😻 Maeva Cifuentes

SEO & GEO for B2B SaaS // Coaching for women in service businesses

I run Flying Cat, a B2B SaaS-focused SEO and content consultancy. We specialize in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and bottom-funnel content strategy, with deep expertise in international SEO when clients need to expand into French, German, Italian, and Spanish markets.

We've worked with ActiveCampaign, Hotjar, Klaviyo, Mixmax, D2L, Leapsome, Ivalua, and CoVet.

After a decade running a translation agency, I built Flying Cat on a simple premise: senior strategists should stay on accounts. No junior handoffs. No templated playbooks. I run the strategy, my team executes. We work directly with marketing leaders who need revenue from search, not just traffic.

📍 I post about SEO, GEO, AI visibility, and building a service business you actually want to run.

WHAT CLIENTS HAVE SAID:

"Flying Cat's approach led to a significant increase in monthly revenue and contributed to our rapid growth." - Rob Hartman, former Creative Director, Operto Guest Technologies

"Together, we were able to increase our yearly organic traffic by 700%. 56% of our traffic was coming through the blog. It was such a smooth partnership and really felt effortless on my side." - Molly Holcutt, Content Manager, Livestorm

"Within two quarters, we were able to drive an additional 80k visits to the website." - Joe Baugnet, Global SEO, ActiveCampaign

I also coach women who run service businesses. If you do excellent work but keep getting treated like a vendor, underpaid, over-explained-to, stuck in execution mode, I can help. My program teaches you how to position yourself as a strategic partner and have the client conversations you've been avoiding.
Follow @purposefulliving.co on Instagram for more on that.

maeva@flyingcatmarketing.com
🌐 @maevaeverywhere

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Content Marketing • Content Strategy • Content Agency • Content Marketing Agency  •  SEO Agency  •  AEO Agency  •  GEO Agency  •  SEO Consultant  •  AEO Consultant  •  AISEO Consultant

Angel Investor & Marketing Advisor

Investor and shareholder. Also, as fractional Head of Marketing/Marketing Advisor, I'm diversifying Spitche's revenue streams and acquisition channels, focusing on organic inbound growth.

Maeva Cifuentes

As a Colombian woman raised in America, I never felt strong patriotism until I watched Bad Bunny's historic half-time show.


I'm not sentimental. Few performances have moved me to tears.

But what he showed, inter-generational community, friends, family, joy, diversity, and LATINOS... this is America! I shed a tear. Because we've been so deep in disappointment, rage, hate about the state of the country, we forgot what it is that we're fighting for.

That show captured something real for me. Today, 20% of Americans are Hispanic. Here in California, we're the majority. I grew up surrounded by three very different cultures in my own household, in one of the most diverse cities in the country.

That diversity, that joy, that mix... that's the America I know, and that's what I moved back here for. And for the first time, I saw it reflected back on a national stage.

It was always hard for me to explain to people why I wanted to move back to the US, in the state that it's in now. But next time they ask, I'll just show them this show.

Yes Benito.... ya sabes!!!

EDIT: I did not just shed one tear. I watched it again and am unable to stop the tears.

🔥 B2B SaaS GEO & Search Everywhere Optimization // Founder, Flying Cat

"Just checking in!"
You've sent it. I've sent it. We've all sent it.

And it almost never works. Because it signals that you need something from them more than you're offering something to them.

Strategic follow-ups get responses because they add value instead of asking for attention. Swipe through for side-by-side examples.

More executive ways to follow up

People are saying SEO is worth LESS now.

Because it drives less traffic.

I did the research so you don't have to.

Yes, organic traffic is declining.

Ahrefs found AI Overviews reduce clicks by 34.5%.

Seer Interactive shows organic CTR dropped 61% for queries with AI Overviews.

60% of Google searches now end without a click.

And no... most of that traffic is not coming back.

We're heading toward a world where people do their entire buying journey inside AI.

They'll only visit your website at the very end, when they're ready to buy.

That future is coming.

But it's still 1-3 years out.

Right now, SEO is still your biggest traffic source.

Google search volume actually increased 21.6% last year.

I've seen conflicting data on how much rankings matter for AI citations.

One study says 92% of AI Overview citations come from pages already ranking in the top 10.

Another from BrightEdge says it's closer to 54% — and in e-commerce, only 22.9%.

Whichever number is true, I keep coming back to the same question:

If your traffic is tanking, is it actually because of AI?

Or is it because you're losing rankings?

Those are two very different problems. 

One requires a new strategy.

The other requires fixing your current one.

I see a LOT of websites blame AI when they're actually just losing traffic from SEO issues. Check yourself!

If your SEO says it's AI... ask for rankings status. The signal that AI is the issue is maintained or improved rankings with lost traffic.

The future of search is about getting recommended to the right people at the right time.

It's about being cited as the expert source.

It's about positive sentiment and accurate information about your brand.
SEO builds the foundation for all of it.

Strong rankings feed AI citations.

Quality content feeds AI recommendations.

Brand authority feeds AI trust signals.

The traffic game is shrinking.

The influence game is just getting started.

Save this if you're building for where search is going, not just where it's been.

Drop a 🔥 if you've already started shifting your strategy.

Every time you say 'it depends,' your client trusts you a little less.


When you hedge, qualify, and present options without a clear recommendation, you think you're being thorough. You're actually making them feel less safe. 

They came to you because they don't know the answer. If you seem unsure, they have nothing to anchor to.

Leaders with conviction create certainty for the people around them. When someone seems convinced they've chosen the best course of action, the people following them absorb that belief. Mirror neurons do this automatically. We relax when the person guiding us seems sure. We tense up when they don't.

This is why clients override your recommendations. This is why they second-guess your work. They're not doing it because you're wrong. They're doing it because you didn't seem certain, so they couldn't let go of their own doubt.

You don't have to be absolutely sure. You might be wrong. That's fine. Conviction isn't about being right every time. It's about being clear on what the data is telling you right now and making a recommendation based on that.

"Based on what I'm seeing, I'd go with A. Here's why. B and C are options if you want to prioritize X instead, but A gives us the best shot at Y."

"My recommendation is X. I've seen this work in similar situations, and the data supports it."

"If your goal is still Z, then I'd do X."

You can offer options. You can leave room for their input. But they should never have to guess what you actually think they should do.

If you've ever refreshed your inbox six times waiting for a client to respond, this one's for you.


Checking in "just to make sure you got my email." Over-explaining your reasoning so they won't think you made a bad call. Reading into a short reply and spiraling about whether they're upset. Saying yes to something that crossed a boundary because the idea of them being disappointed felt unbearable.

These patterns probably feel familiar outside of work too.
Anxious attachment doesn't stay in your dating life. It follows you into your client relationships. The same part of you that used to overanalyze a text is now overanalyzing a Slack message. The same part that tried to be the "cool, low-maintenance girlfriend" is now being the "easy, flexible contractor."

And it's costing you.

You over-deliver to feel secure. You undercharge because asking for more feels like risking the relationship. You tolerate scope creep because setting a boundary might make them leave. You make yourself smaller, more accommodating, more available than you actually want to be.

The work isn't just learning better business practices. It's recognizing that your nervous system is running the same script it always has, just in a different context.

Clients can feel when you need their approval more than they need your expertise. That energy shifts the power dynamic whether you want it to or not.

Security in client relationships doesn't come from being indispensable or easy to work with. It comes from trusting that you'll be okay if they leave.

I audited a brand's French market presence. Perplexity recommended their competitor 9 out of 10 times.

They rank #1 on Google for their main keyword.

Doesn't matter.

Here's why:

They rank for "what is [solution category]."

But that's not what people ask AI.

People ask AI "what's the best tool for [specific problem]."

Totally different query.

Totally different content strategy.

When purchase intent is high, AI doesn't pull from your educational blog post.

It pulls from content about the solutions, from all over the web.

Your website, yes, but also...

Reddit threads.

G2 and Capterra reviews.

YouTube comparisons.

Industry publications.

My clients competitor was all over those sources in the French market.

My client had been focusing on high-volume TOFU content... which is notoriously NOT about the product/solution.

The higher the purchase intent, the more AI pulls from third-party sources like review sites and forums.

So they built a content engine for informational queries.

But AI recommendations run on a completely different engine: reputation and third-party validation.

Things that I might do if I were looking to grow this more:

→ Audit where you show up (or don't) when AI answers buying questions in your category
→ Build presence on the platforms AI actually pulls from: Reddit, YouTube, review sites, niche forums
→ Earn mentions in publications your buyers trust
→ Stop measuring success by rankings alone

You can dominate Google and still be invisible when it matters most.

What have you done to get recommended more?

I help adtech companies including Scope3, Viant, LiveRamp, tvScientific, Transmit, Firsthand, and many others with marketing strategy, content, and PR. 

If you want to talk about ad/martech marketing, send me a message at joe@sharppenmedia.com or DM me on LinkedIn.

If you're here because you like my content, sign up for my weekly newsletter, where I talk about ad/martech GTM strategy and best practices: https://shorturl.at/celmR

Joe Zappa

Adtech founders, especially early-stage, ask me all the time about events: Which ones are legit? Do I sponsor? How do we approach them?

So Eric Franchi and I recorded a "guide to advertising events" Open Market podcast. 

We identified 6 core events:
+ CES
+ IAB ALM
+ Marketecture (#biased)
+ POSSIBLE
+ Cannes
+ Advertising Week

Check it out today on Spotify, Apple, etc. And please yell at us about the events we missed in the comments.

Helping adtech companies with marketing, content, PR

I remember sending a bunch of cold DMs when I started my agency. It sucked — for me and the people I was DM'ing.

It's not that I didn't have value to offer. It's just that their inboxes were inundated, and they and I both knew what I ultimately wanted (their money). It's  not a great way to begin relationships. Even if I offered to help them for free, it still felt either salesy or desperate.

Fast-forward three years. Half my clients come from CEOs and marketers consuming my content (across social, email, and podcasts). The other half come from referrals, and every single one of those was touched by content, too.

The lesson: Share your learnings. Your outbound becomes warm, and you'll grow inbound, too.

Plus, the impact keeps growing as your audience grows. Teach your audience your craft. It's a compounding opportunity.

If you've been reading my posts but we've never spoken, reveal yourself! I'll be at Marketecture Live in 2 weeks. 

Plus, I have an offer for you. I'll ask you some questions about your positioning and will send you a brand narrative after. This is a simple strategy document that can fuel all your content and communications.

Let's get coffee and chat when we're supposed to be watching the content organized by AdTechGod ®️. I have faith he won't smite us.

There is no secret to building a brand on social media. Here's the formula:

1. Have a north star: E.g. I want to be the leading voice on healthcare advertising, performance TV, or AI creative. Talk about it all the time until you're sick of repeating yourself.

2. Think about the audience you want, and help them understand your topic. Explain how it works. Share your own journey learning about it. Provide case studies. Engage with news stories / developments in that space.

3. Post on your own page a couple times a week, as often as 5x/week. But also identify the top 5-10 voices on the topic in question (the people who have the audience you want), and comment on their posts a few times per week. 

That's it. The hardest part is consistency. An audience on social can drive millions of dollars in value for your business or catapult your career. But even if you hire people to help, you still need to be consistent to maximize the value.

It should be a relief that there's no secret. But you do need to get out there every week and do the work.

Public markets in adtech have been rocky. This is partially a narrative problem.

No. 1 adtech comms need right now: a clear, compelling narrative about where AI is taking advertising as a whole — and how you're leading the charge.

No one cares about the ins and outs of your various products. They DO care about big-picture claims re: the future of advertising.

This is a generational moment. It calls for less navel gazing, more visionary projection.

The CEO is always a company's chief evangelist. So, what do you do if the CEO isn't the type to speak publicly or post on LinkedIn?

A few tactics (whether you're that CEO or their VP of marketing):

1. Understand the case for CEO evangelism: You're not posting on LinkedIn to boost your ego. This is how modern comms works — LinkedIn is a powerful channel to share your message with customers, talent, shareholders, investors, and you're taking advantage of it. It's about the company, not you.

2. Establish content buckets: Not every CEO needs to approach evangelism by spouting hot takes. If that's your style, awesome. But you can also share case studies, ask questions instead of offering answers, and analyze trends instead of prognosticating about the future. Many different styles work.

3. Make it a team effort: The CEO shouldn't carry the burden alone. Others should join in sharing the company's message. That includes other execs and the whole team. Get everyone involved in the enterprise of growing the company by building an audience on social and other platforms.

Not everyone is bullish on building a 'personal brand.' That's fine — that's not what it's really about. It's about building the company through modern distribution channels, which in B2B tech mainly means LinkedIn. And that's an effort every CEO should be able to get behind.

The CEO is always the chief evangelist. As a CEO, you might be thinking, "I don't have the damn time to be chief evangelist."

You're already the chief executive officer. And now I'm asking you to play a huge role in marketing.

Here's the thing — it doesn't have to be a huge time suck. You can do one foundational piece of content per week — and everything else can be extrapolated by your sales/marketing team.

For example, let's say you want to own the topic of audience building in advertising. You do a 30- to 60-minute podcast on it each week where you interview customers, partners, etc. Your team slices it into newsletters, blogs, short-form videos, social posts.

You put in 1-2 hours per week. It turns into an entire executive evangelism content engine so that your prospects feel like the CEO is everywhere owning that topic in-market.

Being a chief evangelist requires effort — no way around that. But it doesn't need to be a full-time job, especially if you have a marketing team.

It should feel to your prospects like you're everywhere, and it doesn't take 5 hours a day to achieve that effect.

Often adtech entrepreneurs/CEOs are wary of the adtech label. Eric Franchi and I discussed that on today's Open Market episode.

Specifically, we:
+ make the case for adtech, especially given AI enthusiasm
+ explain how to handle messaging and positioning given this concern
+ provide examples of companies that have navigated this well 

Check out the pod on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your pods.

You only get to be known for one thing — maybe 2-3 if you're lucky. So, less is more when it comes to positioning.

I'll use myself as an example. My agency really took off when I settled on a 2-item combo: adtech (the niche) and executive evangelism (the POV).

That boiled down to 1 sentence: Joe is adtech marketing guy who helps CEOs step into the role of chief evangelist.

You want your positioning to be so simple, distinct, and memorable that people repeat it back to you. When I meet people at events, they say, "Oh yeah. I follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn. You're the social guy." Or "the guy working with adtech CEOs on marketing."

So, ask yourself whether what you do can be boiled down to one word/concept — and whether it's the concept you want.

tvScientific: performance TV.

Firsthand: brand agents.

Viant: ViantAI.

Don't confuse the market. Keep it simple. And hammer home the same message every day.

That's how you build a distinct brand.

You probably think a lot about the events you're attending. What if you should throw your own?

On this week’s Open Market, Marketecture CSO Sam Khoury joined Eric Franchi and me to answer that question.

We broke down what goes into organizing an advertising event — from developing the right concept and setting attendance goals, to landing serious speakers, structuring sponsorship economics, and deciding who owns ticket and revenue targets internally.

We also get into:
+ How to balance real content and biz dev opportunities
+ What events cost
+ How to make events an extension of your marketing program

Check it out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your pods.

When it comes to marketing, most CEOs are looking for *the big idea* that's going to go viral or catapult them to the next level.

Good news: You don't need that.

Bad news: You need to share your wisdom with prospective customers 100 times over the course of the next year or two.

Especially in an era of mass media and rapid information consumption, the key is not one big hack. It's building trust over time.

And that's doubly true for most B2B tech companies, which are generally selling to educated buyers over a long period of consideration.

One extraordinary piece of content probably won't make the difference. And you can't be sure what that will be anyway.

100 touches will. So, don't view content as a moonshot. View it as a daily practice. Get out there and share what you know.

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