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Today's Bissett Bullet: “What level of detail should I go into during my first meeting with a prospective client?” By Martin Bissett See more Bissett Bullets here Go PRO for members-only access to more Martin Bissett. View the full article

There’s an old joke among economists that goes like this: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” I didn’t say it was a funny joke. But when labor economist Robert Solow originally wrote those words in 1987, they were certainly true. Personal computers, corporate mainframes, and the first vestiges of the modern internet were all anyone could talk about. Yet productivity wasn’t budging. These whizzy technologies, in short, weren’t earning anyone any money. The phenomenon became known as Solow’s Paradox. Of course, we all know how that story ended. By the mid-1990s, productivity was on a tear, and tech was making lots of people fabulously wealthy. And (despite a subsequent crash and recovery), tech is now the linchpin of the modern economy. Today, AI is following a similar path. And new data suggests that a similarly massive productivity–and wealth–tipping point may be just around the corner. Old paradoxes Since generative AI surged into mainstream usage with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, it has largely followed the same path that computers did in their infancy. The world can’t stop talking about LLMs and AGI. Yet as late as last year, even the buzziest of AI companies earned shockingly little. OpenAI, for example, had annualized revenue of around $20 billion as of the end of last year. For comparison, the pest control industry is about the same size, and the pizza industry is about two times bigger. The chasm between excitement and actual economic impact shows up in bigger datasets, too. A massive study published in February asked 6,000 business leaders how AI was impacting their operations. The answer? Not at all. While 63% of business leaders say they’ve adopted AI, 90% found it had no impact on their firm’s employment or productivity. Official stats tell largely the same story. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis found that generative AI led to a 5.4% improvement in worker productivity–hardly the massive, workforce-wide gains baked into AI companies’ insane valuations. Solow’s old paradox, it would seem, is back. Real impact New data suggests, though, that that may be changing. It’s still early days. But a slew of new earnings reports and recent studies hint that AI may finally be starting to find its economic groove. Alphabet (Google’s parent company)’s Q1 earnings provide the strongest evidence for a coming AI productivity boost. The company says that AI increased its core Search revenue by 19% and boosted Google Cloud revenue by 63%. Even more tellingly, Alphabet said that AI enterprise tech was driving the majority of Google Cloud’s gains, and that AI-driven revenue from big clients was up 800% in the last year. Likewise, Microsoft is seeing huge revenue from AI adoption start to pour in. In its latest earnings report, the company said its AI business was earning revenue at an annual run rate of $37 billion. Again, enterprise adoption drove much of those gains. Salesforce, ServiceNow and Databricks–three comparatively smaller AI companies–also said that enterprise AI is starting to earn them serious money. Taking a broader perspective, Deloitte looked across multiple industries last year, and found that generative AI is finally starting to show real impacts. Most companies that have adopted AI are seeing ROI from it, Deloitte says, and almost a quarter of companies are seeing gains of 30% or more. Generative AI, in short, is fast becoming something that companies use as part of their core business–not something they begrudgingly adopt to avoid seeming like Luddites. Hockeystick time? So what happens next? If the original Solow’s Paradox is any guide, the answer is: “quite a lot.” Even by the early 1990s–years after Solow coined his paradox–computers and the Internet still hadn’t impacted productivity much. Then, all of a sudden, productivity growth exploded. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, productivity growth had roughly doubled, with computer tech driving most of that gain. The hockeystick-like growth of both productivity and the valuations of big tech firms (again, once the dust of the dot-com bust had settled) remade the economy. Looking back years later, the New York Fed called it a “productivity revival.” In 1987, computers seemed like a bust. Today, it’s impossible to imagine a world without them. Despite its slow start, AI may yet cause the same hockeystick-like growth, and defy today’s gloomy predictions. Again, the past may be instructive; most economists now believe that computers began driving real growth only when companies learned how to use them properly, building the kinds of infrastructure and processes that let them squeeze real value from the tech. The enterprise AI revenue growth reported by Alphabet, Microsoft, and the like suggest AI may be in a similar moment of real adoption. Initially blindsided by generative AI–then dazzled by it–big companies now seem to be settling down to the tough, expensive, fruitful process of figuring out how to actually put it to use. That will take time. But when the first Solow’s Paradox showed up in the stats, its ultimate resolution radically changed the economy and the world. It could well be about to happen again. View the full article

The four major underwriters had an increase in first quarter open orders versus the end of 2025 in spite of data showing the number of units produced declined. View the full article

Google Analytics added a new AI Assistant channel that tracks traffic from chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The update should help you measure visits from AI assistants without using custom filters or workarounds. What’s new. Google Analytics now automatically labels traffic from supported AI assistants with new traffic source values. When someone clicks on your site from a supported AI chatbot, Google Analytics will automatically assign that visit to one of these new channels. Medium: ai-assistant Channel Group: “AI Assistant” Campaign: (ai-assistant) Why we care. This update should help you track AI traffic directly inside standard GA4 reports. It should be easier to track things like which AI assistants send the most traffic, whether AI traffic is growing, how AI traffic compares to organic search and other channels, and whether visitors from AI tools convert differently. The announcement. New AI Assistant traffic measurement View the full article

You just ran a crawl of your website. The report flags hundreds of technical issues, many marked by your tool of choice as high priority. You map out a plan based on best practices, and you’re already dreading the email to your developers. But here’s the catch: Many of those “critical errors” don’t actually matter. You can spend weeks resolving “high-priority” technical issues and still see no meaningful impact on traffic or conversions. Some fixes look critical and do absolutely nothing. A 404 buried six levels deep in the site architecture? Probably not worth the fire drill it causes. Meanwhile, a seemingly minor internal linking issue on high-value category pages might be suppressing millions in revenue. The problem isn’t technical SEO. It’s the persistent myth that all fixes carry equal weight. They don’t. One of the biggest maturity shifts you can make as an SEO is moving from issue-based SEO to impact-based SEO. Because the goal isn’t to fix everything. It’s to fix what actually moves the needle. Why critical doesn’t always mean impactful Technical SEO tools are incredibly useful. But, they’re also incredibly good at creating anxiety. Crawl reports, site health dashboards, and those “critical” red flags often create the illusion that every flagged issue deserves immediate attention. But a tool may label something as a “critical issue” because it violates a best practice. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s hurting organic performance. This is where we lose time. These tools confuse technical correctness with search impact. A site can be technically imperfect and still perform exceptionally well in search. Likewise, a site can have an impressive CWV score and still underperform because the wrong problems are being prioritized. Some issues are cosmetic, some matter only at scale, and some are tied to old-school best practices that don’t affect rankings. Technical SEO should be measured by outcomes, not arbitrary scores from an array of tools. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Not all issues affect search in the same way A helpful way to prioritize fixes is to understand which layer of performance the issue affects. Is it indexing, or rendering, or user experience? Or a combination of all of the above? Indexing issues These affect whether pages can appear in search at all. Some examples include: Noindex tags. Robots blocking. Sitemap omissions. Canonical conflicts. These tend to be the highest priority. If search engines can’t access or index the page, rankings are impossible. Rendering issues These affect how search engines understand and interpret content across the site. Examples include: JavaScript-delayed content. Lazy-loaded content incorrectly rendered. Blocked JS or CSS resources. These are especially important for JavaScript-heavy frameworks and dynamic experiences (anything built with React, Angular, a headless CMS, etc.). UX and performance issues These influence engagement signals and conversion behavior. Examples may include: Slow page speed. Layout shifts. Intrusive interstitials. Poor mobile usability. This type of issue may not directly impact a site’s ability to rank well, but it can affect engagement and conversions, which, in turn, can impact organic visibility. Sometimes SEO is less about rankings and more about protecting the traffic you already earn. Dig deeper: Where to focus technical SEO when you can’t do it all A practical framework for prioritization Before moving a technical SEO fix to the top of your list of priorities, it can be helpful to pressure-test it against a simple decision framework. Start by asking three questions: Does this issue affect crawlability or indexing? If search engines can’t access, render, or index the page correctly, that’s usually a priority. Does it impact high-value pages or sections? A small issue affecting thousands of product pages or top-performing content is rarely small in practice. Is there evidence this issue is suppressing traffic or rankings? Look for signals in performance data, not just audit tools. Ranking drops, stagnant pages, indexing anomalies, and crawl inefficiencies all tell a more useful story than issue counts alone. Once you have a better understanding of the answers to these questions, you can use a prioritization matrix to help create a plan of action. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. High-effort, low-impact fixes Let’s start with the work that tends to consume a disproportionate amount of our time. These are the fixes that look important in an audit but often produce little measurable lift. Fixing every 404 on the site Not all 404s are a problem. Fixing a broken URL may have virtually no impact if it: Has no backlinks. Receives no organic traffic. Is not internally linked. Isn’t part of a key user journey. This is especially common on large publisher or ecommerce sites with legacy URLs, expired products, or campaign landing pages. Teams can spend weeks cleaning these up without affecting visibility. The real question is whether the broken page is still being crawled frequently, holding authority, or disrupting conversion paths. If not, it’s often maintenance work, not growth work. Chasing minor Core Web Vitals fluctuations sitewide Site speed matters. But not every performance fix deserves equal urgency. A minuscule shift in CLS on low-traffic blog posts is rarely as impactful as improving render speed on revenue-driving pages. Core Web Vitals scores have become a hot topic in general. They certainly do matter, and it’s one of the few concrete metrics Google provides in terms of measuring SEO performance. But too often, teams prioritize significant engineering work because a dashboard score dipped slightly, rather than focusing on where performance intersects with rankings and user behavior. If your category pages, product pages, or article templates are already performing well, marginal speed gains may not produce meaningful lift. Image alt text on assets with minimal search value Alt text is essential for accessibility. That alone makes it worth doing. But in terms of SEO impact, not all alt text work deserves equal priority. Updating alt text across large volumes of legacy images, especially on low-traffic or outdated pages, is often high-effort with little return. If those images aren’t driving visibility through image search and the pages they live on don’t perform well organically, the SEO upside is minimal. Where alt text does move the needle is on: High-traffic pages. Image-driven content. Ecommerce product imagery. Treat alt text as a priority where it supports discoverability or user experience at scale, not just because it shows up in an audit. Header tags that look wrong (but aren’t hurting anything) Header tags are one of the most over-policed elements in technical SEO. Multiple H1s? Skipped heading levels? Tools love to flag them. And on paper, those flags look serious. But in reality, this is often a high-effort cleanup with little to no impact. Search engines are much better at understanding page structure than they used to be. They don’t rely solely on perfectly nested HTML headings to interpret content hierarchy. In many cases, visual hierarchy, layout, and contextual signals do just as much heavy lifting. It’s also common for header styles to be defined by design styles rather than strict semantic markup. A page might have multiple H1s, but still present a clear, logical structure to both users and search engines. So it’s not inherently a problem. Where header tags do matter is when they create confusion: No clear primary topic or heading on the page. Headings that don’t align with search intent. Structural issues that make content harder to parse (for users or crawlers). As with most things in technical SEO, the goal with headers isn’t perfection. It’s clarity and impact. If users and search engines already understand the page, this probably isn’t the fix that moves the needle. Over-optimizing structured data Schema markup helps search engines better understand content and can unlock rich results. But adding increasingly granular schema types to every page template often diminishes returns. Going from no product schema to valid product schema? Huge. Adding optional niche properties that don’t change the SERP appearance? Minimal. Sometimes we treat schema like a compliance exercise rather than part of a visibility strategy. But if it doesn’t influence comprehension or SERP presentation, it may not be the highest-value work. Dig deeper: How soft 404s and indexing issues caused a 90% traffic collapse Low-effort, high-impact wins Now for the work that often drives outsized returns. These are the fixes that directly affect crawlability, discoverability, and user experience. Internal linking to high-value pages This is one of the most overlooked technical wins. A few strategic internal links from authoritative pages to underperforming high-intent pages can improve: Crawl frequency. Page discovery. Contextual relevance. Authority flow. Compared to complex engineering tickets, this is often low lift with measurable impact. Especially for ecommerce category pages, subcategory pages, and seasonal landing pages — these can gain traction quickly with better internal link support. Duplicate content and canonical issues Duplicate content coupled with improper canonicals can substantially impact rankings in a negative way. This is especially common with faceted navigation, pagination, filtered product collections, and syndicated content. Issues may range from parameter handling to trailing slash inconsistencies. When search engines are forced to choose among near-duplicate URLs, ranking signals can fragment. Fixing canonicals, parameter handling, or indexing rules can dramatically improve performance. This is often a relatively small technical change with major implications. Resolving accidental noindex or robots directives This sounds obvious, but it happens more than teams admit. Staging directives make it into production. Template updates accidentally apply noindex rules. Important JS resources get blocked. These are classic low level of effort, high-impact issues because they directly affect discoverability. And again, when pages can’t be crawled or indexed, nothing else matters. This isn’t Field of Dreams and traffic isn’t guaranteed just because you built the page. Rendering and JavaScript issues that hide your content This is where things can break fast and quietly. If important content isn’t visible in the rendered HTML, search engines (and even LLMs) may not see it at all. That includes: Client-side rendered pages that rely entirely on JavaScript. Delayed content hydration. Critical elements (copy, links, metadata) that only load after initial render. In these cases, the issue is foundational. Search engines have improved their ability to process JavaScript, but it’s not guaranteed, and it’s not always immediate. If your content depends on perfect rendering to exist, you’re introducing risk to your ability to be indexed and ranked. Often, the solution isn’t a full rebuild. It’s targeted. Ensure key content is server-side rendered or pre-rendered. Reduce reliance on delayed JS for above-the-fold content and make sure critical elements exist in the initial HTML response. Dig deeper: No-JavaScript fallbacks in 2026: Less critical, still necessary Why impact vary by site type Best practices often get treated like universal truths when, in reality, context changes everything. The same fix can drive meaningful growth on one site and do absolutely nothing on another. Without understanding the business model, site structure, and how organic search actually drives value, prioritization becomes guesswork. Publisher sites For publishers, it’s all about speed, scale, and freshness. These sites live and die by how quickly content gets discovered and indexed. That means technical priorities tend to center around: Discoverability via internal linking, recirculation, tagging, etc. XML and dynamic sitemaps. Pagination and archive structure. Render speed for content-heavy templates. If Google can’t quickly crawl new content, it doesn’t matter how well it’s written. It won’t perform well. Rendering issues are especially risky here. If key content is delayed by JavaScript or not immediately visible, you can miss the window where recency or freshness matters most. Ecommerce sites Ecommerce is a different game. Here, technical SEO issues affect visibility and revenue at scale. High-impact areas typically include: Faceted navigation and parameter handling. Duplicate URLs across product and category variations. Product availability and lifecycle management. Internal linking across category and subcategory structures. Crawl waste caused by filters, sorting, and pagination. For an ecommerce site, a single mistake can impact thousands of product detail pages at once. This is where small technical issues become big business problems. Lead gen and service sites Lead gen sites tend to be smaller, but the stakes are just as high. Here, the focus shifts to: Clean indexing (making sure the right pages are eligible to rank). Clear location and service page architecture. Page speed and UX on high-conversion pages. Strong local signals, where applicable. You don’t need millions of pages to drive impact, but the pages you do have need to perform. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with There’s no universal SEO priority list And there never will be. What matters is context: how an issue intersects with your site’s structure and content model, and how your business actually generates value from search. While the same fix can be critical for one site, it can be completely irrelevant for another. A crawl report full of thousands of errors doesn’t mean you’ve found thousands of opportunities. Sometimes, it means you’ve found noise. And sometimes, one fix — a canonical correction, a rendering issue, a blocked page — outweighs everything else on the list. Real SEO expertise is knowing the difference. View the full article

Let’s discuss small things that almost took down an entire team or company. To kick us off, here’s a story that was shared here recently: About 10 years ago, I was at a job where a huge drama erupted over email signatures that ultimately resulted in a lawsuit. One day the subcontractor we all worked for sent an email that we had to standardize our email signatures because some people were having too much fun with them and using non-standard colors and fonts. Okay, fine, we thought, we guess we took it too far. The job was very very tedious and messing around with signature blocks (strictly in emails to each other) was one of our few outlets and expressions of individuality. Which was fine for about two hours, until a follow-up came down from the subcontractor telling us we all had to use the same provided signature block that contained a job title other than what we were … and that’s when everything blew up. Think: we were senior advanced llama groomers, first class, and were being ordered to identify ourselves as llama grooming junior assistants, third class, in all our correspondence. A couple people began to ask questions and do some googling, and it was gradually revealed that the subcontractor was billing us to the contractor at the higher senior groomer rate but paying us at the much lower junior assistant one (and telling us that was the senior groomer rate!) … and the new email signature was meant to prove to various important people and clients we corresponded with that we were actually junior llama grooming assistants, third class, and to thus justify our low pay scale in the eyes of some people beginning to ask questions during a contracting cycle. Several people sued; more abnormalities came to light, including that we were entitled by law to PTO in the state we were in, but it had been hidden from us, removed from the handbook, and even hidden inside the timecard software (!). The chorus of complaints grew very loud, but then everyone in the office was then laid off in several waves across a month or two (no justification provided, just “you’re at will, and it’s our will that you leave now”). Many years later, the lawsuit was dropped, but not until the subcontractor’s name was dragged through the mud and they fell out of favor among contractor llama groomers. It was a huge mess, caused by a few people using pink Comic Sans fonts that caught the attention of the finance department who then panicked that we might blow the whole billing scheme with our shenanigans. Well then. Let’s talk about other small things that took down or nearly took down someone or something. The post let’s discuss small things that nearly took down an entire company appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

Neue Galerie specialises in early 20th-century German and Austrian art and designView the full article

The usually innocuous weather system poses more threat than since the early 1970sView the full article

Clear Capital acquires Restb.ai, ProxyPics becomes a verified provider of the Uniform Property Data Report plus more appraisal industry updates. View the full article

There are several dimensions to the ongoing legal war between the media industry and AI companies over copyright, and one of the major ones is the question of outputs. Which is to say: Scraping content without permission may be detestable, but if the party doing the scraping isn’t doing anything with it that would compete with the content creator, it’s difficult to prove harm. And many legal proceedings, especially civil claims, depend on showing the actions were harmful. One of the earlier rulings in this area exemplifies the point. A group of authors, including comedienne Sarah Silverman, sued OpenAI way back in 2023 for appropriating their books without compensation. A judge later dismissed several of the authors’ claims because the lawsuit didn’t identify specific outputs that were direct copies. It turns out just pointing out that a large language model (LLM) was trained on your material isn’t enough—you have to show it’s creating outputs that take business away from you. The output problem Copyright lawsuits like the Silverman case often depend on showing specific instances of scraping and reproduction. The problem is, much of this activity is in the realm of bots: scraping done quickly, silently, and at scale. And while the outputs of big, public-facing AI services like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are there for everyone to see, there’s a whole shadow industry of mass AI scraping that isn’t. It’s been an open secret that AI companies sometimes obtain data from third-party brokers, and media industry analyst Matthew Scott Goldstein recently published an extensive report on them. The conclusions, as reported in Digiday, are eye-opening: At least 21 companies, several funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, routinely scrape publisher content without paying for it, and sell their “data services” to customers that include OpenAI, Amazon, and even other publishers like The Telegraph. The report shows what “outputs” are when scraping is allowed at scale: multimillion-dollar companies built around parsing internet data for bots and agents, indexing that content, and selling it. These aren’t famous companies; they have names like Parallel AI, Exa, and Bright Data. Goldstein points out that they aren’t shy about what they’re doing: While a recent Wall Street Journal profile describes Parallel AI as a platform “dedicated to servicing AI agents,” he characterizes it as a “scraper company with better branding.” As the saying goes, show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome. Given the setbacks in copyright cases before the courts, not to mention the current administration’s dismissal of copyright concerns, the message is clear: There are little to no consequences to unauthorized scraping, and generally the legal and technical mechanisms governing it default to greater access for AI systems. Block the bots, or build for them? This reality creates an existential dilemma among media companies. Do you aggressively block bots from accessing your content, or do you let them do it? The latter means essentially conceding the fight (or at least letting others fight it for you), but it also gets you out of the game of whack-a-mole with AI scrapers. More importantly, it frees you up to build a business around the idea that AI ingests and repurposes your content. I actually don’t believe these two perspectives are as contradictory as they may seem. Yes, copyright holders should assert their intellectual property rights, but they also need to contend with a future where AI engines are an essential part of content strategy. AI is a distribution channel, an intermediary, and an audience, all at the same time. What does a considered approach to the scraping ecosystem look like? I see five components, not all of which will be available to every media company: Get better at blocking bots: Protecting your IP requires both technical and legal components. Most major publishers are blocking bots, at least on paper, though being aggressive about it means going beyond adjustments to the robots exclusion protocol (the instructions every site has for bots trying to scrape their site—which are often ignored). For instance, People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel has said his company has needed to become highly sophisticated at blocking unauthorized bots. Most publishers don’t have the same resources. However, there are technical partners that can help, and infrastructure companies like Cloudflare have moved toward copyright-protecting defaults. Even if sophisticated blocking tech isn’t an option, you can still gather intel. Don’t just look at the bot traffic to your site; you should regularly audit AI systems to find where your content has been appropriated and misused. Practice good GEO: It might seem counterintuitive, but regardless of whether or not your site is being scraped, you should make your content as friendly to AI scrapers as possible. The question of access is a binary—either they should be scraping or not. The problem with ignoring generative engine optimization (GEO) is that, if your content is hard for bots to interpret, that counts for both authorized and unauthorized bots. There are several advantages to practicing good GEO. For starters, there’s the reality that scraping is happening, so you should compete in summaries, even if you don’t like being there without getting compensated. You may as well get the visibility and the (small) qualified traffic that results. Also, it creates a paper trail for your proactive auditing, and potentially helps prove your value in any legal proceedings. Finally, it will be essential if you build an in-house agent or MCP server for your content. Shift your business model: I’ve written about this extensively, but the reality is the media model of the Google era is rapidly diminishing. That means any business that’s primarily based on monetizing anonymous traffic is shrinking. New revenue streams need to be nurtured, including events, subscriptions, data and more. I know—easier said than done, but diversifying revenue needs to become religion among ad-dependent publishers. Sue: This is not an option for everyone, obviously. Very few media companies have the resources to take on an OpenAI or a Perplexity in court. But the report on the shadow market of industrial-scale scraping opens up a group of companies that have been largely invisible up until now. Given what they’re openly doing, how much money is involved, and the stakes for publishers, it would be surprising if more legal action didn’t result. Lobby for regulation: While regulation at the federal level seems unlikely in the current environment, many states are attempting to regulate AI, including through training-data transparency and disclosure rules. And it may not even require a wholesale updating of copyright law. The mere requirement for bots to properly identify themselves would ensure some bots couldn’t effectively impersonate humans, allowing for much more robust governance mechanisms. Reasserting agency As AI bots continue to “eat the internet,” publishers may feel a sense of helplessness—that scraping is just another brutal inevitability to be endured. There’s some truth to that. But inevitability shouldn’t become an excuse for paralysis. In a world increasingly dominated by agents, publishers need to reassert their own agency: protecting what they can, adapting where they must, and refusing to let the future of their work be decided entirely by the same companies who scraped it. View the full article

PCAOB is taking less confrontational approach as it downsizes Enron-era mandate to scrutinise industry View the full article

President touts his friendship with Xi Jinping and future opportunities for his entourage of US business titansView the full article

Connections create career opportunities, resilience, and leadership growth. Accounting ARC With Liz Mason and Byron Patrick Center for Accounting Transformation Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

Connections create career opportunities, resilience, and leadership growth. Accounting ARC With Liz Mason and Byron Patrick Center for Accounting Transformation Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

One of the main appeals of a Chromebook is its simplicity: You've essentially just got a row of browser tabs, running web apps, with minimal background activity going on and everything instantly saved and synced to the cloud. As Chromebooks have developed though, they've add more to this basic Chrome foundation. They can run Android apps now, for example, and they actually come with several pre-installed apps that are genuinely useful. Open up the Launcher (the Google icon, bottom left), to see what's available. These are the best built-in apps you get right now, if you buy a new Chromebook Plus model—that's the slightly higher spec series, capable of supporting all the Gemini AI extras that Google has been pushing out in recent years. Recorder Recorder offers simple recordings and transcriptions. Credit: Lifehacker This is perhaps my favorite of the built-in ChromeOS apps. It's a powerful voice recorder and transcription tool, similar to Recorder on Pixel phones, and it's really simple to use: Click the record button, start speaking, and you're up and running. You'll need to download a couple of extra AI models to your Chromebook, but once you do, you can have speech transcribed into text immediately, and get AI-powered summaries and titles for your clips too. What's more, the app will identify different speakers if you want it to, and apply the correct labels based on voice speech patterns and style. All of your recordings can be easily accessed within the app, and shared elsewhere as and when needed. Screencast Screencast lets you save and share screen recordings. Credit: Lifehacker Screencast is a great tool for screen recording, and you can opt to include your webcam video and microphone audio as needed too. Whatever you're needing to share from your Chromebook display, Screencast enables you to do it. Recording is straightforward, and handled via icons on the shelf at the bottom of the interface—there are annotation tools here too, if you need to draw on the screen. When you're done, any speech is automatically transcribed for you. There are even some basic editing tools included here, so you can trim out unnecessary portions of your presentation or tutorial (or whatever it is). You can share your screencasts with others via customized links, as well. Text Text is a basic text editor and works offline. Credit: Lifehacker You don't always necessarily want to create an entire Google Doc or even a Google Keep note to jot ideas down, and that's where Text comes in: It's a basic, local text editor, the equivalent of Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on macOS. There are a few handy features here, behind the plain interface. You get syntax highlighting for a variety of programming languages, configurable font and tab sizes, and a simple search function. You've also got light and dark modes to choose from. Importantly, it can work completely offline, so it's ideal for distraction-free writing or coding when you don't want to have a dozen browser tabs open (or if you lose a wifi signal and need to remember something quickly). Key Shortcuts Key Shortcuts lets you edit keyboard shortcuts as well as view them. Credit: Lifehacker Keyboard shortcuts are among the best productivity hacks for getting more done in a shorter space of time, and Key Shortcuts lets you view all of the shortcuts available on ChromeOS—from opening notifications to changing the screen zoom. This app is more than just a list of shortcuts, though: You can actually customize many of the shortcuts yourself, via the pencil icon that appears on the right as you hover the cursor. Don't like the full-screen screenshot shortcut? Change it. You will be limited in terms of certain keypresses, and the dedicated keys (for volume, for example) that are available on your particular Chromebook model, but Key Shortcuts gives you plenty of flexibility as well as being a handy reference. Gallery Gallery lets you work with images, video, audio, and PDFs. Credit: Lifehacker Last but definitely not least, we have the excellent Gallery app. This is where you can edit images and PDFs, watch videos, and listen to audio. Each of the different components is relatively basic, but they all work well, and all work offline too. With the image editor, for example, you can crop, rotate, and resize pictures, as well as annotate them with a variety of pen sizes, styles, and colors. There are also basic adjustments available for exposure, contrast, and saturation. The PDF editor covers some of the main operations you might want to carry out on documents like these: Adding text, annotating pages, and inserting your signature. You can also get AI summaries of PDF documents. View the full article

“Hi Frank, I had ChatGPT look at our SEO and it has a bunch of recommendations. Can you take care of this for us?” We’re all getting some version of this email from clients and bosses. Responding is fraught with challenges. How do you avoid sounding defensive or dismissive? How do you avoid looking territorial while still explaining that some of these recommendations are generic, flawed, or completely wrong? It’s one thing to know SEO. It’s another to know how to respond tactfully when AI-generated recommendations are suddenly part of the conversation. Resist the urge to respond, ‘ChatGPT is wrong’ It might feel good to tell them the AI output they sent is wrong and that they should leave the SEO to you. But that response usually backfires. It makes you sound defensive, and it shifts the conversation away from SEO and toward whether you’re being territorial. Don’t debate ChatGPT. Show the person who sent the recommendations that you can evaluate AI output objectively and professionally. The first step is acknowledging the effort behind the recommendations before you start evaluating what’s actually useful. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Validate the effort Don’t jump directly into your analysis. Start by thanking them for sending it. Most people forwarding ChatGPT output think they are being helpful. They are trying to contribute ideas, move things forward, or make sure nothing is missed. If your first move is to attack the recommendations, they will hear you attacking the effort. Here’s how we opened a recent client response: “Hi Dr. _______! Thanks for sending this over. There are a few ideas worth taking a look at. I also have some ideas on data we can give the model so it has more context. I’ll follow up with you afterward with more details.” That response does a few important things: It acknowledges the effort behind the recommendations. It signals that you’re evaluating them objectively. And it gives you room to separate the useful ideas from the flawed ones later. You’re not admitting that AI uncovered major issues you missed. You’re showing willingness to review the recommendations professionally before making decisions. Follow up with what’s worth exploring Don’t lead with everything ChatGPT got wrong. Start with the ideas worth exploring first. That shows you evaluated the recommendations objectively instead of dismissing them outright. This is where you demonstrate expertise. Don’t dismiss recommendations simply because they came from AI. Assess whether the underlying observation is valid, whether it matters, and whether it’s worth acting on. For example, I recently reviewed AI-generated feedback on a page our team was working on. Had a client sent this over, an appropriate response would start with something along the lines of: “Thanks for sending this over. I took a look and there is some room to get some more Philadelphia-relevant content/language into this page while keeping it natural. I’ve assigned this to one of our copywriters to get started.” Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Let the sender come to the conclusion that ChatGPT is wrong Once you’ve acknowledged the recommendations worth exploring, you can start addressing the weaker ones. The key is to walk stakeholders through the reasoning rather than simply declaring the AI output is wrong. For example, we received an AI-generated analysis from a plastic surgeon client claiming that several competitors had “focused their SEO” around a single procedure: “Hi Dr. ___________, Positioning you as the surgeon in your market for a specific procedure goes beyond SEO. This is a fundamental aspect of branding and positioning that could not only drive better user signals, resulting in better rankings, but higher conversion rates as well. I would note that if you visit these websites, however, you’ll see that they rank well for facelift queries even though they list many other procedures. I can’t figure out why the model is claiming that their SEO is focused on facelift. They are producing content beyond that procedure, as well: So if you decide to go all-in on positioning yourself around a specific procedure, it doesn’t mean we can’t list other procedures on the website, nor does it mean we’d be limited to writing only about that procedure. It would largely direct efforts on social media, outdoor, and areas outside of SEO and the website.” Notice what this approach does. It: Acknowledges the valid strategic point behind the recommendation. Introduces contradictory evidence calmly. Allows the stakeholder to recognize the flaw in the AI’s reasoning independently. That is far more persuasive than simply saying “ChatGPT is wrong.” Focus on improving the analysis, not debating the output At some point, you need to explain what is really happening: AI outputs are only as good as the prompt and context they are given. In this case, our client did not provide any context, data, or guidance. He simply asked the model for SEO recommendations for his website. Continuing the client email: “…the model is recommending we add procedure pages in excess of 3,000+ words: Luckily, we already have all of these pages up, though our word counts do not exceed 3000. I checked this against the top-ranking results for these queries and found that almost all have word counts that are much lower than this, which reflects my experience that raw word count does not drive rankings: I think we should rerun this analysis and make a few changes to the prompt, including asking it to ignore word count. We should also ask the model to analyze these pages against ours and point out subtopics they cover that our pages have missed, entities they include that we don’t, and how the information density of our content compares to theirs. What do you think?” Notice the shift in the conversation. You’re not arguing about whether ChatGPT is “right” or “wrong.” You’re improving the quality of the analysis itself. This is a much more productive conversation that positions you as collaborative, analytical, and confident in your expertise instead of defensive about it. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with These emails aren’t going away. Learn how to answer them. You’re going to get more and more of these emails from clients, executives, and internal stakeholders. Learning how to respond to them effectively will become an increasingly important part of SEO and marketing leadership. The challenge isn’t just evaluating AI-generated recommendations. It’s doing so in a way that: Keeps stakeholders engaged. Reinforces your expertise. Doesn’t consume unnecessary time and energy. The next time you feel tempted to send AI-generated recommendations to your accountant, doctor, or IT department, remember what it feels like to be on the receiving end of them. View the full article

Michaels is expanding its party supply and celebration offerings. In September 2025, the arts and crafts retailer introduced The Party Shop at Michaels, an in-store shopping experience that brought party supplies, balloons, and other celebration essentials to its shelves. This year, its product selection will grow even further. In a May 13 press release, Michaels announced it is expanding its in-store party supply assortment and introducing new in-store experiences, with plans to add nearly 600 new products to its shelves throughout 2026. Michaels isn’t the only unexpected retailer with a party supply aisle. Last month, Staples announced it was getting into the party business with help from Party City. The office supply retailer shared plans to add Party City at Staples shop-in-shops to more than 700 of its stores. Party City filed for bankruptcy for a second time in December 2024 and announced it would close all of its stores. Its departure left many shoppers without a go-to retailer for party supplies and balloons. In the wake of its store closure, retailers like Staples and Michaels are filling the gap. Michaels offers new ways to prepare for your next party In the past year, Michaels has expanded its party supplies and balloon offerings to over 4,500 products. The retailer isn’t slowing down—it plans to add around 600 new products by the end of 2026, bringing even more celebration finds to shelves. New products include piñatas, expanded licensed essentials featuring characters like Hello Kitty and Bluey, and year-round entertaining products. Michaels is also introducing new in-store experiences. Beginning this month, the craft retailer is rolling out the following in-store DIY customization bars across North America: The Favor Bar: Mix and match items to build custom party favors. The Candy Bar: Fill favor bags or create dessert displays with an assortment of sweets. The DIY Banner Bar: Create personalized felt banners with interchangeable numbers, letters, and icons. And for those who need gift wrap, Michaels will have an assortment of gift wrap and bags, bows, tags, and tissue paper—customers can mix and match five items for $5. “At Michaels, we believe the joy of celebrating should begin the moment you start planning,” David Boone, CEO of Michaels, said in a statement. Shop-in-shops are the latest way retailers are expanding The Party Shop at Michaels isn’t the only in-store shopping concept that the craft retailer offers. Last year, Michaels also welcomed The Knit & Sew Shop. The shop features Joann and Michaels-branded sewing and crafting essentials like yarn, thread, and fabric. In 2025, the arts and fabrics chain Joann Inc went bankrupt and closed all its remaining stores. In June 2025, Michaels acquired Joann’s intellectual property and private label brands. Shop-in-shops like The Knit & Sew Shop and The Party Shop at Michaels allow retailers to expand their offerings and appeal to a wider customer base without expanding their physical footprint by opening new stores. Both Michaels and Staples are privately held companies after formerly being publicly traded. The Michaels Companies was taken private in 2021 by Apollo Global Management. Staples Inc was bought in 2017 by Sycamore Partners. View the full article

European nations swing behind idea discussed with Riyadh to model agreement on 1970s Helsinki processView the full article

Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald The President started a crucial series of meetings in Beijing on Thursday in a U.S.-China summit where stability in the relationship is the main goal of the two days of discussions. The White House and Chinese state media said the leaders concluded their meeting Thursday morning after about two hours. The President is expected to leave just after midday Friday after a final private meeting with Xi. But few breakthroughs are expected on divisive issues ranging from the Iran war, trade, technology and Taiwan. The President hopes to focus the summit talks on trade and deals for China to buy more agricultural products and passenger planes, setting up a board to address their differences and avoid a repeat of the trade war ignited last year after The President’s tariff hikes. In their closed-door meeting, Xi told The President that if Taiwan is handled well, U.S.-China relations “will enjoy overall stability.” If not, the two countries risk “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Xi said, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. The President in December authorized an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its own territory. The U.S. has not yet moved forward with delivery. Xi said China’s door of opening to U.S. business will only open wider, he told American corporate leaders who accompanied The President. The U.S. president said the business leaders all respect and value China and he encourages them to expand cooperation with China, Xinhua reported. The war with Iran is also likely to be a key topic. Ahead of the meetings, The President hoped China would use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to U.S. terms to end the two-month old war or reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz, but he has tempered those calls ahead of the summit. —Associated Press View the full article

Grasping the benefits of customer loyalty is essential for your business’s success. Loyal customers not just stay longer but likewise spend considerably more than new ones, which directly impacts your profits. They often share their positive experiences, enhancing your brand’s visibility through word-of-mouth. Furthermore, these customers provide insights that can refine your offerings and strengthen your market position. Exploring these advantages can lead to strategic decisions that nurture long-term growth and sustainability. Key Takeaways Increased customer retention can significantly boost profits, with a mere 5% increase elevating profits by 25% to 95%. Loyal customers spend 67% more than new customers, enhancing revenue stability and profit margins. Word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers can reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%. Strong customer loyalty fosters brand advocacy, as loyal customers are more likely to recommend your brand. Engaging loyal customers provides valuable insights and feedback, informing business improvements and marketing strategies. Increased Customer Retention When businesses prioritize customer retention, they not merely save on acquisition costs but in addition improve their overall profitability. Why is customer loyalty important? Retaining existing customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, making it a cost-effective strategy. A mere 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25% to 95%. Loyal customers are also 50% more likely to try new products, creating broader sales opportunities. Moreover, customers with strong loyalty exhibit a 14 times higher likelihood of making repeat purchases compared to new customers. Implementing loyalty programs can improve retention rates considerably, with 77% of consumers stating they’re more likely to stay with brands that offer such programs. These benefits of customer loyalty demonstrate its crucial role in business success. Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value Improved customer lifetime value (CLV) is a vital metric that reflects the total worth a customer brings to your business over the duration of their relationship. Focusing on customer loyalty can greatly improve this value, as loyal customers are worth 306% more than non-loyal ones. Here are three key factors to contemplate: Retaining just 5% of your customers can increase profits by 25% to 95%, making loyalty essential for maximizing CLV. Loyal customers usually spend 67% more than new customers, boosting your average order value. Long-term relationships nurtured by loyalty programs create stability in sales, ensuring a steady revenue stream. Boosted Word-of-Mouth Marketing When you create loyal customers, you’re tapping into a formidable marketing tool: word-of-mouth recommendations. These satisfied customers aren’t just 77% more likely to share their positive experiences, but their endorsements carry more weight than traditional ads, leading to greater trust. Amplified Brand Recommendations How can customer loyalty greatly improve brand recommendations? When customers are loyal, they become enthusiastic advocates for your brand. This enthusiasm translates into recommendations that profoundly impact your business. Here are three key benefits: Increased Referrals: Loyal customers are 77% more likely to recommend your brand after a positive experience, boosting your word-of-mouth marketing efforts. Trusted Endorsements: Approximately 47% of consumers show loyalty by recommending brands they trust, and these endorsements carry more weight than traditional ads. Cost Efficiency: Word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied loyal customers can lower your acquisition costs, as authentic endorsements resonate better with potential buyers. Trustworthy Organic Endorsements Building on the enthusiasm generated by loyal customers, trustworthy organic endorsements play a pivotal role in enhancing word-of-mouth marketing. When loyal customers have a positive experience, they’re 77% more likely to recommend your brand to friends. These recommendations carry 92% more credibility than traditional advertising, making loyal customers influential advocates. Approximately 47% of consumers share their positive experiences, driving organic growth through authentic endorsements. Additionally, word-of-mouth referrals can lower your customer acquisition costs by up to 50%. Brands with strong customer loyalty enjoy increased visibility, as satisfied customers often amplify their positive experiences on social media. Improved Brand Trust and Advocacy When you build loyalty with your customers, you improve their emotional connection to your brand, which can lead to increased trust and advocacy. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your products to their friends, driving valuable word-of-mouth referrals that traditional advertising can’t match. This not just boosts your brand visibility but additionally nurtures long-term relationships that keep your customers engaged and less likely to switch to competitors. Enhanced Emotional Connections Emotional connections play a crucial role in enhancing brand trust and advocacy, as they directly influence customer loyalty. When you cultivate these connections, you can expect the following benefits: Increased Loyalty: Emotional ties can lead to a 26% rise in true loyalty, translating into stronger advocacy for your brand. Higher Spending: Loyal customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers, demonstrating that trust encourages greater purchasing behavior. Reduced Price Sensitivity: Brands with emotional connections can mitigate price sensitivity, as loyal customers prioritize trust over competitive pricing, making them less likely to switch for cheaper options. Increased Word-of-Mouth Referrals Customer loyalty greatly improves word-of-mouth referrals, which can profoundly impact your brand’s reach and reputation. When customers have positive experiences, they become 77% more likely to recommend your brand to friends, considerably enhancing your visibility. In addition, about 47% of loyal customers are inclined to share their experiences, acting as trusted advocates for your brand. This organic word-of-mouth marketing can streamline customer acquisition, lowering your marketing costs and allowing you to allocate resources more effectively. Recommendations from satisfied loyal customers carry more weight than traditional advertisements, leading to higher conversion rates among potential new customers. Higher Profit Margins Loyalty among your customers can greatly impact your business’s profit margins, as they tend to spend 67% more than new customers. This loyalty leads to several key advantages: Cost Efficiency: Retaining existing customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, which cuts down on marketing costs and boosts profit margins. Increased Retention: A mere 5% increase in customer retention can elevate profits by 25% to 95%, underscoring the financial benefits of loyalty. Pricing Flexibility: Loyal customers are less sensitive to price changes, enabling you to implement higher pricing strategies without losing sales, further improving profit margins. Valuable Customer Insights How can valuable insights from your customers drive business success? By leveraging loyalty programs, you gain rich data on customer preferences and behaviors. This information helps you customize your offerings and marketing strategies effectively. For instance, analyzing loyalty member data can reveal which products boost customer engagement and satisfaction. Here’s a quick overview: Insight Type Benefit Example Customer Preferences Customized marketing strategies Personalized email campaigns Product Development Improved product offerings New flavors based on feedback Customer Feedback Enhanced customer experiences Service improvements Using this data, you can track shopping frequency and spending habits, leading to better-targeted promotions and increased revenue. Competitive Advantage in the Market In today’s competitive environment, businesses must leverage every advantage to stand out. Customer loyalty can provide a significant competitive edge, helping you secure and grow your market share. Here are three key benefits: Brand Stability: Strong loyalty programs differentiate your brand, making customers less likely to switch to competitors, which improves stability in a crowded market. Innovation Acceptance: Loyal customers are 50% more likely to try new products, allowing you to introduce innovations that will be well-received. Mitigated Price Competition: Loyal customers prioritize relationships over price, reducing sensitivity to price changes and easing competitive pressures. Frequently Asked Questions Why Is Customer Loyalty Important for a Business? Customer loyalty is important for a business since it markedly reduces costs associated with acquiring new customers. When you retain existing customers, you save money and increase profitability. Loyal customers tend to spend more over time and are likely to recommend your brand to others, enhancing your reputation. Furthermore, even a small increase in customer retention can lead to substantial profit growth, demonstrating how loyalty directly impacts your revenue and long-term success. What Are the Key Benefits of Customer Loyalty for a Business and How Do These Advantages Contribute to Its Long-Term Success and Profitability? Customer loyalty brings numerous advantages that greatly contribute to long-term success and profitability. For instance, loyal customers tend to spend more, often 67% more than newcomers, enhancing revenue. Furthermore, retaining existing customers is usually five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, which improves cost efficiency. In addition, satisfied customers are likely to recommend your brand, increasing brand awareness through word-of-mouth. As a result, nurturing loyalty can lead to substantial profit growth and sustainable business development. What Are the 4 C’s of Customer Loyalty? The 4 C’s of customer loyalty are Commitment, Consistency, Communication, and Community. Commitment reflects the emotional connection between you and the brand, driving repeat purchases. Consistency guarantees you receive reliable experiences, nurturing trust. Effective Communication makes you feel valued, improving your satisfaction. Finally, Community builds a network of loyal customers who engage with each other, amplifying word-of-mouth recommendations. Together, these elements create strong relationships that improve customer loyalty and overall brand success. What Are the 3 R’s of Customer Loyalty? The 3 R’s of customer loyalty are Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Retention focuses on keeping existing customers, as it’s markedly cheaper than acquiring new ones. A small increase in retention can lead to substantial profit gains. Referral emphasizes that satisfied customers are likely to recommend your brand, enhancing word-of-mouth marketing. Finally, Revenue highlights that loyal customers typically spend more, which boosts your overall profitability and contributes to a higher Customer Lifetime Value. Conclusion In summary, nurturing customer loyalty is crucial for your business’s growth and sustainability. By focusing on increasing retention, enhancing customer lifetime value, and encouraging word-of-mouth marketing, you position your brand for long-term success. Loyal customers not just contribute to higher profit margins but likewise provide valuable insights and create a competitive advantage in the market. Prioritizing these aspects can greatly improve your overall business performance and help you build a strong, reputable brand in your industry. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "7 Key Benefits of Customer Loyalty for Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Grasping the benefits of customer loyalty is essential for your business’s success. Loyal customers not just stay longer but likewise spend considerably more than new ones, which directly impacts your profits. They often share their positive experiences, enhancing your brand’s visibility through word-of-mouth. Furthermore, these customers provide insights that can refine your offerings and strengthen your market position. Exploring these advantages can lead to strategic decisions that nurture long-term growth and sustainability. Key Takeaways Increased customer retention can significantly boost profits, with a mere 5% increase elevating profits by 25% to 95%. Loyal customers spend 67% more than new customers, enhancing revenue stability and profit margins. Word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers can reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%. Strong customer loyalty fosters brand advocacy, as loyal customers are more likely to recommend your brand. Engaging loyal customers provides valuable insights and feedback, informing business improvements and marketing strategies. Increased Customer Retention When businesses prioritize customer retention, they not merely save on acquisition costs but in addition improve their overall profitability. Why is customer loyalty important? Retaining existing customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, making it a cost-effective strategy. A mere 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25% to 95%. Loyal customers are also 50% more likely to try new products, creating broader sales opportunities. Moreover, customers with strong loyalty exhibit a 14 times higher likelihood of making repeat purchases compared to new customers. Implementing loyalty programs can improve retention rates considerably, with 77% of consumers stating they’re more likely to stay with brands that offer such programs. These benefits of customer loyalty demonstrate its crucial role in business success. Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value Improved customer lifetime value (CLV) is a vital metric that reflects the total worth a customer brings to your business over the duration of their relationship. Focusing on customer loyalty can greatly improve this value, as loyal customers are worth 306% more than non-loyal ones. Here are three key factors to contemplate: Retaining just 5% of your customers can increase profits by 25% to 95%, making loyalty essential for maximizing CLV. Loyal customers usually spend 67% more than new customers, boosting your average order value. Long-term relationships nurtured by loyalty programs create stability in sales, ensuring a steady revenue stream. Boosted Word-of-Mouth Marketing When you create loyal customers, you’re tapping into a formidable marketing tool: word-of-mouth recommendations. These satisfied customers aren’t just 77% more likely to share their positive experiences, but their endorsements carry more weight than traditional ads, leading to greater trust. Amplified Brand Recommendations How can customer loyalty greatly improve brand recommendations? When customers are loyal, they become enthusiastic advocates for your brand. This enthusiasm translates into recommendations that profoundly impact your business. Here are three key benefits: Increased Referrals: Loyal customers are 77% more likely to recommend your brand after a positive experience, boosting your word-of-mouth marketing efforts. Trusted Endorsements: Approximately 47% of consumers show loyalty by recommending brands they trust, and these endorsements carry more weight than traditional ads. Cost Efficiency: Word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied loyal customers can lower your acquisition costs, as authentic endorsements resonate better with potential buyers. Trustworthy Organic Endorsements Building on the enthusiasm generated by loyal customers, trustworthy organic endorsements play a pivotal role in enhancing word-of-mouth marketing. When loyal customers have a positive experience, they’re 77% more likely to recommend your brand to friends. These recommendations carry 92% more credibility than traditional advertising, making loyal customers influential advocates. Approximately 47% of consumers share their positive experiences, driving organic growth through authentic endorsements. Additionally, word-of-mouth referrals can lower your customer acquisition costs by up to 50%. Brands with strong customer loyalty enjoy increased visibility, as satisfied customers often amplify their positive experiences on social media. Improved Brand Trust and Advocacy When you build loyalty with your customers, you improve their emotional connection to your brand, which can lead to increased trust and advocacy. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your products to their friends, driving valuable word-of-mouth referrals that traditional advertising can’t match. This not just boosts your brand visibility but additionally nurtures long-term relationships that keep your customers engaged and less likely to switch to competitors. Enhanced Emotional Connections Emotional connections play a crucial role in enhancing brand trust and advocacy, as they directly influence customer loyalty. When you cultivate these connections, you can expect the following benefits: Increased Loyalty: Emotional ties can lead to a 26% rise in true loyalty, translating into stronger advocacy for your brand. Higher Spending: Loyal customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers, demonstrating that trust encourages greater purchasing behavior. Reduced Price Sensitivity: Brands with emotional connections can mitigate price sensitivity, as loyal customers prioritize trust over competitive pricing, making them less likely to switch for cheaper options. Increased Word-of-Mouth Referrals Customer loyalty greatly improves word-of-mouth referrals, which can profoundly impact your brand’s reach and reputation. When customers have positive experiences, they become 77% more likely to recommend your brand to friends, considerably enhancing your visibility. In addition, about 47% of loyal customers are inclined to share their experiences, acting as trusted advocates for your brand. This organic word-of-mouth marketing can streamline customer acquisition, lowering your marketing costs and allowing you to allocate resources more effectively. Recommendations from satisfied loyal customers carry more weight than traditional advertisements, leading to higher conversion rates among potential new customers. Higher Profit Margins Loyalty among your customers can greatly impact your business’s profit margins, as they tend to spend 67% more than new customers. This loyalty leads to several key advantages: Cost Efficiency: Retaining existing customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, which cuts down on marketing costs and boosts profit margins. Increased Retention: A mere 5% increase in customer retention can elevate profits by 25% to 95%, underscoring the financial benefits of loyalty. Pricing Flexibility: Loyal customers are less sensitive to price changes, enabling you to implement higher pricing strategies without losing sales, further improving profit margins. Valuable Customer Insights How can valuable insights from your customers drive business success? By leveraging loyalty programs, you gain rich data on customer preferences and behaviors. This information helps you customize your offerings and marketing strategies effectively. For instance, analyzing loyalty member data can reveal which products boost customer engagement and satisfaction. Here’s a quick overview: Insight Type Benefit Example Customer Preferences Customized marketing strategies Personalized email campaigns Product Development Improved product offerings New flavors based on feedback Customer Feedback Enhanced customer experiences Service improvements Using this data, you can track shopping frequency and spending habits, leading to better-targeted promotions and increased revenue. Competitive Advantage in the Market In today’s competitive environment, businesses must leverage every advantage to stand out. Customer loyalty can provide a significant competitive edge, helping you secure and grow your market share. Here are three key benefits: Brand Stability: Strong loyalty programs differentiate your brand, making customers less likely to switch to competitors, which improves stability in a crowded market. Innovation Acceptance: Loyal customers are 50% more likely to try new products, allowing you to introduce innovations that will be well-received. Mitigated Price Competition: Loyal customers prioritize relationships over price, reducing sensitivity to price changes and easing competitive pressures. Frequently Asked Questions Why Is Customer Loyalty Important for a Business? Customer loyalty is important for a business since it markedly reduces costs associated with acquiring new customers. When you retain existing customers, you save money and increase profitability. Loyal customers tend to spend more over time and are likely to recommend your brand to others, enhancing your reputation. Furthermore, even a small increase in customer retention can lead to substantial profit growth, demonstrating how loyalty directly impacts your revenue and long-term success. What Are the Key Benefits of Customer Loyalty for a Business and How Do These Advantages Contribute to Its Long-Term Success and Profitability? Customer loyalty brings numerous advantages that greatly contribute to long-term success and profitability. For instance, loyal customers tend to spend more, often 67% more than newcomers, enhancing revenue. Furthermore, retaining existing customers is usually five times cheaper than acquiring new ones, which improves cost efficiency. In addition, satisfied customers are likely to recommend your brand, increasing brand awareness through word-of-mouth. As a result, nurturing loyalty can lead to substantial profit growth and sustainable business development. What Are the 4 C’s of Customer Loyalty? The 4 C’s of customer loyalty are Commitment, Consistency, Communication, and Community. Commitment reflects the emotional connection between you and the brand, driving repeat purchases. Consistency guarantees you receive reliable experiences, nurturing trust. Effective Communication makes you feel valued, improving your satisfaction. Finally, Community builds a network of loyal customers who engage with each other, amplifying word-of-mouth recommendations. Together, these elements create strong relationships that improve customer loyalty and overall brand success. What Are the 3 R’s of Customer Loyalty? The 3 R’s of customer loyalty are Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Retention focuses on keeping existing customers, as it’s markedly cheaper than acquiring new ones. A small increase in retention can lead to substantial profit gains. Referral emphasizes that satisfied customers are likely to recommend your brand, enhancing word-of-mouth marketing. Finally, Revenue highlights that loyal customers typically spend more, which boosts your overall profitability and contributes to a higher Customer Lifetime Value. Conclusion In summary, nurturing customer loyalty is crucial for your business’s growth and sustainability. By focusing on increasing retention, enhancing customer lifetime value, and encouraging word-of-mouth marketing, you position your brand for long-term success. Loyal customers not just contribute to higher profit margins but likewise provide valuable insights and create a competitive advantage in the market. Prioritizing these aspects can greatly improve your overall business performance and help you build a strong, reputable brand in your industry. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "7 Key Benefits of Customer Loyalty for Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When your brand disappears from ChatGPT or Perplexity, the fix isn't more content. It's diagnosing which layer broke down. The post Stop Treating AI Visibility As One Problem. It’s Actually Three, On Three Different Layers appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Samsung’s 27-inch Odyssey G5 (G51F) gaming monitor has dropped to $159.99 on Amazon, which is the lowest price it has reached so far, according to price trackers. That’s a noticeable discount from its usual $249.99 price, and it makes a lot more sense now for anyone ready to move on from a basic 1080p setup without jumping into the much higher cost of OLED displays. It’s a flat panel (unlike Samsung’s many curved gaming displays), with a matte coating that helps minimize glare in brighter rooms, and comes with a stand that supports height, tilt, and pivot adjustments (something many budget gaming monitors skip entirely). Samsung 27" Odyssey G5 (G51F) Gaming Monitor $159.99 at Amazon $249.99 Save $90.00 Get Deal Get Deal $159.99 at Amazon $249.99 Save $90.00 The G51F’s combination of 180Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and AMD FreeSync support makes fast-paced games look smoother and feel more responsive than they do on standard 60Hz displays, especially in shooters, racing games, and competitive multiplayer titles. The VA panel also helps the monitor deliver deeper blacks and stronger contrast than many IPS alternatives in this price range, so darker games and movies tend to look less gray and washed out. That said, while HDR10 support is included, buyers should keep expectations realistic—with 300 nits of brightness, this is more of a basic HDR experience than the kind of dramatic HDR you get from higher-end Mini LED or OLED displays. Outside of gaming, the Odyssey G5 works reasonably well as a general-purpose monitor too. The sharper 1440p resolution makes multitasking easier, and the extra screen space helps when editing photos, managing spreadsheets, or keeping multiple windows open. Connectivity is decent as well, with HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB support for accessories and peripherals. That said, like many VA panels, it can show some motion smearing in darker scenes, and people who mainly play competitive esports games may still prefer faster IPS or OLED options. Still, for under $160, this makes for a practical upgrade for someone who wants sharper visuals, smoother gameplay, and a more versatile display without overspending. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Heart Rate Wireless Earbuds — $229.00 (List Price $249.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $329.00 (List Price $429.00) Apple iPad 11" A16 128GB Wi-Fi Tablet (Silver, 2025) — $319.99 (List Price $349.00) Shark AV2501AE AI XL Hepa- Safe Self-Emptying Base Robot Vacuum — $299.99 (List Price $649.99) Dell 15 DC15250 (Intel Core i7 13th Gen, 512GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Touch Display) — $599.99 (List Price $839.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

LinkedIn has always been a key driver for B2B discovery, but over the past few years, a new layer of upper-funnel clout has developed: the platform’s influence on AI search citations. LLMs are increasingly influential in how B2B buyers discover products and services, and LinkedIn has become a top source of this information. This means that if your brand effectively optimizes its LinkedIn presence and content flow for AI search ingestion, you’ll likely get a corresponding bump in AEO-based discovery. In our work with B2B clients (mostly of the high-growth SaaS variety), we’ve divided this LinkedIn AEO initiative into three segments: Optimize earned media. Feed LLMs strategic content. Invest in post-engagement that strengthens LLM signals. Here’s how to approach each segment and the outcomes you can expect. 1. Optimize earned media: website, company pages, and high-profile employee pages If you need reasons to keep your website optimized and your LinkedIn pages (both your company page and the pages of your high-profile employees, such as content contributors and thought leaders) up to date, here you go: Doing so feeds LLMs signals that your brand is trustworthy and an authentic source of information. Much like Google adheres to E-E-A-T for traditional SEO, LLMs pull signals from a brands’ earned media to gauge credibility and trustworthiness. Content published on behalf of a brand by its employees and leaders can also contribute to the brand’s reputation, provided those authors are optimizing their owned media. On websites Make sure your business address, contact information, product descriptions, about pages, and author profile pages are fully built out with good, accurate information. On LinkedIn company pages Pay attention to top-level positioning, your “About” section, and the products and services you offer, providing good, detailed descriptions for each. This may seem basic, but it’s common for companies to go for excessively long periods without updating their LinkedIn pages, beyond just posting. Take 30 seconds to gauge whether your page is truly up to date or missing messaging that’s integral to appearing in relevant LLM prompts. (For example, if your products and services are particularly relevant to a specific industry, call out that industry in your intro text.) One more thing: Make sure your company’s executives and thought leaders also have your company and positioning reflected in their profiles. Better yet, they should be posting on behalf of the company if they’re willing to use their profile on its behalf – that’s just more material telling the LLMs that your company is a real, authentic, trustworthy source of expertise. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with 2. Feed the LLMs strategic content Just as a 100-word blog would be a huge outlier to move the needle in organic discovery, meatier content on LinkedIn has proven more influential for AEO visibility (according to recent research our agency’s LinkedIn rep shared with us). Specifically, 800 to 1,200 words of high-quality, original, differentiated content seems to be a great target for driving AEO mentions. LinkedIn articles and newsletters are perfect forums for this length, since users open them expecting deep dives and won’t instinctively bounce like a Facebook user clicking “…more” on a post only to see a mass of text below. Yes, carousels and videos are great for building engagement, and there’s every reason to embed them in newsletters and articles. But early signs are that LLMs really, really like good, richly written content. Dig deeper: LinkedIn Ads on a budget: How one playbook drove sub-$10 CPL Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 3. Invest in building post-engagement More research from our LinkedIn rep: LinkedIn posts with at least 10 quality comments and/or 60 reactions are particularly influential for LLMs. That makes sense, as social proof is a strong signal of authority, and it’s important to note that achieving this level of engagement doesn’t require a ton of added budget. Yes, you can boost company posts and use Thought Leader Ads (TLAs) and follower ads to build bigger user bases. I almost always recommend brands test TLAs when having employees do the work of putting up good, relevant content It’s a good practice to do this anyway — LLMs or not — for posts that get good organic traction and effectively speak to a company’s products, services, or positioning. Our rep didn’t have any precise data that indicated a correlation between TLAs/boosted posts and greater visibility on LLMs. However, as TLAs and boosted posts are essentially promoted organic posts, they serve as a foundation for stronger organic traction. Another LinkedIn threshold to note for AEO is that engagement from profiles with less than 3,000 followers (again, this is from our LinkedIn rep) tends to carry more clout with LLMs because those profiles are seen as relatively authoritative and trustworthy. If you have any employees (including executives) who are over that threshold, empower them to post on behalf of the business by helping them share insights, proprietary data, and any effective tests or methodologies that have driven good results. (While a lot of companies prefer not to tip their hand on the latter, doing so is a great way to build a broad reputation for expertise.) Don’t stop at employees, either: Consider follower ads to build your company’s follower base, and see if you can form partnerships with verified industry experts (guest blogs and video interviews are great for this) who will amplify your brand’s content. Just ensure that content follows the thought leadership thread of the section above; overly promotional content and straight-up brand messaging won’t get much traction with any audience, machine, or human. Dig deeper: LinkedIn’s new playbook taps creators as the future of B2B marketing AI search is expanding LinkedIn’s influence in B2B AEO must now be a careful consideration in your approach to every channel, including Reddit and YouTube. If you’re in B2B and sticking close to the in-platform data you see from LinkedIn, zoom out and carve out some resources to address the initiatives above. The impact of AEO is hard to measure, but it’s only growing as B2B users flock to the LLMs. View the full article