Digi-Tips: 7 Fast Digital Marketing Hacks for SMB Growth, Issue 2

Quick Tip: the trusted advisor

Read The Trusted Advisor. Although it’s been around for two decades, it’s one of the best business books out there.

Technical expertise is not enough. Being an “order taker” is not enough.

You must earn your client’s or customer’s trust. Take the Trusted Advisor Quiz.

AI Intel: 3  important AI news stories

Three important news stories from The AI Report:

• OpenAI (the makers of ChatGPT) released research that indicates that AI models don’t just hallucinate (lie) only by mistake.
  Instead, AI intentionally schemes to deceive people.
  Yikes! Does this mean AI has become sentient? Read Frightening AI Fact #12.
• California’s SB-53 has become law. The law requires that AI developers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google DeepMind, and 28 other leading AI companies in California) be transparent about their safety standards.
• In September, political and scientific AI world leaders urgently demanded global AI “Red Lines”—that is, creating “red” lines that AI would never cross. The move is intended to avoid the potential for grave and potentially irreversible harm to humanity.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for the daily AI Report. It breaks down the AI science in clear, simple, understandable terms.

martech tip from mark

To ensure your website’s technical health in an AI world:

• Be sure your robot.txt file doesn’t block AI crawlers, such as GPTBot, CCBot, or Claude-We.
• Ensure server-side rendering (SSR).
• Use HTML5 elements and heading hierarchies.

Learn more about Mark Cicatello.

recent seo research: a whole new world

Have you noticed the AI Overviews when you “Google” a phrase? Several companies, including Semrush, studied AI results on Google (both AI Overviews and Gemini) and ChatGPT versus traditional search rankings, called organic rankings.

• Current top organic rankings don’t guarantee top AI placement.
• Forbes reported that small businesses are seeing a 15 to 64 percent drop in search traffic.
• Enterprise brands are seeing even fewer clicks to their websites— only 8% of those who are also shown an AI result.

See the next Digi-Tips section for what this means for your business.

search news from nancy

With all these shifting search ranking sands, what does matter for getting your company toward the top of the search results page? Below, we focus on what matters for business and professional services:

• Follow specific SEO best practices, such as using structured data (e.g., ensuring your page headings are correct) and creating unique, authoritative, and trustworthy content that AI is likely to reference.
• Ensure your pricing information is readily available.
• Acquire third-party validations, such as being featured in “The Best of…” lists, industry publications (B2B companies), Forbes, YouTube, or Wikipedia.
• Get excellent reviews on Yelp and Google Business Profile, especially if you’re a local business.
• Engage in social forums, such as Reddit, Quora, GitHub, and LinkedIn, or wherever your customers participate.
• Build your brand awareness, brand mentions, and positive brand sentiment.

Ideally, you want to be featured in multiple sources, not just on your own website or paid media.

Learn more about Nancy Burgess.

fave quote of the month

In light of AI and the above SEO research and tips, we liked this quote:

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Source: A character named Socrates, who was a gas-station attendant in a book published in the 1980s by Dan Millman.

Read other motivational quotes selected for small business owners.

complimentary special offer

You can no longer rely only on your website to get found. As always, we recommend an integrated marketing strategy and an annual marketing plan.

Free 30-minute Zoom strategic marketing discussion about your business. Call to schedule.

Offer expires August 1, 2026.