I've been amazed at how many people still Google "best xyz" when searching for a product and place a lot of trust in the articles and lists that show up in SERPs.
It's easy as a marketer to develop (well-deserved) skepticism for that method of product research and attribute that same skepticism to your buyers. But unless you're selling to other marketers, this may not be true.
It was only listening to calls where BDRs asked this question and the buyer actually explained their product research process that this hit home for me.
Right there with you. This is why not letting your own biases is so important (and a lesson I have to continue to remind myself, or learn the hard way...like this one 😅).
The heavy majority of the market still uses search to handle their early research. Despite the popularity of posts on LinkedIn and other places about the rise of AI, ChatGPT, and other mechanisms to learn about new products/solutions, the reality is that many have yet to adopt those yet. They're still using traditional search to do their homework.
Daniel-san, I love to hate when these moments occur! Now hopefully your CEO doesn’t think they “know” marketing after that, as this is the type of collaboration I crave.
In terms of SEO, I agree it’s not like it was being a huge driver 10-15 years ago, however, with the rise of the ChatGPT’s and other AI tools people are now using them similarly to Google asking “what’s the best tool for X?” or “who are the competitors of X?” which is why I believe SEO still is valuable. This is also cool in terms of education because when you put content out on certain topics, that gets ingested and even suggested in articles when trying to learn. Happened to me in the observability space where although we weren’t the most popular, ChatGPT suggested our tool when asking telemetry questions.
Haha these are definitely the good + humbling lessons (and why I enjoy writing these posts since they're lessons to my "younger" marketer-self).
Fully with you in SEO is still valuable, just the underlying tactical execution is going to evolve. This is where a new learning curve lies and will be fun to explore.
I've been amazed at how many people still Google "best xyz" when searching for a product and place a lot of trust in the articles and lists that show up in SERPs.
It's easy as a marketer to develop (well-deserved) skepticism for that method of product research and attribute that same skepticism to your buyers. But unless you're selling to other marketers, this may not be true.
It was only listening to calls where BDRs asked this question and the buyer actually explained their product research process that this hit home for me.
Great article.
Right there with you. This is why not letting your own biases is so important (and a lesson I have to continue to remind myself, or learn the hard way...like this one 😅).
The heavy majority of the market still uses search to handle their early research. Despite the popularity of posts on LinkedIn and other places about the rise of AI, ChatGPT, and other mechanisms to learn about new products/solutions, the reality is that many have yet to adopt those yet. They're still using traditional search to do their homework.
Daniel-san, I love to hate when these moments occur! Now hopefully your CEO doesn’t think they “know” marketing after that, as this is the type of collaboration I crave.
In terms of SEO, I agree it’s not like it was being a huge driver 10-15 years ago, however, with the rise of the ChatGPT’s and other AI tools people are now using them similarly to Google asking “what’s the best tool for X?” or “who are the competitors of X?” which is why I believe SEO still is valuable. This is also cool in terms of education because when you put content out on certain topics, that gets ingested and even suggested in articles when trying to learn. Happened to me in the observability space where although we weren’t the most popular, ChatGPT suggested our tool when asking telemetry questions.
Haha these are definitely the good + humbling lessons (and why I enjoy writing these posts since they're lessons to my "younger" marketer-self).
Fully with you in SEO is still valuable, just the underlying tactical execution is going to evolve. This is where a new learning curve lies and will be fun to explore.