May 01, 2025

The Quiet Shift: How B2B Teams are Winning Post-SEO

49 minutes

#242: Content Strategy | In this episode, Danielle sits down with Brendan Hufford, founder of Growth Sprints, to talk about what actually works in content and SEO today and why most B2B strategies are broken. Brendan went from high school teacher to leading content at top SaaS companies, and now helps brands move faster and build content strategies that drive real impact.

They cover:

Why most SEO strategies are broken - and why retainers make it worse
The content checklist that took ActiveCampaign from 200K to 240K visitors in 30 days
Why the most lucrative SEO opportunities are hiding in plain sight
Brendan’s "immortal newsletter" framework that cuts production time in half while doubling engagement

Plus, check out the checklist Brendan mentioned in this episode here!

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro to Brendan

(03:45) - – Lessons from teaching that apply directly to marketing

(06:45) - – Why Brendan left education and entered the B2B world

(08:15) - – Early agency and in-house marketing experience

(10:00) - – Building a defensible career: audience, trust, and network

(12:20) - – The Growth Sprints model: why retainers don’t make sense

(13:30) - – Content strategy in bets, not buckets

(14:45) - – Why SEO still works and where it actually drives results

(16:15) - – Getting deep on audience, product, and internal dynamics

(18:30) - – What marketers get wrong about internal buy-in

(20:30) - – Real example: what a content sprint looks like in practice

(22:00) - – The power of internal linking and content refreshes

(24:00) - – How Google views internal linking and user signals

(27:00) - – Why technical SEO is often overrated

(30:00) - – Brendan’s hot take: most SEOs aren’t marketers

(31:30) - – Why the “SEO takes 6 months” narrative is flawed

(33:30) - – The problem with traditional retainers and content brief models

(35:00) - – The immortal newsletter: how to mix evergreen + ephemeral content

(38:00) - – Naming the problem, not just the category

(39:30) - – Content should do 3–5 jobs at once: how to prioritize impact

(42:00) - – The real value of competitor and alternatives pages

(44:30) - – How to make content more useful for sales and buyer enablement

(46:00) - – Brendan’s final mindset shift: create content that earns its keep

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Brought to you by:

Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, helping modern marketing teams build fully custom sites—no developer needed—that perform in AI search. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.

Markup AI - A content quality platform that scans your content against brand voice, preferred terms, messaging standards, and AI-search readiness before it goes live, right inside Google Docs. Learn more at markup.ai.

Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Learn how to deploy agents on your marketing team at Agents in the Mix. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.

Walker Sands - An integrated B2B marketing and growth services agency that helps marketing leaders turn strategy into measurable business impact through their Outcome-based Marketing model. Learn more at walkersands.com/exitfive.

Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive, or check out the MCP server by clicking this link.

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