Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

Maybe I’m falling for ragebait, but cold email has let me:

(1) Drop out of college.

(2) Grow my own agency to multi 7-figures of revenue.

(3) Employ 30+ people around the world full-time.

(4) Buy my sister and Dad cars.

(5) Rent my dream apartment.

(6) Buy my first 5 properties.

(7) Work with 100s of businesses.

(8) Make lifelong friends.

(9) Give my future family a financial head start.

Just remember, for every one person that dunks on cold outbound, there's another person whose life was changed because of it.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

Gemini 3 cannot sell a $10k service package.
GPT 5.1 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Llama 4 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Opus 4.5 cannot sell a $10k service package.
DeepSeek-R1 cannot sell a $10k service package.

A great human seller can.

I posted the below tweet earlier this year. If I could edit it, I would say:

“If I had a son, I would preach that you can either be top 1% in whatever job you have or risk losing it to AI’.”

Because “AI is going to eliminate [insert role]” is surface level thinking, and too broad of a generalization.

It is, of course, going to eliminate roles, but not roles in their entirety. 

Instead, it will eliminate the bottom 99% of certain roles while accelerating the top 1% of others.

Sales is a great example.

AI can handle a lot of the outreach process, even including script writing. What it can’t do is work a deal the way a human would.

The same can be said for a lot of software dev work, in my opinion. Great engineers will never be out of work, but average/mediocre ones likely will.

In short: if you want to AI-proof yourself, become top 1% at what you do. Easier said than done, I know…but very much worth it.

I jokingly posted this and SO many people commented or messaged about Agency 3 and asked for an intro. This is a huge problem.

This post was a joke. No lead gen agency worth their salt would ever take a deal in which they generate leads for clients, and only get paid if/when the client closes them.

We can't control what the client does after we generate the lead.

- What if they simply don’t engage with them?
- What if the lead asks to follow up later, and they don’t?
- What if their sales team just can’t close for their product/service?
- What if their pricing is way off the market norm?
- What if their reviews online are terrible, and the prospects drop out pre-call?
- What if they have no social proof and can't build trust with prospects?

There is so much that is out of the lead generation agency's control. 

Moreover, the client will have no skin in the game and not value the opportunity if they have no risk associated 

The agency can do their job perfectly and even go above and beyond and still make zero dollars because of something on client’s side.

Just a word of warning!

Excited and grateful to share I’ve reached 20,000 followers here on LinkedIn!

Almost 3 years ago, with 3,000 followers, I started posting the most valuable content I could every day (sometimes 2x per day).

Since then, I’ve been able to:

- Meet lots of awesome people I now consider friends.
- Learn a ton about outbound, GTM, and marketing.
- Attract incredible clients we’re extremely grateful for

Whether you were one of the first 3,000 or a part of the next 17,000, I truly want to say thank you. None of it's possible without you.

To that point, I only ask of you is to comment what type of content you want to see more of moving forward!

Super excited to show off our new client portal that makes it far easier for clients to track replies!

Before, we had clients logging into Smartlead to check email replies, then switching to a LinkedIn inbox manager for DM responses, then tracking cold calls elsewhere.

The entire lead gen operation was fragmented across three interfaces that didn't really interconnect.

Clients would miss responses because they forgot to check one of the platforms. They'd get confused about which channel was performing better. 

The biggest sign of this was support tickets kept coming in asking where to find specific replies.

So, we effectively rebuilt our client portal, using MasterInbox as the common thread. Now when clients log in, they see everything in one feed (emails, calls, DMs) that looks completely native to our platform.

Most importantly, clients have commented on how much easier this is for them.

Not to mention, it helps us, too. We've eliminated ~80% of the "where do I find my replies?" support requests. 

As for performance, clients are responding to leads faster because they're not losing track of conversations across multiple tools.

We're rolling this out to all clients because the upgrade is that significant.

Of the 1,000s of client campaigns we've run this year, the best-performer in recent memory was for a yoga studio.

I am big on local lead generation, and this is a perfect example of it. 

This yoga studio hired us to reach out to other businesses to try to get them to book group classes, retreats, off-sites, etc.

So, we scraped lead lists of local businesses and wrote a hyper-local cold email campaign to go with it.

And though you might expect the best performing campaign to be for an agency with a great offer or a hot new SaaS product, this blew others out of the water 

The point is that cold email for local businesses is wildly underrated. If you have or know of a local business interested in generating leads via cold email, feel free to reach out.

We’d love to replicate this.

If you’ve ever pulled leads from Apollo or anything else using “Industry” filters, read this post to make them way more accurate:

They have miscategorized companies in the industry that aren’t relevant to your ICP.

We've been using a new method to get our refined TAM into one list.

See, most lead lists give you name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, and a generic "industry" tag. The problem is that those industry classifications are wrong a lot of the time.

You end up messaging wrong accounts or missing perfect fits.

We found a way to fix this using data already in your lists.

Every company LinkedIn URL comes with an "About Us" section where they describe exactly what they do.

Process:

- Take 3-5 dream clients.
- Go to their LinkedIn About Us sections.
- Pull out every relevant keyword - product terms, customer segments, pain points, industry language. Build a keyword bank.

This takes 20 minutes.

Now layer this on top of broad industry tags. Instead of just "Healthcare," filter for Healthcare companies whose About Us mentions your specific keywords.

Gets you from the neighborhood into the right house.

This is basically advanced semantic filtering without expensive AI tools.

Use the company's own words to qualify them instead of relying on generic industry buckets.

My agency has 283 active clients. If we don't get to 1,000 by the end of 2026, I'll view the year as a failure. There are 3 things we need to do to get there:

LEVER 1 – Churn Reduction

We want to cut our churn in half.

Our sales team don't lie to prospects, but much of the churn does come from misaligned expectations around lead generation, so we are investing a lot in making that extremely clear up front.

LEVER 2 – More Time On Growth

This sounds obvious, but few people do it in practice. It's so easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and not spend enough time on top of funnel activity.

There's so much more we could be doing (YouTube, ads, events, etc.) here.

LEVER 3 – Make Sure Our Team Levels Up

To serve 1,000 clients, we need to make sure our team is operating at all levels.

We had them at off-sites in Dubai and Cape Town in the past few months, and we'll do another one next year.

More tangibly, we are trying to get them more ingrained in lead gen overall.

We are asking them to go follow other leaders in the space and consume their content on a regular basis.

To me, this is an undeniable way to level up.

This comes off the heels of rebuilding our client portal and making it crystal clear and easy to operate. If you have any questions or want to see more on this, let me know.

One of the most common replies you'll get to cold emails at scale is "how much does it cost".

Generally, you'll either:

A) Give the price. Without further context or sales tactics, people automatically see this as a cost and have a hard time justifying the ROI. This usually makes it harder to get on a call.

B) Give a range. This is a bit better, but depending on budget, it still may be hard to paint ROI via email. You need to give a fairly broad range.

Now, very few businesses selling >$1000 packages are public about pricing.

I think that should change.

Your pricing should be publicly available somewhere, ideally on a dedicated page that does a lot of the selling for you.

This might look like:

1. Landing page with 8-minute VSL, full of social proof, with pricing in the middle.

2. Static pricing page, full of social proof + process walkthrough.

This changes your reply from:

"Sure, our pricing is XYZ"

to

"Sure, feel free to have a look here [link] for more information on that".

This way, instead of your prospect just seeing the amount of money you want them to pay you, they get a much fuller picture of the value you provide.

If I were in charge of business development at a local blue collar business like this and needed to win jobs with cold email, I would:

1. Scrape a list of local businesses with an office location.
2. Write the following email copy:

—

[name], just wanted to touch base. We're an HVAC company in the area at [address].

Curious - do you have a go-to person for any kind of AC/heating repairs?

—

You might get a couple of jobs from this, but that is not really the goal with this kind of work.

The "magic" is what happens after.

3. Enroll all positive replies into a weekly nurture sequence (case studies and value).

Do this locally for 90-120 days.

It's the most surefire way to make sure that when a business' AC/heating breaks, they think of you right away.

Scaled to thousands of businesses across a major metro area, you're looking at serious pipeline.

Plus, a VERY small portion (if any) of your competitors are doing this.

To that point, if your business or someone you know would benefit from a system like this, comment or DM me!

Job titles are lying to you about who actually does the work. 

If you're selling something without a clean buyer title, your targeting is probably broken.

Here's how we fixed ours:

Outbound breaks down when your product is ambiguous. 

Say you sell financial forecasting software. 

Who owns forecasting depends on the company (Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy, or even founders, etc.).

A "Finance Manager" could handle AR, AP, Treasury, or actually build forecasts. You can't tell from the title.

So we stopped guessing titles and started targeting the actual work.

Layer 1: Department filtering

Start with departments where your problem sits. For forecasting: Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy.

Layer 2: LinkedIn description keywords

Every user writes a description under their title:

- "Own the quarterly forecast"
- "Build headcount forecasts"
- "Drive variance analysis"
- "Maintain the revenue model"

These keywords self-identify who does the work.

Instead of targeting "Finance Manager" and hoping, target "Finance Manager who mentions 'forecast' and 'financial model' in their description."

The process:

1. Pick 1-2 relevant departments
2. Extract 8-20 keywords tied to your product
3. Filter people mentioning those keywords in descriptions
4. Hit people who self-identify as doing the work

Example query:

Department: Finance/FP&A/Operations

Description contains: "forecast" OR "financial model" OR "budget"

This surfaces only people who explicitly manage forecasts.

We've been running this across ambiguous products and have seen both higher reply rates and better conversations.

The perfect cold email has:

- Relevance = Reason for reaching out.
- Personalization = Part that only makes sense to them.
- Offer = Outcome you'll provide.
- Social proof = Proof you've done it.
- CTA = Low-risk ask that puts the ball in their court.

Not complicated!

We've had clients we book 100s of meetings for per month, and others who churned because "cold email doesn't work".

The difference in how they operate:

Ones booking 100s of meetings:

- Willingly give away free value
- Take suggestions on optimizing offer
- Understand it's a volume game
- Don't overanalyze campaigns
- Chase leads we send them religiously

Ones who are convinced cold email doesn't work:

- Refuse to give away free value because it'll bring "bad leads".
- Refuse to optimize their offer to make it cold-ready.
- Want to send to a "targeted" list of 76 accounts.
- Analyze campaigns in relation to "industry standards" they Googled
- Let leads sit dormant for days and weeks after we submit them

It isn't exactly rocket science. This isn't to say we're perfect at what we do with every campaign.

It is to say we operate based on the data we have, and our data shows that this works.

We're doing 60,000 cold calls per month for clients and ourselves right now. Our number 1 learning for what converts to appointments and what doesn't has nothing to do with cold calling tech or set up.

It strictly has to do with the caller's tone.

One of the big pitfalls of outsourced callers is that they come into the call with no tonality.

Typical "Hey, do you have 10 seconds to speak? I'd love to show you how we could..."

Callers will sound robotic because you are grading them on the amount of dials they do per day. So, they speed-run through the list 

The much better play to run is:

1. Ensure your caller has a curious, inquisitive tone.
2. Ensure they don't get into the routine of sounding like a robot.

It sounds like a simple fix, but it's really not.

This is the difference between booking appointments from cold calling and wasting a ton of money.

How it feels when you realize you can just send more cold emails to get more leads:

We’re sending 260k cold emails Thursday-Sunday this week.

So many sellers view holidays and weekends as time to pause campaigns. I just don't see the point in doing this…mainly for a few reasons:

1. Because so many sellers pause their campaigns, inboxes are way less crowded.

2. Often, you’re targeting someone senior with outbound. Senior people, even though less on weekends, are more likely to check email (even once per day) during the holidays.

3. Generally, people are in more relaxed, friendly moods on a Thanksgiving Friday than they are on a random November Tuesday morning. This bodes well for reply rate.

Disclaimer:

You can expect ~50% of your typical campaign performance in terms of positive reply rate during the holidays. Yes it's reduced, but it's not worth stopping sending altogether.

TLDR: Don’t pause campaigns this holiday!

If I had to increase positive reply to meeting booked rate for any B2B business, here are the exact steps I'd take:

(1) Set up an automation that enriches positive replies with all relevant info (LI URL if I don't already have it, phone number, etc)

(2) Send them a LinkedIn connection request post-positive reply.

(3) Cold call them after that as well.

(4) If the meeting still isn't booked, I'd bump the cold email reply, mentioning I called and left a voicemail. Then, I’d follow up one more time after that.

(5) If they STILL haven't booked, I'd set up a weekly nurture newsletter for all prospects that fit this mould. Each email would have a CTA to book a call.

The point is that you reach them on all platforms.

If you need to set this up:

- Find out what data you have available after each list scrape.

- Set up waterfall enrichment to find what you’re missing after a positive reply (phone number, LI profile, etc.)

- Outline a process for you/your sellers to walk through post-positive reply.

- Use your CRM or beehiiv to set up a weekly newsletter nurture sequence (52 emails comprised of social proof + value).

The more you reach them, the better chance you have. It's not that difficult, but a lot of companies struggle with this.

- client with $100,000 LTV

Client: We only got 3 leads this month.

Me: And?

Client: We are going to have to churn.

Me: Why?

Client: We're clearly not getting enough volume for this to work.

Me: Ok, let's run the numbers. Your average LTV is $100,000 right?

Client: Yes.

Me: Okay, so, if we charge you $300 per lead, we can generate 100 leads that you close 0% on, and you'd STILL be at breakeven with us.

Client: Yeah, but we don't close at 0%. We close at 10-15%.

Me: Exactly. Let's even cut that in half and take 5%. If you pay us $300 per lead and close at 5%, you'd pay $6000 in lead generation costs for $100K in rev.

Client: Oh.

Me: Do you see why you don't need a lot of leads for this to work?

Client: Yes.

We have 60,000 monthly cold calls worth of data to show that prospects absolutely still pick up the phone.

Yet, still, deniers will say that it’s not worth their time, or that nobody picks up the phone, or my favorite: “When you pull the list, you’ll end up with office numbers and not personal ones!”.

(for the record: It is incredibly easy to pull personal mobile phone numbers from lead lists).

My point is that you absolutely shouldn’t listen to people who’ve never given a channel a fair shake about whether or not it works.

If you did:

1. You’d never send a DM because “inboxes are crowded”.
2. You’d never send a cold email because “it doesn’t work”.
3. You’d never make a cold call because “nobody picks up the phone”.

In reality, cold calling and quite literally all other channels “work” if executed correctly and for long enough.

Heading into 2026, outbound marketers will have to multi-thread more and more, meaning it’s likely going to be time to pick up the phone.

Just remember: It does work.

"We already emailed them"

That's EXACTLY why you should be emailing them again.

At any given point, roughly 3% of decision makers in your TAM are actively looking for your solution.

That means even if you do everything right with your lead gen efforts, a good portion of your TAM simply won't buy right then and there (see: “email me next year” replies).

From there, you're given two choices:

1. Mark them as permanently "not interested" and move on.
2. Re-market to them with new messaging every 30 days from there on out.

If you mark leads that don't want to buy right now as "permanently not interested," you will eventually run through your TAM.

If you reach out to leads who don't want to buy right now, every 30 days with fresh messaging, you will be top of mind when they do want to buy.

This is also why it's effectively impossible to burn a relatively large TAM. (Taylor Haren does a great job of explaining this).

The point is, don't be scared of holding on to the same leads. Just make sure your offer is strong, and the messaging is unique each time.

Smartlead

Head of Content & Marketing

GrowthX®

GrowthX Fellow [GX22]

AllRide Apps

Director - Content & Social Media Marketing

Curafoot

Head of Marketing Business Development 

Tribeca Care

Head Of Marketing

Marketing Manager

Head of Content Marketing @Smartlead.ai | Driving Organic Growth and Revenue through Strategic Growth & Content Marketing

I build growth engines that don’t just attract clicks, they drive revenue.

Currently leading content & marketing at Smartlead.ai, where I’m turning organic funnels into predictable, scalable revenue for one of the fastest-growing outbound SaaS platforms out there.

My playbook? 

Well pretty straight forward... Content that speaks human and performs, funnels that convert without friction, and go-to-market systems designed for scale - not vanity metrics.

I’m all about compound growth: content ecosystems, zero-click surfaces, community loops, and AI-native visibility. If it doesn’t drive demand or spark real action, it’s not on my list.

Always down to swap notes on content-led growth, modern GTM, or building lean machines that turn organic traffic into $$$.

Alka Gupta

Winners vs. Invisibles in 2026


AI will be the core growth driver for SaaS brands

And it cares about one thing
Can it trust you enough to recommend you?

And that trust is built across 5 stages most brands are ignoring

▶️ Stage 1: Awareness
You need AI to know you exist.
Be in the conversation when someone asks a question in your space.

What to create: educational blogs, expert POV pieces, content on high-authority sites.

What to track: Are you showing up in AI answers? Are people sharing your stuff? Is traffic growing?

Reality check: This takes serious effort upfront. Skip it, and everything else fails.

▶️ Stage 2: Interest
Getting mentioned once won't cut it.
You need to own topics and build enough depth that AI sees you as the source, not a source.

What to create: content hubs, valuable downloads, newsletter sign-ups that deliver real value

What to track: Are people coming back? Spending time reading? Is AI mentioning your brand by name?

Reality check: This is where brands separate from noise. You're building a moat here.

▶️ Stage 3: Consideration
This is the money stage.
When buyers are comparing options, you need to be in that comparison. And you need to look good.

What to create: Real customer stories, honest product breakdowns, side-by-side guides

What to track: Are people signing up for trials? Staying on your site longer? Appearing in featured snippets?

Reality check: Moderate lift, massive impact. This is where your pipeline starts filling.

▶️ Stage 4: Conversion
You've earned trust. Now make it dead simple to take action.
Clear offers. Clear next steps. No friction.

What to create: Strong calls-to-action, valuable lead magnets, interactive tools

What to track: Form fills, qualified leads, click-throughs on your CTAs

Reality check: If the earlier stages are solid, this becomes the easiest part.

▶️ Stage 5: Retention
The most underrated stage.
Your best customers are your best marketing asset. Help them succeed, give them reasons to stay, and they become proof that AI cites in future recommendations.

What to create: Support content, advanced guides, upsell resources that actually help

What to track: Do customers keep using your content? Is your community growing? Are they going deeper?

Reality check: This is your long game. Compounds over time.

Here's what this actually does:
Gets you into LLM training data → Shows up in AI-generated answers → Turns strangers into buyers → Keeps them loyal

But most teams are randomly creating content across these stages.
A blog here. A case study there. Some social posts.

That won't work in 2026.

AI doesn't reward random. It rewards the sequence.

If you're creating awareness content but have no consideration layer? 
AI won't recommend you when it matters.

If you've got great conversion content but no awareness? 
Nobody ever gets there.

The winning move for 2026:
-Map your content to the full funnel
-Fill the gaps
-Build the sequence

Be the brand AI finds impossible to ignore

Head of Content & Marketing | Building Content-Driven Growth Engines @Smartlead.ai

This AI Agent turns your LinkedIn comments into a lead pipeline 
(and it runs while you sleep)

Here’s how it works:
You post a lead magnet on LinkedIn. 
People comment on it.

Step 1: It scrapes every comment
No AI tools or human scraping, just clean extraction.

Step 2: It enriches their profiles
Each profile gets enriched with company data, titles
You’re not looking at names, you’re looking at buying context.

Step 3: It finds verified work emails
The agent verifies each contact using the Icypeas API, no catch-all nonsense, no bounces. 

Step 4: It builds a Smartlead campaign
The workflow automatically creates a new campaign in Smartlead, sets up the sequences, and pushes all enriched leads directly into it. 

Step 5: It sends a confirmation email
When the campaign is ready, you get one email:

Campaign created. Leads uploaded. Outreach begins in 3...2...1.

This is a full-stack outbound pipeline built on n8n, end-to-end. 

You could use it to:
→ Turn post engagement into booked meetings
→ Feed outbound systems automatically
→ Warm up audiences from your content
→ Or plug directly into Smartlead for instant campaigns 

We’ve been using this inside Smartlead to convert content engagement into revenue.

If you want this agent, comment “Agent” and I’ll send it to you! (Must be connected)

I don't have a perfect life...


And I don't want one!

Over the years, I’ve realised something simple but powerful

You don’t need a perfect life...
Maybe you need a happy one.

You rarely remember how much you spent on a vacation...
but you always remember how you felt during that time…

the quiet mornings, 
the shared laughter,
the adventures with the people who matter.

Success has many angles... and it is deeply subjective.

For some, it’s titles.
For others, it’s numbers.
For many, it’s recognition.

For me, success is something else entirely.

It’s independence. 
It’s freedom.
It’s the ability to live life on my own terms -

to travel to places I once dreamed of,
to enjoy good food across the world,
to create memories with my family that last longer than any achievement ever will.

At the end of the day, I think fulfilment isn’t measured in metrics...
it’s measured in moments. 

I can be wrong to many... but this is what I truly believe...

Cheers to building a life that feels meaningful,
not just impressive🥂

Every time someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity a question in your space…
Your brand either:

1. Shows up
- AI pulls your content as a trusted source
- You get mentioned without spending on ads
- Buyers discover you at the exact moment they're researching

2. Gets ignored
- AI can't locate your content
- Competitors fill the gap you left
- You lose potential customers before they even know you exist

3. Gets misrepresented
- AI surfaces old or inaccurate information
- Wrong facts get amplified across conversations
- Your credibility takes a hit before the first call

Here's what actually happens behind the scenes in LLM search:

Stage 1 → Question Asked
Someone types their query into an AI tool.

Stage 2 → Intent Decoded
The AI interprets what they're actually looking for.
If your content doesn't match how buyers naturally ask questions? You've already lost the opportunity.

Stage 3 → Source Discovery
AI scans two main areas:
Public content (articles, posts, news)
Search platforms (Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora)

If your content isn't public, easy to crawl, and structured for AI discovery? You're completely invisible at this stage.

Stage 4 → Answer Assembly
AI stitches together information from what it found.
Well-organized, information-dense content wins more citations.

Stage 5 → Final Output
The user gets their answer.
Your brand is either part of that answer… or completely absent.

AI search has two critical filters: retrieval and reasoning.

LLM optimization is where the new visibility war is happening.

If you're not in the answer, you don't exist to that buyer.

The opportunity is massive, though:
90% of ChatGPT citations come from pages that aren't even in Google's top 20.

You can dominate AI answers without perfect traditional SEO rankings.

Because LLMs prioritize:
> Structured content: Information broken into digestible sections
Specific solutions: Answers to precise questions Relevance signals: 
Context matters more than pure domain authority

Mistakes I see everywhere:
❌ Thinking traditional SEO automatically covers AI discovery 
❌ Locking valuable content behind gates or in PDFs 
❌ Ignoring platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit as AI sources 
❌ Not formatting content for both search engines AND language models

Your competitors who keep getting mentioned?

They've already adapted their strategy.
-While you're waiting, they're getting recommended. 
-While you're optimizing for yesterday, they're training tomorrow's AI. 
-While you're invisible, they're building trust.

Here's what changes when you get this right:
Structure → Retrieve → Cite

-Your content becomes the go-to reference. 
-Your brand becomes the authority. 
-Your pipeline fills with warmed-up leads.

This is how you win when AI becomes the primary research tool.

♻️ Repost this if your network needs to see it.

Top businesses aren't just optimising for Google.

They're already adapting to AI

Ranking for classic search engines used to be the goal.

But now, answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc) are on the rise...

If you want your business to stay relevant,
You need to start investing in AI-driven rankings (AEO, GEO, AIO, SXO).

If you want to stay of the curve in 2026, you'd be putting time into these 4 types of search:

➡️ AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- Winning AI overviews, featured snippets, voice queries
- It's how you get chosen in search...not just listed

Skip this? You’ll never show up in AI answers

➡️ GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) 
- Getting cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
- Write for prompts, clusters, comparisons

Ignore this? AI will skip you for your competitor

➡️ AIO (AI Integration Optimization) 
- Automate briefs, scale content, repurpose smartly
- Programmatic SEO meets internal efficiency

No AIO? You’ll burn out before you scale up

➡️ SXO (Search Experience Optimization) 
- UX, speed, mobile flow, scroll depth 
- Turn clicks into customers...not bounces

Miss this? High traffic, low results

Let’s take 2 real-world examples:

▶️ DTC Brand Reality:
AEO: Missed voice snippets and product schema
GEO: No AI citations, poor content depth
AIO: Manual content ops, no workflows
SXO: Slow checkout flow, low conversions

▶️ SaaS Startup Truth:
AEO: Weak FAQs, no entity markup
GEO: Blog lacks citations or prompt relevance
AIO: No system for scaling blog or docs
SXO: Long forms, high bounce on mobile

Most marketers blend all of SEO together.

Then wonder why their content isn’t compounding.

But when you separate them?

AEO: Gets you found in AI
GEO: Gets you cited and trusted
AIO: Gets you scalable content
SXO: Gets you real conversions

Crucial signals:

No AEO? You’re invisible in AI search
Weak GEO? You’re never referenced
No AIO? You’re not scaling content
Poor SXO? You're leaking conversions

Common traps:
Writing content with no structure (AEO fail)
Publishing without citations or depth (GEO fail)
Treating SEO as a 1-person job (AIO fail)
Ignoring UX and page flow (SXO fail)

The uncomfortable truth:

Your competitors showing up in ChatGPT results?

They’ve already figured this out.

While you're writing more posts…

They’re getting chosen, cited, scaled, and clicked.

Your next SEO win isn’t a new blog post.
It’s seeing where your strategy is actually leaking.

Stop guessing SEO only.
Start managing SEO with AEO, GEO, AIO, and SXO.

That’s how you rank in 2026 and stay there...

Most SaaS founders are still trying to fix their SEO rankings.

Are you one of them?

In the age of AI discovery, the rules have flipped.

Traditional SEO was about keywords, backlinks, and clicks.

AI Search is about concepts, credibility, and context.

People don’t just search on Google anymore.
They search everywhere.

ChatGPT. Perplexity. Gemini. Reddit. YouTube. LinkedIn. Quora. Medium

When someone asks ChatGPT “What’s the best cold outreach tool?”
it doesn’t pull a ranked list.

It recalls knowledge
...and that means it recalls brands it trusts.

So how do you make sure your brand shows up inside those answers?

Here’s the new playbook:

1. Structure for Machines and Humans

Readable formatting, FAQs, and schema markup help both users and LLMs understand your content.

2. Create Recallable Knowledge

Focus on frameworks, facts, and use cases that AIs can reuse.
Train them to recognize your insights, not just your keywords.

3. Build Reputation Loops

Earn mentions, citations, and community discussions.
Reddit, Slack, LinkedIn, Quora, they’re all feeding LLMs.

4. Optimise for Discovery, Not Just Clicks
AI discovery rewards clarity, trust, and originality more than volume.

That’s the shift we're betting on.

Our strategy doesn’t stop at ranking.

We’re training AI to remember us every time someone searches
“How to scale cold outreach” or “Best email deliverability tools.”

Because tomorrow’s visibility isn’t about ranking higher.
It’s about being retrieved more often.

The brands that master “Search Everywhere Optimization” will own the next 
decade of discovery.

We are already there.
Are you?

You will not get traffic in 2026..
if you're not doing this..

Stop relying on Old SEO in the New AI era.

AEO and GEO are the new keys to visibility.

Millions of people now use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini instead of Google. 

ChatGPT alone has over 400 million weekly users.

That means your customers are searching differently, and brands that adapt first will win this new era of discovery.

Old SEO was all about ranking on Google’s first page. 

- It focused on keywords, backlinks, and technical tweaks. 
- It worked, but it chased visibility instead of credibility.
- It was great for driving traffic, helping new sites rank, and monetizing clicks. 

But now, it struggles to build real trust or conversions. 
And it has zero visibility inside AI tools.

New SEO is built for the AI era. 
It’s about being retrieved, cited, and trusted across Google and large language models.

It’s made up of four key layers: 
GEO – getting cited inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity 
AEO – appearing in AI overviews and summaries 
AIO – structuring content so AI tools can actually use it 
SXO – aligning trust and conversion with user intent

This is how brands now build authority that compounds over time. 
They show up in AI-driven results, get cited by models, and turn visibility into long-term trust.

The new goal isn’t just to rank higher. 
It’s to be discoverable, credible, and chosen.

That’s what we focus on at Smartlead. 
We don’t just optimize for search; we optimize for recall.

Because in 2026, the brands that win won’t just be visible.
They’ll be the ones AI remembers first.

What's your key strategy for 2026?

Old SEO vs New SEO_Alka

LinkedIn + Email, now in ONE clean Smartlead sequence.

This is the multichannel experience we always wanted but didn’t have.
I’ve said this for years:

Most outreach doesn’t fail because of messaging.
It fails because of the mess between tools.

Every week I hear the same thing from founders, agency owners, SDRs:

“I start on LinkedIn… then I switch to email… then I rewrite the whole flow… and somehow the prospect still slips through.”

Honestly? It’s not you.
It’s the tools refusing to talk to each other.

LinkedIn sits in one app.
Email sits in another.
Your outreach ends up feeling stitched together with duct tape.

So at Smartlead, we finally fixed it.

Just a smooth, end-to-end rhythm that feels natural to the prospect - and sane for the sender.

Smartlead X HeyReach.io is now LIVE 😎 

If you're running LinkedIn + Email outreach, this changes the game....
and honestly, it should’ve existed years ago.

The integration is now LIVE.

And once you try it, you won’t want to run outreach the old way again.

Not sure if this happens to you as well 
🤷‍♀️ 

To me - December always hits different somehow.

Not because the year is ending, but because it quietly forces you to pause...
or maybe just to look back at the moments that shaped you.

The wins you didn’t celebrate enough.
The setbacks that taught you more than you wanted to learn.
The versions of you that you outgrew without even realizing it.

For me - December is that gentle reminder that life doesn’t move in straight lines.

Some months feel like growth.
Some feel like survival.
And some simply prepare you for what’s coming next.

And I love the magic of this month...
it gives me permission to reset without apology.

To close chapters without guilt.
To let go of what didn’t serve you.
To carry forward only what feels aligned.

New year isn’t about resolutions...although I make many and break them🫣
 
It’s more about readiness.

Like a quiet inner shift that says....
“I’m done repeating old patterns. 
I’m ready for new challenges, new energy, new opportunities.”

So if you're feeling like - this year felt heavy, chaotic, transformational, or all of the above
try and use December as your breathing space.

some reflections
some realignment
some rebuilding your momentum in silence.

The new year will meet you exactly where you prepare for it.

Let's walk into 2026 with clarity, calm, and a little more courage than this year.✨

How we use Smartlead at Smartlead 😎

Although a huge chunk (about 70%) of users come from organic, socials, word-of-mouth, and referrals...

at Smartlead, we get the remaining 30% from Smartlead's own campaign 🔥

Here's exactly how we use it:

- Connect unlimited mailboxes with AI warmup
- Find leads with SmartProspect (300M+ verified contacts)
- Launch personalized cold email campaigns
- Auto-categorize replies with ML
- Manage everything in one unified inbox

We do exactly what we tell our users to do.

And the results?

1,200+ free trial signups in the last 30 days 
400+ demo meetings per month 
68% reply rates on outreach campaigns

I know we're on the right track because it's the best cold email tool I've ever used💪

Quick story.
Last week, two agency owners messaged me:

One said, “Just activated the Smartlead BF deal. This is HUGE.”

The other said, “Damn… I forgot. Is it still live?”

It’s crazy how the smallest decisions separate momentum from missed opportunity.

So here’s me being the friend who actually reminds you:
Black Friday + Cyber Monday Flash Sale ends tonight.

If you're running outbound... you already know how big this is:

💌 Free Google & Outlook mailboxes (first month)
⚡ Unlimited mailboxes with 1-click setup
🔥 Premium deliverability without the hassle

Midnight → offer disappears.
Simple as that.

If you’ve been waiting for a sign… this is it.
 
Go grab it before your competition does.
👉 https://lnkd.in/dAARFwvU

I analyzed 500 brands winning in AI search.

97% brands are getting ignored.

Only 3% keep showing up in ChatGPT recommendations.

So, I did what any obsessed marketer would do

I spent 6 months figuring out why.

→ Tested 200+ prompts 
→ Reverse-engineered 50+ top-performing brands 
→ Built frameworks from scratch 
→ Broke what worked. Rebuilt it better.

Then I took what I learned and tested it with 7 clients.

The results?
Invisible → Recommended by ChatGPT in 90 days.

Not through ads. Not through luck.

Through a systematic AI-first visibility playbook.

7 free guides to master it before everyone else

And I'm giving it away for free.

Inside you’ll find:

1️⃣ 4 steps to make your content AI readable
2️⃣ 19 laws of ChatGPT prompts
3️⃣ How to make your brand rank on AI first SEO
4️⃣ 44+ Best ChatGPT Prompts for SEO
5️⃣ How to train AI search to find your brand
6️⃣ How to create content AI engines will read
7️⃣ 7 SEO tricks brands need to know for visibility in 2026

This is the playbook I wish I had when AI search started eating our organic traffic.

Now it exists. And it's completely free.

Need access to it?

Like and Comment "PLAYBOOK" to receive it. (🙃 Make sure we are connected)

P.S. Repost this for priority access!

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The Battle

Nick Abraham

Alka Gupta

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The Battle

Nick Abraham

Alka Gupta

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance