We saw a bit of slowdown but still getting leads coming through. Biggest challenge is everyone's doing a lot more due diligence. - Longer sales cycles: What used to be 1-2 months is closer to 2-4 months. - More negotiation on pricing and terms - Less willing to sign long-term contracts. We used to sign 6-9 month initial contracts regularly, now new clients are only willing to sign on for 1-3 months at a time. Clients on the other hand are renewing for 6-12 months at a time. We've been increasing prices too.

@Eric Siu This is what we're seeing too. Clients are either saying "we're doubling down and want to sign on long-term / increase scope" or "we're cutting back." There isn't really a middle ground.

We're able to charge a premium price point so we have healthy margins and can be flexible with our scope. In addition to the straightforward SEO & content strategy and production we do, our strategists regularly ask clients about other business initiatives and challenges. That additional insight gives us opportunities to consult on things beyond our scope and become a trusted partner who helps them think through new strategies to test, ways to level up what they're already doing, resource allocation, etc. vs just another vendor to manage. We become more deeply embedded with their team and welcome it when they approach us with new problems that are "out of scope" because it's an opportunity to build on the partnership. Clients have often said "it feels like we're on the same team in the same company." Would highly recommend folks be more flexible with scope to build these types of partnerships.

1. Ramp up and understand every client's industry so well that we can explain it to them. We build what we call a "domain model" to do so. Generative AI tools speeds up the research process. 2. Write Google Sheets formulas. Serious time saver, especially for those who aren't as quick with writing complex formulas (me). Example output: =IF(OR(B2="yes", C2="good"), "Excellent", IF(AND(B2="yes", C2="good"), "Acceptable", "Not Acceptable")) (Could I have written that from scratch?... maybe) 3. Analyze search results. Example prompt: "Analyze the top 5 google search results for the query 'content strategy,' give me a list of all the H2 headers and tell me 5 important topics that aren't covered" 4. Analyze qualitative data (i.e. open ended survey reponses). What would normally take hours to sift through unstructured data only took 1 hour. 🤯 5. Quickly obtain and clean data that would otherwise take a lot of time. Example prompt: "give me an exhaustive alphabetized list of industries for a b2b marketing survey"

Just here to give props that @Jason Khoo has taken action and started recording podcasts. Make sure to share it when it's live :)