Part 3/6: Organic Traffic is Falling off a Cliff: Mitigation Strategies 1-3 with 12 Tactics You Can Start Implementing Today

Part 3

We tapped into the startup zeitgeist with part one of this series posted on 2/11. We have since expanded to five parts to go super deep on this topic as it’s top of mind with every founder, CEO and VP of Marketing/GTM that I talk with.

Here’s the schedule for the series and if you are just coming in, welcome, we recommend starting back at 1 as it’s being laid out linearly.

• Part 1 (Feb 11): Organic Traffic is Falling off a Cliff

• Part 1.5 (March 8): More Data about Plummeting Organic Traffic

• Part 2 (March 11): What to do about it - 9 Strategies for post-GenAI GTM is here

• Part 3 (March 25): 12 Tactics for Post-GenAI GTM: Strategies 1,2,3

• Part 4 (April 8): 12 Tactics for Post-GenAI GTM: Strategies 4,5,6

• Part 5: (April 22): 12 Tactics for Post-GenAI GTM: Strategies 7,8,9

• Part 6: (April 29): Playbook for The Post-GenAI GTM Challenges

We call this series the Post-GenAI GTM Challenges Series.

(Post-GenAI - Generative AI phase of technology post ChatGPT’s 10/22 launch // GTM - Go To Market - all areas involving sales/marketing are under heavy impact right now).

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Post-GenAI GTM Strategies

As a refresher, the Tweener Times 9 Strategies for a Post-GenAI GTM World are:

• Strategy 1: Clicks are dead, Attention is King (covered here)

• Strategy 2: Authenticity and the Walk West/Earfluence 4Ps (covered here)

• Strategy 3: Focus on Quality and Relevance (Time to E-E-A-T!) (covered here)

• Strategy 4: ABM - Account Based Marketing ABM (coming in part 4)

• Strategy 5: GEO is the new SEO (coming in part 4)

• Strategy 6: Diversification (comint in part 4)

• Strategy 7: Leverage GenAI to beat….GenAI?! (coming in part 5

• Strategy 8: Company Distributed User Generated Content (coming in part 5)

• Strategy 9: Intent-First Content Mapping (coming in part 5)

Let’s dig into the tactics!….

In this section we peel the onion on the first three Post-GenAI GTM Strategies and provide 4 tactics for each. (3*4=12 total tactics!)

Each Tactic will have short and long description, an Implementation Tip, a desired outcome and Tool recos where we recommend any tools that you may not be familiar with. We know you are on tight seed-strapping budgets so every tool we recommend will be under $100/m.

Finally, all of these strategies are designed to be b2b/b2c agnostic. People are people and whether your ICP is someone that may want a car wash or they are the VP of HR at a $10-80m company in the SE, these strategies and tactics will be effective.

Strategy 1: “GenAI Era: Clicks are Dead, Attention is King”

Key Theme: Shift your mindset from chasing clicks (and pure SEO metrics) to measuring and cultivating attention and direct audience engagement.

Tactic 1: Create “Attention/Engagement-Focused” Metrics Dashboards

• Tactic: Move beyond pageviews and instead track engagement metrics such as time on page, scroll depth, video watch times, brand mentions in AI search results, etc. As startups we can’t afford to do ‘unaided awareness’ $200k studies, but

• Implementation Tip: Use heatmap tools (e.g., Hotjar - more below) to see where you lose user attention. Adjust content length, design, or calls to action accordingly.

• Outcome: You’ll have a better measure of true audience engagement versus just “empty” clicks.

• Tools:

  • Great inexpensive yet versatile dashboard tool I reco: Geckoboard

  • Can’t afford Hotjar? Google Analytics, now called GA, doesn’t have heatmaps, but you can DIY with their tag/trigger feature. Here’s a quick guide if that’s of interest to you.

  • Other tools in this category are: Mouseflow, Lucky Orange, LiveSession, and CrazyEgg.

  • Pendo: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that ultimately if you want to drive product engagement, Pendo ‘owns’ this category, but it’s not in the < $100/m pricepoint.

  • Microsoft Clarity is a free tool that can add heatmaps to GA or any site. yes, I said Microsoft.

• Ninja level: The second order thinking here is:

  • First order - start tracking your engagement across all channels as well as the ‘bottom of funnel’ stuff (clicks/views/CTAs)

  • Second order - Figure out which engagement drives more economic benefit and create a weighted score that weights each channel accordingly. For example, in a b2b context, someone that comes to a webinar live and watches the whole thing is higher value than someone who’s engagement is a snackable piece of content. Figure out your compay’s Engagement/Attention scores. (and do more of the high scoring activities).

• Tweener Times Challenge: 🎯🎯 Create an engagement score of any kind, baseline it here in March and every month for the next year increase it 20% m/m. Note this is not mutually exclusive with bottom of the funnel metrics, you can growth both.

Tactic 2: Add “Live Digital Interaction” Touchpoints

• Tactic: Customers and prospects want 1:1 engagement with the founder - give it to them. Host monthly “office hours,” live AMAs (Reddit/discord/slack), or short webinars to give your community direct access to you. Yes, founders, a common thread here is you’re going to have to put yourself out there. Everyone wants to talk to the founder, it’s part of the role these days.

• Implementation Tip: Promote consistently across LinkedIn, email lists, and any high-traffic social group you have. YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tiktok love livestreams and their algorithms favor it - use those Live formats.

• Outcome: Builds brand stickiness and deeper trust—attendees often turn into brand advocates who carry your message far beyond a click.

• Bonus: Use clips from these sessions to create more quality content - The channels love ‘shorts’ - give them shorts!

• Tools: Streamyard, Riverside, Zoom, Restream, sociallive, Switch studios all can be platforms for running live video sessions across platforms.

• Tools: Streamyard has a nice ‘short’ creator, opus clip is great too.

Tactic 3: Leverage “Hybrid” Online/Offline Engagements

• Tactic: Sponsor analog (offline/IRL) micro-events, meetups, or local gatherings where your brand is front-and-center, then share digital highlights and speaker sessions online.

• Implementation Tip: Record short, highlight videos or produce mini-case studies from each event to share in your direct channels.

• Outcome: “Real-world” interactions tend to generate more memorable attention than digital ads, while also producing content you can repurpose.

• Case Study: At ChannelAdvisor, we did regional dinners half day content blasts with dinner that were 1/2 customers and 1/2 prospects, they killed. Add in to that mix capturing a lot of the content and pushing it to digital 👨‍🍳😘

Tactic 4: Experiment with “Attention-Grabbing” Paid Ad Formats

• Tactic: If you do pay for ads, use immersive experiences (e.g., short video stories, interactive polls).

• Implementation Tip: Focus on brand awareness–style creative that fosters recall rather than purely chasing clicks to a website.

• Outcome: Even your paid promotions become less about immediate clicks and more about brand salience and message retention.

• Pro Tip: Use your organic content as a signal for where to go paid. For example, let’s say you put out 30 pieces of great content and 3 catch fire and drive ‘power law levels of attention’. Figure out why - was it the topic, the speaker, ? Now do that in paid. Throw fuel on the flame, not the water.

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