Showing Up in AI Search Takes More Than an SEO Checklist

What We Need to Grow, Episode 064: Now We're Going Backwards. A Founder Talk conversation with Jesse McFarland, Founder of SpearPoint Marketing. Cleaned for readability; the words are the speakers' own.

Caleb Pedosiuk: All right, Jesse, I'm stoked to talk shop today and hear a little bit of SpearPoint. So you founded SpearPoint, from what I understand, in 2022, after almost two decades as a corporate marketer, CMO. How's it going? How are things going with what you're building right now? Let's hear about it.

Jesse McFarland: Things are awesome. We had a really amazing year this year, especially the first half of the year. We significantly grew our business, Q4 to Q2. And then Q3 was really slow, and it's still kind of slow, which is a little concerning, because I just hired, I would say a month ago or two months ago, I hired more people anticipating catching up with all the growth. And then of course everything kind of slowed down. But when I look at my history, the same thing happens every year.

Overall, since I've launched the business, I'm nothing but happy. Things are going really well. I just have a good life, man. It's awesome being an entrepreneur. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Caleb: So where would you say the focus is for SpearPoint? If you want to share a little bit about what the agency does, where your focus is, who you serve.

Jesse: We're essentially an SEO agency. With the change in the world, we now consider ourselves an SEO and AI search type of agency. We currently serve the B2B space mostly. B2B is super general, of course, so a lot of our customers are in professional services, so that can be consulting, or a lot of fractional CFO, CMO type of positions, and other agencies. And then we also work with software companies, in a variety of different verticals, like healthcare software or manufacturing. Manufacturing is another niche we seem to be doing really well in. But all under that B2B umbrella.

There have been so many changes in our world. A lot of them are really overstated. Most of the fundamentals haven't changed, but it's more of a positioning thing of saying, no, this is also what we do. Actually, we've always done it this way. It's just called this now. So it's a lot of education, of sharing what organic search actually is now.

Caleb: Where do you find the conversation sitting with, let's say, prospects? Do you feel like they are aware of the problem to be solved that you help with, or do you find that part of that education you mentioned is actually helping them see the need for it?

Jesse: The truth is, the problem is usually, hey, I need more revenue, how can you help me. And that's what the problem should be.

Within the last year, because of what's happening in my world with AI visibility, the problem is, how come I don't show up when I search for my service on ChatGPT. And that's more of, okay, now we're going backwards. The problem should be more about revenue. That's been the focus in my world for a long time. Originally it was that SEO agencies would help with Google rankings, and then customers got smart, business people got smart and were like, well, I don't really care about where I rank, I just want to make sure that I'm getting new business from SEO. And now, within the last year, it's gone backwards to, where do I rank instead of on Google? Where do I rank on ChatGPT?

So that's really the issue I face on a regular basis, with not just my prospects but also my customers: reminding them, hey, what's the goal here? Is the goal to type in one phrase on ChatGPT to see whether or not your business is recommended there, or is your goal to actually increase revenue for your business? If that's the case, then let's talk about that. So that's the constant conversation I have on almost a daily basis.

Caleb: So how are you finding the different factors, almost like a Venn diagram, the circles that overlap in factors that play into showing up in AI search? Is it something where you're saying, okay, if your brand wants to be the recommended option in these prompts, then you need to be considering a couple of different things? It's not like you put the money in the Google Ads machine and the name pops up. Do you find you have the clients step back a little bit and then you're educating them about how the system works, or are they just essentially trusting you to say, look, just look after it?

Jesse: It's a lot more educating on how the system works now. But the funny thing about the system is that 80% of it, roughly, is the same system we've always used for SEO. ChatGPT is going to give you the best answers to your questions. By the way, Google Search has been doing that for a long time. So a lot of it is just very similar. It's just a few things that AI search will favour more than traditional SEO or Google search would.

So a lot of it is just that, but it comes down to really educating the client: hey, these are the things that we need to do. And by the way, we need to focus on maybe a clearer brand identity for your business. It's too scattered. And I'll give you a good example from my own business, to be honest with you. Being a B2B SEO agency, we could say we're the best B2B SEO agency, but would it be better for us to say something with a clearer message, because B2B is so general? That would be an example of how I would consult my own business, having more defined messaging, especially in an area that you do most of your work in.

So it's things like that. It's more strategic. It's just a different level of strategic, I would say, with AI search versus what we traditionally did with SEO.

Caleb: And are there different categories you would advise a client to go into? For example, depending on what industry they're in or what they're trying to do, would you say, hey, we should add a Reddit component to this, and you're sort of putting these spheres onto the table as you build a strategy? Or do you find that the fundamentals are, hey, we use these five categories for every industry, and it's just a matter of whether we're doing a lot of it, a little bit, or next to none?

Jesse: We have a dashboard I created in-house. It's basically a reporting system where it evaluates, or completely audits, your AI visibility. We look for what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. If your strengths are your website, and maybe you have an awesome YouTube channel, but like you said, maybe Reddit doesn't have much action there, and your competitors have a lot of citations that are being referenced on AI search, then we identify an easy gap there.

I think the best way, or at least the way that we do it, the best way to identify opportunities to improve your AI visibility, is really seeing what your competitors are doing and see what the gaps are. And traditionally, to be honest with you, that's how we've done SEO for a long time. Especially if your competitors have already invented the wheel. Well, let's see how they invented the wheel. We have the data to see how they invented the wheel right here. It's on the internet, you know what I'm saying?

So we can look for those different things and go, okay, these are the things that they're doing really well, these are the things that we're doing really well, let's see what those items are that they're doing better than us, and let's fill that gap, and then let's see how we can make it even better than them. So that's really how we tackle it, but accumulating that data is step one for sure.

Caleb: So by gap, would an example of a gap be recognizing that a competitor has a very strong knowledge representation towards a certain component of the industry, whereas your client is completely absent of that? So the gap would be, hey, they're sort of the only one in this conversation, we now need to enter that conversation and share your perspective on these subjects. Would that be an example of a gap?

Jesse: Yes, that's a good example of the gap. As long as whatever your competitor is doing really well at is something that is impactful for your business too. Sometimes competitors might offer things that you don't, and so we don't want to attack those gaps, because that's not going to help the business. But if it's in alignment with things that you offer, and it's more of an apples-to-apples comparison, then yes, absolutely. That's a good example.

Caleb: I'm curious sometimes about mid-funnel. When someone has typed in your client's name or a competitor's name and you're seeing what activity happens there. Do you find that mid-funnel, let's say for a CRM, when someone is looking and saying, hey, is Salesforce the best option, they're at that level of intent or research, they're looking with an openness to have their mind changed. Do you find that that is one of the most significant places to be contending for?

Jesse: Absolutely, man. You just nailed that, especially with mid-sized businesses, the type of personas that we mostly work with.

Big companies could care less. They'll go right after mid-funnel. They'll say, hey, we're the best at this, here's a comparison between us and our competitors. They're a lot more bold. Whereas a lot of our target audience are a little more timid on doing mid-funnel stuff like price comparisons, service comparisons, and sharing that. But that is the best opportunity, usually, in that mid-funnel type of search. And by the way, that's heavily searched by your audience. People are looking for the best price, the best features of a CRM service or whatever, or just a general overall, what's the difference between this brand, this brand, and this brand?

So we always try to recommend that, because it's usually a wide open opportunity, especially, like I said, in that mid-sized business, and probably in small businesses too. An opportunity to really own the middle funnel. And then the handful of customers who are bold enough to go, yes, let's do that, let's do comparison type of content, stuff like that, they really capitalize. And if we have performance, we usually create case studies of that and try to convince our customers: hey, look, this is our other customers doing it, this is the impact, are you up for it now, can we convince you to do it? Because the mid funnel to me is just more open. It's a lot more open than top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel.

Caleb: And are you finding that ongoing drip, activity for client accounts where you keep topping up the strategy, is the best way to help them build over time? Or is it more cyclical, that say quarterly you're doing a bigger push, or annually you're coming back to them and suggesting a specific approach to take?

Jesse: I think it kind of depends on the customer. We kind of do both. We do work monthly, but we strategically come up with a strategy usually for the quarter, and then we try to hold to that strategy and turn it into our monthly content, and then do it on a monthly basis. We find that's typically the best way. Sometimes it makes sense to front-load it, sometimes it doesn't, but we try to always have communication with our customers at least on a monthly basis, if not more, whether we're just updating them with stuff, or we're having some sort of strategic collaboration there.

A lot of that, though, is just to keep the communication strong. Or keep the relationship strong. The more time you have between a conversation, as a vendor or an agency, it's usually a bad thing if there's too much time, because then people start to forget, hey, what's the value of these guys again? Or someone new comes in and starts auditing stuff. So we want to make sure that relationship is tight. Having more of a drip type of collaboration is usually a stronger way, for a variety of reasons, but mostly for relationship.

Caleb: So the last question I love asking guests is, what do you feel like you need most to grow right now, if you had to put your finger on one thing?

Jesse: The answer to that question has always been, I need more help. And then I saw that over the last couple of months. And now I need leads. I need more people looking for services.

There are a few things going on. A lot of companies are holding back on marketing services. And another thing is the time of year. This is the least likely time, especially in the B2B space, where companies are looking to hire a vendor. It's more that they're planning strategically, looking closer to January. But it should be happening fairly soon, where companies are looking.

And then the other layer on top of it is that the whole AI search thing is just hotter and hotter and hotter. There are just so many distractions now. Traditionally it was, okay, we need SEO type services to help grow our pipeline. Now the question is, well, hey, we need AI search. But my answer would be, you need SEO and AI search. Let's talk, you know what I mean?

So I think there's just that clarity of thinking, like we need SEO or we need AI search, when really what you need is an agency that knows how to do both, who's really good at both. So it's more of answering that type of question, which I'm really trying to do in my content and podcasts like this, just to share that. There's no line there. They are two separate things, but 80% of it is the same. You just need to know how to talk to an agency that can show you the difference between the two, and see if they create a plan that works for your business. But the ultimate goal is always, and this is what we should remind ourselves, can this feed my pipeline?

Caleb: Well, Jesse, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. thespearpoint.com. Thank you.