The Grow and Convert Marketing Show

Benji Hyam and Devesh Khanal
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Weekly

We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.

  1. 2d ago

    AI Visibility Case Study: How to Grow a New Brand That Hadn't Invested in AI Search or SEO

    Most GEO/AEO advice assumes you're already a known brand. Here's how we'd approach GEO/AEO if you're not. Redline Capital is a business funding company that came to us after running mostly outbound. They didn't really have an online presence, no SEO foundation, and they were competing against incumbents that had invested in SEO for years. In this solo episode, Devesh walks through their Traqer dashboard and shows exactly how they went from roughly zero AI visibility to ~30% across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode- and which parts are still at zero, and why that's fine. Covered in this episode: → Why new brands can't get into an LLM's training data — and why web search is your only realistic wedge in → The Prioritized GEO pyramid, and why owned content beats off-site mentions when you're starting from nothing → Why a single blended "AI visibility %" is misleading and trivially gameable — drop the topics you lose and the number goes up → Why prompt tracking is not keyword research, what clickstream data actually is, and why it misses your B2B buyer entirely → The self-promotion myth, busted: Redline's own product page is the #1 citation and a named brand mention in ChatGPT, ranked above NerdWallet, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes → Citations ≠ brand mentions — and why getting cited ninth is worth almost nothing → Why attribution gets harder as you win: when LLMs name your brand without linking, people just Google you, and it lands as direct traffic Prioritized GEOInvisible Prompts Topic-Based GEO Pain Point SEO Traqer (our AI visibility tool) Questions about your own brand? Drop them in the comments, we read all of them. Newsletter

  2. Jul 1

    Webinar: Why Your GEO Strategy is Probably Wrong (And What Actually Works)

    Most GEO advice is wrong. Everyone's recommending llms.txt files, FAQ schemas, and content tweaks, but none of that actually influences whether ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini recommend your brand. In this webinar, Devesh Khanal (co-founder of Grow & Convert) breaks down what actually drives visibility in AI search. You'll learn:- Why most AI traffic is "dark traffic" you can't measure in analytics- The flawed advice everyone's following (and why it won't move the needle)- About our GEO prioritization pyramid that we use to get real visibility for clients (and why tier 1 content matters most)- How to stop thinking in keywords and start thinking in topics- How to measure AI visibility without clean attribution If you're doing GEO or trying to be visible in ChatGPT, Claude, and other LLMs, this framework flips the script on what most people are doing. Related content:Topic Based GEOPrioritized GEO Learn more:📧 Join our newsletter: growandconvert.com🔧 Try Traqer.ai (7-day free trial): traqer.ai💼 Work with us: growandconvert.com

  3. Jun 8

    Does Third-Party Content Actually Drive LLM Brand Mentions More Than Your Own Site?

    "Third-party content drives 85% of brand discovery in LLMs." It's the GEO stat making the rounds on LinkedIn right now, and a lot of marketers are using it to argue that your own site content doesn't matter anymore- that GEO is really about getting mentioned everywhere else. We disagree. And we have client data that contradicts it. In this episode, Devesh and Benji break down where this narrative came from (an Air Ops post citing a Graphite study), where the methodology breaks down, and what we're actually seeing across our clients in Traqer.ai.  The short version: big brands like Salesforce and Peloton skew studies like this because they already have category-level brand awareness.  For smaller players like Toro TMS and Climb Hire, clients we've worked with where their own content is essentially all we've done, they're pulling strong brand mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini. That's not third-party publications doing the work. We also get into:– Why Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode behave differently than ChatGPT and Gemini (and what visibility numbers look like across each)– The growing evidence that LLMs may decide what to recommend from training data and a loose SERP read first, then find sources to cite after the fact– Why competitive categories (CRM, exercise bikes, content marketing agencies) need a different playbook than less-saturated ones– Why your own site is the only place with enough canvas to spell out the specific use cases, pain points, and customer types that LLMs match against real user conversations Referenced posts: Invisible Prompts and Topic-Based GEOhttps://www.growandconvert.com/ai/invisible-prompts/https://www.growandconvert.com/ai/topic-based-geo/ This is the companion to last week's episode on self-promotional listicles for SEO. Watch that one first if you haven't. Subscribe for new episodes. Newsletter and full written breakdowns: growandconvert.com/newsletter #GEO #AISearch #ContentMarketing

  4. May 27

    Is Google Cracking Down on Self-Promotional Listicles? Our Data Says No

    "Self-promotional listicles are dying" is the new SEO narrative making the rounds and we've had multiple clients Slack us asking if we should change our strategy of producing list posts. In this episode, we break down Lily Ray's Substack post that started it all, walk through why the data she shared shows correlation but not causation, and pull up the actual rankings of category-keyword listicles we run for clients to show what's really happening after the late-January 2026 traffic dip. Then we get into the part nobody else is talking about: - How to actually write these posts so they hold up through core updates. -Why you don't need to force-rank a list. -Why you don't need to call yourself "the best." -Why the first-person "I tried all 15 of these" framing is a lie that backfires. -And why product schema hacks will get your site torched. We walk through a negative example, then show two posts that have ranked through multiple Google updates- our own "Best Content Marketing Agencies" post and a client example in trucking management software. The full written breakdown with screenshots and ranking data is going up on the blog — link in the newsletter: growandconvert.com/newsletter Full blog post on this topic: https://www.growandconvert.com/seo/self-promotional-listicles/

  5. Apr 10

    Topic-Based GEO: The Content Strategy Framework for AI Search

    A client told us ChatGPT kept recommending Grow and Convert until she had to reach out. So we copied her exact prompt into an incognito window. We were nowhere to be found. That one example changed how we think about AI search strategy entirely. In this episode, we introduce Topic-Based GEO, our new framework for content strategy in the age of AI search.  We explain the concept of "invisible prompts" (the personalized context behind every AI search that makes prompt-level tracking unreliable), walk through how to build a topic map for your business, and share practical steps for creating the kind of content that actually gets LLMs to recommend you.

  6. Apr 2

    GEO Is Not SEO: The New Rules for Getting Recommended by AI

    Most people optimizing for AI search are focused on the wrong metric. Getting cited by an AI model feels like a win but a citation doesn't mean you're actually influencing the answer.  And after sampling AI search prompts over 20,000 times, the data makes that painfully clear. In this episode, Devesh and Benji from Grow and Convert sit down with Bernard from Clearscope to break down what's really driving AI recommendations and what isn't.  They get into why Gemini searches an average of 5.7 times per query while ChatGPT barely searches at all, why Google appears to be actively suppressing brand citations even when it mentions you, and why the GEO "hacks" everyone's pushing right now (schema, Reddit, you name it) aren't moving the needle. The bigger takeaway: training data controls 70–80% of what AI recommends. Web search only affects 20–30%. Which means the content strategy that actually works in this new era isn't about producing more it's about going way more specific. In this episode: Why getting cited by AI ≠ influencing the answer Gemini vs. ChatGPT: how differently they search (and why it matters for your strategy) The brand suppression finding: why mentioning yourself might be hurting your citations Why "Content 2.0" is about persona-specific, long-tail content not volume How Grow and Convert is evolving Pain Point SEO for the AI search era Relevant articles:Invisible prompts: https://www.growandconvert.com/ai/invisible-prompts/Topic Based GEO: https://www.growandconvert.com/ai/topic-based-geo/

  7. Mar 17

    Your ChatGPT Traffic Is 5-10x Higher Than You Think

    Your ChatGPT traffic is probably 5-10x higher than what your analytics shows. We used to think AI traffic was a small fraction of Google. We showed you the data a few episodes back — ChatGPT was about 3-4% of organic Google traffic across our clients. We've revised our thinking. In this episode, we break down why analytics tools are dramatically underreporting LLM-driven traffic and leads, why Google AI Overviews are creating the same attribution blind spot, and what you should actually be doing about it. The core issue: when someone discovers your brand in ChatGPT or a Google AI Overview, they don't click a trackable link. They open a new tab, Google your name, and land on your homepage. Your analytics says "direct" or "organic." The real source? An LLM. The only way to know? Ask them. We walk through real examples from our own data and client accounts, show exactly how this plays out in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and share what we're changing in how we measure and report on content performance.

  8. Mar 9

    AI Is About to Create a New Kind of Marketer. Here's Why

    For the last 10-15 years, marketing has been dominated by the performance marketer - everything measurable, everything attributable. Creative marketers with big campaign ideas couldn't get the budget or the dev and design resources to bring them to life. AI is about to flip that. Now a single creative marketer can go from vision to finished product- building interactive tools, data-driven content pieces, mini apps, landing pages- without waiting on developers or designers.  The people with the best ideas (not just the biggest budgets) are about to win. In this episode, Devesh and Benji break down why this shift is happening, how Grow and Convert is using AI internally to maintain their quality bar while unlocking entirely new types of content projects, and why most agencies pumping out automated AI content are setting themselves up for failure. We also cover which AI predictions from 2023 actually came true, what Google's "shadow penalties" look like in practice when marketers try to automate content, and why producing written blog posts at a high level is about to become table stakes for good content teams. Read the article: https://www.growandconvert.com/ai/ai-creative-marketer/

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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.

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