta have Instagram Tiktok.

Dave [0:26:54]: All...

Dave [0:26:54]: You you can't possibly do that, and then what happens to some of our stuff sometimes is, like, I'll think I have this great idea, and I'll put a video on Youtube and it gets seventeen views.

Dave [0:27:01]: You need a real strategy here I'm curious to hear about the actual approach to content strategy and and what needs to be created and and I wanna make that person feel like, alright.

Dave [0:27:10]: Yeah.

Dave [0:27:11]: They heard me.

Marcy [0:27:12]: I can give it a go.

Marcy [0:27:12]: I am not my direct content person, but I do approve the plan and read every single thing that we put out.

Marcy [0:27:18]: I can give it a go.

Marcy [0:27:19]: But ask me more deeper questions, and then I can also follow up with you.

Marcy [0:27:23]: So what we look at is we start with just like regular Seo, what are the keywords that we wanna own?

Marcy [0:27:30]: And so once you have that keywords, like, for example, for us, it's property intelligence would be one of those keywords.

Marcy [0:27:36]: And then once we have that keyword, for Ae specifically, we figure out all of the prompts that would relate to that keyword.

Marcy [0:27:43]: So give me the top property intelligence providers.

Marcy [0:27:47]: How do people get property intelligence.

Marcy [0:27:49]: This property intelligence integrate with x workflow?

Dave [0:27:53]: And are you are you doing this Griffin thing, like, coming up with these ideas yourself or is there a way to research this?

Marcy [0:27:59]: Yeah.

Marcy [0:27:59]: I mean, part of it is you can look up and see Google trends what people are searching for.

Marcy [0:28:04]: You can also see inside of some of these tools, ad that your competitors are ranking for and that gives you some idea of where you should go.

Marcy [0:28:12]: You're already doing this in paid.

Marcy [0:28:14]: You already know what keywords you wanna own and paid and so a lot of the supplies that you can sort of pick up and go from.

Marcy [0:28:20]: So it shouldn't be...

Marcy [0:28:20]: This is a good

Dave [0:28:21]: add on to this, by the way, which Aaron put in the chat.

Dave [0:28:24]: Like, this comes as and knowing your customer, Google trends, sales called data Sem rush those type of tools, but I my head went right to, like, the tool side of this, and it's, like, actually, you know, if you've have a deep understanding of your customer.

Dave [0:28:35]: All the sales calls today are recorded.

Dave [0:28:37]: We all have access to Ai tools to be able to analyze this at scale.

Dave [0:28:40]: Right?

Dave [0:28:41]: You could probably use Ai to actually come up with the prompts here.

Dave [0:28:44]: It's like, hey, here's the makeup of our fifty best customers.

Dave [0:28:46]: Here's some transcripts some objections, whatever.

Dave [0:28:48]: Let's come up with a list of the ten prompts for these people.

Clare [0:28:51]: Yeah.

Clare [0:28:51]: Mean, everything is recorded now.

Clare [0:28:53]: So that is what you just said, David in terms of people wanting tactics.

Clare [0:28:56]: I think that's a great way, and we have actually generated some of our highest performing content from that.

Clare [0:29:01]: Of...

Clare [0:29:01]: Sometimes it's sales individuals if we don't have a call recording, but if we do have call recordings leveraging.

Clare [0:29:07]: Okay.

Clare [0:29:08]: Like you said, that these are the fifty calls, what are some common themes across these Obviously, it's dependent.

Clare [0:29:12]: Like I said, we're very complex by our journey, and it's dependent on vertical, etcetera.

Clare [0:29:16]: But you can really drill down and get those content pieces.

Clare [0:29:18]: And then from a tactical perspective, having somebody asked I know, like, we'd do different content breach each, and I'm, like, I'm a fan of one content strategy and just thinking of it as this human birth is the...

Clare [0:29:29]: First the content and the Ai format for content.

Clare [0:29:32]: It's sort of how I think about it.

Clare [0:29:34]: That's how I think about it.

Speaker_4 [0:29:35]: I think there's one out.

Speaker_4 [0:29:36]: One other part over here, and super early, like, this isn't high level in the ivory tower and just thinking about kind of what the content strategy is, but on the grounds, we tend to think a lot about how do build in the open.

Speaker_4 [0:29:49]: And how do you provide value that way?

Speaker_4 [0:29:51]: It really goes back to that principle that I said earlier, if you think about how you can create content that provides value?

Speaker_4 [0:29:57]: I think about it from almost a a community development perspective.

Speaker_4 [0:30:01]: And sometimes people think about that and it doesn't feel as, like, marketing specific as it needs to be.

Speaker_4 [0:30:07]: But the reality is that from practitioner to champion to economic buyer, there's a whole change that's happening right now, and people wanna see people building in the open.

Speaker_4 [0:30:17]: And so the way that we think about our content strategy in part is I've got a team of about seventy people in the marketing team, and one of the things that we encourage is Hit Linkedin, Hit x, hit Reddit, and talk about what you're learning and share the best practices where you've failed and what you've learned where you've succeeded in all of that.

Speaker_4 [0:30:38]: So anyways, long winded did way of saying that that type of building in the open, I think is a way for you to keep the noise in the market, which I think is super important today, but also make sure that it's not just Ai sloth, but you're actually authentically sharing

Dave [0:30:53]: what you're learning.

Dave [0:30:54]: I like that we used to talk a lot about air cover, and that's why I'm a huge advocate of P r and and social.

Dave [0:30:59]: Marcy, you're about to get on on heater, and I...

Marcy [0:31:02]: Love it.

Dave [0:31:02]: Go god.

Dave [0:31:02]: My ego got in the way, and, you know, I'm thinking this is my show and it's not.

Dave [0:31:06]: So...

Marcy [0:31:06]: Alright.

Marcy [0:31:06]: So I also wanna reiterate logs are one tran.

Marcy [0:31:09]: Of your content for Ae.

Marcy [0:31:11]: So there's multiple ways that you can do it?

Marcy [0:31:13]: So you can write blogs, but you can also get cited.

Marcy [0:31:17]: And third party citing is maybe one of the most important things because is signals to the algorithm that what you say is true.

Marcy [0:31:25]: It's like a third party source of truth.

Marcy [0:31:26]: Have you heard that phrase, it validates what you're saying.

Marcy [0:31:29]: And so if you get multiple sources saying the same thing, this goes back to, like, describing your brand product accurately.

Marcy [0:31:35]: If multiple sources are saying this in the same way.

Marcy [0:31:38]: It must be true.

Marcy [0:31:40]: The L is gonna push this to the top with the recommendation.

Marcy [0:31:43]: Okay.

Marcy [0:31:43]: But back to blogs.

Marcy [0:31:44]: So once you have sort of your keywords, then you have to...

Marcy [0:31:48]: Kinda have to, like, sit and think for a little bit.

Marcy [0:31:50]: Put it in your brain.

Marcy [0:31:51]: And put your shoes put on the shoes of your buyer for us it's, like many different buyers.

Marcy [0:31:56]: We do this in many different ways.

Marcy [0:31:58]: But you think about the buyer, like, how are...

Marcy [0:32:01]: What are all the topics at the top of the funnel that they're gonna be researching as it relates to their profession.

Marcy [0:32:07]: So let's go back to, like, aerial imagery, for example, another one of our top keywords.

Marcy [0:32:13]: So if they're looking at aerial imagery, they might wanna know as an adjacent topic, what I can see the satellite versus aerial imagery.

Marcy [0:32:22]: Or what can I get with drones, and you need to then write content for all of those things?

Marcy [0:32:28]: Even if it's not directly related to your product?

Marcy [0:32:31]: Because what you're trying to do is build up awareness in consideration with your prospect.

Marcy [0:32:38]: So that when they come time to buy because eighty percent of the people looking at this stuff are not ready to buy, they'll know Eagleview and then have that in your consideration set.

Marcy [0:32:46]: So it's really counterintuitive and frankly, one of the challenging parts of this is that we've gotta go to your subject matter experts inside of your company to get them to review some of this because it can be highly technical, and as a marketing you do not need to know all the technicalities of every product.

Marcy [0:33:01]: So then they'll object like, we don't even sell satellite imagery, and you have to, like, explain to this that you are trying to circle the buyer with information so that they know your brand.

Marcy [0:33:12]: So so we literally have a dock.

Marcy [0:33:15]: If you wanna get tactical, we have a word doc.

Marcy [0:33:17]: That has all the keywords we wanna for, and then we have a plan.

Marcy [0:33:22]: We write out in the plan, like a six month basis, all of the blogs that we're gonna write for that six month basis to focus on one or two keywords that we wanna arrange for.

Marcy [0:33:31]: And then we smash those out.

Marcy [0:33:32]: And it it's not our number one priority, but we make sure we're consistently doing that.

Marcy [0:33:36]: And then on top of that, for the blogs...

Marcy [0:33:39]: For blogs that are already ranking for us in L and search in other ways.

Marcy [0:33:43]: We have to update that at least once every year because rec is another trigger for the algorithm that you need to be on top of.

Marcy [0:33:52]: So slide adjustments, making sure it's fresh content that's sort of the second effort.

Dave [0:33:57]: I love this line about, circling the buyer.

Dave [0:33:59]: Because I think if we separate the, like, Ae, whatever, like, oh, that's the strategy is, like, circle a buyer, surround sound for where wherever that.

Dave [0:34:06]: Anyone wanna built on that before I I take this in a different direction.

Dave [0:34:09]: This question came up, and I made a note talk about it, Marie in the chances says, are you investing more in P r now that it's back.

Dave [0:34:15]: And I made a note here earlier just to myself, which is, like, I wonder, like, do you all see the P r and brand become, like, even more important again because here's an example.

Dave [0:34:26]: I'm researching this product?

Dave [0:34:28]: A lot of the enterprise types of products don't always have publicly available pricing.

Dave [0:34:33]: Right?

Dave [0:34:33]: So I might wanna buy something...

Dave [0:34:34]: Pricing not unavailable.

Dave [0:34:35]: Well, there's a good chance that someone somewhere has shared that pricing on reddit.

Dave [0:34:39]: Right?

Dave [0:34:40]: And so if I go to the L m's that I'm asking to do the research Just like, yeah, This actually cost this.

Dave [0:34:44]: And so the marketers dilemma though is, like, well, I didn't write that comment on Reddit.

Dave [0:34:49]: And so we all go to, like, oh, we should be on reddit.

Dave [0:34:51]: And it's like, well, no.

Dave [0:34:53]: Because it's not like you paid someone to write that comment and Someone actually, like, use the product liked it wrote about it.

Dave [0:34:57]: Is there some element of, like, let's reinvest in P r and brand because of this whole circle the buyer thing and it's not as easy to tie back to sales.

Dave [0:35:05]: And anybody kinda, like, pick up the direction I'm going in there?

Marcy [0:35:08]: For sure.

Marcy [0:35:09]: I don't wanna take up all the air.

Marcy [0:35:11]: But, yes, we went back to long form P just for the sake of P

Clare [0:35:16]: this year.

Dave [0:35:17]: What is long paid So...

Marcy [0:35:19]: Yeah.

Marcy [0:35:19]: Just one year ago.

Marcy [0:35:20]: It was like, oh, shorter P is better.

Marcy [0:35:22]: You know, one page press releases.

Marcy [0:35:24]: And now bringing, like, multi page press releases, cram it with more information just for the purpose of this.

Marcy [0:35:30]: And again, inside the organization, people like, why are we releasing a press release on blah blah.

Marcy [0:35:36]: And if you're my competitor, please put on your ear?

Marcy [0:35:38]: But, yeah, it works.

Marcy [0:35:39]: It's just more rec see, more citing.

Marcy [0:35:41]: And then, like with P, you put out press release and immediately, everyone sort of repo it now because journalists all fired.

Marcy [0:35:48]: So there's no one actually writing any articles anymore.

Marcy [0:35:50]: And so the publishers will just repo your exact press release, and it's super

Dave [0:35:56]: Just like that, you got a link from another domain.

Dave [0:35:58]: It's like, the whole Google thing all over again.

Dave [0:36:00]: Right?

Clare [0:36:01]: For twenty twenty four, granted, That was a little new to the company and learning the industry and everything.

Clare [0:36:05]: But in twenty twenty four.

Clare [0:36:06]: I think we might have done one press release and in twenty twenty five, we did, like, I wanna say eight to ten.

Clare [0:36:12]: So I kinda drill down on that.

Clare [0:36:15]: And I I don't have any exact speaking to the person who was, like, oh, can we get, like, the real marketers in next time.

Clare [0:36:22]: I am both.

Clare [0:36:23]: I'm up here at thirty thousand book view, but also the actually writing the press release that get set out and researching.

Clare [0:36:29]: So we did really sort of double down on the press release, we all also had a lot of news to share, but I think that I don't have the exact numbers on.

Clare [0:36:36]: Well did that move and needle...

Clare [0:36:38]: There's some opinions versus data, conversations happening internally, but it is also gonna be a big part of our strategy for twenty twenty six.

Clare [0:36:45]: So I'm with you, Marcy just to reiterate what you said on the.

Clare [0:36:48]: And even our P person the press release wire that we use, they're really helpful.

Clare [0:36:53]: Like, we don't pay them extra for that, but they're helpful with telling you like, hey, what works and and they have all all said, every time I do a press release and I have that live call.

Clare [0:37:00]: They're, like, yeah.

Clare [0:37:01]: Long form long form is in.

Clare [0:37:02]: So that's from the big guys at Cis ts.

Speaker_4 [0:37:07]: To kinda double click on what you said it's fun to both be the leader of the team and the operator at the same time.

Speaker_4 [0:37:11]: And I think as things change, all of us are rolling up our sleeves.

Speaker_4 [0:37:16]: I started my career in P.

Speaker_4 [0:37:18]: And I think having that as a foundation, the ability to kinda tell stories to extraordinarily cynical audience, in, like, thirty seconds or less.

Speaker_4 [0:37:26]: It's just an important success criteria for any, like, marketer today.

Speaker_4 [0:37:31]: And so to whoever asked the question, should you invest more in P, or not, I, a hundred percent think invest more in P right now.

Speaker_4 [0:37:38]: And I also believe that the nature of P r has changed.

Speaker_4 [0:37:42]: And that the press releases is a tactic.

Speaker_4 [0:37:44]: Like, we're talking about a tactic.

Speaker_4 [0:37:46]: Should you do press releases or not?

Speaker_4 [0:37:48]: Yes, you should.

Speaker_4 [0:37:49]: But press releases are only a part of how you should be investing in P r.

Speaker_4 [0:37:54]: And so what we've been doing is we've really realign our teams so that P actually oversees not only like media relations and corporate reputation.

Speaker_4 [0:38:05]: But social media marketing, and influencer marketing and external and room.

Dave [0:38:12]: Yeah.

Dave [0:38:12]: That just comes bias.

Dave [0:38:14]: I've been writing my ass off about this on linkedin and someone finally said what I think.

Speaker_4 [0:38:18]: Yeah.

Speaker_4 [0:38:18]: Well, I mean, and I completely agree with that the external and internal part of P is also really important because the people who work for your company or your best brand ambassadors.

Speaker_4 [0:38:27]: So what you need to do is make sure that you're arming them to spread the gospel.

Speaker_4 [0:38:32]: And so we've seen great results in terms of that approach.

Speaker_4 [0:38:36]: And I think the last thing I was gonna say, I wanna go back to this circle the buyer because I think that can't be emphasized enough.

Speaker_4 [0:38:43]: The data out there shows that...

Speaker_4 [0:38:45]: And I think it came from Linkedin or from somewhere before, that ninety five percent of your buyer audience isn't in market right now.

Speaker_4 [0:38:54]: They're just not.

Speaker_4 [0:38:55]: You're really only speaking of five percent that in inter market.

Speaker_4 [0:38:57]: So as marketers, our job is to take that ninety five percent and actually push them in market and find their category entry points.

Speaker_4 [0:39:05]: And so when we're developing our content strategy map, we're really thinking also about what is that category entry trigger, and how do we create content for each of those trigger points?

Dave [0:39:17]: I like that.

Dave [0:39:17]: I love the combining those roles because social is the new P today.

Dave [0:39:21]: This word mouth.

Dave [0:39:22]: And then, also, okay.

Dave [0:39:24]: You started your career P.

Dave [0:39:25]: That's where I started.

Dave [0:39:26]: I think about this.

Dave [0:39:27]: The challenges back then, there were lots of trade publications.

Dave [0:39:30]: Right?

Dave [0:39:31]: I I worked with one company that was like a legal It company.

Dave [0:39:34]: And just in the legal sector alone, there were, like, twenty blogs and magazines and publications that covered legal tech.

Dave [0:39:41]: That's all gone away now and those people are...

Dave [0:39:44]: They have their own subs stack.

Dave [0:39:45]: Right?

Dave [0:39:45]: Or they have a lot of followers on on a particular platform.

Dave [0:39:48]: And so that is you need to influence them, which I realized liked.

Dave [0:39:51]: And then also on this the topic of a press release, beyond the benefits of like, you writing something that the L are gonna crawl or whatever they call it in in this world.

Dave [0:40:00]: I love it as a forcing function for you as the company to have to have something to say and have some news.

Dave [0:40:07]: And so it's like, I just like the exercise of writing the press release, and I obsessed over, like, Steve jobs writing, and they used to write the headline first.

Dave [0:40:15]: For any product launch you'd be, like, I'm gonna write the headline that I want the journalists to write.

Dave [0:40:19]: It's like, You're.

Marcy [0:40:20]: Thank you.

Dave [0:40:21]: Exactly.

Dave [0:40:21]: That exercise of, like, let's write this And then where we're it's like, okay.

Dave [0:40:25]: What have we done over the last three quarters.

Dave [0:40:27]: What do our customers care about?

Dave [0:40:29]: Like, what stuff have we shipped?

Dave [0:40:30]: Or it can be like, oh, my gosh.

Dave [0:40:31]: Like, we have no innovation.

Dave [0:40:32]: We've done nothing.

Dave [0:40:33]: And now this is a forcing function for?

Dave [0:40:35]: I think that, like product marketing, cadence and tying that stuff Up into news is.

Dave [0:40:39]: Also really important and how we talked about air cover a little bit.

Dave [0:40:42]: I think that's how you can kinda, like, manufacture your your own news internally also.

Marcy [0:40:47]: Yeah.

Marcy [0:40:47]: You know, what's painful as a marketer is I write a lot of press releases.

Marcy [0:40:51]: To help our company understand what our product is and the value.

Marcy [0:40:55]: When it's so backwards.

Marcy [0:40:57]: Right?

Marcy [0:40:57]: Like, we should not be creating products not knowing what the value is, But, yeah.

Marcy [0:41:02]: So we use press releases a lot of time as a clarification.

Marcy [0:41:06]: Methodology for our company.

Marcy [0:41:08]: And we work out sort of the positioning as we write it.

Marcy [0:41:11]: And it's unfortunate.

Marcy [0:41:13]: That's the way that happens, But it's actually a really good tool for it because, of course, we want everyone to then the c suite your Gc you're the Cfo to your Ceo certainly to approve your press release, and it acts as a mechanism to solidify what we're actually offering and who we're going after.

Marcy [0:41:29]: I saw someone in the comment asking this, and I think it's really important.

Marcy [0:41:33]: You have to push the press release to the wire.

Marcy [0:41:34]: That's what gives it the momentum.

Marcy [0:41:36]: So it would be helpful.

Marcy [0:41:37]: I guess to put it on your website, but it's not gonna have nearly the same impact.

Marcy [0:41:41]: As if you put it on the wire.

Dave [0:41:43]: I got a bunch of questions in the Q and a, and I wanna get to some of them, and then we'll wrap up I'm gonna rapid fire these.

Dave [0:41:49]: Whoever feels the strongest inclination to pop in and and answer it It's it's up for grabs some this question is for a start up with limited expertise and budget.

Dave [0:41:56]: This seems like a tough start.

Dave [0:41:58]: Do you think it's manageable.

Dave [0:41:59]: So let's reframe this and if you were running marketing at a startup up with basically no budget right now, what would you be thinking about from a content and Ai standpoint?

Marcy [0:42:08]: I would not be worrying about Ai in terms of Ae.

Marcy [0:42:11]: I'd be worrying about understanding my positioning and messaging and the Ae will follow.

Marcy [0:42:16]: If I had limited time and budget.

Speaker_4 [0:42:19]: Marcy, I was gonna see the same thing.

Speaker_4 [0:42:21]: You and I share a brain.

Speaker_4 [0:42:22]: I think the smaller the place, think about your positioning strategy?

Speaker_4 [0:42:25]: Your messaging.

Speaker_4 [0:42:26]: What's the differentiated value that you offer, who cares a lot about that value.

Speaker_4 [0:42:31]: And then lean really into that.

Speaker_4 [0:42:33]: Wow, and I definitely share.

Clare [0:42:36]: Yeah.

Clare [0:42:36]: I agree.

Clare [0:42:37]: I was gonna say any similar, maybe a little more tactical of just that...

Clare [0:42:40]: Yeah.

Clare [0:42:40]: And once you nail that, then just starting with a very small, manageable content strategy, if you do have information on, hopefully, you have information on who your buyers are and what they're looking for, but creating content start small, maybe a weekly or bi weekly publishing cadence.

Clare [0:42:57]: But I think, yeah, I agree what Marcy said be.

Clare [0:43:00]: Like, I wouldn't be starting about Ae.

Clare [0:43:01]: I would be thinking, like, what content do we need to create that will be useful to our buyer.

Clare [0:43:05]: And then from there, you can work your way up.

Clare [0:43:07]: But I do think it's manageable to do it without an agency.

Clare [0:43:11]: I mean, it takes time and you have to have leadership aligned.

Clare [0:43:14]: But I do think content strategy and Seo and Ae and what you guys know my thoughts by now on that I think of it as, like, one thing.

Dave [0:43:21]: Right.

Dave [0:43:21]: But

Clare [0:43:21]: I do think it's very doable.

Dave [0:43:23]: No better way to learn it than to be forced to do it because yeah hire an agency, like these big fancy CMOs.

Dave [0:43:28]: Not just kidding.

Dave [0:43:29]: This one is more about on page web stuff?

Dave [0:43:32]: I don't know if any of you have any learnings here.

Dave [0:43:34]: If the blog and resource hub content plays such a big role in search.

Dave [0:43:38]: How does that methodology apply to core web pages like product or service pages, What do we need to do content wise on on product pages to rank well for Ae?

Dave [0:43:46]: Any lessons there on, like actual just structuring of the web content?

Clare [0:43:50]: I think that for me, that goes back to the three things that adding the Tl key takeaways.

Clare [0:43:55]: A section on those pages even the product pages even if it feels like maybe this is too short for a Tl key takeaway.

Clare [0:44:03]: I still think it's important.

Clare [0:44:05]: We've seen that work.

Clare [0:44:06]: I also think adding Faqs to those product and solution pages.

Clare [0:44:10]: Ideally, they mirror real buyer questions, if you can.

Clare [0:44:13]: But again, if you don't have an agency or you don't know what those are, you don't have the feedback loop established yet with your sales team, get that feedback, loop established if you can but I think having those their little three or four or as many as eight or ten.

Clare [0:44:27]: I can share some in the chat.

Clare [0:44:29]: They're, like, I relapse share links.

Clare [0:44:30]: I can share a few.

Clare [0:44:31]: Bank rate does a really good one on the Ee t, which I had to Google what that stood for because I forgot because like that felt like a marketing one on one class.

Clare [0:44:39]: Twenty years ago.

Clare [0:44:40]: But I'll share that one and then Credit team, I think is the other one.

Clare [0:44:44]: I'll share them.

Clare [0:44:45]: But they both do a really good job the sort of the comparison pages.

Clare [0:44:48]: So we are still working on building out that content, but sort of, like, the us versus them, hey, Here's what we do.

Clare [0:44:54]: Here's our differentiation.

Clare [0:44:55]: And using legal, If you're big enough to have a legal team, they may give you grief about doing, like, for us, I'll say one of our competitors is language line for the language services pillar of our business, and that is, like, something we're working on is actually Piedmont Global versus language line and and actually doing a comparison.

Clare [0:45:13]: It seems like the algorithm that L like that kind of content.

Clare [0:45:17]: But I'll send you...

Clare [0:45:18]: I'll put in the chat those examples of some actual.

Clare [0:45:21]: Hopefully, it's helpful tactical to kind of how to structure this.

Dave [0:45:24]: I think we hit on this one.

Dave [0:45:25]: How are you y'all tracking Ai search what people are asking.

Dave [0:45:28]: You've mentioned a bunch of tools.

Dave [0:45:29]: Just recap on the tracking?

Dave [0:45:31]: Because I feel like in order to start, we need some progress on this.

Dave [0:45:34]: Is it Sem was one.

Dave [0:45:36]: Address has their brand radar tool, Anything else that we missed there?

Dave [0:45:40]: Peak.

Dave [0:45:40]: Peak.

Dave [0:45:41]: Yeah.

Dave [0:45:41]: A lot of a lot of peak comments.

Speaker_4 [0:45:43]: Yeah.

Speaker_4 [0:45:43]: Peak.

Speaker_4 [0:45:44]: We profound as a tool as well.

Speaker_4 [0:45:47]: Again, they're there are a lot of individual tools out there each with their own, I guess, kind of added value proposition.

Speaker_4 [0:45:53]: I just go back to the basics.

Speaker_4 [0:45:54]: Either, you if you're using the peak or or or whatever.

Speaker_4 [0:45:58]: But we look at all of that.

Speaker_4 [0:45:59]: We are also looking at the fundamentals of, you know, traffic to page conversion rate on page, making sure that we're setting up sort of experiments on page in the right way so that we get, you know, sort of the greatest amount of learnings from them.

Dave [0:46:12]: My lesson that I'm gonna apply to our business from today is, like, just making sure I have a strong opinion or, you know, let's talk to you.

Dave [0:46:19]: Making sure you have a strong opinion on how people find you and how people buy from you.

Dave [0:46:24]: And let's work backwards from there, and now it's like, oh, maybe like some of the best plays in here are not necessarily just the cool Ai tools to create the content and help you rank for these terms, but it's like, a world, like, we have all of the customer data.

Dave [0:46:37]: We have all the sales calls.

Dave [0:46:38]: We have all the churn notes.

Dave [0:46:39]: We have all the best fit people.

Dave [0:46:40]: We can analyze us all that I was watching a guy demoing cloud code today, and basically, there's, like, a tool in there where you just...

Dave [0:46:47]: It asks you the questions all the way through, and it's, like, I could just be using an Ai tool to basically tell me what I should be working backwards from to come up with the prompts.

Dave [0:46:56]: And I think that's a really helpful lesson.

Dave [0:46:57]: Okay.

Dave [0:46:58]: Producer, Aaron.

Dave [0:46:59]: Let's roll the poll We believe in measurement speaking of measurement.

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Dave [0:47:07]: So we measure all that rate this session right now five if you loved it.

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Dave [0:47:15]: I see a lot of fours and fives, which is where we wanna be, and there'll be a bunch of follow on this.

Dave [0:47:19]: I feel like we can't hit on this enough?

Dave [0:47:20]: There's gonna be an endless appetite for, like, hey.

Dave [0:47:23]: Teach me how to do Ais seo, teach me what to learn.

Dave [0:47:26]: We hear you.

Dave [0:47:27]: We're gonna continue pushing on this topic.

Dave [0:47:29]: I thought this was great.

Dave [0:47:30]: The mark of a good session for me is often how much I'm sc down during this, and and I got a bunch of stuff.

Dave [0:47:35]: So just a quick virtual, you know, round of a, thank you for Marcy Clare, Dave.

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