Introduction

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Hey Alice, welcome to the show!

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Hi, thanks for having me.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Alice, you're the ex-CMO at Cognism. Can you walk us through your journey at Cognism?

Joining Cognism: From €3M to €100M

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I was at Cognism for nearly seven years. I joined when we were just under three million in revenue. When I left, fast approaching the hundred million mark. The team went from three of us in marketing when I joined to about 28 by the end. We acquired a couple of brands during that time. The reason I was brought on: create a predictable, scalable, revenue-generating marketing engine.

What Changes From Build to Scale

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
When you're at zero to one or three to four, you have to find out how good you are at problem-solving with little to no resources. You learn things that traditionally wouldn't fall into your role. You build operational infrastructure from the ground up. You'd never do that at a larger organization, but you have to in those early days.

You get good at unscalable things in early stages because that's what gets success. You operate fairly blind on data. You have to be comfortable acting on directional insights. As you scale, the expectation is you're no longer the bottleneck. You need to give that knowledge to your team.

Becoming a First-Time CMO: Re-Interview Yourself Every Year

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Don't have unrealistic expectations — this doesn't happen overnight. The way I thought about it: every year I was reinterviewing for my job. Whether Head of Marketing or CMO, every year I needed to re-interview for the role. Nobody told me. It was just my mentality, because I had never done that next phase.

Building Trust With the CEO

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I worked out what mattered to the CEO. I know something matters to James when he's mentioned it multiple times in the same time period of a day. Not within a week — within the same time period. That meant: prioritize getting an answer.

I worked out how he wanted to be communicated with. He was a founder-CEO operating at high intensity. When he asks me a question, give him an answer in the moment. That was where I needed to meet him. Always have the numbers — if he needs an answer, it's because there's a board member or investor.

Marketing the Marketing Internally

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I wasn't great at this in the early years: be super proactive distilling down what marketing was doing and how it led to growth. Don't be afraid of repetition. Repetition is what builds memory. The more I proactively communicated marketing's role and wins that mattered strategically, the better. He wasn't going to come and ask. It had to come from me.

Building the Team: Don't Hire to Hire

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I was big on: don't hire to hire. I needed something to break before I'd hire. We were resource-constrained. I wasn't hiring for tenure. I was hiring for attitude and ability to understand the new playbook.

I had a core belief about what kind of marketing organization I wanted. People are a good or bad fit for that quickly. We trained up generalists. As we scaled, they became specialist where the data showed we should invest.

The Structure at €100M Scale

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Paid acquisition function. Demand generation — my business unit owners, owning targets per region or segment. Other parts of marketing acted as mini specialist agencies to them. Content and SEO split: SEO for capturing demand, content for the demand creation media engine. Customer marketing and product marketing under the same VP layer. Enablement team — video, website, design — a resource across the org. And an incredible project manager who kept everything cross-departmental on track.

Where AI Would Have Changed Things

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Two categories of mistakes. First: when to in-house, when to outsource. We had a growth-at-all-costs era — just threw people at problems. The problem: you can only keep quality of hires to a certain level when your team is a certain size. At too large a scale, you make sacrifices.

Two examples: paid and SEO. I wanted all the experience and domain expertise in-house. The cost of managing that number of people — ensuring career pathways, work variety — it can't happen at scale efficiently. There's a ton of execution work that's really boring. AI is taking a lot of that away.

Specialist in-house plus an agency or AI for execution. That's where I ended up. Had AI been where it is today, that would have happened sooner.

The Ten-Years-At-Salesforce Trap

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Second mistake: senior hires. My philosophy was to grow people. That got challenged as the C-suite tenure changed. I tried hiring much higher experience levels. The promised land: it'll be better, you'll manage less, you'll learn from someone better at that domain.

A good example: product marketing. We tried a couple — with no success. Never lived up to expectations or cost.

Just because someone has tenure on their CV does not mean they'll best execute that role. Done at scale, it's detrimental to culture. People see they're hired over with the promise of learning from someone more experienced — if that value isn't delivered, it's an additional layer between you and the work. Career blocker.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
When does it make sense to hire someone with 10+ years from a big company?

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I wouldn't. The only exception: someone who went to a build-phase company, stayed two to three years, succeeded, then went back into building. Hiring someone from that enterprise type and putting them into a build phase — if they haven't been in build phase for 10 years — is never going to be successful. Differentiate the manager versus the builder.

Why Most First-Time CMOs Get It Wrong

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Too hands-off for too long. CEOs say to me weekly: "I just want to get some stuff done. Get into execution mode." That's a critical piece marketers shy away from — the execution work. People are scared to hire marketing leaders because all they think they'll get is a positioning statement, not something that moves the engine.

Set expectations upfront with the CEO. It's not about buying hours — you should be buying an output. I should be delivering a product that helps your business move forward.

The Math That Killed Gated Content

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I was a full-on advocate of ebooks and gated content. We were the best at it. Then we hit another phase of growth. I split the funnel: declared intent demo requests on one side, content leads on the other.

I needed 25 demo requests to close 1 deal versus 100 content leads to close 1 deal. ACV decay on content leads — half the ACV. Look at next year's targets, think about budget and resources — not just on marketing, on sales to follow up — the math doesn't math. Unscalable.

I knew the first question was: "can't we just do more demo requests?" Yes, but how scalably? That came from building an engaging, authoritative content engine — always on, all the time, to everyone in our ICP, delivering differentiated value. I couldn't do that AND gate content.

Selling Demand Creation to a CEO

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I asked the C-suite, "how do you buy?" When you see an ebook, do you give your real personal details? You know it's coming — a PDF in your inbox. Does it actually get read? You know you'll get cold-called from an SDR. The answer was always no, no, no.

It's hard to go against the logic that this isn't the reality. The math, the reality, plus surfacing that sales are aligned — those three things generated buy-in.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you make the math math?

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Not cold turkey. Turn down the most inefficient content campaigns. Repurpose that money into ungated. Hypothesis showing how I'll scale demo requests in line with the spend that fills the gap.

The terrible conversion rates on content leads worked in my favor — I didn't need many more demo requests to fill the gap. Within two months I had correlation graphs of spend and demo request increase. As you scale, you invest in software — Fibula on LinkedIn ads, Dream Data across the journey. Eventually proper marketing mix modeling at €100M+.

The Four Content Buckets

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
You need a strategy. Topics you want to be known for. Memorability is built through repeatability. Random acts of content, even ungated, won't have impact. Four content buckets:

• Thought leadership — the new story of the day for our industry, broken in a helpful, actionable way.
• Dotted line back to the offering — we still need people to know what we do.
• Product content — not decks. How does the product solve a problem? Voice of customer or third party.
• Social proof — facts and opinions of others, not just us.

And distribution. Understand where your audience hangs out and what formats work for those channels.

You cannot cheat quality. We're never going to be as big as competitors on spend. But we can create truly authentic, free quality content that an LLM can't write and competitors can't do at their scale.

Acquisitions and Brand Integration

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Strategic reason for the acquisition drives everything. Take Caspr — incredible brand presence in France and we were going into France. We weren't going to kill the brand. PLG motion versus our sales-led motion — we didn't want to cannibalize our SMB audience. Different brand for that reason.

On the back end, fully integrated. Same office, same systems, integrated teams. The Caspr marketers became the French leads.

Two Books and Closing

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You wrote two books. Give me the sales pitch.

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
The honest ramblings of someone trying to master the CMO role for the first time. A story of two halves — early growth versus later stage are different. The journey from a content lead generation business into a fully bespoke create-demand motion. Anyone in a leadership role for the first time, or building from the beginnings.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where can people reach out?

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
LinkedIn. I'm very active. Put the bell on the LinkedIn posts.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you Alice.

guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Thank you.

Introduction

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Hey Dave, welcome to the show!

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Thanks for having me, Jordan.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Now everybody's talking about AI. CMOs and VPs of Marketing are scared. There's huge FOMO. The CEO and the board are pushing "how do we double revenue and divide the team by three with AI and agents?" On your side, you talk a lot about events, social, organic, storytelling. What's wrong with you?

The AI Hype vs Reality Gap

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I'm not an engineer. This is the perfect time if you came up to marketing from being an engineer. My friend Tom Wentworth, CMO at Incident IO, posts every day about things he's building with Claude Code. He has engineering background — perfect for this era.

I run a community of B2B marketing professionals — CMOs and marketing leaders. There's a huge gap between what you see on YouTube and what's actually happening inside companies. If you go to YouTube and type "Claude marketing," you'll see 20 videos: "I replaced my marketing team with Claude Code in 20 minutes." Then the next one says 16 minutes. There's a huge cash grab and attention grab.

I'm at the intersection of "I believe in AI" but I also talk to lots of people every week who'd be surprised how many people aren't even using Claude regularly. Just using Claude is a revelation for them.

And ultimately, you're still selling to people. Until my AI agent does research for me and buys on my behalf, exclusively talking to your AI agent, humans are still in the buying process. There's a lot in social, community, and events that pays towards humans.

Do You Use AI?

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you use AI?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Absolutely, of course. I am AI. Claude was actually trained on me.

What Stays Timeless: Human Connection

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
A lot of stuff that can be replaced makes sense. Advertising is a perfect example. It's always been about how many landing page variations, copy, creative, headlines, images you can produce. Ad creation, landing page creation, automating ads — the future is: I should just be able to go to LinkedIn, type in plain text "show these ads to these people," and it just happens automatically.

But on the other end, we just came back from doing this event with 100 people in Arizona for B2B CMOs. Highly curated, lots of offline time, real conversations. There's something about that human in-person connection.

We're not all going extinct in the next couple years. There's a fundamental need to still want to connect. Content creators are filming videos with old-school video cameras. iPods are back. Landline phones are back. People are dying for a phone with no screen, doing retreats, "raw-dogging" a flight. We're trying to find ways to reconnect, be human, be present.

I want to be in both camps — believe in AI, use it to run my business, but not lose sight of humans being connected over the campfire, telling stories.

Marketing's New Superpower With AI

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I became a CMO because I was good at marketing. You get promoted, eventually rise to the top, and "congratulations, you're good at marketing — you now manage the whole marketing team." Turns out when you do that, you don't actually do a lot of marketing. You do people management, budgets. Most of my day was with HR, the CFO, the CEO, fundraising. I was like, "man, I just like writing copy on a landing page and making an ad."

What's so cool now: I can have an idea — I'm not a designer, I'm not a developer, I only know basic HTML — but I could go this afternoon and build my own website. The speed at which we can go from having an idea to making something is exciting.

From CMO at Drift/Privy to Building Exit Five

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You had to start from scratch when you left Drift and Privy. How did you handle that?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I never felt like I went from scratch. When I was doing marketing at Drift and Privy, I started writing about marketing on LinkedIn. I had a podcast and a newsletter. Tale as old as time: if you write about the things you're doing online, you attract the audience of like-minded people.

That led to me unintentionally building a large following on LinkedIn of B2B marketers. It wasn't because I wanted to be famous or have a personal brand. I live in the woods in Vermont. I don't drive fancy cars. I'm never going to be the personal brand guy in front of a Lamborghini.

Patreon, Then Substack: Pricing Content From Day 1

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Then it was natural progression — "I have a lot of followers, I'm going to launch a paid version." The closest comparison now would be Substack. Back then it was Patreon. $10 a month. People today are like "Patreon? What the hell is a Patreon? Are you making porn?"

Three to six months in I had a thousand members. That was $10,000 a month in recurring revenue from content. That broke my brain because forever in my mind, $100K in a year was the epitome of success.

That was while I was a CMO. COVID happened, I was home every day. I built that while still CMO at Privy. I had product-market fit before going full-time. My career has just been stacking things on top of each other.

Why Most B2B Communities Die

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Most B2B communities are like dead Slack groups. What did you do to make Exit Five work?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
A lot of communities go to zero. They let them get over-riddled with spam and promotional stuff. One way we solve for that early on is by charging money. People thought I was just an awful arrogant evil capitalist. But money is an amazing forcing function to get commitment. We just did our event in Arizona. The two pieces of negative feedback were from the two people who had free tickets.

The Rules: Charge Money, Stay Niche, Police Comments

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Number one, we charge from the beginning. Number two, having a really focused niche — exclusively for B2B marketers.

Number three: I've written maybe 8,000 posts all-time and 40,000 comments. For the first five years, I'm in there every day — writing, commenting, policing comments. If Jordan writes a lazy post, I'm like "Hey Jordan, update your post — it's not very specific." Or "this is clearly you promoting your company." Founder mode. Things that don't scale.

Communities mostly die because they're an acquisition channel, not the product. If a vendor owns it and the goal is nurturing people into a SaaS subscription, engagement drops. Every time. Exit Five isn't owned by a vendor. The community IS the product.

Storytelling as a Competitive Skill

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
It's hard. It's almost like a friend who just has a way. The "je ne sais quoi." You can't go to ChatGPT or Claude and study a storytelling structure and just print it out. The people that are really good at marketing have a wide range of interests outside work.

Especially in B2B: "let's go see how Stripe does their website." Where I'm like "shoot, check this out — this lady down the street has an amazing sandwich shop here in Vermont and her website is awesome." The confidence to not just copy what's been done in your industry.

Writing With Claude (and Why It Takes Two Hours)

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I have a newsletter — exit5.com/newsletter. I use Claude to write it. It takes 2+ hours.

I'm the subject matter expert. I didn't just give it to AI and one-shot it. It's: "I have this idea. I recorded a podcast with Jordan. Here's the transcript. Here's two other things I've written that relate to this." That's where Claude is amazing — like having a creative agency partner. I'm now piecing each section together.

It's not saving me time. It's making the output better.

Personal Brand vs Company Brand

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you manage the tension between writing for the company versus writing for you?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
It's easy for me — I run the business. But say you're VP of Marketing at a cybersecurity company. You can't write the same way. Get direct with the subject matter expert. People buy from people. The opportunity is sprinkling in personality and being you. Every business is in the business of social media now.

Metrics That Matter: Revenue, Churn, Engagement

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I do look at data. Revenue. Money. Goal: make more than you spend. Indicators: growth in membership, churn. Churn is a killer. Email list growth, engagement, opens, clicks. NPS — are people happy with the thing they're paying for?

In B2B inside a company, MQLs are bullshit. But I run a media company — those ARE our metrics.

F*ck Attribution

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you work on attribution?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Fuck no. We ask every person joining: "how did you hear about us?" They tell us. We export them a couple times a year. We don't learn that much. It reaffirms what we're doing is working.

So much of this comes from over-metricing marketing. At some point you've seen the whole game and you just know — if you do the right things, people will show up.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you don't think about the ROI of content.

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Hell no. If we put out good content people like, they will join our newsletter, they will be on our podcasts, they make us look good. If people think we're legit, they will. They're not morons.

Closing

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where should we send people?

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
exit5.com is good. Also I'm on LinkedIn — Dave Gerhardt.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thanks Dave.

guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Thanks for having me.

Introduction

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Hey, Eli!

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Bonjour Jordan, good to be here.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you for being on the pod. For people who don't know you, you're famous for having written a bestseller in the SEO space called Product-Led SEO. What is Product-Led SEO?

What is Product-Led SEO?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
The story is: I was working at SurveyMonkey — my last full-time job — and I started consulting on the side. A large brand reached out to potentially hire me. I gave them an offer and they asked: "So what are you going to do for us? Write content? Do keyword research on SEMrush or Ahrefs? Recommend links to build?" I said yes to all three.

Then he asked: "Why wouldn't I hire someone in the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, or anyone on Fiverr to do that?" I knew the answer was: I'm better. You reached out. You wanted to hire me. If you thought you could do it for $50 on Fiverr, you would have.

I didn't have the concrete answer at the time, and I didn't sign that client. But it forced me to think back on how I did things at SurveyMonkey. The way I did things was not just creating keyword-driven content and building links to it. I thought about what the user was searching for and built that asset. I needed a name for it — Product-Led SEO became the name.

What it really is: when someone is searching, they're not searching for something that matches a keyword. If someone searches "best mobile phone for me," they're not looking for a piece of content that says "best mobile phone for me" 60 times. They want the answer. They want a product. Product-Led SEO is building the thing — a piece of content, a video, an experience — that satisfies the answer, not just matches a keyword.

The Product Approach: TripAdvisor and Amazon

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
TripAdvisor is a great example. When someone searches "review of the Ritz Carlton Paris," they're not looking for content that has the phrase "review of Ritz Carlton Paris" 60 times. They want the review. TripAdvisor's approach back then wasn't to write blog post after blog post. They built a website that satisfies any combination — Paris, New York, Ritz Carlton, Hilton. That's the product.

Same with Amazon. They didn't approach e-commerce the way late-90s competitors did — "let's make a piece of content about what a cell phone is." Amazon put all the effort into building the architecture and structure of great SEO. There are now millions of things sold on Amazon that were never dreamed about when Amazon was created — but they don't need to build a new Amazon for each. They extend the architecture. Even better, they took amazon.com and extended it to amazon.fr without needing a new SEO strategy for France.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Would you say "product" is an umbrella word that includes content, reviews, calculators, etc.?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
It includes the thing the user is looking for. On a media site, content is the product. On an e-commerce site, the e-commerce landing page is the product. On a research page, it's the ideas. Product-Led SEO is really better defined by what it is not: content-led SEO — keyword research, create something that matches exactly what the user searches, call it a day.

Rewriting the Book for the AI Era

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Between when you wrote the book and today, a big thing happened: LLMs, AI, AI Overviews on Google. What would you rewrite today?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
A lot of my book was intended never to be obsolete. I wrote the whole book myself — I didn't hire a ghostwriter. Every time I used "Google," I added "Bing," just in case Bing would overtake Google one day. I didn't talk about a lot of tactics, again because I didn't want it to be obsolete.

Much of the book applies today. The big thing I'd change: I'd talk about AI being an answer itself. AI Overviews, Gemini, ChatGPT — they become that first-layer product. If a user is just looking for an answer, they no longer need a website that has done SEO.

The other part: I'm excited my vision for Product-Led SEO is now coming into fruition. The shady tactics — buying 80 million backlinks, spamming keywords — don't work as much anymore. What's left is essentially Product-Led SEO. The only thing I'd add: help the reader understand that experience also happens on an LLM, and you can't recreate it if it's happening there.

Will LLM Companies Need SEO?

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Would you advise these big LLM corporations to invest in SEO?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
I believe they already are. Go on LinkedIn — OpenAI, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Anthropic all have growth marketing teams and people with SEO titles.

Contrary to what everyone thinks based on social media — "Google's dead, everyone will use LLMs only" — I don't think that's close to the case. Those companies know that to reach 80–90% of the online world, they have to do it through Google.

Given the antitrust suit in the US, Google maintained its monopoly. Google will dominate consumer search until something completely shifts. Not just because they're good — they have distribution power: Android, Workspace, Chrome. People say "kids aren't using Google anymore." In the US, many kids get their first device from school: a Chromebook. Google's Trojan horse is "here's your new computer, it can only use Chrome."

So those LLM companies know the way to reach online users is through Google and typical SEO.

The Search Pie Is Getting Bigger

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
People see this as a shift from search to LLM, but actually the cake is getting bigger. People still use Google — they use Google plus OpenAI plus other LLMs.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Exactly. There are many queries Google wasn't a good solution for. Four years before ChatGPT, everyone said Google was dead because of TikTok. TikTok satisfied an area of search Google couldn't — video restaurant reviews, trip plans.

Now LLMs do things Google couldn't. I was using Gemini to figure out why a door in my house wasn't working. I explained the problem, took a picture of the handle, Gemini gave me an answer. I never could have done that on Google. This is a new area of search. By the end I'll probably need to buy a part — that's when I'll go to Google. The top of funnel didn't even exist before.

Where AI Wins, Where SEO Wins

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You've said AI owns top-of-funnel and SEO wins mid-funnel and bottom-funnel — even with AI Overviews expanding into mid-funnel. Where do you draw the line?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
First: I'm not sure GEO is a real, separate investment. I'd continue to invest in SEO. Many big websites are going to get themselves in trouble because they think AI is the only future, and they'll make basic SEO mistakes — subdomains vs. subdirectories, technical SEO that should be structured at the start.

Top-of-funnel example: someone wonders if they have a health issue, like anxiety. That belongs to AI Overviews. They describe symptoms, the LLM says "this sounds like anxiety." Many blog posts cover that, but Google's AI Overview takes the top of the page and gives the answer.

I worked with a mental health company. Their solution was therapy, for anxiety. There are many ways to address anxiety: meditate, listen to music, take drugs, go to therapy. But this company only offered therapy. So bottom-of-funnel was "therapy" or location-based queries. The super top-of-funnel — "anxiety" — doesn't exist for them anymore. AI Overviews handle that. Now AI tells the user "people with feelings like yours could meditate, listen to music, or try therapy." That brings them to mid-funnel: "therapy for anxiety." That's the only place this company can address.

Citations Are the 2026 Version of Backlinks

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
The data shows the top SEO results are 80% the top LLM results. So you should still invest in SEO even to appear on LLMs. Agree?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Yes. I talk to so many companies that want me to recommend them for GEO/AEO. Their answer fits two buckets:

• Content directly matching what the user prompts. If they directly match, they show up. But we don't even know what the prompts are if they're long-tail.
• Citations. Citations are the 2026 version of backlinks — and I don't think backlinks have mattered that much in the last couple of years. If the whole GEO play is getting citations, is that really new?

Beyond LLMs, AI is trying to think like a human. You can spam citations all you want, but if AI thinks like a human, it also thinks "which of these citations matter?" Most brands that get cited are cited because they're brands. Build a brand users actually like. That's what the engines are looking for.

I asked John Mueller in Zurich whether Google uses any data from Google Maps and Street View. He said of course they do. If you have a restaurant and Street View goes by, Google Maps tells you if a store is busy. If I were an LLM with access to that data, I'd use it to recommend the pizza shop that's always busy at lunch. You can build all the citations you want, but if Google knows no one goes there, it doesn't matter.

The Five Stages of Awareness vs ToFu/MoFu/BoFu

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Are you familiar with the Five Stages of Awareness framework?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Yes.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Instead of ToFu/MoFu/BoFu, with the Five Stages you focus on Problem Aware. Problem Aware is "I type my symptoms." I don't know any solutions — I just know my problem. I go to an LLM because everything is foggy. But when I know exactly what I need — Solution Aware, Product Aware, Most Aware — I just go to Google.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Exactly. I had this experience with one of my first consulting clients, Mixpanel. We did all the SEO stuff but none of it converted. Mixpanel is expensive and very sticky. People landing on the content were very early in the journey. The right way: what do we do at this very high point of the funnel to bring them to the next part? Maybe retarget. Maybe a webinar. Not a big purchase.

How to Vet GEO Agencies

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What's one question a CMO should ask GEO agencies?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Start with the assumption that they probably don't know what they're doing. Agencies only selling AIO/AEO/GEO probably don't. If they have a track record of successful clients in SEO and now show how they've adapted to AI, that's more trustworthy.

Same with tools: look at the people who made the tool. Do they have a track record? If they just "found a niche, everything has switched, let's make money while people don't know what's going on" — avoid.

The basics of AI visibility are the same as SEO. So quiz them on traditional SEO. It's the Wild West with AI — everyone's making things up. I see data studies that completely conflict and they're both right because the data is too vast.

Convincing the CEO Not to Over-Invest in GEO

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do I convince my CEO not to fall into FOMO?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
You don't. I find it very difficult to convince people who really believe in something not to do it. If the CEO really believes GEO is the future, fighting creates friction. What I'd do: do it. Focus 10% on GEO and AI visibility, focus 90% on typical SEO. In six months, if you're right, the CEO will say "this seems to be a scam, let's drop it." You can say "I tried to tell you, which is why I didn't put all my eggs in this basket." Now you deserve a bonus.

Budget Allocation: $1M to Spend

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You have $1M as a CMO. Walk me through the decision tree.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
I would not spend it on SEO. First, it's very hard to spend $1M in SEO properly. Second, if you don't already have a brand, do brand marketing first. Most companies should do paid before SEO — it's quick feedback on what works, on product-market fit, on what I call search-market fit. Are people even searching for this? If not, your SEO won't work.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Search ads, not social ads?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Search ads, yes. I actually like social ads too. I'd do social ads first, then search ads, then SEO. The biggest bang for buck for any startup with $1M is brand. Hire PR agencies. Get the name out. That trickles down into everything else.

Should SEO Sit in Product or in Marketing?

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Should SEO be in the product team?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Ideally yes. The levers for getting things done are better moved within the product team. On a marketing team, you write tickets that go to product, then engineering. On a product team, you and your colleagues all report to the same boss and work on the structural assets directly.

Example: making a CMS decision. At larger companies, marketing has little influence — it's product. My most successful SEO engagement was Tinder. I worked directly for a VP of Growth. We had engineers, marketers, designers in our growth pod. Two years of work, and the impact came because I was in the product team.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What's the best org structure?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
SEO would be a product manager whose responsibility is SEO. Hub and spoke, with the PM at the center. If you're SEO inside marketing, you become a spoke and lose control.

Technical SEO and Link Building Are Overrated

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You said link building is overrated and technical SEO is over-indexed. What do you mean?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
SEO audits come back with technical feedback — 301 redirects, 302s, 404s. If you implement everything, you're unlikely to see much growth. It's like going to the doctor and being told to run 10 miles a week. Maybe you live longer. Will you meaningfully make more revenue? Most honest consultants would have a hard time saying yes.

On link building: there was a time it really mattered — raw PageRank, no filters. For many years now Google filters that out. I had a backlink from WhiteHouse.gov when I joined SurveyMonkey — the Obama White House did a partnership. The link was a 404. I created a page to fix the 404, then linked from it across the site. All those pages started ranking higher. That was 2012.

In 2018 SurveyMonkey got more White House backlinks — they were scraping our research. None did anything. Why? Google got smarter. The White House is authoritative on government, not on customer feedback surveys. So Google said "this is not a relevant link."

That was 2018. They've gotten even smarter. They look at a Forbes link and say "this is paid placement." So just getting a high-DA link isn't something I'd invest in. Same with citations.

The Future of SEO

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you see the future of SEO?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
SEO never disappears. I made a prediction that Meta is about to launch its own search engine — their LLM already exists at meta.ai. It will work by pulling Meta data — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Business. They've made big AI acquisitions. Real player.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
They actually announced an acquisition today.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
The world of LLMs will be dominated by companies that were already huge. OpenAI raised a lot, but beyond OpenAI and Anthropic, big tech wins. SEO is always this request for discovery. Search 15 years ago was "go on your computer and type into Google." Next year it might be glasses. That's still search.

The Most Contrarian Take

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
One contrarian take that you believe almost nobody in the industry agrees with you on?

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
I really don't think anybody should be investing significantly in AI as a separate thing. Invest in search visibility. The way GEO/AEO is framed today is as if it's something separate. It's like 20 years ago when "mobile SEO" became a thing — as if you had an SEO person and a mobile SEO person. Same trap.

AI visibility is just the 2026/2027 version of SEO. Make sure your existing agency knows how to think about SEO of today, which has an AI visibility element. Don't break it off and call it a new thing — that creates a budget category you don't have to spend in.

Closing

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Fair enough. Thank you, Eli. For people who want to follow you, you've got a newsletter and you post on LinkedIn. Your book Product-Led SEO is still a bestseller — link in the description.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
LinkedIn is great. And please read my newsletter. I've been doing it for three years. When I started, no one read it. I just wrote to the world. Now I have almost 14,000 subscribers. Whenever someone asks how I got there, I just kept writing. Honored if anyone reads it.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I'll put the link in the description. Thank you, Eli, all the best.

guest—ELI SCHWARTZ—Author Product-Led SEO:
Thanks for having me.

Introduction

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Welcome, Adrian.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Merci. Thank you.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you're here for the Momentum Tour?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Yes.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Can you just speak about that tour? What is it?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Absolutely. At Webflow, we saw an amazing opportunity across the world with incredible customers. We've seen so much growth across the European business, with customers like Spotify, monday.com, and Anytime Fitness.

We really wanted to go on the road with our customers and partners to talk about how the world is changing and what we're seeing in the web space. It was an opportunity to learn from them while also sharing what we're seeing across our 300,000 customers so we can meet this moment together, because so much is changing so quickly.

Recording a First English Podcast

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
For my audience, this is the first time they've heard me speak English, so apologies if I make mistakes. This is my first time recording a podcast in English, so I'm glad to do it with you.

Today, Adrian, you're the CRO of Webflow and you've been there for about nine months. I'd like to understand your onboarding and your first 90 days. At this level of responsibility, those first months are critical to making an impact. How did you approach them?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
When I joined Webflow, the world was already changing quickly in the web industry, but I never imagined how fast AI would reshape discovery and search.

In my first 90 days, I focused on understanding three perspectives:

• What our customers say about us
• What our partners say about us
• What our employees say about us

I wanted to understand our place in the market, our impact, and where the future was heading.

Since I oversee sales, marketing, support, and customer success, I also spent significant time understanding where revenue comes from, how it evolves, and how we could build a vision for the future alongside our customers, agencies, and partners.

Biggest Surprise After Joining Webflow

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What surprised you the most when you arrived?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The biggest surprise was how quickly people's behavior around information consumption changed.

Back in early 2025, AI-assisted search existed, but it wasn't yet materially different for most people. Depending on where you lived, AI web search was still limited.

What surprised me was how quickly the world changed in the way it consumes information online.

There are now major conversations happening around:

• What is the role of the website in an AI-first world?
• What happens in six months, one year, or two years?
• How does discovery change when AI answers questions directly?

On a positive note, one of the most rewarding surprises has been seeing what agencies and customers build. The creativity, visual quality, and immersive experiences they create are incredible.

Transitioning from Salesforce and Tableau to Webflow

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You come from Salesforce and Tableau, which are more traditional B2B environments. Webflow has a much stronger design and creative culture. What changed in your role?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The mission at Webflow is to bring developer superpowers to everyone.

That means helping customers make creativity their competitive edge.

The biggest shift is prioritization. At Webflow, creativity is central:

• How do we help customers express creativity?
• How do we create beautiful experiences?
• How do we maintain a design-first culture internally?

Because we're a design-first company, there's a higher bar for delivering excellent experiences.

For example, relaunching Webflow.com brought pressure to meet those expectations — and I enjoy that challenge.

Creativity Inside Teams

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you have more creative people in your teams compared to previous companies?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I wouldn't necessarily say more creative people.

The difference is that creativity becomes a top priority.

Creativity shows up in many forms:

• Design
• Problem-solving
• Strategy
• Innovation

At Webflow, it's simply much more front-of-mind.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you encourage that creativity?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I push people to be bold.

I often tell my team:

"I want you to make me uncomfortable with your idea."

If an idea makes me uncomfortable, it usually means we're pushing toward the edge of what's possible.

We're operating in a rapidly evolving world, and creativity matters not only for humans anymore — but for AI as well.

We now design for:

• Humans
• AI systems consuming websites

That requires a different philosophy.

Managing Sales, Marketing, Success, and Support Together

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
As CRO, you oversee sales, marketing, support, and success. How do you balance optimizing individual functions while keeping the revenue engine aligned?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I think about this as rows and columns.

Imagine a spreadsheet:

• Rows represent products
• Columns represent functions like sales or marketing

Each row and column has an owner.

The key is ensuring alignment across functions so nobody works in isolation.

I often tell the team:

"We win together, and we never lose alone."

That means:

• No initiative should exist without cross-functional ownership
• Teams should have shared accountability
• Collaboration must be structurally built into the organization

Where Revenue Engines Usually Break

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where do revenue engines usually fail?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Most businesses spend too much time diagnosing the past.

Instead of traditional business reviews focused only on what happened, I run a process called "Plan to Make Plan."

Rather than asking:

• "What happened last month?"

We ask:

• "What did we learn?"
• "What will we do differently?"
• "Who will partner with us to execute?"

Revenue engines become harder to manage when:

• Multiple lead sources exist
• Product-led growth combines with sales-led growth
• Funnel complexity increases

The goal is to diagnose quickly and adapt before momentum is lost.

Team Operating Rhythm

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What routines do you use to manage this?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
At the start of every month, every leader runs a "Plan to Make Plan" review.

It includes cross-functional partners.

We also run:

• Weekly forecast calls
• Cross-functional revenue reviews
• Monthly alignment conversations

The rhythm matters because consistency creates accountability.

Dashboard and Metrics

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What data do you monitor daily?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I built my own dashboard called "State of the Union."

I monitor:

• Revenue by source
• Geographic performance
• Pipeline creation
• Inbound vs outbound performance
• Partner-generated revenue
• Product-led vs sales-led motion

I also log into Webflow daily to understand:

• Traffic trends
• Homepage performance
• Pricing page engagement
• Product page engagement
• Referral sources

Staying Close to Customers

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How deeply do you go into customer conversations?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
As deep as necessary.

I strongly believe you don't truly understand something until you talk to customers.

When I create a messaging hypothesis, I'll test it directly with customers within 24 hours.

That prevents strategy from becoming overly academic.

The Momentum Tour has been valuable because conversations in Paris, London, and Dubai continuously reshape the messaging based on what customers are experiencing.

Why Smaller Events Matter

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I was surprised to see you attending smaller events. It feels unusual for someone in your role.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Smaller events often produce higher-quality conversations.

Right now, there's no better place to understand change than by bringing leaders together and learning how they are adapting.

International Expansion and Local Presence

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We saw an opportunity to create more success by bringing our teams closer to customers.

Being close to customers is how you:

• Learn faster
• Collaborate better
• Build trust

We've expanded teams across:

• London
• France
• Germany
• Nordic regions

Research we conducted showed that 91% of marketers identified their website as their most valuable marketing asset.

Because websites drive revenue, it's important for us to support customers not just technologically — but strategically and locally.

Global Standards vs Local Innovation

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you draw the line between global and local teams?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I like the phrase:

"Global standards, local innovation."

The idea is:

• Create consistent global frameworks
• Allow local teams to adapt to market realities

For example, data about AI trends may be global — but how you communicate that message should be shaped by local customer conversations.

AI Differences Across Countries

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Different countries are experiencing AI differently. France doesn't yet have AI Overviews in Google.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Exactly.

Some countries are already testing AI-native search experiences, while others are earlier in adoption.

That's why local market understanding matters.

You need to think not only about where the market is today, but where it will be:

• In 3 months
• In 6 months
• In 12 months

Support, Marketing, and Local Expertise

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you approach global/local structure differently across marketing, support, and success?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Support is global and operates 24/7.

AI has improved support efficiency because it allows faster multilingual responses.

Marketing is more centralized, but revenue ownership requires local alignment.

For example:

• A sales leader for Europe must have marketing alignment
• Customer success requires regional expertise
• Solutions architects often need local specialization

Customers want to speak with people who understand their market realities.

Partnerships as a Growth Lever

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Partnerships seem to work especially well at Webflow. How do you think about them?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Agencies are not just software implementers.

They are strategic partners.

In a rapidly changing market, agencies provide:

• Specialized expertise
• Creative thinking
• Strategic guidance
• Technical execution

As AI evolves, implementation becomes easier — but creativity and strategy become more valuable.

We've built partnership success into:

• Team incentives
• Organizational structure
• Executive prioritization

That's why partnerships are a strategic investment.

AI's Impact on the Web

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You sit on a lot of data. What do you see happening with AI and websites?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
One thing is becoming clear:

Websites are no longer built for humans alone.

We've seen:

• A 125% increase in AI crawler activity
• A 6× increase in conversion from LLM-driven traffic

This suggests users arriving from AI are more informed and further down the funnel.

The challenge becomes:

• How do we structure content for AI understanding?
• How do we create differentiated human experiences?
• How do we adapt websites for both audiences?

AI Strategy Framework

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We think about AI through two lenses:

1. Owning the Answer

This includes:

• Authority
• Measurement
• Content
• Technical setup

2. Converting the Traffic

This means creating immersive experiences once users arrive.

Websites need to feel:

• Relevant
• Personalized
• Interactive
• Visually engaging

Why Wikipedia Became Less Relevant

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I realized recently that I don't visit Wikipedia anymore.

The information still exists — but the experience hasn't evolved.

AI provides answers faster.

This illustrates a broader truth:

Information alone is no longer enough.

Experience matters.

Are Websites Dead?

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
There's a debate that websites are dying because of zero-click content. What's your view?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
For websites to disappear entirely, you'd need a world where:

• AI no longer needs websites to learn
• Synthetic data replaces real web content
• Brands no longer need owned experiences

We're far from that reality.

AI still depends on websites for understanding brands, products, and positioning.

What changes is the role of the website.

The website becomes:

• A structured source of truth for AI
• A branded experience for humans
• A dynamic environment for engagement

The Future of Marketing and Website Design

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Marketing is returning to first principles.

Clear messaging matters again.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I agree.

The future rewards:

• Clear communication
• Strong user experiences
• Practical messaging
• Better digital design

AI will force companies to become more intentional.

Adrian's Biggest Challenge

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What is your biggest challenge today?

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Helping customers adapt to rapid change.

The rules are changing quickly.

Customers need help understanding:

• How LLM changes affect discoverability
• How websites should evolve
• How to structure content for AI

My focus is helping customers navigate uncertainty while remaining competitive.

Closing

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you very much, Adrian.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Thank you.

For anyone interested, we also created an AEO maturity model that benchmarks your website against trends we're seeing across customers.

It provides practical recommendations and is freely available.

host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I'll include the link in the description.

guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Perfect.