Creative thoughts lack structure.

Once you direct your creativity by putting up some guardrails,
your thinking gets more efficient.

The best way to structure my thoughts is using frameworks.

One of those frameworks that help businesses grow through strategic marketing is based on my own name, here it goes:

The GERT Framework

To use this framework, go through each of the steps, or copy it into ChatGPT or Gemini, for instance, and ask it to apply the framework to your business:

G = rowth

• Market expansion into new customer segments or verticals
• Geographic expansion (domestic or international markets)
• Product line extensions and new category development
• Strategic partnerships and channel development
• Customer base diversification (B2C to B2B, or vice versa)
• Brand positioning and market differentiation strategies

E = Efficiency Wins

• Operations and supply chain optimization
• Manufacturing or fulfillment process improvements
• Cost reduction initiatives without sacrificing quality
• Automation and technology integration
• Inventory management optimization
• Team structure and workflow improvements
• Vendor relationship optimization

R = Revenue Drivers

• Pricing strategy optimization
• Premium product or service offerings
• Upselling and cross-selling opportunities
• Subscription or recurring revenue models
• Customer lifetime value enhancement
• Average order value (AOV) increases
• New revenue stream development

T = Traffic Foundations

• SEO and organic search optimization
• Content marketing strategies
• Paid advertising channels (PPC, social ads)
• Social media presence and engagement
• Email marketing and retention campaigns
• Referral and affiliate programs
• Strategic PR and brand awareness initiatives
• Community building and engagement

If you'd like to see what the framework would look like applied to your brand, drop me a line to info@gertmellak.com and I'll check it out!

Had a great conversation with James Schramko recently about something that's been bothering me.

Everyone's rushing to optimize for AI while their basic SEO is falling apart.

It's like building a second floor when your foundation has cracks. Sure, you might get some quick wins, but the whole thing could collapse.

The Reality Nobody Wants to Hear

AI platforms pull their information from somewhere. And that somewhere is often the same content that ranks in search engines.

If Google can't understand what you offer, neither can ChatGPT or Claude.

Think about it: when Perplexity gives an answer about "best Shopify SEO tools," where do you think that information comes from? The same websites that rank for those terms in search.

Your SEO work feeds the AI machine. Abandon it, and you're invisible in both places.

What We're Seeing at SEOLeverage

Our clients who've been investing in SEO are automatically getting better visibility in ChatGPT responses. No extra work needed.

Meanwhile, businesses that jumped ship to focus only on AI optimization? They're scrambling to rebuild what they lost.

The smart money isn't choosing between SEO and AI. It's doing both, with SEO as the foundation.

Zero-Click Searches Aren't The Enemy

James brought up an interesting point about zero-click searches. More people get their answers directly in search results or AI responses without clicking through.

That sounds bad for traffic, right?

Not necessarily.

Every time your brand appears in those results – even without a click – you're building recognition. A user might not click today, but when they're ready to buy, they remember seeing your name five times in their research.

That's why structured content matters more than ever. Clear headlines, proper schema markup, and context-rich articles increase your chances of being featured, whether someone clicks or not.

The Platform Game Has Changed

Reddit threads now show up in AI responses. Forum discussions influence what ChatGPT recommends. Listicles that mention your product get referenced by Perplexity.

If you're not in these conversations, you don't exist for AI systems.

We're telling our clients to get their brand mentioned everywhere relevant. Not spammy link building – actual participation in discussions where their expertise adds value.

The 80/20 Rule Still Applies

Every two weeks at SEOLeverage, we identify the 20% of activities that will drive 80% of results for our clients.

Right now, that 20% includes:

• Fixing technical SEO issues that block crawling
• Creating content that answers specific questions clearly
• Getting mentioned in industry discussions and lists
• Building brand signals across platforms

The businesses that win aren't trying to do everything. They're doing the right things consistently.

My Take After Working in Both Worlds

I've been deep in AI optimization for months. Testing, measuring, adjusting. (My daughters think I talk to ChatGPT more than to them – they might be right.)

Here's what I know: AI visibility without SEO foundation is a house of cards.

But SEO without considering AI is leaving money on the table.

You need both. Period.

What Should You Do Right Now?

Start with an audit. Where does your SEO actually stand? Are your title tags clear? Does your content structure make sense? Can search engines understand what you offer?

Fix those basics first.

Then layer in AI optimization. Make sure your content provides the context AI systems need. Structure your information so it's easy to extract and reference.

Don't abandon what works to chase what's new. Build on your foundation instead.

The companies succeeding right now aren't the ones making dramatic pivots. They're the ones steadily improving both their SEO and AI presence, treating them as complementary rather than competing strategies.

Want to hear the full conversation? James and I go deeper into specific tactics and real examples from our client work. [Link]

Need help figuring out your SEO-to-AI strategy? That's exactly what we do at SEOLeverage.com. We'll show you the 20% that actually moves the needle.

We live in interesting times as marketers these days.

AI is changing the game, and while it's exciting, I know it can also feel like we're in new, unexplored territory.

Many brands are tempted to jump right into the latest AI tools, hoping for quick wins.

But:

In my experience, that's like using a power tool without knowing what you're building – you might end up making mistakes, only faster. 

I get it, the attraction of AI is strong:

• It promises to streamline our work, enhance our creativity
• boost our results
• give you some free time back to do something you might be more passionate about

And it can deliver on that promise, but only if we use it strategically.

In fact, AI doesn't replace strategy. It simply allows us to execute it faster.

Think of it this way: I use AI to enhance my work, but it's the strategy that provides the blueprint.  

What I'm seeing is that many of you are missing a crucial piece: a solid process.

It's not enough to just play around with AI.

We need a consistent, repeatable framework that ensures we're using these tools to achieve specific goals.

And the fastest way to get one is to accept external help - someone you trust, and who is not tied to the day-to-day madness of running or working in your business.

Someone who

• comes into your world
• analyzes your situation
• disassembles your processes
• improves its parts where possible
• and puts them back together for you to continue.

As a consultant, my focus is on providing that clarity and direction.

I help brands like yours by focusing on what I call the three pillars of modern marketing:

• Precision: In 2025, data is everywhere. And it is being used to inform the algorithms about your brand, your products, the challenges you solve, and the markets you are in. This is where precision-engineered SEO and content work come in and where we align your pages with search journeys, user intent, build authority, and turn traffic into conversions. 
• Platform Leverage: Your customers are all over the place. They're on Instagram, YouTube, Reddit... and their attention is scattered. We need to meet them where they are with consistent messaging that’s adapted for each platform. They will most likely discover you on one of their favourite platforms, and only then search for more information about you.
• Consistency: This is where many of you struggle. You might be tired of your message, but your audience is only just beginning to hear it. We need to show up consistently with valuable insights. That's why I emphasize building scalable frameworks. 

If you're feeling a bit lost these days, it's normal. Just remember you're not alone.

What you need is a guide who can bring clarity, strategy, and a bit of "precision in practice" to your marketing efforts.

Reach out to see if we're a good fit and build a strategy that delivers real results. 

Gert

Yesterday, OpenAI announced a direct integration of product details into their chat. If we can believe some code leaks reported, the ChatGPT experience should even include the final purchase of the selected product.

A click through to your website might no longer be necessary!

Why is this relevant?

Searching on ChatGPT is a drastically different experience than searching through the traditional Google Search box.

And while Google tries to push their AI Mode, ChatGPT is still often the first tool accessed by more and more users.

We have to expect AI Mode or ChatGPT to become our go-to interface handling entire search journeys.

Especially when these tools are able to actually even close a sale.

Given the trust many users bring towards ChatGPT, sharing often private details with the platform, it's to be expected that people will also bring this trust across when faced with a Checkout form of sorts.

An OpenAI product feed is coming

Similar to Google Merchant Center, OpenAI seems to be preparing to read product details from a product feed soon, thus feeding 😅 their internal knowledge graph with real-world, updated data.

If you want to sign up to be notified when your store's feed can be submitted, sign up here https://openai.com/chatgpt/search-product-discovery/

Leverage the control you have

Whatever the full experience will look like, the trend clearly shows that platforms expect us to engage more and more within an AI-driven conversation, asking questions, sharing knowledge, and receiving product recommendations.

I can only expect this to grow even faster once we have voice assistants talk to us like ChatGPT does on their app. Chatting with ChatGPT while cooking dinner and selecting and purchasing a product might soon become second nature.

In order for AI tools like ChatGPT to be able to list your product, they will not only require a product feed. They will want to connect the dots between your product, the challenges it solves, and your target audience.

In order to do this, LLMs (Large Language Models) will rely on semantic relationships learned based on content both from your website, and from the open web.

This gives you a certain amount of control, as we can help you optimize your content for AI engines - but also hints on the importance of a cross-platform approach.

In the same way as your website will be one of the sources to train language models, so will other sites like review sites, product comparisons your competitors might be hosting, social media posts, comments, Reddit threads, medium.com articles and unpacking videos.

Start optimizing your PDPs (product detail pages)

In order to help you optimize your product detail page's semantics, I have created a free custom GPT you can use:

ChatGPT - Product Optimizer

Future-Proof your Product Detail Pages (PDP) for AI and Search

ChatGPT

It will ask you to paste your page's content, and then rate the different elements critical to product detail pages on a scale from 1 to 10.

This will clearly show you potential gaps and what to improve!

Get help to do this right

We're in the middle of the "AI gold rush".

This is not the time where you want to get a VA try to figure this out.

It's the time where you want a reliable partner by your side who you trust.

Someone spending every single day working with search, AI and e-commerce, and who can make sure that your resources are invested where it really moves the needle.

Let's have a conversation!

Get in touch!

If something was working a certain way for quite some time, it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that it has changed.

Marketing has NOTHING to do with what it was a few years ago.

Here is why:

Think of the last purchase decisions you made.

And make a conscious effort in finding out where you found out about those products or services.

• How many of them came from a social media advertisement?
• How many of them did you find after searching on Google?
• How many did you see come up in a newsletter you are subscribed to?

In my case, it would be practically cero.

And when asking around, I hear similar stories.

Where decisions are made

Across different industries, from e-commerce to consulting, mentoring, from car repair shops to woodworking, we're seeing a clear trend:

Decisions are made based on recommendations given by other people.

People who might not be known, but trusted.

And where does this trust come from?

I'd call it "inherited" trust:

• because they publish in a niche forum
• because they have a lot of upvoted comments (e. g. on Reddit)
• because they got a lot of likes, comments or support in their niche facebook group

The key term is "niche":

Once you find "your crowd" in a niche forum, you'll automatically be more likely to trust their recommendations.

This doesn't make it simpler for marketers used to come up with creative ideas to run ads that, just by attracting attention, used to convert into sales.

Often, it takes 0 clicks ...

Well-respected marketers like Rand Fishkin have talked about it for a long time - a lot of buying decisions involve 0 clicks - the platforms themselves will give all the information a user needs.

Just take Google, for instance ... a big part of what we do for SEO these days is based on branded searches:

Users already found out about your brand on other platforms, and are now googling <brand> features, <brand> pricing, does <brand> do <use case>, etc. - they're not discovering a brand for the first time on Google, but actually want to back up their buying decision.

Those great Facebook ads times ...

I've lost count of the brands I helped with SEO that got to 7 or even 8 figures just through facebook ads a few years back.

Btw, I don't mean to downplay that achievement, it takes great skill and a lot of experience to pull that off!!

My own team was doing FB ads at times for Gyms at some point and easily filled up their open slots with simple funnels - a good video and a landing page was all it took!

In general, I believe the process back then was simpler, mostly following one of the following schemes or slight variants of it:

• Ad => Landing Page => Sale
• Ad => Presell page => Sales page => Sale
• Ad => Landing Page => Opt-in => Follow-up sequence => Sale

Why this is no longer enough

In my personal experience with my SEO consulting business, I've seen the shift come with Covid in 2020.

My SEO business almost doubled thanks to all the Facebook ads focused businesses, claiming they were no longer getting the required ROAS to keep investing in FB ads alone and now wanted to be found on Google as well.

Hundreds of brands had neglected organic search completely, just because their ads funnel worked so well for so long.

But why don't ads work anymore the way they used to?

Customers want proof, not promises

Every brand's customer base has matured in experience. They will no longer buy on promises only, but actually want proof.

Just think of courses people buy that promise to enable you to build a pipeline of prospects in 30 days, or the FB widget that could help you with all kinds of repairs, or that beauty product that would replace all your beauty products with just one single cream ...

FB ads at times reminded me a bit of the TV shopping channels, offering things "too good to be true" just to make a sale happen.

Just making big promises is no longer a scalable strategy.

People trust people

We're not as quickly to trust any more - unless we see it "go viral" (or believe it did just because we see so many reels or tiktoks about it).

Let's face it: recommendations from some dude on Reddit with a lot of upvotes may often beat the most creative, disruptive, attention-grabbing ad on socials.

That's the power of the niche!

Now it requires a long-term strategy

"Rapid fire testing" was long a valid strategy for ads:

You'd create 10 different versions of an ad, show them to your target audience,
then take the best angle, title, visual, etc. and create your campaign with it while trying to beat it with variants.

While this still might work to a certain extend, I believe today it takes a more long-term strategy to not burn your ad spend.

Also, because people require a lot more touch points with a brand than they used to.

We've learned attribution isn't as clear-cut as it seemed to be

Every ad platform polishes data so it looks like they were responsible for a conversion to happen.

But the reality shows it's more complex than that:

If you want to get a feeling for your situation, head over to Google Analytics 4, Advertisement, Attribution paths, and select "Medium":

Down below, you'll see the different channels involved before a conversion happened - and the touch points it took for users choosing that combination of channels. Ya

(This requires your conversion tracking to be set up properly ... if you have trouble with this you might want to reach out).

As you can see, it's hardly ever a straight path from an ad or landing page to a conversion / sale. There are very often 2, 5, maybe 20 touch points involved before a user makes their decision.

Precision marketing

General ad based marketing won't cut it these days anymore.

Brands need to

• get better at targeting who will really want to get to know your brand
• get better engaging with your audience on a variety of platforms
• embrace the niche they are in and become an active contributor
• show proof of how their product or service solves a challenge, and get other people in the niche talk about it

This won't happen with a traditioal ad strategy.

It requires a precise marketing plan for each platform that does not only cover ads and targeting, but in-person engagement.

Check out this Reddit thread from 10 years ago on the best CRM for small business:

It's ranking number 2 on Google for "best CRM".

I know Google's giving this probably an extra boost due to their partnership with Reddit.

But it's also what people want to see:

Humans discussing options.

Guess how many people will check out the mentioned tools here ... just this thread alone is definitely responsible for tens or hundreds of trial sign-ups on the mentioned CRMs.

Forums, in whatever shape or form (Reddit, Quora, Slack communities, Telegram channels, etc.) are back - because this is where we get to directly engage with people who are "like us" - interested in the same things, going through the same challenges ... and we get a chance to learn from their mistakes.

Why would I buy a car polish others already had a bad experience with?

Who would buy a face cream just because of an ad, unless there were people with similar skin issues trying and endorsing it?

I wouldn't buy a cheap brand's disc sander unless I see experienced woodworkers endorsing it.

Contributors, not (only) Influencers

I think it's important to make a distinction between influencers and contributors here.

Influencer marketing has been big for a long time and definitely works when done right.

However, I'm seeing more and more AI-based influencer marketing, which leads me to expect some sort of inflation here.

It's going to take more influencers than before to get the same performance across this channel.

Contributors, however, are still, for the most part, real people. Platforms will get better at spotting obvious spammers and shadow-banning them so they don't impact conversions that much.

For a sustainable strategy, you want to be or have access to contributors on different platforms. Not just influencers.

It's contributions that stay the longest. A simple recommendation of the top 3 CRMs might stand the test of time.

While an influencer might publish a story that has vanished after 24 hours, your contribution to that Reddit thread might drive sales for years.

Imagine doing that at scale, following a platform strategy!

Marketing ain't what it used to be.

It's not just about flashy ads anymore; it's about precision, being on the right platforms, and showing up consistently.

Think "smart factory" – data-driven and always-on.

If you're not measuring, you're just guessing.

And remember, AI is a tool, not a magic fix.

If you're ready to ditch the guesswork and build a strategy that actually works, then let's talk. I’ll bring the dad jokes.

Marketing in 2025 is like a smart factory—data-powered, precision-tuned, and always-on. And while I’d love to say all you need is a cool logo and a viral TikTok, the truth is… marketing has grown up. It now demands strategy, consistency, and platforms that work harder than your espresso machine on a Monday morning.

Let me break down what matters most right now - and how to approach it!

1. Precision Is the New Creativity

Don’t get me wrong—creativity still matters. But in 2025, if your ideas aren’t backed by data, they’re just “creative guesses.”

Success comes from measuring what works, then doing more of it.

That’s where precision-engineered SEO steps in. We're talking about aligning keywords with intent, building topical authority, and turning traffic into actual conversions. Not just “more clicks”—better clicks.

SEO isn’t about feeding the algorithm.
It’s about feeding your bottom line!

2. Your Platform Game Must Be Tight

Customers don’t browse—they bounce. Their attention is fractured between Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and product reviews on Reddit.

This is where PlatformLeverage becomes your best friend. You need consistent messaging adapted for each platform without becoming a full-time content hamster.

In our work, we’ve seen platform-first strategies increase e-commerce engagement considerably — because timing and tone matter just as much as the message itself.

3. Consistency Wins (Even When You’re Bored of It)

Here’s a hard truth: by the time you’re tired of your message, your audience is just starting to hear it.

Marketing in 2025 isn’t about one-time fireworks. It’s about showing up, again and again, with sharp insights and clear value. That’s why we build repeatable frameworks that actually scale.

Precision + consistency = results.

Every. Single. Time.

(Also applies to parenting and woodworking, by the way.)

Bonus: AI Is a Tool, Not a Strategy

AI is everywhere—and yes, I use it to streamline, enhance, and speed things up. But here’s the thing: AI doesn't replace strategy. It just lets us execute faster.

Think of AI as a power tool. If you don’t know what you’re building, all it’s going to do is make bad work faster. Trust me—I’ve sanded through enough boards in my workshop to know.

So What Now?

✅ Audit your message—are you being heard where your audience hangs out?
✅ Look at your platforms—are you present where your audience is hanging out?
✅ Check your consistency—are you building something long-term, or just chasing likes?

Marketing in 2025 is smarter, sharper, and less forgiving of fluff. But with the right strategy, it’s also more rewarding.

Reach out to ditch the guesswork and start building with precision!

Thanks to a contest over at @brand.nat I got early access to "manus", the newest AI platform coming shortly after Deep Seek directly from China.

The mind-blowing thing about Manus is how hands-off the process is:

Forget complex prompt engineering!

Manus just - out of the box - seems to know what I'm probably going to be interested in.

For my landing page report, it automatically went into

• quick wins
• high traffic, low conversion rate
• intent-conversion gap
• prioritized URLs
• and more!

Check out this video where I document what I did:

While ChatGPT or Claude even in their latest versions had issues processing URLs, Manus seems to go directly into the analysis process, creates python scripts to analyze the data where necessary, and comes back with a nicely formatted report - including visuals!

Here was my prompt, by the way, accompanied by a CSV file we export from our SEOLeverage app.

I'm uploading a landing page report for my website, it shows all landing pages (organic), and their conversions, conversion rates, high intent (behavioural conversion), and average position and CTR from Google Search Console. I want to achieve more conversions and high-intent conversions, which URLs should I focus on?

And here's the end result:

-

If you want to stay tuned to what's going on in AI, sign up here:

Modern engines try to figure out what a website is about.

They do this by taking into account the content published on the site.

Engines try to connect the dots

Like the "join the dots" game my daughters used to play to draw a cat, a car or a unicorn.

Every concept is a dot.

In SEO, we call those concepts entities.

Now, when connecting a certain amount of dots, 85 in the image above, the unicorn is clearly visible.

But what happens when you'd suddenly have 1000 dots up there, many of which have no relation to each other?

What about 10000 dots?

The image would definitely not be that clear anymore.

The unicorn pattern would be hardly distinguishable.

The same happens with a site with too much content:

The core concept is hardly recognizable.

A while ago, we audited a website with literally more than 5000 articles with little or no relation to the brand's core business.

The result?

The site had stopped ranking for its core business terms.

Thousands and thousands of dollars had to be invested into Google Ads to compensate for lost quality traffic, while the brand - unknowingly - kept making it worse by continuing with its publishing process.

Only a few weeks after a heavy pruning process, I received the following e-mail:

"We have paused paid ads"

• this meant they just got a 2x return on our pruning process my team helped them with, only 2 weeks afterwards.

But how could it come so far in the first place?

See, Google tends to rewards good content.

But if that content isn't in line with your core business, the traffic is useless.

While seeing the traffic go up is encouraging,
you must never lose sight of the traffic quality.

This is why we've got a special high-intent tracking setup on all our clients' projects, this enables us to always judge how interested visitors are in our clients' business and offer, and can react fast if the interest level changes.

For AI to understand your brand and your products, context is key.

Context helps AI bots to figure things out.

A person, a product, a service, a brand, or an entire business.

If the context is distracting, AI is going to start making stuff up
and driving bad visitors to your site (or no visitors at all).

Regular pruning is the way to clarity for your visitors,
but also for AI engines.

e-mail info@gertmellak.com for more information about your website's pruning!

My team and I have - once again - spent an entire week auditing a site that has focused on creating tons of content, that got them tons of traffic - just to find out they were now losing

• relevance
• leads
• and revenue.

I get it!

It's an amazing feeling to see traffic graphs skyrocket after creating a lot of content.

But:

Can we acknowledge that an inflated ego doesn't help grow a business?

Earlier this year I got really sick of it.

So, I asked Branko, our developer here at SEOLeverage, to visualize a new KPI in our app:

High intent.

We track this in absolute values and percentages.

Check out this example:

The site has been growing in traffic until November / December, based on seasonality, traffic went down. At the same time, though, November was a peak in conversions, followed by a peak in high-intent visitors the month afterwards.

This brand has told us they're having a crazy month in December with lots of new clients, many enquiries about pricing and RFPs - most likely from the previous 2 months of high opt-ins.

But what turns your average user on your site into a high-intent visitor?

Tracking visitor intent

We track their behavior and define key moments that would tell us that this user isn't just an information browser, tire kicker, or newbie searching for a definition.

And then we track those moments as conversions (key events in Google Analytics 4) and import them into our app:

This leads to a series of exceptional findings:

• which pages bring people to your site who check out your offer
• which pages get tons of traffic but no high-intent engagement at all
• which pages get great high-intent metrics but could do much better with more traffic
• which pages only drive high intent but never close a typical conversion

At scale, our app is now able to find out across hundreds of URLs, which ones are the ones that drive the highest intent - and which keywords are the ones that drive the most traffic to them. (Gert Mellak)

Lead metrics vs. lag metrics

Now after a few months of having high-intent tracking in place, we are also seeing additional patterns evolve:

• positive high-intent metrics are very often leading indicators of high conversion rates
• a downtrend in high-intent can be an indicator to double down across all channels to soften the likely downward trend in conversions.

Customer journeys can take a few weeks, if not months. Having additional, high-intent tracking in place will shift your focus to the level of engagement with your offer and brand, rather than to immediate sales:

• A Google Ads campaign not driving sales but tons of high-intent traffic might still have a positive ROI, just a bit later
• A campaign on Meta that does not drive high-intent at all might not need to be kept up for too long, which will help you save in budget.
• Only generate articles on topics that drive high-intent visitors from organic search engines and consider dropping the ones that don't.

ROI vs. High-Intent focus

Let's be honest here - it's almost impossible to make an ethically correct, serious forecast in SEO - there are just too many variables.

And don't get me started on what you can do with search volume data, expected CTRs, etc. I've done those reports as well to illustrate my plans to clients here and there, but you and I know that while it's good to see this work out on paper, the reality is mostly very different!

BUT:

High-intent tracking will allow you to quickly find out if your content marketing works - and allow you to fine-tune even before you have completed - or a lack of - purchase information.

So, rather than trying to produce an impossible and often made-up forecast, let's set our strategy up so we can react fast to real data coming in.

With high-intent data you will quickly know whether the traffic you are driving in across all channels is, in fact, the traffic that will actually grow your brand and drive more sales in the future.

Best,

Gert

Incorporating AI into your business model isn’t just about keeping up with trends; it's about strategically using technology to enhance efficiency and outperform competitors. Here are three ways AI can significantly boost your business operations.

1. Automate Repetitive Tasks

AI's ability to manage repetitive and mundane tasks offers a powerful way to save time and resources. Imagine having a virtual assistant that can handle data entry effortlessly, or a chat bot that manages customer inquiries around the clock. These are not distant possibilities, but realities businesses are capitalizing on. Automating tasks with AI allows your team to engage in more strategic initiatives that demand human insights and creativity . What current tasks could your business free from human management through AI?

2. Enhance Customer Experience

In today’s market, personalized customer interaction is crucial, and AI excels at personalization. By analyzing customer data patterns, AI can tailor recommendations, anticipate needs, and ensure highly relevant interactions. For instance, AI-driven recommendation engines—much like those used by giants like Amazon—can suggest products that suit your customers’ interests based on their history and preferences. This level of customization not only delights customers but can significantly boost your sales.

3. Optimize Inventory Management

For businesses in retail or e-commerce, inventory management is a balancing act. AI can predict demand more accurately, which helps in optimizing stock levels. This means fewer instances of overstocking or stockouts and reduced storage costs. AI-driven inventory management ensures smooth cash flow and enhances customer satisfaction by keeping products readily available, thereby preventing order delays.

Implementing AI in your business is not just about deploying new tools but reevaluating and optimizing current processes to create more robust, efficient systems. As you think about integrating AI, consider which areas of your business could benefit most from increased efficiency. What changes can you make today to start leveraging AI for a more efficient business tomorrow?

Your business might be stuck - not because of a bad offer.

But because not enough of the right people know that you exit!

One of the most efficient ways to make sure people who want to buy what you are selling, become aware about you, used to be Google Search:

Both, organic results and paid ads impact people just when they’re “in the market” for your offer.

Furthermore, social ads have been used for years to impact people who might be interested in what you’re doing.

There’s hardly a better way to increase brand awareness in your target audience than running social ads.

The new (AI) Dimension

With AI now, the complexity is getting to a new level!

More and more people use ChatGPT now to research.

Google shows AI generated answers in their AI overview.

Claude.ai is more and more powerful processing quite complex input to come out with not only great results, but also a very user-friendly interface.

Your users might still find out about you on Google - yes.

But also Bing - remember that one?

ChatGPT searches stuff on Bing when it doesn’t know an answer. Where’s your site ranking on Bing again?

Chances are, they’re also finding players in your market on social media platforms, AI tools might give recommendations, or they might head over to Reddit.

Remember, Reddit partnered with Google and OpenAI?

Every major player in AI is keen on quality input to train their Large Language Models (LLM).

Input determines output.

The more quality training material goes into an LLM, the better its output.

But what does this mean for your online marketing?

First of all, it’s high time to take control:

Research your audience, the platforms they hang out on, and the content they want to consume there. You can do this in a DIY fashion, or you can hire my team at SEOLeverage to do that.

You’ll come up with a prioritized list of platforms.

The top 5 deserve your immediate attention.

This is where your audience hangs out the most.

And this is also where your activity might trigger the most direct leads or even sales.

The top 5 platforms are where AI tools will likely find the best and most recent training material about your industry. So, make sure your contributions are context-rich, and that you connect your profile with your website.

The next 5 platforms on the list should at least get some attention from your brand on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. You can leverage them to clarify common questions, participate in conversations with context-rich answers, and also make sure you are helpful when somebody seems to be in trouble.

The other platforms will mostly be authority websites in your industry, and less important platforms like medium.com, SoundCloud or others. You can leverage the industry sites for trust, and the other portals to amplify your core message and bring your brand to a wider audience.

Revise how you are doing things!

The digital marketing game (and the SEO game in particular) is no longer won on just one playing field. It requires a multi-platform context-rich approach, that shows your brand’s depth on certain subject matters, but also positive popularity.

If you feel your current online marketing processes might need a refresh, hit me up by e-mail: info@gertmellak.com!

Online reputation management is all about brand perception: You want people to perceive your brand in a positive, encouraging and compelling way.

While this was mostly focused on search + socials in the past, the rise of AI-based language models has started to add several levels of complexity to the matter.

Here are the key takeaways from this in-depth guide:

• LLMs present additional challenges due to the lack of tracking tools
• Monitoring any mentions of your brand on any platform is crucial
• Engaging with harmful content about your brand can shift language models’ perception
• Now is the best time to bake your brand into the AI ecosystem

Language models get trained by content on the web

Generative AI needs context to produce quality output.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot or Gemini, to name a few, use various content sources to train their language models.

Input = Output.

This means that whatever goes into the language model as training material, will impact what comes out of it.

Imagine this similar to training a new intern. The more examples of something they have seen, the better they are going to do their job.

Especially when those examples are consistent.

So, if e. g. Gemini is asked whether Nike is a legit brand, it will answer based on its training material about the Nike brand and related information.

The training material will most likely come from official sites like nike.com, but will also factor in elements such as user reviews, trustpilot reviews, videos showcasing products and customer experiences, blog posts, product descriptions, and even podcast recordings where the brand got mentioned.

The growing complexity

The numerous platforms where content can be hosted these days presents a completely new level of complexity to a brand, as training materials will vary greatly:

• Google is spending millions to use Reddit threads as training material these days (apart from obviously using the web).
• We can also expect Google to use all their platforms, from YouTube to Google Drive, to Gmail and more as potential training material to serve users better.
• Microsoft’s Copilot could technically have access to cloud-hosted office documents, outlook.com / hotmail, teams conversations and more.
• Perplexity.io even shows you specifically with references where the answer comes from (honestly, my preferred approach)

What exactly they can use without violating privacy restrictions is another topic I can’t comment on - but we also know that big brands have always happily paid fines while still getting their way to establish themselves in the market, so I do believe they’ll use whatever they can get access to.

Whatever content is out there, will be used as the training material for several language models - and might trigger them to respond about queries relating to your brand in a certain way. (Gert Mellak)

You can’t fix what you don’t know

In order to stay ahead of the game here, as a brand in 2024 you want to make sure you are aware of everything that could concern your brand:

• Where was your brand mentioned?
• Is there a different way to spell your brand name?
• Are there different ways in which people refer to your brand?
  • Micro$oft for Microsoft
  • “manzana” in Spanish when people refer to Apple
  • Will Paulter is often referred to as “the eyebrows guy”
• People might also mention your employees:
  • ”The food was good, but the waitress, Cathy, was extremely rude”
• People might only describe your brand …
  • “I’ve got shoes from that brand with the stripes and I absolutely love it”

The different ways matter, because they represent varying training material the AI engines can and should connect to the same brand - especially when it’s positive material.

Action step:

• Monitor mentions of your band, products, and relevant staff members in all possible spellings and forms
• Use Google Alerts (free) or more professional tools like brand24 which I personally like (no affiliate).
• Create a set of sample queries people might type into the different platforms, and run them frequently to check their output.
• Leverage custom tutorials like this one from Wil Reynolds showcasing how tracking can start to work with a manual approach.

I found a negative review - what to do now?

In my book “Fix Your Online Reputation” I have described specific action steps around how to react to the different scenarios.

One of the most common ones people encounter is a negative review or opinion. Somebody writing a post, or posting in a forum or a review site like trustpilot, explaining their experience with your product or service.

How should you react?

Should you actually react at all?

Now, first of all, let’s be clear:
It doesn’t matter if they are a real customer or not - it’s going to affect you either way, as the “training material” is there, and ChatGPT won’t know if that’s a real customer.

Whether you should react or not will depend on a variety of factors, such as the overall page’s content and sentiment, frequency, whether the last reviews are positive or not, and more.

In many cases, reacting and offering a solution through customer support is a good first step. However, I prefer to decide this on a case-by-case basis, rather than providing an all-size-fits-all advice.

One factor where reacting to a thread might not be the smartest move, would be if the thread is really old, as adding fresh content to it might just re-ignite its importance again and even bring its relevance up.

Action step:

• If you found a negative review or mention, make an informed decision or consult with a trusted ORM expert before potentially increasing the damage.

Your brand’s content footprint

If you have a brand, you should proactively create content. That content will be controlled training material that the engines can pick up and learn more about your brand.

It is critical that the material they find consistently explains what your brand does, who you help, and how you achieve that.

Pay attention to the wording, and happily reuse phrases to refer to your brand that explain in simple terms what you are all about.

Similar to an artist’s color palette, you want to associate your brand’s entity with a terminology or entity palette. AI language models work on a semantic level, trying to connect relevant concepts with each other to understand how a piece of content works in context.

Pro-actively creating content that connects you with important concepts in your and your ideal clients’ environment will help provide consistent training material and future-proof your brand inside AI’s algorithms.

Next steps

As a brand, you need to establish your status quo, and based on that draw a game plan on what needs to be done consistently to strengthen your brand reputation online.

Hit me up at info@gertmellak.com for more infos!

Agencies are changing heavily with upcoming AI tools:

Generative tools like Chat GPT, Perplexity or Copilot assist research and,
when used correctly, provide astounding results that might need little additional work.

At the same time, it feels like this AI boom has also brought more attention to process automation in general.

I’ve been running agencies in digital marketing for almost 20 years - from a solo freelance role to leading a small team at my consulting firm solicom.net, to a team of 25 SEOs at my agency SEOLeverage.

Whoever has been running an agency knows about all the different processes involved; each of them might take 20 different steps to execute, involving 5, 10 or maybe even more different tools:

• Customer onboarding, CRM setup, Project management setup, Task lists, …
• E-mail sequences, Landing page generation, Copywriting, Content creation
• Concepts for visuals, visuals design, feedback loops, etc.
• Podcast preparation work, editing, show notes, social media snippets, …
• Website work, web development
• Strategy meetings, meeting recaps, Zoom calls
• Dashboard creation, reporting
• and so on.

Many agencies still work on most of them manually, with experienced staff clicking through the same apps day after day, week after week.

Wouldn’t it be better for your marketing strategists to spend time researching your clients’ competitive landscapes rather than setting up the next project on Clickup or Monday.com?

Increased competition

Every agency I talk to has been seeing increased competition in recent years: between more and more solopreneurs presenting themselves as agencies and more clients going down the DIY route with the latest AI tools, running and scaling an agency has gotten more complex.

To stay competitive while maintaining quality, it’s crucial to consistently work on optimizing your existing processes - or, as my business mentor James Schramko would advise business owners:
“zoom in”, improve things, and zoom out again.

In practical terms, this means:

• Pick a process
• Disassemble it into its parts
• Look at each part and improve it, automate it, make it more efficient
• Enjoy an overall improved performance

BPA for agencies

Process automation (often referred to as Business Process Automation or BPA) has been around for many years. Funnily enough, it’s never been really getting into most agencies' day-to-day management.

This is surprising, especially because many of the tools agencies use these days lend themselves very well to the automation of regular tasks, freeing up (human) capacities that can be used for more qualified work.

To automate our processes in my agencies, I’m following a framework I called IMPACTO, covering:

• Investigate
• Measure
• Processes
• Automation
• Condition
• Transformation
• Optimization

Applying this framework, we’ve been able to uncover, redefine, optimize, and automate, a series of processes over the years that were thought to be always in the realm of marketing experts.

This frees up my consulting experts to focus on high-level research and analysis work, knowing that the “mechanic” tasks are being taken care of by our smart BPA tools.

Start with IMPACTO

The IMPACTO framework starts with a thorough investigation:

Which processes do you actually have in your business?

In our case, our processes had been well-documented and updated for years in our SOPs (standard operating procedures).

In other agencies, this step might require some brainstorming with the different team members about what they work on repeatedly, as well as the necessary steps those tasks actually take.

What gets measured can be improved.

You won’t know if something has improved if you don't measure. The second step in IMPACTO is to measure a particular situation to be able to get a status quo and compare the result after an optimization.

Measurements can be quantitative (e. g., how long does onboarding take), but also qualitative (how happy are clients with their onboarding process).

A process can primarily be measured entirely, but specific steps might also be relevant to measure individually.

Processes and sub-processes

Every significant process consists in various sub-processes. Once you line up the trigger for a particular process and the sequence that follows, the image becomes more apparent.

The overall process might be

• Purchase (e. g. through stripe)
• Invoicing (QuickBooks, etc.)
• Welcome e-mail
• User setup
• Onboarding call

However, when you look more closely, the details are really important, e. g. Invoicing doesn’t only consist of sending an invoice but also of creating the client account in your software - and might right now involve a manual step to verify the client details, their tax number and so on.

The welcome e-mail might actually require a previous step of creating a username and password for the client so they can access their dashboards, which in turn requires secure access to their analytics account and ads accounts before.

Business Process Automation for agencies requires a specific design phase, where the individual details are documented, and the different cases are illustrated so everybody in the BPA project understands exactly what happens at which moment.

Automation - finally

Now that you know which processes and sub-processes are involved in delivering your agency’s service, it’s time to look at automation.

First of all, not everything should be automated.

Most agencies provide creative or knowledge work - and we know that critical thinking and creativity isn’t the strong suit of AI (at least not right now).

So, when looking through the processes, it is crucial to highlight the elements that absolutely need to be done by a human being.

Humans should mainly stick with

• processes that cannot be defined down to their last detail (e. g. design a logo)
• processes that require a huge amount of experience to handle
• processes that are different for each particular agency account

On the flip side, good candidates for automation are

• processes that humans are doing in a “mechanic” way (setting up users, accounts, projects, etc.), using templates to send e-mails, notifying team members about new projects, adding task templates to project management systems, etc.

Condition / Quality

Despite the opportunities with generative AI, the quality or condition of the end result must not be forgotten. Once automation has correctly replaced specific mechanic tasks in your agency, make sure the end result is consistent and high-quality.

Adding automation must never decrease the quality of the end result.

Transformation

Once you line up the processes, define them, pick up their elements, optimize them, make you agency overall run more efficiently, it’s natural that a transformation sets in:

Your teams and clients are going to get used to operating more efficiently.

They might even uncover additional opportunities where automation could also contribute.

Sometimes even new offer segments can be considered now that automation is a valid and proven option.

Your agency has shifted from the old “all manual work” to operating in a hybrid mode of high-qualified manual labor paired with strategic automation.

Your operations are set up for success in the growing competitive marketplace.

But you’re not done yet:

Optimization

The “O” of IMPACTO considers that a process is never fully optimized. There will always be things to tweak here and there to optimize further.

This is why the measurement is so essential, and also, an ongoing monitoring/optimization process should be implemented to consistently check if the current automations are still doing their job or need adjustments.

Your turn

Now it’s your turn - is your agency well optimized and automated already?

E-mail me and let me know: info@gertmellak.com!

In the last weeks and months, I’ve been thinking about this basic principle a lot:

Input = Output.

Whatever you put into something determines what you get out of it.

Be it your business, sports and fitness, relationships, your children,
a business process, a standard operating procedure, an entire SEO strategy …

Heck, even working on a piece of wood …

My consulting brain sees everything as a process.

A process that can (and often should!) be broken down into its elements.

This enables you to pick up each element, improve it, and put it back.

Imagine, for instance, a simple example: a weekly newsletter.

The newsletter

Many businesses send one out … most of them shouldn’t (at least not how they do it).

But I digress …

Simplifying it a bit for this example, a newsletter process could be broken down into:

• Content
• Subject line
• Layout
• Recipients selection
• Scheduling

Imagine this process gives you an output of a newsletter with an evaluation based on some internal criteria of 6/10.

You’re probably not too happy about it, but it’s essentially free exposure, so you might not care too much about it.

Process elements break-down

Let’s look at the elements of this process a little closer, one by one:

The content creation

In many companies, especially B2B, creating content for a newsletter is a standard process nobody cares too much about.

Many companies just send out a collection of recent blog posts.

Some others might be actually looking to get people to their site to see some new offers.

But let’s be serious:

Most are not putting too much emphasis on what they are sending out week after week to thousands of people.

A good place to start!

What would need to happen to improve this particular element of the newsletter process?

How could you improve your copy by just 1%?

• Can you have a better opening line (hook) that gets people interested?
• Could you integrate story elements?
• Have you tried sharing a testimonial at the top?
• Does your content sound like your brand?
• Is the content benefit-driven or just a mere list of news items?

I’m sure if you go through this very short list, you would already find at least 2 elements you could improve.

The subject line

I maybe don’t know you.

But I know one thing about you:

You’re a skimmer.

Just like I am.

At least when it comes to your inbox.

Chances are you’re also getting hundreds of e-mails every single day.

We all need to make decisions within microseconds.

Which is why we got very quick in deciding which e-mail is worth opening,
and which e-mails we can safely ignore or even mark as spam.

The subject line of an e-mail is decisive.

You don’t want it to sound spammy.

You also don’t want it to sound clickbaity.

Ideally, it would sound like something a friend could be writing to you.

Let’s gather some ideas on how to make your subject lines better:

1. Keep it concise: Aim for 6-10 words to grab attention without being cut off in the inbox.
2. Personalize: Use the recipient's name or other personal data to catch their eye.
3. Create urgency: Words like "Now" or "Limited Time Offer" prompt immediate action.
4. Spark curiosity: Pose a compelling question or hint at intriguing content without giving it all away.
5. Use numbers: Lists or statistics can make your subject line more specific and engaging.
6. Avoid spam triggers: Steer clear of all caps, excessive exclamation marks, and spammy words.
7. Test emojis carefully: Used sparingly, emojis can add personality and stand out, but ensure they're relevant and display correctly across devices.
8. Be clear and direct: Sometimes, straightforward is best, especially when clarity is crucial.
9. Segment your audience: Tailor subject lines to different segments for more personalized, relevant engagement.
10. A/B test: Regularly test different subject lines to see what works best with your audience, and adapt based on results.

Do you think by applying these, you could get 1% better open rates?

The layout

The layout of e-mails is one of my favorite topics.

I can’t count how often I have seen on my end and heard from others that writing a newsletter in simple text gets much better results than the fanciest layout you could be thinking of.

I write most of my e-mails in plain text.

And they work.

If you do want to get a bit fancy on your layout, though, here are a few tips:

1. Responsive Design: Ensure your newsletter layout adjusts seamlessly to various screen sizes, especially mobile devices. A responsive design improves readability and user engagement.
2. Clear Hierarchy: Use headings, subheadings, and a logical structure to guide readers through your content. A well-organized layout helps readers quickly find the information that interests them.
3. Balanced Use of Images: Incorporate relevant, high-quality images to break up text and add visual interest, but use them sparingly to avoid overwhelming readers or causing slow loading times.
4. Whitespace: Embrace whitespace (or negative space) around text blocks and images. It makes your newsletter look cleaner and helps to draw attention to the most important elements.
5. Consistent Branding: Incorporate your brand's colors, fonts, and logo consistently in every newsletter. This consistency reinforces brand recognition and lends a professional touch to your communications.

Do you think by either trying a text-only format or testing one or two of the above layout tips, you could improve your newsletter’s performance?

Selecting recipients

Most companies send out newsletters to everybody.

However, only a fraction of your e-mail list subscribers will actually be interested in what you are sending out today.

The rest will ignore your e-mail.

And if you send too many e-mails that are easy to ignore, they will unsubscribe and/or flag you as a spammer.

How about you be more selective?

Could you segment your list, e. g. by product type, product segment, lead magnet or opt-in, lead source, etc.?

Is there a way for you to address newsletter content specifically to one or a few of those groups, and only send it to them?

Would you think that by being more selective in your recipient selection, you could improve your newsletter’s performance by 1%?

Scheduling

Wow, what a busy schedule we all have these days.

It feels like there’s really not the right moment to receive a company’s newsletter anymore.

Or is there?

Have you tested sending your newsletter at different days of the week?

How about different times of the day?

If you think of your own inbox, you really don’t want to be the last e-mail on a list of 200 unread e-mails on a Monday morning.

At the same time, Friday afternoon might not be the best moment to receive your news updates either …

By testing different times and days, you will soon find out what works best for you.

Heck, maybe you’re in B2B and Sunday afternoon is the best moment of the week for your audience?

You’ll never know …

But: Would you think testing different times, your newsletter’s performance could go up by 1%?

If you just do 1% better …

How well your newsletter process performs depends on the performance of each of its elements.

If you increase one of these elements, you get a linear improvement.

Make the subject line 1% better, you’ll get a 1% better process output.

And let’s be honest: You don’t need to be an e-mail marketing wizard to get a 1% improvement on that.

But if you improve multiple elements by 1%, your improvement increases exponentially.

e. g. imagine you get 1% better at subject lines, 1% better at copy, and get 1% better feedback from subscribers because you are more selective!

That’s 3,03% better …

Get 10% better on each of these, and you’re looking at a 33,1% improvement!

Let’s break down some processes and get better at each of their parts.

And if it’s only by 1% …

Gert

Every single day, one of my clients, friends or family members points me to the latest AI tool they have just spotted.

They might even act surprised I don’t know about that one yet.

And they would jump directly into a new process where they use that new tool for their business.

A process that wasn’t important the day before.

A process that wasn’t even on the table hours before discovering the new tool.

You’ve got it backwards

If you are creating new processes based on what AI can do now, you’ve got the whole thing backward.

AI is a tool.

A really cool one.

And I just love digging deep into the rabbit hole of a new tool, spending hours that feel like minutes testing, tweaking, and learning more about it.

AI can do a lot of things.

Just simple text generation with generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini is mind-blowing.

But AI is just a tool.

Say it with me:

“AI is just a tool.”

How did that feel?

I think it’s going to be a relieve for some of you:

AI is like finding a new table saw for a carpenter that gets more cuts across in less time.

The carpenter wouldn’t invent a new product line just because they got a new saw.

They would first try to make their existing processes more efficient.

Efficiency gains - Yes!

This is actually the best start, and what I help more and more people with:

Analyzing their existing processes,
and drafting ways to make them more efficient.

Very often that doesn’t even require AI to begin with.

More and more, though, we are able to match an AI-assisted tool to an existing process and either speed it up, or improve its outcome.

Examples of processes that can be improved with AI

Now that most companies operate a large portion of their business online, it’s actually really simple finding entry points in existing processes that can be made more efficient through artificial intelligence tools.

Here are a few examples that I have seen and/or worked on lately:

• E-Mail marketing (marketing automation, personalization)
• Chat bots
• Newsletter creation
• Podcast editing
• Sales data analysis (finding patterns)
• Content creation of all sorts
• Marketing plans
• Online coaching
• Employee onboarding
• Sales training based on frameworks (e. g. SPIN)
• Copywriting
• Image creation
• Video editing
• Social media posts
• Image creation for facebook
• Ads creation
• Persona definitionsand many more.

Action step:

What’s a process that you would love to improve, that eats up a lot of time and resources, but is essential for your business?

Send me an e-mail and let me know: info@gertmellak.com.