Part II: Organic Traffic is Falling off a Cliff: What do about it ? Introducing: The Tweener Times 9 Proprietary GTM Strategies for the GenAI Era
We continue the popular topic and expand the series to 4 parts and introduce the 9 GenAI GTM Strategies.
Our most popular post by far since starting the Tweener Times in October of 2024 was our Feb 11, 2025 article: “Part I: Organic Traffic is Falling off a Cliff. Why?” We originally intended it to be a two part series, but based on the flood of questions, ideas and deep research with new information, we’ve decided to expand this to a four partner.
Because of the complex nature of this topic, it takes time to collect everything and present it here, so the schedule going forward for this topic will be:
Part 1 (Feb 11) Organic Traffic is Falling off a Cliff. Why? is here.
Part 2 (March 11) What to do about it - 9 Strategies? <YOU ARE HERE>
Part 3 (~March 25) Tactics 1,2,3
Part 4 (~April 8) Tactics 4,5,6
Part 5: (~April 22) Tactics 7,8,9
We call this series the GenAI Era GTM Challenge Series.
(GenAI Era - Generative AI phase of technology post ChatGPT’s 10/22 launch // GTM - Go To Market - all areas involving sales/marketing are under heavy impact right now).
Two quick notes: First, the tilde (~) is there to signal that we’ll try to hit those days, sometimes things come up, we want to get it right and we’re delayed a day or two. Second, there will be much more Triangle Tweener content in the middle there, but given the strategic importance and amount of change and incoming information we’re processing, we want to get this right!
This series wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our sponsors:
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Quick Refresher: Why is this import?
This article assumes you read part 1, but to refresh your memory:
From startups to larger firms that are great at content, like HubSpot, companies are seeing organic fall off a cliff.
There are three root causes:
GenAI is ‘flooding the zone’ - creating so much content that it’s hard to stand out in the noise
Google made 2 major changes - Google did 2 big core updates that made dramatic changes that reduced organic (SEO-driven) traffic dramatically.
GenAI search is on the rise - More and more consumers are finding they get better answers from ChatGPT’s web search, Perplexity and now Grok. (claude can’t be too far behind).
Death of Organic→ Existential Crisis For Startups
Based on the conversations I’ve had since Part I, the reason this is topic is so popular is that everyone can feel that we’re on the cusp of an existential crisis. The whole go-to-market strategy or what we call ‘motion’ e.g. GTM Motion is changing. We know what’s not working, but we aren’t sure what’s working.
If you can’t get your company’s message to punch through the increasing level of noise out there, you won’t get new customers.
Well the good news is there are some things working, they aren’t the usual suspects and they require a completely different approach and a new way of thinking.
When faced with these existential crises, I have found a Reframe helps to get me out of my crisis-induced paralysis. Here are 2.
Start here.
Reframe 1: YOU have an information advantage
Every company has their own strategy and vision they need to execute on, but this is a big enough change going on, I strongly think every Founder and CEO, needs to be spending ‘founder mode time’ on this topic because it’s the biggest and most important thing to hit startups since the iPhone came out in 2007 and ushered in the huge move to mobile from desktop.
We don’t know all the answers, but are investors in 145+ companies on the bleeding edge of the GenAI GTM Challenge. Talking to them, the good news is there are some best practices emerging that are working. Things are changing fast, so I can guarantee they will change.
In this series we’re going to point you in the directions of what’s working today. It’s up to you to prioritize this and execute on it in a way that’s right for your business. This series/topic won’t end until we feel like the rate of change has slowed and everyone’s catching up. You now have an information advantage because the collective knowledge of our large portfolio and some of the best marketers on the planet. It’s in your court to use it.
I’ve got a lot of scar tissue on these tectonic shifts, and I strongly believe you need to really lean in here and embrace this to overcome it -
ENGAGE FOUNDER MODE!
Reframe 2: Disruption Favors Challengers
By definition if you are a startup, you are a disruptor. You are a challenger in a world filled with incumbents. Usually incumbents have an edge. In GTM, they’ve been pumping out content and SEO’ing for years, maybe even decades. They have hundreds of SDRs and SEs and AEs working those leads. It’s hard to compete with that huge competitive GTM machine as a startup.
But, this moment in time just leveled things. NO, Strike that….in fact the incumbents are on their heels (but they probably don’t know it yet). They are stuck in the innovator’s dilemma, they are big, slow and happy. They are the brontosaurus sitting there munching on some yummy grass while the meteor passes overhead. In 30 days they will realize something is going on. by 2026, they will have some actions that come out of 10 committee meetings that are what they should have done in March of 2025.
The entire GTM motion just had a huge reset button pressed. It’s a new day, a new level playing field, time to get after it! Go challenger the heck out of somebody!!
Neil Shah, CEO of CareYaya put it best in this Linkedin comment:
These reframes are important as they inform the strategies below. When you have ‘less to nothing to lose’ - why the heck not try some hail marries, or make some big bets that could go your way?
9 Strategies for the ‘GenAI GTM Era’
After talking to many many of our portfolio companies that are fighting this in the trenches right here in the Triangle, scouring the internet, talking to leading edge SEO practitioners we have identified 9 strategies for the GenAI Go-To-Market Era. I feel confident not only will these 100% counteract the impact you are feeling, but it will also set you up to kick the butt’s of those incumbents who can’t lean into this as much as startups can. In this post we’ll
Strategy 1: Clicks are dead, Attention is King
Strategy 2: Authenticity and the Walk West/Earfluence 4Ps
Strategy 3: Focus on Quality and Relevance (Time to E-E-A-T!)
Strategy 4: ABM - Account Based Marketing ABM
Strategy 5: GEO is the new SEO
Strategy 6: Diversification
Strategy 7: Leverage GenAI to beat….GenAI?!
Strategy 8: Company Distributed User Generated Content
Strategy 9: Intent-First Content Mapping
Strategies vs. Tactics
Strategy and tactics are two of these ‘overloaded’ terms in business. For the purposes of this series, we’re going to go with this definition:
Strategies - Strategies are like software ‘epics’ - very big picture, broad stroke approaches on how you tackle this challenge.
Tactics - Strategies are made up of a series of Tactics. Sometimes tactics can be using a specific tool (e.g. LinkedIn, SubStack, etc.) or they can be specific tactical ways you can structure your websites.
In this article we’re going to focus on the big-picture strategies so you can get a feel for which of the 9 GenAI Era GTM Strategies you want to utilize. In the subsequent parts of this series, we will peel the onion on each strategy
Also note that these strategies are all intertwined, we’ve done our best to make them atomic, but by their nature they will have multiplicative effects when used together.
Goal:
Our goal here is two fold.
First, we want to give you a menu of ‘organic traffic drop remediation options’ you can do today if you are feeling this impact.
Second, we want to continue to drive the discussion amongst Triangle startups on this topic. The way we collectively get smarter and outperform other startup ecosystems is by sharing information more efficiently. For Triangle startups, this isn’t a zero sum game, it’s additive.
Finally we have a META GOAL:
We believe that if the Triangle Startup ecosystem solves the Organic Traffic /GenAI Era GTM Challenge faster than, oh say, Silicon Valley, or Austin, it could very well accelerate our climb up the top startup ecosystem ranks.
Strategy 1: GenAI Era: Clicks are Dead, Attention is King
From a 30k foot view, you could argue this is what happened to GTM:
TV era (1950s-1995) - The only way a brand could get attention was TV, maybe radio and newspaper. There were no clicks, no pageviews, no DAUs, no MAUs. You had audience (Nielson), engagement, and brand impact (unaided brand awareness through expensive consumer surveying. In this era, GTM was 80% art and 20% science. Everything you did went through a paid channel and an ad agency.
Internet era (1995-2022) - Once the internet got steam and we had e-commerce, cookies, tracking and ads, suddenly marketers could measure everything. Also the middle men, at least on organic, were somewhat cut out. But the Google and Facebook/Meta duopoly formed and most paid goes through a channel (Google/Meta) and most organic, well, also goes through that Channel, but there is a small part that is ‘direct organic’ meaning no channel middle-men. Such as blogging, Youtube, etc.
GenAI era (2022-) - The evolution kicked off by the launch of ChatGPT is changing everything, rapidly. While we don’t know how much, one thing for sure is that Search engines are becoming answer engines. That means instead of having traffic come to your website, you either get no traffic and just a mention at the answer-engine level, or
Let me illustrate with a real-world example. A spot on the internet that’s got a huge incumbent is job listings / Indeed - 800lb gorilla.
Internet Era Result→
Here’s the search result for someone trying to figure out job postings on the internet:
Look at that - every blue link here is going to send indeed traffic. They’ve been measuring this and every pixel here is tuned to perfection - they pay handsomly for this huge ad (it’s like half a page!) but we can infer it works. They’ve tracked optimized everything and know that paying, let’s say $4/click here is worth it.
GenAI Era Result→
Now imagine you’re indeed. Yes you are listed first, but you’re competitors are right there. I doubt most people will click the little citation to learn more, because it’s onto giving you some great advice on job listings.
Attention and DTC are king
Here are the elements of this Strategy:
Clicks will still be there and you should track and optimize them, but if clicks/traffic are your top metrics to you, you should turn that down several notches. You should also make sure you are tracking ‘pre GenAI’ and ‘post GenAI’ traffic sources. For example, make sure you are tracking citations from Gemini, ChatGPT, XAI/Grock and
Attention is best gained by going direct (Direct to Customer - DTC)
You should start thinking through some of those old-school TV and radio systems in this new world.
Examples of questions you should start thinking about:
In a world where my brand is being mentioned ‘up’ in GenAI, how do I measure brand awareness/impact of what I’m doing?
My clicks/traffic are going down, but my bookings are going up - how is that possible? (several companies are seeing this)
Should I block GenAI from scraping my content? See Strategy 8. somewhat of a sister strategy related to this one.
What should I care about most? (hint it’s not clicks or traffic)
How should my company measure ‘attention’?
I’m finally breaking free of the Google/Meta duopoly, but am I trading them for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok and Claude?
Strategy 2: Authenticity and the Walk West/Earfluence 4Ps
One of the root causes of the GenAI era traffic problem is that marketers are ‘flooding the zone’ with GenAI content.
In a world of inauthentic, empty calorie content being generated, the best strategy is to be contrarian - be authentic. That means, Don’t use GenAI. When writing Tweener Times, we use GenAI as a thought partner - making sure we’re being tight on our ideas, haven’t missed anything and formulating the outline, but that’s it. The content is 100% real human generated.
Founders, looking 👀 at you…
For startups, that ‘authentic voice’ has to come from somewhere and you’ll have to trust me on this one, it will have the most impact coming from you, the founder. If you’re CEO even better. Maybe you have more than one founder and can mix it up or tackle different parts of the biz, but the highest impact for building an authentic voice for the company comes from the Founder and CEO.
Walk West advice worth listening to…
This seems unrelated, but in our interview about their merger featuring Earfluence CEO, Jason Gillikin and incoming CEO for Walk West, Greg Boone. In this interview, Greg had two interesting comments about their plans going forward that resonate on this topic of Authentic voice and when you get into tactics, we’ll be revisiting this:
First, he said:
“Earfluence is part of our 4P strategy Podcasts, partnerships, paid-media and public relation. This creates a diverse set of channels that mix organic and paid and targeted inbound/outbound.”
Second when asked how they would know if the acquisition would be successful:
“We’re going to make sure our clients are seen, heard, cited by both humans and machines alike for maximum results.”
Strategy 3: Focus on Quality and Relevance (Time to E-E-A-T!)
What is EEAT? Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
Here you see that strategy 3 is tangential to strategy 2, because what is authenticity, but the combination of these ingredients. 🤔 It’s as if someone is trying to tell us something.
Way back in 2014, Google talked about how human reviewers would look at EAT and then in 2022 added the Experience E to the front. While they said it didn’t directly impact the algorithm, SEO experts have suspected that there’s something going on for a while around this. Since the BIG core changes of 2024, SEO gurus are finding that Google’s algorithm is increasingly bearing down on this EEAT as way to defeat the flood of GenAI. Reading the tea leaves, this makes sense to me via this logic:
If someone already is a trusted authority with experience and expertise, they are going to write that that topic. However, if they want to say write about something a bit outside their EEAT bubble, they would call on GenAI. This ties together as it’s been mentioned that ‘content that lacked authority’ is what got taken out of the search index (from part 1):
One thing that there is growing consensus around is ‘domain authority’. Let’s say that historically you write a lot about oh, let’s randomly pick…. Triangle startups and e-commerce. Then in the last 2yrs you have been pumping out content around all kinds of other topics, Google is going to demote or even de-index you for the content that is outside your ‘authority’.
Strategy 4: Account Based Marketing ABM
The other acronym we’ll talk about here that we use TON in startupland is ICP - Ideal Customer Profile. Let’s say your ICP is lawyers that have been at a firm for 10yrs - where they ‘cluster’ or the companies they hang out would be called Account Based Management - get the account, get a barrel full of ICPs. For example, if you wanted startup lawyers, you’d research and find the biggest firms are Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, etc. Those are critical accounts because in each one you have thousands of ICPs hanging out. ICP - one, ABM - company with lots of ICPs waiting to be scooped up.
All About the ABM - go narrow
Companies that are several cycles into this change are finding the most success here. I’d describe it with the shotgun/rifle metaphor (hey we are in NC). With content/Inbound strategies, before GenAI, it was easy to say - well let’s write about topic a and we might as well put stuff out about b/c/d - to keep your lawyer example going let’s say our software is for lawyers to track their billable hours - that’s the target of our strike zone. Maybe we also have a tier 2 ICP that is consultants as they also have billable hours and uber drivers. We’re putting out content all over the place to get to these three ICPs - shotgun approach.
In this example, we have three very different ICPs, so we put out a lot of content, but if our business is 70% lawyer vertical, 20% consultant and 10% other, the current changes are crushing us because our content is all over. The shotgun approach is dead.
Therefore, it’s time to narrow down - rifle or laser approach: focus in on that core ICP, Create a list of those ABMs, and focus your entire funnel strategy there in a concerted effort.
More on this playbook when we get to tactics - lots of good stuff here that’s super actionable!
Strategy 5: GEO/AEO is the new SEO
First, don’t believe the hype, traditional SEO isn’t dead. But now there’s a new sheriff/model in town: GenAI Engine Optimization or some call it Answer Engine Optimization - we’ll use GEO as that seems to have the most momentum right now, but remember we’re using it to include AEO if you run up against that.
Training time vs. inference time
In the simplest terms, the way LLMs work they have a training phase (when they are trained on the knowledge you want them to ‘learn’) and an inference phase - when you ask them questions and they generated answers to your questions based on their ‘learned knowledge’. It takes months and months and sometimes over a year for a model to train. Therefore the knowledge in most models is at least 6 months and most times several years.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT’s latest model
That’s 21 months ago. If you ask models for information that you think is current and cutting edge, sadly, most models, as they aim to please will merrily answer you - be very careful and aware of this as I’ve seen many people fall into this trap. We’re dealing with changes that you need the latest, do the DAY information to stay on top of.
ChatGPT 4.5 has some reasoning in the model now and instead of you picking (“hmmm, I’m asking I want current knowledge of, so I want to press the ‘search web’ button along with the prompt”), it will invoke it for you→
Grok/Xai tells us they have a system where they are always keeping things up to date (not clear if they are so fast at training they can just layer on more info or they are leveraging something like chatgpt above:
Finally, for Perplexity, it’s complicated because you can pick several models and there’s a standard/pro matrix to deal with. In pro default you get:
However this is misleading as that’s the LLM , but Perplexity always runs the LLM against a search index - kind of a marriage of how Google and ChatGPT work.
As we get into tactics this will be important - are you optimizing for LLMs training, or inference and which engines have which?
Current inference time GenAI Answer Engines
At the time of this writing companies that during inference get real-time information from the web or an index are: (alphabetical order)
ChatGPT - Called SearchGPT, ChatGPT/OpenAI introduced inference-time search in limited experience July 2025 and rolled out to everyone in October of 24. It works with the 4o and o1 and later models, sometimes requiring a ‘search web’ button press, or the model reasons that it needs to turn on the search web functionality.
Deepseek - The only 'open weight’ model that has web search (Llama does not).
Google AI Overviews (Gemini) - It’s google, of course!
Perplexity - The OG.
You can expect, Claude, Llama (Meta) and others to include this as standard going forward.
What is GEO?
With that background - GEO is tuning/optimizing your website for either training or inference time to make sure your content is ‘trained’ and answered with or ‘cited’ as high as possible in the LLMs.
Strategy 6: Diversification
The typical online marketer up until 2024 had a pie chart of traffic that looked like this:
and it was a huge win - High fives! 🙌
That’s broken now and you need to build a pie chart that looks like this for 2025:
The benefits of diversification in all aspects of business are well understood, but human nature is to lean in to what is working - why spend a ton of effort for a new 5% thing on reddit or whatever when I can just tweak my adwords a bit…
Strategy 7: Leverage GenAI to beat….GenAI?!
Many big incumbent companies (Hubspot, glassdoor, etc.) are blocking the GenAI training search crawlers because they fear their content will be used to train the LLMs.
Don’t do that, that’s a self inflicted error.
Here’s an example, local startup RepVue (Disclaimer: personal investor, on the board, and Tweener Fund is an investor) that competes with Glassdoor. Because glassdoor has ‘opted out’, this has cleared the way for RepVue to DOMINATE the search results. for example, this perplexity prompt yields 2 RepVue citations
That’s one part of this strategy - get in the game with both feet. BUT counter to what you think this one means, don’t generate your content with GenAI, but use GenAI for strategy, A/B testing and ideation. More details coming when we get to tactics.
Strategy 8: Company Distributed User Generated Content
One SEO strategy that overlaps 100% with GEO is user generated content (UGC) that can be then published. The OG in UGC is Reddit and let’s check in on how their doing after the big changes:
Whoa, this chart is up and to the right and everyone else is down to the right. 🤔. Why? Yep, UGC.
While it may seem that your business couldn’t possibly leverage this, we’re going to walk you though some ideas that may change your mind when we get to tactics.
Strategy 9: Intent-First Content Mapping
SEO is traditionally driven by search terms/keywords - using paid adwords and tools that are very keyword oriented.
In the GenAI era, ChatGPT has trained the consumer to enter 8+ words in the prompt. Prompts are even getting longer and longer as we learn the models do best with a lot of context.
This creates an interesting opportunity: intent-first content mapping.
In GTM as we think through both user flows and the funnel, we think about the user journey and the micro moments in there. From here you can anchor off of that content-wise and create content that addresses these steps.
Then, when your ICP is entering phrases like: “How do I evaluate a company that does X, Y and Z, your content is there. Nobody in the Pre-GenAI world is thinking that way.
Recap
This concludes post 2. In the next 3 posts, we’ll take three of these strategies in a chunk and introduce tactics you can leverage to get going. Hopefully this has given you both a lot to think about and hope that there’s a path out of crash in the organic traffic.
The strategies are:
Strategy 1: Clicks are dead, Attention is King
Strategy 2: Authenticity and the Walk West/Earfluence 4Ps
Strategy 3: Focus on Quality and Relevance (Time to E-E-A-T!)
Strategy 4: ABM - Account Based Marketing ABM
Strategy 5: GEO is the new SEO
Strategy 6: Diversification
Strategy 7: Leverage GenAI to beat….GenAI?!
Strategy 8: Company Distributed User Generated Content
Strategy 9: Intent-First Content Mapping
Stay tuned for Part 3 and don’t forget to…