John Tyreman 0:00

AI search is completely changing how buyers search and find information on the web. So how should your firm show up? What do you need to change about what you're doing in your marketing? How are these AI platforms different, we're gonna explore it by bringing in some experts on the podcast. Let's get into it.

Mark Wainwright 0:37

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on the "Breaking Biz Dev" podcast. I'm Mark, he's John, and today's topic, is a little over my head, so we're gonna lean hard on John and the marketing world. John, how are you today, and how are you feeling about having this extra responsibility of, you know, defining these mysterious terms?

John Tyreman 1:02

I'm actually really intrigued and curious about this topic. It's definitely not in my, like, area of expertise, but, I've worked alongside SEO specialists and experts, for decades. And even today, many of my clients, I work with a few different marketing agencies, and this topic about SEO and how it's changing is completely dominating. And these are agencies that work across different industries. so it's just fascinating, and really interesting to me. So I'm excited about this one.

Mark Wainwright 1:33

we often reference a, sort of a, a marketing to sales continuum, one to five. I think the ones we typically consider marketing-led activities, five are sales-led activities. this one falls, I think, in the former, right, on the, on the marketing end of things. And if people, maybe people have heard that continuum, maybe people also have this vision of sort of a funnel in their, in their brains, a marketing and sales funnel. this podcast episode exists towards the top end of that, of that funnel.

John Tyreman 2:13

Yeah, I think that's largely true, Mark. but I think that there is a shift that's happening to where it's actually kind of moving a little bit further down the funnel, and we'll get into some of the details around that. But I think that's the shift that's happening out there, and that's where I think you and I will have a good conversation around is like, how is this changing from a buyer's point of view?

Mark Wainwright 2:35

Good, good. So you mentioned in the opening that we've got some, some guest voices, joining us on the podcast today. let's just do a quick intro, 'cause I know we're gonna kind of splice those bits in here. Why don't you do a quick intro on who those individuals are? We'll do some definitions, and then we'll kind of start exploring this, rich, interesting topic

John Tyreman 2:54

Yeah, so the first voice that you'll hear is, Jeff Kirbus, and Jeff is an SEO specialist that I've worked with in the past, when I worked at Silverback Strategies, an ag-agency out of DC. Jeff led the SEO services for our clients. He is now the director of SEO at Assembly Global, which is a, pretty big agency. and then Austin McNair is the second voice that you'll hear, and Austin is the head of marketing at Hinge Marketing, which is another agency that I worked at, years ago. Austin's a good friend of mine. A- and I've also talked with a few different other SEO experts that you won't hear, and I'll, I'll mention them as we go through. But those are the two voices that you'll hear.

Mark Wainwright 3:41

There are likely a, a good number, hopefully everybody. I mean, it's, you know, I mean, we're in the 21st century now, John. Hopefully people are catching up to this whole interwebs, thing. And, even our, you know, technical professionals, our doer-sellers, our engineers, architects, analysts, whoever else they are, I'm certain they've heard these terms. Whether or not their firm, their organization, and their marketing people are digging deep into them, leveraging them, et cetera, these are terms that people should be familiar with. So we know the three-letter acronym SEO, right? Search engine optimization, right? There's this new one, though, that you want to talk about as well. So what do we got there?

John Tyreman 4:31

Well, there's a number of different people in a number of different places call this GEO, generative engine optimization. I've heard of it referred to as AIO, artificial intelligence optimization. People sometimes refer to it as AI search, whatever three-word acronym you wanna throw into it. but really the, the core difference between search engine optimization and generative engine optimization is the technology. They're two different types of technology. One is an algorithm that looks at indexed web pages and surfaces relevant information based on keywords, and the other is an artificial intelligence platform that does research and scours the web, understands where you're coming from in a little bit more context and nuance, and surfaces citations and brand mentions based on its knowledge of you.

Mark Wainwright 5:32

And the, the practical, sort of experience, at least now, you know, we are in, just to set your, set your clocks here, folks, we're in 2026, you know, maybe, you know, kind of mid, you know, second quarter, third quarter, kind of that ballpark there. And, where this is starting to show up in sort of practical experience is where? I mean, how are people kind of starting to experience this?

John Tyreman 5:59

Yeah. So here's a real-world example. So if a buyer, let's just say that there is a buyer who i- has experienced a need for, let's say, accounting services. And this buyer, instead of going to Google, they'll go to ChatGPT or Claude and they'll say, "Who are the, the b- the three accounting firms that I should talk to right now about my problem?" And Claude or ChatGPT or whatever AI engine you're using will say, "Well, based on your scenario and, and understanding what y- your business is, here are the three firms you should talk to." So, like, let's pause for a minute and just kind of examine, like, they're speeding through what is, what was traditionally a very, very important foundational piece of the professional services marketing strategy, which is arm buyers with information, right? For decades, it's been create educational content if you want to be found in search so that buyers have that touchpoint and you're top of mind. AI search is completely, fast-forwarding that process.

Mark Wainwright 7:09

and, and another way this is showing up i- is that, you know, your, your, your common sort of Google search is actually changing, right? It's, it's when you use that tool, Google has its, its own sort of AI, you know, technology, its own platform. So whether you realize it or not, the results that are appearing on your phone or on your, your, your computer screen, whatever it may be, are different now, and they are being presented to you, differently because they're, those results are actually being created differently. But what's, what's happening now, like you said, is that the, the way that buyers or prospective buyers are researching and then identifying, you know, expertise specifically, you know, in this world, like in professional services, right? The way buyers are finding your organization is changing, and some organizations kind of understand that and many do not. let's back up a little bit and just say wh- why on Breaking Biz Dev are we discussing this? Are we discussing SEO or GEO, this generative engine optimization? Why, wh- why is this even a relevant topic for, for this podcast and this audience?

John Tyreman 8:25

We talked in the past about inbound leads versus outbound leads, so this would fall in that category of an inbound sales motion, where a buyer has self-diagnosed, maybe accurately, maybe not, but a specific need that they have, and they go out to seek a solution. So that's the scenario we're talking about here, and this is very real. It, it does work. It works for accounting firms, engineering firms, marketing agencies, consulting practices. so we're talking about inbound leads. but the way that these leads are showing up is changing, and so that process of going to a search bar and entering a query and then landing on your website, what happens in that messy middle there is, is what we're digging into. So, I think, a big part of this too is buyers are trusting their AI agents and their AI platforms more. And we talk about trust a lot on this podcast, and I think that's a really interesting concept to get into, is how we're placing more trust in these machines now than other humans, really.

Mark Wainwright 9:41

Yeah, makes sense. And, you know, we talk about things like referrals, and referrals are, you know, at least proactive referrals in the way that we discuss them. it's an individual has a self-diagnosed need, like you mentioned, and, and they seek out someone they know and trust to provide, you know, a recommendation or, or a referral. So maybe sometimes that's happening, but now people are actually putting some amount of trust into these technology tools, which, the question of trust is, always present, you know, when we're discussing these tools 'cause people don't know exactly how these tools are making, making the, the recommendations or what information they're getting or where that information came from or how they're interpreting things or whatever else. And, you know, if you've used any of these AI tools at all, you can call one out and say, "Hey, the results you gave me are, were incorrect." And they'll say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you're totally right, Mark. Sorry. Sorry. Here's the right answer." Right? So if you've done it at least 10 times, you know, your, your, the AI tool has come up with something wrong, for you, for certain. So even though we are putting, like you said, greater and greater amounts of trust, these tools aren't necessarily presenting themselves as being trustworthy. So interesting conundrum here.

John Tyreman 10:51

Yeah. To that point a little bit, so i- and to the point of a- AI LLMs getting things wrong from time to time, that's why it's so important to understand that now if you have invested in an inbound lead generation strategy or if that's something that's on your roadmap to do, then you're really creating content and you're really looking to optimize for humans, right? So think about clicks to your website. You're also optimizing for different kinds of machines. You're optimizing for those search tools and you're optimizing for AI agents, and it's not clicks to your website that you're optimiz- optimizing for, but it's, there's really two KPIs and it's, it's brand mentions and then citations. So A brand mention is when an AI LLM mentions your brand, that's pretty straightforward, in its response back to you. A citation is essentially like a link or think of it, it as like a source. So they're citing a certain source and that's where it got the information of for the response.

Mark Wainwright 11:57

I have seen those citations in some of the AI results that I have obtained, through my research or whatever else. Inevitably, I'll go chase those citations down. I'll see it cites maybe two or three different sources, and I'll go into the citation maybe for a greater elaboration, for some depth to the response, because inevitably these quick little responses that you get through the tool are pretty thin, you know? but what we're talking about here, you mentioned it early on, i- is that people are actually l- using these tools for two important steps in, you know, top of the funnel on the marketing end when people have, you know, right or wrong, self-diagnosed some, some problem where they have a particular need. They are starting to use these tools more and more, not just for research. We always use the web for research, right? We wanna go out, we wanna find some information out there that aligns with our need. We wanna start to learn some language. We want to stur- start to learn some potential solutions, et cetera, all that sort of thing. But then we take the next step of trying to find and select, you know, top service providers, you know, people c- who can help us. So what you're saying, in this episode, is that people are starting to use the tool for the research and then the selection process where it starts to spit out sort of recommended service providers or experts or whatever else.

John Tyreman 13:20

Yeah. So here's a good clip from my conversation with Jeff where he talked about the challenger sale and, and how AI search is really replacing the first 63% of that buying journey. So here comes Jeff In your opinion, how has AI search impacted the buying journey?

Geoff Kerbis 13:41

So I am going to quote a book that I think everyone probably who's listening to this podcast has read at some point in time, but, um, it is "The Challenger Sale," which is probably one of my favorite books of all time. And I think that AI has turned organic search into "The Challenger Sale," which if, uh, you need a quick synopsis, the entire concept of "The Challenger Sale" is trying to interrupt the user's buying journey before they get to that 63% of their buying journey path, which is the idea of, "All right, cool, I'm ready to buy now. I'm ready to discuss price and really think about my options and compare the final vendors that I've chosen." AI is fast-forwarding us into that 63%. It is taking out the research process because unfortunately, there are a lot of people who think research is too hard and want to just say, "You do it," and, "Oh, it takes merely seconds for you to do th- it? 100%. I am going to invite this into my work stream." So our job now is to be able to make sure that while AI is doing this, while AI is fast-forwarding this entire process, is our voice getting thrown in there? What is our share of voice in this principle? are we being cited? Are we being-- getting impressions? Are other people talking about us, right? Um, it's trying to redefine strategies that we've used for SEO and turn them into how are these affecting AI platforms,

John Tyreman 15:19

all right. So in Jeff's response there, Mark, it was really about how AI is kind of bypassing the first almost two-thirds of that buying journey and really kind of taking a shortcut to, um, help me select a service provider, help me get to a solution faster

Mark Wainwright 15:36

which sounds good from a time and efficiency, perspective. but it also, can lead to, you know, or, or contribute to a misdiagnosis, you know, a, a lack of information. hopefully in a buyer-seller situation, the buyer is armed with some level of information that they know, they've come across, they've read, they've discovered, whatever else, so that they can enter into a buying-selling conversation informed, right? So what, where a potential result of this is a buyer, that, doesn't have the depth of understanding that they may need, or doesn't have, you know, sort of the, the, the ability to have an informed conversation with the, the seller. 'Cause that's kind of ideally what you want, is you want someone, you know, who has some, some level of understanding of, of the problem. "The Challenger Sale," if I'm recalling the book correctly, has a lot to do with, the need definition, right? In that the role of the salesperson in "The Challenger Sale" is to, challenge, the assumptions that the buyer is coming in to that buying-selling conversation. they wanna challenge that because the advantage of the seller being able to challenge that is they can then lead them down a different path. or a path that will, you know, fulfill their needs better or solve their problems better or whatever else it is. So that's, that's part of the, of the whole "Challenger Sale" book.

John Tyreman 17:04

now that we've kind of talked about the role of search and how that's changing from a buyer's point of view, what can you do, right? What can firms do? What can doer sellers do? What can your organization do to be able to adjust to this? And so I don't know all of the answers, but again, we talked to these folks about, you know, what you can do to adjust your website and your web presence, But first, before we dive into some of at least my takeaways from these conversations and a little bit more clips, I listed out a few different questions that

Mark Wainwright 17:41

good

John Tyreman 17:42

I think you listeners should be asking your marketing team or your SEO specialist internally. So I'd like to run through those real quick, Mark, if that's cool with you

Mark Wainwright 17:51

Yeah, it makes total sense. And, if you have marketing responsibilities in the organization, obviously these questions are, appropriate, for you to, to answer. If you are an organizational leader, if you're doing most of the work on the bottom of the funnel, and people have been talking for, hopefully years at this point about how you can increase, the web traffic and the attention being paid to your organization so that, you know, you're getting at least a reasonable number of inquiries coming in through your website or, phone calls, whatever else it is. So, if you are a doer seller, this is important stuff because, yes, you should be trying to increase the number of leads that your firm creates from the ether, right? You should have people coming to your organization discovering you and wanting to have a conversation with you. So these are some very good questions.

John Tyreman 18:35

Yeah, so the first one: Is our website technically sound? Are our core web vital metrics in an acceptable range? And your SEO expert specialist should be able to answer that question. the second one is: Is our website being cited by LLMs? Remember we talked about citations being a core metric. so the third one is, is, is our brand being mentioned by LLMs? Again, citations and brand mentions, those are the two KPIs. the fourth one that I have here is: Has our website traffic seen big spikes from direct or referral traffic sources that we can't account for? One of my findings in these conversations was that those spikes are often LLM traffic going to your site, and scanning your pages.

Mark Wainwright 19:25

Gotcha.

John Tyreman 19:26

All right, and the last one that I have here is: What do our content creation efforts look like on social media and digital publications? The content that we put out there on third-party platforms is just as much, if not more important than the content we're putting out on our own websites.

Mark Wainwright 19:45

So that's a great list of questions. we're gonna shift. We're gonna continue the conversation a little bit. Is there gonna-- We have another clip from Jeff kinda coming up here, or is that

John Tyreman 19:56

There's really the two big parts of what you have control over. and then obviously it's y- your website, th- the role of your website, and then it's the content that you're putting out on those third-party platforms. So let's start with the role of your website. And I posed this question to, to Jeff, when he brought up the concept of a Google Search profile, which is a tool that Google uses to look at your total web presence. And I asked him, "How big of a brand do you really need to be before you should set up a Google Search profile?" And here's what Jeff had to say

Geoff Kerbis 20:32

a couple of weeks ago, Google announced this idea of, hey, we are just gonna collect everything and we're gonna make it super easy. And The Verge had an amazing podcast with, uh, the CEO of Google, and he was like, "Yeah, we're personalizing search just for you," right? Which is amazing, cool, very cool tool, but also terrifying that you're either going to be less included in that conversation. So the conversation that I'm having with brands is let's make sure that that profile, one, exists, right? We wanna make sure that is very much live and active. But two, let's make sure that it is accurate and you have complete ownership of that profile, and you're being seen as a publisher. Now, there are certain barrier to, barriers to entry with this, right? You have to have a certain number of followers

John Tyreman 21:21

profile are you, are we talking about here? Is this Google Business pr- profile?

Geoff Kerbis 21:25

are Google Search profiles. So Google Search profiles are more so focused on the idea of an announcement that was made a couple of months ago where Google said, "Hey, we wanna make sure that you are able to follow the big brands, the en- entities, the businesses that you think are important. We're gonna collect everything together." So John, let's just give an example with the "Breaking Biz Dev," podcast, right? It would collect your Instagram. It would collect your, if you have a TikTok, your TikTok, your LinkedIn. Everything would be under one banner and one URL. How nice would that be for you that you could just share that? It is a glorified Linktree.

John Tyreman 22:05

how big of a brand should you be to consider getting set up on Goo- on a Google Search profile?

Geoff Kerbis 22:12

great question. I think that there is some proactivity that needs to be done with this, even if you're a small brand, right? If you are just starting off and you're saying, "Ugh, well, Google has all these barriers," because there are certain-- I don't have them off the top of my head, but there are certain minimums as far as, uh, the number of followers that you need to have across different platforms and all of those fun things. But there are proactive step, steps that we can do, such as utilizing organization schema on your website. Uh, organization schema, for those who don't know, comes from schema.org. It is a piece of structured data that you can put on the back end of your website to be able to show that you are an entity, this is what your entity is about, and these are the links to the other pieces of your entity. So if you have a Facebook page, if you have an Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all of those things can be linked, and what we're seeing is that Google is then utilizing organizational schema in many instances to build these Google Search profiles. So if you are just like, "Hey, I'm too small. Guess I'm never going to do this," take the proactive step today. Make your organization schema. Add it to the back end of your site. Make sure that you're constantly maintaining that, so if things change, if new profiles are added, you are making sure to take care of that as well, so that the day that you become large enough or to be considered as a publisher, Google is already one step ahead and ready for you in that minute, and you're not scrambling because they have the wrong URL for your website.

John Tyreman 23:49

Okay, so you don't need to be Coke or Pepsi to set up a Google Search profile. In fact, it's, as Jeff points out, it's a proactive measure that you can take, even as a, as a small consulting for- firm or an engineering firm, set up a Google Search profile to connect all of those different platforms to that profile so Google is able to index your content across platforms

Mark Wainwright 24:17

Yeah, makes sense. I'm doing everything I can not to just, open up a new browser window and start, making sure that I did... I believe that I have created a Google Search profile for, my site, but, I'm definitely, like John, when we press, stop on the record, I'm gonna be all over this for sure, so

John Tyreman 24:33

Yeah, there's a few different tools that you can go to. Google Search Console, Goo- Goo- Google Business Profile. These are all different platforms and entities that you can go to to optimize your online footprint, depending on what industry you're in. And then another point that Jeff brought up was this notion of company schema. And essentially this is, a tag in essence a signal that you can send to Google to say, "We are a commercial company. This website is a, is a company page. This isn't an educational page. This isn't a hobby page. This isn't, whatever other kind of website. This is a commercial business entity." And then Google understands that and then can serve up that content in different ways, knowing that it's a company and not another kind of website. And then we talked about the technical foundations. We talked about core web vitals a little bit. And then if folks wanna really get into the details of this conversation, check out our YouTube page. search for "Breaking BizDev" on YouTube, and you can hear the full conversation with Jeff. but Mark, I'd love to kinda shift a little bit from more of the technical foundation to the role of thought leadership on your website and then beyond on the third-party sources.

Mark Wainwright 25:46

Hey, we, we've, we've talked about the importance of thought leadership and sort of the return. I think we had an episode called The Return on Investment, the ROI of, of thought leadership. Hopefully somebody out there is nodding. That would be good. so yeah, it's important, so let's bring it home here. Talk about website, talk about other content that exists out there. And when you talk about those other third-party sites, sure, you could be talking about other webpages out there, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff as well. And we, you know, here at Breaking Biz Dev, John, we try to leverage that as much as, as much as we can.

John Tyreman 26:18

Yeah, 100%. I mean, when we publish an episode of "Breaking Biz Dev," there is a transcript, as part of the metadata that's uploaded to our podcast platforms. And when that's published on Apple, on Spotify, and on other audio platforms, the transcript is available to be indexed. So Google, other search engines, ChatGPT, Claude, is able to index the transcript of our conversations on those third-party platforms. So it's not just your website, it's YouTube. I talked about Apple and Spotify, Reddit, even email newsletter platforms like Kit and Beehiiv and Substack. These are all platforms that can be indexed by large language models and by search engines. and then those that are indexed by search engines are also read by AI tools. So it's a really good practice to publish content on these third-party platforms. But taking that a step further, your digital PR investments have a big impact on AI search. So if you are trying to get cited in industry publications, or if you wanna get a link back to your website from a digital magazine, or if there is a podcast that you want to be a guest on and get a link back, these are all activities associated with digital PR, but AI places a big emphasis on those depending on how authoritative and how credible those publications are.

Mark Wainwright 27:51

All right, we've got, uh, we've got a little bit of time and, uh, another clip, uh, I think to, to talk through.

John Tyreman 27:58

those third-party sources are super important, and through the lens of professional services, there is one third-party platform that may be a little bit more important than the rest. So here is a clip from my good friend Austin McNair, head of marketing at Hinge I just wanna make sure that our audience is clear that it's not just your website, it's also what's being published out there on third-party sites as well.

Austin McNair 28:24

Yeah, exactly. Which is why, why I keep coming back to this phrase, John, of like integrated marketing strategy, right? It's, it's a marketing strategy that goes beyond just one channel, just one, you know, just your website. we need to be thinking about things like our social media platforms. social media platforms are now being picked up by, e-even traditional Google Search now. I mean, there was a time when Instagram posts and, and, and Instagram profiles really weren't even featured in traditional Google results. Now, like posts themselves are being read and cataloged in traditional Google rankings. They're-- it's all going into, to, to these AI models as well. LinkedIn is like probably one of the number one cited, domains that I can see from an LLM perspective in, uh, in professional services. Like high-quality LinkedIn posts are being referenced as, as, as like very, uh, reputable source material in the eyes of AI. YouTube and kind of video content strategies and transcripts, those are being pulled. and then some other things, John, that we, we talk about with our clients would be things like, uh, ranking websites. So any kind of website that's, kind of a listicle or where somebody can leave like a public review of your company. in the tech industry, I'm seeing, you know, G2 is like the big one, right? And, and companies are really pushing the accelerator now on, you know, paying for those premium packages in G2 and also being a little bit more aggressive than ever in terms of getting high-quality reviews from their customers, because it's really important. It sets that narrative inside the, the, the AI engines. for other professional services, I've seen some like Clutch. there's one called DesignRush. There's a whole bunch of those, but like, Glassdoor is another one where it's Trustpilot, ClearlyRated Some of those, like even the Glassdoor one, is a really interesting one. I had a client that, they, didn't really have a lot going on when you, when you searched about their brand. Like they hadn't done a lot of earned media. Their experts had never really gone out and published content in other places. They had a very small, or I'd say modest digital footprint. And so when you asked any of those comparative questions like, Hey, please weigh this company versus this company," what was actually showing up as one of the top sources were some disgruntled, former employee reviews from like 10 years ago, um, that were showing up from Glassdoor. And it was like a red flag to say like, "Hey, like we need to put, we need to put some stronger narratives out there in the digital ecosystem about our company, um, because this is the kind of stuff that is, is showing up right now." and they were horrified, you know, as they-- as any of us would be, because that's not, you know... It, it's just, it's surprising that something like that, like a small Glassdoor review would, would be used as like a, for an, by an AI agent to make like grandiose statements about, "Oh yeah, but this company has these big problems." It's like, wait, but that was from so long ago.

John Tyreman 31:19

All right, so the cat's out of the bag. LinkedIn is a big platform in terms of being cited as reputable sources in AI search. So I thought that was a big, a big takeaway from there, that

Mark Wainwright 31:32

Yeah, we lean pretty heavily on LinkedIn. We have a business audience. it's a business community. and, you know, try as LinkedIn might to, add in splashy video reels or whatever else that, manage to fill up your sort of information feed, the thing that continues to come through on LinkedIn is valuable, professional, relevant information. So, yes, it's an important channel for us, and it's not just for looking for a job, folks. It still has that sort of, legacy moniker of the only time I ever spend any time on LinkedIn or on my profile is when I'm changing jobs, right?

John Tyreman 32:13

there, there's a big opportunity to create content, and then even just like posting just ev- once a week or every other week or so has an impact because these large language models are looking at LinkedIn as a really credible source. And if you're posting there, creating content there, and showing up there, then these, the AI search platforms will see that, and then that will help influence your brand mentions and your citations in those search results

Mark Wainwright 32:44

Are there, are, are there, uh, uh, some, some specific points that people should kind of be aware of or lean into on LinkedIn, John?

John Tyreman 32:51

we've done a few episodes in the past on LinkedIn. Obviously, LinkedIn's changing every single day. But I think, any of these social platforms, if you look across them, they value consistency and they value relevancy. So if you are consistently creating relevant content for your target audience, that's, you know, it's easier said than done. Obviously, you need to know exactly who you're talking to and th- your area of expertise and how it's relevant to them. But that's the secret is consistency and, relevancy

Mark Wainwright 33:22

All right, so there's a go and do here, right? We said initially that, people, maybe firm leaders, sales leaders, doer sellers that aren't necessarily really close to all of this, there's a go and do. And I think there's also a go and do obviously for the people who are, you know, marketers, you know, the people who are, who are in control of this. And what are those-- What do we wanna make sure that people take away from this?

John Tyreman 33:48

So I think for those who don't sit in a marketing seat, those questions that I listed out earlier in the podcast are great to take to your marketing team, and then just kinda have a conversation with them on where you stand on all, all those different areas. But if you are in a marketing seat, then you are in a position to go and audit your website's technical foundation. So I think that would be the number one place to start is technically how sound are we? Because that's the foundation on which you need to build. And then from there, once you understand your website's technical foundation, take stock of your share of voice outside of your website. How are you showing up? What platforms are you showing up on? where are, are backlinks coming to your website from? And what are opportunities are there out there for you to increase your share of voice?

Mark Wainwright 34:43

I, I have, I have tested that on occasion, and if someone is so hyper-specific trying to find the stuff, John, that you and I talk about, we will, we will show up, whether it's my site or whether it's our podcast, we will, we will show up as a cited, cited source, which is kinda, kinda fun. You know, it's a little bit of a needle in a haystack, John, but, you know, that's, that's the path we've chosen here. You know, we're not, we're not, we're not McDonald's. You know, we're here for a ver- pretty specific audience, for sure

John Tyreman 35:13

Exactly

Mark Wainwright 35:14

John, thanks for scrambling my brain and, wa- wander- wandering through this ever-evolving topic. clearly things are evolving, and inevitably, organizations that I talk to kind of casually, almost anecdotally reference like, "Oh yeah, we just got this random inquiry, this random email, this random phone call." People find you, you know, for a reason. Hopefully it was something that you did, it was something that you said, it was a conference you, you spoke at, or whatever else it was. But it was content, it was some intentional move that you made in order to, to garner some attention, and lo and behold, it worked. So you should do more of that, for sure

John Tyreman 35:48

Yeah, 100%. Inbound leads are real, and the way that you generate them is by showing up and demonstrating your expertise in a visible way on digital channels

Mark Wainwright 35:59

John, this has been an educational, and interesting episode. Until next time

John Tyreman 36:04

Until next time