The thing I loved most about my agency days at Refine Labs was the sheer volume of data I was able to see across our clients + being able to use that to spot trends, patterns, opportunities, + generally unsolved issues.
Now that I’m back from the in-house life to working with multiple clients, it’s been interesting to see what’s changed over the last 3.5 years.
TBH, a lot of things haven’t changed - the issues that have been issues for years are still running rampant inside most companies. The opportunities that have been opportunities for years are still there for the taking, just a matter of actually executing them.
When I was on my own in-house island, I was always wondering if what we were experiencing was unique to us or a larger trend occurring across the market.
So today’s newsletter is going to be a little bit different than normal. I’m going to share what I’ve been seeing + hearing over the past month as I’ve entered back into the fractional/client-facing world. Some of this will probably feel validating to you + give you that “I thought I was going crazy seeing this” feeling knowing you aren’t alone. Some might have you realizing you’re farther ahead than you thought you were. And some might have you thinking “uh oh, we’re a little behind.”
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What hasn’t changed
This is the part that probably surprised me the most. Many of the things that we marketers have been struggling with for years, well, we’re still struggling with them 🤷♂️ Similarly, some of the things that have worked well for years are still going strong.
With that, here’s what I’m seeing hasn’t changed all that much:
(Lack of) data hygiene
Inside the first week of being fractional, I saw/spoke with multiple companies who had MAJOR duplicate issues inside their CRM. I’m not talking a couple accounts here + there that led to awkward conversations for BDRs/AEs when they realized they were calling a customer, I’m talking 25-50% of their CRM having duplicate accounts, leads, and/or contacts.
The part that had me lol was that these companies all knew they had a big issue because their duplicate rules were firing telling them “hey, this might be a duplicate” inside their CRM, but they didn’t have someone owning/executing the actual merging/deletion of any of these, so they just…sat there 🤦♂️
And the reason for this ultimately leads us to the next thing that hasn’t changed…
Execution
The strategies are there + the documentation for various processes, frameworks, etc. are all created, but when it comes to someone owning the execution and/or doing the execution at all…
Not sure if there’s a fear of being held to a specific outcome or responsible for the health of a system, but it’s like a paralysis has settled in. Ideas + plans are being shared galore, but then everything just kind of sits there when it comes time to do something.
The person/team who’s allowed to hit the “merge records” button
The demand gen marketer who takes the campaign brief + gets the campaign live
The SEO/AEO marketer who takes the list of keyword opportunities + creates webpages that aren’t complete AI slopdust, but have a real POV + voice behind them
Fast ROI expectations
“Hey how’s that new campaign going that we launched Monday? Any new opps yet?”
Some things never seem to change + this is one of them.
A new AE is hired + finance builds in their “ramp” period until they know they’ll be producing pipeline and then closing deals.
Meanwhile, finance is like “yooo marketing, we just gave you a couple thousand dollars 2 days ago, where’s the return on it? BTW if we don’t have a report on what every single ad dollar did, we’re pulling the budget and putting it into BDRs.”
Managing internal stakeholders + setting appropriate expectations is something that I doubt will ever go away for us marketers. This is something I have to constantly remind myself of + why I wrote a 3-part series on how to get leadership buy-in.
After helping them understand how buyers buy in today’s world + shown them the data supporting the shift in strategy + execution you’re going to make, the next two questions they’re going to ask you are:
What will it look like to make this shift?
When should we expect to see these new + improved results?
And that’s when I usually pull out some flavor of this handy dandy visual:
What has changed
Cold outreach
Holyyyyy cow has this one gotten worse. Yes, people are answering cold calls/emails at lower rates than ever before, but the effort going into > 95% of those cold calls/emails is just about as minimal as it gets.
I see tons of super templated, generic emails going out OR super AI slop that reads as AI slop. Then there’s the higher volume of cold calls that technology has enabled, BUT those cold calls aren’t even being utilized in a way that’ll help them compound over time.
^^ that’s a section of my missed calls from a few weeks ago. Whenever a call comes through from a number I don’t recognize, I screen it to voicemail. Otherwise I’d never get anything done in my work day.
But here’s the thing - of the last thousand cold calls I’ve probably had come through this past year, I can count on ONE HAND the number of those who left a voicemail.
“But Sam, leaving a voicemail is sooooo much work”
Wahhh.
If someone doesn’t know who’s calling, they’re probably not going to answer. And if you don’t tell them who it is that’s calling, you know what’s probably going to happen the next time you call from that same number they don’t recognize (or heaven forbid it’s one of those fake “I’m calling from your area code!” numbers) - they probably won’t answer that time either!
I started my career as a BDR so I have full sympathy for those in that role - it’s one of the hardest I’ve ever had. But the “best practices” that have been used over the previous handful of years make me think the definition of “best practices” has shifted from “best” in driving results to “most convenient” for the person doing the cold calling.
SEO/AEO/GEO
I don’t think this one’s going to surprise many of you here, but SEO and general search/answer engine optimization has been shaken up with the rise of LLMs in recent years.
As much as I wish it still worked, the days of keyword-pumping articles + shipping hundreds of blog posts per month in order to rank on Google are long behind us.
Then add to that things like AI overviews being shown at the top of the search engine results page, answers being given directly in tools like ChatGPT + Claude, and all of a sudden we have fewer clicks + visitors by the hundreds or thousands.
So is SEO not working anymore? How do we know if what we’re creating is being picked up + showing us in a good light in LLMs?
Well, remember the whole “dark social” thing marketers recognized in the early 2020s + defined the shift from lead gen —> demand gen? SEO is going through that now with “dark SEO” as users are researching + gathering information much differently now than they were just a few years ago.
With this shift in behavior, it’s made me rethink the metrics, KPIs, and goals relative to SEO/AEO.
What I’m putting less weight behind:
CTR as a primary success metric (or at least, unbranded CTR)
Click traffic directly from SEO
Click-to-conversion attribution models
What I’m putting more weight behind:
AI visibility + citations
Brand search volume trends
Brand lift measurement over time
Self-reported attribution citing things like “web research” or “ChatGPT”
I’ll be honest - putting less weight behind clicks feels weird/wrong. It goes against decades of SEO muscle memory. The new truth I’ve come to realize is that our VERY best SEO work might never generate a click. And that’s ok.
Just like on social, we’re optimizing for memorability - being the name people remember when they have a need. And when that need comes to a head, they come straight to us.
Webinars
Webinars work.
Webinars work really well.
I know. You probably expected me to say they aren’t working like they used to.
And that’s because they weren’t…for years. We had the COVID boom of webinars where everything was a webinar + since we were confined to our houses, it was our only way to interface with others. So after a few years of that we were burnedddd out on webinars.
But fast forward to this past year + I’ve been shocked by registration AND attendance rates of the webinars I’ve hosted or attended.
I’m not saying every webinar is a hit (plenty still flop, trust me), but the ones that have been driving a ton of registrations + having those people actually attend/watch the recording after have all been doing one similar thing:
Positioning the webinar around a very specific use case/JTBD and having the webinar go beyond theory into “and here’s how you can do this too” territory.
Part of this is probably everyone's current fear of falling behind due to the crazy pace of innovation happening right now, but I think the other part is that the webinars are actually giving value now. They used to pretty much just be boring sales pitches that were filled with promises + generic overviews, so this switch to specificity + “how to” is what people actually care about.
Let the learning continue
As you can tell, I’m back in my happy place. Lots of exposure to the market to see what’s going on + how we marketers can stay ahead/use it to our advantage.
If you feel like you’re stuck on something or unsure if it’s a “your company” problem vs. a broader “market” problem, I have space for 1 more client until I’m booked up through Q1 of 2027. Reply back here, send me a DM on LinkedIn, or feel free to drop me an email at sam@derevaco.com.
See you next week,
Sam