Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, joins Jeremy Rivera to discuss why strategy must come before tactics in small business marketing. With 15 years at Duct Tape Marketing—starting as an intern and rising to CEO—Sara shares the agency's proven approach to building trust through transparency, education, and true partnership.

This conversation covers the evolution of SEO in the age of AI, why customer interviews are non-negotiable, how to structure content for both humans and LLMs, and why quarterly planning beats annual marketing plans in today's rapidly shifting landscape.

Sara Nay is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, where she has spent 15 years helping small businesses build effective marketing strategies. She recently authored Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models, offering a fresh perspective on escaping outdated marketing approaches that no longer serve today's businesses.

"A website should help people get to know, like, trust, and even be able to try your services and buy your services. Yes, it should look nice—that is important. But the content and the journey that you're guiding people on is what I would argue is the most important piece of the puzzle."

"We're not just creating marketing strategy for people anymore. We're creating marketing strategy for people AND AI."

"When people skip over leadership interviews and ideal client interviews, that's where they waste time, energy, and money on marketing in the long run."

"Gone are the days where you can just publish content and hope it shows up. You have to be very focused on what you're putting in the content, but also how you're structuring it."

"I believe you can't really plan for marketing further than three months at this time because it's changing, shifting, and evolving so much."

Jeremy Rivera is the founder of SEO Arcade and host of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, with 19 years of experience in SEO and digital marketing. He specializes in converting podcasts into comprehensive SEO content marketing strategies.