The Long Game

The Long Game shares personal and business success stories where long-term thinking triumphs. Join us for discussions about the frameworks, principles, and learnings that drive success in business.

The Long Game is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 246 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts The Long Game, a business show with 246 episodes published.

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  Episode #247

  Three Dinosaurs Talk AEO (with Benji Hyam & Devesh Khanal)

  Sep 23, 20261h 22m

  In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Alex Birkett sits down with Benji Hyam and Devesh Khanal, co-founders of Grow and Convert, to separate what's real from what's noise in AI search optimization. Drawing on their work with 100+ brands and their own AI visibility tracking data, they challenge popular narratives around listicle penalties, Reddit citations, and one-size-fits-all GEO tactics. They discuss how personalization and context-rich prompts make AI search fundamentally different from Google, why long-form content is losing its role in the buyer's journey, and the rise of cold inbound leads who arrive with no prior connection to the brand. The conversation also covers why positioning, reputation, and on-site source material matter more than mass third-party mentions, why attribution is getting harder as marketing becomes multi-channel, and how brands need to rethink where they earn attention. Key Takeaways Self-promotional listicles are not penalized by default; the widely cited examples involved thousands of AI-generated pages with misleading claims, while human-written, category-relevant comparison content has stayed stable through Google updates. Aggregate citation studies overweight Reddit and Wikipedia because their datasets skew toward high-volume consumer queries, whereas Grow and Convert found 86% of citations for B2B buying prompts came from industry-specific sites. YouTube shows up in citations across B2B clients far more often than the industry discusses, making video a real opportunity for reaching buyers. Roughly 80% of sources cited by LLMs in Grow and Convert's research ranked in Google for ordinary keywords with search volume, which suggests SEO fundamentals still drive much of AI visibility. AI summaries strip out the differentiated arguments that used to win readers over, producing cold inbound leads who compare several vendors on deliverables and need to be educated on your point of view during the sales process. Personalization means the same prompt can return entirely different recommendations for different users, so prompt-tracking tools cannot capture many of the moments where a brand actually wins a lead. Positioning and voice-of-customer research are now root-level requirements, because content on topics outside your core category can weaken the brand associations LLMs form about you. Hyper-specific, pain-point content lets smaller brands beat incumbents in AI search, and there is no 301 redirect for LLMs, which makes rebrands, pivots, and reputation fixes much harder than in traditional SEO. Holding a defined experimentation budget with expected-value thinking keeps low-cost tests like FAQs separate from expensive bets like newsletter sponsorships that rarely justify their cost. Third-party mention strategies work best when they back into the specific topics and sites that influence your category, while strong on-site source material is both more persuasive and more defensible against inaccurate claims. Show Links Visit Grow and Convert Connect with Benji Hyam on LinkedIn Connect with Devesh Khanal on LinkedIn Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter Description Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify) , Ryan Law (Animalz) , Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) , Kaleigh Moore (freelancer) , Eric Siu (Clickflow) , Peep Laja (CXL) , Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper) , Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo) , Tim Soulo (Ahrefs) , Ryan McReady (Reforge) , and many more. Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from: Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo) How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard) Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social) Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath) Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency: Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEO Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts? How Do Growth and Content Overlap? Connect with Omniscient Digital on social: Twitter: @beomniscient LinkedIn: Be Omniscient Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

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  Episode #244

  Proof Over Promises, Case Studies, and Marketing When Trust Is Low with Sofia Sulikowski

  Jul 15, 20261h 1m

  In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Alex Birkett sits down with Sofia Sulikowski, founder of Solera Strategies and former product marketer at dbt Labs, Tableau, and Atlan, to explore why standing out in a saturated content landscape has become a core product marketing problem. Sofia breaks down what "basic marketing" really requires, why internal narratives so often drift from how customers actually describe a product, and how pulling voice of customer language directly from calls and interviews can anchor messaging that actually resonates. They discuss the erosion of trust in marketing, from products being marketed ahead of their real capabilities to the flattening effect of AI generated content, and why human authored, technical, practitioner led voices are becoming a premium differentiator. The conversation also digs into how case studies are evolving from static logo and metrics templates into technical, narrative driven assets, and why the real measure of a successful customer story is whether the featured customer feels proud enough to share it themselves. Key Takeaways Product marketing is fundamentally "basic marketing": identifying what value a product provides, for whom, and how, then aligning every channel and message to that core. Internal assumptions about a product's value often diverge from real customer usage, which is why product marketing has to synthesize input from product, sales, and customer success teams. Pulling the exact language customers use, by sitting in on beta calls or QBRs, is an underused but effective way to anchor messaging customers already recognize. Not every customer quote deserves equal weight; separating signal from noise means understanding who gave a quote, how invested they are, and what their actual outcomes look like. Companies are increasingly marketing products ahead of their real capabilities, widening the gap between what's promised and what a customer experiences on first use. AI generated content compresses everything toward the same "average" output, flooding channels with low value content and burying pieces that offer something distinct. Technical, practitioner authored content, written by the people who did the work and lightly polished by marketing, is outperforming generic thought leadership because it carries real expertise. Case studies are shifting from a template of company background, pain points, and results tables toward a hybrid with technical blog posts that shows the actual "how," including architecture and implementation decisions. A mature case study program should be organized by goal: heavy hitter logos for credibility, gap fillers for common but underrepresented use cases, and hero stories that make the customer look good. The clearest signal that a case study succeeded isn't traffic or downloads, it's whether the featured customer is proud enough to organically share their own story with their network. Show Links Connect with Sofia Sulikowski on LinkedIn Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify) , Ryan Law (Animalz) , Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) , Kaleigh Moore (freelancer) , Eric Siu (Clickflow) , Peep Laja (CXL) , Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper) , Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo) , Tim Soulo (Ahrefs) , Ryan McReady (Reforge) , and many more. Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from: Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo) How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard) Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social) Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath) Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency: Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEO Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts? How Do Growth and Content Overlap? Connect with Omniscient Digital on social: Twitter: @beomniscient LinkedIn: Be Omniscient Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

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  Episode #243

  Kitchen Side: The Hidden Drivers of AI Search

  Jul 8, 202651 min

  In this Kitchen Side episode, Alex Birkett, Allie Decker, and David Ly Khim unpack how brands should actually measure success in AI search, and why traditional attribution models are breaking down as buyer behavior shifts from search links to AI assistants and workflows. They discuss why self-reported attribution is becoming the most reliable signal available, the different tiers of AI visibility from simple citations to category-level consensus, and why AI visibility functions more like a brand recall survey than a channel you can optimize in isolation. The conversation also covers the idea of a “post-channel marketer” who coordinates across product, customer education, and PR, and why chasing visibility tactics with no underlying business purpose rarely pays off. Key Takeaways Self-reported attribution is more reliable than clickstream data for AI search because most AI-driven visits never result in a tracked click. AI visibility behaves more like a brand recall survey than a channel, reflecting how a brand compares to competitors rather than something to optimize in isolation. Picking up a citation on a narrow, low-competition prompt is easy, but shifting broader category-level consensus, like being named among the best CRMs, is far harder and requires changing an entire conversation. Correcting outdated third-party pricing information moved AI search outputs within about a month in one client engagement, though this was a sentiment fix rather than a visibility gain. Some AI answers now include negative or qualifying recommendations, meaning a mention doesn't always translate into a positive outcome for a brand. Different AI tools serve different roles, with ChatGPT and AI Overviews functioning as quick answer engines while agentic tools like Claude Code perform deeper multi-step research, and visibility strategies should account for that difference. Whether a company should publish a markdown version of its site for easier AI retrieval depends on its audience, mattering more for technical, developer-facing products than for typical B2B SaaS buyers. Sustainable AI search performance comes from investing in product experience, customer education, and reviews, since genuine third-party validation is difficult to fake once a brand has earned it. Marketing teams need a “post-channel” role that coordinates across product, customer success, and PR to influence sentiment and visibility, rather than treating this as an SEO-only or PR-only problem. Tactics pursued only to move an AI visibility score, with no underlying business purpose, are usually not worth the effort unless they're addressing existing negative sentiment. Show Links Connect with David Khim on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Allie Decker on LinkedIn and Twitter Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter What is Kitchen Side? One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the "kitchen side" of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture. You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside. You understand how the sausage is made. As an agency ourselves, we're working both on growing our clients' businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business. We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship. Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify) , Ryan Law (Animalz) , Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) , Kaleigh Moore (freelancer) , Eric Siu (Clickflow) , Peep Laja (CXL) , Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper) , Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo) , Tim Soulo (Ahrefs) , Ryan McReady (Reforge) , and many more. Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from: Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO) Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo) How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard) Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social) Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath) Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency: Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEO Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts? How Do Growth and Content Overlap? Connect with Omniscient Digital on social: Twitter: @beomniscient LinkedIn: Be Omniscient Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

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  Episode #242

  AI as the New Front Door to Brands, Solution Marketing, and Why Your Promise Beats Your Product with Johann Wrede (UserTesting)

  May 21, 20261 hourS0

  <p>In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, David Khim sits down with Johann Wrede, Global CMO at UserTesting, to explore how AI is reshaping brand perception, the role of the modern CMO, and why truly customer-centric marketing still comes down to diet and exercise.<br> They discuss why AI has become the new front door to brands — compressing and abstracting how companies are perceived before a human ever visits their site — and how marketers can influence (but never fully control) that narrative. Johann also shares his philosophy on solution marketing over product marketing, the big bets he's making on i...

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  Episode #241

  Kitchen Side: The GEO Gold Rush Problem

  Apr 8, 202648 minS0

  <p>In this Kitchen Side episode, Alex Birkett, Allie Decker, and David Khim unpack the increasingly noisy world of AI search (GEO/AEO), including spam tactics, flawed attribution models, and widespread confusion around what actually drives results.</p> <p>They explore why visibility without revenue is a trap, how brand sentiment and off-page signals shape AI outputs, and why trust, positioning, and human validation are becoming more important than ever in B2B buying decisions.</p> <p>Key Takeaways</p> The SEO vs AEO debate is largely unproductive and distracts from creating real business value. Spammy, short-term tactics are resurging...

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