[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4843},["ShallowReactive",2],{"podcast-marketing-leaders-scott-wasserman-on-why-ai-search-rewards-trust-not-rankings":3,"header-articles":906,"updatesSection-all":2933,"updatesSection-all-team":3859},{"_path":4,"_dir":5,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":8,"description":9,"date":10,"audio":11,"episode":14,"minutes":15,"series":16,"authors":17,"guestimg":19,"guest":20,"guesturl":21,"iframe":22,"seotitle":8,"guestabout":23,"body":24,"_type":900,"_id":901,"_source":902,"_file":903,"_stem":904,"_extension":905,"category":5},"/podcasts/marketing-leaders/scott-wasserman-on-why-ai-search-rewards-trust-not-rankings","marketing-leaders",false,"","Scott Wasserman on Why AI Search Rewards Trust, Not Rankings","In this episode, Scott Wasserman discusses why traditional SEO metrics and MQL-driven marketing are losing relevance in an AI-first world. He explains how modern buyers research across AI tools, communities, podcasts, and dark social before ever reaching your website, and why brands that listen to their customers, build trust, and create valuable content across multiple channels are the ones AI is most likely to recommend.","2026-06-26T16:10:18.501Z",{"url":12,"length":13},"https://share.transistor.fm/s/3faa600a","69582903","223","58","Back on T-R-A-C-K",[18],"Kerry Guard","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/fa48cad6-066d-4dac-99e5-25360efd2f19-Scott-Wasserman.webp","Scott Wasserman","https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottwasserman/","https://share.transistor.fm/e/3faa600a","Scott Wasserman helps B2B SaaS companies build revenue-focused marketing strategies that align sales, marketing, and AI-driven demand generation to create pipeline that converts.",{"type":25,"children":26,"toc":895},"root",[27,36,42,48,53,58,63,68,73,78,83,88,93,98,103,108,113,118,123,128,133,138,143,148,153,158,163,168,173,178,183,188,193,198,203,208,213,218,223,228,233,238,243,248,253,258,263,268,273,278,283,288,293,298,303,308,313,318,323,328,333,338,343,348,353,358,363,368,373,378,383,388,393,398,403,408,413,417,422,427,432,437,442,446,451,456,461,466,471,476,481,486,491,496,501,506,511,516,521,526,531,536,541,546,551,556,561,566,571,576,581,586,591,596,601,606,611,616,621,626,631,636,641,646,651,656,661,666,671,676,681,686,691,696,701,706,711,716,721,726,731,736,741,746,751,756,761,766,771,775,780,785,790,795,800,805,810,815,820,825,830,835,840,845,850,855,860,865,870,875,880,885,890],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":30,"children":32},"element","h2",{"id":31},"overview",[33],{"type":34,"value":35},"text","Overview",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":38,"children":39},"p",{},[40],{"type":34,"value":41},"Scott explains why rankings have become a lagging indicator and why today's marketers should focus on becoming the trusted answer instead of simply winning search results. He explores how AI search, dark social, customer advocacy, and consistent messaging are reshaping B2B buying behavior, while emphasizing that listening to customers, creating valuable content, and building genuine trust are the foundations of sustainable growth.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":43,"children":45},{"id":44},"transcript",[46],{"type":34,"value":47},"Transcript:",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":49,"children":50},{},[51],{"type":34,"value":52},"Kerry Guard  0:11  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":54,"children":55},{},[56],{"type":34,"value":57},"Well, welcome back to the show, and welcome to our listeners. If you are here with us today, comment away. We want this to be a conversation, that's why I go live, and even if you are listening to this after it is already closed, or we are no longer live, whatever you want to call it, feel free to comment anyway, because we will get back to you. We are a sucker for a good comment, and we are here for the conversation. Before we get into it, a quick word on who's behind the show. I'm the CEO of MKG Marketing. Here's the thing: I'm proudest of Dan hiring us once, then he took us to five companies. Joanne hired us twice. Marguerite took us left, right, and center all over the shop, because every agency promises pipeline now, but that's the floor. What's hard to find is an agency that actually gets you, your category, your buyers, the way you work; that's the one that gets rehired, and it's a good lens for today's conversation. Being an agency or the brand that gets the buyer is exactly what it takes to become the answer they're looking for. This show is for the marketing and go-to marketer leaders, figuring out how to do more meaningful work, often with leaner teams, more tools, and a whole lot of noise about AI. It's that's you, you're not behind, you're probably just jumped into the middle. We're here to get you back to the beginning in the right order. And today I get to do one of my favorite things on the show. Welcome back, a returning guest, Scott Wasserman, is a fractional CMO for B2B SaaS and PE-backed companies. The founder of Wasserman Revenue Advisors and the founder of the AI Fix, he's spent his career building demand gen and dark social programs that create pipeline instead of just capturing it, and he's now working AI into every layer of the engagement, from the signal-based intent systems to rev ops workflows, less volume, more position, that's the Scott Wasserman way, and he is coming in hot today with a take I can't wait to dig into that. Rankings have quietly become a lagging indicator. The thing that actually matters now isn't where you rank, it's how often you're the answer, and AI chooses to surface, and he's not the one, he's got the receipts, a cybersecurity client that proves it out. Scott, welcome to the show. So glad you have it.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":59,"children":60},{},[61],{"type":34,"value":62},"Scott Wasserman  2:32  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":64,"children":65},{},[66],{"type":34,"value":67},"Thank you for the welcome back. Thank you, it was fun. Let's do it again.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":69,"children":70},{},[71],{"type":34,"value":72},"Kerry Guard  2:37  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":74,"children":75},{},[76],{"type":34,"value":77},"I know, I know, I'll have you back again and again.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":79,"children":80},{},[81],{"type":34,"value":82},"Scott Wasserman  2:40  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":84,"children":85},{},[86],{"type":34,"value":87},"I hope I can. I hope I can live up to that grand introduction that you just gave me.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":89,"children":90},{},[91],{"type":34,"value":92},"Kerry Guard  2:46  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":94,"children":95},{},[96],{"type":34,"value":97},"Well, honestly, I just do a big intro because I got to give people time to like get into the comments and come hang out with us. So, hopefully you're all here now for the real juicy bit where we're going to spill all of the tea. All right, real quick, Scott, for anyone meeting you for the first time, where are you now? What Wasserman Revenue Advisors does, and what the AI fix is. Sure, then I want to get right into the talk that you brought today.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":99,"children":100},{},[101],{"type":34,"value":102},"Scott Wasserman  3:12  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":104,"children":105},{},[106],{"type":34,"value":107},"Sure, I mean, what is.. let's see.. where do I start? I started. well, I was consulting many for several years, back from around 20 2016 to 2020 no, I'm sorry, 2008 to 2016 and it was basically when digital marketing first kind of was really rearing itself, and you could start seeing metrics for what they are, as opposed to tracking phone numbers, you know, old school marketing, and I sold the company that I owned, bought or built this new consulting company, not really knowing what I was doing, and you know, worked with all the content that HubSpot was putting out, because they were putting out so much training material as far as how to be a quote unquote inbound marketer, and I just loved it, and I love what, yeah, and I love working with, with all these new, different, different people. I would bring in agencies to help me do the things that I could not do, as a company brought me in within a month and a half of doing this. Somebody said, \"Hey, Scott, I got a referral for you, and I said, \"Okay, great, who is this? And they said, \"It, this is, you know, the company Foster Grant, the sunglasses, and I'm like, yeah, and they said, well, the VP wants to VP, and marketing wants to meet you out of the blue. Now, coincidentally, I was living in Rhode Island, in the northeast part, right outside of, right outside of Massachusetts, outside of Boston, and they happen to be, that's where their headquarters are, and I went in there, and the guy said to me, \" You know, do you? Okay, listen, here's the deal. We have three big sub brands, we're not just Foster Grant, we got these big time, you know, money makers, you know, they sponsor NASCAR, they do this, they do this. We need three websites, we, you know, can you do it? I'm not going to say no, I just didn't know how to do it. It, so I like, what do I do now? So, as the assistant literally just goes out, comes back, and hands me a check, that was it. And, yeah, I mean, okay, I'm like, this is a cool world, they like this. And I just reached out to a couple of friends of mine, and they referred me to a couple of agencies that wound up being able to do all the heavy lifting for me, and build the sides and do what I had to do, and start working on back in the day, which was like SEO and all that, all that other crazy stuff. So that's what I did for many years, and then I wanted to go back to an internal company, a company I was referred to as a consultant. They asked me to come on full-time, and I did that, and it was a blast. We, it was a total, totally away from everything I always did. This was a total bc. It was a company called Poseidon Expeditions. I'll give a little plug. It's a, it's a Arctic, Antarctic, almost expedition to the North Pole, South Pole, well, North Pole, Arctic, Antarctic, you know, all those different countries. West, I was in. They sent me to West Greenland on an expedition. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":109,"children":110},{},[111],{"type":34,"value":112},"Kerry Guard  6:11  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":114,"children":115},{},[116],{"type":34,"value":117},"Actually, though, did you see penguins? I gotta ask, of course.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":119,"children":120},{},[121],{"type":34,"value":122},"Scott Wasserman  6:13  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":124,"children":125},{},[126],{"type":34,"value":127},"I saw penguins.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":129,"children":130},{},[131],{"type":34,"value":132},"Kerry Guard  6:15  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":134,"children":135},{},[136],{"type":34,"value":137},"Laura, you saw penguins.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":139,"children":140},{},[141],{"type":34,"value":142},"Scott Wasserman  6:16  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":144,"children":145},{},[146],{"type":34,"value":147},"I saw penguins. I did not. I never made the trip down to the Antarctic, but I learned a lot about penguins. I saw a video, yeah, penguins are penguins are fun, but actually it's funny, and I was not to get up totally off topic, like we always do, but that more recent thing, over the past month or so, or two months ago, when there was a ship-borne illness that people were freaking out about, and the ship that they kept calling it a ship and a cruise ship that people were getting sick from rats, and this and that. You remember all that stuff that was happening a few months ago. Well, they were actually an expedition company, not this one, I'm not going to name that, but a different one, and people didn't really like this. Is not a cruise ship; this is an expedition ship. We're talking not 5000 people on a ship, we're talking usually about 150 people on a ship, much, much smaller. So that was driving me nuts for a while, but anyway, it was an expedition thing. Went up there, saw the, saw the, what's whatchamacallit Aurora Borealis, and you know, you know, took those, took those little figure out the names of this stuff, those little black boats to shore from the ships, like they have when you watch like SEAL Team movies and stuff, those little black quiet boats, I hear what they're called, anyway, I know I'm going off on a tangent, but I was in, like, I said, around Boston, wound up moving down south, and you know, I basically stuck to getting back into more B2B, more tech, more SaaS, and I started working with smaller companies, working there internally, whether it be as a director of demand gen, or whether it be as a director of marketing, whatever, but as you know, with many small companies and many small startups, whether they be bootstrapped or whether they be PE backed, or you know, they get heavy funding, they don't always make it, you know, for whatever reason, they don't, they don't always make it, and you know, marketing, I've always said is you marketing is in many cases a lot, a lot of companies consider it a luxury. They may not admit that, but they consider it a luxury. They may be, maybe they start their business right. It is, and you know it's sad because everyone always knows they need sales, but the sales come from marketing. People don't buy the hard way. Used to, we all do. We all do. People don't buy the way they used to. They don't sit there, you know, when you're making, you know, sales people making cold call after cold call after cold email, and follow up, and all these things, trying to find that needle in a haystack, whereas marketing, if the job is done right, that they bring in those high intent leads, and you know, we've talked about this. I know we talked about this last minute. I'm sure we did about things like MQLs that really have just been watered down over the years, and people, you know, a company saying to the marketing team, \" Why aren't your MQLs high? And you know, when you get what they consider to be what they consider to be an MQL, they'll say, \"Well, just let the sales team call them. We need to get some things going. That's not how it works. And people don't buy like that. They buy in a new way. They, 87% of all C-level and VPs, exec levels will do research on what they're looking for before they even decide what company they're going to go with, and that kind of brings me back to your point about, and I'm not sure if this is what we talked about before we went live here, buyers do not buy the way they used to, you know, they do all their research, and like I said, getting back to your point, we were talking about AI and talking about how people like search in all.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":149,"children":150},{},[151],{"type":34,"value":152},"Scott Wasserman  9:59  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":154,"children":155},{},[156],{"type":34,"value":157},"These large models, Chat GPT, Claude, whatever, and they, that's where they do their lot of their search now, very, very common, very simple, and some people don't know how to use the prompts necessarily, but you can just ask the most simplest thing, I mean, I look at, you know, I use, I use Chat GPT for my everyday fun stuff, you know, just every day, you know, we have this, this, and this in the fridge, we need to, we're trying to find something to make. Give me a couple of recipes, and that's great. And I use Claude for all my heavy lifting, you know, and do everything else on that. Yeah, it's.. I just found it much better. I made that switch about six months ago, after being on ChatGPT for years. But you had mentioned how, you know, let's say you get a large company, you know, big, big, big, big, you know, they're, you know, all over the place, very well funded. They have everything; they offer so many different things. And then you have a smaller startup company, and maybe doing something similar, and in many cases, that smaller company will wind up beating them out as far as being found. That's what my research is showing.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":159,"children":160},{},[161],{"type":34,"value":162},"Kerry Guard  11:01  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":164,"children":165},{},[166],{"type":34,"value":167},"I'm doing a big research project. I look forward to sharing it with everybody shortly, but yeah, that's what I did. When I looked at cybersecurity specifically, I looked at six categories, and I wanted to know. My thesis was, is enterprise going to beat out the startups because they naturally have a huge, massive digital footprint that the scale-ups now need to go create, and funny enough, it's actually the opposite. Enterprise is their branded search is falling off a cliff, they're not getting mentioned as much, and the startups and the scale ups are are coming in with guns blazing, because they not only are building a digital footprint, but they're building like a targeted digital footprint, and they're doing it with a very specific message around the exact problem they solve with language that the buyers can pick up and use that ties it back to the brand, like abnormal AI created behavioral security, right? Things behavioral, or behavioral AI, it's something like that. But because they have this word \"behavioral\" in front of it, which has never been used before in the industry, people immediately understood what it meant, and now they're using it, and so they're actually like up and coming. So it's very interesting to, like, see that shift and be proven wrong. I was so sure that we were going to be in trouble trying to like go up against these guys, these enterprises, and that is not the case. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":169,"children":170},{},[171],{"type":34,"value":172},"Scott Wasserman  12:31  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":174,"children":175},{},[176],{"type":34,"value":177},"I don’t think so at all. I mean, I actually think that again it goes back to that bureaucracy, big, you have to get so many things done to do something within a big company, whereas smaller companies that are more streamlined, that can, you know, just spin on a dime, just, you know, make changes as they need to make changes, and are willing to try, they're willing to try new things, they're willing to fail, it's not like they've been there for 100 years, they want to know what's going to work and what's not going to work, and they're going to go after the best and the brightest, and I'm not downing big, large companies by any means, but that's just, you know, sometimes the more people you get into a pot, the more people you get to deal with, whereas, yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":179,"children":180},{},[181],{"type":34,"value":182},"Kerry Guard  13:15  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":184,"children":185},{},[186],{"type":34,"value":187},"Yeah, the other challenge is that as you build up your feature set, and as you solve more problems, you're now not solving any problems, you're, you're, you don't have any clear messaging that, like, why you're different and why you're better. It's actually why, like, a challenge we have as an agency, there are so many agencies out there, and pipelines become table stakes, you no longer can talk about, oh, we deliver pipeline, you better deliver pipeline, right? So it's like, why you, and you really have to do that deep work, and I think enterprises are now sort of coming to the realization that they have to get back to basics and get back to that work of like, what problem do they really solve for customers, and more importantly, why are they different? Why are they better, and why should people pick them? And they haven't done that work in so long.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":189,"children":190},{},[191],{"type":34,"value":192},"Speaker 1  14:10  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":194,"children":195},{},[196],{"type":34,"value":197},"Yes,",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":199,"children":200},{},[201],{"type":34,"value":202},"Kerry Guard  14:11  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":204,"children":205},{},[206],{"type":34,"value":207},"that they're out behind the curve. It's, it's, yeah, it's really interesting how, how this is sort of shifted.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":209,"children":210},{},[211],{"type":34,"value":212},"Scott Wasserman  14:20  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":214,"children":215},{},[216],{"type":34,"value":217},"But also, things go in cycles, you know, and this is a very common thing that we've all seen in the past. So, let's go back to, I don't know, the 90s hypothetical. I'm just going to give you an example. IBM was called Big Blue; nothing could touch it, you know, nothing could touch it. Well, as other companies started to come in and take away some of their market, as other companies would do things differently, they really stuck to that button-up. This is who we are. We are IBM, you know. And all of a sudden, IBM was losing and losing big and losing shares, and things were changing. Dramatically, they have all of a sudden to realize, what do we do? How do we keep up? How do we make these changes? But when you have these smaller companies that are easy to pivot and easy to move and easy to just get around these larger companies, it's the same thing. It's just different technology. It's just different technology, that's all it is. And it's a matter of just trying to stay acclimated and stay up to date, you know, when it gets back to marketing, a lot of marketers, especially at these larger companies, you know, they go in there because it's safe, they go in there because, you know, they can do what they know, they can do what they are expected, what's expected of them, but they're not always willing to make waves, they're not, they're a corporate person, yeah, exactly. They deal with the political, you know, the political nature behind a company, whereas they're not willing to stand up and say, you know, something, this may have worked a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, but it's not going to work today. And then having to have that conversation over and over and over again.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":219,"children":220},{},[221],{"type":34,"value":222},"Kerry Guard  16:01  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":224,"children":225},{},[226],{"type":34,"value":227},"Managing up as a, as you know, within your marketing team, and then as like the CMO to the board and to the founder, like that is a, that is a muscle and a skill that is just absolutely something you have to have when you're in that seat, especially now.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":229,"children":230},{},[231],{"type":34,"value":232},"Scott Wasserman  16:18  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":234,"children":235},{},[236],{"type":34,"value":237},"It's a skill I never had, it's, I guess you can call it patience, lack of, but I think you know, I'll tell you why. I think it's where I started. I was never ever.. I didn't start off like, oh, let me start off with this big company out of college. Well, I did. I was working for finance, American Express Financial directly out of college for a very short period of time, and it wasn't like I was working for the corporate end, I was working for a very small subsect, financial planning, which was originally called IDS, before it was changed to American Express Financial, and they bought it out, and but it was still a larger company, and just finance wasn't for me, that was like probably the biggest thing I ever did, and I'm sure you remember from our conversation my next jump from there, because I was losing my hair very, very young, was to, well, at least people in the States, the Hair Club for Men, you know? I wound up becoming a Hair Club client because I was losing my hair very young. It really worked amazingly. This is back around, I'm going to date myself, back around 9293, and you know, I was bringing some people to see me, and we were talking, and I brought friends in, and they said, \"Hey, would you be willing to work here? My father always had a breakdown when he said, \"Man, you were working for me, I sent you to school, you're working for American Express, and now you're going to go work for the hair club, are you kidding me? You know, but what I'm getting at is that I was always in a position working for a franchisee who owns several offices, working with a very small type of company, where you know we had an owner that people knew of. I'm not only the hair club president, but also a client size, Berlin. May he rest in peace. He's, you know, passed away several years ago. Um, great guy, that these were.. we were like a family. It was a smaller thing, but we had no problem opening up to each other, and we used to get into battles, you know, and discussions, and... but it was all like devil's advocate stuff. It was like, you know, we'd always kiss and make up.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":239,"children":240},{},[241],{"type":34,"value":242},"Kerry Guard  18:16  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":244,"children":245},{},[246],{"type":34,"value":247},"Important.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":249,"children":250},{},[251],{"type":34,"value":252},"Scott Wasserman  18:17  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":254,"children":255},{},[256],{"type":34,"value":257},"Yeah, and this is how we grew the business, and even Sai said, you know, I can't grow this anymore.\" And the funny thing was, it was when he finally decided to sell that it was a big change for the company. You know, it wasn't the same, and it was different. And I'm not saying, saying it hasn't finally, you know, grown and thrived over the years. It certainly has, after several owners beyond that. But, you know, this is the kind of company I was with all the time, and when I sold, I bought that franchise, sold it nine years later, and I wound up doing the independent consulting, like I mentioned, the digital marketing that was still working for myself, and then I wound up working with some smaller companies, I only wound up within one large bureaucracy years later, for no more than six months, it just wasn't for me. It was not for me at all. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":259,"children":260},{},[261],{"type":34,"value":262},"Kerry Guard  19:08  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":264,"children":265},{},[266],{"type":34,"value":267},"I think that's.. I do think it takes a certain person. I'm in the same boat. I can work with clients, and I've figured out how to build those relationships and plant those seeds, and then, you know, from founder to founder, I think helps as well, that is, but I am managing up, so to speak, in educating them on how marketing works, and I've built a lot of trust there to be able to do it, but yes, when you have that pressure of being within a big conglomerate and you got lots of teams under you and you're then trying to convince the board of X Y and Z, especially in the changing.. we just had a client who's enterprise years ago. Their board showed up and was like, \"We want to be number one for all of these terms, go bid on them, so that we're number one. And like, the cost of that is insane. Yes, right. Like my point is, there has to be somebody in that seat. It takes a certain special person to be able to push back and to say this is why, and it takes time to build up that trust. But going back to something you said earlier.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":269,"children":270},{},[271],{"type":34,"value":272},"Scott Wasserman  20:10  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":274,"children":275},{},[276],{"type":34,"value":277},"Yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":279,"children":280},{},[281],{"type":34,"value":282},"Kerry Guard  20:12  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":284,"children":285},{},[286],{"type":34,"value":287},"Regarding you, you sort of bought into the inbound HubSpot way of doing things.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":289,"children":290},{},[291],{"type":34,"value":292},"Scott Wasserman  20:22  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":294,"children":295},{},[296],{"type":34,"value":297},"Yes.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":299,"children":300},{},[301],{"type":34,"value":302},"Kerry Guard  20:24  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":304,"children":305},{},[306],{"type":34,"value":307},"It feels like because we were just talking about the MQL and gated content and all these other things, and you know, our previous conversation we had, we talked about this too, but it feels like that you've moved away from that. When was that moment for you where, like, sort of the just forgive the analogy, but that's sort of come to Jesus, like, oh, this is not what I thought it was, this isn't working anymore, if it ever worked. Where was sort of that moment for you when you said this.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":309,"children":310},{},[311],{"type":34,"value":312},"Scott Wasserman  20:57  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":314,"children":315},{},[316],{"type":34,"value":317},"Is when you said this is what I thought it was, meaning the type of work we were doing as inbound at the time.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":319,"children":320},{},[321],{"type":34,"value":322},"Kerry Guard  21:05  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":324,"children":325},{},[326],{"type":34,"value":327},"So I have the opinion, yeah. And you're gonna just maybe you're gonna disagree with me, which is gonna be great, because that's what makes this show so awesome. I love it when people disagree with me, but I'm of the opinion, and hindsight is 2020, right? Looking back on it, for sure, yes, but I have, I sort of have this feeling that inbound and lead gen and this chasing the lead sort of mentality, the MQL sort of broke marketing, and we're kind of like now in this bed that we have to lie in that we made and figure out how to fix it, and the fix is not some silver bullet that's going to show up and allow us to just, you know, flip the covers over, like this is a big brand build initiative that we have to get back to, and I'm just curious, where you feel like that shift happened, and you agree with me that that that is the case.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":329,"children":330},{},[331],{"type":34,"value":332},"Scott Wasserman  22:01  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":334,"children":335},{},[336],{"type":34,"value":337},"Yes, and I actually do agree with you more than you probably think. No, it's just true. You know, several years ago, I was working with a company, part of the demand generation team. It was for health, health tech stuff that we did, and you know, I was brought up, let's say, brought up, meaning from my days of, you know, HubSpot, I was, I was a reseller for HubSpot, I did a lot of early training with them, I did a lot of beta testing for their CRM when they were kind of breaking off with Salesforce at the time, and I, you know, would you know, MQLs were a thing, it made sense. It's like, okay, let's set up a scoring system, and let's say HubSpot, and you know, if they have this touch, this touch, this touch, they're going to get this point, this point, this point, and you know, when they hit a certain level, that's when, okay, boom, it's now an MQL, they show they're showing enough intent, let's toss them over the wall to sales, and let's see what they can do to get them to an SQL. Okay, made sense. It's, it's, you know, seems like common sense. Unfortunately, companies relied, especially people that don't understand marketing, rely on this term MQL, that this is a marketing qualified lead, and that marketing qualified lead sometimes turned into, wow, he downloaded an ebook last night, you know, that's what we used to do, top of the funnel, you know, let's put on an ebook on a paid ad, and you know, free download, ebook, yada yada yada, you know, and okay, and they do, and that was just supposed to be an initial boom, again, top of the funnel, the first touch, that was the idea behind it, and now you can open them up to email marketing. You can open up to a lot of different things, retargeting, and so on, so forth. So you could do all these things to just.. and the goal, what was.. what was the goal? Get them back to your website, show them the new blogs that you're putting out, put links, internal links in those blogs, so that you keep them on your website. Why? Because it will help with SEO. The more people who see your page, the more people who are on your page, the higher your rankings will be. At least that's what we were told, and that worked for a while, but over time, the buying structure changed. Google is no longer the only search engine out there, and I'm not talking about in comparison to, you know, Microsoft, or anything like that. I'm talking about using, and let's even talk about before Chat GPT, which, you know, basically just, you know, comes to search engines, but I'm talking about things such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a search engine, you know, TikTok is a search engine, Instagram is a search engine, YouTube is absolutely... they were all certain. There's a ton of them, and you know, they all have their own algorithms. You can go down any rabbit hole you want on them. You'll get stuck in a lot of these rabbit holes you can't get out of, such as me with cooking and stuff like that. Our foods and... and things that I start looking up. And, of course, once I got into a quad thing for a while now, it's all I see. They already have a million cloud prompts that they think they're going to change the world, you know, it's just a different rabbit hole. But my point is that people buy differently now. They're not just relying on Google; they're not relying on, okay, let's get to the first page of Google. Great, that's the goal. We're on the first page. Why? Because back in the day, we used to say, because over 90% of people don't click over to a second page, they see what's on the first page. So, initially, it was ads on the right-hand side of the screen, organic on the left-hand side of the screen, and that was it. Then they started putting ads at the top of the screen, so now it's pushing down what was the original, quote unquote, you know, top 10 on that first page. So then that happened.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":339,"children":340},{},[341],{"type":34,"value":342},"Scott Wasserman  25:40  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":344,"children":345},{},[346],{"type":34,"value":347},"Now we're moving to a point where Gemini is taking over what happens on the initial search when you go on Google, so getting on the first page doesn't even matter anymore. It really doesn't matter. I mean, yes, you can if you know how to click out of the Gemini thing, you can start to see more old school stuff, but that's not what it is, and that's not where people are always looking, you know. They used to come to your website and read your blogs, but now, if you're like, if your bounce rate is lower than 90%, you're doing well, you know. For a blog, you know, to get somebody seeing a blog, you know, was it launched? Should we do long, long blogs, or short blogs? I mean, I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure to many in the audience here, but you know that's not what it's all about. It's putting that content in all different places, and not just in written content, in video, through podcasts, such as this, snippets of podcasts, you know. Then you get into the whole dark social thing, where you can't even see what's going on behind the scenes, but let's say you make your post, or I make a post, and you get a couple people that you know make comments in that post, and then maybe they like somebody likes a comment that somebody else made, and they reach out to them on the side. You can't track that. You have no idea how you're going to track that. So it goes back to that Gartner study, and I've mentioned it before, and before, and before, where you get people that you know, like I said, C-level and VPs that will do, I think it was like 87% of them will do their research before they even come close to a company, and the ones that are out there, like that, we talked about the smaller startups that are really out there, and they're all over, you know, all over the place, and they're found in AI, much bigger than larger than the big ones. They're going to sit there, and you know, somebody will eventually get to your website and hit that demo, or hit that request this, or request that.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":349,"children":350},{},[351],{"type":34,"value":352},"Kerry Guard  27:36  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":354,"children":355},{},[356],{"type":34,"value":357},"Front center.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":359,"children":360},{},[361],{"type":34,"value":362},"Scott Wasserman  27:37  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":364,"children":365},{},[366],{"type":34,"value":367},"Yeah, and say, I see you everywhere, I see you everywhere, and I know what I want, and I've.. and you don't know they've been discussing this in Slack channel, they've been discussing this in groups, they've been discussing this privately. Maybe they got on a call themselves, you know. How do you feel about this? Where do you feel about this? Have you heard of anybody? It almost goes back to, again, a full cycle prior to even the internet. You know, let's say you know you wanted a restaurant recommendation, you know, you asked your friend, you know, have you gone to a restaurant? Now a person will tell you one, a person will tell you one, \"Oh, I had a great experience at this restaurant, and you may go, but if they say, \"Oh, I had this worst experience at this restaurant, now not only will you not go, you're going to tell five friends, \" Don't go.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":369,"children":370},{},[371],{"type":34,"value":372},"Kerry Guard  28:21  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":374,"children":375},{},[376],{"type":34,"value":377},"It's true.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":379,"children":380},{},[381],{"type":34,"value":382},"Scott Wasserman  28:22  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":384,"children":385},{},[386],{"type":34,"value":387},"You know. It's the negativity of it, but we're back in a cycle now because this whole concept of dark social and not knowing where people are actually talking about you or how they learned about you, which gets back to putting a question on the form when they do go ahead and get to your site and ask, How did you find us?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":389,"children":390},{},[391],{"type":34,"value":392},"Kerry Guard  28:42  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":394,"children":395},{},[396],{"type":34,"value":397},"You find us.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":399,"children":400},{},[401],{"type":34,"value":402},"Scott Wasserman  28:43  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":404,"children":405},{},[406],{"type":34,"value":407},"Yeah, you know, and old school, so you almost have, like, have to have, like, a manual attribution model, where it would say, you know, oh, you know, you know, YouTube or Insta, or, you know, TikTok, or LinkedIn, or whatever, you know, that's what they found you, they're not going to sit there and look at your website, is like, wow, that's a very good website, and they put up so much information just on your website, you know. No, they're still gonna, they might, they might see a couple pieces of content on there, but that's not going to be their final decision, it's going to be from whatever all the information they got from everybody else. So, when they get to you, they're basically high intent, 80% done, and, as I've always said, I'd rather, I'd rather get 20 solid high intent leads a week, and I'm just throwing that number out there, as opposed to 100 leads a week that maybe just hit that demo button for whatever reason, you know?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":409,"children":410},{},[411],{"type":34,"value":412},"Kerry Guard  29:36  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":414,"children":415},{},[416],{"type":34,"value":277},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":418,"children":419},{},[420],{"type":34,"value":421},"Scott Wasserman  29:38  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":423,"children":424},{},[425],{"type":34,"value":426},"That's it. Yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":428,"children":429},{},[430],{"type":34,"value":431},"Kerry Guard  29:38  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":433,"children":434},{},[435],{"type":34,"value":436},"I mean, back, I mean, before with getting a download, right, you wanted as many downloads as you could get, because to your point, then it became all that nurturing, but now we sort of, this is where I think HubSpot, and the, and the inbound sort of notion broke, was not just in how buyers research, but in how they engage, they don't want it anymore. They're afraid to give us their email address because they know what's straight behind it, in terms of the onslaught of emails, nurture sequences, and newsletters, like they protect that with their life now. So, if they're giving it to you, it's because they are serious about potentially working with you. I actually had a prospect today. I made the short list. I was like, so excited, right, because when you know your marketing's work, like, you did a thing, like your own marketing as an agency is doing a thing, and somebody shows up and fills in that form. I have to add that field, by the way, I keep meaning to. I have no idea. I sort of figured out how she found us. I knew I was connected to somebody who had been on my podcast five years ago. I see her in my feed all the time. I'm always engaging with her content. I know she gets our newsletter, so I know that our marketing for the last five years has been hanging out with this person, and now that they're ready to engage with an agency, we made the short list, and so she filled in the form. We had this great conversation this morning, but it's like you just have to create this consistency now of building that trust up, because they're not this woman, she filled in the form, we sent her an email that said wonderful, we're looking forward to meeting you, book a meeting, she couldn't book a meeting because she's in Australia and we're in the US, so she actually emailed us, and I was like, she's serious, like she really wants to work with us, right? It's those intense signals of like when you really work, when you really hit somebody with your message, and you really make that connection, like that's that's where we need to get to, and I just feel like we've broken so much trust over the years with buyers, because of how this sort of marketing system, this gamification sort of happened, and now we are where we are. Let's get back to the AI search of it all.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":438,"children":439},{},[440],{"type":34,"value":441},"Scott Wasserman  31:51  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":443,"children":444},{},[445],{"type":34,"value":277},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":447,"children":448},{},[449],{"type":34,"value":450},"Kerry Guard  31:52  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":452,"children":453},{},[454],{"type":34,"value":455},"And talk about, and dark social is sort of an indicator of this, too. We have to measure this differently, right?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":457,"children":458},{},[459],{"type":34,"value":460},"Scott Wasserman  32:00  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":462,"children":463},{},[464],{"type":34,"value":465},"Yep.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":467,"children":468},{},[469],{"type":34,"value":470},"Kerry Guard  32:00  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":472,"children":473},{},[474],{"type":34,"value":475},"So it's the lead, the leading indicators have changed. It's not the MQL, it's not the click-through rate, it's not even sessions on a website, although your conversion rate is something you should definitely be checking out. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":477,"children":478},{},[479],{"type":34,"value":480},"Scott Wasserman  32:14  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":482,"children":483},{},[484],{"type":34,"value":485},"See, of course.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":487,"children":488},{},[489],{"type":34,"value":490},"Kerry Guard  32:14  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":492,"children":493},{},[494],{"type":34,"value":495},"If that's actually gone up, fewer sessions but better conversions. To your point, so in your opinion, Scott, now what you know, we have that form fill, which I think is great. We need to all get that on our website. What other leading indicators should we really be measuring to know that, like, we're doing all of this activity, we're trying to show up as many places as possible now, and build that digital footprint? Is any of it working? How do we know? ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":497,"children":498},{},[499],{"type":34,"value":500},"Scott Wasserman  32:39  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":502,"children":503},{},[504],{"type":34,"value":505},"I think the best way to know if something is working or not is to ask them, is to ask that potential client, is to put that out there when you're putting your content out there, asking them what kind of content they want to read about, you know, these are things that I've kind of drifted away from, because I kind of get down these little rabbit holes of things that I love to, you know, really preach about, get on my soapbox about whatever, but you know, finding out what they want to learn about and finding out what they need to see, that is the way, again, like we said, people buy differently than they used to buy, you know, it's those days of, you know, like I mentioned, I worked in that, in that health tech company. You know, you get that lead just because the guy couldn't sleep at two in the morning and decided to download an ebook, and you know, just was interested, and he gets a phone call the next day, within, as they said, has to be within 24 hours. You know, I mean, that to me is off-putting. You know, it's, it's very off-putting, that all of a sudden it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I just wanted to see something, you know, and it's like now this salesperson is going down this, you know, let's find a needle in the haystack kind of thing. So, how do you find out? Well, you know, you have to find out, first of all, where your audience sits. Well, they're not sitting on your website, you know, they're sitting in different places, they're as I mentioned, you know. How did you find us? You know, are we focusing too much on, you know, reels on Insta? Are we focusing too much, and I'm talking organic, are we focusing too much on there are so many different things, you know, focusing on just one thing too much, but finding out. Okay, put together this manual attribution model that says, okay, we're getting a lot of responses that people are seeing our live podcasts on YouTube, you know, that's where they're seeing us, or they're seeing us on LinkedIn, but nobody ever checks off TikTok, and nobody ever checks off Instagram. Okay, so well, we can put our stuff on there, but let's not focus too much on it, you know. Let's focus more on the other things, and that I think is just engaging in creative conversation with different people in different audiences, and at the same time understanding that you just, you don't. Put out things that you're trying to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. You're putting out information that they can use, you know, for free. And people sometimes are afraid to do that. They think they're giving away the store, and I'm like, \"No, you're not giving away the store. If you're putting out content after content after content about what they can do and how they can do it, and this is what they should be doing, and this is, you know, the stuff they should try. Then, you know, people are going to listen, and they'll look at you as an expert, and then they say, you know, something. If they're putting out this kind of stuff for free, I wonder what they'll put out if I pay them, you know. So, I think that's probably the best way to do it it's not new, it's not new at all, but I mean, how many times do you get in mails or cold emails that give you a plethora list of, you know, everything that they do and what they've done, and all their examples, and all their use cases, and links to their calendars, and do you want to chat? Do you? I don't know who you are. Who are you sending this information to? I have no idea, you know. And then I go to look for you.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":507,"children":508},{},[509],{"type":34,"value":510},"Kerry Guard  36:10  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":512,"children":513},{},[514],{"type":34,"value":515},"I always start off with, like, trying to connect with you, of how they saw this case study, or they read the, yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":517,"children":518},{},[519],{"type":34,"value":520},"Scott Wasserman  36:17  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":522,"children":523},{},[524],{"type":34,"value":525},"yeah, yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":527,"children":528},{},[529],{"type":34,"value":530},"Kerry Guard  36:18  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":532,"children":533},{},[534],{"type":34,"value":535},"Feels so forced.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":537,"children":538},{},[539],{"type":34,"value":540},"Scott Wasserman  36:20  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":542,"children":543},{},[544],{"type":34,"value":545},"Yeah. And when I reach out, it's more, you know, I, I saw you here, I love, you know, I love that you commented on this, you know, love to chat with you, and just learn, not, no, no, and I always, I always tell it when I sit there and write it, I say, you know, you know, no, what's the wording I always use, you know, nothing, like there's nothing, I have, no, what's that?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":547,"children":548},{},[549],{"type":34,"value":550},"Kerry Guard  36:42  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":552,"children":553},{},[554],{"type":34,"value":555},"Not pitching.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":557,"children":558},{},[559],{"type":34,"value":560},"Scott Wasserman  36:43  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":562,"children":563},{},[564],{"type":34,"value":565},"Yeah, it's.. I'm not trying to pitch anything, it's not.. I just want to learn more about what you're doing, how you're doing it, you know. Because I saw that it was a great post, you know, that's it. I mean, LinkedIn is great in so many ways, but one of the downfalls I think of LinkedIn, this goes back to the beginning, was that it was just.. just like, you know, it was just hooking up with anybody you can meet, you know, anybody that friend that try to connect with you, connect with, you know, and I connect with them. How many times has somebody come to you and said, \" You know, geez, Kerry, I see you know so and so, can you give me an introduction? You know, I know them, but just from connecting with them 10 years ago, I don't necessarily know who they are. Yeah, I'm happy to let them know, I guess you know. But now you're introducing someone you don't know to someone you don't know. Yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":567,"children":568},{},[569],{"type":34,"value":570},"Kerry Guard  37:30  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":572,"children":573},{},[574],{"type":34,"value":575},"Yeah, I only try and do it for when, yeah, people are for people I know.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":577,"children":578},{},[579],{"type":34,"value":580},"Kerry Guard  37:36  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":582,"children":583},{},[584],{"type":34,"value":585},"who've been on the podcast or have some sort of connection with, and they're looking for a job, even if I don't really have a good relationship with the person I'm connecting them to, I always try to follow that through, because, man, job hunting, right now, that's a whole other podcast.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":587,"children":588},{},[589],{"type":34,"value":590},"Scott Wasserman  37:50  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":592,"children":593},{},[594],{"type":34,"value":595},"Well, that's a whole other story for people, absolutely, which is part of the reason I got back in. I started this up again, that was the exact reason I started up, because I was tired of being as much as I love working internally in startups, and I love working internally with small teams, you know, you're at the whim of the company, you know, and I was working with a company, as an example, that, you know, when I got there, there were, you know, like 15 marketers, a year later they were down to eight, you know, there were some issues. I was asked to kind of take over something that had to do with what should have been under customer success, but that customer success person had left, and I found out that we had customers who were just mostly miserable. They were, they were not happy, so as much as we might have been getting customers in the front door, they were walking out the back at the same time, and that's where Rev Ops, that's where things need to be fixed, and they don't, they say, \"Whoa, but we're not getting any new business. Well, maybe because we don't have any good business behind it, you know, meaning customers that are so happy that they're willing to be, you know, a, you know, an ambassador for the company, in a sense, you know, I mean, they, I found a few that were very, very happy, and that's great, but that's where companies say, oh, well, we got to cut back on marketing now, because marketing isn't doing their job well, but yeah, as a company, we have to do this whole thing together, it's, we're not, we should not be living in silos at a company, you know, marketing does this, sales does this, customer success does this, you know, we have to be able to put it all together and find out what's working and what's not. I was with this larger company briefly, and you know, I was running this whole, these major ABM campaigns from these multi million dollar contracts, I kind of came in at the very end of it, this more one to one reach out, and I would get messages from my, you know, from sales teams in Japan and other, some other places that I was working with, and they would say, \"Yeah, stop, stop with the message, stop the messaging to them, stop the messaging to them. I'm like, \"Why? I said that. A customer, they're already a client of ours, and they said, \"Well, because it was our new product, and he said, \"He said, 'Yeah, but the problem is they have a lot of issues, and they're really not very happy right now. So, you kind of want to stay away from that, and I ran into that so often, and you know that's just not cool. You know, I mean, I'm sorry, it's not cool if you have unhappy clients and unhappy customers. Sorry, you're not going to make it.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":597,"children":598},{},[599],{"type":34,"value":600},"Kerry Guard  40:30  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":602,"children":603},{},[604],{"type":34,"value":605},"That's one of the problems with how enterprises are functioning right now, and why they're also not showing up in AI: what their customers are saying about them, not always very good, is not aligned to what they're saying about themselves, and so because there's not that alignment, they're not getting recommended or mentioned, and so yes, you have to have fundamentally at your core, you have to have happy customers who are out there talking about your differentiators, and why you, because that's not going to align. So, man, people could get away with not having custom happy customers, maybe before, but they definitely need them. You need them now. If you are having a problem internally with your customers and your communication, and them not, you know, loving your product, definitely start there. Oh my gosh.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":607,"children":608},{},[609],{"type":34,"value":610},"Scott Wasserman  41:22  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":612,"children":613},{},[614],{"type":34,"value":615},"Because you know, what's interesting is that it's to your point exactly. You know, just as it's so easy now, let's say a customer is so upset, or they're upset about something, or they're just, they were asked a question. Let's say they were on a Reddit or this or something else, and made comments. Well, guess what? AI is going to pull from everywhere, and I have seen, like, when I sit there and say, well, you know, I might go into, you know, can you give me a quick background about this company, what people are saying about them, this and that. Well, you will see the positive, and you will see the negative. It's it puts it on, it pulls it off, it's so it's not even a matter of",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":617,"children":618},{},[619],{"type":34,"value":620},"Kerry Guard  42:01  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":622,"children":623},{},[624],{"type":34,"value":625},"Talk about",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":627,"children":628},{},[629],{"type":34,"value":630},"Scott Wasserman  42:02  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":632,"children":633},{},[634],{"type":34,"value":635},"Exactly, and that's the point.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":637,"children":638},{},[639],{"type":34,"value":640},"Kerry Guard  42:05  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":642,"children":643},{},[644],{"type":34,"value":645},"Yeah,",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":647,"children":648},{},[649],{"type":34,"value":650},"Scott Wasserman  42:05  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":652,"children":653},{},[654],{"type":34,"value":655},"And you nailed it. I mean, negative is so much easier, exactly. It's the same thing. People, well, I mean, come on, Yelp went through lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit about that, because you gave, you know, consumers so much power by sitting there saying, you know, oh, my bagel was bad the other morning, I'm taking you down, you know, kind of thing, or right? They went through a whole thing years ago about that. There were lawsuits involved, you know, regarding that. So I don't even look at any, and you know something, I used to, I, it's funny, I switched over to, you know, I always look at reviews. I love to look at reviews. Living is a quick example. Living in the South, you know, there are a couple of things that us northerners miss. It's Pete's good pizza, good bagels, and, sorry, good Chinese food too. You know, it's one thing that we miss, and you know you're always looking and trying to find, and you know what's out there and what's happening. Well, you know, I kind of, I tend to stay away from Yelp, and I started working more on Google reviews, and looking at those, but then I started realizing, especially since I was a part of it, because I was helping a company, you know, work on their brand, utilizing reviews, is that, and I'm sure you've gotten these, we've all gotten these, you go to go somewhere, could be a kerry, you know, your chiropractor could be the dentist, could be anybody, and they sit there and say, 'Hey, you know, did you like what you did? Would you be willing to give us a review on Google? They give you a link, boom, you do it, done. And I'm happy to do it in many cases, I really am. And I've actually, I've never given, I think, a bad review. I've just not given a review if it's bad, but this is how they get their five-star reviews. It's not because somebody's being, you know, somebody - if somebody's mad, oh, they'll get on there, and they'll knock the, don't knock the crap out of you, you know, without any, without anybody asking them to. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":657,"children":658},{},[659],{"type":34,"value":660},"Kerry Guard  43:52  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":662,"children":663},{},[664],{"type":34,"value":665},"But yeah, they'll sometimes vote on the wrong profile, not even for us.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":667,"children":668},{},[669],{"type":34,"value":670},"Scott Wasserman  43:56  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":672,"children":673},{},[674],{"type":34,"value":675},"And sometimes it'll get pulled down because, you know.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":677,"children":678},{},[679],{"type":34,"value":680},"Kerry Guard  43:58  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":682,"children":683},{},[684],{"type":34,"value":685},"I can't get it. I can't get Google to take it down. Like, this has nothing to do with us, right? I even emailed the guy, I was like, \"Could you please take this down? But he doesn't know how, and he's in Ireland. He's, I think, in Ireland, but he ended up in the US. It was anyway. So now, now.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":687,"children":688},{},[689],{"type":34,"value":690},"Scott Wasserman  44:14  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":692,"children":693},{},[694],{"type":34,"value":695},"Oh, we have 505-star reviews. Well, that's because you asked 500 people who were, or actually probably 5000 people, to get those 500 that they were happy to please review, which is nice, but unfortunately, I think it skews it a lot. It's not independent, you know, and that's true. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":697,"children":698},{},[699],{"type":34,"value":700},"Kerry Guard  44:32  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":702,"children":703},{},[704],{"type":34,"value":705},"You do like, well, even the G2 reviews aren't necessarily independent, right? Because the same thing, client, yeah, it's the same thing, so I, but you do need the reviews. Absolutely, I'm not saying initially now we're even thinking internally of like how we ask our customers who've been, you know, okay, you've been with us for three months, how's it going? Would you mind giving us a Google review if you've been with us for years? It's like, would you mind giving us a clutch review? Yeah. I mean, having a review system is imperative now, because again, you need that corroboration between what you think about you as a brand and what your customers are saying, so if it's skewed, it just needs to be part of the system exactly.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":707,"children":708},{},[709],{"type":34,"value":710},"Scott Wasserman  45:19  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":712,"children":713},{},[714],{"type":34,"value":715},"And one thing I mean, one thing I do love is that when I look at reviews, I do look at reviews, especially for restaurants. I'm a foodie, we love to go out, you know. I want to see, okay, what people are saying, and you know, I want to see the good and the bad, but I also take everything with a grain of salt, you know, meaning if you see, because what does everybody focus on? You know, you see all these great five star reviews, then you see a couple, two or three star reviews, and there may be a one star review in there, and they just get slammed, and you know, a lot of people look at those, go, oh, they're going to take the power of those three over the other ones, you know, I mean, you know, some people are just miserable, some people just will never, you'll never make happy, no matter what. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":717,"children":718},{},[719],{"type":34,"value":720},"Kerry Guard  45:59  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":722,"children":723},{},[724],{"type":34,"value":725},"Looking at the date, like, you know, looking if, like, it was 10 years ago, it's the other way around, where all the good reviews are like from months ago, but then the bad reviews start showing up, and they're newer, right? So you definitely need to be, like, critical about how you read them, but AI's... I don't know that AI is taking all that into consideration, so having a good review system is definitely key. What is Scott? We've talked to, we've kind of danced around a lot of ideas in terms of showing up in AI. We've planted a lot of seeds in terms of foundation reviews being one of them, consistent messaging being another. We talked about some tactics, but out of all the things we've talked about, if somebody were leaving this podcast right now, they only needed to go do one thing to start building that digital footprint for a B2B tech business. What would you, where would you recommend they start?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":727,"children":728},{},[729],{"type":34,"value":730},"Scott Wasserman  46:53  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":732,"children":733},{},[734],{"type":34,"value":735},"I'd recommend they start putting out content everywhere, and I'm not just talking written content, I'm talking taking content that you've written, I'm talking, doing videos, podcasts, such as this, guest podcasting, getting yourself into groups and chat groups, whether it be on Slack or different mediums, where you can sit there and talk to people you know that look up those messages, look at what people are saying when you post something, respond to them, you know. If they don't like what you say, if they disagree with what you say, don't get into a battle with them, but just make it, you know, get into a discussion with them. Maybe it's offline, maybe it's offline. It'll help teach you what you should put out, what you shouldn't put out. But all this stuff, if it's in the public domain, even though it may be on a private site, it will start to be pulled out. It will start to be extracted. People will start to share it, and once it's shared, it will start to make its way into this whole vernacular of AI. You know, it will happen, but the idea is you have to really keep your ear to the ground and see what's happening, and listen to what people are saying, and respect what people are saying, and be willing to make those changes, and ask them questions, and ask them what they would like, and what they would prefer. It's really engaging that audience, you know, engaging with them, not saying, \"this is what I am selling you, it's right here, do you want it or not? \" You know, it's like, \"no, what are you looking at? ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":737,"children":738},{},[739],{"type":34,"value":740},"Kerry Guard  48:18  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":742,"children":743},{},[744],{"type":34,"value":745},"Started a podcast, right?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":747,"children":748},{},[749],{"type":34,"value":750},"Scott Wasserman  48:20  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":752,"children":753},{},[754],{"type":34,"value":755},"Yeah, you know, and that's why I love being, you know, a guest on a podcast. You know, what I listen to, what I say isn't the all-end-all be-all by any means. I don't think anybody has that end-all be-all. My process has always been that I'm not afraid to try new things, I'm not afraid to test new things, I'm unafraid to, you know, I embrace AI, but I don't. I'm not owned by AI, you know. I love it. I work with it. Yes. Do I write content with it? Absolutely. I'm not going to send people to say, \" Oh, it's not AI. You know something you can write if you prepare and you know what you're doing, where you can actually create an article that is all you, because you have built this thing up that it knows exactly what your thing is. I mean, I've plugged in my, you know, my emails, how I write and how I talk, what I say, and what my thought process is, so it knows me. Do I still review it? Absolutely. The problem is, there's something now, a term which, frankly, I didn't hear about until just a few months ago, called AI slop, you know, where people are just saying, oh, well, now I can post on LinkedIn 345, times a week, and they put up the stuff, and it's so obvious, you know, that I mean, I have gotten stuff emailed to me, email marketing stuff, you know, that just, what did you do? Just pull the whole thing from my LinkedIn page, is that what you did? You just pulled my LinkedIn page, plugged it in, and said, write them an email, you know, because this is obvious, you know, I mean, there's the telltale signs, of course, the em dashes and all that stuff, but I'm just talking about the personality and the content of it, you know.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":757,"children":758},{},[759],{"type":34,"value":760},"Kerry Guard  49:51  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":762,"children":763},{},[764],{"type":34,"value":765},"You can feel the tone of a total of where it's been well written, even with the even if it was the help with AI versus when it's here. Uh, AI, it's, but I love what you're saying, and I think it's so important, and I'm, I've been sort of shouting it from the mountaintops, even though we don't necessarily help with positioning and messaging, I have wonderful partners like yourself and some other people and some other fractional marketing leaders who do this, because it's just where you all like, where we all need to get back to basics. Even if you're an enterprise, you need to redefine your positioning and messaging in the new era of AI search. And I love what you're saying about listening.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":767,"children":768},{},[769],{"type":34,"value":770},"Scott Wasserman  50:32  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":772,"children":773},{},[774],{"type":34,"value":277},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":776,"children":777},{},[778],{"type":34,"value":779},"Kerry Guard  50:33  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":781,"children":782},{},[783],{"type":34,"value":784},"If you can first.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":786,"children":787},{},[788],{"type":34,"value":789},"Scott Wasserman  50:35  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":791,"children":792},{},[793],{"type":34,"value":794},"yeah.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":796,"children":797},{},[798],{"type":34,"value":799},"Kerry Guard  50:36  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":801,"children":802},{},[803],{"type":34,"value":804},"Oh, if you can listen first to your audience and really hear what they're saying, like, I, you know, the world is shifting underneath our feet. I'm literally writing a book about how to build the marketing systems from the ground up, and what you need to do it, and the unsexy foundation stuff that just needs to get done to allow you to build on something strong that can compound right, and the position, the listening piece, and the positioning and messaging is really that first step that everybody skips because they want to get into market and they want to just start spending money for whatever reason, and then none of it works, and they don't know why, and, man, yeah, listening to your audience and really understanding what the problem is, and what, and what you saw, everybody's talking about, they're not talking about a, they're not talking about AEO, they're not talking about geo, they're not even talking about SEO, now it's AI search, that is what people are talking about, right now, I had to pivot all my messaging to match the markets, like what you were talking about before. I'm a small, small business, I can pivot on a dime, and I sure as hell am to meet the market and hear what they're talking about, how they're talking about it, and it's yeah, you have to listen. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":806,"children":807},{},[808],{"type":34,"value":809},"Scott Wasserman  51:57  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":811,"children":812},{},[813],{"type":34,"value":814},"Yeah, listening is what it always is. As we interrupt each other, I interrupt you all the time. Listening is what it's all about. Yeah, you have to listen to what people are looking for, what people want. You can't just shove it down their throat and say, \" This is what we have to offer. Do you like it or not? And this is how we do business. Do you like it or not? You have to be willing to take care of these people. I mean, you know, customers are valuable, and your existing customers are even more valuable if you're not taking your existing customers. Forget about upselling them or cross-selling them, or whatever you do as a company. They're not going to be happy, and if they're not happy, trust me, they're going to tell their friends, you know, they're going to tell people they know. Do not do business with this company. Everybody has relationships with different people in the same industry, just to different companies, do not do business with this company. You know, why would you want that? You know, you want to be an ambassador for the company. You want people, you want your customers to say, \"Yeah, I love this company. You want them to be willing to do a video testimonial for you. You want them to be willing to come on a podcast with you. You know, hey, we have this person, this person, you know. Yes, we chose some of our customers, but they're the first people we want to, because, you know, they seem very happy. So we're not paying them for this. This is, they're happy, you know. Yeah, and that's what they bring you along.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":816,"children":817},{},[818],{"type":34,"value":819},"Kerry Guard  53:13  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":821,"children":822},{},[823],{"type":34,"value":824},"and they bring you along with them. They bring you along, yeah. That is, that has been our story, which has been the most amazing 15 years of just working with some amazing people who love what we do, leave the next company, and continuously bring us along. I just, that is what it's all about. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":826,"children":827},{},[828],{"type":34,"value":829},"Scott Wasserman  53:30  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":831,"children":832},{},[833],{"type":34,"value":834},"Yeah, I love that. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":836,"children":837},{},[838],{"type":34,"value":839},"Kerry Guard  53:31  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":841,"children":842},{},[843],{"type":34,"value":844},"One last question for you, where can people find you, follow along, and engage with your content and what you're doing?",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":846,"children":847},{},[848],{"type":34,"value":849},"Scott Wasserman  53:38  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":851,"children":852},{},[853],{"type":34,"value":854},"The best place is always LinkedIn, it's under Scott Wasserman on LinkedIn. I actually finally put up a website. Yes, you did. I did. Thank you, Claude. It's Wasserman revenue.com. It'll give you some basics. It also talks about something called the AI Fix, which I just kind of came up with out of a whim, but just because I used to see I was seeing these things and seeing what people were going through, and knowing what I've gone through over the years, as far as how to deal with, you know, the day to day stuff that AI can actually take away or take off their plate, in a sense, and they can focus on the things that need to get done, and I started doing that just as an additional thing, not just for B Texas asks, but for anybody that is overwhelmed with their day to day, you know, these emails that I have to send back, or these, you know, email follow-ups, content they never get to explain the same things over and over and over, and you know, admin scheduling, all that stuff, social media customers, you know, questions, customer support, you know, and they wind up doing this stuff like, you know, Sunday night or Friday night, because they just had no time during the week. I found a way to actually set up a system where one-shot deals, they, you know, come in, give me their biggest issues, we talked for a few minutes, I put the whole thing together for them, but all the promos. Together for them, show you how, show them how to use them, and it's done. And if it works, and it has, and the few, you know, this is fairly new, but the few people I've worked with on this love it have been so happy that it just saved them time. It saves them time, you know, which is kind of cool. When I, you know, I've always been in the business of helping people, whether it be through sales, like I said, I was part of the hair club. Look, what it did for me, not now, but look what it did for me. You know, and you know how it can make you feel, how it can make you look, all that stuff. Going forward in marketing, and I was, you know, I was a marketing major. Going forward in marketing, where you know what a marketer's job is, especially in demand generation. A marketer's job is to generate demand, a salesperson's job is to make sales, the sales team happy, you know, you make the sales team happy, everybody's happy, so you know, I guess it's called my people pleaser thing, I don't know, you know.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":856,"children":857},{},[858],{"type":34,"value":859},"Kerry Guard  55:52  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":861,"children":862},{},[863],{"type":34,"value":864},"No, I love it, I love it, and so head on over, check it out, if you have anything that you're constantly executing on time and time again, that probably could be automated. Hit up Scott, and he'll help you streamline that asap. The time is now. Make it happen, Scott. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for coming back on.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":866,"children":867},{},[868],{"type":34,"value":869},"Scott Wasserman  56:12  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":871,"children":872},{},[873],{"type":34,"value":874},"Kerry. Thanks for the invite, that was fun. Always fun, always fun, always fun.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":876,"children":877},{},[878],{"type":34,"value":879},"Kerry Guard  56:16  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":881,"children":882},{},[883],{"type":34,"value":884},"All right.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":886,"children":887},{},[888],{"type":34,"value":889},"Kerry Guard  56:17  ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":891,"children":892},{},[893],{"type":34,"value":894},"Yes, as you mentioned, you can find Scott Wasserman on LinkedIn and on his website. Go connect, especially if you're a founder or operator who needs a marketing leader who measures in pipeline, not activity. If there's one thing to take away with you, stop treating your ranking as the scorecard. Actually, I'm not going to read this, because we totally went off topic. And if there's one thing that you always do, this conversation, I know, but that's the beauty of it. I love it. There's one thing you need to take away from this: to listen to your customers, take care of your customers, and build a relationship with them, because they are your foundation and your fuel, and they will help you build up that marketing engine from the ground up, and take care of you along the way, while you do it. So be sure to, you know, go look internally and see where there's some opportunity that could be. It could be huge. It could be huge. I love this, and I haven't talked about this yet, so that's amazing. That's just, ah, amazing. This episode is brought to you by MKG Marketing. Dan hired us once, then took us to five companies. Every agency promises pipeline. Now that's just the floor. What you can't find is an agency that gets you, your category, your buyers, the way you work. That's the one that gets rehired. But thanks for being here. And we will catch you next time.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":897},2,[898,899],{"id":31,"depth":896,"text":35},{"id":44,"depth":896,"text":47},"markdown","content:podcasts:marketing-leaders:scott-wasserman-on-why-ai-search-rewards-trust-not-rankings.md","content","podcasts/marketing-leaders/scott-wasserman-on-why-ai-search-rewards-trust-not-rankings.md","podcasts/marketing-leaders/scott-wasserman-on-why-ai-search-rewards-trust-not-rankings","md",[907,1355,1756,2121,2521],{"_path":908,"_dir":909,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":910,"description":911,"date":912,"img":913,"imgAlt":914,"body":915,"_type":900,"_id":1351,"_source":902,"_file":1352,"_stem":1353,"_extension":905,"category":909,"minutes":1354},"/blog/seo/stop-writing-content-at-midnight-and-how-to-scale-past-yourself","seo","Stop Writing Content at Midnight (and How to Scale Past Yourself)","The Series B playbook for breaking the founder bottleneck, killing random acts of marketing, and scaling the pipeline.","2026-07-29T18:07:00.000Z","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/12e04d67-1482-4534-a48a-30010c97f41c-stop-writing-content-at-midnight-hero-image.webp","Stop Writing content at midnight",{"type":25,"children":916,"toc":1345},[917,922,927,940,945,957,965,971,976,981,986,991,1026,1031,1037,1042,1054,1073,1080,1096,1101,1106,1111,1129,1134,1149,1154,1159,1164,1171,1177,1190,1209,1314,1319,1325,1330,1335,1340],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":918,"children":919},{},[920],{"type":34,"value":921},"You are sitting at your desk, and it is 12:42 AM. The rest of your house is completely dark. The only illumination comes from the harsh blue glow of your laptop screen, where a half-finished LinkedIn post and a messy content brief are staring back at you. Your eyes are bloodshot, your third cup of coffee from earlier today has long since turned into a hollow pit in your stomach, and you are trying to remember how you ended up here.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":923,"children":924},{},[925],{"type":34,"value":926},"You are a Series B founder. You have raised millions of dollars. You have a product that customers love, an engineering team shipping code daily, and a board that expects you to double ARR over the next twelve months. Yet, instead of steering the ship, setting strategic partnerships, or closing enterprise deals, you are spending your midnights editing paragraphs, fixing broken formatting, and playing the role of a junior copywriter.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":928,"children":929},{},[930,932,938],{"type":34,"value":931},"This is the reality of the ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":934,"children":935},"strong",{},[936],{"type":34,"value":937},"founder bottleneck",{"type":34,"value":939},", and it’s a desert where you cannot function.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":941,"children":942},{},[943],{"type":34,"value":944},"Every single week, you are losing 15 to 20 hours to pure marketing chaos. You are acting as the human router between a disjointed network of freelancers: a writer who doesn’t understand your technical product, an SEO specialist who just dumps keyword spreadsheets into your inbox, and a graphic designer who takes four days to fix a font color. You are trapped in an exhausting cycle of constant review, micro-management, and point-solution firefighting, all to combat a terrifying trend: your organic traffic is dropping, and your pipeline is flattening out.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":946,"children":947},{},[948,950,955],{"type":34,"value":949},"You didn't build a high-growth SaaS company to become a stressed-out project manager for outsourced contractors. It’s time to stop committing ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":951,"children":952},{},[953],{"type":34,"value":954},"random acts of marketing (RAM)",{"type":34,"value":956}," at midnight and build a growth engine that runs entirely without you.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":958,"children":959},{},[960],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":962,"children":964},"img",{"alt":7,"src":963},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/45d6c10a-63c3-4a08-8b3d-bb83d71944c2-stop-writing-content-at-midnight-image-1.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":966,"children":968},{"id":967},"the-chaos-trap-why-point-solutions-are-killing-your-growth",[969],{"type":34,"value":970},"The Chaos Trap: Why Point-Solutions Are Killing Your Growth",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":972,"children":973},{},[974],{"type":34,"value":975},"When you first raised your Series B round, the mandate was simple: scale the pipeline. To achieve that, you likely followed the traditional digital marketing playbook. You hired a few niche freelancers, brought on a boutique agency for paid ads, and tasked yourself with overseeing the output.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":977,"children":978},{},[979],{"type":34,"value":980},"It seemed efficient on paper. In practice, it created a highly fragmented system that demands your constant attention to survive. Niche agencies and freelancers operate in isolation; your SEO vendor doesn't talk to your content writer, and your content writer has no idea what your paid media team is testing.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":982,"children":983},{},[984],{"type":34,"value":985},"Because there is no unified strategy or shared operational framework, the responsibility of connecting the dots falls entirely on your shoulders. You become the central node. Nothing moves unless you review it, approve it, or fix it.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":987,"children":988},{},[989],{"type":34,"value":990},"This fragmentation results in three critical failure points for a Series B organization:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":993,"children":994},"ul",{},[995,1006,1016],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":997,"children":998},"li",{},[999,1004],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1000,"children":1001},{},[1002],{"type":34,"value":1003},"The Velocity Crisis:",{"type":34,"value":1005}," Because you are managing independent contractors, a single piece of content takes three weeks to move from ideation to publication. By the time it goes live, the market window has shifted.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1007,"children":1008},{},[1009,1014],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1010,"children":1011},{},[1012],{"type":34,"value":1013},"Vanity Metric Overload:",{"type":34,"value":1015}," Your point-solution vendors will always defend their specific silo. The SEO agency points to rising impressions, the copywriter points to word count, but neither can tell you how many qualified opportunities entered your CRM this month.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1017,"children":1018},{},[1019,1024],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1020,"children":1021},{},[1022],{"type":34,"value":1023},"Strategic Disconnect:",{"type":34,"value":1025}," Freelancers write for search engine algorithms or generic audiences—they do not write for your buyers. Without deep product context, the content feels shallow, failing to capture the strategic narrative required to win enterprise deals.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1027,"children":1028},{},[1029],{"type":34,"value":1030},"This operational drag represents a massive hidden cost. When you spend 20 hours a week acting as a tactical traffic cop, you are not doing the high-leverage work that your board actually measured you on. You are sacrificing strategic growth to keep a broken execution model on life support.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1032,"children":1034},{"id":1033},"moving-beyond-chaos-to-a-systemized-pipeline",[1035],{"type":34,"value":1036},"Moving Beyond Chaos to a Systemized Pipeline",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1038,"children":1039},{},[1040],{"type":34,"value":1041},"To break free from this operational quicksand, your organization must transition away from disjointed point-solutions and embrace a unified framework. You do not need more freelancers to manage; you need an integrated execution model that converts your strategic vision into a pipeline without demanding your personal time.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1043,"children":1044},{},[1045,1047,1052],{"type":34,"value":1046},"This is where the shift to a ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1048,"children":1049},{},[1050],{"type":34,"value":1051},"systemized pipeline",{"type":34,"value":1053}," occurs. Instead of treating marketing as a series of isolated creative projects, it must be run as an integrated product engine.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1055,"children":1056},{},[1057,1059,1064,1066,1071],{"type":34,"value":1058},"A systemized growth engine relies on two foundational pillars: ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1060,"children":1061},{},[1062],{"type":34,"value":1063},"operational control",{"type":34,"value":1065}," and ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1067,"children":1068},{},[1069],{"type":34,"value":1070},"financial predictability",{"type":34,"value":1072},". When these two elements are integrated into your growth strategy, the need for midnight editing vanishes.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1074,"children":1075},{},[1076],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":1077,"children":1079},{"alt":7,"src":1078},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/119a49bb-e39d-4d4f-a6d0-983ddb424358-stop-writing-content-at-midnight-image-2.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1081,"children":1082},{},[1083],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1084,"children":1085},{},[1086],{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1088,"children":1090},"h3",{"id":1089},"achieving-true-operational-control",[1091],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1092,"children":1093},{},[1094],{"type":34,"value":1095},"Achieving True Operational Control",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1097,"children":1098},{},[1099],{"type":34,"value":1100},"The primary reason founders get pulled into tactical execution is a lack of visibility. When marketing operates inside a black box of messy email threads, scattered Slack channels, and fragmented Google Docs, you naturally micro-manage because you cannot see what is happening until it is either late or broken.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1102,"children":1103},{},[1104],{"type":34,"value":1105},"True operational control means replacing communication chaos with absolute transparency. By consolidating all marketing execution into a single, centralized platform—such as fully optimized Asana sprint boards—you gain immediate clarity.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1107,"children":1108},{},[1109],{"type":34,"value":1110},"At any moment, you can look at a single dashboard and see exactly:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1112,"children":1113},{},[1114,1119,1124],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1115,"children":1116},{},[1117],{"type":34,"value":1118},"What strategic initiatives are currently in production.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1120,"children":1121},{},[1122],{"type":34,"value":1123},"Who owns the next step of execution (design, copy, technical implementation).",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1125,"children":1126},{},[1127],{"type":34,"value":1128},"The precise launch date for every campaign, asset, and distribution channel.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1130,"children":1131},{},[1132],{"type":34,"value":1133},"When production workflows are systematized, you no longer need to check in on people. You don't have to send \"Is this ready yet?\" Slack messages at 10:00 PM. The system provides the visibility, allowing you to step out of the project manager role and step back into the visionary role.",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1135,"children":1136},{},[1137],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1138,"children":1139},{},[1140],{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1141,"children":1143},{"id":1142},"eliminating-fees-with-transparent-published-pricing",[1144],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1145,"children":1146},{},[1147],{"type":34,"value":1148},"Eliminating Fees With Transparent, Published Pricing",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1150,"children":1151},{},[1152],{"type":34,"value":1153},"The second major friction point in scaling a marketing engine is financial unpredictability. Traditional agency models are intentionally opaque. They hide behind complex retainers, unpredictable hourly billing, and sudden scope-change fees that require constant negotiation.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1155,"children":1156},{},[1157],{"type":34,"value":1158},"Every time you want to pivot strategy, launch a new experiment, or spin up an extra campaign, you are forced to review a new statement of work (SOW) or argue over out-of-scope costs. This introduces massive procurement delays and wastes precious executive energy.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1160,"children":1161},{},[1162],{"type":34,"value":1163},"A modern growth engine eliminates this friction through fully transparent, published pricing models. When your execution partner operates on flat, predictable rates with clearly defined monthly deliverables, budgeting becomes simple. You know exactly what you are spending, precisely what you are getting, and you never have to waste time auditing a confusing invoice from an agency partner.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1165,"children":1166},{},[1167],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":1168,"children":1170},{"alt":7,"src":1169},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/4ecef925-47b0-4868-996d-e40f7f3d2f79-stop-writing-content-at-midnight-image-3.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1172,"children":1174},{"id":1173},"the-execution-playbook-shifting-from-thinker-to-reviewer",[1175],{"type":34,"value":1176},"The Execution Playbook: Shifting From Thinker to Reviewer",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1178,"children":1179},{},[1180,1182,1188],{"type":34,"value":1181},"Building a self-running growth engine does not mean you abandon marketing entirely. Your strategic insights as a founder are incredibly valuable; you understand the market, the product, and the customer better than anyone else. The goal is to change ",{"type":28,"tag":1183,"props":1184,"children":1185},"em",{},[1186],{"type":34,"value":1187},"how",{"type":34,"value":1189}," your insights are extracted and executed.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1191,"children":1192},{},[1193,1195,1200,1202,1207],{"type":34,"value":1194},"You must transition from being the ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1196,"children":1197},{},[1198],{"type":34,"value":1199},"primary creator",{"type":34,"value":1201}," to the ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1203,"children":1204},{},[1205],{"type":34,"value":1206},"strategic reviewer",{"type":34,"value":1208},". Here is how an integrated execution model restructures your workflow to give you your time back:",{"type":28,"tag":1210,"props":1211,"children":1212},"table",{},[1213,1237],{"type":28,"tag":1214,"props":1215,"children":1216},"thead",{},[1217],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1219,"children":1220},"tr",{},[1221,1227,1232],{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1223,"children":1224},"th",{},[1225],{"type":34,"value":1226},"Workflow Phase",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1228,"children":1229},{},[1230],{"type":34,"value":1231},"The Legacy Way (Founder as Creator)",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1233,"children":1234},{},[1235],{"type":34,"value":1236},"The Systemized Way (Founder as Reviewer)",{"type":28,"tag":1238,"props":1239,"children":1240},"tbody",{},[1241,1260,1278,1296],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1242,"children":1243},{},[1244,1250,1255],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1246,"children":1247},"td",{},[1248],{"type":34,"value":1249},"Ideation & Strategy",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1251,"children":1252},{},[1253],{"type":34,"value":1254},"Founder spends hours researching keywords and drafting outlines from scratch.",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1256,"children":1257},{},[1258],{"type":34,"value":1259},"Founder records a 10-minute Loom brief outlining core strategic concepts.",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1261,"children":1262},{},[1263,1268,1273],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1264,"children":1265},{},[1266],{"type":34,"value":1267},"Production & Layout",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1269,"children":1270},{},[1271],{"type":34,"value":1272},"Founder routes drafts between isolated freelance writers and graphic designers.",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1274,"children":1275},{},[1276],{"type":34,"value":1277},"Integrated partner handles research, writing, design, and technical setup natively.",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1279,"children":1280},{},[1281,1286,1291],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1282,"children":1283},{},[1284],{"type":34,"value":1285},"Quality Control",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1287,"children":1288},{},[1289],{"type":34,"value":1290},"Founder spends midnights rewriting poor copy and fixing formatting errors.",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1292,"children":1293},{},[1294],{"type":34,"value":1295},"Founder reviews a polished, near-final asset inside an Asana sprint board for approval.",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1297,"children":1298},{},[1299,1304,1309],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1300,"children":1301},{},[1302],{"type":34,"value":1303},"Analytics & Reporting",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1305,"children":1306},{},[1307],{"type":34,"value":1308},"Founder logs into multiple dashboards trying to connect traffic to revenue.",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1310,"children":1311},{},[1312],{"type":34,"value":1313},"Integrated partner delivers a single dashboard showing direct pipeline velocity impact.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1315,"children":1316},{},[1317],{"type":34,"value":1318},"By shifting your input to the very beginning of the loop (sharing your unique domain expertise) and the very end of the loop (final sign-off), you cut your time investment down from 20 hours a week to less than two. The entire middle phase, the heavy lifting of research, drafting, designing, and optimizing, is handled by an integrated execution system designed to scale.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1320,"children":1322},{"id":1321},"reclaiming-your-executive-leverage",[1323],{"type":34,"value":1324},"Reclaiming Your Executive Leverage",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1326,"children":1327},{},[1328],{"type":34,"value":1329},"Every hour you spend editing a blog post, tweaking a landing page headline, or tracking down an unresponsive freelancer is an hour stolen from the strategic growth of your company.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1331,"children":1332},{},[1333],{"type":34,"value":1334},"At the Series B stage, your board is not evaluating your performance based on how many articles you published or how many keyword metrics went up. They are looking at capital efficiency, scalable customer acquisition, and ARR growth.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1336,"children":1337},{},[1338],{"type":34,"value":1339},"When you break the founder bottleneck and replace random acts of marketing with a systematized pipeline, you aren't just cleaning up your marketing operations. You are reclaiming your executive leverage. You are giving yourself the operational freedom to focus on fundraising, culture, enterprise sales, and product innovation, the high-leverage work that actually moves the valuation needle.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1341,"children":1342},{},[1343],{"type":34,"value":1344},"Leave the midnight writing sessions behind. Build a systemized growth engine that operationalizes your marketing, gives you absolute visibility, and scales your pipeline predictably month after month.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":1346},[1347,1348,1349,1350],{"id":967,"depth":896,"text":970},{"id":1033,"depth":896,"text":1036},{"id":1173,"depth":896,"text":1176},{"id":1321,"depth":896,"text":1324},"content:blog:seo:stop-writing-content-at-midnight-and-how-to-scale-past-yourself.md","blog/seo/stop-writing-content-at-midnight-and-how-to-scale-past-yourself.md","blog/seo/stop-writing-content-at-midnight-and-how-to-scale-past-yourself",7,{"_path":1356,"_dir":909,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":1357,"description":1358,"date":1359,"img":1360,"imgAlt":1361,"body":1362,"_type":900,"_id":1752,"_source":902,"_file":1753,"_stem":1754,"_extension":905,"category":909,"minutes":1755},"/blog/seo/beyond-last-click-the-board-ready-svo-dashboard","Beyond Last-Click - The Board-Ready SVO Dashboard","When search engines stop sending traffic, your pipeline reporting must evolve to measure true market influence.","2026-07-15T16:22:26.797Z","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/59ea0764-d440-4526-95b2-ebad4d4b1e78-mkg-blog-beyond-last-click-hero-image.webp","Beyond Last-Click ",{"type":25,"children":1363,"toc":1738},[1364,1369,1374,1379,1384,1389,1395,1400,1406,1411,1416,1421,1428,1434,1453,1458,1557,1563,1575,1580,1586,1591,1603,1610,1616,1621,1640,1646,1651,1656,1662,1667,1675,1687,1710,1715,1722,1728,1733],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1365,"children":1366},{},[1367],{"type":34,"value":1368},"Your board meeting is just two weeks away. The calendar invite is glaring back at you, and the agenda leaves no room to hide: defend your post-Series B marketing investment, prove incremental pipeline ROI over the next two quarters, and confirm that your current customer acquisition cost (CAC) trajectory is sustainable.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1370,"children":1371},{},[1372],{"type":34,"value":1373},"To get ready, you open your go-to web analytics platform. You expect to see the usual straight line between search rankings, site clicks, and inbound demo requests. Instead, you’re confronted with a disturbing trend.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1375,"children":1376},{},[1377],{"type":34,"value":1378},"Your top-of-funnel SEO platform insists you’re winning. Your priority keywords are ranking better than ever. Yet your site’s organic referral traffic is steadily declining week over week. Buyers are searching for the exact problems your SaaS product solves, but they’re getting complete, synthesized answers directly on the search results page. They scan AI-generated summaries, get what they need, and move on, without ever clicking a single link to your site.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1380,"children":1381},{},[1382],{"type":34,"value":1383},"You’re stuck in a measurement crisis. The attribution models digital marketers have depended on for more than twenty years, last-click tracking, multi-touch UTM parameters, and cookie-based sessions, are collapsing. When buyers research inside conversational interfaces, they eventually appear in your funnel as “Direct” traffic or self-reported “word of mouth,” often weeks after their true first touch.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1385,"children":1386},{},[1387],{"type":34,"value":1388},"Walk into the boardroom armed only with legacy traffic reports, trying to rationalize why stellar rankings coincide with shrinking website visits, and you’ll look like a marketer clinging to vanity metrics. To defend your budget and assert clear strategic authority, you need to adopt a modern measurement framework, one that captures how your brand builds influence without clicks and translates that influence into an airtight financial business case for your Chief Financial Officer (CFO).",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1390,"children":1392},{"id":1391},"the-core-deficit-how-generative-engines-break-the-click-based-funnel",[1393],{"type":34,"value":1394},"The Core Deficit: How Generative Engines Break the Click-Based Funnel",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1396,"children":1397},{},[1398],{"type":34,"value":1399},"The structural breakdown in marketing measurement is a direct consequence of how search engines have redesigned their user experience. Large language models and AI search applications have introduced a friction-free research layer between your brand’s content and your prospects.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1401,"children":1403},{"id":1402},"the-interception-of-educational-search",[1404],{"type":34,"value":1405},"The Interception of Educational Search",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1407,"children":1408},{},[1409],{"type":34,"value":1410},"Under the legacy search model, informational queries served as highly profitable entry points for software platforms. When a buyer searched for a framework, such as \"how to design a B2B sales commission plan\" or \"enterprise API rate-limiting best practices,\" they were directed to an optimized blog post. That visit placed a tracking cookie, fired a retargeting pixel, and kicked off a measurable lead-nurturing journey.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1412,"children":1413},{},[1414],{"type":34,"value":1415},"Today, those same queries are resolved instantly within the search environment itself. The user’s intent is fully satisfied by an AI Overview, a Perplexity-style summary, or a ChatGPT conversation. Because they get the insight they need without ever reaching your site, this structural shift has created an Informational Query Collapse.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1417,"children":1418},{},[1419],{"type":34,"value":1420},"For modern marketers, the implication is clear: your top-of-funnel content is still training the models and powering the answers, but the traditional web-traffic feedback loop has been cut off.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1422,"children":1423},{},[1424],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":1425,"children":1427},{"alt":7,"src":1426},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/c20aa35e-dadf-47ca-8cbd-3742dfbfbc31-mkg-blog-beyond-last-click-image-1.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1429,"children":1431},{"id":1430},"the-svo-attribution-matrix-shifting-metrics-from-clicks-to-models",[1432],{"type":34,"value":1433},"The SVO Attribution Matrix: Shifting Metrics from Clicks to Models",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1435,"children":1436},{},[1437,1439,1451],{"type":34,"value":1438},"To survive this transition, you must replace click-based attribution with a ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1441,"children":1445},"a",{"href":1442,"rel":1443},"https://mkgmarketinginc.com/resources/the-ultimate-guide-to-search-visibility-optimization-svo/",[1444],"nofollow",[1446],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1447,"children":1448},{},[1449],{"type":34,"value":1450},"Search Visibility Optimization (SVO)",{"type":34,"value":1452}," reporting framework. The board does not need to see how many people visited your resource page; they need to see if your brand is the definitive answer recommended by the systems your buyers use to make purchasing decisions.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1454,"children":1455},{},[1456],{"type":34,"value":1457},"This requires tracking a completely different set of metrics that measure your active digital footprint across the entire LLM ecosystem. Consider how your reporting must pivot to remain relevant:",{"type":28,"tag":1210,"props":1459,"children":1460},{},[1461,1482],{"type":28,"tag":1214,"props":1462,"children":1463},{},[1464],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1465,"children":1466},{},[1467,1472,1477],{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1468,"children":1469},{},[1470],{"type":34,"value":1471},"Metric Category",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1473,"children":1474},{},[1475],{"type":34,"value":1476},"Legacy Attribution Model",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":1478,"children":1479},{},[1480],{"type":34,"value":1481},"SVO Attribution Framework",{"type":28,"tag":1238,"props":1483,"children":1484},{},[1485,1503,1521,1539],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1486,"children":1487},{},[1488,1493,1498],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1489,"children":1490},{},[1491],{"type":34,"value":1492},"Primary Traffic KPI",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1494,"children":1495},{},[1496],{"type":34,"value":1497},"Unique Sessions, Pageviews",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1499,"children":1500},{},[1501],{"type":34,"value":1502},"Influence Without Clicks (Off-site impressions)",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1504,"children":1505},{},[1506,1511,1516],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1507,"children":1508},{},[1509],{"type":34,"value":1510},"Market Share Metric",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1512,"children":1513},{},[1514],{"type":34,"value":1515},"Organic Keyword Share of Voice (SoV)",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1517,"children":1518},{},[1519],{"type":34,"value":1520},"Share of Model (SOM) (Citation frequency)",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1522,"children":1523},{},[1524,1529,1534],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1525,"children":1526},{},[1527],{"type":34,"value":1528},"Attribution Vector",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1530,"children":1531},{},[1532],{"type":34,"value":1533},"Last-Click UTM Parameters, First-Click Cookie",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1535,"children":1536},{},[1537],{"type":34,"value":1538},"CRM-to-Model Pipeline Association",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":1540,"children":1541},{},[1542,1547,1552],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1543,"children":1544},{},[1545],{"type":34,"value":1546},"Financial Validation",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1548,"children":1549},{},[1550],{"type":34,"value":1551},"Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Lead (CPL)",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":1553,"children":1554},{},[1555],{"type":34,"value":1556},"Pipeline Velocity, Accelerated Sales Cycles",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1558,"children":1560},{"id":1559},"_1-quantifying-share-of-model-som",[1561],{"type":34,"value":1562},"1. Quantifying Share of Model (SOM)",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1564,"children":1565},{},[1566,1568,1573],{"type":34,"value":1567},"Just as you historically measured your share of voice on traditional search result pages, you must now measure your ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1569,"children":1570},{},[1571],{"type":34,"value":1572},"Share of Model (SOM)",{"type":34,"value":1574},". This KPI tracks how frequently your SaaS platform is cited as a recommended vendor or authoritative source across dominant large language models.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1576,"children":1577},{},[1578],{"type":34,"value":1579},"If a prospect asks an LLM to \"Compare the top three enterprise compliance platforms for Series B startups,\" your SOM metric tells you whether your brand was included in that generated recommendation, how prominently it was positioned, and what specific attributes were associated with your software.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1581,"children":1583},{"id":1582},"_2-measuring-influence-without-clicks",[1584],{"type":34,"value":1585},"2. Measuring Influence Without Clicks",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1587,"children":1588},{},[1589],{"type":34,"value":1590},"Because search experiences no longer require a click, your reach must be measured through off-site trust footprints. This involves tracking your brand's presence inside curated industry databases, open-source documentation, developer communities, and trusted third-party review platforms that generative models scrape to compile their summaries.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1592,"children":1593},{},[1594,1596,1601],{"type":34,"value":1595},"When your brand is consistently integrated into these reference networks, you exert massive ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1597,"children":1598},{},[1599],{"type":34,"value":1600},"Influence Without Clicks",{"type":34,"value":1602},". Your buyers absorb your brand authority during their initial AI research phase, bypassing your website entirely until they are ready to book a direct sales call.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1604,"children":1605},{},[1606],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":1607,"children":1609},{"alt":7,"src":1608},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/9329b26b-2033-4565-8e76-8bd7d88cddec-mkg-blog-beyond-last-click-image-2.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1611,"children":1613},{"id":1612},"building-the-cfo-justification-package",[1614],{"type":34,"value":1615},"Building the CFO-Justification Package",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1617,"children":1618},{},[1619],{"type":34,"value":1620},"To defend your marketing budget, you must translate these modern off-site visibility metrics into a language your finance department respects. A CFO is inherently skeptical of abstract marketing concepts like \"brand awareness\" or \"algorithm influence.\" They want to see how these adjustments reduce customer acquisition costs and accelerate the movement of capital through the business.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1622,"children":1623},{},[1624,1626,1631,1633,1638],{"type":34,"value":1625},"Your ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1627,"children":1628},{},[1629],{"type":34,"value":1630},"CFO Justification",{"type":34,"value":1632}," package must connect your SVO strategy directly to the core metric of enterprise growth: ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1634,"children":1635},{},[1636],{"type":34,"value":1637},"Pipeline Velocity",{"type":34,"value":1639},".",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1641,"children":1643},{"id":1642},"step-1-mapping-the-offline-crm-signal-loop",[1644],{"type":34,"value":1645},"Step 1: Mapping the Offline CRM Signal Loop",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1647,"children":1648},{},[1649],{"type":34,"value":1650},"To prove that your off-site visibility is driving real pipeline, you must establish an automated data loop between your customer relationship management (CRM) system and your marketing data.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1652,"children":1653},{},[1654],{"type":34,"value":1655},"When a prospect books a demo and enters your pipeline, you can no longer rely on self-reported attribution forms or simple direct-traffic categorization. You must cross-reference their IP address, company domain, and early-stage engagement timeline with your off-site coverage. By demonstrating that accounts exposed to your high-ranking AI citations move through the funnel faster, you prove the direct pipeline impact of your off-site optimization efforts.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1657,"children":1659},{"id":1658},"step-2-calculating-pipeline-velocity-impact",[1660],{"type":34,"value":1661},"Step 2: Calculating Pipeline Velocity Impact",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1663,"children":1664},{},[1665],{"type":34,"value":1666},"Use the standard financial formula for revenue acceleration to show how your SVO efforts directly de-risk the sales cycle:",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1668,"children":1669},{},[1670],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1671,"children":1672},{},[1673],{"type":34,"value":1674},"Pipeline Velocity = (Qualified Opportunities × Average Deal Value × Win Rate) / Sales Cycle Length",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1676,"children":1677},{},[1678,1680,1685],{"type":34,"value":1679},"When you optimize your brand for LLM retrieval and citation, you are educating the buyer ",{"type":28,"tag":1183,"props":1681,"children":1682},{},[1683],{"type":34,"value":1684},"before",{"type":34,"value":1686}," they ever speak to an account executive. When a prospect enters your funnel after researching solutions through an AI engine, they are already deeply informed about your product’s capabilities and specific differentiators. This pre-educated state dramatically reduces internal sales friction, resulting in:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1688,"children":1689},{},[1690,1700],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1691,"children":1692},{},[1693,1698],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1694,"children":1695},{},[1696],{"type":34,"value":1697},"Shorter Sales Cycles:",{"type":34,"value":1699}," Buyers make decisions faster because they do not need to sit through basic introductory education.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1701,"children":1702},{},[1703,1708],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1704,"children":1705},{},[1706],{"type":34,"value":1707},"Higher Win Rates:",{"type":34,"value":1709}," Your sales team is engaging with highly qualified prospects who already understand your platform's unique value proposition.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1711,"children":1712},{},[1713],{"type":34,"value":1714},"By presenting a clear, data-backed correlation between SVO visibility and a shorter sales cycle, you give your CFO an undeniable business case: your marketing spend is directly accelerating the velocity of capital through the company.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1716,"children":1717},{},[1718],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":1719,"children":1721},{"alt":7,"src":1720},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/2689edb5-819c-489b-bca1-ea162addeb5a-mkg-blog-beyond-last-click-image-3.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1723,"children":1725},{"id":1724},"summary",[1726],{"type":34,"value":1727},"Summary",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1729,"children":1730},{},[1731],{"type":34,"value":1732},"Defending your marketing strategy to a venture-backed board in 2026 requires an immediate departure from legacy, click-reliant reporting models. When search engines transition to closed-answer ecosystems, traditional web traffic metrics decline, while actual brand influence remains highly active. AI Overviews and zero-click search behaviors are systematically intercepting your buyers during the educational research phase, causing a dramatic drop in top-of-funnel website sessions.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1734,"children":1735},{},[1736],{"type":34,"value":1737},"To protect your budget and align your team with revenue growth, you must implement a robust Search Visibility Optimization dashboard built for executive scrutiny. This shift requires three core actions: measuring your Share of Model (SOM) to track your brand’s citation frequency across leading AI platforms, quantifying your Influence Without Clicks by auditing your off-site trust footprints, and building a CFO-ready justification package that ties SVO directly to pipeline velocity improvements and reduced sales cycle lengths. Stop defending empty traffic drops. Align your metrics with financial reality, demonstrate how off-site authority drives qualified buyer intent, and transform your marketing team into a highly accountable, capital-efficient pipeline engine.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":1739},[1740,1741,1742,1747,1751],{"id":1391,"depth":896,"text":1394},{"id":1402,"depth":896,"text":1405},{"id":1430,"depth":896,"text":1433,"children":1743},[1744,1746],{"id":1559,"depth":1745,"text":1562},3,{"id":1582,"depth":1745,"text":1585},{"id":1612,"depth":896,"text":1615,"children":1748},[1749,1750],{"id":1642,"depth":1745,"text":1645},{"id":1658,"depth":1745,"text":1661},{"id":1724,"depth":896,"text":1727},"content:blog:seo:beyond-last-click-the-board-ready-svo-dashboard.md","blog/seo/beyond-last-click-the-board-ready-svo-dashboard.md","blog/seo/beyond-last-click-the-board-ready-svo-dashboard",6,{"_path":1757,"_dir":909,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":1758,"description":1759,"date":1760,"imgAlt":1761,"img":1762,"body":1763,"_type":900,"_id":2117,"_source":902,"_file":2118,"_stem":2119,"_extension":905,"category":909,"minutes":2120},"/blog/seo/search-visibility-optimization-svo-monthly-overview-june-2026","Search Visibility Optimization (SVO) Monthly Overview - June 2026","Stay updated on the June 2026 search landscape: Google’s Spam Update, AI Mode’s 1-billion-user shift, GA4 AI attribution, and the rise of zero-click journeys.","2026-07-08T17:14:21.417Z","AI search signals organized into revenue growth","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/0deef299-c7d8-4147-b9ee-16a1e12c7b61-mkg-blog-seo-industry-overview-june-2026.webp",{"type":25,"children":1764,"toc":2101},[1765,1771,1831,1837,1842,1847,1870,1876,1890,1896,1916,1922,1933,1946,1951,1957,1971,1985,1991,1997,2010,2016,2039,2045,2050,2055,2088],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1766,"children":1768},{"id":1767},"executive-summary-the-tldr",[1769],{"type":34,"value":1770},"Executive Summary (The TL;DR)",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1772,"children":1773},{},[1774,1793,1812],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1775,"children":1776},{},[1777,1782,1784,1791],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1778,"children":1779},{},[1780],{"type":34,"value":1781},"Algorithmic Consolidation:",{"type":34,"value":1783}," Google executed its ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1785,"children":1788},{"href":1786,"rel":1787},"https://www.seopress.org/newsroom/seo-news/june-2026/",[1444],[1789],{"type":34,"value":1790},"June 2026 Spam Update",{"type":34,"value":1792}," immediately after the May 2026 Core Update concluded, heavily targeting automated search manipulation, back-button hijacking, and inauthentic brand mentions.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1794,"children":1795},{},[1796,1801,1803,1810],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1797,"children":1798},{},[1799],{"type":34,"value":1800},"The 1-Billion-User Pivot:",{"type":34,"value":1802}," First-party data confirms Google’s conversational \"AI Mode\" has ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1804,"children":1807},{"href":1805,"rel":1806},"https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-us-insights/",[1444],[1808],{"type":34,"value":1809},"surpassed 1 billion monthly active users",{"type":34,"value":1811},". User behavior here is strictly non-linear, creating a closed-loop ecosystem where traditional click-through rates (CTR) collapse.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1813,"children":1814},{},[1815,1820,1822,1829],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":1816,"children":1817},{},[1818],{"type":34,"value":1819},"Standardized AI Attribution:",{"type":34,"value":1821}," Google Analytics 4 introduced a native ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1823,"children":1826},{"href":1824,"rel":1825},"https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-adds-ai-assistant-as-default-channel-group/574974/",[1444],[1827],{"type":34,"value":1828},"AI assistant channel group",{"type":34,"value":1830},", giving growth leaders measurable, unfragmented visibility into referral traffic generated by LLM engines.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1832,"children":1834},{"id":1833},"algorithm-technical-seo-updates",[1835],{"type":34,"value":1836},"Algorithm & Technical SEO Updates",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1838,"children":1839},{},[1840],{"type":34,"value":1841},"June was defined by quick, back-to-back updates designed to clear low-quality clutter from search results and crack down on sites that use automated shortcuts to fake their authority.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1843,"children":1845},{"id":1844},"june-2026-spam-update",[1846],{"type":34,"value":1790},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1848,"children":1849},{},[1850,1852,1859,1861,1868],{"type":34,"value":1851},"Google launched and completed its",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1853,"children":1856},{"href":1854,"rel":1855},"https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-begins-rolling-out-the-june-2026-spam-update/580424/",[1444],[1857],{"type":34,"value":1858}," June 2026 Spam Update",{"type":34,"value":1860}," between June 24 and June 26. Running for just over 48 hours, this global update leveraged the AI-driven SpamBrain system to suppress artificial citation footprints. According to early technical analyses, the ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1862,"children":1865},{"href":1863,"rel":1864},"https://momenticmarketing.com/google-updates/june-2026-spam-update",[1444],[1866],{"type":34,"value":1867},"update",{"type":34,"value":1869}," focused heavily on correcting \"back-button hijacking\" and sites engineering inauthentic digital PR mentions to manipulate authority metrics.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1871,"children":1873},{"id":1872},"may-2026-core-update-conclusion",[1874],{"type":34,"value":1875},"May 2026 Core Update Conclusion",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1877,"children":1878},{},[1879,1881,1888],{"type":34,"value":1880},"This rapid spam crackdown followed the",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1882,"children":1885},{"href":1883,"rel":1884},"https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history?authuser=1",[1444],[1886],{"type":34,"value":1887}," May 2026 Core Update",{"type":34,"value":1889},", which officially concluded its 12-day rollout on June 2. The consecutive sequence of these updates indicates Google is tightening its data-filtering thresholds. For Series A–C tech companies, this means programmatic or low-utility content footprints are facing accelerated volatility, directly impacting organic traffic stability and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1891,"children":1893},{"id":1892},"the-geoaeo-frontier",[1894],{"type":34,"value":1895},"The GEO/AEO Frontier",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1897,"children":1898},{},[1899,1906,1907,1914],{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1900,"children":1903},{"href":1901,"rel":1902},"https://mkgmarketinginc.com/expert-digital-marketing-services/generative-engine-optimization/",[1444],[1904],{"type":34,"value":1905},"Generative Experience Optimization (GEO)",{"type":34,"value":1065},{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1908,"children":1911},{"href":1909,"rel":1910},"https://mkgmarketinginc.com/expert-digital-marketing-services/answer-engine-optimization/",[1444],[1912],{"type":34,"value":1913},"Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)",{"type":34,"value":1915}," transitioned from theoretical concepts to practical marketing channels. New data on user behavior now confirms this shift.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1917,"children":1919},{"id":1918},"conversational-ai-scale-behavior",[1920],{"type":34,"value":1921},"Conversational AI Scale & Behavior",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1923,"children":1924},{},[1925,1931],{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1926,"children":1928},{"href":1805,"rel":1927},[1444],[1929],{"type":34,"value":1930},"Data",{"type":34,"value":1932}," released around Google’s AI Mode highlights a massive shift in user behavior:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1934,"children":1935},{},[1936,1941],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1937,"children":1938},{},[1939],{"type":34,"value":1940},"Queries in AI Mode average three times as long as traditional searches.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":1942,"children":1943},{},[1944],{"type":34,"value":1945},"Decision-stage questions starting with \"which\" rose 40%, signaling that high-intent commercial evaluation is moving into conversational interfaces.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1947,"children":1948},{},[1949],{"type":34,"value":1950},"However, the impact on organic CTR is consequential. Session analyses show that in 88% of AI Mode tasks, users accept the model's shortlist as-is. More starkly, 74% select the top-ranked recommendation, and 64% click no links at all.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1952,"children":1954},{"id":1953},"citation-bias-and-platform-updates",[1955],{"type":34,"value":1956},"Citation Bias and Platform Updates",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1958,"children":1959},{},[1960,1962,1969],{"type":34,"value":1961},"A June data study published on ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1963,"children":1966},{"href":1964,"rel":1965},"https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-cite-self-serving-listicles-recommend-competitors-480573",[1444],[1967],{"type":34,"value":1968},"Search Engine Land",{"type":34,"value":1970}," revealed that while Google's AI Overviews heavily cite listicles and comparison matrices, the engine recommends a brand's direct competitors 69% of the time within those summaries. This highlights a structural bias toward third-party aggregators, earned media, and affiliate domains over a brand’s owned web assets.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":1972,"children":1973},{},[1974,1976,1983],{"type":34,"value":1975},"Concurrently, alternative engines are upgrading their enterprise analytics. Perplexity rolled out its ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":1977,"children":1980},{"href":1978,"rel":1979},"https://releasebot.io/updates/perplexity-ai",[1444],[1981],{"type":34,"value":1982},"\"Deep Research in Computer\"",{"type":34,"value":1984}," infrastructure alongside a new Computer Analytics API, enabling B2B enterprises to pull model query data directly into internal reporting stacks such as Snowflake or Hex.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":1986,"children":1988},{"id":1987},"strategic-implications-for-leaders",[1989],{"type":34,"value":1990},"Strategic Implications for Leaders",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":1992,"children":1994},{"id":1993},"what-to-ignore",[1995],{"type":34,"value":1996},"What to Ignore",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":1998,"children":1999},{},[2000],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2001,"children":2002},{},[2003,2008],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2004,"children":2005},{},[2006],{"type":34,"value":2007},"Unvalidated \"GEO Hacks\":",{"type":34,"value":2009}," Disregard trending guides advocating for hyper-fragmented content chunking or the forced deployment of llm.txt files to control crawlers. Google’s official generative search optimization documentation explicitly debunked these tactics as low-impact noise. The underlying models prioritize data completeness and human utility, not structural gimmicks.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2011,"children":2013},{"id":2012},"where-to-pivot",[2014],{"type":34,"value":2015},"Where to Pivot",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2017,"children":2018},{},[2019,2029],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2020,"children":2021},{},[2022,2027],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2023,"children":2024},{},[2025],{"type":34,"value":2026},"Audit Your Shared Real Estate:",{"type":34,"value":2028}," Given that AI Overviews favor competitors 69% of the time across aggregate listicles, marketing leaders must pivot budgets from solo blog production toward aggressive digital PR and dominance in affiliate marketplaces. If your brand is not among the top five in external industry roundups, LLMs will systematically omit you from decision-stage queries.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2030,"children":2031},{},[2032,2037],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2033,"children":2034},{},[2035],{"type":34,"value":2036},"Configure Native AI Attribution:",{"type":34,"value":2038}," Audit your Google Analytics setup to leverage the new default AI assistant channel group. This ensures your marketing operations team can accurately segment and defend LLM-driven ROI to the board, turning historically \"dark\" referral traffic into clean data.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2040,"children":2042},{"id":2041},"optimize-for-the-future",[2043],{"type":34,"value":2044},"Optimize for the Future",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2046,"children":2047},{},[2048],{"type":34,"value":2049},"With more and more AI search sessions resulting in zero clicks, traditional SEO is no longer enough to protect your pipeline. To stay visible, you need a Search Visibility Optimization (SVO) strategy that ensures AI models index, cite, and recommend your brand.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2051,"children":2052},{},[2053],{"type":34,"value":2054},"MKG helps protect your revenue from sudden search engine changes in three practical ways:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2056,"children":2057},{},[2058,2068,2078],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2059,"children":2060},{},[2061,2066],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2062,"children":2063},{},[2064],{"type":34,"value":2065},"AI Search Audits:",{"type":34,"value":2067}," We find exactly where AI models are leaving your brand out of product recommendations and shortlists.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2069,"children":2070},{},[2071,2076],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2072,"children":2073},{},[2074],{"type":34,"value":2075},"Technical Site Alignment:",{"type":34,"value":2077}," We update your backend code, so Google and AI engines understand and display your company's facts accurately.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2079,"children":2080},{},[2081,2086],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2082,"children":2083},{},[2084],{"type":34,"value":2085},"Clear Traffic Tracking:",{"type":34,"value":2087}," We organize your analytics so you can actually see and measure the business value coming from AI search engines.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2089,"children":2090},{},[2091,2093,2100],{"type":34,"value":2092},"To future-proof your digital acquisition engine and lower your CAC,",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":2094,"children":2097},{"href":2095,"rel":2096},"https://mkgmarketinginc.com/contact/",[1444],[2098],{"type":34,"value":2099}," Book a Discovery Call with MKG today",{"type":34,"value":1639},{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":2102},[2103,2104,2108,2112,2116],{"id":1767,"depth":896,"text":1770},{"id":1833,"depth":896,"text":1836,"children":2105},[2106,2107],{"id":1844,"depth":1745,"text":1790},{"id":1872,"depth":1745,"text":1875},{"id":1892,"depth":896,"text":1895,"children":2109},[2110,2111],{"id":1918,"depth":1745,"text":1921},{"id":1953,"depth":1745,"text":1956},{"id":1987,"depth":896,"text":1990,"children":2113},[2114,2115],{"id":1993,"depth":1745,"text":1996},{"id":2012,"depth":1745,"text":2015},{"id":2041,"depth":896,"text":2044},"content:blog:seo:search-visibility-optimization-svo-monthly-overview-june-2026.md","blog/seo/search-visibility-optimization-svo-monthly-overview-june-2026.md","blog/seo/search-visibility-optimization-svo-monthly-overview-june-2026",4,{"_path":2122,"_dir":909,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":2123,"description":2124,"date":2125,"img":2126,"imgAlt":2127,"body":2128,"_type":900,"_id":2517,"_source":902,"_file":2518,"_stem":2519,"_extension":905,"category":909,"minutes":2520},"/blog/seo/the-great-decoupling-why-saas-seo-is-changing-in-2026","The Great Decoupling - Why SaaS SEO Is Changing in 2026","Legacy content strategies are triggering massive traffic drops as AI Overviews intercept informational search volume. ","2026-07-08T16:16:30.271Z","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/91f5449b-4a04-436d-9866-d31810d27c34-mkg-blog-the-great-decoupling-hero-image.webp","web search",{"type":25,"children":2129,"toc":2504},[2130,2135,2140,2145,2150,2155,2160,2166,2171,2177,2182,2187,2192,2198,2210,2215,2220,2227,2233,2247,2252,2351,2356,2361,2368,2374,2379,2384,2390,2406,2429,2434,2440,2445,2462,2467,2473,2478,2483,2490,2494,2499],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2131,"children":2132},{},[2133],{"type":34,"value":2134},"Your organic ranking report lands in your inbox and, at first glance, everything looks like a win. Your core informational keywords occupy comfortable spots in the top three positions. Your top-of-funnel blog content is indexing exactly where you planned, and traditional position-tracking tools insist your organic visibility is fully optimized.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2136,"children":2137},{},[2138],{"type":34,"value":2139},"But when you open Google Analytics and examine actual website sessions, the graph tells a very different story.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2141,"children":2142},{},[2143],{"type":34,"value":2144},"Organic traffic to your highest-performing marketing assets hasn’t just softened, it has fallen off a cliff. Across your long-standing resource center and educational content hub, incoming visits are down anywhere from 34% to 80%. Lead forms are stagnant, qualified product sign-ups have evaporated, and you’re being held personally responsible for a catastrophic traffic drop that, according to conventional optimization metrics, shouldn’t be happening at all.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2146,"children":2147},{},[2148],{"type":34,"value":2149},"You’re following the standard playbook to the letter. You’re running comprehensive keyword research, targeting high-volume informational queries, optimizing header tags, and building authoritative backlinks. Yet even while you’re doing everything right, your post-funding SaaS growth engine is burning through capital while becoming effectively invisible to your market.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2151,"children":2152},{},[2153],{"type":34,"value":2154},"This is the lived reality of the structural crisis reshaping digital acquisition. The once-direct link between ranking at the top of the SERP and earning human clicks has been fundamentally severed. We’ve entered the era of the great decoupling, where traditional organic search success no longer guarantees actual user discovery.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2156,"children":2157},{},[2158],{"type":34,"value":2159},"If you continue to evaluate marketing performance through the volume-obsessed lens of the past, you’ll end up defending hollow metrics to an executive team that cares only about pipeline. To stop the bleed, you have to understand the specific engineering shifts within modern search networks that intercept your buyers long before they ever reach your domain.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2161,"children":2163},{"id":2162},"the-double-whammy-informational-query-collapse-and-zero-click-realities",[2164],{"type":34,"value":2165},"The Double-Whammy: Informational Query Collapse and Zero-Click Realities",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2167,"children":2168},{},[2169],{"type":34,"value":2170},"The reason your traffic is vanishing while your positions remain intact comes down to a permanent shift in search engine monetization and layout design. Search platforms have transformed from directory indexes that route traffic outward into closed ecosystems designed to answer questions natively.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2172,"children":2174},{"id":2173},"_1-ai-overviews-and-the-elimination-of-the-organic-click",[2175],{"type":34,"value":2176},"1. AI Overviews and the Elimination of the Organic Click",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2178,"children":2179},{},[2180],{"type":34,"value":2181},"The primary driver of this sudden drop in visibility is the rapid rollout of AI Overviews (AIO). In the past, when a B2B buyer needed an educational answer—whether they were comparing software compliance architectures or figuring out how to scale their data infrastructure—they would typically click through to a top-ranking SaaS blog post.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2183,"children":2184},{},[2185],{"type":34,"value":2186},"Now, Google intercepts that intent. Organic click-through rates fall sharply on queries where an AI Overview appears. A position-one result that once reliably attracted clicks now captures only a fraction of that traffic, because the generative answer box satisfies the user’s question directly on the results page.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2188,"children":2189},{},[2190],{"type":34,"value":2191},"This shift has sparked an unprecedented collapse in informational queries. Large language models are uniquely suited to ingest, synthesize, and surface educational information. If your marketing strategy is built on high-volume, top-of-funnel keywords, you are effectively competing with the search engine’s own interface. The engine extracts your insights, repackages them as a native text block, and leaves your website with little more than a fleeting impression.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2193,"children":2195},{"id":2194},"_2-the-rise-of-the-zero-click-search",[2196],{"type":34,"value":2197},"2. The Rise of the Zero-Click Search",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2199,"children":2200},{},[2201,2203,2208],{"type":34,"value":2202},"This monetization behavior has accelerated the prevalence of the ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2204,"children":2205},{},[2206],{"type":34,"value":2207},"Zero-Click Search",{"type":34,"value":2209},". Fresh market data show an undeniable trend: the vast majority of standard informational web searches now end without a single click to an external website. Buyers get their answer, end their browsing session, and move on.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2211,"children":2212},{},[2213],{"type":34,"value":2214},"Worse yet, the links embedded within generative summaries are largely ignored, with only a tiny fraction of users actually clicking through to the source materials. The old mechanics of content marketing, where you traded free information for web traffic, are obsolete.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2216,"children":2217},{},[2218],{"type":34,"value":2219},"When your metrics are tied to traffic volume, an automated summary that satisfies a user query can appear to be an operational failure on your internal dashboards. In reality, the audience is still looking for solutions, but they have migrated to a multi-platform environment that standard index-tracking software cannot track or quantify.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2221,"children":2222},{},[2223],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2224,"children":2226},{"alt":7,"src":2225},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/5f8436d1-dceb-4e2e-be9a-9a455121bf69-mkg-blog-the-great-decoupling-image-1.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2228,"children":2230},{"id":2229},"the-fatal-flaw-optimizing-for-keyword-volume-vs-llm-retrieval",[2231],{"type":34,"value":2232},"The Fatal Flaw: Optimizing for Keyword Volume vs. LLM Retrieval",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2234,"children":2235},{},[2236,2238,2245],{"type":34,"value":2237},"If your content calendar is driven primarily by search volume metrics pulled from traditional ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":2239,"children":2242},{"href":2240,"rel":2241},"https://mkgmarketinginc.com/expert-digital-marketing-services/search-engine-optimization/",[1444],[2243],{"type":34,"value":2244},"SEO",{"type":34,"value":2246}," platforms, you are systematically producing assets that are invisible to modern buyers. Legacy tools calculate volume based on historical click patterns, completely missing the multi-platform journey your prospects take across ecosystems like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's native AI interfaces.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2248,"children":2249},{},[2250],{"type":34,"value":2251},"The framework for evaluating search success must shift from simple traffic accumulation to an active systemic model. Consider the structural difference between legacy keyword acquisition and an optimization framework designed for modern search behavior:",{"type":28,"tag":1210,"props":2253,"children":2254},{},[2255,2276],{"type":28,"tag":1214,"props":2256,"children":2257},{},[2258],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":2259,"children":2260},{},[2261,2266,2271],{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":2262,"children":2263},{},[2264],{"type":34,"value":2265},"Performance Component",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":2267,"children":2268},{},[2269],{"type":34,"value":2270},"Legacy Keyword Volume Model",{"type":28,"tag":1222,"props":2272,"children":2273},{},[2274],{"type":34,"value":2275},"Search Visibility Optimization (SVO) Framework",{"type":28,"tag":1238,"props":2277,"children":2278},{},[2279,2297,2315,2333],{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":2280,"children":2281},{},[2282,2287,2292],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2283,"children":2284},{},[2285],{"type":34,"value":2286},"Primary Metric",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2288,"children":2289},{},[2290],{"type":34,"value":2291},"Organic Traffic, Pageviews, Keyword Rank",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2293,"children":2294},{},[2295],{"type":34,"value":2296},"Citation Share, LLM Retrieval Frequency, Pipeline",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":2298,"children":2299},{},[2300,2305,2310],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2301,"children":2302},{},[2303],{"type":34,"value":2304},"Content Focus",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2306,"children":2307},{},[2308],{"type":34,"value":2309},"Broad Informational Text, High-Volume Blogs",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2311,"children":2312},{},[2313],{"type":34,"value":2314},"Self-Contained Passages, Node-Based Architecture",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":2316,"children":2317},{},[2318,2323,2328],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2319,"children":2320},{},[2321],{"type":34,"value":2322},"Target Infrastructure",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2324,"children":2325},{},[2326],{"type":34,"value":2327},"Traditional Search Engine Indexes",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2329,"children":2330},{},[2331],{"type":34,"value":2332},"Large Language Model Vector Databases",{"type":28,"tag":1218,"props":2334,"children":2335},{},[2336,2341,2346],{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2337,"children":2338},{},[2339],{"type":34,"value":2340},"Discovery Vector",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2342,"children":2343},{},[2344],{"type":34,"value":2345},"Single-Engine Keyword Matches",{"type":28,"tag":1245,"props":2347,"children":2348},{},[2349],{"type":34,"value":2350},"Multi-Surface Brand Attribution (GEO, AEO)",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2352,"children":2353},{},[2354],{"type":34,"value":2355},"When you orient your production toward high-volume informational keywords, you create fluff text that AI scrapers can easily summarize and discard. Large language models do not look for word count or keyword density; they look for explicit entities, clear relationship mappings, and structured data points that can be retrieved and packaged into an immediate user response.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2357,"children":2358},{},[2359],{"type":34,"value":2360},"To build an organic acquisition model that survives this transition, you must dismantle the division between traditional content creation, answer optimization, and technical data structure. Your content must be engineered to be retrieved as a direct citation by an answer engine, rather than just waiting for a human click that may never come.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2362,"children":2363},{},[2364],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2365,"children":2367},{"alt":7,"src":2366},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/82d9e480-5f8e-4102-8c62-784d55c5dcea-mkg-blog-the-great-decoupling-image-2.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2369,"children":2371},{"id":2370},"systemic-accountability-the-svo-framework-for-modern-retrieval",[2372],{"type":34,"value":2373},"Systemic Accountability: The SVO Framework for Modern Retrieval",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2375,"children":2376},{},[2377],{"type":34,"value":2378},"Winning in modern search means going far beyond basic index optimization. You need to approach search visibility as a unified, end-to-end system explicitly designed for large-language-model retrieval. That requires restructuring your entire digital footprint so it can effectively feed into the vector databases that power generative search experiences.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2380,"children":2381},{},[2382],{"type":34,"value":2383},"Gaining reliable visibility in an AI-driven search ecosystem requires an immediate operational reset built on three core pillars.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2385,"children":2387},{"id":2386},"pillar-3-implementing-generative-engine-optimization-geo",[2388],{"type":34,"value":2389},"Pillar 3: Implementing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2391,"children":2392},{},[2393,2395,2404],{"type":34,"value":2394},"To ensure your brand is cited in generative answer boxes, your digital assets must be structured in line with the core tenets of ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":2396,"children":2398},{"href":1901,"rel":2397},[1444],[2399],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2400,"children":2401},{},[2402],{"type":34,"value":2403},"Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)",{"type":34,"value":2405},". LLMs prioritize clear data nodes and explicit entity relationships over lengthy narratives.",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2407,"children":2408},{},[2409,2419],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2410,"children":2411},{},[2412,2417],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2413,"children":2414},{},[2415],{"type":34,"value":2416},"Isolate Information into Extractable Passages:",{"type":34,"value":2418}," Content must be written in highly structured, self-contained blocks. Each section must provide an authoritative, direct answer in the first two sentences so an algorithm can lift the passage cleanly for a summary snippet.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2420,"children":2421},{},[2422,2427],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2423,"children":2424},{},[2425],{"type":34,"value":2426},"Inject Specialized Terminology and Schema:",{"type":34,"value":2428}," Use technical, unambiguous industry terms and hard data points. Back this up with comprehensive schema markup—such as Product, Organization, and FAQPage code blocks—to give retrieval engines clean, machine-readable validation of your expertise.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2430,"children":2431},{},[2432],{"type":34,"value":2433},"By formatting content as a series of verified information nodes, you transition your assets from standard pages into high-priority sources that generative models actively select for their citations.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2435,"children":2437},{"id":2436},"pillar-4-capturing-multi-platform-answer-engine-optimization-aeo",[2438],{"type":34,"value":2439},"Pillar 4: Capturing Multi-Platform Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2441,"children":2442},{},[2443],{"type":34,"value":2444},"Your buyers are no longer using a single search box to evaluate software vendors. Market data show that conversational tools are capturing a large share of research intent, with platforms experiencing clear adoption spikes among technical enterprise buyers.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2446,"children":2447},{},[2448,2450,2460],{"type":34,"value":2449},"You must expand your strategy into a comprehensive ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":2451,"children":2453},{"href":1909,"rel":2452},[1444],[2454,2458],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2455,"children":2456},{},[2457],{"type":34,"value":1913},{"type":34,"value":2459}," ",{"type":34,"value":2461},"model. This means building a digital footprint that extends beyond your domain. Generative engines do not evaluate your site in a vacuum; they cross-reference your claims against third-party data networks, developer forums, review ecosystems, and professional platforms.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2463,"children":2464},{},[2465],{"type":34,"value":2466},"Ensure your brand entity is explicitly mentioned, categorized, and reviewed across these peripheral environments. When an LLM executes a multi-source synthesis query to recommend a vendor, your presence across these verified external networks forces the engine to include your brand in the final response.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2468,"children":2470},{"id":2469},"pillar-5-transitioning-metrics-to-citation-share-and-real-time-tracking",[2471],{"type":34,"value":2472},"Pillar 5: Transitioning Metrics to Citation Share and Real-Time Tracking",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2474,"children":2475},{},[2476],{"type":34,"value":2477},"You must stop using organic traffic volume as the primary indicator of search health. Because zero-click behavior is rising, a drop in traffic does not automatically mean your brand has lost market influence. You need a reporting infrastructure that tracks your presence within the answers themselves.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2479,"children":2480},{},[2481],{"type":34,"value":2482},"Implement tracking mechanisms that measure your citation frequency, brand mention frequency, and overall share of voice inside AI Overviews and native conversational tools. Break down your referral sources by specific AI platforms to see which retrieval architectures are actively feeding your pipeline. When you align your internal tracking with actual citation delivery, you can easily separate platform-wide search changes from controllable marketing performance issues.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2484,"children":2485},{},[2486],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2487,"children":2489},{"alt":7,"src":2488},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/70c363a9-e782-49c5-a4c2-f67fcda73d8c-mkg-blog-the-great-decoupling-image-3.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2491,"children":2492},{"id":1724},[2493],{"type":34,"value":1727},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2495,"children":2496},{},[2497],{"type":34,"value":2498},"Winning in organic search now demands a decisive break from volume-obsessed content playbooks. When your rankings remain strong, but website sessions collapse, the real issue is a structural split between search engine optimization and how users actually click. Generative features like Google’s AI Overviews are soaking up high-volume informational queries, assembling answers directly on the results page, and creating a pervasive zero-click environment that starves legacy blog portfolios of traffic.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2500,"children":2501},{},[2502],{"type":34,"value":2503},"To future-proof your digital acquisition engine and safeguard post-funding growth, you need to evolve your content approach into an integrated search visibility framework. That shift hinges on three concrete moves: engineering content for Generative Engine Optimization with self-contained data nodes and clean schema markup; expanding into Answer Engine Optimization to build brand authority across third-party ecosystems; and upgrading your analytics to track citation share instead of vanity pageviews. Stop running an outdated playbook that leaves your SaaS platform invisible. Demand uncompromising clarity from your tracking models, optimize directly for algorithmic retrieval, and turn generative search into a reliable, compounding driver of pipeline.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":2505},[2506,2510,2511,2516],{"id":2162,"depth":896,"text":2165,"children":2507},[2508,2509],{"id":2173,"depth":1745,"text":2176},{"id":2194,"depth":1745,"text":2197},{"id":2229,"depth":896,"text":2232},{"id":2370,"depth":896,"text":2373,"children":2512},[2513,2514,2515],{"id":2386,"depth":1745,"text":2389},{"id":2436,"depth":1745,"text":2439},{"id":2469,"depth":1745,"text":2472},{"id":1724,"depth":896,"text":1727},"content:blog:seo:the-great-decoupling-why-saas-seo-is-changing-in-2026.md","blog/seo/the-great-decoupling-why-saas-seo-is-changing-in-2026.md","blog/seo/the-great-decoupling-why-saas-seo-is-changing-in-2026",8,{"_path":2522,"_dir":2523,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":2524,"description":2525,"date":2526,"img":2527,"imgAlt":1637,"body":2528,"_type":900,"_id":2930,"_source":902,"_file":2931,"_stem":2932,"_extension":905,"category":2523,"minutes":2520},"/blog/ppc/shifting-legacy-paid-playbooks-to-saas-pipeline-velocity","ppc","Shifting Legacy Paid Playbooks to SaaS Pipeline Velocity","Facing a 25% drop in pipeline conversion despite great CTRs? Here is how to stop the blended inventory bleed.","2026-07-01T04:00:00.000Z","https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/5b62e834-bdc3-4dbd-ad88-8c2c36cb3362-mkg-blog-why-legacy-paid-playbooks-are-failing-series-hero-image.webp",{"type":25,"children":2529,"toc":2915},[2530,2535,2540,2545,2578,2583,2588,2593,2598,2604,2609,2615,2620,2625,2630,2636,2648,2662,2669,2675,2680,2692,2700,2705,2745,2750,2757,2768,2773,2778,2784,2789,2812,2817,2823,2828,2833,2852,2857,2863,2868,2873,2880,2886,2891,2896,2901,2905,2910],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2531,"children":2532},{},[2533],{"type":34,"value":2534},"You just closed your Series B. The capital is in the bank, the board presentation is locked, and the mandate from your investors is non-negotiable: scale net-new ARR, accelerate market penetration, and do it with predictable efficiency.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2536,"children":2537},{},[2538],{"type":34,"value":2539},"To hit these aggressive growth targets, your first instinct is to take the paid media playbooks that successfully carried you through Series A and double down on the spend. You pump more capital into your core digital acquisition channels, expecting a linear, proportional scaling of your backend revenue.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2541,"children":2542},{},[2543],{"type":34,"value":2544},"Initially, the dashboard looks spectacular. Your marketing team or agency presents reports filled with green upward arrows:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2546,"children":2547},{},[2548,2558,2568],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2549,"children":2550},{},[2551,2556],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2552,"children":2553},{},[2554],{"type":34,"value":2555},"Click-Through Rates (CTRs)",{"type":34,"value":2557}," are holding perfectly steady.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2559,"children":2560},{},[2561,2566],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2562,"children":2563},{},[2564],{"type":34,"value":2565},"Total Impressions",{"type":34,"value":2567}," are hitting record, all-time highs.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2569,"children":2570},{},[2571,2576],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2572,"children":2573},{},[2574],{"type":34,"value":2575},"Cost-Per-Click (CPC)",{"type":34,"value":2577}," looks highly optimized and efficient.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2579,"children":2580},{},[2581],{"type":34,"value":2582},"On paper, the top of your marketing funnel looks healthier than ever. But when you log into your CRM and look at the executive revenue dashboard, the reality is starkly different.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2584,"children":2585},{},[2586],{"type":34,"value":2587},"The net-new sales pipeline has stalled. Your sales development representatives (SDRs) are sorting through a mountain of leads that go completely cold upon outreach. Your account executives are complaining about empty calendars, and your backend pipeline conversion rate has quietly dropped by a devastating 25%. Despite spending more capital than ever post-funding, your cost to acquire a customer (CAC) is soaring, and your capital burn rate is outpacing actual pipeline velocity.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2589,"children":2590},{},[2591],{"type":34,"value":2592},"The metrics that look good on marketing slide decks are completely disconnected from cash-flow reality. The traditional B2B demand generation playbooks—heavily reliant on buying generic ad impressions, chasing abstract vanity metrics, and blindly trusting ad network automation- are fundamentally broken.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2594,"children":2595},{},[2596],{"type":34,"value":2597},"To protect your capital and restart your revenue engine, you must diagnose the structural flaws in modern ad networks that cause this backend leakage and transition from an impression-chasing model to a pipeline-velocity framework.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2599,"children":2601},{"id":2600},"the-double-whammy-blended-inventory-bleed-and-platform-fatigue",[2602],{"type":34,"value":2603},"The Double-Whammy: Blended Inventory Bleed and Platform Fatigue",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2605,"children":2606},{},[2607],{"type":34,"value":2608},"The core reason your backend pipeline is deteriorating while front-end metrics look healthy is a structural shift in how major digital ad networks operate. The software landscape has experienced a massive wave of algorithmic automation. Platforms have quietly removed granular user control in favor of artificial intelligence-driven, multi-placement campaigns.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2610,"children":2612},{"id":2611},"_1-google-demand-gen-campaigns-blended-inventory-bleed",[2613],{"type":34,"value":2614},"1. Google Demand Gen Campaigns & Blended Inventory Bleed",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2616,"children":2617},{},[2618],{"type":34,"value":2619},"Originally introduced as a replacement for legacy video discovery formats, these campaigns are built to drive engagement across Google’s vast ecosystem: YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and the Google Display Network. On paper, this level of automation looks highly efficient. In practice, it introduces a structural issue: Blended Inventory Bleed.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2621,"children":2622},{},[2623],{"type":34,"value":2624},"When you spin up a standard campaign with these settings, the ad network packages high-intent premium search and video inventory alongside low-intent fringe placements. The underlying algorithms are engineered to chase the lowest-cost clicks and impressions needed to hit your daily spend targets.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2626,"children":2627},{},[2628],{"type":34,"value":2629},"As a result, your budget is steadily redirected away from true in-market buyers into automated mobile apps, low-quality YouTube surfaces, and accidental taps on mobile swipe feeds. The platform will proudly show you an optimized, low Cost-Per-MQL, while the reality in your CRM is that you’re funding non-intent traffic that has virtually no chance of becoming a closed-won opportunity.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2631,"children":2633},{"id":2632},"_2-linkedin-ad-fatigue",[2634],{"type":34,"value":2635},"2. LinkedIn Ad Fatigue",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2637,"children":2638},{},[2639,2641,2646],{"type":34,"value":2640},"Simultaneously, B2B software companies are hitting an absolute ceiling on professional social channels due to severe ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2642,"children":2643},{},[2644],{"type":34,"value":2645},"LinkedIn Ad Fatigue",{"type":34,"value":2647},". As massive amounts of venture capital pour into identical target audiences, decision-makers are being inundated with repetitive, formulaic single-image ads and gated PDF lead-generation forms.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2649,"children":2650},{},[2651,2653,2660],{"type":34,"value":2652},"According to data compiled in the ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":2654,"children":2657},{"href":2655,"rel":2656},"https://dreamdata.io/blog/announcing-linkedin-ads-benchmarks-report-2026",[1444],[2658],{"type":34,"value":2659},"2026 LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report by Dreamdata",{"type":34,"value":2661},", non-branded search and standard social click-through rates have experienced noticeable industry-wide compression as buyers tune out generic corporate messaging. When your target audience develops ad blindness, automated bidding systems often serve your ads to peripheral, less relevant segments of your audience to hit your volume targets. You end up paying a premium for clicks from users who have the right company name on their profiles but have absolutely zero buying authority or intent.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2663,"children":2664},{},[2665],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2666,"children":2668},{"alt":7,"src":2667},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/1d59b696-0eb0-4224-8804-ba0618feea53-mkg-blog-why-legacy-paid-playbooks-are-failing-series-image-1.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2670,"children":2672},{"id":2671},"the-fatal-flaw-pipeline-vs-mqls",[2673],{"type":34,"value":2674},"The Fatal Flaw: Pipeline vs. MQLs",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2676,"children":2677},{},[2678],{"type":34,"value":2679},"If your internal marketing performance is tied to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), your team is naturally incentivized to run campaigns that feed this algorithmic dilution. An MQL model views every form fill or content download as an equal unit of value.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2681,"children":2682},{},[2683,2685,2690],{"type":34,"value":2684},"Optimizing for MQL volume completely ignores the critical business metric: ",{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2686,"children":2687},{},[2688],{"type":34,"value":2689},"pipeline velocity",{"type":34,"value":2691},". Pipeline velocity measures the speed at which a prospect moves through your sales cycle and converts into actual revenue. It is governed by a simple mathematical relationship:",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2693,"children":2694},{},[2695],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2696,"children":2697},{},[2698],{"type":34,"value":2699},"Pipeline Velocity = (Number of Opportunities × Deal Value × Win Rate) / Sales Cycle Length",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2701,"children":2702},{},[2703],{"type":34,"value":2704},"When you allow Blended Inventory Bleed to flood your CRM with low-intent leads, you negatively impact every single variable in this equation:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2706,"children":2707},{},[2708,2725,2735],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2709,"children":2710},{},[2711,2716,2718,2723],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2712,"children":2713},{},[2714],{"type":34,"value":2715},"Diminished Opportunity Quality:",{"type":34,"value":2717}," Your total number of ",{"type":28,"tag":1183,"props":2719,"children":2720},{},[2721],{"type":34,"value":2722},"qualified",{"type":34,"value":2724}," opportunities decreases because sales teams waste time calling invalid leads. This creates internal friction, slowing your organizational momentum and frustrating high-performing sales representatives.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2726,"children":2727},{},[2728,2733],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2729,"children":2730},{},[2731],{"type":34,"value":2732},"Depressed Win Rates:",{"type":34,"value":2734}," Your win rate drops significantly because the baseline buying intent from automated placements is non-existent. Leads stay stuck in early discovery pipelines indefinitely, inflating your apparent pipeline without contributing to actual bookings.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2736,"children":2737},{},[2738,2743],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2739,"children":2740},{},[2741],{"type":34,"value":2742},"Expanded Cycle Length:",{"type":34,"value":2744}," Your sales cycle length expands dramatically because SDRs must spend weeks chasing and filtering out accidental clicks, burning through critical sales development resources and delaying market penetration.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2746,"children":2747},{},[2748],{"type":34,"value":2749},"To scale predictably post-Series B, you must ruthlessly eliminate the distinction between marketing metrics and sales reality. Every single dollar deployed into paid media must be measured not by the volume of contacts it generates, but by how effectively it accelerates velocity through the active pipeline.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2751,"children":2752},{},[2753],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2754,"children":2756},{"alt":7,"src":2755},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/98c78d8d-12fc-4480-a7f7-54b74f1dc0e3-mkg-blog-why-legacy-paid-playbooks-are-failing-series-image-2.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2758,"children":2760},{"id":2759},"systemic-accountability-the-path-to-de-risking-spend",[2761,2766],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2762,"children":2763},{},[2764],{"type":34,"value":2765},"Systemic Accountability: The Pat",{"type":34,"value":2767},"h to De-Risking Spend",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2769,"children":2770},{},[2771],{"type":34,"value":2772},"Stopping this cash burn requires a fundamental shift in how you structure, audit, and hold your paid media channels accountable. You cannot treat paid media as a slot machine where you pull the lever of ad spend and pray that revenue emerges on the other side. You must treat your paid marketing as a highly predictable, mathematically verified system built on absolute truth and accountability.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2774,"children":2775},{},[2776],{"type":34,"value":2777},"De-risking your post-funding ad spend requires a rigorous architectural overhaul of your marketing campaigns across three core operational pillars:",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2779,"children":2781},{"id":2780},"pillar-1-decoupling-blended-placements-and-enforcing-guardrails",[2782],{"type":34,"value":2783},"Pillar 1: Decoupling Blended Placements and Enforcing Guardrails",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2785,"children":2786},{},[2787],{"type":34,"value":2788},"The first immediate operational step to stop the bleeding is to regain control over where your ad creatives actually display. You must move away from default, fully automated campaign settings that give ad networks a blank check to distribute your budget across low-value inventory.",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":2790,"children":2791},{},[2792,2802],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2793,"children":2794},{},[2795,2800],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2796,"children":2797},{},[2798],{"type":34,"value":2799},"Isolate Video Inventory:",{"type":34,"value":2801}," Within your Google Demand Gen Campaigns, you must actively decouple your video inventory from standard contextual display feeds. YouTube inventory must be managed and optimized as an independent channel.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2803,"children":2804},{},[2805,2810],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":2806,"children":2807},{},[2808],{"type":34,"value":2809},"Enforce Strict Exclusions:",{"type":34,"value":2811}," You must upload comprehensive placement exclusion lists that block your ads from showing on mobile applications, gaming channels, and non-business video content.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2813,"children":2814},{},[2815],{"type":34,"value":2816},"By aggressively trimming away peripheral placements, you force the ad platform's algorithm to deploy your capital strictly into premium, high-intent viewing environments where your target B2B buyer is actively consuming professional content.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2818,"children":2820},{"id":2819},"pillar-2-synchronizing-ad-networks-with-offline-crm-signals",[2821],{"type":34,"value":2822},"Pillar 2: Synchronizing Ad Networks with Offline CRM Signals",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2824,"children":2825},{},[2826],{"type":34,"value":2827},"Ad network algorithms are incredibly intelligent, but they are entirely blind to your revenue reality unless you feed them the correct data. If you only pass front-end conversion signals (like a whitepaper download or a generic form fill) back to Google and LinkedIn, their machine-learning models will continuously search for more people who exhibit that exact surface-level behavior.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2829,"children":2830},{},[2831],{"type":34,"value":2832},"To fix this, you must establish an automated, real-time feedback loop between your CRM (such as HubSpot or Salesforce) and your ad network accounts. By leveraging Conversational API (CAPI) integrations and offline conversion tracking, you must pass deep-funnel milestones directly back to the ad platforms:",{"type":28,"tag":2834,"props":2835,"children":2836},"ol",{},[2837,2842,2847],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2838,"children":2839},{},[2840],{"type":34,"value":2841},"Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) validation milestones.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2843,"children":2844},{},[2845],{"type":34,"value":2846},"Formal discovery meeting completed tracking.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":2848,"children":2849},{},[2850],{"type":34,"value":2851},"Pipeline opportunity value verification.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2853,"children":2854},{},[2855],{"type":34,"value":2856},"When the ad network’s bidding engine realizes that a specific sub-audience or placement is generating genuine pipeline velocity while another is only generating dead-end MQLs, it will automatically shift your budget away from the automated bleed and focus heavily on high-intent conversion pathways.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":2858,"children":2860},{"id":2859},"pillar-3-establishing-a-unified-system-of-attribution-tracking",[2861],{"type":34,"value":2862},"Pillar 3: Establishing a Unified System of Attribution Tracking",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2864,"children":2865},{},[2866],{"type":34,"value":2867},"You can no longer trust self-reported attribution metrics inside individual ad platforms. LinkedIn will claim a conversion if someone merely saw an ad within 30 days, and Google will do the same for a basic search impression. The result is a heavily distorted performance picture, riddled with double-counting and inflated ROI figures that hide systemic waste.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2869,"children":2870},{},[2871],{"type":34,"value":2872},"You need a unified, multi-touch attribution model that captures the full behavior of the B2B buying committee. With modern enterprise deals involving roughly 10 stakeholders across many digital touchpoints, your measurement must focus on account-level engagement, not just isolated individual clicks. Track every paid interaction alongside organic, direct, and content syndication activity to identify exactly which paid motions are compressing your sales cycle and driving clean, consolidated pipeline growth.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2874,"children":2875},{},[2876],{"type":28,"tag":961,"props":2877,"children":2879},{"alt":7,"src":2878},"https://assets.mkgmarketinginc.com/157d08c3-ac27-4147-832f-e4877df7a9df-mkg-blog-why-legacy-paid-playbooks-are-failing-series-image-3.png",[],{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2881,"children":2883},{"id":2882},"protect-your-runway-by-demanding-pipeline-truth",[2884],{"type":34,"value":2885},"Protect Your Runway by Demanding Pipeline Truth",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2887,"children":2888},{},[2889],{"type":34,"value":2890},"As a Series B founder, your core obligation to your board, your team, and your runway is ruthless capital allocation. Clinging to legacy, volume-driven paid media tactics in today’s highly automated ad ecosystem is a near-certain path to burning cash.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2892,"children":2893},{},[2894],{"type":34,"value":2895},"Stop applauding inflated impression counts and cheap, top-of-funnel leads that evaporate as soon as sales engages. Insist on full visibility into your downstream data. Require your marketing team and agencies to connect every ad dollar directly to qualified opportunities, improved win rates, and faster sales cycles.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2897,"children":2898},{},[2899],{"type":34,"value":2900},"By deliberately separating blended network inventory, integrating your ad platforms with real CRM pipeline data, and managing paid media as a fully accountable, measurable system, you can strip out marketing waste, de-risk your growth runway, and build a predictable pipeline engine that positions you to dominate your category.",{"type":28,"tag":29,"props":2902,"children":2903},{"id":1724},[2904],{"type":34,"value":1727},{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2906,"children":2907},{},[2908],{"type":34,"value":2909},"Scaling after a Series B round means moving beyond volume-based marketing metrics and focusing on real pipeline velocity. When top-of-funnel indicators (like impressions and CTRs) look strong, but pipeline conversion falls by 25%, the underlying issue is almost always a mix of platform automation and audience fatigue. Google Demand Gen and similar products use blended inventory that quietly redirects your budget away from high-intent prospects toward low-value, accidental placements in mobile games and low-quality YouTube surfaces. At the same time, decision-makers are tuning out generic corporate outreach as systemic LinkedIn Ad Fatigue sets in.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":2911,"children":2912},{},[2913],{"type":34,"value":2914},"To escape this growth stall and stop wasting capital, B2B SaaS founders must enforce rigorous, systemic accountability across their paid media programs. Practically, that means taking three immediate steps: separating video inventory from broad automated feeds to prevent inventory bleed, implementing offline CRM tracking so that deep-funnel milestones are pushed back into ad platforms, and rolling out multi-touch, account-level attribution to track the full buying committee. Stop optimizing for cheap MQL volume that overwhelms your sales team. 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She chose to come back to the agency world when she learned about MKG and our People First values.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3889,"children":3890},{},[3891],{"type":34,"value":3892},"She is most proud of the impact she had on her previous company by creating a positive and supportive environment for those she managed. ",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3894,"children":3895},{},[3896],{"type":34,"value":3897},"Alanna enjoys spending time with her husband and two teenage daughters, has a very eclectic taste in music, and is an obsessive Hamilfan.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":3899,"children":3901},{"id":3900},"fun-facts",[3902],{"type":34,"value":3903},"Fun facts",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":3905,"children":3906},{},[3907,3912,3917],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":3908,"children":3909},{},[3910],{"type":34,"value":3911},"In college, she won a radio contest for her youngest brother to have dinner with Nickelback. The band spent the entire evening trying to convince her, then 15-year-old, brother to drop out of school.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":3913,"children":3914},{},[3915],{"type":34,"value":3916},"She once spent 3 hours convincing a famous country singer to get off his tour bus to shoot a commercial that her client had contracted him to be in.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":3918,"children":3919},{},[3920],{"type":34,"value":3921},"Her family is a big fan of True Crime, and they binge Crime Junkie on every road trip.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":3923},[3924],{"id":3900,"depth":1745,"text":3903},"content:team:alanna-moman-rawden.md","team/alanna-moman-rawden.md","team/alanna-moman-rawden",{"_path":3929,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":3930,"description":3931,"name":3930,"ref":3932,"jobTitle":3933,"team":3933,"images":3934,"linkedIn":3936,"quoteCite":3873,"sequence":3937,"body":3938,"_type":900,"_id":3999,"_source":902,"_file":4000,"_stem":4001,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":4002},"/team/alicia-antonow","Alicia Antonow","Meet Alicia Antonow, one of MKG Marketing’s saavy digital ads experts, bringing 15+ years of hands on execution and strategy to the table.","alicia-antonow","Digital Advertising Experts",{"landscape":3935},"alicia-antonow.webp","alicia-a-36459bb5",54,{"type":25,"children":3939,"toc":3997},[3940,3948,3953,3961,3966,3974,3979,3987,3992],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3941,"children":3942},{},[3943],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":3944,"children":3945},{},[3946],{"type":34,"value":3947},"How I Got Into Digital Advertising",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3949,"children":3950},{},[3951],{"type":34,"value":3952},"With a background as a nurse, my journey into digital advertising began unexpectedly when I back to Ann Arbor, Michigan. A Google Partner approached me to assist with healthcare content and ads. I quickly discovered a passion for the field, and with Google Ads sales training followed by SEM training, I was hooked.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3954,"children":3955},{},[3956],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":3957,"children":3958},{},[3959],{"type":34,"value":3960},"What I Love About Paid Search",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3962,"children":3963},{},[3964],{"type":34,"value":3965},"Every campaign is like a unique puzzle, even within the same industry. Variations in geography, audiences, and keywords make each project different. I enjoy leveraging the full suite of Google products—Search, Display, Demand Gen, and YouTube—because they work best when integrated. The ever-evolving nature of the work keeps me inspired and challenged.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3967,"children":3968},{},[3969],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":3970,"children":3971},{},[3972],{"type":34,"value":3973},"Why I Chose MKG Marketing",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3975,"children":3976},{},[3977],{"type":34,"value":3978},"I was drawn to MKG Marketing for its people-first culture. The company recognizes that we are all human, with lives outside of work, and fosters a supportive environment that values balance and well-being.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3980,"children":3981},{},[3982],{"type":28,"tag":933,"props":3983,"children":3984},{},[3985],{"type":34,"value":3986},"Fun Facts About Me",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3988,"children":3989},{},[3990],{"type":34,"value":3991},"I’m an avid traveler and love immersing myself in different cultures. Before having kids, my husband and I spent at least three months each year exploring the world.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":3993,"children":3994},{},[3995],{"type":34,"value":3996},"I take cooking classes with locals wherever I go and love scuba diving whenever there’s water nearby.\nMy kids are my world—seeing their faces light up when experiencing something new brings me the greatest joy.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":3998},[],"content:team:alicia-antonow.md","team/alicia-antonow.md","team/alicia-antonow",1,{"_path":4004,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":4005,"description":4006,"name":4005,"jobTitle":4007,"team":4008,"images":4009,"ref":4011,"linkedIn":4012,"sequence":4013,"body":4014,"_type":900,"_id":4062,"_source":902,"_file":4063,"_stem":4064,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":896},"/team/avery-davis","Avery Davis","Avery Davis is an Account Superivor here at MKG Marketing.","Account Supervisor","Account Services",{"landscape":4010},"avery-davis.webp","avery-davis","avery-davis-114055191",59,{"type":25,"children":4015,"toc":4059},[4016,4022,4027,4032,4037,4041],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4017,"children":4019},{"className":4018},[3879],[4020],{"type":34,"value":4021},"\nAvery began his digital marketing career at a tech startup focused on ID scanning and facial recognition software. In addition to gaining a deep understanding of paid media and analytics, this peaked his interest in cybersecurity and tech in general. He then transitioned to agency life where he specialized in SaaS marketing.\n",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4023,"children":4024},{},[4025],{"type":34,"value":4026},"Over the years, Avery has touched a variety of verticals including health and beauty, eCommerce, medical/pharma, education, and more. He is drawn to agency life because of the variety of clients he is able to work with and, in turn, learn from.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4028,"children":4029},{},[4030],{"type":34,"value":4031},"Although he’s touched several areas of digital marketing, Avery feels most at home when doing Account/ Project Management as well as Copywriting.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4033,"children":4034},{},[4035],{"type":34,"value":4036},"As is the theme with many of our staff, Avery was drawn to MKG because of our culture. In Avery’s words “MKG shares the same values as I do in both my professional and my personal life. When I saw that we meshed so well, this was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse!”",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":4038,"children":4039},{"id":3900},[4040],{"type":34,"value":3903},{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":4042,"children":4043},{},[4044,4049,4054],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4045,"children":4046},{},[4047],{"type":34,"value":4048},"Avery is an avid racquetball player. Having first gotten into the sport in college, he’s had lots of fun playing over the years. He tries to get to the court at least once a week.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4050,"children":4051},{},[4052],{"type":34,"value":4053},"Avery is a hobby bartender and enjoys making, tasting, and learning about different drinks. He’s mainly a Kentucky bourbon guy but also loves Japanese whisky!",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4055,"children":4056},{},[4057],{"type":34,"value":4058},"Avery is a black belt in Pasaryu. This is a Korean mixed martial art which includes karate, kung fu, and Taekwondo. He has also trained and competed with weapons: nunchucks and samurai sword just to name a couple!",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":4060},[4061],{"id":3900,"depth":1745,"text":3903},"content:team:avery-davis.md","team/avery-davis.md","team/avery-davis",{"_path":4066,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":4067,"description":4068,"name":4067,"ref":4069,"jobTitle":4070,"team":4071,"images":4072,"linkedIn":4074,"quote":4075,"quoteCite":4076,"sequence":4077,"body":4078,"_type":900,"_id":4125,"_source":902,"_file":4126,"_stem":4127,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":896},"/team/jared-gerling","Jared Gerling","Meet Jared Gerling, one of MKG Marketing’s thoughtful SEO Experts, bringing 10+ years of experience, intentionality, and creativity to the team.","jared-gerling","SEO Expert","SEO Experts",{"landscape":4073},"jared-gerling.webp","jaredgerling","The truth is, most of us discover where we are heading when we arrive.","Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes)",55,{"type":25,"children":4079,"toc":4123},[4080,4085,4090,4095,4100,4105],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4081,"children":4082},{},[4083],{"type":34,"value":4084},"Jared's journey into digital marketing started with answering a classified ad for a company looking for people with writing backgrounds for a position in SEO. As a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in Creative Writing, this sounded like the perfect opportunity.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4086,"children":4087},{},[4088],{"type":34,"value":4089},"This small agency taught him SEO from the ground up, and, after taking a break from digital marketing to receive his MA from DePaul University, Jared jumped back into the field at a medium-sized agency out of Chicago as an SEO analyst.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4091,"children":4092},{},[4093],{"type":34,"value":4094},"Since then, Jared has worked for large and small marketing agencies for over a decade, providing expert SEO services in almost every industry that has a website on the internet. And with his background in writing, Jared feels most at home in the content and customer facing side of SEO and digital marketing.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4096,"children":4097},{},[4098],{"type":34,"value":4099},"It was first and foremost the people that drew Jared to MKG. Everyone at MKG has been so in tune with his values and his personality, and they've made his time at MKG easily the best experience of his career.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4101,"children":4102},{},[4103],{"type":34,"value":4104},"Fun Facts:",{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":4106,"children":4107},{},[4108,4113,4118],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4109,"children":4110},{},[4111],{"type":34,"value":4112},"I love to travel with my wife. We've been to many incredible places over the years, and are always on the lookout for our next destination.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4114,"children":4115},{},[4116],{"type":34,"value":4117},"I was a college rower in my younger days. I rowed mostly eights as a port, and competed against some of the best schools in the nation...and lost to most of them.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4119,"children":4120},{},[4121],{"type":34,"value":4122},"I love a really good French Martini.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":4124},[],"content:team:jared-gerling.md","team/jared-gerling.md","team/jared-gerling",{"_path":4129,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":4130,"description":4131,"name":4132,"jobTitle":4133,"images":4134,"ref":4136,"sequence":4137,"imageDescription":4138,"body":4139,"_type":900,"_id":4191,"_source":902,"_file":4192,"_stem":4193,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":896},"/team/kathy-obrien","Kathy Obrien","Meet Kathy O’Brien, MKG Marketing’s amazing executive assistant who consistently supports all of MKG across the many needs of the company.","Kathy O'Brien","Executive Assistant",{"landscape":4135},"kathy-obrien.webp","kathy-obrien",80,"Kathy O’Brien, MKG Marketing’s Executive Assistant, in front of a gray background | MKG Marketing",{"type":25,"children":4140,"toc":4188},[4141,4147,4152,4161,4166,4170],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4142,"children":4144},{"className":4143},[3879],[4145],{"type":34,"value":4146},"\nKathy loves details and has managed the finer details of business her entire career.  She started her career in Center City, Philadelphia working for several law firms.  After she was married and had her first son, she left the bustling city to work closer to home at an international publishing company.  In 1994, Kathy and her husband Bill moved with their two sons to Charlotte, North Carolina.  They eventually completed their family with two more boys born in Charlotte.\n",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4148,"children":4149},{},[4150],{"type":34,"value":4151},"In 2000 they relocated to Chester County, a suburb of Philadelphia. After a hiatus and four sons, Kathy returned to work in Chester County. This time, she gave retail a whirl so that she could be home when her school age boys were home. She quickly found out Ann Taylor was employing one of their best customers. Kathy then spent the following 10+ years in the Non-Profit arena where she did whatever needed to be done to further the mission. No job was too big, small, or unimportant to tackle.",{"type":28,"tag":4153,"props":4154,"children":4155},"blockquote",{},[4156],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4157,"children":4158},{},[4159],{"type":34,"value":4160},"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.\nMother Teresa",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4162,"children":4163},{},[4164],{"type":34,"value":4165},"By February 2020, Kathy was eager to build something for herself and her family. She set off on a new adventure of starting her own business when she was connected with Kerry, Mike, and MKG. Having commuted and worked outside of the home for 10+ years, she was ready to work from home and have a better life balance. She followed the rainbow and found MKG in her pot of gold. MKG is like no other firm or organization for which Kathy has worked. Their standard of people first is evident in every team member, every decision, every meeting, every interaction. They live their standard.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":4167,"children":4168},{"id":3900},[4169],{"type":34,"value":3903},{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":4171,"children":4172},{},[4173,4178,4183],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4174,"children":4175},{},[4176],{"type":34,"value":4177},"Kathy’s dislikes: fruit & chocolate together and Tuesday.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4179,"children":4180},{},[4181],{"type":34,"value":4182},"Family: Kathy met her husband Bill in Wildwood, New Jersey after their high school graduations during “Senior Week”. They have 4 sons and 2 grandsons. There hasn’t been a girl born in the O’Brien family in 32 years! You will often hear Kathy saying her boys are the best 4 gifts she’s ever been given.",{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4184,"children":4185},{},[4186],{"type":34,"value":4187},"Special talent: Baking. Her boys’ (Bill included) favorites are Spritz Cookies and Chocolate Chip Cookies. There is a running family debate as to whether Ricotta Cookies are cookies or biscuits. At Christmas time, Kathy has been known to hide cookies to save some for guests.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":4189},[4190],{"id":3900,"depth":1745,"text":3903},"content:team:kathy-obrien.md","team/kathy-obrien.md","team/kathy-obrien",{"_path":4195,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":18,"description":4196,"ref":4197,"name":18,"team":3867,"quote":4198,"images":4199,"twitter":4201,"isLeader":3871,"jobTitle":4202,"linkedIn":4201,"sequence":4002,"quoteCite":4203,"imageDescription":4204,"body":4205,"_type":900,"_id":4253,"_source":902,"_file":4254,"_stem":4255,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":4002},"/team/kerry-guard","Meet Kerry Guard, one of MKG Marketing’s founders. She currently fills the role of CEO of MKG as well as hosting the podcast, Back on T-R-A-C-K.","kerry-guard","I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness — it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.",{"landscape":4200},"kerry-guard.webp","kerryguard","Founder & CEO","Brené Brown","Kerry Guard, MKG Marketing’s Owner/CEO, stands on a street in Guernsey with the Town Church behind her | MKG Marketing",{"type":25,"children":4206,"toc":4250},[4207,4213,4225,4238,4242],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4208,"children":4210},{"className":4209},[3879],[4211],{"type":34,"value":4212},"Kerry Guard (she/her) is a mom of twins - boy and a girl. She understands what work life balance really looks like and is on a mission to build a company that honors parents having a career and a life. She’s out to prove you really can have both with policies like ensuring 20 days of vacation each year, no client emails after 6PM or weekends, unlimited sick days, and everyday flexibility.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4214,"children":4215},{},[4216,4218,4223],{"type":34,"value":4217},"She also hosts our podcast, ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":4219,"children":4221},{"href":4220},"/podcasts/marketing-leaders/",[4222],{"type":34,"value":16},{"type":34,"value":4224},", which brings eight digital marketing experts to your ears every quarter.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4226,"children":4227},{},[4228,4230,4236],{"type":34,"value":4229},"Kerry is responsible for HR. If you’d like to join MKG where people are first and your expertise matter, Kerry will be with you through the entire interview process ensuring each candidate meets the necessary requirements and gets a fair shot. Want to join MKG and Kerry’s mission of bringing People First to as many people as possible? Check out our ",{"type":28,"tag":1440,"props":4231,"children":4233},{"href":4232},"/about/jobs/",[4234],{"type":34,"value":4235},"Jobs page",{"type":34,"value":4237}," and see if we have a position right for you!",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":4239,"children":4240},{"id":3900},[4241],{"type":34,"value":3903},{"type":28,"tag":992,"props":4243,"children":4244},{},[4245],{"type":28,"tag":996,"props":4246,"children":4247},{},[4248],{"type":34,"value":4249},"Kerry now lives in Guernsey — a tiny nook in the world between England and France. Come visit for a spot of tea any time!",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":4251},[4252],{"id":3900,"depth":1745,"text":3903},"content:team:kerry-guard.md","team/kerry-guard.md","team/kerry-guard",{"_path":4257,"_dir":3862,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":4258,"description":4259,"name":4258,"ref":4260,"jobTitle":4261,"team":3933,"images":4262,"linkedIn":4264,"sequence":4265,"body":4266,"_type":900,"_id":4317,"_source":902,"_file":4318,"_stem":4319,"_extension":905,"category":3862,"minutes":896},"/team/leigh-snyder","Leigh Snyder","Meet Leigh Snyder, one of MKG Marketing’s amazing digital advertising experts, bringing 15 plus years of experience to the team","leigh-snyder","Digital Advertising Expert",{"landscape":4263},"leigh-snyder.webp","leighasnyder",50,{"type":25,"children":4267,"toc":4314},[4268,4274,4279,4284,4289,4294,4299,4304,4309],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4269,"children":4271},{"className":4270},[3879],[4272],{"type":34,"value":4273},"\nLeigh has over 15 years of experience of managing Paid Search campaigns. She started her career at Solid Cactus, a full service eCommerce agency in Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania. Having no experience in Paid Search, she learned as she went, starting out in the earlier days of Google Adwords, when Adwords Editor wasn't even being used yet.\n",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4275,"children":4276},{},[4277],{"type":34,"value":4278},"Leigh loves to create accounts and watch them grow, even more she loves to take a poorly performing account and turn it around. Watching the KPIs increase from changes she has made or new ideas she implements, keeps her career exciting.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4280,"children":4281},{},[4282],{"type":34,"value":4283},"Managing a wide variety of accounts that include local car dealerships, worldwide clothing stores, online supplement shops to plastic surgeons and much much more, Leigh brings a vast knowledge of creative ways in managing accounts.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4285,"children":4286},{},[4287],{"type":34,"value":4288},"While working the majority of her career in local offices, the options for expanding her career were becoming less and less. She decided to apply for a remote job (before it was the norm) and was able to get experience that wasn't as prevalent in the smaller area in which she resides.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4290,"children":4291},{},[4292],{"type":34,"value":4293},"After working from home for the past 6 years the opportunities kept coming and when MKG reached out to her, she knew that there was something special about them and decided to take the leap. The people first environment is not just talked about here, but it is practiced everyday. MKG Marketing is unlike anywhere she has ever worked.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4295,"children":4296},{},[4297],{"type":34,"value":4298},"Outside of work, Leigh enjoys spending time with her husband Dustin, their blended family (Emma, Casey, Jake & Brayden) and their dog Millie.",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4300,"children":4301},{},[4302],{"type":34,"value":4303},"The kitchen is where you will always find her, she loves to cook and bake all things Gluten Free and no one ever knows. When they are not at a swim meet or a baseball game they love swimming in their pool, long walks on the local trails, renovating their house and binging shows.",{"type":28,"tag":1087,"props":4305,"children":4306},{"id":3900},[4307],{"type":34,"value":4308},"Fun Facts",{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4310,"children":4311},{},[4312],{"type":34,"value":4313},"Although it was just was a short time, at age 19 Leigh drove cross country from a small town in PA and moved to Hollywood Hills, CA. Her view from her kitchen window was the Hollywood sign. Not a bad first apartment.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":896,"depth":896,"links":4315},[4316],{"id":3900,"depth":1745,"text":4308},"content:team:leigh-snyder.md","team/leigh-snyder.md","team/leigh-snyder",{"_path":4321,"_dir":4322,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":4323,"description":4324,"name":4323,"imageDescription":4325,"ref":4326,"jobTitle":4327,"images":4328,"linkedIn":4326,"quote":4330,"quoteCite":4323,"sequence":1354,"body":4331,"_type":900,"_id":4405,"_source":902,"_file":4406,"_stem":4407,"_extension":905,"category":4322,"minutes":4002},"/team/marketing-leadership/celeste-jacroux","marketing-leadership","Celeste Jacroux","Meet Celeste Jacroux, a strategic GTM partner to MKG and Founder of Sweel Marketing Advisors. She leads Go-to-Market strategy for high-growth companies.","Celeste Jacroux, Founder of Swell Marketing Advisors and MKG Partner","celeste-jacroux","Fractional GTM Leader | Founder, Swell Marketing Advisors",{"landscape":4329},"celeste-jacroux.webp","A great product doesn't win on its own. It wins when the story, the strategy, and the sales motion all pull in the exact same direction.",{"type":25,"children":4332,"toc":4402},[4333,4346,4351,4363,4369],{"type":28,"tag":37,"props":4334,"children":4336},{"className":4335},[3879],[4337,4339,4344],{"type":34,"value":4338},"\nCeleste Jacroux is a Go-to-Market architect for companies ready to graduate from \"random acts of marketing\" to a predictable revenue engine. 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