The Best SEO Podcast
AI-Driven Visibility. Real-World Impact.
Getting found, named and cited by AI search.
Running since 2009. Over 5 million downloads. The same question the whole time: what is actually working right now, and what only sounds like it is.
Matthew Bertram hosts. He owns and leads EWR Digital in Houston, so none of this is theory. It is what he is seeing in client work every week.
The shift is not that buyers use AI. It is that a model now decides which companies get mentioned at all, and most executives cannot see whether theirs is one of them. Ranking was something you could measure. Being named is not, yet, and that gap is where the risk sits.
Every week: operators, analysts and specialists who have run the thing they are talking about. What still works, what quietly stopped working, and what to do on Monday.
If you run a marketing team, run a company, or you are building your own name, this one is for you. Because if the models cannot find you, your buyers will not either.
The show explains it. EWR Digital does it. Get a free AI visibility audit at ewrdigital.com/ai-visibility-audit, or find more from Matthew at matthewbertram.com.
The Best SEO Podcast
Personal Branding For AI Search
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We talk with Karen Tiber Leland about how AI search changes personal branding, rebranding, and what it takes to stay findable when machines summarize the internet for your customers. We break down how to pick a canonical name, reduce mixed signals across channels, and decide whether you need a full rebrand or a focused re-up.
• Choosing one canonical form of your name and using it everywhere to reduce identity collision
• Buying the right domain and cleaning up scattered online data for better AI and Google understanding
• Defining rebrand versus re-up and spotting the different ways brands drift
• Cutting noise in messaging so AI can classify your expertise with confidence
• Why specialization is coming back and why “everybody” is not a target market
• How executive branding impacts trust for investors, clients, and employees
• Handling public criticism as a leader and planning for the crisis continuum
• Brand refresh pressure points for new brands versus legacy companies that feel behind
• Industries most disrupted by AI and how service firms can adapt without losing trust
• Disclosing how you use AI and keeping humans in the loop for quality and accountability
• The micro changes worth watching, including pricing transparency and AI-driven discoverability
• Where to find Karen, including KarenLeland.com and SterlingMarketingGroup.com and her book Brand Mapping Strategy
Guest Contact Information:
Website: sterlingmarketinggroup.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/karenleland
More from EWR and Matthew:
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Free SEO Consultation: www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call
With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online.
Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of the LLM Visibility® Stack, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability.
Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve.
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Cold Open And Show Setup
SPEAKER_00This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started.
Name Collisions And Canonical Identity
SPEAKER_01Audi, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matthew Bertram or Matt Bertram. And I know I've mentioned that before and how there's been kind of name collision out there and how important it is to understand your brand personally as well as your business online. And someone that I've been circling for a while, that uh we finally connected, and I've got her on the show. She's worked with some major brands. Uh, she's a personal brand consultant, a rebranding expert for some of the biggest businesses in the space. She's been doing this a long time. Karen Timber Leland, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. It's Tiber, by the way. Tiber, sorry. No worries.
SPEAKER_01We were just talking about that too. And what we were actually talking about previously, about uh how important in the age of AI it is to make sure that there is consistency uh in your name. And uh I've been talking about, I've gone by Matt Bertram for a long time. I own the domain Matthew Bertram. I'm going by Matthew Bertram. I had books titled that. I've been listed as different things, different titles as time progresses. And, you know, trying to help AI understand that, as well as I have actually a number of other people out there with my name. And one person is actually in the same space as me. So I'm dealing with a lot of like brand challenges. And I know, you know, you you've kind of seen this and dealt with this yourself.
SPEAKER_02It's not, it's crazy because it's not unusual because it's amazing how many people have the same name. I mean, even there are other Karen Lelands out there. That's one reason I went to Karen Tiber Leland was to start distinguishing. So, I mean, one thing I will say is you do the bigger point here is you do have to teach Google and AI who you are by consistency across the internet, because that's how it knows you, not just by your name, by what you do, by what your expertise is. It's like one mistake people make, and I'm sorry, I think you've made it, is you really want to pick one canonical form of your name and don't vary it. So, do you have if you have a middle name, do you have a middle name?
SPEAKER_01I I do, you know, Robert, like so. People, not that's not my middle name, but like people that go by Robert or Rob or Doug, right? People that have all these different names have issues. One of the things that I did do at the beginning because I couldn't buy my domain, I was actually able to recently buy it a couple years ago, but I I added Matt Bertram Live. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And so a lot of my hands on that will work, but yeah, but you know, also you could do Matthew R. Bertram, Matt R. Bertram. The chances are somebody probably doesn't have that, and so uh yeah, it's actually an S.
SPEAKER_01Sorry, I was so confused. I I confused you. It it my middle my middle name for just uh the AIs and uh uh is Steven. So Matthew Steven, but but yeah, I I agree with you. I should have done that before I got it.
SPEAKER_02Well, you can still you can still do it, but it's so really doing a middle-ish name or a middle a minute middle initial is kind of the cheapest way to differentiate, and it only works if you do it everywhere: your byline, your LinkedIn, your speakers bureau, your book jacket, your email, like you've got to be consistent, which is why when I got divorced, instead of I because I couldn't let Leland go because my all my books and stuff were Leland. So now I've been transitioning it to Karen Tiber Leland. That's the way I've been starting to distinguish it. So that's my that's my little bit of advice for if your name is a name a million other people have.
SPEAKER_01And and I would encourage everybody to go out there and buy their domain if you don't have a hundred percent. Yep. And I again, I cannot believe how many people that there are that have this same name as me. True, and it it's it's really shocking out there. And if you go search your name, you'll kind of see where you stand. And some people have such a unique name that the knowledge graph picks it up, it's no problem, like it's very clear. But like if you've changed titles, if you've changed companies, all that information is scattered out there online, and there's kind of a data hygiene issue that companies as well as individuals really should start to consider and and really clean it up. And the more common your name is, the more kind of challenges you're gonna have with collision, right?
SPEAKER_02And and because now what happens is AI, when it was just SEO, SEO would give you a thing, you would click through, and you could make your assessment as the customer, right? Now it's AI is between you and that customer, and AI is in a way giving the customer the answers. So the customer isn't going to these locations online and finding the answer, AI is giving them the answer. So if you haven't trained AI about what the answer is for you, you're you're really gonna have a problem being findable. And being findable is the very first thing you have to do when you're branding
Rebrand Versus Re-Up Explained
SPEAKER_02today.
SPEAKER_01So I would love to hear from you, like with kind of all the things that have changed to build a brand a day from scratch, and then the difference between like rebranding, maybe like there's a there's there's a lot more considerations if you're a company, say and you're rebranding. Because I I I'm seeing a lot of roll-ups happen, and you know, people are changing their website, and then there's you know link equity or equity issues based on the the brand strength, uh authority, trust, and then people that are starting from zero, and sometimes it's kind of like building a house. Like, do you do you demo the house and start over?
SPEAKER_02Do you tear down? Do you tear down or just remodel the kitchen? Well, here's the thing. And you know, I've been in the business of rebrand, personal branding, and then rebranding with companies for more than 20 years. And here's what I found. In the old days, a company would look every five to seven years, let's say, 10 years, and they'd go, huh, does our brand still fit? Do we need to change it? What do we need to do? And by brand, I don't just mean their look. I mean the whole thing, right? The messaging, the marketing, the look, the logo. The problem is we live in an environment now where there's lots and lots of what I would call micro changes in the market, right? And those micro changes can happen from month to month. They're not even necessarily a year-to-year thing, right? There's all these micro changes in the market. A rebrand is when you're really starting over. You're going, you know what? Either we made a mistake and we need to just tell the truth and totally rebrand, or we didn't make a mistake, but the brand we had just doesn't fit anymore in total, and we need to really start over. That's what a rebrand is. A re-up, which is, you know, that's the next book that I'm that's coming out, hopefully next year, but we'll see. Uh, but you know, the the book I'm working on now about re-upping your brand, re-upping is more like it's not so much that you're starting over, it's that you've you've what you've done has worked and now you've outgrown it. You know, there's some places in which what I call this is your brand has drifted. You know, there's a whole chapter in the book about seven ways your brand has drifted because brands drift in very different ways. Some brands drift visually, like they just don't look good anymore. Like the way the logo and the colors and the style is is old, right? It isn't up to market. Other brands drift in their messaging, the way they talk about themselves. Other brands, quite frankly, drift in their product. Their product is behind and isn't what it used to be. Other brands drift in the way that they're marketing, other brands drift in how they're communicating to their audience. So a re-up is more about, it's not a seismic change. It's more about looking at where are we? What are those microchanges in the markets? And then what do we need to adjust in our brand to keep on track with the market and where we want to be? That's the difference between a rebrand and a re-up.
SPEAKER_01So for everybody listening, I'm just nodding my head. So everything that Karen's saying is is um in in full agreement. I I can even tell you personally, we've started to evolve our messaging and and who we target and who we offer, and and that's happening on different channels at different times. So we've started to evolve our our branding, and also like I've there's been big changes. Like I've I've bought out my partners at EWR Digital. So now I've taken over the company and I'm planning on taking a new direction. We we've changed the name a few times, but we're going through a website rebrand. We've already started the social media, the website, like we got to get the new website launched, like, and it's got to catch up. And AI is in indexing, right? It's indexing LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, you know, uh other other platforms as well. And there's a drift, right, in in in the messaging. Um, and you you have to have continuity, or that actually affects your ranking and what you uh show on your person and how you're getting distributed. And so there's a lot of these like considerations that I think companies are are looking at things two-dimensionally, and now it's it's full three 360 view of what's happening and what's going to happen based on where you are and where you're trying to go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's a really important point because even those of us that are in the business, like you and I, right? Like for me, I just redid, I just re-upped my website. I didn't start over. I did it's my website, it's mine, but there were too many messages on there, and it was confusing AI and it was confusing Google, and it wasn't giving me the strongest points for what I do, which is personal branding and rebranding, right? So those two things, so I reorganized my website to be much more about those two things. And there are there other things I do that are tangential to that. You know, yes, I'm a color consultant. Companies as part of branding off me bring bring in to do colors, but I don't have that stuff on my website anymore in that way because it was confusing the AI, and that's not what I want to do. I want to be found for personal branding and rebranding because those are essentially the two things that I'm really an expert in. And so it really requires being on top of it. And you know, it's it's not that it's hard, it just takes vigilance.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, so when when what you're talking about is again something I'm going through as well. And you got like I'm I'm taking a lot of analytics on what's happening with these changes, and some of this data, there's nothing historical, like like there was nothing to reference what was happening. So it's been through through trial and error, and it's like if you start to evolve outside of a category that that AI has designated, you will start to like lose visibility and ranking. Correct. So you have to match what you're showing up for and how you're showing up. And like the the thing that I even said last podcast that I think is relevant here is you got to focus on that signal and get rid of the noise so AI has a better job. Correct. Bigger.
SPEAKER_02That's a great, that is a great analogy because it is like a signal, and it's like if the signal is not clear and there's fuzz and there's interference, and it's it is really hard for AI to pick up on that. You have to be very clear. This is who I am, this is what I offer, this is my expertise. You know, whether it's that you've got the best black summer dresses on the planet, or whether it's you're the best, you know, marketing person. It doesn't matter. You have to be really clear on what that messaging is and get rid of all the noises you just said. But here's the trick you have to do it across the board. So your LinkedIn,
Signal Over Noise Across Channels
SPEAKER_02your podcasts, your books, your website, every piece of content you put out, you got to hit that same branding and messaging every time so that it knows what you are.
SPEAKER_01So so two points about that, really quick that that I've found personally that I think are valuable to everyone listening is is first, if you're too if you drift too far with your messages, AI won't know if it's the exact same company and won't have confidence, so it won't show it. And so there's an issue with your your own brand like fighting with each other because it doesn't know what to show, so it's not gonna really go, okay, this is the right answer, let me show it, because there's there's a trust barometer and won't go into all the details there. One of the things that I've found, this is something I haven't shared. I probably should put it together in a study, but essentially, like if you're trying to get that message out there and you're talking about, okay, what is the doorway in of how I want people to find us? If you keep your headers and your meta descriptions in the proper categories, you can then evolve the messaging on the page. And how kind of the chunking happens with the LLMs and also the historical reference, if it can grab that and read that, it can help you kind of evolve that messaging for you without losing like what you've done historically.
SPEAKER_02I agree. And the trick is you got to have the those major messages on the website and the subheadings really be in the right category. And what's hard about that, one is that people have to make a choice, but two, people don't want to be limited in what they say. It's like that thing about who's your client? It's everybody. Well, it's not everybody. People and me too, by the way, I go through this as well. People don't want to be limited because then they felt, well, then I'm gonna miss out on this section of the business, or then I'm gonna miss out on that customer. But the truth is, is that we're really going back to an error with all of this AI of specialization. I think. I think we're going back to it, won't just be, oh, that person's a good branding person. It's no, that person's a branding strategist and their expertise is personal branding, or their expertise is rebranding, or their expertise is retail branding. I think we're going in heading in that direction.
SPEAKER_01Uh so so I was at an agency conference that was there was like a questionnaire that went out, and that that was a a trend that they were seeing as well. And it and it really makes sense, right? Like you're trying to say I'm an expert in everything. Nobody's an ex like you can't be, right? Like there, there's gonna be things you're better at, force rank versus other things, and you might do everything and you might be good at more than one thing, but that's only it's evaluating the authority, expertise, trust, and experience you have to to kind of weight those things exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so yeah, and it and it and in a way it's limiting, but in a way, it opens all the doors for you because by limiting the options, more of the doors open for the right customers who want exactly what you do to find you and realize oh, that person has exactly what I want.
SPEAKER_01I that's what I've been telling my sales team. I'm like, look, this is the deal you know you want that we're really good at. Here's here's where we can really shine and help. And yeah, we can do those other things, but you're getting distracted to build like a very customized bespoke deal that's going to drain a lot of time that's not the really right fit for what we do. Correct. Let's get the messaging, the outreach, like everything that we're doing to align with that because that is our our bread and butter and and the right customer that we're expert at. So why don't we make ourselves more known and get more of those deals and then everybody wins?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that's and that is, and that's I think where this is going. And I think that's what people have to start to really recognize and then do the hard work of figuring out well, what is our brand? What is the entry to the door? What is our messaging? How are we doing at having consistency with that messaging across the board? Where do we need to re-up it? Where do we need to fine-tune it? Where do we need to shift it based on those marker, those micro changes in the market? And you know, that's that's work. And every what I find is because I CEOs say this to me all the time. They like bring me in to help them do a big like rebrand or a re-up or you know, uh, and then they go, I don't have the time. And I'm like, look, you can't have both. You can't get it done and not take the time to do it. I got a client who I love, they're they're fantastic. Um, and they asked me to do a big PR thing for them to get them out there more, right? Not just for SEO, not just for AI, but also just for like being able to have more marketing out there for them. And so I did a really good job on the PR as I always do. And I would call the CEO and go, okay, this person wants to interview you. I don't have time. This person wants an article, I don't have time. This guy wants you on his podcast, I don't have time. And finally, I said, Dave, look, the PR is not any good if when it comes in, a reporter isn't gonna go, okay, well, I'll wait a week and a half till he's not busy. I go, I you have to get these people move on super fast. Like I get that email about they want to interview you. I call you, you gotta say yes or no within an hour, and I got to get back to them. Like, we've got to be on it. And to his credit, he finally got it and has started getting on top of it. Not because by the way, he's a bad person or not caring. He's just like everybody so busy that he doesn't really understand and people don't understand. It's a big commitment to really do this. Now, the rewards, once you've got it rolling, are fantastic, but on the front end, it is a lot of work. I mean, even for myself, you know, like I just because I've always been an artist just on the side. I mean, I've done art shows and been an artist and sold work. It's not how I make my living, it's not how I want to make my living, but I realized, okay, it's time for me to have an art website. You know, now I'm an expert, not in the programming, but in the branding and the designing. Uh, Matthew, it took me months, months of working on planes, getting a little in here, getting in the alert to finally get my art website up, right? So it's like all the upfront work was there. But now that it's up, when I want to apply for like an art thing, it's so easy to do because I did all the upfront work, but the upfront work took months. And I think that's the part people either don't understand, don't like, or feel a conflict about.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's funny because the the thing that makes you unique or your business unique, you have to define that. That can't be like a pre-packaged off the shelf. No, and so that takes a lot of time to distill that. What and one of the things you were saying about um, you know, the the PR work, what I've seen is like the follow-on after a big PR piece, it is really beneficial, but you gotta be ready. There's a 24-hour news cycle. Like, if you don't jump on that stuff, you miss it. So you you gotta you gotta have the bandwidth to be able to have it. Um, where I would love to take this conversation is is you talked about executive branding and then company branding. And I would like to talk like enterprise branding. I would love for you to kind of paint um uh like a framework or or a roadmap for how executives need to think about personal branding as well as like how it interacts with our company. So, like six, seven years ago, I wrote a book about how I kind of think that a small business owner can attract new business through social media. Their personal brand. Their personal brand, but but like fast forward six years, like there's been a there's like bigger companies, executives at you know, Fortune 500 is like I would love to evolve that conversation to start talking about enterprise and how that might be different than the small business owner. And and you've had that experience. So I love to kind of hear your frameworks.
Executive Branding Drives Enterprise Trust
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, the interesting thing is if you look at the research, it is so clear that, like a lot of the Edelman Trust surveys, if you look at the Edelman Trust surveys, they really clearly show a link between people, potential customers, customers, clients, understanding the CEO's brand and how that impacts their feeling about the enterprise brand. There is a no question, an unbelievably clear connection at this point in time between those two things. So, one thing is I think CEOs and executives of enterprise companies have started to realize, okay, there's a real connection here that has real impact on three groups, invest or four groups, investors, potential investors, current clients, potential clients, and employees and future employees.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02So your brand as a CEO or as an executive in an enterprise is hugely important towards impacting those groups, those audiences, right? So that's one thing. I think people have gotten hip to that and realized that. But I think the other thing that's happened is executives realize they may not be with that company for 20 years, right? It's not like the old days. That company might get bought by somebody else. That company may go out of business. Who knows? That if their brand, their personal brand isn't on the forefront, they're gonna find themselves going, oh, I need to get a new gig and I have no brand. And now they got to start from zero and you know, run it up. It's much better to have a longer runway of that personal brand if you ever need it personally. So I think it's I think it's a dual function. I think it's that it helps them in their own career and business life, but I also think they're starting to see it's really impactful on the enterprise. And so both of those roads are what lead to Rome. You know, both of those roads are why a personal brand is really critical for an executive or a CEO.
SPEAKER_01I I agree, I agree a hundred percent. I I see it, and and we're seeing a lot of the big tech, right? Like CEOs build that personal brand, write that book. And I mean, it moves markets. I agree, employee retention, uh, as well as client retention. Attention, like you're you're doing the whole job, like from kind of a PR standpoint. Man, I I also feel like it's a big double-edged sword, too, because if someone missteps, it's so public. And then, like, I mean, like Elon Musk, for example, I mean, I I think he's brilliant, but man, his his stock price of his companies go up and down.
SPEAKER_02He's had a he's had a few missteps. You know, that that's a very interesting point because every once in a while I'll get a CEO who will call me and go, I'm really concerned. Uh, we need to address X, Y, or Z. I need to personally say something about it on social, but I'm worried that there's gonna be some people are gonna take it the wrong way. And I said, do my here's always my response: don't spend any time worrying that someone's gonna take it the wrong way. I guarantee you someone's gonna take it the wrong way. Like there is no such thing in the world we live in as the safety of putting something out, no matter how innocuous you think it is, that someone somewhere won't get offended by it or take it the wrong way. I have a client, right? CEO of a nonprofit. You have net, she's an angel. I mean, you have never met a kinder, more considerate, more non-judgmental, loving, kind human being in your entire life. And I don't know, she did some post on something that was completely loving, supportive, whatever, and she got a few people that got offended by it, right? And she was like, This makes no sense to me. And I said, No, because it makes no sense. Because if you put something out today, I guarantee you someone will take it the wrong way, misunderstand it. There's just no way around that. You know, if you if you're gonna worry about that, I'm not saying you shouldn't be conscientious and careful. You should. You should be thoughtful as a CEO or an executive about what you put out there. But if you're gonna be like, I don't ever want anything negative for anybody to interpret anything, forget it. Just don't even, just don't even plan on being public because it just won't happen. I guarantee you there are people listening to this conversation that you and I are having that will be offended by something we've said, right?
SPEAKER_01And think it's just horrible. Everybody has different perspectives. The algorithm, what's interesting with the data, the algorithm is is trying to put you in an echo chamber and it's trying to sift people out, which causes uh a lot of people that that do have disagreement. One of the things that you were saying was interesting, there was a it was a couple years ago, Domino's Pizza. I don't know if you remember when the CEO went on TV and read read the reviews publicly of what people are saying. I mean, that was like everybody told him like, I mean, no, don't do that. And he owned it, and he's like, This is what people are saying. Pizza tastes like cardboard, we're gonna redo the whole thing, and even like Burger King, the you know, the the king versus you're the king, the right they had.
SPEAKER_02I mean, people and compare that, compare that to the way Taylor Farms has handled this whole lettuce snafu, right? So, you know, there's and and that isn't to say, by the way, crises happen, despite everyone's best intentions or not, crises happen. So you have to be able to know how to handle things in a crisis and recover, right? But there's a difference between a crisis and people just some people getting upset about something that they didn't like or thought it was the wrong thing. So, you know, there's a there's a continuum, and on the low end of the continuum is you misspoke or somebody misunderstood. And on this end of the continuum is you really handled, you really stepped in it. You know, it's like cracker barrel, they're a good example of really stepping in it, and then having to walk it back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're this conversation. We're gonna not go further down this path because then people will definitely get offended because I got a couple ideas of brands that that misstepped in in some certain areas that fair enough, that were the very public, but uh maybe offline conversation or guys, green room. I was gonna launch like a green room, like the conversation.
SPEAKER_02I like that idea. Oh, I like that idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like I have after the camera goes off or before are always like the best conversations, right? And they're like, you don't get that. Love it, but um, I would love to hear.
Brand Refresh Pressure And Stakeholders
SPEAKER_01Um, I feel like today a lot of businesses are thinking about doing like a brand refresh or re-up um or full-on brands launching. I'm seeing a lot of online brands launch on social media, like from zero to to to nothing. Like, and uh I've seen it in in the consumer space. I I'm just curious, like when you're in the room in those conversations, what are the things that they're thinking about?
SPEAKER_02And what are the things that you've seen that like they need to be thinking about that they might not be uh you know that that depends if they are a brand that's been existing for a while and they're doing fine, but they realize there are these micro changes in the markets and sometimes macro changes in the markets, and they need to address them, versus if they're starting right from from nothing and they're building up, versus if they realize, man, we are just either made a huge mistake and really need to rebrand, or we've we've ridden this wave for 30 years and we're it's done and we need to really create a new focus of our company, right? So the conversations shift a little bit, and one of the things that shifts is the pressure point. So if you're a new company and you're starting out, you don't really feel a lot of pressure because nothing exists. You're creating it from new, right? But if you are on the other end of that spectrum, you've been in business. Like I have a client right now, they've been in business for 30 years, and their brand is really old. The whole thing, the messages, the look, the website, it's all old, right? Yeah, and so they feel more pressure because there's all these people nipping at their heels coming up, and they're like, wow, we better, we better get caught up quick. So they feel a lot of pressure. Okay. Then you have people in the middle where they go, you know what, we just need to re-up. We don't want to rebrand, we just need to re-up, we need to refresh. They feel some pressure to do it, but they don't feel that same pressure that people who are like really, really behind do. And the problem when you're really one of the conversations in the room when you're at that far end of the spectrum where you're really, really behind and you have to do a total rebrand, is they want to do it quickly. So they have they really tend to want to make decisions fast. Like we got to get this done, we got to write the book, we've got to redo the website. And of course, let me just tell you that always ends up with them making a mistake that then they have to redo again. So it's like that thing about it's you know, measure twice, cut once.
SPEAKER_01Cut once. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's like I always one of the conversations I always have in the room is I know you feel this pressure, but don't allow you this pressure to have you make a mistake that you're just gonna have to redo down the line again. Like, let's do it right the first time. So I think that's one of the big conversations that I end up in with in the room.
SPEAKER_01So when you're in the room, like who are the different stakeholders and where where does the pressure come from? Because like I would think like CFOs kind of like, we don't do we really need to do that.
SPEAKER_02And then IT is like, uh, you know, you know, it depends on the company, but most of who hires me are the CEOs, the chief marketing officer, or the CEO, because they have realized they have to do this and they're driving the project. So they've said to the chief financial officer, we are going to budget X amount of dollars for this, right? We are going to budget this amount of time for this. We are going to do this, and everybody's gonna get with it. So it's usually the CEO is in the room, usually the CMO is in the room. Uh, usually if there's a head of um like a head of product development or something, they're usually in the room. Um, it's funny, the CFOs often are not in the room till after they've hired me, and now I'm presenting the plan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I I you know it it I guess it depends on the size of the company. Yes, it does. It does. If you have partners, right? Like it's at a company that has partners, like different have people have different opinions.
SPEAKER_02And I have a client right now who has partners, and my work started with all the partners, and all like the initial assessment was with all the partners, the offsite was with all the partners. I presented the plan to all the partners, all the partners had to buy in, you know. So the CEO's there, but I had to really do it with the CEO and all the partners a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah,
AI Disruption And Honest Disclosure
SPEAKER_01I would I would love to hear kind of what industries do you see having like the most need to change, maybe with everything with AI? Like, there's a lot of businesses, I feel like, like you just said, that have been the market leader, right? They've been the market leader for a long time, and now there's all these line extensions, there's other people kind of taking parts of the value chain, and and these big businesses that had this big mode of trust in their name, and and like some of these platforms online and and websites, like I'm I can name names that of businesses I deal with.
SPEAKER_02I'm like your financial trading platform needs to get updated, it needs to get updated, and and yeah. So my honest answer to that question is given the world we live in, we first of all, given the world we live in, everyone needs to be thinking about what are the re-ups they need to do on their brand every year. You know, what are those tweaks that people need to do? And maybe it's just a tweak to your messaging, maybe it's a tweak to your social, maybe it's a tweak to how it looks. Like everyone needs to be asked. I mean, to be honest, that's why I wrote this next book, you know, re-up your brand, which isn't out yet but is is written and we're, you know, it's in the process. It's because it got clear to me that everybody, regardless of if they're a one-person business or a Fortune 500 enterprise company, needs to, and everything in between needs to be asking that self that question because that's the world we live in, right? So that's kind of one answer. But the other answer is there are some industries that are really hit pretty hard. And I will say that one of them I think is um is retail. I think retail has changed so dramatically that if you're not on top of what is going on and where you need to rebrand and re-up in retail, you're just you just get behind. I mean, you know, Sears filing for bankruptcy. I mean, there's so many examples, right? So I think that's that's one place. The other place that I think is really interesting is legal tax accounting and consulting. Like my field of consulting, I feel like majorly, because structurally, we're the worst positioned because efficiency with AI directly cannibalizes revenue. You know, AI makes work faster, it threatens revenue, especially if pricing is dependent on ours build. And, you know, like 78% of clients today or corporate clients are saying AI's enabled like quality improvements. So, you know, providers as a provider, like those marketing agencies, as service agencies, you know, we have got to really come to grips with that there's things that we used to do that AI can do. There's things it can't do, and there's places where we still need to work in partnership with AI. But I think legal services businesses, right? Legal, tax, accounting, consulting, marketing, agencies. I think we're big industries that are ripe for these kinds of reinventions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and one of the things that uh I've seen in the data is that they don't necessarily want stuff for less, they just want more for the same cost. Correct.
SPEAKER_02They want more efficiency. They want more efficiency, you know, and it's interesting because I I use AI in my work, but I always tell my clients, here's exactly how I'm using AI. You know, I'm using it like this, I'm not using like this. Like it's interesting because my for my my artist website that I just put up, right? I didn't want to spend $10,000 with a web designer. It's not a business business that I make a lot, you know what I'm saying? It's more like a hobby, it's like a side gig. So I want to spend that kind of money. Now I'm not a programmer either, so I knew I need my guy to program. So here's what I did. Because I'm a brand strategist, because I'm a color strategist, because I'm a writer, right? Because I already have my logo and all of that. I worked with AI to design all the landing pages for my website. You know, it's like I art directed AI instead of art directing a person. And I'd give it what I wanted, it would come back and I'd go, no, do this, move that here, make this like that, till I got every single landing page I wanted, which I wrote. It used all of my design work. Then I said, put it in an HTML, then I gave it to my programmer and I said, Great, can you go build me a website? So it it he still got work. It was fast for him. He made good money on the short amount of time it took him, but that's the way that like I used AI. So it's not that we don't use AI in those businesses. It's that what's the way we're using them? Being disclosing 100% to the client the way we're using them. I think that's so important. Like my clients have asked me straight out, are you using AI to write any of this? And I'll say, yes, but I don't just give it to AI and ask it to write it. I interview you, I edit it, I do my own writing on it, then I give it to AI and say, what did I miss? How could it be improved? Is there, you know what? I give it to that, then it gives it back to me, and then I re-edit it. So when I explain my process to people, they're like, okay, great, cool, fine. So it's, I think that's a really critical part of this, is that we have to learn how to use AI in every business as a partner, not a replacement, but as a partner to great greater efficiencies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, you got to remember these are coding agents that became like kind of chatbots, like there. So there's totally there's there's different routes, but also if you don't know how to use it or you don't have that expertise driving it, like kind of navigating it, you're you're you're gonna make even greater mistakes. I've seen AI make so many strikes. So you got to have human in the loop. There, there's a lot to to to definitely um consider when you're you're leveraging AI. I um I thought of one thing that I don't I want to for I don't want to forget to ask that I I wrote down. You were talking about earlier the micro changes, uh that and you got to be managing your brand and making decisions every year. And I'm you know, in my head, I'm starting to go, okay, what what is like the checklist? What is the monitoring? What are what are the analytics behind that? Like when when you say maybe it's personal, maybe it's business, I don't know how you break the buckets, or you can say B2B versus uh retail or or direct to consumer. Um, and then even professional might be even categorized differently, but what are the KPIs that people need to be monitoring?
SPEAKER_02I
Micro Changes In Pricing And Discovery
SPEAKER_02mean, for example, there are there are micro changes in pricing and packaging. You know, there are there are micro changes in in what things cost. I'll give you a perfect example. It's a silly example, but I think it'll make the point. There is a small boutique business that I have shopped at for 20 or 25 years, right? And whenever I'm in town in the Bay Area, I go to this boutique. One, I like supporting small businesses, right? Two, they're they have great clothes, they buy beautifully. And, you know, if I'm not buying on sale, it's always full price, right? They're not cheap, but they're, you know, it's a choice, but they're the same as like if I go to a department store to buy that particular brand, right?
SPEAKER_01Nordstrom Rack went out of business. I don't know if you saw that.
SPEAKER_02I think did they go out of business? No, I didn't say. Are they are there no more Nordstrom racks or did they just file for bankruptcy?
SPEAKER_01Someone mentioned that to me in past today.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. Okay. So, and I went there the other day and I bought a pair of jeans and I brought them home. And coincidentally, one of my my girlfriends said to me, she said, Oh, I just bought those jeans and she bought them at Nordstrom. And she looked at the tag and she said, Wow, these are like $40 more than they are at Nordstrom. And I said, Well, were they on sale? She said, No. So we just did a little Googling on the internet, and sure enough, every other boutique, every other place, they were $40 or $30 less, $40 less. Now, is $30 or $40 a big deal? Not really, but it's it's the principle of the thing, and it's still $30 or $40, right? Okay. I mean, these days it's a can of soup and a banana at the grocery store. So, so I I I emailed the woman who I've known for 20 years, and I said, Hey, I was in there, I loved it, everything's great. But by the way, this is what happened. How would you feel about refunding the difference, you know, the $30, $40? And she did refund it, but I had a conversation on the phone with her, and she was, she was less than gracious about it. She was like, Well, I'm a small business and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And at one point I said to her, Listen, you shouldn't do anything you don't want to do. I'm not gonna press you. But do you feel like all the business I've given you all over the years makes a difference in that? She said, Yes, but if we buy less, so then we get this. And I thought she's not paying attention to the micro change in pricing that's gone on in the world in the world of this kind of clothing, right? Now, she's a good person. I like her. I'll still go to the store. But my point is that that's an example of where there's a micro change in pricing. And there's a micro change in pricing because what can you do? You can pick up your phone and you can put in the name of the item, and you will get 50 places and you can see what those 50 places are charging.
SPEAKER_01So on the retail side, it's super interesting. Like, yeah, you can you can get comparisons. And I, for the first time, started, and you know, everybody does high-low pricing or whatever, but I I I got like a Target app, right? And like used stuff on the Walmart app because Amazon or whatever I was buying with it was way higher, like way higher. Yeah, yeah, and so it it it people are becoming more savvy shoppers, and so having exactly experience or like really like we talked about at the beginning. What is the specialization? Why are you different? Maybe it's because you come in and they they they help consult what looks good on your body or this or that, like and then and then you and all of that's legitimate, right?
SPEAKER_02But it's like it's like I think she's a little irritated because she doesn't understand the microchange that's happened in the market around pricing, right? No, absolutely, you know, but like another micro change is around discoverability. We talked about this earlier, you know, the the way discoverability has changed. And when you ask, an AI is gonna give, like, I cannot tell you how many calls I get now where people call me who I don't know, and I say, Well, how did you find me? Did you get referred? And they go, No, I asked Claude who's an expert in rebranding and your name came up, or who's an expert in personal branding and your name came up, right? That's a micro change in my in what's happened in the market.
SPEAKER_01So, so circle up on that and kind of we'll we'll wrap close to that. And and I want to give you a time to kind of talk about what you're doing and for people to follow you. Um, is um we saw that change. We saw that marker change, we jumped on that three years plus ago, whatever. I don't know the exact time, but there was a lot of pushback in the industry and going like it's just SEO, it's it's really no different. Uh, the the traffic is just nothing, and Google's traffic keeps growing. Well, I mean, the traffic keeps growing because it's bots looking at our sites. That's why it keeps growing, and there was this huge lag. Uh, and and it's funny, we we get consistently the same thing, people calling us like we started uh working with companies uh in English speaking countries around the world that they were finding us through through AI. And I'm talking not small companies either. And the data, like I was looking at the trends or the micro changes of where it was going, and I was looking at like my mom was one of the first employees in Microsoft, like I saw what the internet did, where it was going online, on demand videos. Like, I'm like, this is not like just something that's gonna happen and go away. This is a huge trend, and and we need to become experts in it now. And yeah, it was it was a big commitment to shift, and uh it's starting to pay quite a bit of dividends, and I think people are starting to catch up because they're looking at snapshots of the current market of where it's at, going, oh, this segment is growing pretty significantly now. I think it's over 40. It was like under 10 when we went all in on this, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so and and that and that ability that and and that's my point. When people are actually paying attention to the microchanges, they will often see things before they've hit, you know, that that big wave. And that's that's what's key about it.
One Channel Marketing And Closing
SPEAKER_01So so Karen, I we're we're close to time here. I wanted to uh give you an opportunity to to share your your company and how people can follow you, but I also wanted to hear from you, you know, the the title of the the the podcast is The Unknown Secret of Internet Marketing, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. And so I would love to hear from you what are some unknown secrets you feel like or things that people uh just tend to miss consistently, maybe on the personal side and on the rebranded company side, just so uh we have that for the audience and it it gives them something actionable to look for. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Well, what you want me to do first? The the kind of okay, so I'll I'll get the logistics out of the way. So people can always reach me at KarenLeland.com or Sterling Marketing Group.com, either one. And if they Google me, they always come up.
SPEAKER_01And we're gonna put those links in the show notes, everybody.
SPEAKER_02Great, great. The book isn't out yet, but uh, but please look for it. You know, it's gonna be re-up your brand, and we don't know who the publishers yet. We're working on it, we're working on getting the publisher we want. Um, the current book is the brand mapping strategy, which you can get on Amazon. And, you know, people can always just reach out to me via my website if they have questions, if they want to talk about, you know, how to rebrand, either a personal rebrand or a company re-up or a rebrand. Um, here's one secret. This is now a lot of people disagree with this. You don't need to do 10 channels for promotion and marketing. If you do just one, even really, really well, that can that can work. Because if your customers are on LinkedIn and you just do LinkedIn to the hilt and you focus on that and you make that great, and you're like one of the best people in your industry on LinkedIn, you could just do that. I don't mean you you don't have to do other kinds of marketing, but I mean you don't have to be on eight million social media sites, you don't have to be on Facebook and Instagram and dis you have to do one really, really deep and consistently and well. And I think most people don't know that. They think they have to be on everything, and you don't. You don't.
SPEAKER_01And is that would you say that that's the same for businesses as well?
SPEAKER_02Or how that's that's a hundred percent for businesses. I I can't tell how many how many businesses I have seen that just go, you know what, we're just gonna focus on this one because that's the where most of our clients are, and we're not gonna worry about all those other socials and made incredible strides.
SPEAKER_01Awesome, guys. You you heard it here with uh Karen Timber Leland, Tiber, Tiber, Tiber, Tiber, Tiber, everybody, Tiber. Uh, remember that. Um, and thank you all so much for listening. EWR Digital does sponsor this podcast, make it all happen, uh, and make it free for everyone. So please go leave a review. Please go check us out. Uh, if you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet, uh, keep listening to this podcast and uh stay tuned for the next show. Until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.
