In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, titled "SEO Strategy for Business Leaders: Unlocking the Path to Increased Visibility and Revenue," we sit down with Brent Bouldin and Scott Gardner of New Media Advisors to explore how a robust SEO and content strategy can future-proof brands and drive sustained revenue growth. With decades of experience in digital marketing, Brent and Scott discuss the evolution of SEO from a tactical tool to a strategic foundation for business success. They share insights into creating a Center of Excellence, building in-house expertise, and effectively securing executive buy-in to prioritize SEO as a critical revenue driver. For business leaders and marketers alike, this episode reveals actionable strategies for aligning SEO with core business metrics, empowering internal teams, and using data-driven insights to capture more market share and increase visibility.

Tune in to learn how to transform your brand’s digital presence with a sustainable, high-impact approach to SEO and content marketing.

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.374)

So welcome Scott and Brent, please introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your background, experience, and your agency.

Brent Bouldin (00:11.117)

Yeah, my name is Brent Bolden. I'm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I've been in the digital marketing space for about 20 years. I started my career in management consulting, did a whole lot of traveling, and needed to get off the road. And so I took a job at Bank of America where I got my start in digital. Led some large functions there for about 10 years and then went and led marketing and media at Choice Hotels. And my partner, Scott Gartner and I stepped out of there about four years ago to start new media advisors.

Scott Gartner (00:41.14)

Yeah, Gary, hey, Scott Gartner. I've also been in digital with a primary focus on search for almost 24 years now. I spent the first 10 years of my career launching startup search agencies, some pretty cool technologies back in the early mid-2000s. Then I jumped in the house where I met Brent, worked at B of A, helped build and run the SEO and content centers of excellence, jumped the choice of calls, and helped run a lot of digital channels there. And then as Brent mentioned, we launched our firm about four years ago.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:08.816)

Excellent. Well, thank you both. very excited to have you on today. I think we've met multiple times over the years, both in your Bank of America capacity and Choice Hotel. So it's really exciting to have you on today. So tell me a bit more about New Media Advisors and kind of what your strategy is behind that and how you're helping brands today.

Scott Gartner (01:36.692)

Yeah, our model is really meant to be consultative and, we work directly with in-house brands, and in-house teams to really help them understand the criticality of SEO, the modern strategies, and how to integrate SEO functions, and content functions throughout the organization. We cater more to the mid-market large enterprise brands. And, you know, we felt like Kerry, back in our careers at B of A and Choice Hotels, we had fantastic agency partners and lots of good, you know, internal capabilities, but we found that early on, a lot of those capabilities and know-how stood on the side of the agency.

So we were big believers in trying to build centers of excellence and bring that know-how in-house and build people, processes, tools, and systems to rebalance the scales a bit. And that's kind of what we bring to bear with clients. We act more like a fractional SEO or content channel leader. And we partner with brands and their in-house teams to accomplish those missions and also help them work more effectively with their agency partners. So our Baylor wick is at the intersection of enterprise with SEO and content.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:43.558)

Excellent. So, yep, so go ahead, Brent.

Brent Bouldin (02:46.167)

No, I would just add that, you know, the other thing that we sort of always hypothesized when we were in-house was that the opportunity to work with the folks that we met during the pitch process was important to us. We would meet awesome partners and leaders and people that we thought could really change our business and help us. But then after the start of the engagement or shortly thereafter, you know, we would get a fairly junior group of folks coming in to work on the business. 

So part of what we do is when clients work with us, you're getting to work with very senior leaders that have been in-house for 15-plus years, and you're getting that consistent phase. We're not doing that thing where we roll people off constantly and sort of train folks on the client's dime. So I do think that's a differentiator as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:32.498)

Yeah, and it's so important today, you know, as we've all been in the industry for a really long time and seen SEO kind of be the undervalued channel and now is a little bit more front of mind. And today really needs to be the foundation of a lot of the media strategies and plans. And talk about it a bit about how you believe that a really solid SEO foundation can help kind of super future proof or super proof future proof a brand for that continued success and growth.

Brent Bouldin (04:12.611)

Yeah, I mean, I think SEO to your point has sort of been traditionally undervalued. I think it's been viewed as more of a sort of technology function that you do as part and parcel of launching a website. You brush it up periodically and a lot of brands, if they do it at all, they treat it like that. I think what we see is that brands that treat it like a marketing channel that drives topper funnel and mid-funnel traffic that gets you visibility out into Google, is, we've often called it the world's largest focus group, where people raise their hands to declare what they're looking for. And it's the stuff that you're trying to sell. So you've got to be there. So sort of communicating that in a way that executives can understand it, where they can sort of buy into the vision that, this is more, it's more valuable and more, there's more to it than perhaps I thought there was.

And so we believe in sort of helping folks tell that story internally through good data, and good storytelling, letting them see sort of how SEO is a compliment to all the other marketing channels that you have. And frankly, if you're not doing SEO, that forces all your marketing channels to work infinitely harder because somebody is gonna come out, and type in your brand and your product, you're not there, your competition that is doing SEO is just gonna sit there and pick that traffic off. And so it's really vital and it's really sort of additive to what you're doing in the other spaces.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:40.542)

All right. And so how do you get, are you seeing that brands or the executives on the brand side of the marketing teams starting to understand the importance of that? Or are there ways that you need to kind of convince them the importance of making it a core part of the strategy?

Scott Gartner (05:59.572)

I think that you mentioned the evolution of SEO and the awareness of SEO. Nowadays most executive leaders know the criticality of SEO and search, but I still think prioritization is important. So we found that brands that can have more of an internal evangelist who can really trumpet the value of SEO, the positive impacts on the business, and really the mandate to grow back with data, they can kind of get more buy-in, get more funding, get more prioritization.

I think it's critical that you work with that executive to get them to become a spokesperson, then become the kind of that executive sponsor who can help you clear the roadblocks you're going to face as an SEO leader, and get others on board across departments. So from SEO, we know we need leadership buy-in from UX content, product, brand, legal risk, compliance PR, and the whole shebang takes a village. 

Right. And so, if you have that marketing leader who gets on board with you, goes with you to help get those integrations. That's a big part of it. And that's going to enable SEO to be far more effective. SEO does not operate in a silo or let's go do SEO projects. For brands who do it the best, SEO is happening organically, no pun intended, but organically within the company, within the employees, and within the teams that own and build digital platforms and digital experiences. So that's why that really … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:19.776)

Yeah.

Scott Gartner (07:27.978)

Kind of that top-down partnership is imperative to make SEO work.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:34.174)

Yeah, no, I agree. I, yeah.

Scott Gartner (07:36.288)

And I think if I can add one more, Kerry, you asked about kind of getting those folks on board. Traditionally in SEO, we've been prone to share the top 10, top three rankings, and how many impressions you get or how many clicks you get. But those executives need to understand how you are driving growth in the business. How are you supporting our business when we turn paid media off? So we need to understand as an SEO how to communicate in that language.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:54.195)

Yeah.

Scott Gartner (08:01.492)

What's the profitability? What are the units driven? What are the application start rates? What are the conversion rates? What's the breakdown in the purchase funnel? As an SEO, you want to be well-versed in that conversion path, and that's going to really help win more executives over to the value of search.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:18.706)

Yeah, definitely. I see the importance of tying it to the business metrics, especially when you need the executives to buy in and support the investment and understand that it's not an overnight success, but as you've mentioned, needs to be part of the foundation and ongoing strategy and initiative. So how are you making sure that you're aligning the SEO strategies content with those metrics that matter to the business?

Scott Gartner (08:49.728)

I mean, a lot of organizations we work with, they've got lines of business or different business units. So I think that a one-person SEO team and enterprise doesn't work. So you need to have some SEO support. can go liaise and have counterparts in a business line or a certain division. And you begin to really be part of the fabric of what they talk about, what their priorities are, the projects they're working on. Then you flag what projects might have an SEO impact.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:59.603)

Right.

Scott Gartner (09:18.644)

The more you can integrate into what the business is doing and prioritizing, the more SEO work you're gonna get to the system. Again, back to the, if in the tech room or Azure room, if you're doing an SEO project, it might fall below the cut line. It could get backlogged over and over. However, if a business partner or business unit launches a new campaign building a new product, or launching a new capability, … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:33.662)

Mm-hmm.

Scott Gartner (09:46.75)

… and SEO comes along for the ride, that's how you get more work through the system. And we found that to be the secret sauce. Yeah.

Brent Bouldin (09:55.715)

Yeah, I would just say, know, the metrics sort of flow out of that relationship that Scott talked about getting ingrained in the work they're doing and your understanding sort of what metrics they care about. And for us, that differs from client to client, division to division. You know, we want to sort of focus on the metrics that move the needle in their business. And so as he mentioned, you know, it's not necessarily top 10 rankings or top three rankings.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:07.207)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Bouldin (10:21.549)

Those are sort of vanity plays. How much traffic are you driving? Are you getting the right people to the right page through the funnel to the conversion experience? Those are the types of things that our clients care about. And so we tend to sort of pivot to where they want us to go. They sort of set the target and we skate towards it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:41.618)

Yeah, and so what we've seen over the years with SEO, now, definitely becoming less of a tactic and more of a strategy. I've also been kind of watching the growth of content strategy, and content marketing, in which there's a lot of overlap and some of the points you made earlier of SEO need to be a big part of that content strategy development, what are you going to write, how are you going to write it, and how is it going to live on your website. Talk about the kind of the center of excellence framework and the importance of that to partner with them, how you're helping build those centers of excellence, and how, Scott, you mentioned it needs to be more than one person.Talk about your process there and why it's important.

Scott Gartner (11:31.636)

Yeah. Yeah. I think that there are different flavors of this. You know, if you go for a formal COE, you're going to need to have a headcount budget, bringing the right folks in. A lot of times they're, they're individual factions working on similar projects and organizations. So for example, one client has multiple pockets of content writers. They have their little mini-content strategy and they've got their teams and they're doing great work.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:36.925)

Yeah.

Scott Gartner (12:00.272)

Once SEO often acts like the glue, we're touching all those teams, partnering with all the teams in terms of what people really search for and what they're looking for in the intent behind the search. So you can then inform those content stakeholders of why we're going to write the content and how we meet that customer's needs. So often as SEO, we're acting as the customer advocate, but in those little pockets, we're often giving folks … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:13.182)

Mm-hmm.

Scott Gartner (12:27.7)

Hey, this team's doing it this way. And that team learns from it. When we bring these teams together, that's when the magic kind of happens. And that's when you gain efficiency, you get folks in the right seats. You don't have redundancy and you kind of have this mastermind group of, in this case, content strategists, content writers, content editors, and content marketers, they understand the business, understand the customer, integrate search, understand distribution across channels, and measurement. So that's kind of.

How we've done it in the past is we try to stitch teams together, trying to go in and get funding for an entirely new organization and getting HR to go recruit those people. That's a difficult task. So I think it's more working with the current resources and trying to centralize things a bit more. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:15.933)

Mm-hmm.

Brent Bouldin (13:16.837)

You mentioned the growth of content. I mean, the truth is, as we know, content is what fuels search. If you don't have content, there's nothing to show up. And if you're not sort of stitching those teams together and using search to inform that content, how are you deciding what to write about? In most cases, the answer to that question is you're writing about what's important to you as the brand. And nine times out of 10, that is not what's important to the customer.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:33.822)

Right.

Brent Bouldin (13:41.433)

And so having that lens of search, what are people looking for? How does our brand fulfill that need? And then speaking to the role that the brand plays in helping that customer achieve whatever the objective is, is really of the guiding principle there because otherwise, you're just sort of guessing. What do we want to say? What do we think they want to hear? That doesn't work.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:58.823)

Thank you.

Yeah, no, and definitely to your point, it goes back to even the basics in SEO of, you know, from a banking perspective, customers are searching for loans versus banks or, you know, their activity is lending. know, going back to some of those basic functionalities of content, you need to make sure that it's aligning with your target audience.

You talked a bit about, you, a framework that you've put together with six steps. Can you talk about your impact framework and how that really ties to your customers, and the success of your clients' programs?

Brent Bouldin (14:42.937)

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned at the top or a minute ago that SEO can be a longer-term play and we don't disagree with that, but we also want to come in and get actionable quickly and start producing tangible outcomes because that's what people care about. And so we developed the impact framework early on to sort of be our process for doing that. It's an acronym. It stands for, you know, identifying the opportunities. Gosh, hold on, pause. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Gartner (15:09.824)

Make a focused plan, and prioritize the job to be done. Act and execute, create repeating models, and then take ownership with internal stakeholders. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:10.372)

Yeah.

Brent Bouldin (15:12.498)

Tell me about the... Yeah. All right.

Brent Bouldin (15:21.165)

Yeah, all right, start over. So we developed the impact framework early on as a way to sort of get going quickly. It's an acronym that stands for identify opportunities, make a plan, prioritize the opportunities in terms of cost and benefit, and then act on those, communicate. No, crap, Scott, launch answers. I'm not good at this.

Scott Gartner (15:46.272)

Yeah, I got it. I got it teed up right here. Okay. Let's take it from the top,

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:48.22)

Okay. All right. Let me, let me ask you about it. All right. So you talked about your impact framework that has really helped drive success for your clients. Share a bit more of what, what that entails.

Brent Bouldin (15:48.299)

Okay. I can't remember.

Scott Gartner (16:02.42)

Yeah. So obviously you touched on earlier that SEO does take time to ramp and drive impact. But, now, when Brent and I started the firm, we knew that for clients we work with, we need to demonstrate some quick wins as part of the long-term game. So the impact frameworks and acronym, let us really come in and over the course of three to six months can be compressed. We identify opportunities and issues. We make a focused plan with the client. then prioritize all the work to be done, effort impact.

Then we talk about acting and executing on that prioritization list, creating repeatable models that begin to be ingrained in the culture of the brand. then last is kind of taking ownership. While we're there to help jumpstart these initiatives back to our earlier discussion, we do believe brands can take more control and build more institutional know-how, and taking ownership from the brand's perspective, the client's perspective is really important.

So we kind of help facilitate that and empower them to do that.

Brent Bouldin (17:04.249)

You know, that hits on one thing that we didn't talk about at the top, Kerry, which is this belief that we have sort of teaching our partners how to fish a little bit. We both work with great agencies, but the model at many of those agencies was to sort of stay around as long as possible and land and expand and try to sort of get as much business as possible out of the relationship. I've worked with agencies in some places that have been there for upwards of 15 years.

If that's the model, that's fine, but we sort of believe in teaching them how to do the work we're doing so that at some point they've got the know-how to take the steering wheel and do it themselves and we can go and be a resource if they need us on an on-call basis. It's important that brands know how to do this and all of the institutional know-how doesn't sit on the partner side.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:52.254)

Right, well, and I love creating the kind of repeatable framework aspect because that's going to be the core of your center of excellence. So a very smart recommendation. So can you talk a bit about some of the successes that you've been able to help drive for your clients?

Brent Bouldin (18:11.929)

Yeah, we've had a number of successes. One I can highlight, and Scott might be able to highlight a different one, is we work with a regional bank out on the West Coast, multi-state, but not huge. Their business had largely been driven from person to person. It was a relationship business, and the world was going online. They wanted to get online, but their site was mainly thin content and syndicated content that they got from large content providers that syndicated to a lot of folks in banking.

And we came in and helped them sort of turn digital into a growth driver for them. We grew their top 20 visibility by 300%. We've doubled their organic traffic by building out those pages, adding additional content, and adding thought leadership content that speaks to some of those questions that customers are asking like we just talked about a moment ago. So that's been a huge success. In year three with that client and we've done some institutional know-how transfer, but they've elected to keep us around and …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:13.31)

So you dig something right.

Brent Bouldin (19:14.777)

Something that, yes. Scott, I'm not gonna want to stick to it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:17.522)

That's great. Yeah.

Scott Gartner (19:18.272)

Yeah, I mean, I can share one real quick. Early on, this was probably three, three and a half years ago, we were fortunate to work with an online mortgage lender. They were more of the upstart trying to catch up to the likes of a rocket mortgage guaranteed rate. And they competed, of course, with the lending trees and bank rates, nerve wallets of the world. So they spent a lot of money on paid search. This was back when mortgage rates were in the threes.

A lot of demand was coming in, but they knew that SEO was a void. So we kind of came in and helped them build from the ground up and really worked with agency partners and then their internal, their credit experts, their mortgage experts to bring their expertise from behind the curtain, if you will, into digital. So we kind of brought forward a lot of spokespeople, brought forward a lot of expertise in thought leadership, in tips and insights, customized calculators, et cetera, played all out.

And they began to see explosive growth in organic search, which is hard to, you know, it's easy to say, we 10 X their SEO traffic, which we did. We were starting from a fairly low bar. However, they began to really show up and compete for mortgage refinance terms and first-time home buyer terms and, you know, fixed loan type keywords. And, as the rate environment went the other direction and rates crept up in the sixes and sevens, they heavily, you know, demand dried up and so they were cutting paid media, cutting agency partners and we were proud to say we were the last vendor that stuck around because of the value they saw with the content and organic search impact. It was a really big factor for them once they turned off all their paid media, they still drove demand and kept the pipeline fairly full in a difficult climate. So that was a good case study for us. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:14.258)

Yeah, definitely. Well, this is great.I know that you've been great partners to a lot of companies and I'm grateful that you were able to carve out time to join us today. So thank you so much for joining the podcast and I look forward to seeing you guys in person sometime soon.

Brent Bouldin (21:34.457)

Thank you, Kerry. Bye bye.

Scott Gartner (21:34.592)

Thanks so much.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:41.318)

Okay, you guys are great.