OmniChannel Monday #100: What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong, and What’s Coming Next

One Hundred Mondays Later, Marketing Looks Very Different

One hundred editions ago, the MSP marketing trends and conversation looked considerably different.

SEO was still largely discussed in terms of rankings, keywords, and organic clicks. Generative AI was emerging, but few businesses understood how quickly it would influence content, search and buyer behavior.

Marketing teams wanted more leads.

MSPs wanted better automation.

Technology vendors promised that intent data, artificial intelligence and increasingly sophisticated platforms would make it easier to identify prospects and convert them.

Meanwhile, buyers were quietly changing the rules.

They were doing more research independently, consuming content without completing forms, and comparing companies across websites, social platforms, reviews, and third-party sources before engaging sales.

And then AI gave them another way to find answers.

Over the course of 99 editions of OmniChannel Monday, we’ve examined many of these changes.

Some things we got right.

Some things moved considerably faster than we anticipated.

Others never became nearly as important as the industry hype suggested.

So for edition #100, I’m not interested in writing a victory lap.

I want to grade the thinking.

What did we get right, underestimate or didn’t happen?

And, perhaps most importantly:

What should MSPs and technology companies be preparing for next?

Here are five lessons from the first 100 editions of OmniChannel Monday and five predictions for the next 100.

1. AI Didn’t Replace Marketing. It Raised the Bar.

What We Said

When generative AI began dominating marketing conversations, one prediction appeared everywhere:

AI was going to replace marketers.

I never believed that was the most important part of the story.

The more significant change was much simpler.

AI was going to make producing average content incredibly easy.

Anyone could create a blog, produce ten LinkedIn posts, ould rewrite a service page and anyone could create an email campaign.

That didn’t eliminate marketing.

It eliminated the scarcity of content.

What Happened

We now have more content than organizations or buyers could possibly consume.

That created an unexpected problem.

When everybody can produce something that looks reasonably professional, simply publishing content stops being a meaningful differentiator.

The question changes from:

Can you create content?

Do you have anything worth saying?

That distinction matters enormously for MSP marketing.

An AI system can explain what managed IT services are.

It can:

• • describe cybersecurity.
  • create a list of benefits associated with Microsoft 365, cloud computing or compliance.

What it cannot independently manufacture is your experience.

It wasn’t in the customer meeting, manage the incident, help the manufacturer recover, discover the problem during an assessment and It didn’t spend 20 years learning why one approach works and another doesn’t.

Those experiences belong to people.

What Comes Next

The companies that stand out will increasingly turn their first-party experience into marketable knowledge. That means subject matter experts need to become part of the content process.

Customer experiences need to become case studies. Questions from sales conversations need to become articles. Internal knowledge needs to become external authority. Data needs to become insight.

AI will absolutely participate in that process.

But the organizations using AI to amplify genuine expertise will have an advantage over those using it to manufacture the appearance of expertise.

The future isn’t AI-generated marketing.

It’s human experience multiplied by AI.

2. Search Was Never Going to Remain Ten Blue Links

What We Said

For years, businesses treated SEO as a fairly predictable equation.

Someone entered a search query.

Google displayed results.

The objective was to rank as high as possible.

Ranking still matters.

But we’ve spent considerable time in OmniChannel Monday discussing a broader question:

What happens when the search engine starts answering the question?

And eventually we reduced that entire conversation to one question every business leader should consider:

Would ChatGPT Recommend Your Company?

That question represents a fundamental change in digital visibility.

What Happened

People can now research companies and business problems through traditional search engines, AI-generated search experiences and conversational AI platforms.

The buyer doesn’t necessarily ask:

“Managed IT company near me.”

They can ask:

“What should I look for when choosing an MSP for a 75-person manufacturing company?”

Then:

“What questions should I ask them?”

And:

“What are the risks of switching?”

Then:

“Who provides these services in my area?”

Those are fundamentally different search behaviors.

Instead of optimizing solely for a keyword, businesses increasingly need to demonstrate that they are a credible answer to a problem.

That’s where SEO, AEO and AI visibility begin to converge.

What Comes Next

SEO isn’t dying.

It’s expanding.

Technical SEO remains important. Crawlability matters. Site structure matters. Internal linking matters. Page experience matters. Content quality matters.

But ranking alone isn’t an adequate definition of visibility anymore.

Businesses also need to consider:

• • Can search and AI systems clearly understand what we do?
  • Can they understand who we serve?
  • Is our expertise demonstrated consistently?
  • Are there independent sources validating our claims?
  • Do we provide useful answers to the questions buyers actually ask?
  • Is our content original enough to be worth citing?
  • Are our services, people and expertise represented consistently across the web?

The future of search isn’t SEO versus AEO.

It is building enough clarity, authority and evidence that search engines and answer engines can confidently understand where your company belongs.

3. The Buyer Journey Changed Before Most MSP Marketing Did

What We Said

For years, marketing technology encouraged businesses to believe the buyer journey was something we could observe.

• • Prospect visits website
  • downloads content
  • becomes a lead.
  • Marketing nurtures lead.
  • Sales contacts lead.
  • Opportunity closes.

Nice, neat and measurable.

There was only one problem.

Buyers stopped cooperating.

What Happened

Today’s technology buyer can interact with a company repeatedly without identifying themselves.

• • They might discover an executive on LinkedIn.
  • Search the company name.
  • Read two service pages.
  • Leave.
  • See another LinkedIn post three weeks later.
  • Ask an AI platform about the issue.
  • Read reviews.
  • Visit a competitor.
  • Attend an event.
  • Return to your website.
  • Read a case study.
  • Ask a peer about you.
  • Then finally complete a form.

Your analytics may tell you that a Google search generated the conversion.

Technically, that’s true. Strategically, it may be almost meaningless.

The conversion could have been the result of months of accumulated trust.

What Comes Next

We need to stop pretending every marketing activity needs to generate an immediately attributable lead.

Marketing needs to support the entire buyer journey, including the portion we cannot see.

That requires consistency across:

• • Search
  • AI search and answer engines
  • Website content
  • LinkedIn and executive visibility
  • Email
  • Events
  • Reviews
  • Case studies
  • Public relations
  • Partner ecosystems
  • Third-party websites
  • Sales conversations

This is why brand and demand generation are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.

Brand creates familiarity. Demand captures intent.

Trust connects the two.

4. More Technology Didn’t Fix the Sales and Marketing Problem

What We Said

Over the past several years, the MSP industry has gained access to an extraordinary amount of marketing and sales technology.

• • CRMs.
  • Marketing automation.
  • Intent platforms.
  • AI.
  • Sales intelligence.
  • Conversation intelligence.
  • Automated prospecting.
  • Content platforms.
  • Data enrichment.

The theory was reasonable.

Better technology should produce better outcomes.

What Happened

Many organizations acquired better tools without fixing the underlying strategy.

And technology cannot answer some very basic questions for you.

• Who is your ideal customer?
• Why should they choose you?
• Which people participate in the buying decision?
• Are there problems that cause them to enter the market?
• What information do they need before they’re comfortable speaking with sales?
• Is there evidence that reduces their perceived risk?

Without those answers, automation simply allows you to execute an unclear strategy faster.

A CRM doesn’t fix a poorly defined ICP.

Intent data doesn’t fix generic messaging.

AI doesn’t fix weak positioning.

Marketing automation doesn’t fix bad follow-up.

More content doesn’t fix the absence of expertise.

What Comes Next

The advantage will increasingly belong to disciplined organizations rather than organizations with the largest technology stack.

Before the:

• • campaign comes the ICP.
  • CTA comes the persona.
  • automation comes the buyer journey.
  • content comes strategy.
  • measurement comes an agreement about what success actually means.

Technology should amplify a marketing discipline.

It should never substitute for one.

5. Trust Became the Real Marketing Currency

What We Said

If you’ve followed OmniChannel Monday for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed one idea appearing repeatedly.

Buyers need reasons to believe you.

This became increasingly important as MSP websites started sounding remarkably similar.

Everyone:

• • is proactive.
  • is strategic.
  • has great support.
  • provides peace of mind.
  • became a trusted partner.

When everybody makes essentially the same claims, the claims themselves lose value.

What Happened

At the same time, AI dramatically increased the amount of information buyers encounter.

That makes verification more important.

A prospect doesn’t only need to know what you say about yourself.

They want to know what customers say about you.

• • Do partners talk about you.
  • What publications say about you.
  • Whether you’ve demonstrated expertise elsewhere.
  • Proof you’ve solved the problem before.
  • Whether real people are associated with the expertise being presented.

This is where trust stops being a branding concept and starts becoming marketing infrastructure.

What Comes Next

The strongest companies will build ecosystems of evidence around their brands.

That includes:

• • Customer reviews
  • Detailed case studies
  • Named subject matter experts
  • Original research and insights
  • Speaking appearances
  • Industry involvement
  • Awards and recognition
  • Certifications
  • Partner relationships
  • Third-party mentions
  • Podcasts and interviews
  • Consistent executive thought leadership

We’ve begun thinking about these signals collectively as a TrustStack™.

Because the next generation of visibility isn’t simply about telling Google which keywords belong to your company.

It’s about giving humans and machines enough corroborating evidence to understand why your company should be trusted as an answer.

What Didn’t Happen?

A 100th edition wouldn’t be particularly useful if I only talked about what we got right.

Several predictions circulating through the technology and marketing industries didn’t materialize the way many expected.

SEO Didn’t Die

It evolved.

AI search didn’t eliminate the need for technically sound, useful, well-organized websites.

If anything, having content that systems can discover, understand and retrieve has become more important.

AI Didn’t Eliminate Marketers

It changed what marketers should spend their time doing.

Commodity production became easier.

Strategy, experience, judgment, creativity and differentiation became more valuable.

Intent Data Didn’t Solve Prospecting

Intent can be a valuable signal.

It isn’t a substitute for relevance, timing, relationships or a compelling reason for someone to speak with you.

More Content Didn’t Automatically Create More Visibility

The internet doesn’t have a content shortage.

It has an original insight shortage.

Publishing another generic explanation of cybersecurity isn’t necessarily helping your company—or your prospective customer.

The Funnel Didn’t Disappear

It became harder to observe.

Buyers still move from awareness through consideration toward a decision.

They simply don’t move through those stages according to the neat sequence represented in most marketing dashboards.

And that distinction matters.

Five Predictions for the Next 100 Editions of OmniChannel Monday

If the first 100 editions documented the transition from digital marketing into an AI-influenced buyer environment, what will the next 100 bring?

Here are five predictions I’m willing to put in writing.

Prediction #1: AI Visibility Becomes a Measurable Marketing Discipline

Companies will increasingly ask:

• • Where does our company appear in AI-generated answers?
  • What questions cause us to be mentioned?
  • Which sources influence those answers?
  • Which competitors are recommended instead?

Rank tracking won’t disappear.

But AI citations, mentions, referral traffic and recommendation visibility will become part of the marketing scorecard.

Prediction #2: Brand and Demand Generation Converge

The debate between brand marketing and lead generation will become increasingly outdated.

Buyers rarely experience those activities separately.

A:

• • podcast builds familiarity.
  • LinkedIn post demonstrates expertise.
  • Google result creates discovery.
  • review reduces risk.
  • case study provides proof.
  • event creates a relationship.
  • search eventually captures intent.

Which one generated the customer?

Potentially all of them.

Prediction #3: First-Party Knowledge Becomes a Competitive Asset

As commodity information becomes essentially unlimited, information that only your organization possesses becomes more valuable.

Your:

• • customer experiences.
  • internal data.
  • methodology.
  • observations.
  • successes.
  • failures.
  • expertise.
  • point of view.

The question for marketing teams will increasingly become:

What do we know that the internet doesn’t?

That’s where differentiated content begins.

Prediction #4: Marketing Teams Become Human + AI Operations

The winning organizations won’t choose between people and AI.

They’ll determine what each does best.

• • AI can accelerate research.
  • Analyze information.
  • Identify patterns.
  • Create initial structures.
  • Repurpose content.
  • Assist with personalization.
  • Automate repetitive work.

Humans provide judgment.

• • Context.
  • Experience.
  • Relationships.
  • Creativity.
  • Accountability.

And perhaps most importantly, humans decide what is worth saying in the first place.

Prediction #5: Trust Becomes Measurable Infrastructure

For years, trust has been treated as something intangible.

I don’t think it stays that way.

We’ll increasingly measure the signals that contribute to authority and recommendation.

• • Reviews.
  • Third-party mentions.
  • Citations.
  • Expert visibility.
  • Customer evidence.
  • Brand consistency.
  • AI mentions.
  • Search visibility.
  • Referral sources.
  • Engagement with subject matter experts.

The companies with the strongest trust ecosystems will have an advantage not only with buyers, but with the systems helping buyers decide what information and companies deserve consideration.

So, What Did 100 Editions Teach Us?

Marketing has changed enormously.

But the most important lesson may be that the fundamentals haven’t changed nearly as much as the technology surrounding them.

1. Understand your customer.
2. Know why you matter.
3. Be useful.
4. Demonstrate expertise.
5. Create evidence.
6. Show up consistently.
7. Earn trust.

Technology changes how those things are discovered and distributed.

It doesn’t eliminate the need for them.

That brings us back to the question we’ve increasingly asked throughout OmniChannel Monday:

Would an AI platform recommend your company?

Maybe the better question for the next 100 editions is:

Have you given it enough reasons to?

Because whether the buyer finds you through Google, ChatGPT, LinkedIn, an industry event, a referral, a podcast or something that hasn’t been invented yet, the ultimate decision still comes down to something remarkably human.

Do I believe these people understand my problem, and do I trust them enough to help solve it?

That’s the part of marketing I don’t expect to change.

Here’s to the next 100 Mondays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SEO still important for MSP marketing?

Yes. SEO remains an important foundation for MSP visibility because search engines and AI-powered search experiences still need to discover, understand and evaluate web content. However, MSPs should increasingly think beyond rankings alone and consider overall search visibility, authority, citations, third-party validation and AI recommendations.

What is AEO for MSPs?

Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is the practice of creating and structuring authoritative content so that search engines and AI-driven answer platforms can understand it and potentially use it when responding to questions. For MSPs, that means clearly explaining services, expertise, industries served, customer problems, solutions and evidence of experience.

How can an MSP improve visibility in ChatGPT and AI search?

Start with the fundamentals. Make your website crawlable, publish original and useful content, clearly establish who you serve and what problems you solve, demonstrate real expertise, develop customer evidence and build third-party authority. AI visibility should complement strong SEO rather than replace it.

Will AI replace MSP marketing teams?

AI will automate and accelerate portions of marketing execution, but effective marketing still requires strategy, customer understanding, judgment, creativity, experience and relationship building. The strongest model is likely to combine human expertise with AI-assisted execution.

What will matter most in MSP marketing over the next several years?

Trust, differentiation and visibility will become increasingly interconnected. MSPs that clearly define their ideal customers, demonstrate real expertise, create useful first-party content, build independent validation and maintain visibility across search, AI platforms and industry channels should be better positioned as buyer behavior continues to evolve.

Would AI Recommend Your Business?

Your prospects are already using search engines and AI platforms to research problems, compare providers and evaluate potential partners.

The question is whether your business is showing up in those conversations—and what those systems understand about you when it does.

Put your visibility to the test.

Explore how your website, expertise, authority and trust signals may influence your visibility across traditional and AI-driven search.