What the big-budget effectiveness research means when your entire marketing budget fits in five figures. In Season 2 of Mad Men, Sterling Cooper dumps Mohawk Airlines, a small regional carrier that paid on time, because Duck Phillips swears American Airlines is ready to sign. Don objects. He loses. American never signs, and Mohawk is gone…
Why anonymous content loses on every axis a retrieval system measures, and what a real byline is actually worth in AI search Somewhere in your CMS there is an article credited to “Editorial Team.” It has a header image of a woman in a blazer gesturing at a whiteboard. She does not exist. She is…
A question-and-answer field guide for manufacturers, fabricators and industrial suppliers, with a detour through the 19th century Almost everything published about marketing this year was written about software. That is a problem when your product weighs four tons, ships on a flatbed, and gets specified fourteen months before anybody cuts a purchase order. The buyer…
A Q&A for founders who are also the delivery team, the sales team, and the logo There is a particular flavor of tired that only arrives when you are the entire company. You end a client call at 2:15 and you were the deliverable. At 2:30 you are the sales department. At 4:00 a prospect…
A Q&A about the highest-intent page on your website, the one you almost certainly have not built. Featuring cookies, both kinds. Right now a person with a budget and a shortlist is typing your name, the word “vs,” and the name of your rival. That page exists. The only open question is who wrote it,…
Why Exact-Match Category Domains Still Clear at Eight Figures in the Age of AI Search A questions-and-answers briefing, with the receipts, the counterarguments, and a short course in naming taught by the War of 1812. 1. Everybody says domain names stopped mattering around 2013. Did they? Then somebody forgot to tell the buyers. In April…
Why the one metric that could embarrass you next quarter is the cheapest credibility on the market, and the one thing on your website a competitor cannot copy by Friday. Everyone in your category claims to be fast, accurate and easy to work with. Buyers read those words as noise. What follows is the alternative,…