AI versus Marshy 66 - getting featured in the press, website interviews, and lead machine go brrrr

Hey fam,

Is there anything happening in AI right now?

Just kidding lmfao - that’s stupid.

But if you’re newish to this newsletter - welcome!

I write about 3 topics each week usually centred around growth, impact, and strong opinions.

This week we’re covering (checks notes):

• Hacking the press cycle
• Novel use case: interviewing your “ideal customer” for your website
• Building a lead generation machine with AI (another presentation)

I’m keen as mustard to get into the meat of this, so let’s make like a carnivore and get stuck in.

-Marshy

Hacking the press cycle

Did you know you can pay coffee prices for a press release ($6 for a fancy one here in Australia) and be picked up by the news?

Ed’s an SEO guy showcasing how this can work.

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Yes you can do this

This isn’t new and ground breaking stuff.

It’s a dirty open secret in news and online content world that knowing someone, or being able to leverage something gets you in the news moreso than being newsworthy.

The days of worthiness and meritocracy are far beyond us and it does seem to be about advantage, leverage, or how big an audience you already have is what determines what gets seen and when.

Want to hear more than you want to know about taking things to the next level?

Then here’s more detail than you ever wanted.

True news story

In the pod Jacky talks about inventing hooks, attaching research, and planting/pitching journalists post-plant on exclusives to near-guarantee indexing on masthead news sites.

This then spikes organic traffic (or link juice) back to the client’s page.

Forbes is notorious for this.

Because it has been around for so long it has high domain authority (one of the measures SEO people use to determine how much credibility/organic reach a website will get).

But you can simply pay Forbes for articles (see excerpt from Forbes Middle East Media Kit) to get that same credibility.

You’ll never look at “Featured in Forbes” the same way (I think)

It’s not best article on merit, it’s best article on how its gamed and why Google Search results have been sub-par for some time.

See also: enshittification and AI slop.

Novel use case for web design

LinkedIn is kind of becoming more how I remember Twitter to be.

People would share all sorts of delightful things they found for people on the Internet to pick-up.

I made friendships through Twitter, chatted with Venture Capitalists, and once even got retweeted by Gabriel & Dresden (while complaining about their Singapore gig over a blog).

But I digress!

Eduardo’s an AU startup consultant (‘sup homie) and shared this one on his LinkedIn:

Funnily enough I featured one Ed after another today​

In an ideal world - you would interview actual customers. But in startup and growth world - you’re often making conscious and unconscious scrappy trade-offs all of the time.

Good enough is usually good enough at that point in time, and this is one of the better examples of simple prompting being put to good use.

Building a client generation machine with AI

Something funny happened last week.

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Well I do like a challenge

My speaking rate is much higher than free, but after checking it out, knowing I have content ready to go, and understanding the session was recorded I decided to go hell for leather and build a beast of a presentation.

Yeah they are!

Building a “client generation machine” has been on the to-do list for some time.

So I built a robust version with Airtable, n8n, Apify, and Claude Code and went nuts.

You can download the presentation here (not gated).

My next webinar is on building a funnel in with AI in 2025 and you can register at the usual spot.

Lead machine go brrrrr

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That’s a wrap!

There’s a bunch of other good things going on most of which I can’t talk about at this stage, but if you’ve got any questions about AI (or just want to noodle something out loud) feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

I’m also VERY aware I haven’t done anything with the Skool so far and want to reward the people who have joined super early (on a link and a promise) by answering any questions they have in there with recorded videos.

So if that sounds appealing just jump on the link and I will hit you with some.

Take care and enjoy the rest of your week.

-Marshy

I finished this newsletter off in a park in the sun and isn’t that just delightful? 🌞