Thoughts on Marketing

Or…how to get AI Overviews to pay attention to you

[Originally published as The Marketing Mix newsletter on Substack. Please subscribe for the latest, every 2 weeks]

Getting mentioned in credible third party publications is still a smart move. What was once effective as an SEO tactic is perhaps even more important with the growth of AI Overviews in search.

So how do you get those publications to talk to you?

The answer is Research. But first off:

• You shouldn’t be paying for placements or interviews.
• Those “Top 10” publications that claim to want to feature you bring minimal benefit other than an ego boost.
• Some better known names like Authority or CIO Review do legitimately get coverage and help with the algorithm. But you can do better.

If you’re going to spend some money, invest it in independent research.

At Opengear, we paid a research company to survey 500 senior IT leaders about their attitudes to network outages. This data then allowed us to pitch stories to a list of industry publications, revealing the results of the survey, and editorializing around the concept of network resilience – a concept that we just so happened to have the solution to.😏

For the price of one or two paid articles, we got coverage in multiple, credible publications.

At that time, we were going for high rankings in organic Google searches. But it seems that AI overviews follow much of the same playbook – relying on high-authority sources to point them in the right direction.

So before you send your precious marketing dollars to the Forbes Council, or some no-name “Top 10 list” publication, take a look at building your own research instead. And if you’re not sure how, let’s chat.

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What I’m Reading

When Differentiation Matters [The Product Marketer Substack]

tl;dr There’s more to positioning than finding your point of differentiation. Rory Woodbridge suggests that, depending on your point in the growth curve, maybe finding your unique selling point isn’t always that important.

Favorite Quote: “Sometimes the category opportunity is so large that competition simply isn’t your problem yet….Your positioning is about helping buyers understand why this new way of doing things matters, not why you’re better than the other startups trying to do the same thing.”

The Year the Buyer Changed (Again) [The B2B Stack]

tl;dr A summary of recent B2B marketing studies. Some scary findings, including that the average size of a buying committee is now at 9.7!! And a reminder that not every marketing tactic works the same in every geography.

Favorite Quote: “Buying committees now loop back into research as new technologies (AI, automation, privacy) force fresh due diligence…The modern ABM challenge isn’t ‘reach the decision-maker’. It’s re-reach them when the decision resets.”

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Drink of the Week

We’re going retro, with a whisky sour. Why? Well, I was out for dinner at the weekend, and was handed a pretty uninspiring cocktail list.

And then the server walked past me with a goblet that looked…special. Almost like a Belgian beer, a light gold liquid topped with a foamy head. Turns out, it was a whisky sour, made from scratch (and yes, that means with a raw egg!).

As is often the case, I was too fast to taste the drink and didn’t get a great photo…

I tried to recreate it at home the next night – having learned the tricks during a cocktail class at Dear Irving a few years ago. It wasn’t as good as the original! But if you want to try, here’s the recipe.

Cheers!🍺

Steve

P.S If you know you need to take marketing seriously, but don’t know where to start, let’s chat. I help growing B2B tech companies build their marketing muscles.

P.P.S If you’ve enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to The Marketing Mix newsletter – my thoughts on B2B marketing, sent out every 2 weeks.