If this feels familiar
Your marketing hasn’t changed. Your customers’ search has.
You’re doing what’s always worked. Your team hasn’t gotten lazy and your product hasn’t gotten worse, but somehow, fewer people are finding you, and it’s getting harder to explain why to your boss, your board, or yourself.
Here’s what’s actually happening: the way people search for things has quietly changed. A lot of the time now, when someone has a question, an AI just answers it right there: no click, no visit to your website, no side-by-side comparison the old-fashioned way. If your business isn’t set up to be found and trusted inside that new kind of answer, you’re invisible in a place your customers already spend their time. And you’d never know it happened. Nothing shows up as a “miss.” It just quietly doesn’t happen.
I’m John. I’ve spent 25 years in marketing, and the last two figuring out exactly this problem for people. This is what I do all day: help businesses get found and chosen in a world where the path to “yes” looks nothing like it did three years ago.
What’s actually going on
Two out of every three searches now end without anyone clicking a single link. Google, ChatGPT, and the rest just answer the question directly, using whatever they can find (and trust) about businesses like yours.
If they don’t understand what you do, or don’t trust what they find, you get left out of the answer. Not ranked lower. Left out.
This isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign the ground shifted under everyone at once, and most businesses (including some very good ones) haven’t caught up yet.
Why work with me
I’m not a big agency, and I’m not going to hand you a binder full of buzzwords and a twelve-month contract.
I’m one senior person (with a small group of people I trust completely) who gets in, figures out what’s actually broken, and fixes it.
Sometimes that’s how your website talks to search engines. Sometimes it’s a marketing plan still built for a version of the internet that doesn’t exist anymore. Sometimes your team is just stretched too thin to even see the problem, let alone fix it.
I connect what your customers actually need with how your business grows.
Twenty-five years in (doing this for tourism boards, colleges, car dealers, and everything in between), here’s the honest truth: most businesses right now don’t need a bigger budget. They need someone to explain, in plain terms, what’s actually happening, and help them fix the right thing first.
Where I’ve spent the most time
I’ve worked closest with tourism boards, colleges and universities, car dealers, retailers, and other service businesses, but honestly, the problem looks the same everywhere. Your customers are finding answers in new places, and most businesses haven’t caught up yet.
- Tourism & Hospitality
- Education
- Automotive
- Government
- B2B
- Retail
- E-commerce
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I even know if this is happening to my business?
Look for the quiet signs: you’re working just as hard, maybe harder, for the same results. Your website traffic looks fine on paper, but leads have slowed. And when you ask an AI tool a question about your own industry, your business doesn’t show up, or shows up wrong. That’s usually the moment people call me.
Is my marketing actually broken, or am I just being paranoid?
Probably not paranoid. Typical signs: you’re working harder for the same results, you’re still tracking the same old numbers (website visits, click-through rates), and real questions about your business are getting answered somewhere else, before people ever land on your site.
Are you an agency? A freelancer? What exactly are you?
Neither, really. Think of me as a senior partner you bring in for one thing: to get the thinking right. I’m not building a full agency around you. I get the strategy and structure sorted, then work alongside your existing team and partners to bring it to life.
Do you just do “AI stuff,” or actual marketing?
Actual marketing. AI is a big part of why things feel broken right now, so it’s a big part of the fix, but the real work is making sure your strategy, your content, and your media all pull in the same direction. That was true before AI, and it’s still true now.
What does working with you actually look like, day one?
It usually starts with one real problem: a customer journey that’s lost steam, a visibility issue you can’t quite explain, or a part of your marketing that just feels harder than it should. We look at what’s going on, figure out where it’s actually breaking down, and decide what’s worth fixing first. I had a client whose website traffic had dropped by half, and their content wasn’t showing up in AI search results at all. We fixed how their site presented information, cleaned up their content, and brought in the right partners, and their visibility came back.
Is this even a fit for my business?
If you want a real partner, and you’re not showing up the way you should (especially in tourism, education, automotive, B2B, retail, or e-commerce), probably yes. If you’re after the cheapest possible fix, or something you can set and forget, probably not. That’s not what this is.
Contact
Tell me what’s not working, and we’ll figure out the rest.
John Hall, 604-787-2917, findtheethos@gmail.com
