However even in the event you’re our most loyal fan, there’ll nonetheless be loads of insights that you just’ve missed or have forgotten already. Many of those concepts are too good to let vanish.
So we went again by means of our catalog and rescued the insights from our friends that need to be referenced time and again once more.
The very best half? A lot of our friends can even be on stage at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego on October 14 and 15.
So, consider this as each the director’s minimize of our podcast and your front-row preview to Ahrefs Evolve.
Mark Schaefer is a globally-recognized creator, keynote speaker, futurist, and enterprise advisor who blogs at {develop}, one of many prime 5 advertising and marketing blogs on the planet. He additionally teaches graduate advertising and marketing courses at Rutgers College and has written 10 best-selling books.
When he got here on the podcast, he didn’t sugarcoat it.
“In the event you’re simply competent, you’re going to be eaten alive by AI. AI is already competent. It’s greater than competent. It’s magical. So we’ve received to dig deep and do higher.”
How will we do higher? Mark says we should always make advertising and marketing extra human, extra like artwork.
“I’m not going to purchase tickets to listen to AI play a Stephen Wilson music. He means one thing to me. There’s an emotional connection to his humanity and the tales he tells in his songs. our advertising and marketing indirectly should method artwork. It should unleash and spotlight this human ingredient.we have to educate by means of our tales, our experiences, our schooling. We’ve to speak about what makes us comfortable, what makes us excited, what makes us indignant, as a result of that’s what’s going to join with individuals. It’s this expression of the human expertise. That’s what artwork is. It’s an expression of the human expertise.”
Mark can be talking on “How People Win in an Al Advertising World” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Mark stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Emily Kramer is a number one voice in B2B startup advertising and marketing. She beforehand led and constructed advertising and marketing groups from the bottom up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly and has been the first-ish marketer 4 instances, main groups by means of hypergrowth and at scale.
On the podcast, she defined why so many founders misdiagnose their advertising and marketing issues.
“Founders typically suppose they’ve an engine downside: they’re not doing sufficient channels, not sending sufficient emails, not working sufficient advertisements. However actually their gasoline sucks. They’re pushing dangerous messaging into channels that would work if the content material was higher.”
Emily breaks startup advertising and marketing into three components:
- Basis: your ICP, your positioning, your market.
- Gas: the concepts, content material, and creatives you produce.
- Engine: the channels you utilize to distribute that gasoline.
“You’re not going to convey a Tesla to a daily fuel station. The flawed gasoline for the flawed engine gained’t work. Startups want the appropriate gasoline and the appropriate engine, they usually must match.”
She additionally urges startups to search for what she calls advertising and marketing benefits: the unfair edges that solely your organization has. At Carta, that meant utilizing their proprietary knowledge to publish a landmark report on the gender fairness hole. The marketing campaign was provocative, press-worthy, and put Carta on the map.
“Copying one other firm’s playbook gained’t get you there. I’m all the time asking: what benefits do you might have that no person else does? That’s the place it’s best to double down.”
Emily can be talking on “Classes for Small Content material Groups: How I Handle My Content material Technique As A Two-Particular person Staff And A Publication With ~70k Subscribers” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Emily stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Peep Laja is a 3x founder (Wynter, CXL, Speero). Immediately, he’s a acknowledged knowledgeable in technique, messaging, and market analysis.
On the podcast, Peep was blunt about why a lot content material advertising and marketing fails:
“Mediocre content material is harmful. Positive content material destroyed us at CXL. It wasn’t dangerous, however it wasn’t nice both. And that’s the worst place to be. Dangerous content material individuals ignore. Positive content material wastes everybody’s time and erodes your model.”
For him, content material that wins must be both:
- Exceptionally helpful (distinctive insights, knowledge, frameworks), or
- Exceptionally opinionated (a robust, even contrarian, level of view).
All the things else is noise.
Peep can be talking on “B2B Manufacturers Don’t Have A Pipeline Drawback, They Have A Recall Drawback” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Peep stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Delbert Ty is a fractional CMO who’s the ex-CMO at Espresso Meets Bagel, a preferred relationship app. Earlier than becoming a member of CmB, Delbert labored as Head of Advertising at Circles.Life—a Singaporean telco—the place he grew income to 9 figures in 5 years.
Having been behind a few of APAC’s wildest advertising and marketing stunts, he’s trustworthy:
“All the good concepts begin as dangerous concepts. Do the other of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, then make the narrative tie again to your model.”
A few of his finest stunts (and misses):
- The “vandalism” reveal (Singapore) — Delbert seeded a faux telco marketing campaign in MRT stations, then doodled over the advertisements with creators earlier than revealing Circles.Life and its 20GB for $20 provide. In pristine Singapore, it hit a cultural nerve. Outcome: 10× new-user run charge in a single day, CAC down by ⅓–⅔, and model consciousness leaping from single digits to 30–40%.
- $3 Baller “merchandising machine” — Pay $3 and get $50 from a human inside a pretend merchandising machine. It received tons of viral consideration and press coated it extensively. The police confirmed up.
- CMB’s “ship casuals away” function — CMB wished to show that it was an app for critical relationships. So, if a consumer chosen “informal” throughout sign-up, the app pointed you to rivals as a substitute. A contrarian gesture that almost all firms wouldn’t make.
How Delbert decides what to ship:
- Goal for anticipated worth, not heroics: Price range small, take many pictures, and don’t depend on a stunt to hit the forecast.
- Account for hidden prices: Stunts are “low cost” in money however costly in staff power and braveness.
- Exploit the cultural erogenous zone: What shocks in Singapore gained’t budge Manila. Context is king.
- Distribution helps, however the concept is king: Seeding and outreach are icing; a meh concept gained’t journey.
“If 10% of your wild concepts land, that’s a win if every roll of the cube is reasonably priced.”
Delbert was a part of a panel at Ahrefs Evolve 2024 and in addition spoke at Ahrefs Evolve Mini 2025 in Singapore.
Madhav Bhandari is CMO at Storylane, an AI-native platform for creating interactive demos in minutes, giving consumers a hands-on option to test-drive merchandise.
On the podcast, he shared his greatest perception: Early-stage advertising and marketing isn’t about following a playbook. It’s really about constructing a portfolio of experiments.
“I all the time consider myself as a fund supervisor. The price range is my fund, and the shares are my advertising and marketing channels. My job is to choose the appropriate portfolio combine, based mostly on what the corporate wants, what’s already been tried, and the CEO’s danger profile.”
As an alternative of looking for one silver-bullet channel, Madhav runs dozens of small experiments rapidly, then doubles down on the 2 or three that work.
“At Hubstaff, I attempted 80 or 90 techniques in six months. Out of that dash, possibly two or three emerged as actual progress drivers. That’s the job: run many concepts quick, discover your hits, and construct round them.”
He additionally warns towards overcomplicating attribution too early: what issues is belief and directional alerts, not good knowledge.
Madhav can be talking on “How We 7x’d Model Consciousness in 6 Quarters Utilizing ‘Sample Interrupt Advertising’” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Madhav stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Glen Allsopp is the Head of Advertising Technique and Analysis at Ahrefs. He’s additionally the founding father of Detailed.com and the Detailed search engine optimization extension, which we acquired in September 2025.
Earlier than becoming a member of Ahrefs, he was on the podcast sharing his huge search engine optimization and enterprise knowledge with the world.
His edge comes from obsessive depth: doing the work others gained’t.
“I’ve written 300 articles that no person cared about. The one method I get consideration now’s by doing the work nobody else will: manually checking 10,000 queries, analyzing hundreds of internet sites, and placing out analysis that’s bulletproof.”
That degree of rigor has earned him mentions in TechCrunch, Monetary Instances, and Enterprise Insider.
His lesson for entrepreneurs is straightforward: go deeper than anybody else in your trade. True differentiation comes from effort others aren’t keen to take a position.
Glen is notoriously personal and can probably not be discovered talking at any occasions. However look ahead to his articles on our weblog!
Chris Cunningham is the Head of Social Advertising at ClickUp and one in all its 4 individuals who began the corporate. Throughout his time on the firm, ClickUp has grown to over 1,400 staff, raised $535 million at a $4 billion valuation, and run main campaigns together with a Tremendous Bowl industrial.
He additionally constructed ClickUp’s content material into the very best in B2B SaaS, surpassing 1 billion impressions in 2024.
What’s his secret? Deal with content material like a inventive studio.
As an alternative of pushing product updates, Chris employed actors, writers, and comedians to make office sketches which can be humorous, relatable, and endlessly shareable. Then, when the viewers is warmed up, ClickUp retargets them with product-led advertisements.
However Chris believes this isn’t simply ClickUp’s benefit. It’s the longer term:
“All B2B firms are going to have a full-time creator. 100%.”
His recommendation to entrepreneurs is straightforward: cease following “finest practices,” research what really entertains individuals, and spend money on expertise that may pull it off. As a result of in a world the place consideration is scarce, each SaaS firm is competing with Netflix and TikTok.
Chris can be talking on “The SaaS Social Playbook: Turning Natural Content material Right into a Progress Channel” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Chris stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Melissa Laurie is likely one of the main voices on EGC (Worker Generated Content material). By way of her company Oysterly Media, she’s helped manufacturers like SEPHORA, Salesforce, and even the Singapore Police Power, flip their staff into a strong advertising and marketing channel.
Her large concept flips the same old “worker advocacy” script: have staff create quick movies that go in your model’s channels, as a result of authenticity beats polish and scales throughout recruiting, tradition, and gross sales.
Quick video is now how individuals search and uncover. Meaning your model feeds can’t be occasional press releases; they want a gradual cadence of human clips from actual teammates: product ideas, day-in-the-life, fast tales, green-screen explainers. But it surely solely works in the event you deal with it like a program, not a one-off.
“I don’t imagine now we have 3 seconds anymore… it’s the first body.”
“It’s not nearly posting one video and also you’re achieved. It’s about making a channel, a neighborhood.”
Melissa’s playbook in a nutshell:
- Practice and set guardrails. Don’t simply go to a Gen Z worker and inform them to “make a video”. Educate hooks, first-frame textual content, pacing, and sample interrupts and evaluate each publish.
Publish constantly. Observe saves, feedback, and completions to double down on what resonates. - Goal for enterprise outcomes. Quick video on model channels helps appeal to expertise, retain/interact groups, and promote (suppose Sephora associates genuinely recommending their favourite merchandise)
In case your model remains to be making an attempt to move off TV spots as Reels, you’re “placing lipstick on a pig.” Put actual individuals, actual voices, and helpful micro-stories in your model account and make it a behavior.
Melissa spoke at Ahrefs Evolve Mini 2025 in Singapore!
Kevin Indig is an advisor to among the world’s fastest-growing startups and has outlined natural progress methods for firms like Ramp, Reddit, Bounce, Dropbox, Hims, Nextdoor and Snapchat. He led search engine optimization and Progress on the world’s main e-commerce platform Shopify, the #1 market for software program G2 and the #1 developer firm Atlassian.
On the podcast, Kevin made one daring prediction:
“2024 would be the peak visitors 12 months. From right here, clicks go down, impressions go up. AI is altering the sport, and search engine optimization is getting into a brand new cycle.”
However slightly than declaring search engine optimization lifeless, Kevin sees it evolving. Site visitors might decline, however income doesn’t essentially comply with the identical path, particularly as AI Overviews begin exhibiting up for extra industrial queries.
His recommendation for SEOs is straightforward: Don’t simply optimize for key phrases, optimize for actions. Each search is a step towards doing one thing: shopping for, fixing, creating. In case your website solely informs however doesn’t assist individuals act, they’ll go to AI as a substitute.
“The primary ideas of search engine optimization nonetheless apply—relevance, freshness, authority—however consumer habits has shifted. Individuals are typing longer, hyper-specific prompts, and there’s a vacuum of content material that truly solutions these. Whoever fills it’s going to win.”
Kevin can be talking on “What Content material Works Properly in LLMs” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Kevin stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
John-Henry Scherck is the founder and CEO of Progress Performs, a number one B2B content material technique & search engine optimization company that works with mid-market and enterprise know-how companies to drive pipeline, not simply web page views.
The core lesson from his episode: Site visitors alone is nugatory except it drives income.
That’s why JH is skeptical of the hype round “zero-volume key phrases.” Positive, some might usher in a trickle of visitors, however they not often transfer the needle for venture-scale SaaS firms:
“In the event you’re hinging your profession on issues that convey 100 clicks a month, it’s worthwhile to create a lot content material. Search may not even be the appropriate channel for it.”
As an alternative, he urges entrepreneurs to suppose larger:
- Use search as an entry level, however funnel that visitors into brand-driven and academic content material that builds belief.
- Spend money on product knowledge research that get press and hyperlinks (like DocSend’s landmark VC pitch deck research).
- Double down on occasions, partnerships, and distribution channels the place your consumers already collect.
For JH, all of it comes again to a easy fact: quantity is vainness, income is sanity.
John-Henry can be talking on “Adopting Al: All the things We’ve Realized Turning into an Al-First Company” at Ahrefs Evolve. See John-Henry stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Neil Patel is likely one of the most recognizable names in digital advertising and marketing. He’s the co-founder of NP Digital, which has grown into a world company with over $100M in annual income, plus software program companies like Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic.
On the podcast, Neil minimize by means of the noise about why companies actually fail to scale:
“Most individuals suppose the issue is gross sales. However the true cause companies don’t develop is churn. In the event you hold a consumer for 10 years, your corporation appears to be like fully totally different. In the event you lose them in a single or two years, you’re all the time on the hamster wheel.”
For Neil, the important thing to lowering churn is increasing the connection. If a consumer solely hires you for search engine optimization, they’ll churn. But when they depend on you for search engine optimization, paid, electronic mail, and CRO, you turn into indispensable.
He additionally emphasised the significance of focusing on enterprise purchasers:
- They take longer to shut, however they keep longer.
- They develop contracts throughout providers and areas.
- And whenever you win one model, you typically get launched to others inside the identical group (e.g., LVMH).
It’s not about closing the deal as soon as; it’s about maintaining the deal for a decade.
Remaining ideas
If there’s one widespread sample throughout these episodes, it’s this: The winners in advertising and marketing do what’s onerous. They obsess over depth, take dangers and ship “dangerous concepts” in an effort to discover nice ones (i.e. construct a portfolio of bets), out-human the machines, and measure success by outcomes, not vainness.
Ahrefs Evolve is your likelihood to take these concepts off the web page and into observe. You’ll hear the unfiltered variations on stage, ask follow-up questions in individual, and swap notes with entrepreneurs who’re working the precise performs you care about.
See you at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego, October 14–15.
