This week, Bill talks with Sam Dunning, founder of Breaking B2B and host of the Breaking B2B Podcast. Sam is a leading expert in B2B SEO, websites that convert, and customer research-driven strategies.

Together, they explore how AI search, LLMs, and SEO are converging to disrupt the way B2B companies and manufacturers compete online. The conversation covers the impact of ChatGPT on visibility, why content fundamentals still win, the critical role of pricing transparency, and how customer research drives effective marketing strategies. Whether you’re a manufacturer, service provider, or tech company, this episode delivers the insights you need to build visibility, credibility, and inbound leads in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape.

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today we have a very hot topic and a very special guest. Sam Dunning is the founder of Breaking B2B and the host of the Breaking B2B Podcast. He helps B2B and SaaS companies generate revenue through SEO and websites that actually convert with a focus on customer research and practical strategy. With a focus on customer research and practical strategies, Sam cuts through the noise to deliver marketing that drives results. Sam, thank you for joining us today.

Sam: Hey, I appreciate the invite and looking forward to the chat.

Bill: Thank you, Sam. So Sam, today in the marketplace, not a call or a conversation goes by that I don't get a request from a CEO, from a marketing manager, whoever I'm talking to. Hey, what's going on with AEO, GEO and SEO? You are operating in a hot space. What are you kind of just seeing in this moment in the market?

Sam: Yeah, it's quite possibly the biggest shakeup in SEO I feel for probably the last 10 years and almost every discovery call, sales call, customer catch up that I'm having, I'm having marketing leaders or the founder of the company asking pretty much the same thing. Like how do we get visibility on LLMs? How do I show up first on ChatGPT or even why aren't we showing up in ChatGPT? So it almost feels like over the last six months or so, everyone's super worried, super crazy, maybe even a bit anxious with this shakeup, wondering is their business visible? Do they need to ditch Google? Has SEO completely changed? Do I need to call it something else? LLMO, AIO, SEO, what do I call it? So it's a crazy time, but looking forward to digging in.

Bill: Yeah, so Sam, I think that one of the things you uncovered there is really what's missing is it's brought people's attention back to a space that I think was probably waning a little bit in its emphasis. think people are kind of like either given up or it's kind of taken their eye off the SEO ball. But now it has come back in sharp focus for everyone to deal with this and try and figure out like these shifting sands that are moving underneath us.

Sam: Yeah, it is funny that it's taken something like a massive shakeup for folks to take, or at least the majority of tech companies and service companies in the B2B space that I speak to. It's funny that it's caused this to make them kind of take SEO seriously. We'll dive into some of this stuff, but it's almost funny that how a lot of times the fundamentals carry through and it takes like a big new shiny object to realize that some of the more classic strategies are still almost as good as they were several years ago.

Bill: Absolutely. Well, Sam, let's jump right in. I know in one of your personas on your LinkedIn contact, content, you're Superman. And so we're just going to up up and away and jump right into this content and figure it out. So what are you seeing when you look at the future of AI search, LLMs and SEO? Like how is AI search changing the way people find information?

Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose to get to up some context, I guess is traditionally when, and a lot of the strategies that I talk about for attracting high intent prospects with SEO. So basically what is going to give us the quickest time to value possible when a dream client is in market searching for our solution, our software, service, our tech, or whatever we provide. Cause that's where the gold is in SEO. We want to capture that 5%. You're probably familiar with the 95-5 rule. At any one given time, only 5% of our total addressable market is in buying mode. So let's start there. So how has it changed? Well, with a Google search, historically, if I was maybe a CMO or a founder or a VP marketing, I might have searched for something like best payroll software, as an example, if I was in the market, or best HR software. I'm saying that because I've recently been talking to a client in that space. Whereas in ChatGPT, I might go, I'm CMO at this company. I have 50 reps on my team. I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z pain point. I need ABC features and I want you to show me the top three solutions within X and Y budget. A lot more detailed prompt first and foremost. And what's the difference? Well, historically with Google search, you've got, sometimes you've got an AI overview, then you've got the Google ads and then you've got the classic organic 10 blue links. And you'd have the option to click through into a blog article or landing page or whatever the pages were listed on Google. Whereas ChatGPT, you're pretty much getting instant responses to your detailed prompts straight away. Sometimes the responses will be there with a citation, so a link to an external site, but they're not always to classic websites. Sometimes they could be places like Reddit, it could be to YouTube, it could be to an article, it could be to a review site, it could be to Wikipedia. So the difference being that ChatGPT is pulling from all across the web. So more of an ecosystem play, I'd say, compared to the traditional Google 10 links and the fact that folks can search for stuff that's way more detailed than a classic Google search to set the scene.

Bill: So from your perspective, as you're trying to earn those citations and across the entire digital universe, right? Not just for Google, there's YouTube, there's Reddit, there's other sources you mentioned. Is content still king?

Sam: Of course, of course. It's, it's almost funny that since kind of ChatGPT has become more and more popular and likewise other LLM tools that a lot of folks are coming out with these different strategies like classic SEO is dead. LLMO is the only way to go or GEO is the only way to go. But a lot of it comes down to SEO fundamentals. And what does that actually mean? Well, like I said, working out what your dream client’s searching for when they actually need your solution, when they need your service within your industry, when they have crisp and specific expensive problems that your product or service solves, or when they're frustrated with their current vendor, or when they're weighing up options for vendors in your space. Those are the five or six kind of main things it drills down to, or bottom of funnel SEO, if you will. And the crux of that is building out first and foremost, your website to be a super useful asset, or almost a 24 seven sales rep, if you will. So you've got, as to your point, content that addresses all of those things, whether that is solution pages, whether that's articles, whether that's listicle pages, comparison pages, alternative pages, industry pages, all we can kind of drill into when and where each makes sense. But yeah, you've got to have the content there for, because ChatGPT is pulling from sources like Google, it's pulling from Bing, as well as external ones from the web. If you don't control the narrative, i.e. have that content that can actually be picked up, a line in the water for both Google organic search and LLMs, then you're already struggling, let alone everything you do outside of your website, be that PR, be that YouTube stuff, Reddit, et cetera.

Bill: And doesn't this change the way B2B companies should really think about their website and their content? Like it's no longer good enough to just say, you know, here's what we make or here's what we do. Here's some features and benefits. I mean, you have to really define that buyer's journey for each persona and then walk them the whole way through because you're, the ability or the reliance on your sales team to get that lead and then take them on that journey in handhold is in some ways being replaced by the LLMs and them being able to create these, you know, recaps or pull this data. So it not only, it seems to me, it not only argues for that content is king, but the historic definition of what good content was is still lacking. And we have to expand the content we're placing online to continue to answer more and more of those prompts and questions. Do you see that as you're winning some of these SEO and other EO battles online?

Sam: Oh for sure. And I think it's because now that the trouble is it's easier than ever to create content at the click of a few buttons with AI tools. But the one issue with that is AI is brilliant as a starting point, whether that's you're going to create a page on your website, maybe a solution page or a page for an industry or product or an article. Great to give you like your outline or your rough draft. But a lot of us, and I imagine a lot of the folks watching or tuning in probably aren't selling stuff that costs five bucks. They're probably selling stuff that's several thousand dollars, maybe 50K, 100K, 150K. And no one suddenly wakes up deciding to invest that amount of money in their service or a software or a solution. It takes a lot of thought and consideration. And if the first touch point, someone comes across your website, whether that is an organic search or through LLMs or elsewhere, and they stumble upon what I call and a lot of others call kind of AI slop. And they land on your article, even if it does rank and it says stuff like, we're going to turbocharge your revenues with our all in one, all singing, all dancing platform built for tech wizard wizardry to boost your business. And it's like, that doesn't even make sense. Like what the heck does that mean? They're going to read that and just bounce off and go to competitor. And I think like, to your point, like customer research is, the, is the foundation of not just SEO, but the backbone of good B2B marketing. So taking a step back before you do any kind of keyword research, before you do any planning, before you craft any content, before you do any technical SEO, any backlinks and all the other pieces of the SEO puzzle. Like to your point, you need to mine those sales calls, do that research, speak to your customer success team if you've got one and kind of really understand your dream clients’ problems, motivations, goals, jobs to be done, industries that you've historically sold well to and all that good stuff. So your strategy is kind of based on what's working.

Bill: And isn't that the perceived lie that we're all accepting or maybe that we really need to challenge, is that AI is going to replace it all do it all, we don't have to worry about it. In some ways we're finding AI is creating more work because there's so much more data to deal with. There's so much more information and it's like we have not. We have seen in some ways it speeds things up, but in other ways it slows things down because there's just so much more to contend with and so much more variability and information. How do you see that as you refer to that slop, as you refer to that AI slop? How do you see that?

Sam: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think there's there's good and bad to it, really. I think it can be in some cases it can give you. like when it comes to website content. Sometimes if you feed it the right insights, like maybe you pull out, pull some sales calls or customer success call transcripts and you say like, mine these transcripts, give me the top three five pain points that are raised and jobs to be done and goals and like get those into bullet points. That can be really useful to then weave into a great piece of content that's likely to resonate with your dream clients. But when you kind of get it to do everything for you, you'll probably end up with more work than you had initially, because you're going to have to change so many words and mess around so much like you say so, and that, doesn't just apply to content writing, but that could be to building workflows or whatever it is with AI. It can, it can be quite a game. So a lot of the things with SEO are just good B2B marketing fundamentals and that's ruthless prioritization. What is going to give us the time to value quickest? I, in this case, what are our dream clients actually searching when they need our offer? Not information gathering, but they need our solution now. Let's start there. And what resources do we have in-house or externally to put together a systematic play and do something that we can repeat like each week or each month?

Bill: No, I love that. And I think you're hitting on a topic that we're very passionate about. And I'm seeing those practitioners who are doing really, really great work that is effective for their clients. And that is this voice of customer research. We also do voice of what we call SME research, so subject matter experts. So we try and take, okay, here's what the customers are saying and that research. And then here's what the subject matter expert at the company, especially in like engineered and very technical products and services to make sure that we're bringing those things together. And then also, I guess, the third party in the room and the big elephant in the room is that making sure that that matches what people, people may say they're searching for it in this way or allude to it, and subject matter experts may say that's what's happening. But then we have to look at what's actually happening online and the research of where the volume of conversation is and then kind of match all that together. So that voice of customer research is so important. How have you seen that approach change the game in the work you're doing?

Sam: Oh, big time, great question. So I think you're right. Because I think sometimes where SEO can go wrong is you can almost go one way, too much one way or too much the other. So you can go too much into the search engine optimization. You can over-index on optimization, technical, and kind of forget the content needs to resonate. Or you can go full thought leadership content mode, but then not do any of the SEO fundamentals, like not do basic technical SEO, like the URL, the metadata, the structure of the page, H1, and so on. And then your website just doesn't rank properly because of the fundamentals. So yes, it's a balance. And I guess you've drilled on some good points there. What we, what I normally encourage folks to do that perhaps early on in their journey is get with their sales team, get with their CS team, or if you're the founder of a small business, then you'll know all this stuff already. And really one, pull all those insights that you can from, from your prospects, from your customers and so on. And then I, I recommend building out something I call the money keyword matrix. And in very, very simple terms, that's making a Google sheet or something similar of four main columns. One is, what's every way that someone can refer to our offer or our solution? And if I go back to that payroll example, that might be like payroll software, payroll tools, payroll solutions, payroll platforms, et cetera. That would be column one. Column two would be what are the industries we've historically sold well into by looking at our CRM data that one, have the problem we solve, two are motivated to solve it and three have cash to easily invest in the offer and we've got that data that they've done it. Three is what are the competitors that always come up in sales schools, the column three common competitors that always come up to almost annoying level. In the payroll software that might be like ADP, paychecks, et cetera. And then column four is what are the top three, four, five crisp and specific problems or jobs to be done of our dream clients? And customer research is great for that, your sales team are great for knowing that. And payroll software could be like how to manage fraud with when doing payroll or what's the way the client or the prospect gets the job done today that reaches almost a frustrating level that's causing time delays or churn. And that could be like how to manage my payroll within Google Sheets or something like that, where you can then position your product as the new and better way. So those are the four main columns. And I always encourage that as a starting exercise, because it's good for one involving the team, two getting, getting ideas on how prospects actually refer to the offer. And the whole crux of this is then you can actually use that data to make long tail searches that the dream client might look on on Google or elsewhere when they need the solution. So I suppose to give, to give some actual ideas, like if you were trying to rank for best payroll software, that's going to be extremely competitive because you have all the big players in the field, but you might niche down to payroll software for HR or for nonprofits or for education or whatever those industries you decipher are money industries and that's way easier to rank and weigh faster. And plus no one searches payroll software for nonprofits for fun. They search it because they need that solution. And if they land on your landing page and it resonates, it addresses their questions, it has plenty of proof, answers their queries, then they'll probably grab a demo. So a lot of it is, and you can use tools like when you've got those four columns on that money keyword matrix, you can use tools like hrefs or semrush to look at keyword difficulty. As long as they've got a little bit of search volume, what you'll find is lower search volume keywords tend to rank a lot faster and they tend to be higher intent as opposed to like the classic how to do XYZ, what is a KPI, how to build a website, loads of traffic, but are never gonna drive inbound leads. So yeah.

Bill: That is an insanely practical way to do it. And I love the way you have kind of built that model and provided that framework. I think that that you know, someone's listening to this and they're missing out on the way they're approaching their SEO, that would be a great first step is to build that matrix and kind of look at the way that you're organizing that. I want to ask you a question about the knowledge panel and AI overviews. We've been seeing in some of the work where we've been able to rank for our clients, not only in the first organic position or high on the first page, but then also we're achieving citations in the AI overview and the knowledge panel.

Sam: Nice.

Bill: What is the value? Because I was in a meeting the other day, there were nine people at this company and we were sitting there and I'm trying to explain the value of the knowledge panel. And we were basically at a 40% share of the knowledge panel citations for a very, very important keyword for that client, manufacturing client. What is the value of like earned media or like is there value to the knowledge panel? I'm still trying to like piece this together.

Sam: Okay, so there's two ways to look at it. First, I think it's important if you can, what we call own the SERP, so own that search engine ranking page or results page. So there's multiple ways you can do that. Yeah, go for the AI overview, go for the knowledge panel, maybe have a YouTube video on the topic, then have a landing page, possibly even a blog. So you've got like four or five organics, then maybe a Google ad as well. So looking to own it is always smart, get that market share, encourage the likeness to get a click through. But there's… I think it was, I forget her name, Liz Reid or a senior VP at Google was saying things like Google overviews haven't reviewed, haven't reduced click-throughs to websites. And it's just ridiculous because they a hundred percent have. People are getting the information they need in the AI overview. And then sometimes they'll click through. Sure. But if you're getting an instant summary on a query or similar, then of course it's going to reduce your chance of, clicking through to the traditional links. Is that bad? Not necessarily. So I think, I see, I think the way that I think one, it's great to do that, especially if it's for a commercial like bottom of funnel search term like best payroll software solutions or best offer for industry or whatever's relevant for your niche and your offer in your industry or competitor alternative search or something like that. If it's a money keyword that's really valuable, then yeah, you want to own it as much as as the SERP is possible for sure. No doubt about it. But I feel that with the rollout of Google AI mode, so their version of ChatGPT, and likewise with tools like ChatGPT, they're moving more and more into a mindshare play in the sense that these platforms, just like LinkedIn now, has crushed organic reach. Organic reach is terrible. They want you to stay on the platform as much as possible. The last thing they want you to do is click off their platform, so they want to serve you as much information in app, in platform, in tool, before you move away. So if I feel we're going more into the kind of mind share game that if your brand is consistently cited when your dream clients have your problem solve, comparing vendors, looking for questions around your niche or directly looking for the offer or looking to move away from the incumbent. If your brand is consistently cited, what a lot of websites are seeing is their, their click throughs are going down. Their impressions are going up, but then the non branded traffic is going down, but then folks are going directly to their site. Their direct traffic or their branded search as well on Google is going up. And I feel like in a few years time, that’s gonna, that trend is only going to increase. So folks are going to get the information they need, whether it's from AI search, LLMs or Google eventually with Google AI mode, and then just go straight to your homepage.

Bill: No, and I think when you cite that study or that reference to Google saying click throughs have dropped. Well, if you go to that AI overview and there are many of the answers to the questions, like there's a framing of that problem, the job to be done or the problem to be solved, and there's many things to read, you then hone in on what you need to click on to find the answer you need as opposed to, I mean, even as in the ancient times a year ago, before we had all these tools or two years ago, you would have to click on many of these solution providers’ websites and read through countless pages or countless clicks to find that answer. So isn't, like you said, it's mind share. It's just being in that space and having part of that conversation that's going to lead towards momentum as opposed to the old metrics, click through, those type of things that really are going to drive conversions moving forward.

Sam: Yeah, I feel it's definitely not there yet, but I definitely feel in the coming years we're going to get there. Just because like I say, all tools are the same. Social platforms are the same. Search engines are the same. LLMs, pretty much the same. They want you to stay on there as long as possible, serve you as much information until you absolutely have to get off that platform. I was going to say, I suppose something I didn't mention is there is, it feels like there's a lot of anxiety and around businesses, B2B service and tech companies that feel they're missing a trick when it comes to LLMs and ChatGPT. Like I say, nearly every sales call that the marketing leader or the founder will ask, how do we increase LLM visibility? And I almost say, look, wait a second. Let's take a step back. Who, who is your ICP? Who's your dream client? And if it's, if they're more of a classic service, like they're selling more to more layman, like a traditional audience, I'll say the chances are they're probably big on Google still. Old habits die hard. Everyone's used to doing it. You don't suddenly switch to a new platform instantly. Takes a lot of adoption over a long time. And, but on the flip side, if you have a very tech-savvy audience, maybe you're a SaaS that sells to developers. They probably only exclusively use LLMs to search. So weigh that up. And the other thing I will say is that Datos, I think they're run by SEMrush and SparkTorre did a study a few months back and they realized that Google at the time still gets 373 times the searches compared to LLMs. And if you added all the AI tools together, Perplexity, ChatGPT and so on, they only take up 2% of the total search market. So before you start going crazy thinking we need to go all in LLMs, a lot of good SEO that carries through to LLMs is still just classic SEO, like we talked about, and digital PR and kind of B2B ecosystem marketing. And Google is, right now, Google is still the beast to capture inbound leads for most businesses, at least.

Bill: It does feel a little bit like we're on the bleeding edge and there's much ado about nothing. When you look at the numbers. But I think you're exactly right. We need to be prepared for the future. The good news I think for SEO is that a solid traditional play not only develops content for Google, not only develops content for the LLMs, but also develops a good YouTube video, which is another huge search engine. And it develops like a piece that your sales team could use in their sales enablement or their pitch deck. So it, to me right now, one of the still the best investment that a company can make, especially in B2B is content. Content, content, content. Don't worry about other fringe efforts, double down on content. And over time, you should continue to win. The probability is with you.

Sam: Yeah, that's it. I mean, I'd agree with that. I'd also say I'm one of those sick SEOs that turns down a ton of business because there's a, there's a number of reasons. Like I'll have marketing leaders or founders come to me and say like, Sam, we want to invest in SEO. Then I'll ask some questions around the business, the, industry they're going after, what they're doing now, how their revenue is per month, per year, et cetera. And some, might turn out that they're a new offer. So perhaps they're creating a new category. So people aren't actually searching for what they do. SEO doesn't make sense. SEO is best to capture demand for active folks in a mature market where folks are aware of your solution. That's when it's at its peak. If they don't know it exists, you're way better off in your case, like you mentioned content, but work out where those dream clients spend their time. Are they listening to a specific industry podcast? Are they going to specific trades shows or in-person dinners? Get present to them because SEO is not going to help you at this stage.

Bill: Correct.

Sam: There is a play you could do with SEO, but it's way too long tail for most companies I speak to that want to drive impact fast, pipeline fast.

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Bill: So Sam, I want to switch gears here and go into something I think it's going to be controversial for a lot of companies to consider and a lot of leaders to consider. And that's transparency in pricing. When you're dealing with SaaS companies, normally they have a pricing page, right? And you can get the free, the good, the better, the best. When we're dealing with a lot of manufacturing clients with very complex processes and maybe some service companies that aren't as buy-it-now, this pricing transparency conversation is always very, very difficult. But I know you have a very strong opinion on this, but like, why do you believe publishing pricing on your website is now essential?

Sam: Yeah, there's a few thoughts I've got. So one is spinning back to LLMs, I don't know what it's like. You know your niche better than myself, because I deal with a few service companies, but a lot of tech. But for example, you can type in brand name, pricing. And if that company doesn't have pricing on its website as a dedicated page, it's going to pull it from other sources. You're just not controlling it.

Bill: Yes.

Sam: So it could pull it from Reddit. It could pull it from review sites, i.e. Intech, G2, Captera. There's a bunch of others like the usual suspects, Clutch, et cetera. And it might not always be from a happy user. For example, on Reddit especially, it could be from someone that said, tried to get pricing, took me three sales calls, the sales rep eventually passed me to someone, they never responded to me, then I found out from a friend it was five grand a month and we only had one grand a month budget. Zero stars out of five would not use these again. Do you want that to show up as your brand? Because I certainly wouldn't. I'd much and I'd also think like, one, I'd rather my own pricing was cited. So I’d definitely rather have a pricing page. And two, if I put myself in the prospective buyer's shoes, and let's say I'm evaluating two or three options, whatever it is, it could be a service, could be a solution, doesn't really matter. I know, I mean, the last thing I really want to do is spend 45 minutes on a call with a sales rep to then go to another call to eventually get pricing. I'd much rather self-qualify in the sense that I need the solution. I want to go to the website, flick on their pricing page, even if they don't have set tiers, like usually in SaaS, like say free, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, or contact us for enterprise pricing. At least give me a bracket, like a bucket, like this tier between 5K to 10K, this tier 10 to 20K, this this tier custom. Because at least then I know you're in the ballpark and I'm not gonna waste your time and my time having a 45 minute chat with several sales reps just to realize your way out of the budget I ever had and that saves that saves everyone time, right?

Bill: Absolutely. And I think even in the manufacturing space, you know, hey, we manufacture these machines that cost anywhere from one point five to two point five million dollars. I mean, if you're a small manufacturer and your budget is twenty-five grand, great. Everybody saves time. If you're Ford Motor Company or a multinational that's like, yeah, we're thinking about putting in a line that has 20 of these machines. No worries. But they want a more expensive machine because they want the throughput and the reliability and the precision. They want to spend money because that'll be spread over hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of production. So I think it's so important. I think it's going to be a shock specifically in spaces in B2B where it isn't traditional. In SaaS, in tech, it's a little more traditional to have those pricing pages. I would say in most of the rest of the tech or B2B spaces I've ever worked with, there is no pricing page. There is never a pricing page. And that's going to have to be adopted for these companies to be effective in communicating with the LLMs and those buyers’ prompts to compare and contrast against other companies.

Sam: I think one thing to consider is you don't know what you don't know. So you don't know how many prospects, and I'd imagine this is probably quite rife for more traditional industries that maybe aren't as big on like visitor identification software on their sites as well. So you don't know what you don't know. You don't know how many prospects might come onto your site. They might have plenty of budget. They might have millions to work with you, but they're just annoyed because the competitor is showing them pricing. So they'd rather deal with someone that's transparent. And the other flip side to pricing pages, yes, they can be searched on Google. They can be searched on LLMs. That's a great advantage, but also they can be really good for sales enablement. So you can have your bracket, like your bucket of pricing, three tiers, whatever it is, but then you can basically act as a sales rep. So you can say, look, here's a video review of a customer and why they chose us specifically and how our pricing was transparent. You can also have badges maybe that are relevant for industry awards or et cetera, but you can have an FAQ section. And the FAQ directly handles queries that you get related to pricing or account management on sales calls. Like why so expensive? What's your refund policy? Do I get shipped off to a junior account manager that can't spell my name? All that kind of stuff, you know, like the classic questions that get asked on sales calls, address them head-on. And it's going to help everyone. It saves everyone time.

Bill: Well and I think that's the key as we move forward, what we don't know is how many people have just passed over us because we weren't available with the information they wanted at the time and didn't want to be bothered. And that's going to be an important transition as we start to. And I'm with you. I don't know that you have to give the exact price of the machine or the solution, but you at least have to give some buckets and price ranges. Because if you're buying an automobile, are you buying the lowest cost, get you back and forth or the Land Rover? You need to know if you can afford it, right? Because you don't want to have that conversation if it's not in the budget or if it's not going to meet your specifications. What do you think are some practical tips about using pricing pages that you've seen, like those facts are huge, walking through all those questions? I mean, it's like you want the pricing pages and you want to handle those like the challenges, the buyer’s like hesitation to deal with it. What other practical tips do you think there can be for using a pricing page?

Sam: Yeah, I suppose outside of actually being searched itself, because your prospects probably are typing like, brand, your brand name and pricing. And outside of that, I would essentially say just, just try and make it handle anything that your sales team are getting queried on. So one bolster of plenty of proof. So if you've got client review videos that do kind of touch on kind of the service, the customer support, the success, those kinds of things are kind of prime and relevant to pricing. Like weave those videos in, get those embedded on there. If you've got client quotes or testimonials with their picture and brand they're from, et cetera, again, add those there. If you've got social badges, I don't know what badges are most relevant to if, if more traditional industries have review sites, but if they do weave those in there, or maybe accreditation's might be more relevant. And then yeah, the FAQ section towards the bottom. Again, just pick up, get with your sales team and just ask like, what are the most common, like really difficult questions that we're getting asked around our offer, industry, set up, guarantees, aftercare, all that kind of stuff. So not only is it good for prospects, it's gonna save you kind of getting poor-fit leads, but also means your sales team can even link those when they're chatting to prospects and just say, check out our pricing, it's actually covering everything you need to know. And when folks eventually book a call or book a demo or book an onsite meeting with you, they're kind of a lot more educated.

Bill: I really love that as far as the sales enablement tie-in as well, because it is way easier if you're on the phone with a prospect and they start challenging you and asking these questions. And then you just say, hey, let's just go to our website. Let's share it on screen. I'm going to show you exactly how we deal with that. So then instead of it being like this, they think you're doing some magical negotiation or making up prices on the spot or whatever. And I think all salespeople, no salesperson likes to look dumb. Right. That's the, that's the kill of a sales process. But if you can point to those things like, here's what it is, here's how we do it, here's our policies, here's our procedures, FAQ, testimonials, it's going to give that buyer more sense of structure and reduce cognitive dissonance, which is then the buyers’ remorse, sort of the unwillingness to close on that buy if they aren't feeling positive and willing to move forward. So I think that makes a ton of sense. Do you think that pricing pages are a trust enabler? Like is that something that's just going to take, if you have one company that has a pricing page and one that doesn't, is not the trust of the pricing page displaying company just that much higher based on the landscape that we're facing today?

Sam: I feel so. I mean, I can't speak directly for every prospect or industry, but at least nearly every marketer, like yourself, I run a podcast. I interview B2B marketing leaders every week and they actually, I've asked, where are we? Like over 450 interviews and nearly every marketing leader, founder says when they go on your website, they want to quickly get an idea of what you do, how it helps them, why they should choose you. They want to see your offer, your product in action. They want to see how much it costs, get their common questions answered. And if you check all those box and they're happy with it and it fits kind of their criteria, then they want to easily schedule a call with a specialist at a time that suits them. So I don't think it's too much to ask on a website really. And I feel kind of, I've, like I've, as a founder, I've been on the end of kind of dealing with tons of qualified inbound leads. Like when I've worked at businesses before that didn't share pricing and it's just annoying. It's like you ask all these discovery questions because as a sales rep, you're told to by a sales manager and it's like, well, they're not going to buy because they just literally can't afford it. So it doesn't matter what I say or how I spin it. These leads that are coming in, we're getting tons of them, but they're not qualified. So can our website just do that for us?

Bill: Let's pivot a second because some of the things you're saying are just stimulating some thought here. What, Sam, is your opinion of the value of case studies, not only from an SEO and dealing with the LLM's perspective, but then also from that sales enablement perspective? Like, how does that maybe tick some different boxes and what are you seeing that's effective in use cases of case studies in the market?

Sam: Yeah, I think my views on this actually changed a bit over time. So I'm, I am big on evidence. I'm big on build a undeniable amount of evidence that you can deliver. Definitely big on that. So I kind of leaned in to, at least with our business Breaking B2B, I leaned into video testimonials. So waiting for, waiting to that moment till you know, you've delivered some great work for your customer, your client, and they've said, so I'm really happy with this or, in our case, I don't know, SEO has just delivered a bunch of demos or sales calls and they've closed whatever it may be. Or we've just had a great win on Google LLMs and they've, I've sent them a screenshot of results and they've said, great. Okay. And I'll say, well, can we book in a quick 15-minute video testimonial? Because I think that has so much replay value in the sense that you can ask them questions like really, really good stuff that helps, it almost kills three birds with one stone because you can do customer research. You can get a video testimonial, then you can replay that video testimony into a case study, LinkedIn posts, social posts and YouTube. So I'll ask them stuff like, why, how did you stumble upon us? Why did you choose us over the other competitors? What do you hate most about our industry? What made you decide to partner with us? Like, what were the results that you that you experienced? Where do you see it going in the next 12 months? What would you say to anyone on the fence about working with us? Like all these kind of crisp and specific problems and queries that kind of skeptical folks considering working with us will have, and then just get dozens of those videos, stack them up on your results page, your case studies page, and kind of break it down with text copy as well. And then you can get them ranked on YouTube. Our ones on YouTube get a bit of traffic, and it's just like undeniable proof. I think that's how I look at it. And I think it's just good to keep stacking that, because the more you've got, the easier it is to be a salespeople.

Bill: So let me ask you, and I think this pivots exactly into this next topic that I think in some ways is a dead topic, but it's very, very difficult to deal with gated content. And, you know, as marketers, we're trying to show that we're getting conversions and we're trying to show the people are filling the form and going into HubSpot or ActiveCampaign or whatever it is. And like we can, we can show that there are people engaging this and we now have their email. And now since they downloaded a white paper, we should pepper them with phone calls and go crazy. Is that moment or era of marketing over? And are the LLM inquiries going to be what finally kills it?

Sam: My opinion on this has changed over the last couple of years. I used to be really against gated content. So I don't know how many folks tuning in are familiar with like Chris Walker's work, Refine Labs. Chris Walker founded a company called Refine Labs in like 2019 or so, whenever it was. And he, kind of brought the movement of demand generation into a really cool context in the sense that, don't ever gate anything, serve everything for your prospects. Like talk about the problems you fix, talk about kind of why folks should choose you, educate the market, like that 95% of the market that aren't in buying mode, but fit your ICP, educate them, build trust, do paid media in front of that 95% cold audience and slowly build trust that you're the right choice to solve their problems over time. And I'm not against that. Like we do that with LinkedIn ads for Breaking B2B for cold lists. I think that's great. But it's getting harder and harder, especially on platforms like organic social, to build an audience because these platforms like we talked about earlier are reducing, they're crushing organic reach and they're going everything into pay to play. So I believe it's now more important than ever to control the narrative, like we talked about with LLMs and Google search and have an owned audience. So I think having a list, having your own newsletter list of ICP prospects is actually really important as these social channels limit the reach. But that's not to say you should just tell ChatGPT to make a best guide for building machines for animal feed or whatever it is within 10 seconds and then gate that and then put a load of paid media to it or blast it to your email list and say, download this, no. I'm more of the sense that craft something that your prospects would actually pay for. So when I've historically done like B2B SEO and SaaS SEO guides, they've originally been paid to play guides. And then I've just repackaged them, add videos and all that kind of stuff and use that as my lead magnet to fuel my list. So I think gated content is okay if your prospects agree that it's so valuable that they'd otherwise pay for it. So it's that useful, that helpful on the specific topic, whatever it's about, because I believe having an owned list is really important. Certainly been useful. Like we only have a small list, but it still kind of drives business for us. And I think it's becoming more important ever, but it has to have the right strategy and it has to be something that's actually useful. And the drip feed or the email, the newsletter again has to be something that's helpful, useful, shares insight, shares a point of view, isn't generic AI slop.

Bill: Well, and maybe that's, so the Missing Half podcast, we're always trying to discover what's missing in people's strategies or approaches. And maybe this is one of the things that's missing when we think about gated content. And maybe there needs to be some type of Sam Dunning value equation filter that like, you know, if it is probably by industry, if you're buying a ten million dollar machine, the value of the content can't be $5. It needs to be $1,000. They would be willing to pay $1,000 for this comparison or for this information in their buyer's journey. And if that is true, and then you are going to give it away and not sell it, then you should be willing to ask for their information. But if it is just, yeah, Chat, please compare and contrast these five competitors and remove the em dash. Publish. Yeah.

Sam: Yeah.

Bill: We shouldn't be asking for the contact info for that information.

Sam: Exactly, exactly. And it could be, I suppose in that case, it could be some kind of unique study. Maybe you got together, I don't know, maybe you made a panel of like 50 target prospects and you asked them like, what are the main issues that you're facing right now in the industry as a whole? What's, what, where do see that the industry changing over the next five years? Like what's working really well for you right now in your machinery business to actually drive revenue and how are you keeping your reps motivated? Like that industry unique data, that does exceptionally well in ChatGPT, also does well in Google. And if you can put together kind of one of those reports that has some of that, has some of your own point of view, yeah, sure, positions your product as the solution at the end, why not? But that's the kind of stuff that I'd see as, like it's easy to say give value, but actually gives kind of some context that would be useful to the prospect that you might exchange for an email.

Bill: Well and Sam doesn't that go back to just like great content? Because it like we've come full circle right in this conversation is whatever we do, it has to be great content and those type of research studies always perform well. It's often very difficult to get companies to invest in that but those when we've executed things like that they've just outperformed everything else we've ever ever done. Well Sam, this has been a fantastic conversation. What I'd like to do is ask you for maybe as we kind of bring this home for some practical tips or takeaways that you think you could, because you and I could get into some really technical stuff. We could get on some different paths. But, you know, we try and keep this conversation fairly high flying. And, you know, if there's a CEO, an owner or a founder listening, a leader and they want to understand what's working right now in SEO content and AI. How would you give them some practical tips and takeaways?

Sam: Yep, yep. So a lot of the basics still work just fine. So what do I mean by that? I mean, if we go back to what I talked about earlier, that money keyword matrix, if you're relatively new to SEO, or even if you've done some stuff before, I think that's still really practical and you can actually put that into play today. So working out kind of what the folks refer to your offer, your solution as, list it out, what the industries you've historically sold well into, competitors and also kind of dream clients’ problems, frustrations, jobs to be done or how they get the job done today. Then you need to make sure that you've, you're building out best-in-class content for that. So from Google perspective, there's a really easy thing you can do, and it's called assessing the intent. So when you build out that money keyword matrix, and you then turn those into long tail keywords, maybe with the assist of a tool like Ahrefs, to see how difficult a keyword is to rank, you might build out for example, I was talking about payroll software earlier, if we decided that payroll software for nonprofits, maybe was one of our target keywords, all I do is I type that into Google organic. I'd see in the organic results, what are the main pages that show up? Is it landing pages mainly? Is it articles? Is it a listicle? Like we evaluated the top 10, um, payroll software for nonprofits of 2025. What shows up most? And then we know that that's the type of page that we need to build to hit the right search intent. And then I just use a strategy called blow that page out of the water. So you do basic technical SEO, which means have the keyword in the URL, have the keyword in your single H1. Structure the page well with H2s for headings, make it product led. So feature your product, make it nice and visual. If you can weave in trust signals, so if it's an article like the author bio, social proof, client results, client result videos, maybe a YouTube video embed. If it's a landing page, maybe FAQs, addressing pain points that we talked about earlier. And yeah, whatever's ranking top organic, look to make your page more helpful, more useful, more educational, position your product better, and so on. That works really well and you can often rank the less competitive searches that are more niche and more specific. You can often rank with content alone. When it comes to more competitive keywords like best payroll software, you need to do that process. Best in class content with light technical SEO, but you also need to bolster it with backlinks from industry-relevant sites. And what works really well for getting visibility in LLMs is building your own listicles for the top 10X solutions, the top 10X software, whatever it may be for each way that a prospect can refer to your solution. That's great because then you can control the narrative and get those pulled up in Google and LLMs. Also looking to feature on external sites, whether that's PR sites or external listicles. So in my game, like tech, software, et cetera, if you search anything around software, pretty much all that gets cited is like the review sites, the top 10X listicles, top 10X articles, all that kind of stuff. So if you can find out the articles that are top ranked in Google and top ranked in LLMs and get placements in those like top three, because no one really skips past the top three or four, you can often get placements in those. I'm speaking from experience. You don't necessarily have to pay to play. You can often outreach whether it's a website owner or the founder or the content lead and give them some kind of value exchange. So as a practical tip, this works quite well for pretty much anything outreach based. If I want to get featured on a podcast, if I want an article listing, if I want a backlink, if I want a placement, I'll just find that person on LinkedIn, send them a painfully short message like, Hey Steve, Hey Jess, enjoyed your listicle on XYZ or enjoyed your podcast on AYZ, had a weird idea, are you against a conversation? They'll usually accept my LinkedIn request and be like, Sam, what the hell are you talking about? And then I'll send them a Loom video with whatever the subject is. If it's a podcast, I'll be on their podcast page. If it's trying to get featured on their article, it'll be on that page saying, I enjoyed this, this, this listicle. Actually had an idea to get a placement. I wondered if you'd be against us kind of inviting you on our podcast as an exchange, or we can give you a backlink on one of articles and an exchange, or if you're applying to a podcast, it might be, had like these tactical strategies that could be useful to your audience and happy to plug it to my followers on LinkedIn and my email list in return. So a lot of those outreach strategies that are good for SEO, good for PR, good for B2B marketing, take more manual effort, but usually the stuff that works really well and it gives you a big boost, you've got to put a bit of sweat equity into, from my experience at least, like the AI tools, the instant generation things just won't cut it.

Bill: Yeah, that goes back to like the black hat of the past, right? And it's just, those are gonna be flashes in the pan. Sam, that's an excellent overview and really great practical tips. Let me ask you this as a follow-up. Do you believe PR, which has largely been ignored over the past several years, maybe even the past decade, is going to see a resurgence as creating more value because of these, the need to have third party references and backlinks. Is PR going to feel that same resurgence that SEO is feeling today?

Sam: I think so. I think people don't realize that a lot of companies that are investing big into SEO are doing digital PR anyway. So they were trying to get into the media for big newsworthy outlets for anything that could be relevant to their, any relevant story where they essentially plug the product and mention the brand. So I should have mentioned earlier that LLMs don't really go so much on backlinks like Google historically has to give you trust, trust authority and a bit of a boost, but then more about brand mentions. So having your category mentioned and having your brand mentioned together on your own website, on other websites, Reddit, YouTube, you name it, it's gonna help. So when people ask me about the best way to show up on LLMs, I'll often say, well, it's easy, just build a brand 10 years ago. But not many of us can do that. Not many of us can go back.

Bill: So, yeah my DeLorean is in the shop right now, so I can't go back to the future right and do that. Here's another quick question. Is there anything you see companies doing today that they should stop immediately because it just shouldn't be done anymore or it's hurting their SEO and LLM search performance?

Sam: Yeah, prob, I'd probably say more just doing random acts of SEO. And it's a bit like random acts of marketing kind of where the founder or CEO says, oh this competitor did this on LinkedIn, let's do that. Or this competitor wrote this article that they just, I don't know, they just won an award. Let's do that. Like, let's spend all day writing about this award we just won. And it's like, well, let's do this how-to article that gets loads of traffic and it's just like random acts of SEO, but that could be applied to anything in B2B marketing because it's rife without strategy. So without actually saying, well, this is the dream client. This is who we want to get after. This is actually likely to drive some pipeline that's qualified for our business. Let's build a systematic strategy to make it happen instead of these random tactics or plays that are not really doing much.

Bill: I love that. Well, Sam, this is our opportunity for an 100% shameless plug of your business. Where people can connect with you and all of this will be listed in the show notes and wherever we post this online on LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. But please tell us about Sam Dunning and your company and the shameless plug.

Sam: No, I appreciate, I appreciate the invite. So three main ways. One is LinkedIn, Sam Dunning, daily ramblings on SEO tips, stories, case studies, et cetera. And memes. Second is the podcast Breaking B2B where again, I interview marketing leaders and have solo episodes on SEO and B2B marketing. And a third way is if you may be a little annoyed that competitors are constantly outranking on Google and now LLM is kind of stealing pipeline and inbounds, we might be able to fix that over at BreakingB2B.com.

Bill: Excellent, excellent. Well Sam, this has just been a fantastic conversation. I've been a fan a long time. I do enjoy your memes and some of the comedy you're introducing into SEO, which is hard, right? Because it's not right for, yeah.

Sam: It's quite boring industry.

Bill: I haven't seen a lot of other mainstream comedians really take this topic and run with it, but hey, maybe you are. Maybe this is your doing something 10 years ago for like 2035 that is going to jettison you into the future. Who knows, right?

Sam: Let's hope so. Let's hope I don't cry about it in 10 years.

Bill: Well, Sam, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate the conversation today.

Sam: Thanks for having me.

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Like, share and subscribe. Thanks and have a great day.