Welcome back to Koozai Couch, our interview series where we speak to people from across digital marketing about the ideas, tools and changes shaping the industry.
This time, we spoke with Matt Seabridge, Freelance Digital PR Specialist at Digital PR Tips, about why marketers shouldn’t panic about GEO, how data collection tools are opening up new opportunities for digital PR campaigns, and why PR teams need to develop a stronger understanding of branding.
Matt is a freelance digital PR specialist with close to a decade of experience across SEO and PR roles. He specialises in data-led digital PR campaigns and supports brands with their wider digital PR strategy.
The Interview
For each Koozai Couch, we ask the same five questions to get a quick but useful snapshot of what people across digital marketing are seeing, using and rethinking.
Here’s what Matt had to say.
1. What’s one thing the industry is getting completely wrong right now?
Right now, I think there’s a lot of overreaction to GEO trends in the industry.
There’s plenty of good advice and research being shared, but there are also a lot of hot takes that make the changes happening in SEO seem scarier than they need to be.
The vast majority of the strategy for earning strong visibility in ChatGPT, AI Overviews and similar platforms still comes down to tactics that have been good SEO practice for the past five years, especially for SEO teams that have adopted digital PR as part of their strategy.
When there’s a big shift in the industry, it’s easy to overreact and feel like you need to rip up your existing strategy and start again. SEOs don’t need to do that.
Ignore the “SEO is dead” nonsense. SEO is changing, and much of the new advice covers things that digital PR teams have already been doing for years.
2. What tool or resource has genuinely changed how you work lately?
Apify has been a real game changer for me when producing data-led PR campaigns.
It’s essentially a library of web scrapers that people have built, making it much easier to collect data from lots of popular sites without needing coding knowledge or having to build your own scraping tools.
You do have to pay to use them, but you can usually find very cost-effective tools that make collecting literally millions of social posts or user reviews much more accessible.
It opens up a whole new range of possibilities for the data-led campaigns PR teams can create.
3. What’s a take you’ve changed your mind on in the last 12 months?
I wouldn’t say I’ve completely changed my mind on this, but my opinion has strengthened considerably. Digital PR teams at agencies need to develop a better understanding of branding principles.
We’ve always talked about the importance of brand to campaigns from a relevancy point of view, but I think understanding a brand’s positioning, target audience and tone of voice will become increasingly important for agencies pitching for digital PR work.
I’m seeing more brands take digital PR in-house, and one of the key reasons I see cited is that internal PR teams can know and understand the brand better when developing campaigns.
It can be difficult for agencies to achieve the same level of familiarity when digital PR budgets aren’t huge and people have to split their time across multiple brands.
I think bringing more brand thinking into digital PR activity is something agency teams need to catch up on. The gap between digital PR and traditional PR is getting thinner, which means both sides need to learn from each other and build their skills in those areas.
4. What are you reading, watching or listening to that others in digital should know about?
Honestly, I think there’s a lot of value in PRs watching films and TV shows as they come out to help them spot newsjacking opportunities.
Speed is so important for landing this type of coverage, so being able to spot pop culture moments as they start trending and publications begin writing about them can be a really valuable asset for PR teams.
I’d also recommend The Digital PR Podcast by Propellernet and the BuzzStream Podcast for anyone looking to expand their digital PR and SEO knowledge.
5. Where do you think digital marketing is heading in the next 12 months?
I think, and hope, we’ll see more integration between digital PR and other channels when it comes to how the campaigns we produce are used.
Content marketing sits at the core of so many marketing channels, whether that’s PR, social, email, brand or even out-of-home advertising. We’re all working towards creating engaging content that gets in front of a brand’s target audience.
I’ve seen first-hand how beneficial this can be for brands. There are also lots of great campaigns produced by digital PR teams that have brought other marketing channels into their production and execution.
As the SEO industry increasingly recognises the importance of brand marketing, I think we’ll see more PR campaigns designed so brands can use them across their wider marketing activity too.
Thank you, Matt!
A huge thank you to Matt for joining us on the Koozai Couch.
His answers are a useful reminder that marketers don’t necessarily need to rip up what already works every time something new arrives. Strong SEO and digital PR principles still matter, even as GEO attracts more attention.
At the same time, there’s an opportunity for digital PR teams to think more broadly. Better brand understanding and closer collaboration with other marketing channels could help campaigns work harder and reach audiences in more places.
Catch up on previous Koozai Couch interviews
Enjoyed Matt’s interview? There are more perspectives from across the digital marketing industry on the Koozai Couch.
Catch up with Jojo Furnival, Marketing Manager at Sitebulb, as she discusses technical SEO fundamentals, AI workflows and why brand building should be firmly on marketers’ agendas.
You can also read our Koozai Couch interview with Sean Barber, SEO Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support and host of Search with Sean, for his thoughts on AI search, SEO fundamentals and where the industry could be heading next.
Fancy taking a seat on the Koozai Couch?
We’re always keen to hear different perspectives from people working across digital marketing.
If you’d like to feature in a future Koozai Couch interview, submit your answers via our Koozai Couch form. We’d love to hear what you think.
Leave a Reply