Event Season Is Not for the Faint of Heart

And here we are, heavy into event season! Looks exciting from the outside…
The booths. The keynotes. The energy. The connections.

But if you’ve been in it, you know. Double, triple duty—for all!

Here is a shout out to those who organize, support all sides—in the office, outside the office, and at the home office. You all know:

It’s:

✈️ early flights + delays, boarding group 9… again, and the herculean expectations… you want me to check what and get it where? by myself?
🏨 hotel rooms that all look the same (was I just in this one… or is this every Marriott ever?)
💧 $10 bottles of water that suddenly feel like a luxury purchase, and coffee that somehow becomes your primary food group
☕ breakfasts with strangers (that sometimes turn into great conversations)
📞 panic phone calls regarding a forgotten lunch box, homework, missing dog… did you take the car keys?

And then there’s the organization that looks like wedding planning on steroids:

👉 the planners coordinating months in advance
👉 the teams building booths—and the almost always missing components
👉 the teams running demos, answering the same question 50 times… and somehow still sounding like it’s the first while staying “on” all day
👉 the presenters refining content late into the night, only to change it again five minutes before going on stage—and somehow an old version still gets presented
👉 the constant juggling of your actual job while you’re on the road

Because nothing stops.
Not the emails.
Not the deadlines.
Not the business.

And then there’s the part we don’t talk about enough…

The ones at home… managing everything—and probably wondering why we packed three pairs of shoes for a two-day trip

The ones:

• keeping everything running

• holding down schedules

• making sure life stays on track

While we’re out there doing our thing.

That’s double duty—and it matters more than we say.

So here’s to everyone making event season happen:

👏 the planners
👏 the organizers
👏 the teams on the ground
👏 the presenters
👏 the behind-the-scenes operators
👏 and the people at home supporting it all

It takes all of it—teamwork, resilience… a village, and more coffee than we’d like to admit.

Safe travels to all—and thank you to those who make it possible.

Your Website Isn’t the Front Door Anymore

AI Just Moved the Lobby

For more than twenty years, the website was the center of gravity. The homepage was the front door of buyers’ discoveries. Traffic came from search, social, and campaigns, and the goal was simple:

Get people to land on your page and convert.

But something fundamental has changed. Large Language Models (LLMs) have quietly moved the lobby.

Today, buyers often ask AI systems questions before they ever visit your website. By the time they arrive at your page, much of their research and their vendor shortlist has been formed by what AI systems told them. Your website is still important. But it’s no longer the beginning of the journey. It’s a reference source inside a much larger knowledge ecosystem.

What Has Changed in Buyer Discovery

When buyers research solutions today, they increasingly start with AI tools such as:

• ChatGPT

• Perplexity AI

• Google Gemini

Instead of clicking through ten search results, buyers ask direct questions like:

• “What are the best hybrid cloud managed service providers?”

• “What is the difference between mainframe modernization and cloud migration?”

• “What companies specialize in data platform modernization?”

These AI systems synthesize answers using information from across the web.

Your website is ONLY one source among many.

Which means discovery has shifted from website navigation to AI-mediated knowledge retrieval. Read that again!

What LLMs Are Actually Scraping

When an AI system generates an answer, it doesn’t just read your homepage.

It looks across the entire digital ecosystem for corroborating information.

Typical sources include:

Your owned content

• product documentation

• technical explainers

• blog posts and guides

• FAQs and knowledge bases

External validation sources

• analyst reports

• industry publications

• research papers

• podcasts and webinar transcripts

Market proof signals

• review platforms

• comparison sites

• partner blogs

• developer forums

Community discussions

• GitHub issues

• Reddit threads

• Stack Overflow

• LinkedIn discussions

In other words:

Your website is no longer the destination.

It is one node in a knowledge network that AI systems analyze to produce answers.

The “Thin Page” Problem

Many marketing pages were built for search engines rather than knowledge extraction.

They include:

• vague hero messaging

• minimal technical detail

• gated assets behind forms

• keyword-stuffed landing pages

These pages were designed to capture traffic.

But LLMs are not looking for marketing slogans. They are looking for answers.

AI systems prefer content that is:

Specific
Who is the solution for? What problem does it solve?

Structured
Clear headings, lists, definitions, and logical sections.

Authoritative
Consistent claims supported by citations and external sources.

Thin landing pages built only for conversion rarely contain enough information for AI systems to reference or summarize.

The New Role of the Website

The modern website must now serve two audiences simultaneously:

1. Human buyers

2. AI systems summarizing your expertise

That means marketing pages must function as answer hubs, not just conversion funnels.

Effective pages now include:

• clear problem definitions

• precise explanations of how solutions work

• natural-language FAQs

• examples and use cases

• links to deeper documentation

• comparison tables

• implementation guidance

If an AI system lifted two paragraphs from your page, would the reader understand your value proposition?

That is the new benchmark.

How to Be Seen by AI Systems

Organizations that want to appear in AI answers need to optimize content for extractability, authority, and corroboration.

1. Structure Content for Extraction

AI models work best with structured information.

Use:

• descriptive H1/H2 headings

• short paragraphs

• bullet lists

• step-by-step explanations

This makes it easier for AI systems to quote or summarize content.

2. Target Real Questions

Traditional keyword research is no longer enough.

Instead, analyze:

• customer support tickets

• community forums

• industry Q&A

• “People Also Ask” search results

Turn these into question-based headings and FAQ sections.

3. Provide Clear Answers First

Each section should start with a concise explanation.

Example structure:

Definition → context → example → additional nuance.

AI systems often quote the first clear answer they encounter.

4. Implement Structured Data

Schema markup helps search engines and AI tools interpret content.

Common schema types include:

• FAQ Page

• How-To Page

• Article

• Product

• Organization

This structured metadata improves machine readability.

5. Demonstrate Authority (E-E-A-T)

Search and AI systems prioritize sources that show:

Þ    Experience

Þ    Expertise

Þ    Authority

Þ    Trust

Ways to strengthen these signals include:

• author bios

• case studies

• customer examples

• citations to reputable sources

6. Build Topic Clusters

Instead of isolated pages, create topic ecosystems.

Example structure:

Þ    Pillar Page

Þ    Supporting articles

Þ    Use cases

Þ    Industry applications

Þ    FAQs

Internal linking reinforces topical authority.

7. Publish AI-Friendly Knowledge Formats

Some companies now create simplified content views designed for machine ingestion.

Examples include:

• Markdown documentation

• technical knowledge hubs

• AI-friendly sitemap files such as /llms.txt

These versions remove visual clutter and provide structured knowledge directly to AI systems.

Why External Data Sources Matter

Appearing in AI answers requires more than optimizing your website.

Models look for corroboration across multiple domains.

That means your expertise must appear in:

• industry publications

• analyst research

• partner blogs

• research papers

• customer reviews

• community discussions

• conference talks, webcasts, and podcasts

When your message appears consistently across trusted sources, AI systems treat your perspective as more credible.

In other words:

Authority is now distributed across the internet, not confined to your website.

The AI-First Action Plan: From Traffic to Knowledge

Audit for "Answer Hubs"

Turn thin pages into definitive resources. Use clear problem statements, natural language FAQs, comparisons, and implementation guides to ensure you are the source of truth for your category.

Kill the Gate

If it’s gated, it’s invisible. LLMs cannot fill out forms. By hiding your best insights behind a lead-gen wall, you are choosing a handful of emails over being the primary recommendation in an AI’s answer.

Deploy /llms.txt

Create a "fast lane" for crawlers. A dedicated Markdown sitemap provides a clean, "no-noise" version of your value prop that AI agents can ingest in milliseconds without getting lost in HTML bloat. Even just your pillar pages would benefit.

Format for Machines

Structure is authority. Use descriptive H2s, Schema markup, and tight lists. If an AI lifted just two paragraphs from your site, the reader should have everything they need to make a confident decision.

Expand Web Authority

AI looks for consensus. Encourage third-party reviews, industry mentions, and community threads. The more sources that echo your value, the higher the "trust score" the LLM assigns you.

Monitor AI Citations

Track your "Share of Model." Shift your KPIs from "Clicks" to "Citations." Use tools to track where and how AI systems are referencing your brand to find (and fill) knowledge gaps.

If you want your brand to survive and show up in the "moved lobby," you need to stop hoarding information and start distributing it in formats machines take into consideration when serving up your buyers inquiries.

The New Marketing Mandate

Your website hasn’t disappeared.

It has evolved.

Instead of acting as the front door of discovery, it now serves as the reference library that powers AI answers.

Marketing is no longer just about attracting visitors.

It is about ensuring your knowledge appears wherever buyers are asking questions. It always has, the who is the same, the where and how has changed. Because the lobby has moved. And it now lives inside AI.

Now go be the answer in the LLMs your buyer is researching in.

The Funnel Is Dead. Long Live The Prompt.

The Funnel is Dead. Long Live the Prompt

Over a decade of working in SEO and digital marketing, I’ve watched the search landscape evolve through several eras.

The early 2010s marked a pivotal shift in how businesses and buyers engaged online. Social platforms rapidly scaled, Facebook surpassed 500 million users, while LinkedIn emerged as the dominant B2B networking platform. At the same time, the mobile revolution reshaped how people accessed information. By 2020, digital marketing had evolved into a highly sophisticated, data-driven discipline powered by marketing automation, account-based marketing (ABM), analytics, and intent signals giving marketers remarkable visibility into buyer behavior and control over the funnel. But another shift is now underway. As AI and large language models reshape how information is discovered, evaluated, and delivered, the traditional marketing funnel is being rewritten once again.

In the early days of SEO Google search results was a marketer’s superpower. If you understood keywords and content structure, you could dial up visibility, drive traffic to landing pages, and convert search into revenue.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape has shifted again, dramatically.

Search no longer simply sends buyers to information. Now, information comes directly to the buyer. That shift is powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). Traditional SEO connects people to information. LLMs serve the information directly.

SEO is still important, but a new force has arrived, and it is fundamentally reshaping how buyers research, evaluate, and choose solutions.

And in doing so, it has flipped the marketing funnel upside down.

The Funnel We Grew Up With

For decades, marketers operated within a fairly predictable structure.

The classic funnel:

Þ    Top of Funnel (TOFU): Awareness

Þ    Middle of Funnel (MOFU): Research and evaluation

Þ    Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Decision

With the right combination of targeting, keywords, landing pages, and budget, marketers controlled the awareness path.

·       We tracked every click.

·       Every form fill.

·       Every email open.

Lead scoring systems told us where buyers were in their decision journey. We nurtured them with content, emails, demos, and offers until they raised their hands.

And for many years, that system worked.

But it relied on one critical assumption:

Þ    Buyers came to us early in their journey.

That assumption is no longer true.

The Funnel Has Flipped

Today’s buyers often begin with a prompt, not a search query.

Instead of scrolling through ten blue links, they receive a curated answer, often including summaries, comparisons, reviews, and product recommendations.

In a single interface, they can:

·       Compare vendors

·       Review capabilities

·       Read third-party opinions

·       Evaluate trade-offs

·       Explore communities and documentation

Many buyers now complete 70–80% of their decision journey before ever visiting a vendor website.

The “middle” of the funnel, research and comparison, has effectively moved outside your website into AI interfaces and third-party sources.

It’s invisible. And often much shorter.

Asking an LLM today is like test driving a car before ever stepping on the dealership lot. Buyers can evaluate comfort, performance, and features without a salesperson in sight.

By the time they arrive at your website, they may already know exactly what they want.

Do Funnels and Lead Scoring Still Matter?

So, the natural question becomes:

Is the funnel dead?

Not exactly.

The buyers still exist, of course, but the experience is nonlinear and buyer-controlled.

Discovery and shortlisting now happen through:

·       LLM prompts

·       Community discussions

·       Comparison sites

·       Reviews and peer recommendations

Marketing often enters the process much later than before.

Lead scoring also still matters, but traditional models miss most of the high-value journey.

Page visits, form fills, and email opens no longer tell the full story.

Today’s meaningful signals look more like:

·       Product trials

·       High-intent content engagement

·       Community participation

·       Peer validation

·       Direct outreach

Buyers are increasingly self-directed decision makers.

Research consistently shows that most buyers prefer to conduct the majority of research independently, and many have a preferred vendor before speaking with a salesperson.

In reality, buyers are deciding on their own.

They’re just using everyone else’s data about you to do it.

We Didn’t Lose the Funnel

We changed our monopoly on the information that powered it.

For years, companies controlled the narrative.

Your website.

Your content.

Your lead forms.

Your funnel.

Today, that information is distributed across the internet, and LLMs aggregate it instantly.

But that doesn’t mean marketers are powerless.

It simply means our job has changed.

The New Job of Marketing: Feed the Bots

In an AI-first discovery environment, the brands that win will be the ones that make their information easiest to understand, verify, and surface.

Here are five emerging rules.

1. Make Your Content Easy for LLMs to Understand

Structure information clearly across documentation, FAQs, and product pages so both humans and machines can interpret it easily and accurately. And publish your Mark Downs for LLMs!

2. Publish the Details Buyers Actually Want

Transparency now accelerates decisions. Share implementation guidance, comparisons, pricing context, and even who your product is not designed for.

3. Write for Humans and Machines

Clear headings, structured explanations, and balanced perspectives help LLMs surface accurate answers.

4. Invest in Authority, Not Just Promotion

LLMs trust signals beyond your website. Reviews, Analyst mentions, industry pubs, case studies, and user-generated validation increasingly carry more weight than polished marketing campaigns.

5. Measure What Actually Correlates to Revenue

Focus less on top-of-funnel vanity metrics and more on signals like product usage, trial engagement, and high-intent inquiries.

The New Marketing Superpower

Twenty years ago, keywords were the superpower.

Today, transparency is.

In an LLM-first world, the brands that win will not be the ones guarding their best information.

They will be the ones who explain their value so clearly, and publish it so openly, that both buyers and bots can't help but choose them.