The Future of Content with Sarah Hartland: Beyond SEO and Into Demand

Overview:

Kerry Guard welcomes Sarah Hartland, a demand-focused marketing leader with extensive experience in B2B SaaS, to discuss the evolving content landscape. They break down the limitations of traditional SEO, the rise of GEO, and why brand awareness is becoming more critical than ever. Sarah emphasizes the need for thought leadership, first-party data, and high-quality content that sparks discussions rather than just ranking in search engines. The conversation also covers how AI is changing content creation, the role of PR and backlinks, and why demand generation requires a fresh approach. Tune in to learn how to create content that resonates, gets shared, and drives meaningful engagement.

Transcript:

Sarah Hartland 0:00

Because truly, you have to be saying something either new or in a different way or in a more compelling way, like that has to become the input and the challenging part of that work, aside from the messaging and the persuasion of it is it has to get talked about by others.

Kerry Guard 0:22

Hello, I'm Kerry Guard, and welcome back to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. I know you've all been on the edge of your seats for the show. We were supposed to have this a few weeks ago, and I did not follow my order of operations. And Sarah and I, while we met the cyber marketing con in December, we didn't actually get to connect and like, hash out what we're going to talk about. And so we took a beat, we connected, and now we are ready to dive on in. I am so excited to talk about the heart of the conversation around content, but before we get there, a little bit about Sarah Hartland. Sarah is a demand-focused marketer with over 12 years of experience in B to B. SaaS companies recently led the transition from a lead generation to a demand generation strategy at Jupiter One, and she's currently building demand gen at Ender Labs. Sarah, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Sarah Hartland 1:10

Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I know December feels eons and eons away right now, doesn't it? Look how much we've lived a whole other life between now and,

Kerry Guard 1:19

I mean, almost two whole months and January felt like it was January forever.

Sarah Hartland 1:24

Yeah, uh huh, the longest month of the year, somehow. But here we are. We made it. We're well into it. 25 I know the fiscal year has started for many of us, including us at and or labs. So we're off to the races. Now, off to

Kerry Guard 1:37

the races. Yes, February is an important, important month for many companies like yourself, before we get into our main conversation around content. Sarah, why don't you tell us your story? You know, we know you're under you're at Ender labs now, building demand gen strategy. But how did you get there?

Sarah Hartland 1:53

Yeah. I mean, it's been somewhat accidental, right? So I always say I'm a demand gen marketer by way of copywriting and inbound marketing. But I started my career as a copywriter back in what 2012 and that just came about very accidentally because I was a kid who wrote a lot of things for fun. And it turns out that back then, the name of the game was churning out as much content as possible, which I was exceptional. And so early on my career, like, basically what I did all day was write Google ads and write blog posts and turn out 20 blog posts a week, because that was, that was the strategy. That's what we did, right? And so I came up in an era where I really hard drank the HubSpot, Kool-Aid, inbound marketing, all of that stuff, and sort of ended up into more of a traditional demand gen B to B roll, because eventually, somewhere along the way, I went, Well, what is the point of this? Why am I churning out all of this content all the time? And thankfully it was, you know, working places where I got a really good sense of how the funnel worked and what the purpose of inbound marketing was. And so eventually I ended up as the head of marketing of a small company that was based out of the UK called Lineup Systems worked in the ad tech space, and at that point, the name of the game was lead generation, lead generation, lead generation. And all we really focused on was churning out as many resources and white papers and ebooks as possible to get the almighty email address into our database. And that's, you know, that's what we did. That's what all of us did. That was the way you did lead gen. And around that time, circa 20, you know, 18, we start hearing more of this term, demand, generation, right? And some of it, I think, is fluff. You and I have talked about this Kerry-like, some of it, I think, is just, it's a sexy-sounding title. Represents a legitimate transition in our work, which is that you know, consumers, I think, have exactly the right understanding of what we're doing, and they know what happens when they put in their email address for an e-book, and it's not free. They're paying us with their data to then be called incessantly by SDRs and receive 50 emails and the like. And so we started to, I think, as marketers return to fundamentals and understand that persuading audiences and meeting them where they're at and educating them is far more important than just getting their email address into our precious funnel. And so fast forward to 2020 and moving into more of a demand gen role that's really become the heart and soul of what I see my job as, and what I've done in my last three companies, which is to focus on still using that funnel model, still returning to roots with content, but understanding that ultimately if you don't persuade someone, none of that matters. It's all numbers on a screen if you. Don't have really solid messaging, a really persuasive message, and a really, really core and solid understanding of your audience. And so that's been my journey. But it really starts from two things about me, which was that I wrote a lot. Also was a competitive debate student for many, many years. And I think those two skills just very naturally kickstarted me into B to B marketing. And you know, it's been a pretty clear track for me since then.

Kerry Guard 5:32

There's something you said at Sierra marketing con that you opened your talk with about demand gen and how you didn't feel like you were doing demand gen unless you were building a category. Can you say? Say more about that? Because it's the way that you just talked about demand gen, is really that anybody could do it, but they had this comment, so just pulling the string through,

Sarah Hartland 5:55

yeah. So what's the difference between demand generation and digital marketing? Right? I don't think most people have a compelling answer. I think my comment at cyber marketing con which, man, it sounds the off cuff comments that come back and get me right, but I just, I have this sense that, like my economics professors would just, like, roll their eyes so hardcore at the fact that we have a whole function and B to B marketing called demand generation. Like generating demand, what does that even mean? The reality is, where you know we're looking for buyers who have demand for the thing that we're selling, period, and in an existing category, that of buyers who know that they need something that you have, you're not generating anything. You're just playing in the pool of the demand that exists in the market. This concept of like category creation and demand gen is different to me because you have to do a lot more education work upfront to convince your potential future buyers that they're going to need the product or service that you offer. And so, you know, it's not a hard and fast rule, right? We come up with our buzzwords, we stick to them. It was the Inbound Marketing Manager. Now it's demand gen, whatever. But I do think demand generation has just become a misnomer, because truly, if you're creating if you have to generate demand, it's an educational strategy, starting way, way, way before pa urchase decision. And it's much more embedded with product marketing, much more dependent on the process of finding product market fit. And I think that that gets completely ignored most of the time. But if it's gonna be ignored, then just call it digital marketing. What are we doing? And so that, I think was my rant that you're referring to at cyber marketing conference. And it's funny to me, like there's always like, one or two little off-the-cuff comments I make that then come up and end up being like the hallway conversations. I think this was alright.

Kerry Guard 7:55

Yes, it totally was. And I just really love that, because I think that we are sort of getting caught up in the normal cultures of of what we call these things. And I do think, from a startup perspective, demand gen is really what you need to do, and to sort of flip the funnel on that too, of like not doing the bottom of the funnel stuff right? The paid search, the outreach that way, it's like you have to start with the brand and you have to start building. You did a wonderful talk. I absolutely loved your conference talk at cyber marketing con around that playbook, and I'm sorry, folks, we are not talking about that today. You are going to have to follow up with Sarah to understand what that was, because it was absolutely brilliant around how it is literally the step-by-step on how to go after that. And it was, it was brilliant. So thank you for that. Today we want to talk about content, because you wrote like it was going out of style, and you and it is paid off to this day. And we want to know more about that before we get there, though, where you're currently in California. You're you're hanging out with your team this week, which is awesome. Thank you for waking up early with us. But what's in your day-to-day? What's hard for you right now with the challenge you're currently facing? Yeah,

Sarah Hartland 9:11

well, you know, you mentioned startups. You alluded to the fact that Endor Labs is a startup. We sure are. We're about to start our third year of selling so very much series a startup, and that brings with it a lot of challenges that I'm personally very attracted to. This is my sixth startup, so I'm one of those crazy people, but the challenge that we have right now is the growing pain of having to slow down, to speed up. And I feel that tension every single day where, you know, I know that if I took a beat out of my day to listen to more chorus calls or talk to more customers or analyze, you know, more of the data we have, that it would make my work better. But I'm also competing against the speed at which. Stuff just has to get done. And so that's the balance. And I think the theme of this year is like, sometimes producing less ultimately makes you more productive. And that is, like the constant, like tension that I feel like my whole, my whole team feels.

Kerry Guard 10:18

So that's like, that's the overall challenge. Are you, are you getting that like, a more specific like, are you trying to get to like, no, no. I think that's brilliant because I think we're all feeling that right now. Of we've, we've all been running at the speed of light, and now we went to, we ended up in a world of random acts and marketing. And it bit us real hard because you can't we're no longer in a world where you can do random acts of marketing between AI and how those systems operate from a digital ads perspective, right? Of the how the machine learning operates, you can't, you can't pivot all the time as well as a buyer like the sales cycles are so much longer now by the time you figure out, you know, you throw a bunch of stuff up, you never give anything enough time to actually work. And so you have to take more intention upfront. Actually, I had a great conversation with George Kamide last week about this, of doing the necessary work from a startup perspective, around really defining who you are as a brand, and taking that minute to dial that in, which is part of your talk as well from cyber marketing con. So we think we're all feeling it, but being willing to still do it to your point. Yeah, the insidious thing about, you know, this term has become popular random acts of marketing. We talked about it yesterday in the office, because we're prepping for sko right now, and we're talking about all of these things. But the tricky thing, it's almost like how they say, you know, you don't realize you're in the good old days, until later on, the random acts of marketing thing is similar to me because we never think it's a random act of marketing when we decide to do it, like I think we're most of us are throwing spaghetti at the wall without any thought. It's that it's really hard to be picky when you're in the midst of the hamster wheel. And I think we have to be more honest about that, because, you know, it's very easy to look back and go, that was a random act of marketing. Don't do that. It comes up at every marketing conference. It's such a good little slogan, and it's true. It's absolutely true, but you got to figure out what to say no to upfront, and that is hard, especially when you're passionate, and you work somewhere that moves really fast, and you like all of these ideas, and you work with a team like I do, where, heck, we probably could pull it off. And so the random acts of marketing discussion, I think there's, there's some tricky stuff there. It's not as simple as just saying, just don't do it. We end up there, I think often, quite accidentally. Yeah, I mean, maybe I think it's, I think it's I agree that it's easier to see in hindsight, for sure, and I think it, having done it, ended up there a couple of times. We start to realize what those patterns are of how do we not end up there. And I think, to your point of being you know what, figuring out what to say no to, of what you know, lowest priority, of what's going to have the biggest impact right now. And going with that gut feeling, based on our experience and instinct, I think, is where we're sort of all headed, which I think is good. We, yeah, we had to live the world of right at max and marketing to to figure out what those patterns are, so that now moving forward, we know how to not end up there in the future. So yes to that, and it, it's a catchy phrase. So, you know, we, we love catchy phrases with marketing. We hang on. A lot of them are catchy because they're true. Yes, let's talk about content, because you clearly have a background in it. I'd love to understand more around, you know, we had a wonderful conversation, sorry, marketing con in the hallway around SEO and content, where you feel, where you felt like it was heading and honestly, you know, I've been an SEO now for the last 14 years. And Oh god, I'm like gonna call myself out here, but the first time I ever heard geo was my conversation with you of generative this idea of generative engine optimization threw me for a loop. So let's go down the rabbit hole for folks here on where you know, based on your experience with content, where has it, I want to, like, sort of paint the picture of where it was versus now where it is. Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Hartland 14:35

Well, I think SEO has done us kind of all a disservice in the way that we think about content. Because what SEO did was it gave us a framework for, first of all, deciding what content we were going to create based on what people were looking for, which is useful on the surface. But the second thing that it did was give us a checklist of. Rules of how to do content that was very rinse and repeat, and that's why we have hundreds of agencies where all they do is give you a brief of exactly how to write a blog post all they do. But you know that's usually a core deliverable when, if you zoom out from SEO and talk about content marketing, irrespective of search, it's just about creating stuff that people are actually interested in and actually going to consume in their day-to-day lives, because that is persuasive, especially over time. And so we've conflated SEO and content marketing, because SEO gave us a mechanism for, you know, being strategic and targeted and tracking our progress, which feels really good, but now we're in a world where that's starting to, you know, not work or change, and so something's got to give. And ultimately, it's really just a return to the fundamentals of content marketing. But the challenge with generative engine optimization, for example, is we don't have that same black and white. I ranked number 10. Now I'm ranking number four. I did better. We don't have that. And I do think that the tech will catch up. It's a huge market opportunity for all of these generative engines to give us data about what people are searching but that's a huge Pandora's box that's got to be settled and so we're in a sort of in-between phase right now, where the tooling that we have that gives me a list of keywords to know that which ones are more competitive and which ones are searched more, and try to prioritize what pieces of content to create. It still exists. The data is still there. But at the same time, I know that more and more people are searching in generative engines versus Google, right? I mean, at this point, if you haven't searched for things in chat, GPT instead of Google, like, what are you doing? Because it's way better. It's a better experience. And even on search, most of the responses result in zero clicks because you ask a quick question. You know, we, we've all spent many moons of our lives writing glossary pages, right? Who needs it now? And so what you end up having to do is you, we work in this, like now, a nebulous world where you have to zoom out and understand what content means, and it's not blog posts, and it's not for search necessarily, and where it circles back to demand gen and the discussion that we had earlier is you also have to think about influencing what people are searching for, which is a Much more interesting challenge, but very difficult. And it's difficult for two reasons. It's difficult because, number one, it requires a lot of thought leadership and a lot of intentional understanding of how to change hearts and minds. And number two, you can't track it almost at all. And so we go back to the fundamentals of the things that are not immediately tied to our funnel and not immediately understood. And you have to buy in really early on, especially in startups like hey, that foundational work has to happen or you will be struggling later on, but it's hard to justify it when you could have just stuck with the really tangible. I put this keyword in 10 different places on this page, and the rankings improved by this many spots because that is very, you know, satisfying and easy to track. And it's nice. It's nice to move away from it at this point.

Kerry Guard 18:42

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because we don't have the data, or we're not, we're not necessarily going to have the data around keyword intent in the long run. I mean, maybe, maybe these to-your-point systems will catch up, because they are sitting on so much data that they will be able to produce that for us at some point, and maybe give us some guardrails and guidelines like Google did around what's going to help us rank based off of how their systems work. But at the end of the day, I think that's going to take, that's going to take a minute so in terms of where we are now, of working in the dark, it sounds like, you know, from what we're seeing on our side, the strategy hasn't really changed from an SEO perspective, right? You said it. You have to figure out what people are searching for and what their intent is, and then write content in a way that's going to bring them value back to the you know, and then however they get to that content, whether it's through Gen AI or through Google, they'll all end up in the same place of getting the answer one way or another. So I do think that we don't really need to panic or change too much of what we're doing, but I do think we need. Be careful of where I think you're headed to. Of the conversation is we have to be careful about getting caught up in the hype of it all and then creating content for content's sake, right?

Sarah Hartland 20:12

Well, and the good news in the meantime is that most of the things that help you with SEO should also help you with geo, structured data, and original research. You know, having your pages structured the way that they should be with the correct keywords, Domain Authority, who like what chat GPT is going to reference are going to be the things that are doing well in search engine optimization anyway, and so I think that the conversation that we're having at the end, or Labs, which, you know, given that we're a very, you know, tech advanced team, the what are we doing to rank in chat? GPT question comes up a lot, and the answer is, Hey, I can't give you the same report that I give you for SEO, but the reason I still talk about SEO is because it has a knock-on effect for geo, and I don't have the beautiful dashboard in the same way, but I know that to be true, and ultimately that is as close as where we are right now in February of 2025 in six months. It could be resolved, you know, at the speed of which these things move, or faster. But for now, like is SEO dead, no, in the traditional sense of it being like, truly, the end all be all. And I see a comment about how HubSpot lost 5 million viewers in a month, and it's all over LinkedIn, and we're all discussing like is HubSpot, with their massive blog of 1000s of blog posts, is that like strategy dead for them? Well, I would argue like, yeah, month to month, it's probably not going to continue to grow, but they still have that foundation of an insane domain authority, with their domain authority, like 85 or something crazy that still plays into HubSpot, being an authority that is then referenced by chat GPT. This is not wasted effort, but the metrics and the Why are going to change. And so it's really not a zero sum game. It's kind of being talked about that we love these LinkedIn posts. They're like, SEO is dead. Lead Generation is dead, the MQL is dead. There's nothing new under the sun, right? Like it all comes back around. The principles are the same. And frankly, when it comes to content creation, the most important thing is that you're creating stuff that your audience will like and consume. And if SEO data, if you use SEMrush keyword research to help you kind of figure out where to prioritize or what topics matter, or where you can get the most bang for your bug that's not wasted. I don't think it's crazy to use SEMrush data to then decide what video series to do or a podcast or something that's not SEO. They're all related. It's all still an audience research tool. It's just we have to be honest about what it is and what it isn't. And we've trained our teams, our boards, our CEOs to expect and then we rank number one on Google, and that's not the game anymore.

Kerry Guard 23:16

So let's talk about the content that we should be creating in regards to not just ranking, but just meeting our audience where they are. You know, when we talked, we had this really lovely conversation about what doors this is going to open when it is used thoughtfully. So how do you see ChatGPT and Gen AI helping us in content creation in a way that maybe we didn't have before?

Sarah Hartland 23:46

Yeah, I remember this conversation, and I'm very passionate about it too because I actually think for you and I and others who are a little bit farther in our careers, this is super exciting, and for all of those entry-level folks who would have been writing endless Google ads, copy. I don't know what their on ramp is going to be, but once you're in the magic of it is that suddenly the job is not the monotony of churning out content for the sake of it. It's about being really thoughtful about what types of content in what formats and why you're creating it, and especially, you know, going back to demand gen, if you're truly having to educate and persuade an audience super early on, that requires, like, a lot of thought and strategy. And it's not just about I can write nice paragraphs. It's really strategic work, which I think is very exciting. It's much more interesting than churning out hundreds of glossary pages, which a lot of us have effectively done like we've done it and it's worked, but like now, we get to do stuff that's really exciting. And so I do think it's an opportunity in that way. I personally use chat GPT for get. Over blank page syndrome for expanding on points, for even just, like, a dialog back and forth. Of, hey, I'm trying, I'm trying to articulate this idea. Help me, like, figure out a better analogy. Or what are the holes in this argument? Like, it's really useful if you just, like, want to talk to someone about an idea. I think that chat GPT in my work, is much more useful in that purpose than in I need a blog post on this topic, and it needs to be five paragraphs, and it needs to include these keywords. Like I pretty much don't trust AI to create anything from scratch, but it's a great input for me to then be the one with a sense of strategy, a sense of taste, and it does make my work a lot faster, because the hardest place to start is with a blank page, and that is no longer an excuse for any of us.

Kerry Guard 25:57

Yeah, I agree. I just today I was taking it's just, it's just moved out my process, like I'm not taking notes anymore. I'm using Fathom. And then I take my transcript, dump it into a chat with a template for email, and I say, can you rewrite this email using this transcript? And then it just, and then I just sent the email. It's glorious. And so that repetitive work too. I think I found it so helpful with of just like I've already done the work of setting the thing, and now I just need it revamped over and over and over again with this new content, it's been, has been awesome. One thing you had said that I absolutely loved, too, is that we have to be one of the reasons why writing, you know, having chat, write content for us, is because it's basically a snake eating its own tail, right? So, you know, one of the things that opens the door for us to do is actually in that thought leadership content is say something new. Yeah, right, right. Have to say something new, right? It's just us to do that.

Sarah Hartland 27:09

And this, I think, is more intuitive for all of us. When it comes to original research, we go, okay, well, we're going to do this report, and it's going to be brand new data points, and voila, there you go. There's also an opportunity, though, on the thought leadership side, even if you're not relying on your research team or structured data. And so this, to me, is the essence of why I still maintain my Demand Gen title, and I kind of have my rant about what Demand Gen is, because truly, you have to be saying something either new or in a different way or in a more compelling way, like that has to become the inputs. And the challenging part of that work, aside from the messaging and the persuasion of it, is it has to get talked about by others. And so I actually don't think that doing like, let's say, doing thought leadership for the purpose of geo I don't think there's cheese down that tunnel, because it will take so long to see that result that if that's how you position it internally, then in three months, your team is going to come to you and they're going to be like, Why are we not being mentioned as the best software composition analysis tool in chat, GPT, like I don't understand well, because it's not just about we publish thought leadership. You also have to have really good PR. You have to get mentioned in other publications with a higher domain authority. You still need backlinks. Like all of this plays together. I think the challenge for me and for others in positions like mine is going to be internally educating like what we can track, what we can't track, and what we need to do, because they're not neatly lined up like they have been in the last 10 years. Now, it's a lot more, you know, loose and you have to try to connect those data points. I feel pretty confident that some tool is going to burst on the market, you know, imminently to address this. But until then, you have to look forward to how this landscape is changing and understand like it's kind of the same old, same old but for a different purpose, and it has to be a lot higher quality. And, like, there's tension in all of that, which is very exciting. That's why I don't worry about, you know, AI can't take these kinds of jobs. These are, like, high, critical thinking, knowledge work roles in an organization. And so every time I go to a use market. Use AI for marketing talk, and they're like, use it to write your email copy. Use it to write your social media. Okay, well, chat, GPT is pulling all this content from the internet and building patterns of speech based off what's already published. So if you just publish more of the same thing, it's exactly. What you said, it's a snaking in his own tail. And so, you know, I fundamentally believe the person that there's nothing new under the sun, right? And these are all patterns and humanities never that new. And yet you have to find a way to do something different. Because hopefully when the next person uses chat GPT to write all their social media posts, it's influenced by the stuff that you've been publishing for years.

Kerry Guard 30:26

Got an interesting question from from the audience, what are your thoughts on how ABM is impacted with geo? Feel like a direct impact to content? Syndication? Value Proposition?

Sarah Hartland 30:39

Yeah. Well, I side comment, not a fan of content syndication. We can have a whole how's that going to change discussion. But ABM, so, boy, is ABM an interesting discussion. I think what this question is getting at is probably the intent data behind ABM, because I think that artificial intelligence has a lot of uses in an Account-based Marketing Program, like, it's really great for account research. It's really great for scaling content creation that's sort of more templatized, or if you're just like, creating personalized content based off of sales plays with your internal content. I'm guessing that that's not the heart of the question. I'm guessing it has more to do with intent, data, and third party intent and keywords. So the way that these tools fundamentally work is using reverse IP look-up on third party sites like that's basically what six cents and demand base are doing. And I'm sure that they characterize it much more, you know, in a much more proprietary, sexy way, but that's basically what they're doing. And so as people consume less content in search, less content on like proper websites, and more content in chat, GPT, like that, intent signal basically goes away. And I think eventually, like that, somebody is going to design some tool that tries to crack that nut. But until then, yeah, it means that most searches and most content consumption become invisible to tools like six cents and demand base. And that's why I think you have to create pieces of content that are not just about question, asked, answer given, because that is going to be completely in formats where it's not recognizable by ABX tools. The other thing, though, is I always would say when I was implementing Sixth Sense at Jupiter, one the keywords in Sixth Sense are keywords consumed, not keywords searched. And you have to be really careful with this, because, listen, if I could build a tool that helped you target people based on what they Google, I would not be on this podcast. I would not be working here. I would be a millionaire. So it's not what people are searching. We do not have access to that data. It's about what they're writing about. So really, like specific example, when I was at Jupiter one and we were in the cloud security space, you're one of the best practices, in sixth sense, is to list out friendly and competing brands so that you can try to identify accounts that are, you know, consuming content, sort of about the world in which you're the market in which you're playing. And a big one was Whiz in cloud security, and so wiz was one of our keywords early on, and it was showing that, like, every single account had intent for Wiz. What is going on? My sales team comes to me and they're like, why is everybody interested in Wiz? Well, they're not. Wiz is in the news constantly, and if you're on a security website or a security blog, you're probably going to read an article that mentions wiz because they're that big of an elephant in the room. And so the intent piece, you have to be tricky. You have to be careful with even early on and what it is and what it isn't, or you will get way, way, way into the weeds. And so we love this like, concept of, oh, this person's interested in this keyword, and we've become because the UI is really easy, and the theory behind it makes a lot of sense. We've become, like, really attached to our intent signals. This is going to get harder before it gets easier again. But I do think the reality is, a lot of the data points that we have just naturally built into ABM tools. They're either not going to be there, it's going to be more obvious than ever that they were never that great to begin with. And so what do you do? My opinion, you have to circle back to first party intent. Your data is way more interesting. The cookies on your site and which pages individual people are on, and the data that you can own and control and know there will always be less of it, but that is way more powerful intent signals than anything third party, which always is going to carry lots of caveats, and that is worse because of geo, but it's not new.

Kerry Guard 34:59

Yeah, I think. Think, I think going back to basics around first-party data is it was, it was already kind of common to a head in the last few years, and now it's like at our doorstep, and we gotta, we gotta accept what is on top of the fact that people don't really want to sign up for anything. So actually garnering first-party data is a bit more of an uphill battle as well. Something you said earlier on, though, that I think lends itself to this conversation that's so important is to your point on Wiz is that they're showing up in the news and going back to your point about PR and link building, like, I feel like you just doubled down on that. So clearly, of it we have, if you it's our branded terms are going to be more important now than ever because when people do go search for you, they're not going to be searching for the problem. They're going to do that in geo, but they're but once they're right to actually buy and figure shit out, they're going to search for you and probably two other competitors to get to your website. So that branded search term and having brand awareness, both on your website and externally, I think, is going to become significantly more important when we talk about SEO and content in the next few years. Yeah,

Sarah Hartland 36:16

I almost wonder. I don't want this to become the off-the-cuff comment that this talk becomes about. But I almost wonder if, like showing up in a generative engine is a proxy for brand awareness, like absolutely chat GPT. If you ask, what is the best in this category, and you're not on the list, that's like almost a proxy for the general awareness in the market, because chat GPT is going to pull from the internet and the number of mentions and stack rank it very clearly. And, you know, that's a big hurdle if you're in startup world, right? But I almost wonder if that's going to become like, one of the things we use to be like, Yeah, this is how aware people are the brand. But to your point, Kerry, like, I just feel like I alluded to this in my my talk in December. I just feel like every single thing I was always taught to be, like, that's a vanity metric. Ignore it is the whole job. Like, that's where I keep coming back to PR is a great example, because I was always a this is so frivolous. And like, don't want to do rapid response, and I don't want to have a PR agency, and that is, like, the exact wrong attitude. And you know, it comes across with the experience of seeing what really good PR can do, but it also just highlights one of the things that I'm pretty passionate about, which is that the right things to do are usually not the easiest things to track. And we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot by going, here's my beautiful funnel, here's every stage, here's my 20-point lead scoring. Here's how the system works. Now. It's a gumball machine. Put in $10 and get $100 when we know now more than we have, like, it's really in our faces. Now, it's just not that simple, and so we have to go back and be prepared to, like, constantly beat that drum and re educate it and pull these data points. Because, gosh, yeah, backlinks matter a whole lot, and it's not just because of search rankings. And PR matters a whole lot, and brand awareness matters a whole lot. And we've always, like known that those things were important, but now it's it's the whole game, it's the whole game, and I think there's no substitute for it. And the sooner we all admit that, the sooner we can get to making the work happen.

Kerry Guard 38:48

I think we left brand like we performance marketing came in, and we sort of put brand to the side and said, Yeah, we're good. Now we don't need you. We could just go fill the gumball machine to your point. And now you're right. It is coming back so hard to bite us all, getting back to fundamentals, building that brand, building those links, building those relationships out in the market, is where it's all headed. Sarah, I could talk to you forever. I'm so grateful for clips for days. Elijah, clips for days. This is glorious. I'm so sorry to our audience. There's so much more you wanted us to unpack around content syndication, around content in general, Geo, stuff. ABM, Sara, you're sketch. Come back on. Sorry, not sorry.

Sarah Hartland 39:36

Bummer.

Kerry Guard 39:39

We will make that happen, but at the meantime, as people are wanting to learn more about you and end or, where can they find you?

Sarah Hartland 39:45

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me. Uh, slash, I am slash Sarah Heartland. That's, that's, I think, the one platform where my name is my name, because there are a lot of Sarah Heartlands out in the world, LinkedIn is mine, so that's the best place to connect with me. And, of course. You want to check out endorabs, endorlabs.com, look at that brand awareness with your name.

Kerry Guard 40:03

I love it. I love it. It's actually why I took my husband's name because there was too many Kerry else's. Now it's only one Kerry Guard. I'm here for it. Before we go, Sarah, before you commute on over to work, what's one thing that's currently bringing you joy outside of work, bringing

Sarah Hartland 40:21

me joy outside of work. Well, I recently discovered Dungeons and Dragons, and now I'm suddenly in two different campaigns with two different great groups of friends. And very much, in my nerd era, it's super fun. And I love that that's I love that that's making such a like return to pop culture, so D and D definitely.

Kerry Guard 40:44

Ah, storytelling characters. Yes, I love it. I love it. I want to follow up and hear more about your characters. I think that's going to be great, awesome. Well, thank you again, Sarah, thank you to our audience. Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please like subscribe and share. This episode is brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps complex brands build trust with their complex audience. It's hosted by me, Kerry Guard , CEO and co-founder MKG Marketing and Music Mix and mastering done by Elijah Drown, my podcast sidekick. And if you'd like to be a guest, DM me. I'd love to have you.