The old rules no longer apply. It’s time for a smarter, AI-ready playbook.
AI-driven search is changing the landscape fast. Organic traffic is dropping, visibility is shrinking, and traditional SEO tactics are losing their edge. If you’re still following yesterday’s strategy, you’re already behind.
Join Siteimproveon July 23, 2025 for an exclusive webinar with Zoe Hawkins and Jeff Coyle. Learn how to evolve your SEO approach and content planning to thrive in a world where AI now plays a central role in search.
Here’s what you’ll walk away with:
A breakdown of how AI is changing enterprise SEO.
Why trust and authority now matter more than keyword volume.
How to adapt to high-intent, low-volume traffic behavior.
We can no longer rely on the same tactics that worked before. This session gives you an inside look at how SEO must evolve to stay effective in the AI-first future.
Register now to stay ahead of the curve. Can’t attend live? Sign up anyway and get the full replay delivered to your inbox.
If you’ve been affected by AI Overviews, traffic drops, or feel uncertain about SEO’s future, then this episode is for you.
Search Engine Journal’s Editor-in-Chief Katie Morton sits down with growth advisor and author of “Growth Memo,” Kevin Indig, to unpack the results of his latest AI Overviews study.
In this 35-minute episode, they discuss how it impacts search, SEO, and brand marketing in 2025.
Editor’s note: The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity, brevity, and adherence to our editorial guidelines.
What AI Overviews Mean For Search, SEO & Brand Trust
Katie Morton: Hi, everybody. It is I, Katie Morton. I’m the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal, and today I’m sitting down with Kevin Indig, who is a growth advisor to fast-growing tech companies and the author of “Growth Memo,” a fantastic newsletter.
We syndicate it here on Search Engine Journal, but sign up for it directly, too, because he has content exclusive to subscribers. It’s filled with smart insights every marketer needs to know.
Kevin, thanks for making the time today. The study was analyzed in March-April 2025 and published in May. We’ve had time to reflect, and today we’ll unpack the key takeaways.
We’ll start with the nuts and bolts of the study’s background, so listeners understand the context, and then go beyond the data to explore how marketers and companies, especially those frustrated by Google, AI Overviews, or traffic drops, can respond.
So, Kevin, can you summarize the study and share the main takeaways?
Kevin Indig: Thanks for having me on, Katie. It’s great to be here with you.
What The AI Overview Study Really Reveals
Kevin: The study came from a desire to deeply understand, from a qualitative perspective, how everyday users interact with AI Overviews.
In 2024, everyone was eyeing AI Overviews with curiosity, but traffic impact wasn’t significant yet. Then, at the start of 2025, everything changed. It became a “holy cow” moment – this was real and serious.
We asked 70 participants in the U.S., across different age groups, to solve eight tasks that covered dominant user intents: Finding a tax accountant, researching medical questions, shopping, etc.
We intentionally included queries that showed AI Overviews but didn’t tell participants to interact with them – we wanted unbiased behavior.
So, in a nutshell, the three most poignant results are:
1. Classic Organic Results Still Carry Weight
First of all – and this is no surprise – clicks are really rare when people see AI Overviews. That’s gotten through to everyone by now.
And yet, at the same time, classic organic results still have the majority of impact on people’s completion of user journeys.
Let me untangle that for a second: What we found is that people get their final answer – the final piece of information they were set out to get – 80% of the time from classic organic results. Not from AI Overviews, so that was encouraging.
2. High-Quality Clicks Happen In High-Trust Moments
Clicks are going down, but people still click. And each of those clicks has much, much higher quality than, say, in 2024 or before.
Because those clicks are to verify whether the results are accurate, to get human input from platforms like Reddit or YouTube, and to increase confidence in whether what the AI is saying is true.
And for us, that means it’s critical to be present in these high-trust, high-risk moments. I can unpack that a little more…
3. Audience Age Shapes AI Engagement
The third result I found very interesting is that there really is an age difference here. [Younger users] are much more receptive to AI answers. They’re much more active on Reddit and YouTube. Whereas people of a higher age will often just skip the AI answers because they don’t trust them.
You want to know who you’re talking to, who your target audience is. Ideally, what the age group is of your ICP or your target audience, and then make SEO decisions accordingly.
Why Branding Matters More Than Ever
Katie: Thank you for that. What I’d love to talk about next is branding.
I feel like big brands are a little safer with recent developments. If you already have recognition, you’re in a better spot. But if you’re a tiny brand with no recognition, you’re really behind the eight ball.
For the uninitiated or the uninformed, [you might wonder], why is that important? It’s about trust.
When someone sees your brand in an AI Overview, recognition boosts trust. If they click on an AI Overview or scroll to find organic results, they’re more likely to trust and click a name they know. A strong brand increases your chances.
Mordy uses the example of Nike, which was once ubiquitous, but has lost some relevance. Younger generations aren’t as loyal or aware of the swoosh anymore.
So, for big brands, maintaining confidence and trust is critical. For small or new brands, or brands that never had strong recognition, can they still gain traction?
Kevin: You can get traction … but it’s really challenging.
One challenge is that multiple teams need to work together: product, innovation, marketing, support, supply chain. SEO doesn’t control all these variables. It’s always been a discipline of recommendations, relying on others to act.
So, you always were relying on other teams, and that has 10x’d now with AI. Because, as you said, brand, brand perception, and sentiment are so critical to how you appear in search results or answers.
And it goes back to so many different touch points with a brand, not just the logo that people see or the advertising, but also the product that they use, retention, all that kind of stuff.
SEOs need to show other departments where issues lie, using click-through rates, brand search volume, and engagement metrics as signals. They must communicate the story and rally other teams.
But that often runs into cost concerns. Asking for a new call center to improve support has big budget implications, and quantifying ROI is tough.
So, SEOs must push beyond the Google channel and influence company strategy. It’s incredibly difficult to influence.
Katie: Absolutely. And speaking of SEO being declared “dead,” I’ve heard that every few years in my 20 years in the industry, but this is the first time I’ve felt a credible threat.
SEO will never truly die. It’s discovery, and discovery is always needed, but it’s definitely changing. It used to be the most cost-effective marketing channel. Now, ROI is less certain, and budgets are contracting.
But there’s a silver lining. A lot of low-quality, general content meant just to drive mass page views is getting weeded out.
For example, we used to rank for “What is E-E-A-T?” and get tons of unqualified traffic. With AI Overviews answering those general queries now, traffic is down, but the remaining traffic is far more qualified. That’s better for conversions.
It’s hard for publishers who relied on brute-force clicks. But for us, shifting away from programmatic and toward advertisers aligned with our audience, like SaaS, has worked. The industry is changing massively.
So, what do you think is next for SEO and marketing?
The New Role Of SEO In A Changing Landscape
Kevin: You hit it on the head. SEO is contracting; budgets are down, leadership confidence is down, and when people leave, their roles often aren’t replaced. SEO has died and reinvented itself many times.
I see that we’re using a lot of SEO also for AI visibility optimization. I do expect that to change, but however you flip it, we are in a transition period. And the problem with transition periods is that they’re hard to navigate. You lose orientation, and it’s painful.
Once you settle at a new baseline, you just run around a little headless, and you try to find your way. And then slowly, things kind of start to settle back in.
And so I’m very confident that whatever we’re going to call this, we’re going to settle into a new baseline. It might take a while. This is not going to stop in the next six months – probably not twelve months. But it’s hard to predict when.
Based on how quickly models improve and how quickly humans adapt to them, that will decide the pace of this transition.
However, there are also many opportunities in transitions. You can reinvent yourself. And that’s where, as SEOs, we might lose the SEO budget, but maybe we gain some brand budget, which has been much, much bigger in the past.
You see companies spending millions of dollars for multi-year contracts for a tiny logo that sits somewhere on a Formula 1 car. These things happen all the time.
There’s a big opportunity for SEO to detach from that unwanted profiling as a performance channel – detach ourselves from being a performance channel, and become much more of a brand channel, influence channel, presence channel – whatever you want to call it.
New metrics. New levers. Deeply rooted in SEO. And effective and powerful, but kind of in a new design, right? Like SEO 2.0. Whatever you want to call it.
And I do agree with you. I also see people who’ve been in the game for a long time stepping out. Totally get that. I see young people losing a bit of confidence.
But I will also say that I would like (but wouldn’t admit) that there’s a little part of me that’s kind of excited for all this change.
Because it’s an opportunity to kind of reshuffle the cards, find out new stuff, maybe find some secrets, and kind of reverse engineer what’s going on.
When you look at the last just 10 days where multiple people and companies found new ways to reverse engineer what queries Gemini uses and ChatGPT uses, I’m like, man, it’s awesome to see how adamant the industry works on developing the new playbook, dissecting how these mechanics work and LLMs work, and finding new ways.
So, I have high confidence, and I also have a lot of empathy for all the pain and the kind of problems that this industry is going through. But again, I see us coming out the other side at some point in like a new design – and with a lot of impact.
Katie Morton: I love it. I agree with the empathy as well. Because everyone in marketing, it seems, has lost their mind a little bit over the past year or two with these shifts in traffic.
But that Wild Wild West environment is also really exciting because there are going to be all of these developments.
And if people are calm and they persevere and they do the work to figure these things out, either for themselves or to watch what those researchers are finding, people will be okay, right?
Kevin: We always are. Sorry to cut you off there, but there’s a really important point to make here that I didn’t make – and that is: It’s not just search that’s changing.
SEO is at the forefront of AI. At the absolute forefront. Because it’s about words, and it’s about search, and search is kind of the biggest interface between AI and humans right now.
So it’s not just search that’s changing. Marketing is completely changing. And like, all of our lives are completely changing.
Sure, this will take years to trickle through, maybe not even to the degree we’ve thought of it, but it’s pretty clear that AI is at least as revolutionary as the internet. Maybe even the most revolutionary invention that humanity has made so far.
So let’s not forget: Everything is changing. It’s not just us SEOs. It’s all the channels. It’s marketing as a whole.
Modes and levers are disappearing, and new ones are coming up. We’re feeling it deeply in SEO, as being kind of the front line of AI. But make no mistake, this will trickle through to all the paid channels, product, everything.
Everybody is in a state of shock right now, trying to figure out what the new branches are to hold on to and then build on top of. Marketing as we know it is over. LLMs are transforming how they reach us.
Katie: This affects every channel. At SEJ, we’ve collapsed editorial and marketing into one integrated team. It used to be SEO and editorial here, marketing over there, and no one really talked. That doesn’t work anymore.
Now, everything is more cohesive and focused on the ICP and conversion. It’s better for customers and for teams.
Kevin: 100%. I talk to all my clients about this. SEO and paid search should’ve always been connected, but they were siloed, same with product, email, social, etc.
I mean, look: Realistically and ideally, SEO and paid (or paid search) have always been connected at the hip. But I’ll tell you, at least across almost all the companies that I’ve worked with, they were siloed.
The same exists with all these other teams, like product marketing or social media, conversion, and email – all that kind of stuff.
Now’s the time to rip off the band-aid. There can be small teams of maybe an SEO, an editor, an email person, a social person, and maybe a very technical person who can quickly prototype new apps, programs, or tools.
The biggest challenge now is internal red tape. AI is a speed catalyst, but companies’ old workflows slow them down. Big organizations are stuck.
I’m urging clients to form these multi-disciplinary units under one manager, one roof, one mission.
Reaching People Everywhere Requires A Bold Shift To Other Platforms
Katie: Awesome. One last point: other platforms. For too long, people relied too heavily on Google. Diversifying traffic sources – ads, social, newsletters – is now essential. Holistic marketing is the future. What are you seeing [that is] working right now?
Generally speaking, where do people live these days? Where are humans hanging out, and where do we find them? What are the success metrics that you’re seeing?
Kevin: The short answer is: Everywhere.
Katie: Good luck, everyone. Okay, good night. That’s the show!
Kevin: No, but the reality is, everywhere. There’s this interesting paradox. I need to coin this term somehow, but this interesting paradox that basically all the social networks are growing. And new ones are popping up, right? TikTok – I mean, it’s not that new anymore, but it’s still growing. Reddit is becoming much more of a household name now.
And so you ask yourself, what gives? Sure, linear TV’s down, okay. But how is this possible? And the reality is: People are online all the time – speaking for a friend – and they use a lot of platforms at the same time.
So, the best teams, or the companies that are making a big impact, they have this surround sound effect that they’re creating, where they’re present in a lot of places. They engage authentically, say, on Reddit.
When good companies engage on Reddit, it doesn’t feel like marketing. It’s not marketing, really. It’s much more like trying to be helpful, more like customer support or success.
That’s why these people are generally very well-suited to interact on Reddit. They truly add value. They’re truly part of the conversation.
Brands are repurposing their content in a very thoughtful and high-fidelity way, where maybe they create a blog article, turn it into a video, turn it into clips, which then turn into questions they answer on Reddit. There is this kind of everywhere strategy. AI really helps with that.
And I will also say it’s typically not companies that are getting stuck at the quantification-of-impact question. The reality is that steering an organization or a company toward that multi-channel effect – or that surround sound effect – takes a swing.
It takes a leader to say, “Okay, we’re going to spend some money and take six months, and we’re going to invest in Reddit and YouTube, and we’re going to wait for the results to come in. We’re not going to sit there every day refreshing the dashboard asking, ‘How many sales have we generated yet?’”
It takes a bit of a swing. And so it’s defining for this era, for this transition period, where it’s much harder to project and forecast where you’re going to land with some of these things.
It takes judgment and taste and a certain degree of risk-taking to invest in these channels and functions, and being comfortable, or at least okay, with waiting for some of the results to come in and being able to measure them later.
I’m not saying you should wait a year or two. But give it two quarters, maybe three quarters, and experiment with some of these channels.
So, that’s where people are – people are everywhere. It’s not enough to just have one shot at one platform. You need to be kind of everywhere.
And repurposing can help. Using AI with some of these things helps. But at the end of the day, you need to take a swing.
Katie: Very wise, Kevin. One of those things that I found highly annoying is that you can run these experiments, and you’re going to wait for your results, and then before your experiment is even done, everything’s changed again.
Kevin: Exactly. Predictable methods are gone. You take swings, and some won’t connect because conditions change. The best leaders, the best teams – a lot of times, they take a lot of swings.
Because some of those swings will hit full force, and it’s kind of a skill to build.
Katie: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. We’ve implemented monthly experiments at SEJ. Every department runs one. It could be layout, content type … constant iteration. I tell the team: soft knees. Be ready to shift. There’s no “set it and forget it” anymore.
Kevin: Yes, yes. On point. Allow people to fail. Another good skill is being able to take meaningful risks. I’m not saying bet the farm, but as a leader, if you want to encourage your people to take risks, let them.
Again, that doesn’t mean to blindly shoot in all directions. You want to have some thought behind that, some judgment. You want to be critical. But there has to be a point at which you let go.
Katie: That is a really perfect point. We tie experiments to north-star metrics. For us, one is newsletter subscriptions, so most of our experiments support that. We’ve seen great success, not always in raw traffic, but in conversions and revenue.
Kevin: Amazing. Congratulations on that.
Katie: Thank you. All right, Kevin, any parting remarks before we head out?
Kevin: I’m hearing a lot of very concerned SEOs. Concerned about “How do I tell this story?” or “How do I manage my boss or leadership in this time where traffic is down?”
I want to send out some courage. This is one of the biggest shifts I’ve lived through in my life. I would bet it’s probably the same for most, if not all, of the audience.
So, this is maybe the time to make some changes and have some grace about finding a new playbook.
I’m seeing a lot of SEOs very scared about this. I get the initial fear. But again, this is such a substantial, fundamental change. It’s okay for things to look different. It’s okay for you not to have the answer right now. Be honest with leadership. Push back if needed.
Katie: Focus on new metrics, not just UVs or PVs, but ones that connect to business goals. That’s where the story of success will be told.
Kevin: Exactly.
Katie: Thanks again, Kevin. Where can people find you?
Kevin:growthmemo.com, or just search for “Growth Memo.” That’s my main hub.
Katie: Awesome. We’re at searchenginejournal.com. See you next time!
Kevin: Thanks for having me.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Most brands don’t know they’re wasting money on branded ads. Are you one of them?
What if your Google Ads strategy is quietly draining your budget? Many advertisers are paying high CPCs even when there’s no real competition. It’s often because they’re unknowingly bidding against themselves.
Join BrandPilot AI on July 17, 2025 for a live session with Jenn Paterson and John Beresford, as they explain The Uncontested Paid Search Problem and how to stop it before it eats into your performance.
In this data-backed session, you’ll learn:
Why CPCs rise even without competitor bidding
How to detect branded ad waste in your own account
What this hidden flaw is costing your brand
Tactical strategies to reclaim lost budget and improve your results
Why this matters:
Brands are overspending on Google Ads without knowing the real reason. If you’re running branded search campaigns, this session will show you how to identify and fix what’s costing you the most.
Register today to protect your spend and improve performance. If you can’t attend live, sign up anyway and we’ll send you the full recording after the event.
I recently compared my March 2025 “What works well in LLMs” analysis with Ahrefs’ May 2025 study of 75,000 brands, and we independently arrived at the same surprising conclusion about AI search visibility.
It turns out, brand matters – a lot.
Today’s Memo is a deep dive into a concept that’s often talked about (but rarely measured well): Brand authority.
In this issue, I’m unpacking:
What brand authority really is, and how it’s different from topical authority.
Why brand search volume is the strongest predictor of AI chatbot mentions.
How Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines frame brand reputation and trust.
Tactical steps you can take to build and track brand authority.
A brand-new framework (premium only) for live brand authority dashboards.
If you care about AI visibility or becoming the go-to answer in your niche, brand authority needs to be on your radar.
Let’s define it. Track it. Build it.
Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free!
Brand authority has gained a new quality in the context of AI search.
After matching many metrics with AI chatbot visibility, I found one factor that stands out more than anything else: Brand search volume. The number of AI chatbot mentions and brand search volume have a correlation of .334 – pretty good in this field. In other words, the popularity of a brand broadly decides how visible it is in AI chatbots.
Our correlation of 0.392 for branded search volume closely supports Kevin’s findings – but we’ve uncovered even stronger signals.
The problem: Topical authority is often fuzzy and undefined. The implication is that people use it as an argument to justify actions that are actually not related.
So, I want to double-click on the LLM study and:
Clearly define brand authority and show how it’s different from topical authority.
Explain its role in AI search.
Show you how to build brand authority.
Share a concept for measuring brand authority.
A Crisp Definition Of Brand Authority
Brand authority started as a metric by Moz, built on Google’s Quality Rater guidelines, and then became an industry term.[2]
What Is Brand Authority?
Brand authority is the cumulative trust, prominence, and perceived expertise a domain earns (across the open web and offline sources) that search engines and LLMs use to decide whether and how prominently to surface that brand as an answer.
Brand authority is really just another name for reputation measured across:
Branded search demand.
High-quality citations.
Authoritative backlinks.
Expert/press mentions.
Positive user engagement.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
How Is Brand Authority Different From Topical Authority?
Topical authority is the depth and breadth of expertise and trust in a defined topic niche, while brand authority applies to all topics a domain targets.
You could call brand authority the sum of topical authority across an entire brand, its domain, and all targeted topics.
The idea behind topical authority is that by covering all aspects of a topic (well), sites get a ranking boost because Google sees them as an authority in the topic space.
On the other end of the spectrum would be sites that only touch the surface of a topic.
This handy visual from Clearscope.io’s article “Topical Authority: The What and Why” breaks this down simply:[3]
Screenshot by author from clearscope.io, July 2025
How To Think About Brand Authority
Part of what makes brand authority such a fuzzy term is its contextual quality: Authority is query and topic-dependent.
Some topics have clearly authoritative sites or brands. (Think NerdWallet for credit cards, The Zebra for insurance, and Nike for sneakers.)
Others don’t. For example, a very new topic where authority isn’t established (you know, like GEO/AIO optimization).
Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines (GQRGs) speak about three types of authority:
Unique Official Authority: Government sites for official documents; company sites for their own products.
Recognized Authority: Well-known sources that are go-to references for specific topics.
Informal Authority: For non-YMYL (or Your Money or Your Life) topics, reputation information may be less formal. Popularity, user engagement, and user reviews can be considered evidence of reputation for non-YMYL websites.
You should expect to find some reputation information for large websites and well-known content creators. People or businesses who create content in a professional capacity typically have some reputation information available. However, small websites may have little or no reputation information. This is not indicative of high or low quality.
Brand authority is often mentioned in the same breath as E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, trustworthiness), a concept in the GQRGs to describe ideal results.
Important to note: The GQRGs guidelines say that trust is the most important factor.
If the results aren’t trustworthy, none of the other four factors matter.
As a result, you need to be known for a topic and also come across as trustworthy, which is strongly reflected in my recent AIO usability study:
Emotion is tied to risk. Searchers are internally asking What’s at stake? when making a decision to trust a result
And as a result, high-stakes niches – or even expensive products – receive more skepticism and scrutiny from users.
This skepticism plays out in the form of clicks – a.k.a. your opportunities to convince people that you’re trustworthy.
Takeaways:
Measure brand authority in the context of your competitors.
Recognize that your ability to compete with high-authority brands depends on industry and targeted topics. (Example: A regional medical private practice will have difficulty competing against WebMD for visibility on generic medical topics, but would likely excel in location-specific content.)
Ensure your site is the unique official authority for your products and services. If not, find out why and urgently resolve it.
Ready to make tracking brand authority across metrics easier? I came up with a concept for a brand authority live dashboard, and premium subscribers will get it at the end of this memo. Should save you tons of time!
How Can You Influence Brand Authority?
The main underlying challenge with brand authority? That so many factors influence it.
And for growth marketers and SEO pros, there are often limitations on the inputs you can control.
What you can influence:
What your brand’s website or content says about itself → via brand positioning, reflection of E-E-A-T.
What others say about the brand, website, or your content creators → via data stories and first-party data.
What is visible on the page, including the main content and supporting sections, like reviews and comments → via content production effort, design & layout, trust signals.
User reviews → via providing a great product, service, and experience to submit those reviews.
What is hard to influence:
Customer service/support.
Sales experience.
Product quality/product market fit.
Brand campaigns.
Company positioning & messaging.
Tactical Steps You Can Take
1. Research your reputation to find sites that have an outsized impact:
Search queries raters use: [ibm -site:ibm.com], [“ibm.com” -site:ibm.com], [ibm reviews -site:ibm.com] (these search operators surface up branded mentions across the web).
Look for articles, references, recommendations by experts, and other credible information written by people about the website.
Sources must be independent (not created by the website itself).
Note that sources of mentions/links like news articles, Wikipedia articles, magazines, and ratings from independent organizations signal stronger authority.
Different types of evidence matter for different industries:
News sites: Journalistic awards, Pulitzer prizes.
Medical sites: Recognition from professional medical organizations.
Ecommerce: Customer service reputation, BBB ratings.
Academic: Citations, peer recognition.
2. Use a tool like Semrush Brand Mentions/Ahrefs Mention Tracker/other third-party tools.
Track mentions.
Grow the number of mentions while using positive sentiment as a guardrail.
Differentiate between products that get negative reviews by default.
Monitor differences in backlink authority for your brand vs. peers (via Ahrefs DR, Moz DA).
3. Analyze and optimize your third-party reviews.
React to bad reviews (notice if, in some spaces, you only get bad reviews → which ones?).
How to analyze? → Can you build a small tool that scrapes reviews from G2, Trustpilot, etc., and summarizes their sentiment?
Look at the average rating.
Review what the 5- and 1-star reviews highlight (both positive + negative sentiment).
4. Analyze whether the right pages show up for branded queries (or even exist in the first place) to ensure you offer all important information to users, Google, and LLMs:
Review Google Search Console for “brand + topic” impression tracking.
For example, in the screenshot below, you see a site that gets impressions for the term “{brand} document management” but doesn’t have a dedicated landing page for it.
Google ranks the homepage and other product pages at the top, but the user experience would be much better with a dedicated landing page.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
5. Opt into LLM-citation tracking through a tool.
I’ve included a few of my favorite options below:
Profound.
Scrunch.
Xofu.
Semrush.
Ahrefs.
6. Brand lift & awareness surveys.
What to measure: Unaided/Aided brand recall in your category – Perceived expertise (e.g., “Which brand would you consult for X?”).
Why it matters: Directly tests real-world authority in user minds – separate from search behavior.
How to track: Run sub-100-respondent surveys via Google Surveys or Pollfish quarterly.
7. Sentiment & themes via social listening.
What to measure: Net sentiment score (positive vs. negative mentions) on Twitter, Reddit, forums, and Slack communities; share of voice vs. key rivals in topical conversations (e.g., “skincare AI recommendations”).
Why it matters: Authority isn’t just volume – it’s perceived expertise and trust. Social buzz reveals genuine endorsement or criticism.
How to track: Tools like Semrush Brand Monitoring, Ahrefs, Brandwatch, Talkwalker, or Meltwater; set up topic-specific streams for “brand + topic” keywords.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
One of the best ways to make sure the tactical steps you’re taking to build brand authority are actually moving the needle is to measure and monitor your efforts.
Below, I’ve just dropped a brand authority live dashboard for premium subscribers.
If you don’t have something like this set up already, this should save you hours (maybe even a couple of days) setting up something on your own. Check it out and try it. 👇👇👇
Decision-makers are more likely to buy from organizations that produce strong thought leadership content, and they’re more likely to stay with a current provider that produces strong thought leadership content, which confirms the company continues to offer insights and solutions compared to competitors.[1]
Unfortunately, the term “thought leadership” has a lot of baggage because too many people share a lot of fluff.
They talk about a grand future where everything is amazing, but they don’t share any plans for actually creating that future.
They talk about how far they’ve come, triumphing over a big failure in the past, but they neglect to share any insights from their journey.
They repeat quippy soundbites and hot takes, but they lack any nuance to help their audience improve.
Thought Leadership Is Not Executive Content
How often have you heard of teams calling any content that includes an executive or founder byline “thought leadership”? It happens all the time.
But executives and founders frequently have bylines, appear in videos, and share content on stages – that isn’t thought leadership.
Consider the quarterly earnings report. This is frequently delivered to investors and analysts by a chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), or a founder. Yet, would you consider that content to be thought leadership? Probably not.
Teams can easily understand that, just because an executive shares the information in an earnings report, it doesn’t mean it’s thought leadership, but they struggle to make this differentiation in other narratives and assets.
Thought Leadership Is Not Why Or How We Made Our Product Or Service
Often, people think that talking about why you created something automatically makes it thought leadership content. The “why” is part of conceptual-depth content.
But, simply explaining why something is helpful or necessary does not make it thought leadership.
Again, this is easy to understand with simple examples, like “why you should eat a high-protein diet (it’s an essential ingredient for building big muscles)” but becomes much more difficult when translated to complex topics for brands.
Thought Leadership Is Not Non-Product Content
Some teams think that sharing learn-intent content or assets related to stories and practices automatically means it’s thought leadership content. This is incorrect.
Learn-intent content often teaches the audience about existing information, including well-known topics, referencing older research.
For example, Atlassian shared articles related to Agile methodology on increasing reach, engagement, and conversion.
While this learn-intent content is helpful, it’s based on well-known practices that originated with other creators.
Atlassian didn’t create the concepts, despite articulating them in practical terms for teams looking to learn about incorporating Agile practices into their team rituals and workflows.
Thought Leadership Is Not Being Contrarian
People often assume that being contrarian automatically makes you a thought leader, or that you must be contrarian if you want to be a thought leader.
In theory, being at the forefront of your industry means that you’re going against the best practices, status quo, and commonly held beliefs.
You’re introducing new ways of accomplishing something. You’re iterating on previous work, which probably means you’re dismantling some strategy and tactics, and that’s going to ruffle some feathers!
Sharing in this way is different from being contrarian. Being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian doesn’t make you a thought leader – it just makes you contrarian.
Simply saying the opposite of whatever is trendy is not thought leadership. You must add to the conversation, not just change it.
Attributes Of Thought Leadership
In the simplest terms, we can define thought leadership by looking at each word in the phrase. So, have thoughts, be a leader.
If you look at the anatomy of the phrase, you see that “thought” is really about having something of value to say; being a “leader” and showing “leadership” implies that you are worth following, and that people do, in fact, follow you.
True thought leadership content changes minds and enables action in a new direction. It balances lofty ideas with actionable insights.
Quality content is smart, helpful, and curated. It’s not thought leadership, however, unless it’s innovative, disruptive, and original.
If we continue the three-word descriptions, we can say that a thought leader is someone who is smart, shaping, and sharing. Let’s look at these attributes:
Smart: You’re an expert and you have actionable insights.
Sharing: You codify your insights and make them available for others to learn, use, and improve.
Shaping: You have influence in your industry; your strategies and tactics become best practices.
Thought leadership is unique because it’s about a differentiated point of view informed by expertise and experience, original ideas, strategy, and/or execution, and helping the audience think, act, and achieve in new ways.
Thought leadership builds trust because it’s coming from someone with deep expertise and experience, and it enables someone to take action.
Pitfalls Of Thought Leadership Programs
In addition to the misunderstanding of the meaning of thought leadership, many companies make mistakes when trying to build thought leaders and thought leadership programs.
Marketers and public relations professionals often shortlist executives to build as the organization’s thought leaders.
This is particularly true in founder-led companies, with the assumption that the founder is the best person to be a thought leader.
Unfortunately, executives often struggle to be thought leaders for several reasons. First, they’re busy! These people often manage large organizations with tens or hundreds of people relying on them.
They’re responsible for a large budget, often owning the Profit & Loss statements, revenue goals and quotas, and customer growth numbers if they sit in the go-to-market organization, and efficiency, productivity, or cost savings if they sit on the engineering or IT side of the organization.
This means that they don’t have much time to experiment, iterate, and optimize, and then codify their findings in a way that others can follow. They don’t have time to create quality assets.
And they don’t have time to distribute content in multiple channels, answer follow-up questions, or otherwise engage with the audience consistently to build a large following.
It turns out that practitioners throughout the organization are often better suited to growing into thought leaders because they’re the ones grappling with the challenges and solving the complex problems.
The audience trusts them because they bring real-world experience to the stories and solutions they share, and they’re more likely to spend time on social media and build community with a larger peer network.
To read the full book, SEJ readers have an exclusive 25% discount code and free shipping to the US and UK. Use promo code SEJ25 at koganpage.com here.
Data-backed insights on what drives visibility and performance in AI search
A proven framework to drive results in AI search, and why this approach works
Purpose-built content strategies for driving success in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
This webinar helps enterprise SEOs and executives move from “I don’t know what’s happening in AI search” to “I have a data-driven strategy to compete and win.”
This session is designed for:
Marketing managers and SEO strategists looking to stay ahead.
Brand leaders managing performance visibility across platforms.
Content teams building for modern search behaviors.
You’ll walk away with a usable playbook and a better understanding of how to optimize for the answer, not the query.
AI is being rapidly implemented, but that doesn’t mean it’s being used effectively.
The current lack of clear benchmarks and data about AI usage has meant that everyone has been operating in the dark.
This led us to create our first State Of AI In Marketing report, so that chief marketing officers and marketing decision-makers can have insights to make better informed decisions as they navigate the fast-moving developments in our industry.
We asked eight key questions about generative AI in marketing to a selection of U.S.-based decision-makers and leaders.
We got 155 responses from mostly senior marketers, directors, and C-suite to offer fresh insights into how industry leaders perceive AI, and how they are using AI right now.
While some marketers are unlocking major gains in efficiency, others are struggling with poor output quality, lack of brand voice consistency, and legal uncertainties.
Our whitepaper presents their responses, broken down across five core themes:
Which AI tools are most broadly adopted among marketers.
How marketers are using AI.
The results they’re seeing.
The challenges they face.
Where they plan to invest next.
Whether you’re leading a team or building a roadmap, this report is designed to help you benchmark your AI strategy to make confident decisions as our industry moves at an unprecedented pace.
6 Key Findings From The Report
1. ChatGPT Is Currently Dominating The Tools
Over 83% of marketers said ChatGPT has positively impacted their efficiency or effectiveness.
But it’s not the only player: Tools like Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Canva AI are also making their mark, with many marketers assembling AI “stacks” that combine different strengths across platforms.
2. Content Has Seen The Most Tangible Impact From AI
Unsurprisingly, the most impact in marketing so far among our respondents is based around content, where 64.5% experienced value with content creation, 43.9% with content optimization, and 43.9% with idea generation.
However, AI is not replacing creativity; it’s augmenting it. Marketing teams are using tools to speed up, optimize and break through creative blocks, not to replace human insight.
The report also shares other key areas where AI has delivered the most value to those surveyed.
3. Time Savings Were The Single Most Improved Outcome
The majority of respondents (76.8%) cited time savings as the biggest improvement since adopting AI.
To enhance productivity and efficiency, marketers are gaining hours back to relocate their time to more strategic work.
4. Direct ROI-Linked Results Are Lacking
While operational efficiency is clearly impacted, strategic metrics like customer lifetime value, lead quality, and attribution remain largely unchanged.
In other words, AI is streamlining how we work, but not necessarily improving what we deliver without human oversight and a sound strategy.
5. Output Quality Remains A Top Concern
More than half (54.2%) of respondents identified inaccurate, unreliable, or inconsistent output quality as the biggest limitation in using AI for marketing.
This highlights a central theme that AI still requires substantial human oversight to produce marketing-ready content.
6. Misinformation Is The No. 1 Concern
The most cited concern about AI’s rise in marketing wasn’t job loss; it was the risk of misinformation.
A full 62.6% of respondents flagged AI-generated misinformation as their top worry, revealing the importance of trust, accuracy, and reputation for AI-powered content.
The report also highlights the other areas of concern where marketers are experiencing limitations and inefficiencies.
More Key Findings In The State Of AI Report
Marketing Leaders Are Planning To Invest In These Key Areas
Marketing decision-makers surveyed are prioritizing AI investments where value has already been proven. The report breaks down how much of that investment is across analytics, customer experience, SEO, marketing attribution, or content production, amongst other areas.
How Marketing Leaders Are Restructuring Their Teams
The report findings also indicate whether and how our respondents restructured to accommodate AI within their organization.
Where Will Be The Biggest Impact Over The Next Few Months
Possibly the most insightful section is where respondents gave their thoughts into what would be AI’s biggest impact on marketing over the next 12 months.
Many expect a content explosion, where the market is flooded with AI-generated assets, raising the bar for originality and quality.
Others foresee a reshaped search industry and reduced roles, with an emphasis on those who don’t embrace AI getting left behind.
But, not all forecasts are negative. Several marketers believe AI will level the playing field for small businesses, increase access to high-quality tools, and empower individuals to do the work of many.
Mapping content to the traditional funnel adds no value, since the journey behaves more like a playground than a linear progression.
Pitfalls of the traditional funnel include assuming that every person in the audience intends to and will become a customer, underestimating the sophistication of the buyer, and offering limited options for post-purchase retention strategies.
Building a seamless, delightful journey on a foundation of trust means that we must fundamentally rethink our framework for the audience journey.
Most marketers are familiar with the traditional funnel to outline the buyer’s journey, focusing on three key phases: awareness, consideration, and decision.
The funnel assumes that the audience journey begins with awareness, when, in fact, the audience journey begins long before marketers recognize that this person is on a journey.
Introducing The Playground
We need to think about the journey as a playground: people can go up, down, sideways, and around. They can go to the equipment (content) in any order. They can enter and exit as they please. And they can use the content in the “wrong” way.
How many times do you force your audience to go through unnecessary steps because you’re trying to make them buy when they’re not ready; or, worse, you add friction to the buying process because you need to check the boxes on providing a white paper and a demo and a case study?
Why does this happen? It stems from the idea that we need to push prospects down the funnel to become leads and keep moving them through until they become customers.
Pitfalls Of The Customer Journey Map
Ultimately, every customer journey map ends with the prospect becoming a lead and deciding to purchase the company’s offering. This linear journey map ignores retention, cross-sell, up-sell, and expansion opportunities.
While the looping journey does, at least, acknowledge the additional post-purchase phase, it fails to capture the complexity.
For example, many software-as-a-service companies have user limits for different tiers of their product offerings.
With the rise of product-led growth (PLG) as a key go-to-market motion, many SaaS products include a free tier, with user gates, feature gates, or both, to prompt free users to become paying customers.
Traditional journey maps obscure the messy middle of the customer journey, with weird hacks to stay under the user limit, lengthy negotiations on larger contracts for seat expansion, and fighting competitors when it comes time for the customer to renew.
This highlights another pitfall of the funnel and associated journey maps to move people through the funnel. It’s a retrospective measurement tool, not a forward-looking strategy tool.
If you map the journeys of people who did, in fact, become customers, then you are correct in starting with a prospect having a problem, searching for a solution, and ultimately, choosing your offering.
If, however, you are trying to build a net-new audience, hone your narratives to resonate with that audience, and map your content and distribution strategy, you can’t simply look at what happened in the past, on owned platforms, in the condensed time period where the buying process “officially” started.
In addition, consider a post-purchase scenario where the marketer makes the journey more difficult for a customer precisely because they want to track the interaction in more detail.
Collecting more information gives us a false sense of security. If we know just a bit more about this person, surely we can convince them to spend more money.
Traditional funnel models also fail to recognize the differences between a user and an economic buyer. Many marketers recognize that buying involves multiple different people, but they assume that each stakeholder joins the process in a linear way.
For example, in larger companies, an economic buyer might need to go through a procurement process that includes a security assessment, compliance checklist, and legal or contract review before bringing in a new tool.
The linear funnel assumes that these stakeholders need to be addressed in the “decision” phase of the buying process.
And yet, ask anyone who’s been through procurement in a large enterprise, and they’ll tell you that it’s difficult, and, often, a deterrent to even starting a buying process.
In order to convince me to buy, you need to convince me that I’ll be able to buy. If you make it easy for me to make it through the procurement process, I’m much more likely to choose you as a vendor because I know that I’ll be successful in completing the process.
Consider another scenario, where individual teams are empowered to purchase tools and services on their own. These teams are all in the “post-purchase” phase.
At some point, the invoices might be large enough to warrant consolidation, which might trigger a wider vendor review. In that case, you’ve won over many users, but the economic buyer is now in the “awareness” phase, as they’ve just discovered you as a vendor.
Or, they might need to be convinced that solving this problem should continue to be a priority at all. Alternatively, the buyers might immediately move to the “consideration” phase by opening a request for proposal (RFP) or researching competitors.
Maybe they’ve bought in on the problem, but they want to explore different solutions. They might need to learn about different possible solutions, even though there’s already a vendor solving this problem.
Once you decide to consolidate a contract, the spend might be big enough to require a more thorough vetting by the procurement, security, compliance, and legal teams.
At this point, who knows which phase of the funnel you’re in? Is it “retention” with the users who no longer actually have buying power?
Is it awareness or consideration with the economic buyer? Is it awareness or decision with teams who have the ability to block the deal, but aren’t the economic buyer?
As you can see, attempting to map content to a linear funnel by also mapping linear personas becomes quite a challenge!
These scenarios also minimize or ignore the sophistication of the buyer. In a B2B (business-to-business) context, most buyers are quite sophisticated. They’re well-versed in the problem space, and might have purchased solutions in the past.
They’re equipped to do their own research, and often prefer working through the initial vetting phases before reaching out to a company to initiate a buying process.
In fact, TrustRadius found that, in 2021, 43% of buyers reported consulting with vendor representatives, and that number dropped to an average of one out of four buyers in all but the largest deal sizes.
Instead, buyers preferred to conduct their own research, with a bias towards non-vendor-provided material.
Buyers favored free trials or accounts (56%), user reviews (55%), and community forums (37%) over vendor-provided materials such as customer references (15%), blogs (14%), and marketing collateral (14%).1
This trend continued in a 2024 report from 6sense, a company that arms revenue teams with data to accelerate deal conversions. It found that, when B2B buyers directly engage sellers, they are already 70% through their buying process.2
We see over and over that, by the time a marketer becomes aware that someone is in the buying process, they’re significantly behind the buyer’s knowledge of the problem space, research into the solution space, and affinity for a select list of solution providers.
They’re not coming to the company website cold, or blindly reaching out to a salesperson.
Instead, they’ve consulted a curated list of trusted sources, including conversations with their personal network, crowdsourcing information, and recommendations from peers on social media and forums, and they’ve read about the pros and cons of different providers from people like themselves.
To read the full book, SEJ readers have an exclusive 25% discount code and free shipping to the US and UK. Use promo code SEJ25 at koganpage.com here.
More Resources:
[1] TrustRadius (2022), 2022 Buying Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer, go.trustradius.com/rs/827-FOI-687/images/TrustRadius_2022_ B2B_Buying_Disconnect_6.27.22.pdf (archived at https://perma.cc/ TG6X-UU8T)
[2] 6sense Research (2023), Out of Sight, Almost Out of Time: The 2023 6sense B2B Buyer Experience Report, 6sense, 6sense.com/report/ buyer-experience (archived at https://perma.cc/XJ3Z-ULJ4)
As emerging technologies, particularly AI, reshape B2B marketing strategies, many organizations are shifting resources toward digital transformation to remain competitive.
However, sidelining traditional marketing tactics to prioritize innovation can be a costly misstep.
Traditional channels such as print, direct mail, billboards, and events have considerable value, particularly when they are thoughtfully integrated with digital strategies and real-time demand intelligence.
Combining traditional and digital approaches offers a unique advantage, namely the ability for a brand to stand out in the sea of sameness.
Experiences that blend the old with the new are more likely to capture attention, foster trust, and drive meaningful engagement.
By aligning traditional media with digital insights and delivery systems, marketers can create a cohesive brand-to-demand experience – one that resonates with today’s self-directed, risk-averse buyers.
Here are five high-impact ways to integrate traditional and digital marketing for a more personalized and effective buyer experience.
1. Intent Data Intelligence + One-To-One Conversations
When fueled by intent data intelligence, the cold calls of yesterday become the insight-driven conversations of tomorrow.
Intent data empowers organizations to identify where prospects are within the buyer’s journey and to gauge their level of interest in specific solutions.
This approach transcends cold outreach, enabling marketers and sales teams to engage with prospects who are actively exhibiting buying intent signals.
Before initiating outreach, Go-To-Market (GTM) teams can use intent data to identify:
Prospects actively researching or seeking a solution.
Competing vendors under consideration.
Behavioral signals that reveal sales readiness or indicate the need for a longer nurture path.
Current challenges, questions, and priority search topics shaping buyer decisions.
Organizations can begin capturing meaningful intent signals directly from their own client relationship manager (CRM) and digital ecosystem.
Key first-party intent signals include:
Visits to solution-specific or pillar pages on your website.
Keyword searches aligned with your offerings.
Email engagement metrics, particularly open and click-through rates.
Once foundational tracking is established, GTM teams should consider enhancing their database with firmographic and technographic data.
When integrated thoughtfully into your GTM strategy, intent intelligence allows you to engage buyers with relevant messaging, transforming passive prospects into sales-ready opportunities.
2. Print Media + Deep Media Nurturing
The most effective B2B marketers are meeting the demands of cautious, self-directed buying groups by orchestrating deep media presence that aligns with how prospects prefer to research and engage.
Yet, according to our own Q4 2024 market research, only 22% of marketing teams prioritize the creation of buyer enablement materials, highlighting a significant gap between awareness-building efforts and buyer-centric strategies that support purchase decisions.
The most progressive strategies integrate AI-powered targeting, first-party intent data, and omnichannel delivery systems to ensure buyers receive value at every stage of their journey.
We know that on average, 33-50% of buyers go through seven or more pieces of content during the purchase process. Print media offers a distinct opportunity to break through this noise and command attention.
When informed by behavioral insights and demand intelligence, print media can be strategically activated in niche publications consumed by your target buying groups, delivering a high return on investment.
Here is how B2B buyer intelligence enhances print media experiences:
Predictive analytics and intent signals identify which accounts are most likely to purchase, enabling marketers to prioritize them for print media activation.
Generative AI enables personalization at scale by adapting core messaging across different print formats and channels.
QR codes integrated into compelling print advertisements bridge the physical and digital experience, allowing for trackable engagement and follow-up opportunities.
Print-on-demand and programmatic print technologies make it possible to deliver hyper-personalized physical content with the same agility and precision as digital campaigns.
For marketers focused on brand-to-demand integration, combining technology-enabled media strategies with high-trust formats, such as print, provides a unique and differentiated way to capture buyer attention.
3. Events + ABX
Ensuring that key accounts receive a personalized follow-up experience through an Account-Based Experience (ABX) strategy is an effective way to bridge traditional event marketing with modern, buyer-centric engagement.
ABX enables marketers to connect with prospects before, during, and after an event, creating a cohesive journey that adds value at every stage.
Before the event, contacts can be engaged with targeted nurture streams that build interest and provide relevant insights, effectively “priming” them with content that addresses common pain points, frequently asked questions, or industry trends.
This not only enhances their readiness to engage at the event, but also empowers them with the context to have more meaningful conversations on-site.
For example, if a prospect receives content around B2B buyer advocacy in pre-event nurture, they may arrive at the booth with a deeper understanding of the topic and specific questions in mind.
This creates an opportunity for sales to engage in more relevant, high-value discussions, transforming a standard booth interaction into strategically qualified engagement.
By extending the event experience beyond the show floor, ABX ensures that traditional marketing efforts are amplified through intent-driven, personalized interactions.
This leads to stronger relationships, clearer value exchange, and accelerated pipeline progression.
4. Billboards/Posters + Geotargeting + Nurture
To maximize the effectiveness of traditional advertising platforms such as billboards and posters, marketers can integrate geotargeting to bridge physical impressions with digital engagement.
Geotargeting enables the delivery of tailored follow-up content based on a viewer’s location, allowing billboard placements to align strategically with key account locations, such as near a corporate headquarters or an industry event venue.
When paired with compelling creatives and a clear call to action, such as a short, memorable URL or QR code, billboards can guide viewers to personalized landing pages that extend the message and encourage deeper interaction.
These landing pages can be tailored by industry, buyer stage, or intent signals, further enhancing relevance and conversion potential.
At a more advanced level, mobile location data can be used to identify devices that have passed by a billboard.
This type of geotargeting enables marketers to retarget those individuals with personalized digital nurture campaigns, reinforcing the original message across multiple touchpoints.
By combining location-specific placement with digital activation, billboards evolve from static awareness tools into measurable components of a modern ABX strategy that drives engagement and accelerates pipeline.
5. Direct Mail + Buyer Intelligence
When executed with precision and relevance, direct mail can be a powerful tool for re-engaging prospects who have become unresponsive to digital touchpoints.
A well-timed physical asset can prompt renewed interest, particularly when guided by demand and buyer intelligence.
Technology can play a critical role in elevating direct mail from a generic outreach method in the following ways:
Intent data and predictive analytics, together forming deep data intelligence about the prospect or account, identify when a buying group is entering an active research or purchasing stage, ensuring that direct mail is sent at the most strategic moment.
AI-driven personalization enables messaging tailored to a recipient’s industry, role, behavior patterns, or known tech stack.
Programmatic print technology allows for scalable, real-time production of customized assets such as postcards, letters, or dimensional mailers, triggered by specific prospect actions or buying signals.
Integrated measurement platforms unify physical and digital engagement data, allowing marketers to continuously optimize campaigns.
QR codes and custom landing pages extend the journey, creating a seamless transition from physical to digital.
If five follow-up emails have failed to elicit a response, a sixth is unlikely to succeed. However, a timely and thoughtful piece of direct mail, such as a handwritten note, a tailored infographic, or a personalized token of value, can break through resistance and reinitiate dialogue.
Beyond performance metrics, direct mail also builds trust. When buyers feel recognized and understood, they are more inclined to engage, respond, and move forward in their buying journey.
As part of a broader demand strategy, direct mail plays a key role in creating high-impact, memorable moments that differentiate your brand from the competition.
Key Takeaways
Intent data intelligence turns cold outreach into warm conversations by leveraging behavioral signals to prioritize high-value prospects and boost efficiency.
ABX transforms events into full-funnel experiences through pre-nurture, contextual engagement, and tailored follow-up.
Direct mail, enhanced by demand intelligence and personalization, cuts through digital noise and re-engages prospects with targeted, tangible touchpoints.
With geotargeting, personalization, and integrated measurement, even traditional media becomes seamlessly trackable and conversion-ready.
