The Seven Most Important Lessons from 30 Years in Digital Marketing

Table of Contents:

1. Digital Content Answers Questions
2. Build Authority with E.E.A.T.
3. Structure Website Navigation for AI
4. Publish Content Consistently
5. Own the Middle of Your Sales Marketing Funnel
6. AI as a Marketing Tool, Not a Replacement
7. Align Sales and Marketing Strategies
• Bonus 30-Day Action Plan

I recently ran a test using Claude AI. The goal was to determine the most important marketing lessons learned over 30 years in marketing working with more than 1,000 clients.

The results were eye-opening and worth sharing.

The test started by uploading thousands of pages of my authored content into a Claude project. This included my most recent book, hundreds of articles, dozens of webinars, videos and more.

I then asked Claude to review the content and asked, “What are the seven most important marketing lessons in the age of AI based on my content?” Claude extracted those strategies from my content spanning more than 30 years of marketing and the results were spot on!

Why does this matter?

Knowledge is your most important marketing asset. The age of AI has made sharing your knowledge with your target market non-negotiable.

If you don’t share what you know, your competitors will and those competitors will get the benefit of gaining new customers. I have invested a great deal of time acquiring marketing knowledge and want to share it with you, with the help of Claude.

Sharing thought leadership has many benefits. Marketing leaders who share thought leadership in the early days of AI will reap rewards over the long term.

So I am sharing these insights with you because they are critical to your success in marketing. These strategies impact all industries and markets. Those companies that move fast will gain significant advantages over their competitors.

With the AI marketing revolution in mind, here are the seven most important marketing strategies from 30 years of marketing.

1. Digital Content Answers Questions

If marketing is defined as what you know, then content is the way you express and communicate that knowledge. This is important for so many reasons.

AI has changed how people research and find your brand. Buyer research has evolved into a conversation with AI, mostly through Google’s AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and more. Companies showcasing their thought leadership will be the front runners in the race to get content found by their target market in both AI and Google organic search.

Content that answers questions in a meaningful way gets found in Google search and AI queries. To make this happen, marketers must transition their focus from being subject matter experts to becoming thought leaders. This starts with your marketing mindset.

How Subject Matter Experts Become Thought Leaders

A subject matter expert uses their expertise to solve problems inside the business. A thought leader takes that same expertise and shares it with the market through articles, videos, presentations, and other content that builds trust, establishes credibility, and influences buyers long before the first sales conversation.

You must make the leap from subject matter experts to thought leaders because AI is an answer engine and your marketing must respond to those questions.

Fewer queries people use in Google are showing links to websites. There may be one or two mentions and that is it. In fact, AI often mentions LinkedIn and other websites, before they mention the company website.

The way people buy has evolved.

Early 2000s: Buyers and digital researchers used keywords in a search engine like Google.

From 2010 – 2022: People started using keyword phrases and long-tail searches.

From 2022 to today: Buyers increasingly discover companies by asking AI questions and looking for experts on a topic. in a topic through conversations with AI tools.

This is the evolution of buyer research and it will continue to accelerate on this path as people get more comfortable using AI and with AI agents to come.

The good news is AI is hungry for content from thought leaders. It ignores brochure copy and wants to cite experts in the field in all industries. Marketers must know the questions your prospective buyers ask in their research and answer those questions with detailed and highly valuable digital content on your website, in social media and in your email marketing efforts.

A great place to start is the content on your website. Make sure to answer these questions on your service and product pages of your website:

• How your service or product actually works – in detail
• What benefits the buyer gets targeting your buyer personas
• How to get started, buy or engage, along with how to contact your company
• The implementation and onboarding process
• FAQs buyers actually ask based on sales calls – AI loves this type of content

Action Plan: Include FAQs throughout your website and identify your top 5 buyer questions this week. Build a section for each on your key website product and services pages.

2. Build Content Authority with E.E.A.T.

Google introduced the world to the concept of E.E.A.T. a few years ago and it is now a core function of great marketing, so much more than SEO guidelines. It answers that question: How do you define thought leadership?

Thought leaders must build their digital content around E.E.A.T. It’s not just what Google wants, it’s what AI is forcing thought leaders to do.

I have written a lot on this topic and you can find a few links here:

E.E.A.T and SEO Low Hanging Fruit

How AI Search Works: LLMs, Vector Databases and Cosine Similarity Explained

SEO Isn’t Dead — But the Funnel Has Changed Forever

How AI & Google are Changing Buyer Behavior (YouTube video)

Pillars of Thought Leadership

Here’s what E.E.A.T. stands for.

Expertise – Deep domain knowledge visible in every piece of digital content you publish.

Experience – Strong case studies, client stories and first-hand perspective and experiences that AI can’t create.

Authority – Board seats, associations, media citations, published articles, speaking roles and related credentials.

Trust – Transparent pricing, clear processes, named authors, long form team bios, external reviews and content that describes your company and its offerings.

You can use AI prompts to make a clear connection between E.E.A.T. and your thought leadership. Think of yourself as an SEO and marketing content strategist and use AI prompts to ask questions. Here is a great prompt: review my company’s website and identify where we demonstrate Google’s E.E.A.T. signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Here is a great follow-up prompt: for each area of E.E.A.T. recommend five thought leadership content topics that would strengthen our content. Use AI prompts to improve your website’s E.E.A.T. for both humans and AI.

The enemy of effective E.E.A.T. is not sharing your knowledge. In the age of AI, if you don’t share what you know, someone else will and they will gain the benefits in their marketing results.

3. Structure Your Website Navigation for AI

Your website navigation is your business organized for the world to see and AI to navigate.

It’s easy to ignore this or not give it the required attention. Don’t ignore this key element of digital marketing. Think about it strategically and from the perspective of your website user and AI. Remember, we are marketing to people and machines. Machines look for structure and people look for ease of use.

Here are the most important elements of your website navigation structure:

Products & Services: Anything people buy from your company gets its own page with deep, question-answering content. Avoid generic content and brochure copy.

Resources Section: Blogs, eBooks, webinars, case studies and more are included here and should all be attributed to named authors. This is your thought leadership library.

About Us: Team bios with credentials, the company history, how it works, industries served, board memberships, media appearances and content that describes your company. These web pages are now AI trust signals. This page will often show up in AI queries.

Contact Us: Clear, simple conversion paths allowing people to contact you using their preferred method. Include a contact form, phone number, email, address and keep direct and simple.

Homepage Tagline: Replace generic taglines (“innovative solutions”) with specific outcomes: “We reduce manufacturing downtime by 30%.” Your homepage is your first impression at the top of the sales funnel and your homepage tagline is perhaps the most important marketing content at your company.

Many companies make the mistake of organizing their website navigation structure from their internal perspective. Create a navigation structure that works for your target market, keep it simple, direct and written in the language of your customers.

4. Publish Content Consistently

One of the biggest marketing mistakes we see is companies not publishing content on a regular basis. This usually happens because there are no professional writers on the marketing team. If you are not in the habit of writing content on a regular basis, you must contract those tasks to professional writers who can interview your thought leaders and write on any topic.

A scheduled stream of digital content is very important for the top and middle of your sales funnel. This is where you attract buyers to your brand and encourage them to identify themselves instead of remaining anonymous.

Here are a few examples digital content you must publish on a regular schedule:

Blogs for Your Website – Target at least one blog per month and use real experts at your company with the support of contracted writers as needed.

Social Media Posts – Avoid fluff and brochure copy and focus on content that gets people’s attention using the social channels where you can find your target market.

Email Newsletters – Monthly newsletters loaded with thought leadership content that allows people to research your products and services in their email inboxes. You can reach people before they research in Google, if your emails are value-added and consistent.

Webinars and Podcasts – Regular training sessions that help people perform better at their jobs or get value will drive results and engagement.

Videos – Many people prefer watching videos to reading long articles and use video to get information. Convert your digital content to video using AI tools like HeyGen.

eBooks and Guides – Compare and contrast your products and services with your competitors and use longform content to go deeper into specific industry topics. Allow people to download your thought leadership eBooks in exchange for an email.

All of this content and more can live in the resources section of your website. Work with investigative writers who will interview your experts and thought leaders to write meaningful content.

5. Own the Middle of Your Sales and Marketing Funnel

Regular content helps support the middle of the funnel. This is where major growth happens and is the part of the funnel most ignored by marketing teams. It is hard work to grow the middle parts of the funnel, but the payoff is worth it!

Develop a strategy to strengthen this part of your funnel and convert anonymous researchers into contacts you can nurture over time.

Why mid-funnel matters more in the age of AI: Buyers arrive at your website already educated by AI. They’ve compared options. They’re ready to engage and not only browse.

AI-powered website chatbots are mid-funnel marketing assets: Answer visitor questions 24/7 with intelligent AI chatbots trained with your content and your sales process.

Email newsletter subscriptions: Capture buyers mid-research and follow-up with them. Deliver consistent thought leadership that keeps your brand top-of-mind in your target market’s email inbox.

Webinars & downloadable content: Gate valuable resources for lead capture by gathering emails in exchange for free content. This is a mid-funnel conversion workhorse.

Measure conversions, not just traffic: Traffic to websites continues to decline as AI intercepts top-of-funnel researchers. This makes your website visitor more important than ever. Track quality: leads, chatbot conversations, downloads, form fills and movement in the funnel. This data is now more important to grow and track than website traffic.

6. Use AI as a Marketing Tool, Not a Replacement for Great Marketing

AI is a tool people use to perform better at their jobs. I’m not sure why we don’t hear about this in the media and on social networks more often. It really is a simple solution from an unbelievably powerful tool.

Maybe we don’t hear about this because it is a bit boring, but it is also very true.

People who use AI to be better at marketing will move faster and get more done. AI does not replace good marketers, it accelerates what people can do.

This is also true of how to use AI to approach thought leadership in your marketing. Do not use AI to write content, use it for content ideas and strategies.

This is especially true in marketing. If you are not using AI in marketing, you are getting left behind. AI allows you to better know your customers, prepare content that attracts them to your brand and move fast on marketing initiatives.

What AI Can Do

• AI is a force multiplier and not a replacement for expertise
• Use AI to research your buyer in minutes, not weeks or months
• Use AI to find content gaps on your website
• Use AI to create first drafts and then edit with your authentic voice

What Humans Must Do

• Human-authored content outperforms AI-only content in AI citations
• Your unique experience and insights cannot be replicated
• Only a subject matter expert can ask AI the right questions
• People who use AI well will replace those who don’t

7. Align Sales and Marketing Strategies

In our book, Sales and Marketing Alignment, Karl Becker and I explained the importance of aligning sales and marketing and how to achieve business growth by building synergies between marketing and sales teams.

The book was published before the emergence of ChatGPT. AI has made the book’s strategies and approaches more important than ever.

A major problem with your funnel: Fewer buyers enter through traditional top-of-funnel channels. Sales conversations are now more valuable than ever and in some cases may be the only way to connect with new buyers.

What sales knows that marketing needs: Salespeople know the real buyer objections, the exact questions buyers ask, the language that resonates best with buyers. Feed this information into your marketing and content strategies.

What marketing knows that sales needs: What information advances deals, what AI surfaces about competitors and where buyers are getting stuck. They story told by digital marketing data.

The alignment mandate: Sales and marketing teams should meet weekly and share insights. Build a shared content plan tied directly to pipeline stages from dialogue with both current customers and prospective buyers.

The bottom line: Organizations aligning sales and marketing teams will thrive in the age of AI. Teams that stay siloed will struggle to compete, move slow and miss opportunities for growth.

Next Steps

These are seven practical marketing strategies required for your marketing to be viable in the age of AI and in the years to come. Those organizations moving faster on these strategies will gain major advantages. The most effective marketing strategies are often the simplest and common sense. They are not flashy or sexy, because common sense works best in marketing.

If you only get one thing from this blog post, remember this: Knowledge is your greatest marketing asset.

Make the transition from subject matter expert to thought leader and act on it by producing digital content of value.

Put These Ideas Into Practice

We’ve turned these ideas into 30-Day Marketing Action Plan you can use with your team:

Your 30-Day Action Plan

The following 30-day roadmap will help you strengthen your marketing one week at a time.

Week 1

• Audit your company website and find the generic brochure copy
• List your top 10 buyer questions and connect them to your key benefits
• Identify your key thought leaders and transition your team from subject matter experts to thought leaders

Week 2

• Build at least two answer-engine website pages
• Attribute all blogs to named authors and thought leaders
• Update About page with credentials to your thought leaders

Week 3

• Schedule thought leadership interviews with contracted writers
• Launch an email newsletter if not already running
• Find content gaps on your website and in social media using AI tools

Week 4

• Publish two attributed pieces of content on your website and link to them in social media
• Schedule and hold sales and marketing alignment meetings
• Review, track and focus on website conversions and funnel movements