Inbound Unwound.

Today’s Marketing Cookie is a reflection on the monumental shift in marketing strategy that challenges us to rethink how we stay top of mind in an ever-evolving landscape.

You're sitting at home, going about your day when, suddenly, a jingle pops into your head. You didn’t ask for it, yet there it is, playing on repeat, the catchy tune from a commercial you barely remember watching. It sticks with you, weaving its way into your thoughts until you’re humming it while brushing your teeth, washing dishes, and even as you drift off to sleep. This is outbound marketing at work. It’s a message pushed on you and repeated until it’s etched into your memory. The goal is to achieve recall, ensuring that when the moment comes, that brand is the first thing on your mind. It's the megaphone approach: loud, clear, and impossible to ignore.

But there’s another side to marketing where, instead of pushing, you’re pulling. This is known as inbound marketing. The focus here isn’t on broadcasting your message but on being helpful to those actively searching for answers and solutions. When prospects face a problem or need information, they turn to Google, hoping to find the helpful content you’ve created. If your site is well-optimized and packed with valuable insights, your company is likely to appear high in the search results, capturing their attention. For years, this strategy worked brilliantly, driving organic search traffic and building brand trust. But that all changed on December 6, 2023, the day inbound marketing as we knew it died.

ChatGPT and Perplexity have quickly become the go-to sources for answers. Perplexity, for instance, handled about 250 million queries in July 2024 alone, a massive leap from the 500 million it answered throughout all of 2023. ChatGPT’s rise has been even more dramatic, reaching 1 million users within just five days of its launch in November 2022 and surpassing 100 million active users just 90 days later. Today, it boasts over 200 million active users, with 2.708 billion queries in July alone. By comparison, Google reportedly handled 22 billion searches per day in July 2024. While the combined daily queries of Perplexity and ChatGPT only make up about half a percent of Google’s, this disruption was enough to force Google to pivot away from its own business model.

In response to this rapid shift in the search landscape, Google has launched Gemini. After showing four ads at the top of the results page, Gemini delivers high-quality answers, followed by a range of related questions that others have asked. Users must scroll past several videos addressing the query and links to discussion forums before finally reaching any organic listings. By providing all the answers upfront, Google has effectively eliminated the need for users to visit your website to find the helpful information you’ve created.

As a result, your organic website listing, once a cornerstone of your inbound marketing strategy, has been reduced to the digital equivalent of a bibliography at the end of an 8th-grade essay or the tiny footnotes at the end of a book—largely overlooked. With investments in content marketing expected to reach $600 billion this year, marketers can no longer rely on organic search to get their content into the hands of prospects. Even though Gemini pulls some of its answers from the valuable content you’ve painstakingly created to boost your brand’s visibility, the likelihood of users clicking through to your site after receiving the answers they were looking for has been dramatically diminished. The promise of keyword-driven organic search traffic through inbound marketing strategies, as we’ve known it, is no longer viable.

You may not have a $100 million budget for earworm TV ads with catchy jingles like JG Wentworth's "877-CASH-NOW" to stay top of mind with prospects. You can no longer rely on organic search to help new customers find answers. But what you will always have is the power to deliver exceptional service, treat your customers with respect, and go the extra mile for them. When you consistently do a great job, your customers will sing your praises, write glowing reviews, and spread the word about your company. This creates organic mindshare, and when they refer you to their friends, it can be said about you as today’s fortune does, "Are your legs tired? You've been running through someone's mind ALL day long."