If AI is doing all the work — the writing, the research, the analysis — what happens to the people who are supposed to decide whether the work is any good?

Steve Cummins calls it the validator problem. And it’s not theoretical. It’s playing out right now in every marketing team handing a junior marketer an AI tool on day one and calling it onboarding.

In Part 2 of their conversation, Steve and Tim dig into the question that keeps Steve up at night: how do you build real marketing expertise when AI is doing the work you used to learn from? The answer isn’t what most people expect. It’s not about tools or frameworks. It’s about curiosity. And it turns out that’s much harder to teach than anyone wants to admit.

They also get into what actually changes a founder’s mind about focus, why the fractional marketing model is becoming essential for growth companies, and why simple still works even when the technology around it has gotten infinitely more complicated.

Foundation Capital identified four roles AI will need in the workforce: C-suite accountability, architects (who build the AI processes), relationship people (effectively salespeople), and validators. Those are the people who take AI output, iterate with it, check it, and validate it.

Steve’s concern: how do you get to be a good validator if you’ve never done the work yourself? The graphic designers and art directors who are genuinely good at their craft only got there by doing the grunt work and working their way up. Same with lots of other roles. If AI removes that learning layer, the risk isn’t replacement. Instead, it’s a tendency toward mediocrity, where validators who are "okay" at their job validate "okay" output, and nobody ever gets better.

Steve’s three-part answer:

Most growth companies need marketing strategy much earlier than they can afford a full-time marketing leader. That’s the gap the fractional model fills. Not just a consultant who writes a report and throws it over the fence, but someone embedded with the company a day or two each week, driven by their success, who knows the people and can bring a higher level of strategic thinking than a seed or Series A startup could otherwise access.

Steve’s issue with "fractional CMO" as a label: most small growth companies don’t need a CMO. A CMO deals with the board and investors. What they need is someone who can do the planning and roll their sleeves up. And too many people on LinkedIn calling themselves fractional CMOs have never even been a VP of marketing, let alone a CMO… or are simply doing consulting while they wait for a full-time job, which is a different thing entirely.

The real value of the fractional model is continuity. Being part of a team’s growth process over time, not just dropping in with an ICP, a couple of recommendations, and then moving on.

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter and Steve Cummins on the validator problem, why curiosity is the most important hiring attribute in an AI world, and why simple marketing still works, even when the technology has gotten infinitely more complicated.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 32:11

[TIM PETER]:

This week, Steve and I get into something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and something that Steve calls the validator problem. Here it is in the simplest terms I can put it in. You know, if AI is doing more and more of the actual work, the writing, the research, the analysis, what happens to the people who are supposed to evaluate whether the work is any good? How do they build their skills?

This is not just about theory. This is playing out right now in every marketing team hiring a junior marketer and handing them an AI tool on day one. Steve has strong views on what that means for the people coming up in their careers, for their leaders, and for what curiosity actually means as a hiring attribute this year and down the road.

This is part two of my interview with Steve Cummins. I’m Tim Peter. This is the Digital Reset Podcast. Let’s dive in.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

The other frustration I have when I first talk to founders — nearly every time, you know, I say, "What have you done for marketing?" They say, "Well, we did some Google Ads, but it didn’t really work out," right? Um, and I think because Google Ads is, once you’ve got a website and all that, Google Ads is the next easiest and the next — of course — um, but as with all these things, there’s a skill to it. You have to invest a decent amount of money to make it worthwhile. You have to have focus and all that. But it’s sort of like a bingo card when I’m talking to a founder for the first time. It’s like, at what point is he gonna bring up Google Ads?

[TIM PETER]:

I wanna go back to your point about wearing different hats and especially earlier in your career, ’cause I wanna dive into this in just a second. Um, I love to tell the story about when I started my career. I actually worked for Charles Schwab during the dot-com boom. That’s a story I’ve told people for years. But one of the things I loved about the job was because it was the dot-com boom and because I was early in my career — you know, much like you were talking about, the advice you give about AI this month versus two months ago versus two months from now might change — the early days of the internet, the early days of the web, the early days of digital was a very similar thing. And what I loved about my experience at Schwab more than anything else was every three months there was a new opportunity to learn and grow, right? There was an opportunity to do something different, and it helped me a lot in my career.

It has helped me a lot in my career, that in those early days, you know, something new would come up and it’s like, "We’re gonna talk about search." And I’d go, "Oh, I wanna do that." And then, you know, they were like, "We’re gonna talk about email marketing." And I was like, "Oh, I wanna do that. Oh, we’re gonna talk about…" And I’m like, "I wanna do…" You know, just raising your hand. And I was probably the second or third worst at everything in the company, right? Like, you know, ’cause there were people who were really good at one specific thing. But because I was the second or third or fourth person at all of those things, I could backfill anybody. And it made me very employable over the course of my career ’cause I can go, "Oh, wait a second, I actually know something about this. Oh, I know something about this." Obviously, you tend to get more specialized at a middle part of your career. But for sure, it was definitely something that worked to my advantage, I think.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

My concern — I have a lot of concerns with that, but one of my big concerns is how do you get to be a good validator if you’ve never done the work yourself, right? It’s worried me for years ’cause I work with a lot of graphic designers, art directors. Some very good ones, but they only get to be good by doing the grunt work and the junior work and working their way up. So if we’re now taking out that level of experience, how do you ever get to be good? And then my fear with that is, well, then you just tend towards mediocrity because all of the validators are gonna be okay at their job, so they’re gonna validate okay stuff. So that was the theory behind it.

Um, so I think there’s a few things that you can do. One is when you’re using these AI tools, be very critical about them, right? So don’t set it up to do something and then let it do its thing in a black box and then deliver it to you. While you’re doing it, interrogate the AI, right? I’ll go back to, uh, to your potential sponsor, Anthropic. Um, you have to expand it in most cases, but it will tell you the process that it’s going through to do something, right? So you can look at that and learn from it.

You can run your own experiments. Before AI, if you can remember such a time, I always used to be a fan of — I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m gonna start anyway. I won’t be great at it. I guess this is your third and fourth best argument, right? I’m gonna learn as I do it, and it would then lead me to one of two things. Ideally, if I’m in a growth company, once I’ve done the basics and set up — let’s say it’s search — I can then hire somebody in to actually take it over and do it better. But I’ve learned more about it. I know who I need to hire. I’ve kind of set it up and kind of modeled the behavior for that person to come in. The other way that it helped me — I would come and hire somebody like you, Tim, which I have done in the past, to come and help me with SEO. But I know enough to talk to you knowledgeably about it, make sure that I’m bringing in the right person, and then have a good conversation about it, right? So how do we get people to that level?

And it’s curiosity. I hate to say this because that’s an undefinable thing, and I don’t know how you train people to do it. Um, you gotta be curious. You can’t put something into a black box, take out the answer, and go, "Okay, move on." Um, I think when I’ve managed people or mentored people, you get people to that point just by asking a lot of questions, right? Like, "Why did you do that? How did you do that? Did you think about doing this?" And you build that up. So I think a lot of it’s gonna be driven by, for as long as they exist, middle managers, to make sure that it’s not just "the machine has given me this answer," but, well, "why did you set it up that way? You know, what context, what questions did you give it?" And for certain things, I think you’re gonna be looking for people that have an interest in their own lives, right? So somebody’s an artist in their spare time? Well, they’re probably gonna be a good validator for graphic design. But the medals are gonna go to those who are curious and those who are willing to play around and dig into the details.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

The other thing I would encourage people to do all the time — and it sounds like you do the same thing — is look to frameworks that encourage critical thinking. You know, I’m a big fan of the five whys, right? You know, why did this thing happen. Why did it happen? Okay, well, why did that happen? Well, why did that happen, right? And you just keep going deeper till you find a lever you can pull, until you really understand it.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

The other thing I talk about a lot is books, right? Which is not an exciting area for a lot of people. I used to, in my interviews, when I was interviewing people, I used to always ask them, "Tell me about a good book that you’ve read?" And I gave up because the number of people where I’d get the deer in the headlights, and then they’d start telling me about a blog that they’d read or something. But I actually think books are having a little bit of a resurgence. The trick with that is a lot of these books can get outdated pretty quickly. So look for ones that are more about a framework or process. Um, a book that you and I, I think both like is by Ethan Mollick — he wrote it think three years ago now. He didn’t write about AI as it was at that moment. He wrote about the concepts behind it and how we should be thinking about it. Uh, I think there’s something in there about treating it like an alien. Still valid, right? So searching for those kinds of books that are about the frameworks and the mindsets — I think that’s another smart way to keep up with things.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

I think we’ve kind of covered this a little bit, but, you know, we’ve both watched either well-funded companies or frankly companies that wish they were better funded try to spread their bets across every channel and call it a strategy. You know, what is the conversation that actually changes a founder or a CEO or the head of marketing — what changes their mind about focus, right? What drives the moment that matters in the room?

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

Um, if it’s someone with more of a sales background, you know, "How did you get your first five customers? Was it by going and talking to everybody you’d ever met?" No. It was by identifying the specific group of people that are likely to buy and then targeting in on that. So I think you have to appeal to whatever their background is.

Now, if it’s a VP of marketing, CMO, whatever, it’s a little tougher. I think you have to understand why they feel as though they need to do everything, and it could be because of pressure from the top. It could be because they have not stopped and thought about what are they truly trying to achieve and who are their customers, right? So, you know, as marketers, we always talk about the ICP, right? The ideal customer profile. I tend to be dismissive of a lot of marketing theory because in startups you gotta move quick and you can’t spend a whole lot of time doing strategy. But the ICP makes a lot of sense ’cause it saves you an awful lot of time, both in targeting who you’re speaking to and where you’re spending your money. So I would always start out with that.

And it may be that for a head of marketing who’s all over the place, they haven’t done that or in a lot of cases I find they haven’t been allowed to do that. And sometimes coming in as a consultant from the outside, you are enabled to do that. You can say the thing that needs to be said. I think a lot of small companies used to just be so focused on the tactics, and they are now realizing you do have to have, albeit a thin layer of strategy or planning at the top, because marketing is so diverse now, right? And the other thing is, if it’s somebody that’s, funny you — you just talk about money. Like, where do you want to spend those resources? If you’re gonna give X amount of money and you want to have impact, you gotta tell me which of these three things we go spend it on. So I always bring it back to the three things. Let me do three things really well, and then we’ll worry about the other 20 things on your list.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

The one thing that I am seeing, which maybe others aren’t, is that there is a shift in expectations for marketing. And I think part of it is because of AI. I think part of it is just a general higher level awareness of what marketing is and what marketing can do. But, you know, what it’s meant for me is most of my career was running corporate teams. You know, I ran marketing at a division of Panasonic for a while. I’ve done it with smaller startup companies. But what I’ve realized is a lot of companies need marketing and marketing strategy much earlier than they can typically afford to do it.

Typically, companies would get into that — well, at some point I’m gonna be able to hire a director of marketing, VP of whatever, right? But oftentimes it was too late. Like, you need to start building that awareness much sooner than they were able to do.

Um, so this new model — a lot of people call it fractional CMO. I don’t like that phrase, um, for a couple of reasons. But this idea of being able to hire somebody on a part-time basis — so typically, when I work with companies, it’s a day a week. So what it means is I’m not there as a consultant, you know, writing a report and throwing it over the fence — I’m embedded with a company. I’m driven by their success. I know what’s going on. I know the people. And I can bring in that higher level of thinking than typically a startup — you know, a seed or even Series A startup — isn’t able to do. But I’m also not really a pure strategist, right? I can do the strategy, I can put together a plan, but I also am somebody that wants to execute on it, right?

Um, so that model, I think, is really helpful for growth companies. The way I often phrase it is, it’s for companies that know they need to do more with marketing, but don’t really know where to start. And if you hire a junior marketer, they are gonna tell you to do whatever the thing is that they know how to do, right? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So I think it’s an interesting shift. It’s somewhat self-serving ’cause it’s what I’ve chosen to do. But one of the reasons I chose to do it is I have a low boredom threshold. I like to be involved in a lot of different things. And I’ve always got excited at this early stage of growth. I think it’s great to be able to help companies at that level of growth hopefully sort of get off the launchpad quicker.

Just quickly on my thing about fractional CMO — I don’t like it for a couple of reasons. One is most companies, at least smaller growth companies, they do not need a CMO. A CMO is all about strategy, dealing with the board, dealing with investors, whatever it may be. What they need is a director, or whatever — somebody who can do the planning and roll their sleeves up.

The other thing that drives me absolutely crazy, Tim, and this is LinkedIn again — the number of people I see on there that say they’re a fractional CMO, and oftentimes it’s one of two things. One, they’ve never been a CMO, never even been a VP of marketing, right? But, you know, they did a bit of marketing. And the other thing that drives me nuts is they’re actually not a fractional CMO. They’re somebody who is looking for a job, wants some consulting between times. I have no problem with that, but part of the value of a fractional CMO is you can be there through the growth curve of somebody, and if you’re looking for a job as well, you know, you’re not gonna be able to do that. As soon as you find a job, you’re gonna move on. Again, if you want to do consulting, have at it. But I truly believe the fractional marketing approach is about becoming part of a team and being a part of their growth process — and not just dropping in saying, "Oh, here’s your ICP. Here’s a couple of things you should be doing," and then moving on.

[TIM PETER]:

And it’s funny you tell the story about people who are just doing this while they’re waiting for a job. I literally had somebody ask me in the earliest stages of starting consulting — "Well, the reason we’re not sure we want to hire you is you’re just doing this till you get a real job, right?" And I was like, "No, I actually did this on purpose. This is what I wanted to do." But it took a little bit of time to convince people that that was actually intentional and not just doing this until a better gig comes along. I’m like, "No, this is the better gig."

And it’s tough. I mean, I still — I’ve been doing this three, four years now, and I still get the question from people. It’s like, "But if they offered you a full-time job, you’d take it, right?" "No. This is what I wanna do. This is what I enjoy doing." And there’s risks. There’s risks with everything, right? But no, this is what I chose to do. Um, and the other side I’ll say is it’s a tough job market out there, so in no way am I saying anything against anyone doing what they need to do. It’s the terminology and the approach is all I’m talking about.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

Um, the other thing I would say is — you said some nice things about my newsletter. It goes out every two weeks, talking primarily about B2B marketing. There’s been a lot of AI stuff in there recently, but I typically sort of tell a story about something that I’ve been dealing with, um, and then I also include what I’ve been reading this week, so I put a link out to something that I think is interesting for people. So it’s a Substack newsletter — if you just go to Substack, search either for my name or The Marketing Mix, which is the name of the newsletter. If you subscribe for that, I would be thrilled, and you’ll get a letter from me every two weeks.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

Um, so, you know, summer cocktail, something called a Hugo Spritz, ’cause it’s very refreshing. It’s low alcohol. Um, so it’s basically prosecco, it’s elderflower liqueur — the St-Germain stuff you see in these funky bottles — a little bit of soda water, some mint if you’ve got it. Um, really nice and refreshing. My other go-to cocktail — I have a lot of go-to cocktails — since I suspect a lot of people who listen to this may be road warriors as well, my travel cocktail, which is also refreshing, nobody can screw this up and you can get it on pretty much any airline, is scotch and ginger ale.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

Um, and then allied with that is this whole idea of just pick three things. Just pick three things and do them well. It’s not to say you don’t do any of the other stuff, but block out your calendar, make sure every week you’re doing something on those three things and building momentum and moving it forward. Marketing does not have to be as complicated as people think it is. You can make it very complicated, but the basics — like putting a cocktail recipe at the end of my newsletter — the basics still work. The technology around it’s gotten more complicated, but you know, just keep it simple. At least start simple.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

This interview wraps up what I think has been a really solid stretch of episodes for the show. Uh, we started with the gatekeeper problem in episode 498. We worked through the roadmap in episodes 499 and 500, took a look at the historical view in episode 501, and validated it with Daniel Stanica’s research in episode 502. Now Steve has given us the practitioner’s view of what it all means for the people actually running marketing teams right now. Fun stuff for me, hopefully super useful for you.

I’ll be back next week with another episode. In the meantime, if you know a marketing leader who’s wrestling with what AI means for their team, send them this conversation — both parts of it. They’ll thank you for it.

You can find the show notes for today’s episode at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go deeper on building a brand that customers will ask for by name, my book, "Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech," is the roadmap you need. You’ll find it on amazon.com and bookshop.org, and the links, of course, in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening today and every week. I genuinely appreciate all of your support, and I would not do this show without you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and as always, be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post Steve Cummins: If AI Is Doing All the Work, Are You Building Skills or a House of Cards? — Part 2 of 2 (Digital Reset Episode 504) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

Marketing exists to drive revenue. That might sound obvious. But given how obsessed many of us can be with AI tools, content calendars, and channel optimization, it’s a surprisingly easy fact to lose sight of.

Steve Cummins has spent more than 20 years making sure we don’t do that. He grew a B2B tech company to $75 million in revenue before acquisition. Their own VP of Sales said Steve took an unknown technology company to the point it was recognized as the global market leader. Today Steve works as a fractional marketing leader through Solent Strategies, helping startups and teams of one punch above their weight.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Steve and Tim get into the questions marketing leaders are actually wrestling with right now: Where does the owned channel argument break down? How does a marketing team of one figure out where AI fits into their day-to-day, and not just in theory, but in reality? And if you have to start on rented land, what should you build while you’re there?

I hope you enjoy this candid conversation between two practitioners who’ve watched platform after platform change the rules on the businesses that depended on them.

Tim and Steve spend time on a question that trips up a lot of lean marketing teams: the difference between genuine focus ("do two or three things really well") and using focus as an excuse to go deep on someone else’s real estate.

Steve’s answer: pick two or three things you can have an impact on, get very good at them, be consistent. Then, once you’re at roughly the 90% level, add a fourth. You’re constantly building the stack, not going infinitely deep on one channel you don’t control.

And if you do have to post on rented land: think carefully about the assets you’re creating there and where else they can live. The content you create for Instagram or LinkedIn can become a blog post, a newsletter section, a video script. You may have to do it because you’re posting on rented land. Make sure you’re using those assets for something else.

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter and Steve Cummins discuss what AI actually means for lean marketing teams — and why the rented land argument doesn’t mean what most people think it does.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 28:23

[TIM PETER]:

My guest today has spent more than twenty years making sure that never happens. Steve Cummins has built marketing functions at companies ranging from Japanese tech giants to crowdfunded Danish startups. He grew an entrepreneurial IT business to seventy-five million dollars in revenue before it was acquired, and their own VP of sales said Steve took an unknown technology company to the point where it was recognized as the global market leader.

Today, Steve works as a fractional marketing leader through his firm Solent Strategies, helping startups and B2B companies punch above their weight. He also coaches and mentors people I think about often when I make this show: marketing teams of one.

What you’re about to hear is a candid, honest conversation about what AI actually means for marketing teams right now. There’s no hype here. There’s no fear here. It’s a practical reality of how a lean marketing function can use these tools to build something that lasts without handing ownership of your customers to yet another gatekeeper.

Today is part one of a two-part interview with Steve Cummins. I’m Tim Peter. This is the Digital Reset Podcast. Let’s dive in.

So, Steve Cummins, welcome to the show. I am so glad you’re here. You know, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve been I think friends for quite a while, have enjoyed working with one another over the years, and I’m just thrilled you’re here today.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

So you have just the best newsletter. I love your newsletter. I read it every month. It’s really great. Um, and you wrote recently that marketing exists to drive revenue and everything else is noise. Uh, as you know, I’ve been making a similar argument for owned channels for years. What I’m curious about is where would you push back on me? You know, because I think there’s a version of focus on what you own that becomes an excuse for avoiding the hard work of actually getting your content and getting your message in front of people, you know, distribution and the like. So in your view, where does the owned channel argument break down?

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

But to dig more into your question — where does the focus on owned break down? I think a lot of it depends on your domain or the industry you’re in, right? So I know you do a lot of work in hospitality and hotels. So in that world, there’s some very obvious places where people go on that first level of search, right? So could be Google Maps. That’s often how I search when I’m looking for — I go into Google Maps, and the listings are there. Maybe it’s TripAdvisor, you know, there’s a few other places. Restaurants, similar kind of thing.

So in that case, you know, the earned media is sort of a given, right? You have to do it, but it’s — of course — and then you can really focus on your owned media.

Now, a lot of what I deal with is B2B tech companies. So let’s take an example. One company I worked with, they do a fairly niche area of ed tech, educational technology, right? Something that goes into classrooms. So that first level where somebody might say, "Oh, I need this thing. Let me go find out about it," there’s not a lot of obvious places to go for that beyond good old-fashioned Google search, right? There’s not a platform like Yelp — there’s no, there’s no TripAdvisor. So you actually have to do a lot more work. Probably not even G2 or things like that — they don’t really cover that space. I mean, G2 is much more focused on software, right? So if you’re in hardware, industry websites, magazines is probably the closest you have for it. So you do have to do a fair amount of work on what little earned media there is out there.

And then the other thing is, there’s only any point in doing owned media if you can get somebody to that place. So again, in the case of hotels, somebody finds it on Google Maps or TripAdvisor. First thing I would do is go through to the website, right? So immediately you’re on it. And God bless you for that. I may be in the minority. I don’t know.

Um, but again, with a tech product, you know, how do you get somebody to your website in the first place? So something like a podcast might be, right? ‘Cause people are looking to find out more about ed tech, and maybe that’s how they find it. But I think it’s a lot tougher to get people to owned media. So yes, you should do owned media, but in certain areas, particularly where it’s a niche product, I think you have to do a lot more effort to build the blocks to get people to come to your owned media.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

So rather than trying to explain and solve the big problem, what I would then tell them to do is focus on the thing, on the part of the problem that you solve, right? So, you know, ’cause there’s other people out there frankly with much bigger budgets that are gonna talk about the bigger pie. So really focus in on that one bit, and maybe that’s how you get people to the website. Because then it’s more of that longer tail type search where somebody’s saying — so I’ll use the ed tech example again, right? So somebody knows that they need a screen share widget. So they go out there, there’s two or three big players out there. Those are the people they find. But actually they’ve got this one problem, and this one problem is that it’s very difficult to switch between Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype, right? And that’s actually the thing that this company is really good at. So you spend your time focusing on that so that when somebody starts searching, okay, I know these are the three people, but this is really the problem I have. That’s the bit that you’ve really got to get sharp on.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

That particular instance — the marketer who’s shipping code — is probably a little bit of an outlier. So they’re a cybersecurity SaaS company, Series A, right? So they’re growing fast. Two-thirds of their employees are software developers. So the whole mentality, whenever I talk to the founder, he wants to know have I done this in Claude, right? Everything they do is in Claude. So for this particular marketer, it was just expected ’cause everybody else is doing everything in Claude and it was expected.

So I don’t think that is the answer. It’s not the answer right now for most marketers, and I’m not sure it’s ever gonna be. But particularly if it’s a team of one, which is very common, right? And oftentimes I work with companies where they have a junior marketer who’s very good at the doing, and I get involved to sort of help them with the planning and the strategy and what have you. You sort of need that layer between, you know, we’re doing a lot of things, and are we doing the right things moving forward.

So if you’re a team of one, first off, you probably don’t have the time to work out how to start coding stuff and ship it and all of that, unless you’re in a software-forward company. What I encourage people to do, I think there’s probably three ways you can look at AI at the moment.

The first is pretty much every software program platform that you use is rolling out AI functionality. So the simplest way to start using AI and benefiting from AI is, you know, whether it’s HubSpot, MailChimp, whatever it is you’re using, Canva, they all have AI built in. Some is good, some is not so good. But that’s the first thing. Play around with that because it’s already in your stack, you already know how you’re using it, and it’s probably there to help with your workflows. You and I are recording this on a platform called Riverside. Every week they’re rolling out new AI things that make the editing process easier. So every marketer can do that. It’s typically included in your existing subscription. So that’s the first thing to do.

Um, second thing is, and I’m less keen on this, is there are a lot of standalone AI tools out there that will tell you, you know, "We’ve developed this AI from the ground up. This is gonna solve your problem." Not a big fan of those because, A, they’re still in their development cycle, so you may spend a lot of time effectively helping them make their product better. B, a lot of them will go away. You know, they will get bought out, disappear, whatever, and you’ve just built your stack on that. So if you’re interested, play around with it on the side, but do not build your processes on these platforms that have only been around for three months. And I apologize to any of my clients that might actually have those products right now.

Um, but I actually think the big thing — and what I’m playing around with a lot at the moment — is agentic tools, right? So I’m a big fan of Claude Cowork. And I think for a lot of people, when they think of ChatGPT or Claude, they think about the chatbots, right? You go in, you ask a question, it helps you write, and that’s all very valuable, particularly for a marketer of one.

But Claude Cowork actually helps you run tasks, right? So a real simple case, two days ago, I was working with a client, we’re building out an ABM program for them, and very simple, I was building a list of potential targets, and I realized that I hadn’t filled out the column that had their LinkedIn page on. I just put it into Cowork. And if you haven’t used Cowork, what you realize is you just speak English to it. You just say, "Hey, I have this table. I need to fill in column B with LinkedIn pages," and off it goes and does it. And as far as I could see, there were no mistakes. There was four or five that it couldn’t find, and then I went and found those myself. So start simple, right? And I think Claude Cowork is $20 a month.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

You know, the other thing I’ll say on that, a lot of people are very worried that they’re getting left behind on AI, right? I think you and I have talked about this before. And I have a couple of answers to that.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

Which kind of leads to the next question I wanted to ask you because you have talked quite a bit about do a few things really well. You know, I have talked about own the channels that you build on, and to me those kind of feel like they’re the same argument or there’s a lot of overlap there, right? Fish where the fishing’s good, double down on where your opportunities are, things like that. Um, at the same time, I have seen people who I consider fairly smart use focus as a reason to go deep on a rented platform. You know, we’re gonna be on Instagram, we’re gonna be on LinkedIn, we’re gonna be on whatever channel is working right now and the like. So how do you help your clients, how do you help people you talk to, distinguish between genuine focus and just doubling down on someone else’s real estate, building your brand on rented land, and the obvious risks that that entails?

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

But once you get to that level — and I don’t know what it is, let’s say it’s the 90% level — then you pick the fourth thing. So you’re constantly adding to the stack. So I think it’s diminishing returns to go deeper. It’s that T-shaped thing, right? Get very good at two or three things, but then broaden out.

And I think part of this came from my corporate career before I started consulting. Typically, I would join a company early on when there was maybe one or two marketers, and we would grow the company. And if you’re in that growth environment, the nice thing is if you take that approach, if you get very good at one or two things, then you get to hire somebody to take those things over and maintain and iterate. Meanwhile, you can move on to the fourth thing and the fifth thing. So yeah, I’m not a fan of going deep.

Whenever I’m talking to a new client or someone who’s asking me for help, I always do this first tier audit. You probably do the same thing, right? So I go look at their website, and one of the things I always do, I scroll down to the bottom to look at their social icons. Where are you telling your potential customers to go find out about you? And the number of people that I find that have five or six icons on there, right? They’re on LinkedIn and Twitter and Blue Sky and TikTok and all this, and then you go and click on each one of them, and the only thing they post on there was two years ago, three years ago. But you’ll find one. You don’t know what it is. It could be LinkedIn, could be YouTube, where they are very active. And so then it’s an easy conversation to say, "Look, you thought you would be able to handle four or five of these things. Let’s get rid of those other icons. Let’s get really good at the one you’re already active on. And when we think we’re ready with that, then let’s go to the second one."

I think you have to have that honest conversation. The other thing that I always laugh at is why they picked that one thing, right? Why did they decide that TikTok is gonna be the thing for them? And, you know, sometimes it’s rational. It’s very industry dependent. I worked with a company — it was actually really interesting. They had multiple businesses. One of them is hotels, and the other is a tax advisory business. Very different. Having my call with them, and they have a junior marketer who’s working on the hotel side of the business, and she’d just been brought over to the advisory side as well. And she’s telling him, "Oh, we’ve really got to do a lot on Facebook to get this." Now, they’re trying to bring in high net worth individuals to come in and do their tax advisory. You’re not gonna find those people on Facebook. But for this marketer, it was sensible for her. They’d been very successful with the hotel with Facebook, so therefore we’re gonna do that on the other one. So you also have to be very thoughtful about, once you decide you’re only gonna do two or three things, you may not find the perfect things to do, but at least make sure that they are logical.

[TIM PETER]:

I had to look it up — I apologize, but I couldn’t remember the source of the phrase — but there’s a phrase my dad used to use all the time about the guy who jumped on his horse and rode off madly in all directions. And that kinda doesn’t work out, you know? There’s a lot of that.

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

Absolutely. I realize I didn’t answer part of your question as well, which is the whole rented — deep on rented. The only thing I would say is I think for a lot of smaller companies, you have to start on rented land.

[TIM PETER]:

[STEVE CUMMINS]:

[TIM PETER]:

First, his newsletter, The Marketing Mix, goes out every two weeks on Substack, where he covers B2B marketing with the kind of honest, real-world perspective you just heard today. Pro tip for you: there’s a cocktail recommendation at the end of every issue. You won’t want to miss it, and you’ll find the link in the show notes.

Steve is also on LinkedIn, as you might imagine. Just search Steve Cummins. You’ll find the link to his profile in the show notes, too.

And if you want to work with Steve directly, check out Solent Strategies. All the details for how you can get in touch with him are in the show notes for today’s episode.

Now, Steve and I only covered the first half of our conversation today. Next week, Steve and I get into something that I think is one of the most important questions in marketing right now: What happens to the people building marketing skills when AI is doing more and more of the actual work? Steve calls it the validator problem, and it’s something every marketing leader needs to think about very carefully. That’s part two coming at you next week.

In the meantime, if you know somebody who’s running a marketing team right now and trying to figure out where AI actually fits in their day-to-day, do me a favor, send them a link to this episode. I think it might save them a lot of time and a whole lot of second-guessing.

You can find the show notes for today’s episode, including all of Steve’s contact info, at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go even deeper on building a brand that customers will ask for by name, my book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, might be just what you’re looking for. You’ll find it on amazon.com and bookshop.org. Links in the show notes to those too, of course.

Thank you so much for listening today. I genuinely appreciate all of your support. I would not do this show without you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and as always, be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post Steve Cummins: You Have to Start on Rented Land. Here’s What to Build While You’re There. — Part 1 of 2 (Digital Reset Episode 503) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

Google killed 79 out of 100 blogs. The median site lost 85% of its search traffic between 2022 and 2026. Not the worst blog in the study. The middle. Half did worse than that.

But this isn’t really a blogging story. It’s a story about what happens to any business that builds its customer acquisition strategy on borrowed brand equity, renting visibility from a platform — a gatekeeper — that eventually shuts the gate. Daniel Stanica’s research on 100 once-successful blogs was written as a warning and a way forward for bloggers. It also produced 100 real-world data points confirming the argument Tim Peter has been making for years.

In Episode 502 of Digital Reset, Tim breaks down what the data actually says, who’s really responsible (spoiler: it’s not ChatGPT), and what every business in his audience can do about it right now… regardless of where they’re starting from.

Pull your traffic composition by source for the last 12 months. Look at the share each source provides — not the totals. Then ask two questions:

That’s what tells you whether you’re building a relationship that only you can own.

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter break down why Google — not AI — killed 79 out of 100 blogs, and what every business depending on organic search needs to do about it right now.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 21:04

Google killed seventy-nine out of one hundred blogs. The median blog site reviewed in recent research lost eighty-five percent of its search traffic. Not the worst blog in the list. The middle. Half actually did worse than that. And all of that in less than four years.

Daniel Stanica researched one hundred top blogs and found that between 2022 and 2026, they got slaughtered. Again, the median dropped by 85%. Sixty-five of the one hundred saw their overall traffic drop by fifty percent or more. Another fourteen dropped by an average of 36%. Only twenty-one grew.

That’s… bad.

You know, it’s also a problem for folks beyond blogs. Any business that’s dependent on organic search for its revenue is headed for the same fall. Large publishers have warned us about this issue for years. And it’s coming for every single business that depends on search.

I’d also argue that AI won’t save us because AI is just another iteration of the same issue. It’s a gatekeeper deciding who wins… and who loses.

This is the Digital Reset Podcast. I’m Tim Peter. Today we’re talking about how Google didn’t kill blogging, but how they’re killing the businesses whose model was built on borrowed brand equity. Let’s dive in.

Daniel Stanica put together some fascinating research that looks at what’s happened to one hundred top blogs between 2022 and 2026. And as noted before the break, most of them, seventy-nine of the one hundred, got crushed. The median blog in Daniel’s study lost eighty-five percent of its search traffic. And again, sixty-five of those hundred saw overall traffic fall by fifty percent or more. And that is all kinds of bad.

Now, as Daniel noted in his post, "this is a cohort study, not a representative sample." This is a quote. He said, "I am not claiming that two-thirds of all blogs on the internet lost their traffic. I am claiming something narrower and harder to wriggle out of: Of the specific blogs publicly celebrated as the model’s biggest winners, two-thirds lost the majority of their traffic."

Again, in my view, this story isn’t really about blogs or blogging. Give me a minute and I’ll get to what it’s really about.

One of my favorite bits in Daniel’s article, though, is where he noted four traits among the twenty-one survivors. He didn’t just say, "These folks survived." He called out what they’re doing well. They are, one, first-hand experience; two, owned audiences; three, a real product; and four, brand search. That’s genuinely useful information, and if you’ve listened to past episodes, it maps directly with advice I’ve offered in the past. Again, I’ll come back to that connection in just a few minutes.

What’s worth noting here, though, is that this story isn’t a "ChatGPT stole our traffic" story. ChatGPT didn’t steal their traffic. Google did. Google gave these folks life and then snatched it away. Let me say this again. AI didn’t kill these blogs’ traffic. Google did.

AI Overviews now appear on roughly 48% of all searches on Google. Ahrefs published data in February that showed when AI Overviews appear on the search results page, click-throughs drop by roughly 58%. Worse, Google’s AI Overviews only cites the top pages in search about 38% of the time. That’s down half from 76% last year. In short, if your business depends on search engines, you’re in deep, deep trouble.

And switching or planning on switching from dependence on Google to dependence on AI probably won’t help you. Why not?

Well, first, none are stable platforms for brand growth right now. No single AI holds more than fifty percent of the market. Second, the rules of the road for each AI platform change almost daily. You know, for instance, Reddit’s citation share in ChatGPT fell from roughly sixty percent to roughly ten percent in just six weeks. So if you were depending on Reddit volume for helping you show up there, that’s just gone. Third, and most importantly, choosing this path means you’re just switching from one gatekeeper to another. You don’t get access to more customers. You’re still letting someone else decide who hears about you and who doesn’t.

AI isn’t the cavalry riding to your rescue. It’s just another gatekeeper seeking its chance to own your customers.

Yes, you want to show up in AI and you want to show up in search. They’re important signals to your customers that you’re a real, honest-to-goodness, trustworthy, reliable business. They also come with huge hurdles and more than a few strings attached.

I also want to be fair to the bloggers and other businesses who’ve built their businesses using these channels. As I talked about last week, these businesses were built by people who followed a highly functional playbook: Create high-quality content. Use search and social shares as low-cost distribution to drive awareness and traffic. Monetize that traffic. And double down on the kinds of content and distribution channels that worked best.

They didn’t do this because they were dumb. They did it because it worked. Right up until it didn’t.

In last week’s episode, I explicitly outlined the platform trap and how smart people fall into it all the time. As I mentioned last week, we’ve seen it when Google updates their algorithm, social media sites collapse reach among your fans and followers, OTAs favor paid placements, and most recently with Google AI Overviews. It’s the same storyline every time. New platforms, generous early and expensive later.

Of course, it’s even worse if you’re caught in this trap. Because you’re not just competing with the platforms. You’re competing with the folks who didn’t get caught. Those 21 blogs that Daniel cited built something sustainable beyond big tech and have an advantage that new entrants — or old competitors rebuilding their business — have to overcome.

They’ve earned citations. They’ve earned their audience. They’ve earned the right to show up in their customers’ inboxes. And they’ve set the bar for what customers expect today.

The core element that ties those 21 survivors together is that they built distinct, memorable, desirable brands. Brand is the one thing that helps you grow beyond Google and the rest of its Big Tech brethren. In the age of AI, brand isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Remember, your brand is the prompt. It’s something that bypasses the algorithm, and teaches AI assistants and agents which products, services, and experiences their users prefer without even asking. Your brand is the prompt means you’ve beat Google at its own game by building brands customers ask for by name.

You build that kind of brand by focusing on three pillars: Content is still king. All that’s changed is the kinds of content, and where it appears. Customer experience is queen. The relationship you earn with your customers is what makes you worth asking for by name. Data is the crown jewels. Your CRM, your email list, your first-hand knowledge about your customers’ cares, concerns, and interests is what lets you connect directly with customers — and without asking Big Tech for permission.

I wrote that in Digital Reset. And it’s exactly what Stanica’s survivors all demonstrate.

"Firsthand experience that can’t be AI-summarized" is "Content is King," simply stated using different words. The content that survived came from its creators’ own first-hand, lived experiences. Only they could create that content because they’re the ones who did the thing they blog about: they cooked the recipe, they designed the outfit, they traveled to the destination, they ran the business. Only real people can share real experiences.

Similarly, the way survivors shared their lived experiences represents "the customer experience" for a content business. They didn’t just answer a question; they shared their real-world experiences with audiences who wanted to know not just how… but the who who knows how. Anyone, including and especially an AI, can produce a "top 10 list." But a real human being, sharing a real human experience is distinctly different… and distinctly valuable.

"An owned audience" is "Data is the Crown Jewels." Period. The email list, the CRM, and, most importantly, the subscriber base who can’t wait for your latest post. The 21 survivors built direct connections with customers who valued their experience and expertise. And that connection continues to exist even after any algorithm changes.

"A brand name people search for by name" is "your brand is the prompt" and "beat Google at its own game by building a brand customers ask for by name" almost word for word.

By contrast, think about the 79 blogs who lost vast amounts of traffic. I recommended a simple, three-question test in episode 498 that tells you whether you’re in trouble or not. Think about these questions in connection with those bloggers: What percentage of their acquisition ran through channels they didn’t control? Was their direct traffic growing or shrinking? What was their 90-day alternative when Google changed the rules? Seems pretty likely what those folks would answer. And that’s the whole point right there.

One quick aside. In the data that Daniel showed, he found that of the 21 winners, 3 grew by an astonishing amount. So much so, in fact, that they skewed the data for everyone else. When you look at all 100, it looks like traffic "only" fell by 32%. What really happened though is that three grew a lot and the other 97 fell by more than 63%. The point being, don’t let a few winners distract you from the problem areas. I see this all the time. As I talked about in episode 497, one business had seen decent amounts of traffic and revenue year on year. In reality, their organic traffic had fallen roughly 20% and their paid traffic grew by 85%. So, yes, their overall numbers were OK. But their costs were up big time. The "composition effect," much like in Daniel’s study, was hiding the real story: Their profitability was about to get much worse.

Of course, the question, as always, should be, what can you do about this reality? And as I did in episode 500, I’d break it down by where you sit as a company.

If you’re in the first group we talked about, companies in real trouble today, bleeding revenue or profits, your first job is not "fix your SEO." It is to grow your CRM and direct traffic as much as you can. Look for specific opportunities to gain more direct traffic. Look at your analytics and determine the highest cost gatekeeper channel. Does it fail the owned demand test? If so, redirect at least some portion of your budget towards growing your email list or your first-party data about your customers. Also, encourage all site visitors and other contact points with prospects to opt into your email or SMS communications. Give them some incentive, say, a special benefit or a one-time discount in exchange for their contact information.

For companies whose business isn’t shrinking but isn’t growing much either, your approach is actually gonna be pretty similar. The one big difference is that you’re in a position to start thinking about content that no one but you can make. What experience and expertise do you and your team have that sets you apart from everyone else? What can you talk about that your customers want to hear about? Don’t think quantity. Focus heavily on quality. A single photo essay or video or podcast or written piece that encourages engagement, sharing, and most importantly, new subscribers, is more valuable, much more valuable, than ten or twenty or one hundred automated, mediocre, meh content pieces that no one cares about.

If your company is growing and optimizing, if you’re in the third category, keep that Reddit citation collapse story in mind. Even strong citations represent rented demand that might not last for long. Your job is a continued focus on building brand equity, growing branded search, gaining more information and insights about your customers, and accumulating positive ratings, reviews, and, yes, additional citations across an array of channels. Those will put you in front of more customers and likely will turn up in the next AI model updates. The best way to offset the risk that any one channel can hurt you is to appear in as many places as you can where your customers spend their time.

Daniel mentioned in his post that the problem was, quote, "A model that was a single, large, leveraged bet that Google would be the middleman, sending free clicks indefinitely to publishers in exchange for content. However, since 2023, Google has called the bet, and websites that leveraged this model became a liability rather than an asset."

Don’t be that guy.

Your job is to be a trusted resource customers will turn to whenever you’re the right fit for their needs. Your job is to be a brand that customers want to hear from. Your job is to build a brand that customers will ask for by name.

The last few episodes we’ve done here have walked you through precisely how you can do that. Episode 498 showed you the real-world cost when you don’t own your customers. Episode 499 helped you identify whether you really own your customers… or not. Episode 500 gave you the full roadmap of what to do about it. And Episode 501 laid out the historical pattern in detail. Today’s episode, well, that’s all about what it looks like when folks get it wrong. Daniel Stanica gave us 100 real-world examples without even knowing that they underlined the argument I’ve been making for years.

Don’t borrow brand equity. Build your own.

In fact, here’s what I want you to do right now. Pull your traffic composition by source for the last 12 months and look at how much share each provides. Then ask these two questions. One, what percentage comes from direct traffic, email and SMS, and branded search? And the second question is, is that number growing or shrinking? That will tell you whether you’re building a relationship that only you can own.

Again, don’t borrow brand equity. Build your own.

Next week, I’m going to talk with a brilliant marketer, Steve Cummins, all about what this means for the folks running marketing teams right now.

In the meantime, if you know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today, do me a favor. Send them a link to this episode. I hope they will appreciate it, and I know that I would.

You can find the show notes for today’s episode, as well as a full archive of our past episodes, at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go even deeper on building a brand that customers will ask for by name, my book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, might be just what you’re looking for. You’ll find it on amazon.com and bookshop.org, and of course, you’ll find the link in the show notes.

Thanks so much for listening today. I genuinely appreciate all of your support. I would not do this show without you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and as always, be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post Google Didn’t Kill Blogging. It Killed Borrowed Brand Equity. (Digital Reset Episode 502) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

The brands winning in AI right now didn’t pivot when AI arrived. They didn’t need to. Everything they’d built over years — direct customer relationships, earned reviews, credible content, clear brand signals — prepared them for this moment without even knowing it. The strength of their brand drives their success in AI.

That’s not luck. It’s a 15-year pattern that plays out the same way every time a new platform rises to dominance: they’re generous early and expensive later. It was true for Google, for social media, for OTAs. And it it will be true for AI.

In this Digital Reset Foundations episode, Tim Peter draws on 15-plus years of watching platform shifts to explain why intelligent, experienced marketing leaders fall into the gatekeeper trap again and again. Tim also explains why the businesses that navigate every shift without getting captured all have one thing in common: they never fully gave up the direct relationship with the customer.

New research from Daniel Stanica, tracking 100 once-successful blogs over four years, confirms this thesis. The median site in the study lost 85% of its traffic. That’s not the lower bound. That’s the middle of the distribution. Half did worse. These were sites that built their entire strategy around a gatekeeper… and then paid for it when the gatekeeper changed the rules.

The episode that predicted this outcome is the one you’re about to enjoy.

Test 1: Would this investment matter if AI changed tomorrow? Expert-authored content, review velocity programs, first-party data infrastructure, and earned media from credible sources improve your business regardless of which AI model is winning six months from now. If the investment only works because of how a specific platform runs right now, that’s a warning sign your investment might not last.

Test 2: Does this investment compound its value over time, or does it require changes every few months? Shortcuts work. Foundations compound. A review earned today is in the training data for the next round of model updates. Content cited once tends to get cited again. First-party data gets more valuable the more of it you collect. If the value shifts every time the platform updates, it’s a shortcut. If it compounds regardless of platform updates, you’re building a foundation. One of those has a better future.

Every platform shift follows the same arc:

It happened with Google search. With organic social reach. With OTA commissions. And it’s happening now with AI. The window where the new gatekeeper hasn’t yet started collecting the highest tolls it can is real… and not unlimited. The businesses using that window to build direct relationships rather than deepen platform dependency are the ones giving themselves options when the window closes.

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter break down the complete roadmap for owning your customer relationships, and see why nearly 14 years and 500 episodes of observing Big Tech platform shifts all lead to the same conclusion.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

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Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 26:31

Over the last few weeks, I’ve laid out the roadmap for owning your customer in the age of AI.

One thing that I want to make clear that runs through the entire roadmap: AI rewards great brands.

The brands and businesses winning in AI didn’t pivot when AI came along. They didn’t need to. Everything they’ve done throughout their histories prepared them for this moment.

For all the talk of GEO and social media citations and AI agents and on and on and on, what’s really happening is that AI search, AI assistants, agents, and enterprises ultimately want to point their users to the brands that best meet their needs.

Google increasingly is modifying its search algorithms to do the same. So are social sites like Meta, Instagram, and TikTok, and AI spam filters do it in email, too.

I mean, imagine that you’re a consumer. All your AI tools are trying to show you things you might actually want to keep you in their ecosystem and to eliminate everything you don’t want to see.

That’s a problem for brands that aren’t built from the ground up for this world. That’s what the roadmap I laid out in episodes 498, 499, and 500 is all about.

The point of these episodes was to help you as you go forward. The point of this episode is to show you how we got to this moment. Because I’ve been making this argument for a long time. In many ways, it’s one of the core reasons this show exists in the first place.

And in the Foundations episode we’re gonna look at today, I draw on the 15-plus years of experience and evidence that explain why I believe what I do and why the roadmap works.

In this Foundations episode, I laid out why intelligent, experienced marketing leaders fall into the gatekeeper trap again and again: Because it works… right up until it doesn’t.

They’re not dumb. They’re not foolish. They may even be aware of the problem while they’re stepping into the trap. They also need to put heads in beds, butts in seats, feet in stores, products on shelves, eyes on their product, clicks to their carts, and continued usage after the sale.

There’s nothing wrong with doing what you’ve gotta do to make sure your business succeeds day in and day out, month after month. That’s okay.

And when gatekeepers make it so easy, so enticing to simply use the tools they give you, it’s no wonder folks get trapped. Hell, it’s amazing anyone ever gets out.

But we continue to see the effects of the trap time and again.

Rand Fishkin pointed folks to new research from Daniel Stanica that shows the collapse of traffic blog sites have seen over the last four years. Daniel reviewed 100 sites over this period and found that the median site had lost 85% of their traffic. That’s not the lower bound. That’s the median. Half did worse than that.

Daniel’s research reflects exactly what today’s Foundations episode predicted. These sites depended on gatekeepers, and now, today, they’re scrambling to rebuild their businesses.

I’ll have a full review of Daniel’s research and what you can do about it in next week’s show.

In the meantime, though, I hope you’ll take a moment to enjoy today’s Foundations episode that looks at how AI winners didn’t pivot, they prepared.

I’m Tim Peter. This is episode 501 of Digital Reset. Let’s dive in.

A couple of weeks ago, you heard me talk about City of Hope and the fact that they show up in 97% of AI queries for their specific category. Well, City of Hope did not have a GEO strategy. They didn’t hire an AI optimization consultant.

They showed up in 97% of AI queries for their category because of decisions they made 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago or more. That should tell us something about what AI actually rewards.

AI inclusion is an inheritance. It’s not an acquisition.

City of Hope inherited their position from years of peer reviewed research, independent media, and an earned reputation with their patients. The AI was trained on all of that.

Most GEO strategy, quote unquote, is sold as something you can acquire this quarter. But if AI inclusion is primarily inherited from prior fundamentals, that changes and should change your budget discussion, your budget conversation.

AIs see a weak signal, a contradictory signal, or no signal, and it loses confidence in your brand. When an AI sees a strong signal, a clear signal, a coherent signal, that’s when you win.

The brands who are showing up today, the brands who are showing up consistently today are showing up because they’ve built brands worth people asking for by name. This is what I mean when I say the brand is the prompt. But also brands that are worth answering by name, that the AI can confidently say "As a concierge, I know the answer to your question. I know who you should be talking to."

Winning in the long run isn’t just about what you do this quarter. It’s what you do for a long time.

If you go to your AI of choice, it doesn’t matter if it’s Google Gemini, it doesn’t matter if it’s ChatGPT, it doesn’t matter if it’s Perplexity, it doesn’t matter if it’s Claude, but go to the AI you like the most and ask it to describe your brand.

Everything it gets right is a sign that you have a strong signal. Everything that it gets wrong or hedges on or isn’t quite clear on, that’s where you have a gap. And that’s your roadmap. You don’t need a vendor to do an audit. The AI itself is going to tell you this is what it knows to be true about you. That’s really, really key.

Now the most common gap is when you say one thing about your brand and your customers are saying something else about your brand. It sees a difference between your statements and your customers’ reviews. That’s a huge contradiction, and that means the AI will lose confidence in you. It cannot confidently recommend you to a potential customer.

Note that this isn’t just about the discussions that are happening on platforms that the AI trusts. It’s not because they’re bad, but because you have never done the work to build review velocity for your business, it’s that you haven’t worked to gain the earned media presence that gives the AI some corroborating evidence beyond just what you say on your site or beyond just what it sees in reviews.

Neither of those gaps is going to get solved by a GEO vendor immediately. Both are solved by doing the same things that improve your direct business. Giving a better customer experience, gaining better reviews, and building clearer signal.

I’ve worked with businesses to reduce their dependency on big tech companies over the last 15 years. That’s through Google updates, through the emergence of OTAs, through social reach and now AI. And what’s interesting is how this era looks similar to what I’ve seen before.

In the book Digital Reset, I talk about a pattern that happens: a new discovery channel emerges. Something comes around, then we go, "oh, this is cool, we should check this out." We get good results from it early. We test it and we see that this is really working, and usually at a pretty low cost.

Over time, the platforms with legs grow more dominant. They build a bigger base of customers and often send more customers your way, usually at a pretty low cost.

That’s super attractive. So you double down on that. You dive in even further until suddenly that becomes a major source of your business.

But at that point, that puts them in a position of gatekeeping power. And as you’ve heard me say many times before, gatekeepers gonna gate.

They have to. They are required to because they owe it to their shareholders to monetize the traffic and the connection that they have with customers to grow their revenues and grow their profits and grow their shareholder value. And so what happens is the gatekeeper then raises the toll to you.

And this is a vicious cycle that occurs again and again and again. We’ve seen this repeatedly with search, with social, with mobile, with OTAs. It happens consistently.

Every time there’s a new platform shift, there’s a window. It could be two years, it could be three years, it could be five years, where the new gatekeepers are still building their position and they haven’t yet started collecting the highest tolls they can.

That’s huge because people look at that and marketing leaders look at that and say, this is a great opportunity for our business. And that’s good. That actually is a good idea.

We saw this — I’ll give you a real world example — with independent hotels and hotel brands even. They had an opportunity, they had two opportunities, to build direct booking capabilities and direct booking connection with customers before OTAs became kind of non-negotiable. First before September of 2001. Then in the later aughts.

The ones that took advantage of those windows built direct websites. They built email lists. They built loyalty programs, either recognition programs or reward programs to connect directly with customers and gain data. And they built direct revenue.

The ones that didn’t, well, they found themselves in a tougher spot when the OTAs started raising commission rates and changing the rules of the game.

Now, if the fundamentals are this clear and the pattern is this consistent, why are 82% of companies still stuck in the value gap? Why don’t they just do the thing?

Every new gatekeeper’s entry into the market included a period and includes a period where taking the shortcut looks like the smart play. In Google’s case, it was things like trading links, link building programs even before you had to pay for them. In social media’s case, it was building organic reach and building your follower count. In OTAs, it was things like low cost early commissions, and with AI it’s things like GEO vendors and AI content farms, and churning out high volumes of low quality, low cost content so that you show up.

But those all stop working at a certain point. They realize, "Hey, people are spamming this." So Google shuts that down. The social media channels say "we need to actually earn money off of these folks, so we’re gonna pull back the algorithm and change what your organic reach is." The OTAs are saying, "we’re contributing a lot of business to your hotel, so we need to raise commission rates."

What makes you think that the AIs are gonna do anything different?

We don’t know exactly when that will occur, but I’m really confident it’s coming because we’ve seen this happen again and again and again.

Now, I wanna be very fair to people who have gone down this path before and chosen that path. It’s not a scam. It’s a trap.

It’s not a scam because it works… at least temporarily. That’s what makes it so dangerous. A scam would be easier to resist. You’re savvy enough, the people who’ve done this are savvy enough to know that if you’re not getting value out of this thing, you would never put your efforts there. You would never put your money there.

So the people who have taken these approaches, the people who have worked with these channels are not fools. They’re not getting themselves scammed.

What they are doing is they’re saying, "Hey, this is producing results for me. I should double down on this. I should triple down on this."

That’s what makes it dangerous — the fact that it actually does work.

The challenge is that you end up owning visibility, but not the relationship with the customer.

The shortcut is always attractive exactly at the moment when you need it the most, because they’re helping you reach customers you haven’t reached before… and usually at a relatively low cost. That’s fantastic.

But all that you see at that point is the upside. By the time the cost becomes visible, too many people find themselves in a position where they’ve built far too much of their strategy depending upon that thing. That’s not a great place to be.

Marketing leaders need to think in terms of when is this a genuine investment in our foundations, and when is this a shortcut that’s dressed up as a strategy?

I would think there’s a couple of ways you would test this.

The first is to ask whether this investment would matter if AI changed tomorrow. If we look at things like expert authored content or review velocity programs or first party data infrastructure or earned media from credible sources, those are going to improve your business regardless of which AI model is dominant six months from now, 12 months from now, 18 months from now.

If the investment only works because of how ChatGPT works in Q2 of 2026, that’s probably a warning sign.

The other test you may want to consider is, does this investment compound its value over time or does it require a reset every couple of months?

Shortcuts work, foundations compound. A review earned today is in the training data for the next model update. Content that gets cited once tends to get cited again. First party data gets more valuable as you collect more of it from your customers, as you earn more of it from your customers.

If an investment value has to be reinvested every time the platform updates, that’s a shortcut. If it compounds regardless of the platform updates, then you’re building a foundation for success long term.

When you walk into your monthly review or your quarterly review and you’re making the case for the budget that you need going forward, and for the budget you’ve already spent, you should not be thinking in terms of "We shouldn’t invest in AI." That is not a thing I’m saying here.

You should be saying we should invest in AI the way businesses survive every platform shift invest. We should be investing in the things that improve our business and compound across every platform, not only in things that work for this particular algorithm or this particular artificial intelligence.

One of those has a long-term opportunity for you. One of those means you’re gonna keep throwing money after money after money every time the algorithm changes.

So when we think about budget categories, are we talking about expert authored content that earns citations? A hundred percent. Are we talking about review velocity programs? A hundred percent. Are we talking about a first-party data infrastructure? A hundred percent. If we’re talking about people selling you, "You’re gonna appear in the AI and you’re gonna appear top every single time…" you might want to take a really close look at that. You might wanna start small and test, because maybe they do know something. But you want to make sure you own the result, not just the visibility before you double down there, before you try to scale this up.

The businesses that I have watched navigate every platform shift without getting captured have all had one thing in common. And it’s not that they saw the future first. It’s not that they were smarter than everybody else. It’s just that they never fully gave up the direct relationship with the customer.

They built a long lasting brand platform, a long lasting customer relationship that survived and thrived every time the platforms shifted. They didn’t chase any short term wins at the expense of the long term opportunity.

I have had this exact conversation through the Google updates, and through the collapse of reach on social media, on Facebook and places like that, and on with hotels and OTA commissions, and now with AI.

Some of this isn’t that I’m predicting the future. I’ve seen this and seen folks get burned by it plenty in the past, including me from time to time.

This is hard won experience that you’ve eventually learned, "Hey, maybe we shouldn’t chase the ‘ooh, shiny object,’ but we should build something of lasting value."

The folks I’ve worked with who’ve acted on these conversations and learned from them and applied them, and the folks who aren’t even clients who figured it out on their own, they’re the ones who are doing great and they’re the ones who have options to continue to improve over the long run.

This is not some sophisticated or brand new AI strategy. It’s a 15 year pattern that keeps working no matter who the gatekeeper is next. And ultimately, that’s the place where you want to be.

Thanks so much for listening to today’s Foundations episode. We’ll be back with an all-new episode that dives into Daniel Stanica’s research next week.

In the meantime, if you know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today, do me a favor, send them a link to the episode. I know they’d appreciate it, and I sure would.

You can find the show notes for today’s episode, as well as an archive of all our past episodes, at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go even deeper on building a brand that survives and thrives in the age of AI, my book, "Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech," might be just what you’re looking for. You’ll find it on amazon.com and bookshop.org. Links in the show notes, of course.

Thanks so much for listening today. I genuinely appreciate all your support. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and as always, be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post The AI Winners Didn’t Pivot. They Prepared — Digital Reset Foundations (Episode 501) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

Today marks our 500th episode. But all 500 episodes share one single thesis: the demand you own is more valuable than the demand you rent.

That’s what “Gatekeepers gonna gate” is all about. Any platform that send you customers will eventually charge you more for that revenue.

Episode 498 outlined exactly what that costs you. Episode 499 posed the real question you need to ask. This episode gives you the roadmap.

Most businesses fall into one of three categories when it comes to owning their customer relationships:

The playbook is different for each. But the fundamental law of digital remains the same for all three: Every platform that sends you customers eventually charges you more for them. That’s not a prediction. That’s what 25-plus years of digital history teach us. And it’s playing out again right now.

In Episode 500 of the Digital Reset Podcast, Tim Peter delivers the complete strategic framework for breaking out of platform capture, a complete roadmap for owning your customer, regardless of where your business is starting from today.

Category 1 — Triage: Stop the Bleeding

Category 2 — Build: Grow Direct Relationships

Category 3 — Optimize: Build What Platforms Can’t Own

Pull traffic data from your analytics platform and Google Search Console for each of the last 12 months. Then measure whether branded search and direct navigation traffic is growing or shrinking as a share of paid and total traffic and revenue.

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter break down the complete roadmap for owning your customer relationships, and see why nearly 14 years and 500 episodes of observing Big Tech platform shifts all lead to the same conclusion.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 19:04

Hi, and welcome to episode 500 of the podcast. Roughly every 10 days for the last 13 years and, oh, nine months or so, I’ve tried to bring you the best insights and information that I could about digital strategy and commerce.

During that time, I’ve refined the focus of the show around a core thesis. And that is the demand you own is more valuable than the demand you rent.

That led to my book, and it led us to change the title of the show from Thinks Out Loud to Digital Reset. And that led to this miniseries, the show within the show that led to today’s episode.

Why are we here today?

Well, in episode 498, I recapped the problem in detail. Gatekeepers closing the gates and driving up your costs to reach your customers. We’re seeing it on the P&L, and it’s increasing every single month and quarter right now.

In episode 499, I outlined the core question: Who owns your customer relationship, you or Big Tech gatekeepers?

Today, I want to lay out the roadmap you can use to drive more direct revenue and deeper customer relationships that hopefully will sustain you for the next 14 years and, oh, I don’t know, 500 more episodes.

You know, in my experience, companies usually fall into one of three categories as they come to this question. I’m going to talk about each of these in more detail after the break. I also want you to think about which category you belong to before we begin.

The first category are people who are, you know, we’re in big trouble right now, today. They’re looking to identify the problem, to triage the problem. These conversations happen all the time. People usually don’t call a doctor when they’re healthy, and they don’t ask consultants for help when business is booming. So as you might imagine, I talk with these folks every day.

The second are folks who are growing just slowly or not as much as they might like. They’re looking to build, to drive more revenue. Their business is okay, you know, not terrible, but not great. Again, these are also people I talk with regularly and usually for similar reasons. They recognize they’ve got a problem, and they’re looking for a way out.

The final category includes companies that are seeing strong growth. They’re looking to optimize, to reach new heights. And I’m happy to say I talk with these folks very often, too. Maybe not as much as the first two, but you’d be surprised how many of these people reach out to me. They tend to recognize two basic points. The first is that no matter how good things are, they might have blind spots they don’t want to surprise them later. And the second is that you can always use help to do better. I am always happy to have those conversations and freely acknowledge that I learn as much as I share during those conversations. It’s a win all the way around.

Regardless of which category you fall into, this episode is for you.

I’m Tim Peter. This is episode 500 of Digital Reset. Today, we’re uncovering the complete roadmap for owning your customer. Let’s dive in.

I’ve already listed the three categories companies tend to fall into around owning their customer. Before we get into how you address each situation, here’s how to know which one your business fits into.

Run the simple diagnostic test I shared in our last episode. Pull traffic data from your analytics platform and Google Search Console for each of the last 12 months. Then measure whether branded search and direct navigation traffic is growing or shrinking as a share of paid and total traffic and revenue. That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

Reviewing that small data set will tell you if gatekeepers are making you pay for a greater share of your customers’ attention, if you’re holding steady, or if you’re gaining a greater share of your customers’ attention over time.

Let’s start with the folks in the first category, the people who are already likely losing share to paid channels. There is a relatively simple playbook to follow. And in order, start by running the Gatekeeper Test I outlined in episode 495 for every active channel that drives traffic and revenue to your business. First, ask, "Are we using this platform to build our business or are we building our business inside this platform?" Then ask, "Who owns the data from our interaction with the customer?"

Any channel that fails both questions must become a lower priority for your business. There’s a saying I like, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Your goal is to get out of the hole. Depending on the share of revenue your business gets from these channels, it might be a little easier or a little harder to get out of that hole, but your goal over time is to deprioritize these channels from highest cost to lowest and shift the budget towards channels you have more control over, like your website, your CRM.

I am not suggesting that you quit these channels cold turkey. Rule number one always is "stay in business." During the pandemic, lots of companies I worked with had to hedge "best practices" a bit to ensure they kept the lights on. That is okay.

At the same time, if you’re already in a hole, you want to move away from the most expensive of these channels that fail both tests as soon as possible. Over time, its share of your business, your traffic, and revenue should fall as the share of business from direct channels grows. The point isn’t that its actual traffic and revenue decline. It’s that its importance does. That’s what moving beyond Big Tech looks like. It looks like you become less dependent on gatekeeper channels over time… because you do.

Here’s how you can do that. First, figure out the actual cost of your top paid channel. I don’t mean your return on ad spend or your cost per click or your cost per acquisition. I mean the actual honest dollars and cents amount you pay every month, quarter, and year because that’s money coming straight out of your pocket and going straight into the gatekeeper’s pocket every single day. That’s your target number to save over time.

Then make a note about your single highest value customer segment. Job one is to build a direct path to those customers, and usually the simplest way to do that is through email marketing. If you don’t have their email addresses, start asking for them today. Add an email form on your website. Get your sales and customer service teams to start asking for permission to email them. Create incentives around getting people to sign up to hear from you. That’s how you grow your list over time.

You can also apply our "Core and Explore" methodology. Focus eighty percent-ish of your efforts on what’s working most effectively for your business. The money those channels throw off should help you fund efforts to drive more direct business. And use the remaining twenty percent of your budget and efforts experimenting with ways to grow your direct business, your CRM, and your email list. Ultimately, that is your job right now. That is the whole job right now.

Set a ninety-day target for your efforts. At the end of ninety days, your direct traffic and email traffic should be measurably higher than they are today. That’s your goal. If you see those results, double down on them. And if not, and assuming seasonality isn’t the cause, go back to square one, pick another expensive channel, and try again. I know you can get there. We help companies do this every day. Today, it’s time for you to start.

Category two consists of those folks whose direct business isn’t growing. You’re sitting still. The playbook actually isn’t that much different from group one. It does require a slightly different focus, though.

In this case, you want to start with the Owned Demand Test that I outlined in episode 495. Look at every current marketing investment you’re making and ask three questions: One, does it create a direct relationship with your customer? Two, does it make your brand easier to ask for by name? And three, does it work after you turn off the investment? Any channel that fails all three is one that you need to deprioritize. Just as with category one, that doesn’t mean quit them cold turkey. Not at all. It just means that the channel’s share of your business should decline over time. In ninety days, growth in direct and email traffic and revenue should make the problem channel’s volume smaller as a share of your total. That’s always what you’re trying to do.

Second, search for your business in ChatGPT, in Gemini, in Claude, and Perplexity. What does the AI know about your business? What does it get wrong? And what’s missing? That’s your content roadmap for the next quarter. And your content plan must include not only creation but content distribution. Work on developing branded content that drives engagement on social media. You want customers to like, comment, and share. Use channels where your customers are active, like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok if you’re in B2C, and LinkedIn and YouTube if you’re in B2B. Those engagements, particularly the comments and shares, are a clear signal that validates your content to AI platforms and shows that you’re a brand worth recommending.

Third, continue building your list. The truth of any CRM is that if it’s not growing, it’s shrinking. Folks opt out, they move on, they no longer need your products and services. That’s okay. You don’t want to bother people who aren’t in the market any longer. You want instead to continually build a healthy list of people who want to hear from you, who look forward to hearing from you, and ultimately, who will buy from you.

Next and last, use your content to learn more about your customers and encourage them to share more about themselves with you. Then use what you learn about your customers in turn to create ever more personalized content and improve your segmentation in email or other CRM-delivered content.

You can also start shifting your "Core and Explore" from eighty/twenty to seventy-five/twenty-five or even seventy/thirty. Your goal is to invest more in activities that build your brand over time. You’re not just looking to be seen for a single transaction. You want to become a brand that customers will ask, and teach their AI assistants and agents to ask, for by name.

As for the folks in category three, well, congratulations. You’ve built a brand that’s working and working well. Your job now is to build on your successes and create an ever more sustainable brand.

Your primary goal is to focus on continuing your brand’s success in an AI-mediated world. AI can’t simply be an afterthought. It’s now a primary channel. The brands that AI tools recommend are the brands with the greatest authority signals. Your good work there already provides you a leg up on your competition. Keep your focus on increased quality and volume of your ratings, reviews, and social media engagement, and develop or expand your work with branded content that will gain traction and velocity in its own right.

As with category two, use the data that you get from this content to gain even deeper insights into what matters to your customers. Increasingly, you’re looking to anticipate their needs before they even know those needs exist. And feed this data into your product and service development process, too. That’ll improve the experience in every interaction customers have with your brand and help you build a stronger brand overall.

Finally, you should be interacting with Big Tech in a true coopetition mindset at this point. Big Tech and specific partners should exist as a tool for reaching customers who you can’t reach more cost-effectively on your own. The goal is that you might pay Big Tech for the first connection, but almost never for the second.

I can give you a real-world example of what that looks like. There’s a hospitality client of mine that gets a very small amount of business from Latin America. They don’t have the resources or, frankly, receive the volume that makes developing Spanish language websites, content, or email campaigns worthwhile. Just doesn’t. They’re happy to let Booking.com, Expedia, and Google metasearch deliver those guests the first time. They do, however, follow their guests’ home country privacy practices and ensure enhanced consent for opt-ins. They also work to learn more about their guests’ individual needs and address those specifically when those guests are on property. As a result, they’ve built some solid relationships with this segment and see some decent brand direct repeat business from these individuals. The benefit compounds to them over time. Is it a perfect solution? No, of course not. Nothing is. Is it more cost-effective and engaged with their brand long term? You bet.

You’ll note that across all three categories of businesses that I’ve just talked about, one point holds true, one core underlying point holds true. Every platform that sends you customers eventually charges more for them. That’s the essence of the phrase, "Gatekeepers gonna gate." It’s not a prediction, it’s a fundamental law of the digital economy. It’s been true for more than 25 years, and I’m confident it will remain true for years to come.

The only sustainable response you have in that world is to make any platform introduction a one-time cost, not a recurring one. Your job is to own the second interaction, own the third, own the data, own the relationship. That’s what the last 500 episodes of this podcast have been about. That’s what the book is about, and that’s what this roadmap is designed to help you do for your business.

As I wrap up this episode, I want to look at the three questions from a couple of weeks ago one more time:

The goal has never been to make Big Tech go away. The goal is to never need them twice. That’s thinking beyond Big Tech.

Thank you so much for listening today and for all your support over the last 13 plus years and 500 episodes. It means more to me than I can ever say.

If this episode, if this show, gives you a clearer picture of the digital economy and how you can succeed in it, please do me a favor, send it to a colleague you think it will help. It would mean so very much to me.

You can find the show notes for this episode, including a link to the book, at timpeter.com/podcasts.

Thank you again for listening. I genuinely appreciate you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and take care everybody. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post The Complete Roadmap for Owning Your Customer — Part 3 of 3 (Digital Reset Episode 500) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

If asked, “Who really owns your customer?” most marketing leaders would answer the instantly: "We do." But ownership isn’t a feeling. It’s a real, powerful, measurable outcome. For most businesses right now, the honest answer is much more complicated than they’d like to admit.

In Part 2 of this three-episode series, host Tim Peter shifts from diagnosing the cost of platform dependence to the single biggest question that reframes the entire discussion: who actually owns the relationship with your customer? Do you? Or does the platform that sent those customers to you? Your answer to this question determines whether you’re building demand for your business… or renting it. And one of those has a much, much brighter future.

Input signals — what you’re building:

Output signals — whether it’s working:

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter in conversation on digital strategy, customer acquisition, and what it actually means to build a business beyond Big Tech.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 22:05

In our last episode, I went deep on what it costs when you don’t own your customer relationship using real dollars, real margins, and real CFO meetings. This week, I want to build on that point with a question that reframes the entire discussion, and that is: who owns the relationship with your customer, you or the platform?

Most marketing leaders would answer that instinctively and without any real hesitation: "We do!" I want to spend the next fifteen to twenty minutes showing you why that answer is almost always more complicated than it sounds and more importantly, what you can do about it.

This is part two of a three-part series. Episode 500 next week is where I’ll draw the complete roadmap. But to get there, you need to answer this question first.

I’m Tim Peter. This is episode 499 of the Digital Reset Podcast. Let’s dive in.

Before I answer the question, I want to be clear about something. The argument that I’m making, the argument I’ve made for years in person, in meetings, and in my book is not "Get off Big Tech." That’s not realistic, and sometimes, frankly, it’s not even desirable.

You’ll note the subtitle of my book is "Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech." Big Tech is part of the solution. Marketing beyond Big Tech acknowledges what you’ll do in addition to how you put Big Tech to work.

Chapter 9 of the book talked about it in detail, and it’s something called "co-opetition." It’s where you both compete and cooperate with all kinds of businesses. That’s the real relationship every business has with Big Tech right now and probably always will.

Paying for the first transaction, for an introduction to a customer is fine. Even paying Big Tech is fine. They have massive audiences and significant data on how to reach the right customer in the right moment. Paying for that introduction the first time you talk to a customer often is the most cost-effective decision available to you.

I’m going to go a step further, a step beyond, if you will. If you cannot cost-effectively reach a customer the first time on your own, it’s completely rational, and it’s a really good idea to pay Google or Meta or an AI platform to make that introduction for you. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend and all that. That’s not dependence. That’s smart, clever use of a distribution network.

I’ve got clients who’ve successfully leveraged Big Tech to test new ideas or new markets. They do it all the time. That’s what Big Tech is for.

The mistake isn’t using them the first time. The mistake is using them to reach that same customer on their second visit, their next purchase, and every subsequent interaction you have with them.

Paying once is smart. The mistake is in the repeat, is in going back for more and paying again and again. That’s not going beyond Big Tech. That’s capture. That’s platform capture.

In my book, I tell the stories about Stephanie and David, who are leaders of two different businesses, one in manufacturing, one in hospitality, and the fact that it costs Stephanie roughly 30 to 40% and David between 20 and 25% for every single transaction, every single sale, and pretty much every single time.

They were spending money, big money for those sales. But what they hadn’t done was build direct relationships with their customers. They paid those fees again and again and again only to keep the customer in the hands of Big Tech gatekeepers.

In David’s case, the hotel was profitable, but only just. In Stephanie’s case, the business was on the verge of failure. I mean, this was serious, serious business. And in both cases, they were spending money for every transaction, not for driving long-term connections with their customers.

Just imagine giving away even 20% of every sale every time. What do you think your business would look like in 12 months?

Their reality, what they were living with, is what Big Tech platform capture actually looks like. That’s the risk. Not that you use these platforms, but that you never build an alternative that works for your customers and works for your business today and long term.

The funny thing is Big Tech itself gives us a possible roadmap for how to break free, how to go beyond that platform capture. Because Big Tech doesn’t just connect you with your customers. There’s at least one other thing Big Tech gives you that most businesses ignore.

They define what your customers’ digital lives look like. The way Google surfaces answers and has focused on mobile for years. The way ChatGPT and Claude handle conversations. The way Amazon structures discovery and continually improves speed for delivery. The way Expedia puts its emphasis on available inventory, photos, and reviews.

Those are all signals about your customers telling you how they want to find and buy the things that matter most in their lives. That’s a huge opportunity for you to learn from and take advantage of.

Similarly, there’s a reason I consistently recap Big Tech’s earnings calls. I’m gonna do that again in just a few weeks. They’re required to tell investors the truth about the state of their businesses and what they’re doing to drive customer behaviors long term, as well as what they’re doing to adapt to changing behaviors they had nothing to do with.

The earnings calls episodes have nothing to do with finances, really. They’re a real look at the reality of our customers’ digital lives, of their digital experiences, and how those are evolving quarter after quarter, straight from the mouths of the people most actively working to shape that reality. That seems like something we all might wanna pay attention to, no?

And that’s before we talk about the many blog posts and white papers and interviews and insights they all publish in the hopes of selling their vision of the future to investors, to regulators, and to customers alike.

The statements that Big Tech makes, the data that they share, the stories that they tell, the changes they make to their products and services all provide an opportunity for you to learn what your customers want and a roadmap for how to meet your customers where they are. Study what Big Tech does, then apply it in ways that are specific to your business and to your customers’ needs. They’re giving you competitive intelligence for free. Use it.

If you’re working with Big Tech, if you’re in coopetition with them, the question I might ask is: how do you know whether you’ve been building direct relationships with customers or whether the platforms own those relationships and you’re simply renting access? I think this is one of the most crucial questions you can ask for your business.

There are five ownership signals I find valuable when you’re working to figure this out. Two of them tell you what you’re building today. The other three tell you whether what you’re building is working.

So let’s start with the what you’re building signals. They are, one, CRM and email list growth rate. You know, it’s important to understand the size of your email list, of your CRM list. Understanding the rate at which it’s growing, though, is essential.

A growing list means customers are actively choosing a direct relationship with you, whether it’s the first time they’ve talked to you or after they’ve come through Big Tech the first interaction. It doesn’t matter where they found you. It matters that they choose to continue to talk with you going forward.

Every customer you add to your own list is a customer you can reach again in the future without paying the platforms, without paying Big Tech for that access. You’re lowering, or if you wanna sound fancy, amortizing the cost of the first interaction across every interaction that follows, and that’s what driving down your cost of customer acquisition over time really looks like.

We’ve done research with a wide array of clients and have found that every email address you collect represents, on the low end, between maybe five and fifteen dollars of revenue, in future revenue, and on the high end, as much as a thousand dollars or more in future revenue.

Yes, I know, two orders of magnitude is a pretty wide variation. That’s largely because of significant differences between, say, a mid-scale hotel charging two hundred and fifty dollars a night and a SaaS company that charges tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

But let’s just look at hotel clients for a second. We typically see that email addresses are worth roughly between eight and thirty dollars each. Now, that’s still pretty wide variation. Rate plays a huge role in that, but it gives you a sense of the actual economic value of growing the list over time.

The second attribute you care about, the second signal you care about, is first-party data depth. In addition to email addresses, do you know enough about your customers using data they gave you directly to reach them, to serve them, and to make decisions about them without some platform intermediary’s help? If the answer is no, then yeah, the platform pretty much owns the relationship.

The types of data we’re talking about could include things like birthdays or anniversary dates if we’re talking about a B2C company, or things like purchase timing and budget for B2B companies. First-party data isn’t just about ensuring privacy compliance. Obviously, that’s super important. But first-party data is a core strategic asset for your business longer term. You’ve heard me say data is the crown jewels. It powers your company’s future growth. The businesses that have first-party data are having fundamentally different conversations with their customers and with their C-suite than the ones that don’t.

Email and CRM growth rate and first-party data depth are input signals that are super important to see where you’re going in the future. There are also three output signals you can pay attention to.

The first is direct traffic as a share of total traffic. Direct traffic, and especially direct traffic growth, means your brand is strong enough that customers seek you out without going through a platform intermediary first. They just show up on your website or open your app.

If your direct traffic is shrinking, even, and especially when your total traffic is growing, that means you’re becoming more dependent on Big Tech, not less. You’re falling into the shortcut trap that gatekeepers like to set.

The second thing you want to look at is branded search growth. When customers search for you by name, not by category, not by product type, but by your actual brand name or brand names, product names, for instance, that’s a huge signal that you’ve built something the platform can’t own.

Branded search growth is often the output signal I look for the most. It tells you that customers have specifically decided you’re worth looking for. It’s a direct relationship, even when Google or DuckDuckGo or ChatGPT technically is in the middle of it.

And here’s why it still matters in an AI-mediated world, because it’s still incredibly valuable. The brands showing up in AI recommendations today are almost universally the brands with the strongest branded search signals. The AIs have learned and continue to learn to recommend from the same data Google’s been collecting for years.

Yes, the search experience has moved from one of card catalogs to concierges, but the concierge is still relying largely on the same underlying information that the card catalogs have done for years. I genuinely don’t expect that to change all that soon.

The third signal you want to think about is direct traffic and branded search revenue. Now, this may sound like it’s most applicable to B2C or DTC brands, and there’s some truth to that, but there is a B2B opportunity here as well, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

Traffic share is absolutely a big deal. It’s so important. Revenue from that traffic is a much, much bigger deal. A business that has increasing direct traffic that then doesn’t convert to direct revenue doesn’t have a platform dependence problem. They have a brand trust problem. Knowing the difference matters because you want to make sure you’re clear about which one of those problems you’re working to solve.

Now, I said this might sound like it’s an opportunity mostly for B2C companies, but even in B2B, we’ve got some great frameworks that can help you assign true economic value to your direct and branded search traffic. So drop me a line if you want to talk about that. I’m happy to help there.

There is one uncomfortable truth we have to talk about as we go down this path. Each of these five signals does take a little bit of time to build. They take a little bit of investment and a little bit of effort to build. That is a fact.

Meanwhile, Big Tech and the people who want to be Big Tech can send you customers and revenue right now. That’s what makes the shortcut trap that gatekeepers use so attractive, so effective… and so dangerous.

In episodes 489 and 490, and I’ll link to both in the show notes, I walked through each gatekeeper shortcut trap in detail. Here’s the short version. Your chosen platform looks generous early. They give you stuff that works right now. That makes the shortcut look smart, and by the time they start ratcheting up the tolls, you’ve built too much of your strategy around something you don’t control.

Those five signals I just described are how you measure whether you’re building your way out of that cycle or digging yourself deeper into a hole.

I wanna be fair here, I really do. Using the platform isn’t the problem. Every business I’ve worked with, every business I work with, that has navigated platform shifts successfully has used Big Tech platforms throughout that. Some still do to reach customers they can’t reach more effectively on their own. That is okay.

The difference is that they also built direct relationships in parallel every single time. They paid for the introduction and then did the work to make sure they never had to pay for that same customer twice, or worse, more than twice.

So the question remains, who owns the relationship with your customer? You or a Big Tech platform?

If you’ve looked at those five signals honestly, you may find yourself having a more complicated answer than you did, you know, 15 to 20 minutes ago. And that’s the whole point right there.

Here’s what you can do about this today.

First, pull your direct traffic share for the last 12 months. Is it growing or is it shrinking?

Two, check your CRM growth rate for the last two to three quarters. Is it speeding up? Is it accelerating or is it flattening?

And three, search for your brand name in ChatGPT, in Gemini, in Claude, in Perplexity. What do the AI tools know about you and where are the gaps?

What you learn from those three actions will tell you so much more about your actual ownership position than any analytics dashboard you might have.

Next week is going to be this show’s 500th episode. I want to be very clear, though, I am not planning to use that as a celebration. I’m planning to use it as a document of where we need to go from here. Everything that I can think of, everything I’ve watched work across 500 episodes and 15 plus years of platform shifts is going into one episode. It’s the complete map. It’s part three of three, and I genuinely hope I’ll see you there. I hope you stick with us for it.

In the meantime, if this episode gave you a clearer picture of the world we’re living in right now and how you can start thinking about your path forward, do me a favor. Share it with a colleague who’s currently working to figure this out. It might save them and your business from heading in the wrong direction.

You can find the show notes for this episode at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go deeper on making your brand the answer that AI reaches for every single time, my book, "Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech," is a roadmap that you can use today. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening. I genuinely appreciate you tuning in week after week after week. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and be excellent to each other. I’ll see you next week.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post Who Really Owns Your Customer? — Part 2 of 3 (Digital Reset Episode 499) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

The platforms sending you customers today are systematically making themselves indispensable… and charging you more for that privilege every quarter. Organic channels are down 20–30% for many companies, across a wide array of industries. For many companies, paid channels are up 40–85%… or more. The businesses absorbing this shift aren’t “failing companies” making “bad decisions.” They’re led by competent marketing teams following a playbook that used to work, slowly trading margin for traffic while their revenue numbers give them no reason to look closer.

Today’s episode is Part 1 of a 3-episode series on what it actually costs when you don’t own your customer and what you can do about it.

Key Insights for Strategic Leaders

In this episode, Tim Peter breaks down:

Related Episodes

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Watch Tim Peter in conversation on digital strategy, customer acquisition, and what it actually means to build a business beyond Big Tech.

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 18:16

Organic channels are flat to minus thirty percent year over year. Paid channels are up forty percent or more, often a lot more. I talked with a business the other day that saw organic traffic plummet by over forty percent, and even more importantly, their revenue fall by more than thirty percent.

Even some businesses I know who are having great years, we’re seeing the same story hold true. One client of mine is having a massive revenue growth this year. They’re up over twenty-five percent year on year. They’re just paying for more of that revenue than ever before.

Big Tech gatekeepers are closing the gates.

As I talked about here on the show a couple of weeks ago, Google recently reported its most profitable quarter ever. Meta reported revenue growth of thirty-three percent. Amazon’s advertising services group grew twenty-two percent year on year, and over the last twelve months, it’s generated revenue of over seventy billion dollars. Almost all of these Big Tech gatekeepers’ growth was driven from companies like you.

Hell, Meta even acknowledged that their price per ad grew twelve percent in their most recent earnings call. None of these companies are admitting that they’re charging more on earnings calls. They’re bragging about it.

In many cases, not only are companies I talk with paying more to folks that they’ve worked with for years, they’re often paying for traffic and conversions that they never had to pay for before. Look at the continuing growth of metasearch for hotels. That has eaten into organic search in a big, big way. Similarly, the increasing budgets for paid social and creator partnerships have largely taken the place of organic social media for many businesses in a whole host of industries. These are entirely new line items in the budget that eat into your profitability.

The individual numbers change by business, by industry, by month, by quarter, but the overall pattern is the same. More traffic arriving later in the purchase journey and more from paid channels, no matter where the customer starts.

This is not just a warning sign. It’s so much more serious than that. One individual who I’m keeping anonymous for obvious reasons and with their permission, put it in stark terms. He said, "We can’t afford to go on like this." This isn’t a question of traffic or conversions or revenue. For many businesses, it’s a question of survival.

This is episode 498 of Digital Reset. I’m Tim Peter. Today, we’re talking about what it actually costs when you don’t own your customer. Let’s dive in.

I was sitting in a monthly review with a relatively new client recently. On the surface, their numbers were fine. Not spectacular, but not terrible. Their revenue was slightly down year on year, just under 2%, but they’re in a tough segment, so it was, you know, "expected." I’m definitely putting some quotes around that word, but I mean, we’ve all been there, right? We know sometimes we’re gonna have a tough year.

Their total traffic was also down slightly more than 2%, and their conversion rate actually grew marginally. Direct navigation to their website was also up about 2%, and so was branded search. Overall, they thought that everything was very much in line with their expectations and as a result, thought everything was, you know, okay. They were prepared for this reality. It wasn’t a huge shock to them.

The truth is that their expected tough comparables year on year hid a much, much darker story. I mean, they were doing the right things. They were getting what they’d wanted. They were getting what they’d "expected." And under the hood, they are slowly bleeding their business dry.

Organic channels for this business, including search and social, were off by about 20%. Paid channels were up almost 85%. They were trading "free" traffic for paid traffic. The share of traffic literally flipped from two to one in favor of organic to two to one in favor of paid in a year. And because their revenue was holding steady, the marketing team hadn’t noticed it.

While I can’t share actual revenues or profits, safe to say that it’s a material difference in terms of their marketing’s profitability. The only "good news" here, and it’s not much of that, is that the CFO hadn’t really picked up on it yet either. We had a conversation the other day, the CFO and I, and the longer-term trend was news to her too. The mid-year review doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be much fun for anyone.

The client is far from alone. I’m seeing this everywhere. The pattern keeps turning up across almost every business I’m talking with these days. Some are a bit worse off, some are doing somewhat better. But when you look at the longer-term numbers, the general trend is the same.

And most of these businesses aren’t doing anything wrong specifically. In fact, they’re following a playbook that for a long time was fairly popular: They worked with platforms that offer reach that looks great early on. They optimized for the reach and conversions that those platforms offer. And because it works, in vernacular I’ve used myself many times, they were fishing where the fishing’s good. Their owned alternatives weren’t as urgent because everything "was performing," and I’m very much putting air quotes around that. And then fourth, the various platforms, algorithms, and fees shifted, mostly gradually, in a couple of cases suddenly, and now the business has to scramble.

This is a pattern I have seen again and again and again. This was the whole point of episodes 489 and 490 in early April. At its core, it’s the fundamental problem my book was written to address.

If you listened to last week’s episode, it outlined what AI search is doing to organic traffic right now and how it’s exactly the same pattern playing out in yet another part of the ecosystem.

The toll that gatekeepers charge isn’t a future risk. It’s happening right now.

The reality is that Google’s changes to the way they present search results, and Meta’s changes to the way they display your content on Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn’s changes to the way they display your content in your customers’ feeds, and on and on and on make it increasingly difficult for your brand and business to be seen without paying for that visibility.

Think about it from the perspective of the client I talked about a few moments ago. If their organic channels were even flat this year as opposed to down 20%, they’d actually have grown revenue year on year despite the fact that they’re facing a tough market.

It’s not going to get much better anytime soon either, not for them and probably not for you.

Again, if you listened to last week’s episode, Google proudly announced an array of changes like intelligent AI agents and a "Universal Cart" designed to engage customers and keep them inside Google’s ecosystem… and off your site. ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude have already delivered or are working to deliver comparable features. Social media has acted similarly for years, downplaying the reach of content with links and promoting content that keeps users engaged within their platforms. How many times have you been on LinkedIn and seen a post that included the words, "Link in the comments"? That’s just one more symptom of the reality we’re living with.

You want to bet that any of these guys are going to reverse course on this? I sure wouldn’t. They can’t. Their quarterly numbers, the ones that I cited before the break, are how they keep their investors happy. If Sundar Pichai or Mark Zuckerberg or Andy Jassy or any other Big Tech CEO, any other gatekeeper, regardless of their size, suddenly announced they weren’t going to monetize their traffic as aggressively any longer, or that they were looking for ways to drive more organic traffic and reduce paid opportunities, they might be fired even before the earnings call was over. You’d probably hear something like, "Uh, yeah, we’re experiencing technical difficulties," while they were escorting the now former CEO from the building… or shoving them out a window.

You’ve heard me say gatekeepers gonna gate many times, and given the context of what we’re talking about, let me explain it in a single short sentence: Every platform that sends you customers eventually charges you more for those customers. That’s it. That’s what gatekeepers gonna gate means in a nutshell. It’s shorthand for a reality that you live with today and will continue to live with for a long time to come, probably forever if we’re thinking about this critically. I didn’t coin that phrase as a throwaway line. Instead, it’s designed to describe a fundamental law of the digital economy.

That’s why the client I described earlier didn’t really make a mistake. It’s why they and any business that uses search or social media or other digital channels to find new business, you know, essentially all of them, isn’t wrong to partner with these folks either. It’s also why businesses aren’t stupid or wrong when they suddenly find themselves caught in one of the gatekeepers’ traps. You work with companies that provide value. That’s a good idea. And you continue working with them until they don’t provide value. That’s also a good idea.

Sometimes, though, the line between "provides value" and "doesn’t provide value" disappears, like the famous expression says, "slowly… then all at once." That’s what we’re seeing right now with organic versus paid channels.

I said on this podcast that organic search was still a key driver for many businesses as recently as six months ago. In some businesses, it’s still true. While we were certainly seeing some shifts towards ChatGPT and other AI platforms, Google still delivered — and may still deliver — the lion’s share of traffic, mostly via organic search for most businesses. It’s only in the last couple of months that it started to shift dramatically for many businesses. And of course, that shift is going to accelerate over time. Many businesses are seeing this problem today. Others won’t see it for a while yet. That’s okay. That’s super normal.

By the way, while I’m on this topic, I slightly misspoke last week, during the episode while I was talking about this very topic. I’d said at the time that, and this is a quote, "Within a couple of months, search will no longer send you large volumes of traffic every day. It might not send you traffic at all." My point wasn’t that Google will stop sending you large volumes of traffic within a couple of months. My point was that their new features launching later "this summer," that is, "in a couple of months," will be the reason Google stops sending you large volumes of traffic whenever or if that reality happens. I think it’s far more likely that Google shifts from large volumes of organic traffic to large volumes of paid traffic versus traffic or no traffic. For starters, a huge share of their revenue and profits come from folks clicking their ads. They’re not gonna give up that traffic until they have a proven way to offset the revenue they’d give up from all of the paid clicks that they get today.

Regardless, we need to acknowledge the world we’re living in. We need to understand that the share of traffic you’re getting and likely to get from free sources is declining. And once we’ve acknowledged those facts, we need to plan for what we’re going to do about it.

As we start to wrap up today’s episode, I’ve got three questions for you.

If any of those questions produced an uncomfortable answer for you, next week we’re going to look at the single question that will help you reframe how you think about all three of those questions. And the week after that, episode 500 of this podcast, I’m going to give you the most complete map, the most useful path that I can draw for what you can actually do about it. Today is part one of three. I hope you’ll stay with me because I think this is the single biggest set of questions we need to be thinking about right now.

Again, to recap those:

I hope you’ll stick with me as we go through the next couple of episodes and work this out.

In the meantime, if this episode gave you a clearer picture of the world we’re living in right now and how you can start thinking about your path forward, do me a favor. Send it to a colleague who’s currently struggling to figure this out for you and your business. It might save them and you from heading down the wrong direction.

You can find the show notes for this episode at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go deeper on making your brand the answer that AI reaches for every time, my book, "Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech," is the roadmap you’re looking for. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening today. I genuinely appreciate you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

"Digital Reset with Tim Peter" helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post The Real Cost When You Don’t Own Your Customer — Part 1 of 3 (Episode 498) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

For years, tech titans have chased the holy grail of "the everything app." It turns out we already had one: Google Search. But a massive shift is underway. Google is moving from a model that directs users to your website to one that answers queries, manages tasks, and completes purchases entirely within its own ecosystem… and entirely within the Search box itself.

Google’s I/O 2026 conference revealed a complete reimagining of the search experience. With the introduction of AI-powered Search agents, a multimodal Search box, and its cross-platform "Universal Cart," Google is making its play to become the ultimate destination, not just the gateway.

For businesses that have historically relied on search traffic to fuel their growth, the calculus has completely changed. Traditional search traffic volumes are already declining. Over time, they could drop precipitously, leaving brands like yours to contend with an environment where the world’s biggest gatekeeper owns your front door.

In this episode, Tim Peter breaks down exactly what Google’s latest I/O announcements mean for your customer acquisition strategy. He explores how Google is using AI to control user attention, why authentic web presence is more critical than ever, and how to build a resilient brand that means everything to your customers when Google — or anyone else in Big Tech — wants to be your customers’ “everything app.”

Key Insights for Strategic Leaders

In this episode, Tim Peter breaks down:

Related Episodes

Research and Source Links

Google SEO & AI Guidance

Google I/O 2026 Announcements

Google Advertising Changes

Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Rutgers Business School MSDM Speaker Series: a Conversation with Tim Peter, Author of “Digital Reset”

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 22:34

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Did you notice how Google published marketer-friendly SEO guidance the day before its I/O conference? There is no way that their timing was accidental. It was choreographed to send a message, and that message could not be more clear.

I/O revealed Google’s new agentic tools, its "Universal Cart" for shopping and buying, and a brand-new Search box that no longer sends you traffic. It answers queries directly within Google. That completely changes the calculus for every business that’s relied on search traffic to drive their growth. Within a couple of months, Search will no longer send you large volumes of traffic every day. It might not send you traffic at all. Oh, it might be a place people can buy. But only if Google decides you’re worth showing at all.

Google has always been the real "everything app" that Big Tech titans and their wannabe contenders have promised for years. Now they’re making it official. Search is the interface that your customers will use to find information, research products and services, book travel or buy, well, anything or everything. That completely changes the calculus for every business that’s relied on search traffic to drive growth. Within a couple of months, Search will no longer send you large volumes of traffic every day. It might be a place people can buy. But only if Google decides you’re worth showing at all.

Today’s episode is longer than usual. That’s because there’s a lot to cover. Most importantly, it’s as clear a read as I can offer on what Google’s announcements mean for you and your business, what they’re not talking about, and what you can do to build a brand that can compete when the gatekeeper owns your front door. I’m Tim Peter. This is episode 497 of Digital Reset. Let’s dive in.

Google outlined how web and content teams can optimize their “websites for generative AI features on Google Search.” In short, they said that AEO and GEO ARE SEO. In a call-out that asked “What about AEO and GEO?” Google said simply, “From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”

Their biggest tips: “Apply foundational SEO best practices to generative AI search,” “Create valuable, non-commodity content for your audience,” and “Build and maintain a clear technical structure.” They also followed these up with a section titled “Mythbusting generative AI search: What you don’t need to do” that included ideas like: You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files markup or Markdown to appear in generative search. “There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.” “You don’t need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search.” “Seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem.” And, “Structured data isn’t required for generative AI search, and there’s no special schema.org markup you need to add.” They did follow that one up by adding: “However, it’s a good idea to continue using it, [that is, structured data/schema.org markup] as part of your overall SEO strategy, as it helps with being eligible for rich results on Google Search.”

What makes this most fascinating is that Google dropped this new guidance the day before its I/O developer conference where they introduced, in their words, “the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years — now completely reimagined with AI.” They noted that the new Search box is, “Designed to anticipate your intent, it also helps you formulate your question with AI-powered suggestions that go beyond autocomplete.” I’ll come back to that in a little bit.

The search box, “can search across modalities, using text, images, files, videos or Chrome tabs as inputs.” They also introduced “Search agents.” As their press release notes, “We’re entering the era of Search agents, where you can easily create, customize and manage multiple AI agents for your many tasks, right in Search. We’re starting with information agents. Operating in the background, 24/7, these agents intelligently reason across information to find exactly what you need at exactly the right moment.”

And they followed that up with an “intelligent, proactive shopping cart” they call “Universal Cart.” Their press release for that claims that “Universal Cart is an intelligent shopping cart and your new hub for shopping on Google. It works across merchants and across services, so you can add things to your cart while you’re browsing Search, chatting with Gemini, watching YouTube or even reading your Gmail.” The release continues, “The moment you add a product to your cart, it gets to work in the background — finding deals and price drops, giving you insights on price history and alerting you when an item is back in stock.”

That alone is a ton. But notice what they’ve done here. They’ve told you how you can show up on Google. Not how you can drive more traffic to your site. Universal Cart and Information Agents and whatever other agents follow down the road aren’t designed to drive traffic. They’re designed to keep people within Google.

For years, tech titans have talked about the idea of “the everything app.” It’s what Elon Musk is trying to do with the hollowed out husk of Twitter he calls X. It’s what Mark Zuckerberg wants to do with its social apps, AI, and smart glasses. The everything app is the holy grail, designed to take over — and ultimately replace — your customers’ phones when they’re looking to connect with friends, find information, research products and services, book travel or buy, well, anything or everything.

I’ve said that those efforts were not likely to succeed because we already had an everything app. Search. Google Search, most specifically. Search already is the everything app. It’s where customers traditionally have started most of their browsing and shopping and buying journeys. Yes, sure, your customers learn about new ideas and solutions and products and services from influencers, creators, friends, and family on social. That’s true. It’s still true. But when your customers were ready to learn more, dive deeper, browse, book, or buy, they turned to search. They turned to Google. Google was the front door. Google was, for all practical purposes, “the everything app.”

What more could you need? Turns out that I was wrong about that. Oh, sure, Search was the front door to learning and browsing and buying. But, at some point in their journey, your customers clicked away from Google and ended up at your front door. Customers showing up at your site or in your app allowed you to build direct relationships with your customers, to encourage them to return… and to do that without clicking a link from somewhere else first. To do that without searching. And that was something that Google simply couldn’t allow. Remember, gatekeepers gonna gate.

Google didn’t get here all on its own, of course. Amazon has long been the first place people searched when they were shopping. Again, X and Meta have already been working on their interpretations of “the everything app” for some time. And then, along came AI. Google has lost a little bit of market share, and more than a little bit of mindshare, to ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude. Those AI tools offered better experiences and, at least at first, more complete visions of an “everything app” — though they didn’t say it out loud. What was happening was that your customers were able to go to their favorite AI app and chat, research, learn, and, sometimes, buy or book the products and services they wanted. They were becoming the new gatekeepers, the ones who might take a seat at Big Tech’s table… or take over the whole table for themselves. Again, that’s simply something that Google could not allow.

Google announced their most profitable quarter ever less than a month ago. They certainly weren’t going to let it be the most profitable quarter they ever would have. That’s why Search has to become the real “everything app.” That’s where agents and “universal carts” come into play. Google is making its bid to be the one place customers go when they’re seeking information, insights, products, and services… every single time.

You know that I think they’ve got a huge leg up in this arena. They connect with your customers in ways large and small every day. Sure, there’s Search. There’s also Gmail and Calendar, Workspace/Drive/Docs, Maps, News, Travel and Flights, and Cloud. Oh, yeah, Android and Chrome too. And don’t forget their deal with Apple to provide the default search and AI experiences on Apple’s hardware. That’s an incredible footprint that virtually no one else can touch.

Now, remember when I said I’d come back to how the new Search box is, “Designed to anticipate your intent, it also helps you formulate your question with AI-powered suggestions that go beyond autocomplete”? A couple of weeks ago we looked at Amazon’s “Sponsored Prompts,” which are ads that show up as customers type their query. You pay to have your brand appear in suggested prompts. I don’t know. You could even call them, oh, I don’t know, “AI-powered suggestions that go beyond autocomplete.” Where have I heard that phrase before? Right… in Google’s press release announcing the new Search box.

Gatekeepers gonna gate.

Google has also been pushing its AI Max advertising feature for the last 7-8 months. About a month ago, they also said that they’re “upgrading Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max,” which is their nice way of saying they’re killing advertiser-controlled Dynamic Search Ads, automatically created assets, and campaign-level broad match settings in favor of AI-managed ads. Don’t worry about putting in place the messages and rules and restrictions governing how and where some of your campaigns appear. AI will handle that for you. And then let you know what a good job it’s doing. Gatekeepers gonna gate. They raise the cost of connecting with your customers. I called that out in my book Digital Reset. This is just the latest example.

This is the single biggest question you have to ask yourself: How do you lower the cost of reaching your customers when their AI — or anyone else’s — is the search box, the shopping cart, the everything app between you and your customers?

First, don’t panic. Yes, you’ve got work to do. And yes, some of it’s going to be annoying. But, if you offer products or services to your customers, your brand is built more by their experiences with those products and services than anything else. You’re a hotel? Guests will learn more about your brand during their stay than anything Google or some social media creator can tell them. You offer financial services? Your advice, counsel, caring, and performance show your clients what they need to know. You offer SaaS capabilities? Your customers are hands on with your products all the time. That experience is what they’ll remember.

Second, remember that your brand is the prompt. And that your brand is built on three core elements: Content is king, Customer experience is queen, and Data is the crown jewels.

There are some subtle shifts we’re seeing in these because of AI’s growth. For instance, content distribution — being seen on social media as well as driving customer-generated content like ratings and reviews — is every bit as important as the content you create yourself. While that isn’t especially new, the added emphasis on channels beyond your website and customer commentary is.

Google said in its generative search guidance that “Seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem.” They didn’t say — nor would they — that authentic mentions aren’t helpful. I’m seeing hotels and other businesses I work with show up in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, as well as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude because they get continual and consistent high-quality reviews on Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, G2, and social media sites.

Similarly, your CRM data takes on added weight in this new world. When you talk with customers via email or SMS, you have an opportunity to bypass AI gatekeepers and build deeper, longer-lasting connections. Which, of course, brings us back to content that your customers will find it worth their while to read, listen to, or watch. As my friend Ed St.Onge likes to say, “The point of every second of your content is to earn another second of attention.” The flipside of that is that every second that isn’t worth your customers’ attention isn’t worth sending them.

This is one of the key reasons I don’t recommend using AI to create your content. If you’re not willing to spend time on crafting content that’s relevant and useful for your customers, why would you expect your customers to spend any of their time engaging with it?

Putting this all together, Google just delivered their version of the everything app. They also told you they still expect your content to train that app and provide it with the answers it will need to keep customers in their ecosystem. And they gave you guidance on how you can ensure your content does its job for their needs. You probably have to play that game, at least to connect with customers the first time.

The businesses that think beyond Big Tech know though, that the real win comes from building deep relationships between your customers and your brand. And that building those deep relationships depends on content worth their time and customer experiences they’ll rave about to their friends and family and fans and followers… and their AI assistants and agents. And by using data wisely to better inform those discussions and experiences with your customers.

Google wants to be the everything app. Your job is to build a brand that means everything to your customers instead.

If this episode gave you a clear picture of what Google’s long game looks like in practice and how you can play it more effectively, do me a favor — send it to a colleague who’s currently struggling to figure this out. It might save them — and your business — from going down the wrong path.

You can find the show notes for this episode at timpeter.com/podcasts.

And if you’re ready to go deeper on making your brand the answer that AI reaches for every time, my book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, is the roadmap you’re looking for. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening. I genuinely appreciate you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

“Digital Reset with Tim Peter” helps you look beyond the "shiny objects" to build a business that lasts. How can we help you today?

The post Google’s Everything App: What I/O 2026 Means for Your Traffic, Your Brand, and Your Business (Episode 497) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

Last week, Big Tech reported its Q1 2026 earnings. Google achieved an all-time high for search queries and grew their revenue 22%. Amazon announced “Sponsored Prompts,” paid placements built directly into AI conversations. Meta raised its ad prices and increased revenue by 33%.

If you heard those numbers and thought, “How on earth did we get here?” this episode is your answer.

This is a Digital Reset Foundations episode: a conversation recorded in April that has become more useful, not less, now that the Q1 numbers have come in. The 15-year pattern described here is exactly what drove those earnings. The shortcut trap isn’t theoretical. It literally just showed up in Big Tech’s earnings calls.

And the counter to their dominance is right in front of you. The brands winning in AI right now didn’t pivot to an AI-first strategy six months ago. Almost universally, they’ve been building direct customer relationships, earning independent reviews, and publishing content credible enough to be cited — for years. City of Hope didn’t have a GEO strategy or an AI optimization consultant. They appear in 97% of AI queries for their category because of brand and customer experience decisions they made years ago.

AI inclusion, it turns out, is an inheritance. It’s not something you acquire in a quarter. It’s something you build. And if you’ve been building the right things, the AI concierge will find you.

This reality raises obvious questions. If the framework is this well understood — build credible content, earn independent reviews, make your brand signal clear — why are 82% of companies still stuck in the AI value gap? Why don’t they just do it?

The answer is the Shortcut Trap. Every new gatekeeper’s entry into the market comes with a period where taking the shortcut looks like the smart play. Link-building programs before Google’s Penguin update. Organic follower growth before social media algorithms changed. Low-commission OTA distribution before take rates and paid placements climbed. AI content farming today.

The shortcut isn’t a scam. That’s why it works… at least temporarily. That’s also what makes it dangerous. By the time the cost becomes visible, too many businesses have built far too much of their strategy around it, and they own the visibility but not the relationship.

This episode traces 15 years of that pattern across four platform shifts — Google, social, OTAs, and now AI — and draws two clear tests that separate a genuine foundation investment from a shortcut dressed up as strategy. Google’s search revenue didn’t grow 22% because they got lucky. Amazon didn’t build sponsored prompts by accident.

The window is still open. But it won’t stay open indefinitely. If you’re the one who has to walk into a budget meeting and explain your company’s AI strategy, this is the episode that gives you both the pattern and the language you need to make your case.

Key Insights for Strategic Leaders to Close the Gap

Whether you’re in hospitality, retail, or B2B — and especially if you’re the person who has to answer "what’s our AI strategy?" while watching the platform landscape shift under your feet — this episode gives you 15 years of pattern recognition and the live proof from Q1 2026 earnings to work with.

Don’t miss Tim Peter’s new book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today.

Rutgers Business School MSDM Speaker Series: a Conversation with Tim Peter, Author of "Digital Reset"

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

Contact information for the podcast: [email protected]

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface.

Running time: 23:56

You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes, the Google Play Store, via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page.

Last week, we looked at Big Tech’s Q1 earnings. Google hit all-time high profits. Amazon is building sponsored prompts into AI conversations. Meta raised its ad prices and grew its revenue thirty-three percent.

If you heard that episode and thought, "How did we get here?" This episode is the answer.

This is a Digital Reset Foundations episode, a conversation I recorded in April that I think is as useful right now as anything I could record brand new this week.

The reason I’m bringing this one back is simple. Big Tech’s Q1 earnings didn’t surprise me. After you hear this, they won’t surprise you either.

Big Tech has built their businesses to extract more money from you and your business every single day. Gatekeepers gonna gate and all that.

Here’s the episode. I think it’ll be worth your time whether you’ve heard it before or not. Let’s dive in.

Welcome back to the show. The brands winning in AI right now didn’t pivot to an AI first strategy six months ago. Almost universally, they’ve been building direct customer relationships, earning independent reviews, and publishing content credible enough to be cited for years.

The AI didn’t teach them anything new. It just made visible who has done the work and who has been renting their results from the nearest gatekeeper. I’ve been watching this pattern play out for 15 years through Google algorithm updates, organic reach collapse on social media like Facebook and LinkedIn, increased commissions and take rates from intermediaries like online travel agencies and Amazon, and now the first wave of AI driven discovery.

Each time the businesses that navigated the shift with the least damage had the same things in common: a direct relationship with their customers, an earned reputation that didn’t depend on any single platform, and data that they owned, literally owned.

Here’s the thing. That framework isn’t complicated. Build credible content. Collect independent reviews. Earn the right to show up in your customer’s inbox. Make your brand signal clear.

Most people listening to this show already know that. The question this episode answers is, if the formula is this well understood, why are 82% of companies still stuck in the AI value gap? Why don’t they just do this?

The answer has everything to do with a trap that every new gatekeeper sets and that smart, experienced marketing leaders fall into anyway. I’ve watched it happen through four different platform shifts. I’d like to make sure it doesn’t happen to you on this one.

This is episode 489 of Digital Reset. I’m Tim Peter. Let’s dive in.

A couple of weeks ago, you heard me talk about City of Hope and the fact that they show up in 97% of AI queries for their specific category. Well, City of Hope did not have a GEO strategy. They didn’t hire an AI optimization consultant.

They showed up in 97% of AI queries for their category because of decisions they made 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago or more. That should tell us something about what AI actually rewards. AI inclusion is an inheritance. It’s not an acquisition.

City of Hope inherited their position from years of peer reviewed research, independent media, and an earned reputation with their patients. The AI was trained on all of that.

Most GEO strategy, quote unquote, is sold as something you can acquire this quarter. But if AI inclusion is primarily inherited from prior fundamentals, that changes and should change your budget discussion, your budget conversation.

AIs see a weak signal, a contradictory signal, or no signal, and it loses confidence in your brand. When an AI sees a strong signal, a clear signal, a coherent signal, that’s when you win. The brands who are showing up consistently today are showing up because they’ve built brands worth people asking for by name. This is what I mean when I say the brand is the prompt.

But also brands that are worth answering by name, that the AI can confidently say, "As a concierge, I know the answer to your question. I know who you should be talking to."

Winning in the long run isn’t just about what you do this quarter. It’s what you do for a long time. If you go to your AI of choice — it doesn’t matter if it’s Google Gemini, it doesn’t matter if it’s ChatGPT, it doesn’t matter if it’s Perplexity, it doesn’t matter if it’s Claude — go to the AI you like the most and ask it to describe your brand.

Everything it gets right is a sign that you have a strong signal. Everything that it gets wrong or hedges on or isn’t quite clear on, that’s where you have a gap. And that’s your roadmap. You don’t need a vendor to do an audit. The AI itself is going to tell you this is what it knows to be true about you. That’s really, really key.

Now the most common gap is when you say one thing about your brand and your customers are saying something else about your brand. It sees a difference between your statements and your customer’s reviews. That’s a huge contradiction, and that means the AI will lose confidence in you. It cannot confidently recommend you to a potential customer.

Note that this isn’t just about the discussions happening on platforms that the AI trusts. It’s that you have never done the work to build review velocity for your business, that you haven’t worked to gain the earned media presence that gives the AI some corroborating evidence beyond just what you say on your site or beyond just what it sees in reviews.

Neither of those gaps is going to get solved by a GEO vendor — immediately. Both are solved by doing the same things that improve your direct business: giving a better customer experience, gaining better reviews, and building clearer signal.

I’ve worked with businesses to reduce their dependency on big tech companies over the last 15 years — through Google updates, through the emergence of OTAs, through social reach, and now AI. And what’s interesting is how this era looks similar to what I’ve seen before.

In the book Digital Reset, I talk about a pattern that happens: a new discovery channel emerges. Something comes around and we go, "oh, this is cool, we should check this out." We get good results from it early. We test it and we see that this is really working, and usually at a pretty low cost.

Over time, the platforms with legs grow more dominant. They build a bigger base of customers and often send more customers your way, usually at a pretty low cost. That’s super attractive. So you double down on that. You dive in even further until suddenly that becomes a major source of your business.

But at that point, that puts them in a position of gatekeeping power. And as you’ve heard me say many times before, gatekeepers gonna gate. They have to. They are required to, because they owe it to their shareholders to monetize the traffic and the connection that they have with customers to grow their revenues and grow their profits and grow their shareholder value. And so what happens is the gatekeeper then raises the toll to you.

This is a vicious cycle that occurs again and again and again. We’ve seen this repeatedly with search, with social, with mobile, with OTAs. It happens consistently.

Every time there’s a new platform shift, there’s a window. It could be two years, it could be three years, it could be five years, where the new gatekeepers are still building their position and they haven’t yet started collecting the highest tolls they can.

That’s huge because marketing leaders look at that and say, this is a great opportunity for our business. And that’s good. That actually is a good idea.

We saw this, I’ll give you a real world example, with independent hotels and hotel brands. They had opportunities to build direct booking capabilities and direct booking connections with customers before OTAs became kind of non-negotiable. First before September of 2001. Then in the later 2000s.

The ones that took advantage of those windows built direct websites. They built email lists. They built loyalty programs — either recognition programs or reward programs — to connect directly with customers and gain data. And they built direct revenue.

The ones that didn’t do those things are still paying 20% commissions as table stakes for 35, 40, 50% of their business. That’s not a great place to be. The boutique hotels that appear in ChatGPT answers today for questions like "the best independent hotel in Charleston," or "the best independent hotel in Orlando," are there because of the reviews they’ve been gaining for the last 10 years, for the content that they’ve been publishing for the last eight to 10 years, for press coverage that they earned five or six or seven years ago, and every year in between. They’re not there because of some AI strategy. They inherited that position because they had an overarching brand strategy and an overarching strategy of how to connect with their customers directly every single time.

The hotels that went all in on OTA distribution, the retailers that outsourced their audience to Facebook, the publishers who handed their traffic to Google — each of those folks made, I want to be fair, a rational decision in that moment. It wasn’t a mistake in the small terms. The problem was that they didn’t own anything when the platform changed the terms of the relationship.

So the question that I would ask is whether we are seeing a different game or whether it’s the same game with slightly different rules. Spoiler alert, I think it’s the same game with slightly different rules.

There are definitely new things happening here. Artificial intelligence, AI answer engines, and AI assistants and AI agents as they arrive, are weighing things like corroboration quality — is your story being backed up in other places — more than just "did you get a bunch of links." It’s much harder to game that with volume or technical tricks.

In that sense, AI is doing what search has always supposed to be doing before they had to spend so much time fighting black hat SEO types and people trying to game the system. Candidly, one reason why I’m so bullish on Google is that they know what getting gamed looks like. I’ve argued that many of the AI answer engines right now are doing a speed run through Google’s search spam learnings, and that they’re going to have to make changes that Google’s been making for years.

What hasn’t changed is expert authored content. You’re familiar with EEAT probably, from Google — Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust. Companies and businesses that have built that expertise and have built that authority and have gained that experience and have gained that trust are the ones doing well.

What also hasn’t changed is independent validation and trusted platform reviews and a strong, well-regarded direct brand that follows from those. Those drove organic authority 10 years ago, and they’re driving AI inclusion today.

Maybe you’ve heard me say before that content is king, customer experience is queen, and data is the crown jewels. That’s what we’re still seeing even with artificial intelligence.

One thing to keep in mind here is a "first, do no harm" principle. If a GEO tactic is going to hurt your search performance, it’s probably not going to work for artificial intelligence either — and certainly not in the long term. The tactics that work for both are the same: quality content, earned external references, active review management.

The brands that win in AI today are the ones that have inherited that position. The question you should be asking right now is not "how do we acquire AI visibility?" It’s "how do we build the brand that produces AI visibility as a byproduct of being a brand that AI values?"

Now, if the fundamentals are this clear and the pattern is this consistent, why are 82% of companies still stuck in the value gap? Why don’t they just do the thing?

Every new gatekeeper’s entry into the market included — and includes — a period where taking the shortcut looks like the smart play. In Google’s case, it was things like link building programs even before you had to pay for them. In social media’s case, it was building organic reach and building your follower count. In OTAs, it was things like low cost early commissions. And with AI it’s things like GEO vendors and AI content farms and churning out high volumes of low quality, low cost content so that you show up.

But those all stop working at a certain point. They realize people are spamming this. So Google shuts that down. The social media channels say we need to actually earn money off of these folks, so we’re going to pull back the algorithm and change what your organic reach is. The OTAs are saying, we’re contributing a lot of business to your hotel, so we need to raise commission rates.

What makes you think that the AIs are going to do anything different? We don’t know exactly when that will occur, but I’m really confident it’s coming because we’ve seen this happen again and again and again.

Now, I want to be very fair to people who have gone down this path before and chosen that path. It’s not a scam. It’s a trap.

It’s not a scam because it works — at least temporarily. That’s what makes it so dangerous. A scam would be easier to resist. You’re savvy enough — the people who’ve done this are savvy enough — to know that if you’re not getting value out of something, you would never put your efforts there, you would never put your money there.

So the people who have taken these approaches are not fools. What they are doing is saying, "Hey, this is producing results for me. I should double down on this."

That’s what makes it dangerous — the fact that it actually does work. The challenge is that you end up owning visibility, but not the relationship with the customer.

The shortcut is always attractive exactly at the moment when you need it the most, because they’re helping you reach customers you haven’t reached before, usually at a relatively low cost. All that you see at that point is the upside. By the time the cost becomes visible, too many people find themselves in a position where they’ve built far too much of their strategy depending upon that thing. That’s not a great place to be.

Marketing leaders need to think in terms of: when is this a genuine investment in our foundations, and when is this a shortcut dressed up as a strategy?

I would think there are a couple of ways you would test this.

The first is to ask whether this investment would matter if AI changed tomorrow. If we look at things like expert authored content or review velocity programs or first party data infrastructure or earned media from credible sources, those are going to improve your business regardless of which AI model is dominant six months from now, 12 months from now, 18 months from now. If the investment only works because of how ChatGPT works in Q2 of 2026, that’s probably a warning sign.

The other test is: does this investment compound its value over time, or does it require a reset every couple of months?

Shortcuts work. Foundations compound. A review earned today is in the training data for the next model update. Content that gets cited once tends to get cited again. First party data gets more valuable as you collect more of it from your customers.

If an investment’s value has to be reinvested every time the platform updates, that’s a shortcut. If it compounds regardless of the platform updates, then you’re building a foundation for success long term.

When you walk into your monthly review or your quarterly review and you’re making the case for the budget you need going forward, you should not be thinking in terms of "we shouldn’t invest in AI." That’s not what I’m saying here.

You should be saying: we should invest in AI the way businesses that survive every platform shift invest. We should be investing in the things that improve our business and compound across every platform, not only in things that work for this particular algorithm or this particular artificial intelligence. One of those has a long-term opportunity for you. One of those means you’re going to keep throwing money after money after money every time the algorithm changes.

When we think about budget categories: expert authored content that earns citations — a hundred percent. Review velocity programs — a hundred percent. First-party data infrastructure — a hundred percent. If we’re talking about people selling you, "you’re going to appear in the AI top every single time" — you might want to take a really close look at that. You might want to start small and test, because maybe they do know something. But you want to make sure you own the result, not just the visibility, before you double down there, before you try to scale this up.

The businesses that I have watched navigate every platform shift without getting captured have all had one thing in common. It’s not that they saw the future first. It’s not that they were smarter than everybody else. It’s just that they never fully gave up the direct relationship with the customer.

They built a long lasting brand platform, a long lasting customer relationship that survived and thrived every time the platforms shifted. They didn’t chase any short term wins at the expense of the long term opportunity.

I have had this exact conversation through the Google updates, through the collapse of reach on social media, with hotels and OTA commissions, and now with AI. Some of this isn’t that I’m predicting the future. I’ve seen this and seen folks get burned by it plenty in the past, including me from time to time.

This is hard won experience. You eventually learn, "hey, maybe we shouldn’t chase the ooh, shiny object, but we should build something of lasting value." The folks I’ve worked with who’ve acted on these conversations and learned from them and applied them — and the folks who aren’t even clients who figured it out on their own — they’re the ones who are doing great and they’re the ones who have options to continue to improve over the long run.

This is not some sophisticated, brand new AI strategy. It’s a 15 year pattern that keeps working no matter who the gatekeeper is next. And ultimately, that’s the place where you want to be.

That conversation was from April, a few weeks before Big Tech’s earnings confirmed every pattern I described.

You and I both know that Google’s search revenue didn’t grow 22% because they got lucky. Amazon didn’t build sponsored prompts by accident.

This is the same game being played by gatekeepers, and you’ve got the same window available to you, at least for now.

Next week, we’re going to get specific — what AI search is doing to your traffic right now and the framework you can use to make sure you’re on the right side of it.

If this episode gave you a bigger picture, a better picture of what the long game looks like in practice and how you can play it more effectively, do me a favor — send it to some colleagues who are currently staring at their 2026 budget and wondering where they should put their money. It might save them and your business from spending it on the wrong things.

You can find the show notes for this episode at timpeter.com/podcast.

And if you’re ready to go deeper on making your brand the answer that AI reaches for every time, my book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, is the roadmap you’re looking for. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening. I genuinely appreciate you. Until next time, please be well, be safe, and be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

The post Big Tech’s Q1 Wasn’t a Surprise — Here’s Why (Digital Reset FOUNDATIONS — Episode 496) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.