I Predict a Riot

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant, and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Happy New Year!

I just realized this is the third year I have welcomed in the new year with this iteration of the newsletter since moving to Beehiiv; it’s been pretty cool, a nice platform, and super reliable. I’ve used many, many email platforms, and while I haven’t explored the full functionality yet, for example, having paid subscribers, it seems to be working - do you like it?

I didn’t predict a riot, but I flew solo again this week on the podcast and shared five predictions that caught my eye. And, as for a subject line - I Predict a Riot from the Kaiser Chiefs will shake off some of the holiday dust and get your marketing mojo working today. It seems like a good way to kick off 2025.

I’ll include links below to the sources of all these predictions, but in no particular order, the 5 predictions I am picking out are:

1. Generative engine optimization - This is the idea that we’ll develop a practice within digital marketing to optimize our content not just for search (SEO), but also for tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI summaries that appear at the top of search results. I’ve seen a few references to this, but below, I’ve included a link to a CMI predictions post in which Andy Crestodina believes it will become a thing and will call it Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or AI Optimization (AIO). My personal view, I reckon this will get a lot of hype, maybe over-hyped in the early part of this year, a lot of snake oil will be sold as everyone becomes a GEO ninja, but this will chill out as we discover what impact generative AI has on traffic and settle down as bright folks understand this better.

2. Breaking our MQL addiction - I love this, as Jon Miller, founder of Marketo and former CMO at Demandbase, in his predictions article on Marketing Profs, calls MQLs and the funnel a “gumball machine” with money in and expected results out, and Forrester also has been talking about the death of the MQL for a while now. The challenge here is that we have a decade of habits to unlearn here, and not just us in marketing but also to educate the leadership team and the commercial folks that we need to change - but maybe 2025 is the year?

3. Organization realignment - If you run a bigger team, this is interesting from Forrester, who in their 2025 B2B Marketing and Sales predictions blog post and eBook - share their belief that our organizations need to change and for good reason to reflect changes in B2B buying, however they seem pessimistic - as they believe that moving the chairs is not a path to success, we should be focusing is “resetting strategy and planning to orient around customers, fixing broken revenue processes, improving operational effectiveness, and leveling up talent to blend human and machine competencies”. Sounds sensible.

4. More budget for brand - Again, dipping into the predictions from Jon Miller - I think this is more hope than expectation and is going to require a bit of organizational re-education to get us all off the measurable data crack pipe, as we know brand is tricky to measure and apply revenue attribution to in B2B, but, as Jon shares, it’s time for us to think about the long and short of it, deliver short term value while building the foundation for long term growth.

5. Zero click marketing - This reflects the research from Rand Fishkin and SparkToro that 60% of search sessions on Google do not wind up with a click on the open web, but either get satisfied by the Google AI’s summary content, or they get whisked away to another Google property, like YouTube.

The reason why I included this last one is that it is so universally picked up now by lots of B2B marketers I know (the example I share below is it being quoted by Dave Chaffey at SmartInsights) and my true prediction here is that good research and content, like the work SparkToro have done with the term “zero-click marketing” will cut through.

You can punch well above your brand weight, as SparkToro have a small team, but I see this quoted as often as thought leadership from the big guys like Forrester, Gartner and LinkedIn B2B Institute.

So, maybe not a riot, but a decent set of predictions below to get your teeth into!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Say hello, reply to this email or find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

This week’s podcast…

The week’s street knowledge….

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

A riot? Why not? Lets get 2025 working….