Insights
Ideas from the best.
Made practical.
Each article starts from the published work of a leading thinker — on GEO, growth, brand, content and AI — and turns it into a playbook for European and Chinese businesses. Sources linked in every piece.
What the Princeton GEO study found about getting your content cited in AI answers
The KDD 2024 GEO paper tested nine content changes. Quotations, statistics and citations lifted AI visibility by up to 40%; keyword stuffing did not.
How Brands Grow: Byron Sharp on mental and physical availability and light buyers
Byron Sharp's evidence says brands grow by winning more, mostly light, buyers. What mental and physical availability mean, and how SMEs can apply them.
Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence: four AI rules and the jagged frontier for marketers
Mollick's four rules for working with AI and what the BCG jagged-frontier experiment means for how marketing teams should use it.
Growth loops vs funnels: Andrew Chen's lesson for SMEs designing one loop
Andrew Chen argues the best products grow through loops and network effects, not funnels. Here is how an SME can design and measure one loop.
Zero-click search: what Rand Fishkin's data means for brands when buyers stop clicking
SparkToro data shows 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in early 2026. Here is how to market when the answer arrives before the visit.
Binet and Field's 60:40: balancing brand building and sales activation in practice
The IPA's 60:40 brand-to-activation guideline is a starting point, not a law. What Binet and Field found, how the split shifts by context, and how SMEs can apply it.
April Dunford's positioning method for B2B brands entering Europe
Dunford's five positioning components, applied to a B2B company entering a new market such as a Chinese brand launching in Europe.
Google on people-first and AI-generated content: what is allowed and what gets demoted
Google rewards helpful content however it is made, but scaled content abuse is spam. What its guidance means for AI-assisted marketing content.
Andrew Ng's four agentic design patterns and what they mean for marketing operations
Reflection, tool use, planning and multi-agent collaboration: Andrew Ng's agentic patterns, ranked by maturity and applied to marketing workflows.
How people really use Google's AI Overviews: lessons from Kevin Indig's usability studies
Kevin Indig watched real users search. Most skimmed AI answers and rarely clicked citations, but still verified big decisions with trusted brands.
Erin Meyer's Culture Map: bridging Chinese and Dutch, German and French business cultures
Erin Meyer's eight culture scales explain why pitches, feedback and approvals go wrong between China and Europe, and how marketing teams can adapt.
Brian Balfour's Four Fits: a growth diagnostic for European SMEs
Product/market fit is not enough. Balfour's Four Fits show how market, product, channel and model must align, with a ten-question diagnostic.
Ann Handley's Everybody Writes: the writing principles that matter more in the AI era
When fluent text is cheap, thinking, empathy, voice and sourcing set content apart. Ann Handley's principles, and her own test for when to use AI.
The EU AI Act for marketers: Article 50, labelling AI content and the key dates
What Article 50 of the EU AI Act means for chatbots, deepfakes in advertising and AI-generated text, plus the timeline and a practical checklist. Not legal advice.
E-E-A-T in AI search: how trust and authority signals shape who gets cited
Google says trust is the most important part of E-E-A-T. Here is how Lily Ray and Aleyda Solis apply trust signals to visibility in AI answers.
Diagnosis before tactics: Mark Ritson's case for market orientation and strategy first
Mark Ritson's sequence is diagnosis, then strategy, then tactics. Why tactics-first plans fail, and a practical playbook for SMEs to put research and choices first.
Retention first: what non-SaaS businesses can borrow from Elena Verna
Elena Verna frames growth as loops that only compound when customers stay. Here is what shops, suppliers and service firms can borrow from PLG.
Audience first: Joe Pulizzi's Content Inc. model, the content tilt and owned media
Joe Pulizzi's Content Inc. says build the audience before the product. How the content tilt and owned media work, and a 12–18 month playbook for SMEs.
Where generative AI value concentrates: McKinsey's findings and how SMEs should prioritise
McKinsey put about 75% of generative AI's value in four functions, including marketing and sales. Here is how SMEs can turn that into a short list of use cases.
Gartner's 25% search drop forecast, revisited: how to measure your brand's visibility in AI answers
Gartner forecast a 25% fall in search volume by 2026. Here is what the data shows, and how to track share of voice, AI referrals and brand mentions.
Seth Godin's smallest viable audience: why specificity beats reach for SMEs
Seth Godin argues you should serve the smallest audience that can sustain you, and serve it brilliantly. What that means for SMEs, with a practical playbook.
Sean Ellis's 40% fit survey and North Star Metric, run in a small company
How to run Sean Ellis's 'very disappointed' product/market fit survey and choose a North Star Metric in six weeks, plus the method's limits.
llms.txt explained: what it does, what it doesn't, and how to make your brand machine-readable
Jeremy Howard's llms.txt is a sensible proposal, but there is no evidence it lifts AI visibility. Crawl access, entity pages and structured data matter more.
People scan, not read: a conversion checklist from NN/g and Steve Krug
Nielsen Norman Group research on scanning and the F-pattern, plus Krug's Don't Make Me Think, turned into a 15-point website conversion checklist.
Content strategy for the LLM-first world: what B2B brands must do now
LLMs read your website differently from humans — and from Google bots. Here is how to structure content that gets cited, summarised and recommended.
Stop buying traffic. Start building a growth system — with AI at the core
Renting attention is not a strategy. A growth system compounds. Here is how to build one that runs on AI and owns its results.
When AI answers first: how to get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini
The search landscape has shifted fundamentally. Here is what GEO is, why it matters, and the five tactics that move the needle.
More coming
Each article starts from the published work of a leading thinker — researchers, practitioners and institutions — and turns it into a practical playbook for European and Chinese businesses. Sources are linked at the end of every piece.
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