However even for those who’re our most loyal fan, there’ll nonetheless be loads of insights that you simply’ve missed or have forgotten already. Many of those concepts are too good to let vanish.
So we went again by our catalog and rescued the insights from our company that need to be referenced time and again once more.
One of the best half? A lot of our company 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 writer, keynote speaker, futurist, and enterprise guide who blogs at {develop}, one of many prime 5 advertising blogs on the planet. He additionally teaches graduate advertising lessons at Rutgers College and has written 10 best-selling books.
When he got here on the podcast, he didn’t sugarcoat it.
“Should 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 obtained to dig deep and do higher.”
How can we do higher? Mark says we must always make advertising extra human, extra like artwork.
“I’m not going to purchase tickets to listen to AI play a Stephen Wilson tune. He means one thing to me. There’s an emotional connection to his humanity and the tales he tells in his songs. our advertising in a roundabout way should strategy artwork. It should unleash and spotlight this human factor.we have to educate by our tales, our experiences, our schooling. We now have to speak about what makes us completely happy, what makes us excited, what makes us indignant, as a result of that’s what is going to join with folks. It’s this expression of the human expertise. That’s what artwork is. It’s an expression of the human expertise.”
Mark shall 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. She beforehand led and constructed advertising groups from the bottom up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly and has been the first-ish marketer 4 occasions, main groups by hypergrowth and at scale.
On the podcast, she defined why so many founders misdiagnose their advertising issues.
“Founders typically assume they’ve an engine drawback: they’re not doing sufficient channels, not sending sufficient emails, not operating sufficient adverts. 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 into three components:
- Basis: your ICP, your positioning, your market.
- Gas: the concepts, content material, and creatives you produce.
- Engine: the channels you employ to distribute that gasoline.
“You’re not going to convey a Tesla to an everyday fuel station. The mistaken gasoline for the mistaken engine received’t work. Startups want the appropriate gasoline and the appropriate engine, they usually need to match.”
She additionally urges startups to search for what she calls advertising 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 received’t get you there. I’m all the time asking: what benefits do you’ve that no person else does? That’s the place you need to double down.”
Emily shall be talking on “Classes for Small Content material Groups: How I Handle My Content material Technique As A Two-Individual Group And A E-newsletter With ~70k Subscribers” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Emily stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Peep Laja is a 3x founder (Wynter, CXL, Speero). Right now, he’s a acknowledged professional in technique, messaging, and market analysis.
On the podcast, Peep was blunt about why a lot content material advertising fails:
“Mediocre content material is harmful. Wonderful content material destroyed us at CXL. It wasn’t dangerous, nevertheless it wasn’t nice both. And that’s the worst place to be. Unhealthy content material folks ignore. Wonderful 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).
Every little thing else is noise.
Peep shall be talking on “B2B Manufacturers Don’t Have A Pipeline Downside, They Have A Recall Downside” 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 well-liked 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 stunts, he’s trustworthy:
“All the good concepts begin as dangerous concepts. Do the alternative of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, then make the narrative tie again to your model.”
A few of his greatest stunts (and misses):
- The “vandalism” reveal (Singapore) — Delbert seeded a pretend telco marketing campaign in MRT stations, then doodled over the adverts with creators earlier than revealing Circles.Life and its 20GB for $20 supply. In pristine Singapore, it hit a cultural nerve. End result: 10× new-user run price 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 fake merchandising machine. It obtained tons of viral consideration and press lined it extensively. The police confirmed up.
- CMB’s “ship casuals away” function — CMB needed 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 corporations wouldn’t make.
How Delbert decides what to ship:
- Goal for anticipated worth, not heroics: Price range small, take many pictures, and don’t rely on a stunt to hit the forecast.
- Account for hidden prices: Stunts are “low-cost” in money however costly in crew power and braveness.
- Exploit the cultural erogenous zone: What shocks in Singapore received’t budge Manila. Context is king.
- Distribution helps, however the concept is king: Seeding and outreach are icing; a meh concept received’t journey.
“If 10% of your wild concepts land, that’s a win if every roll of the cube is inexpensive.”
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 patrons a hands-on method to test-drive merchandise.
On the podcast, he shared his greatest perception: Early-stage advertising isn’t about following a playbook. It’s truly about constructing a portfolio of experiments.
“I all the time consider myself as a fund supervisor. The finances is my fund, and the shares are my advertising channels. My job is to select the appropriate portfolio combine, primarily based on what the corporate wants, what’s already been tried, and the CEO’s danger profile.”
As a substitute of trying to find 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 ways 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 in opposition to overcomplicating attribution too early: what issues is belief and directional alerts, not excellent knowledge.
Madhav shall 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 received’t.
“I’ve written 300 articles that no person cared about. The one approach I get consideration now could be 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 stage of rigor has earned him mentions in TechCrunch, Monetary Occasions, and Enterprise Insider.
His lesson for entrepreneurs is easy: 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 one of the best in B2B SaaS, surpassing 1 billion impressions in 2024.
What’s his secret? Deal with content material like a artistic studio.
As a substitute 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 adverts.
However Chris believes this isn’t simply ClickUp’s benefit. It’s the long run:
“All B2B corporations are going to have a full-time creator. 100%.”
His recommendation to entrepreneurs is easy: cease following “greatest practices,” research what truly entertains folks, and put money into 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 shall be talking on “The SaaS Social Playbook: Turning Natural Content material Right into a Development Channel” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Chris stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Melissa Laurie is without doubt one of the main voices on EGC (Worker Generated Content material). By means of her company Oysterly Media, she’s helped manufacturers like SEPHORA, Salesforce, and even the Singapore Police Power, flip their staff into a robust advertising 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.
Brief video is now how folks search and uncover. Meaning your model feeds can’t be occasional press releases; they want a gentle cadence of human clips from actual teammates: product ideas, day-in-the-life, fast tales, green-screen explainers. But it surely solely works for those who 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 completed. It’s about making a channel, a group.”
Melissa’s playbook in a nutshell:
- Prepare and set guardrails. Don’t simply go to a Gen Z worker and inform them to “make a video”. Train hooks, first-frame textual content, pacing, and sample interrupts and assessment each put up.
Publish constantly. Observe saves, feedback, and completions to double down on what resonates. - Goal for enterprise outcomes. Brief video on model channels helps appeal to expertise, retain/interact groups, and promote (assume Sephora associates genuinely recommending their favourite merchandise)
In case your model remains to be making an attempt to cross off TV spots as Reels, you’re “placing lipstick on a pig.” Put actual folks, 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 corporations like Ramp, Reddit, Bounce, Dropbox, Hims, Nextdoor and Snapchat. He led search engine optimization and Development 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 moderately than declaring search engine optimization useless, Kevin sees it evolving. Site visitors could decline, however income doesn’t essentially observe the identical path, particularly as AI Overviews begin exhibiting up for extra industrial queries.
His recommendation for SEOs is easy: 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 folks act, they’ll go to AI as a substitute.
“The primary rules of search engine optimization nonetheless apply—relevance, freshness, authority—however consumer habits has shifted. Persons are typing longer, hyper-specific prompts, and there’s a vacuum of content material that truly solutions these. Whoever fills it can win.”
Kevin shall be talking on “What Content material Works Effectively in LLMs” at Ahrefs Evolve. See Kevin stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
John-Henry Scherck is the founder and CEO of Development Performs, a number one B2B content material technique & search engine optimization company that works with mid-market and enterprise expertise companies to drive pipeline, not simply web page views.
The core lesson from his episode: Site visitors alone is nugatory until it drives income.
That’s why JH is skeptical of the hype round “zero-volume key phrases.” Certain, some could usher in a trickle of visitors, however they hardly ever transfer the needle for venture-scale SaaS corporations:
“Should you’re hinging your profession on issues that convey 100 clicks a month, that you must create a lot content material. Search won’t even be the appropriate channel for it.”
As a substitute, he urges entrepreneurs to assume greater:
- 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 patrons already collect.
For JH, all of it comes again to a easy reality: quantity is self-importance, income is sanity.
John-Henry shall be talking on “Adopting Al: Every little thing We’ve Realized Changing into an Al-First Company” at Ahrefs Evolve. See John-Henry stay at Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego.
Neil Patel is without doubt one of the most recognizable names in digital advertising. He’s the co-founder of NP Digital, which has grown into a worldwide company with over $100M in annual income, plus software program companies like Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic.
On the podcast, Neil minimize by the noise about why companies actually fail to scale:
“Most individuals assume the issue is gross sales. However the actual cause companies don’t develop is churn. Should you maintain a shopper for 10 years, your online business appears fully totally different. Should 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 shopper solely hires you for search engine optimization, they’ll churn. But when they depend on you for search engine optimization, paid, e mail, and CRO, you grow to be indispensable.
He additionally emphasised the significance of focusing on enterprise shoppers:
- They take longer to shut, however they keep longer.
- They increase contracts throughout providers and areas.
- And once 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 retaining the deal for a decade.
Closing ideas
If there’s one frequent sample throughout these episodes, it’s this: The winners in advertising do what’s arduous. They obsess over depth, take dangers and ship “dangerous concepts” with a purpose to discover nice ones (i.e. construct a portfolio of bets), out-human the machines, and measure success by outcomes, not self-importance.
Ahrefs Evolve is your probability to take these concepts off the web page and into apply. You’ll hear the unfiltered variations on stage, ask follow-up questions in individual, and swap notes with entrepreneurs who’re operating the precise performs you care about.
See you at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego, October 14–15.
