Lilach Bullock · Strategy Brief
Hey Lilach,
Matt here, EMGI. Thanks for the reply, Lilach. I’m sending a page rather than a Loom so you’ve got something to scroll at your own pace and share with anyone on your side. You’ve been doing this since the dial-up days, you built and sold an agency, and you’ve worked with monday.com, Dropbox, IBM and Greenpeace. So I’m not going to explain marketing to you. I want to show you one specific thing the data surfaced about your own visibility, because I think it’s a blind spot even seasoned operators miss on their own brand.
Here’s the short version. Your domain ranks for 459 keywords in the US. Almost none of them are the services you actually sell. You’re a Forbes Top 20 social media influencer with 21 years of authority, and when a founder types “ai marketing consultant” or “fractional cmo” into Google or ChatGPT, you do not appear. Agencies, job boards and listicles own those surfaces instead. That’s the gap I want to walk through.
This isn’t a pitch deck. This page is the deliverable. We’re an off-page authority agency. We mostly work with SaaS, but the mechanics that move AI citations, Reddit and editorial source-sets apply just as cleanly to an authority-led consulting brand like yours. Given the overlap in what we both do, I genuinely wasn’t sure whether to frame this as a working engagement or a straight collaboration. So I’ve left both doors open. Take what’s useful either way.
M
Matt ShirleyFounder, EMGI Group · matt@goemgi.com
Where Lilach Bullock sits on the surface
You have real domain strength. 459 ranked US keywords, around 1,655 monthly organic visits, and a backlink profile most consultants would envy after two decades of being quoted everywhere. The authority is there. That’s never been your problem.
459
US keywords ranked
1,655
Monthly organic visits (ETV)
11
Top 10 rankings
57
Striking distance (11-30)
The problem is what those rankings are for. I pulled the full ranked-keyword set and the top of it reads like a museum of your old blog: “instagram followers vs following”, “index match with multiple criteria”, tool reviews for Social Cat, Content Snare, Heepsy and Combin. Genuinely useful content that earned its links. But it captures readers, not buyers. Of the 459 keywords, not one in the top 30 is “marketing consultant”, “fractional cmo”, “ai marketing consultant” or any of the commercial terms your services actually answer. The authority is pointed at the wrong door.
The one-line read: your brand is famous and your blog ranks. Your services are invisible. Those are two different SEO problems, and almost nobody fixes the second one because the first one feels like success.
Backed by our original research
The authority-to-buyer gap, measured
We ran a study on how AI engines pick which brands to cite for buying-intent queries. The finding that matters for you: AI engines do not reward fame, they reward being present in the specific source-set (listicles, Reddit threads, editorial roundups) that sits behind a query. A Forbes feature about you does not put you in the “best fractional CMOs” list ChatGPT reads from. Different surface, different work. Your brand clears the credibility bar instantly. It just isn’t in the room when the buyer asks the question.
Read the SaaS AI Citation Gap Report →What people actually hire Lilach for
When I map what you actually sell against what each surface rewards, six clear service lines come up. These are the jobs people hire you for, and each one has a search and AI footprint you could own given the authority you already carry.
AI Marketing
AI marketing strategy for founders
Helping founders and lean teams actually use AI in their marketing rather than panic about it. The category is exploding and the buyer-intent terms (“ai marketing consultant”, “ai consultant for small business”) are still wide open. Low difficulty, rising volume, and you have more credibility here than the agencies currently ranking.
Trigger
“I keep reading about AI but I need someone who has actually done marketing to tell me what matters.”
Fractional CMO
Fractional CMO leadership
Senior marketing leadership without the full-time hire. “fractional cmo” alone is 3,600 searches a month and the SERP is owned by marketplaces and agencies, not operators with your track record. An operator who ran marketing for monday.com-scale brands is exactly who this buyer wants, and cannot find.
Trigger
“We need a grown-up running marketing for two days a week, not another junior.”
Lead Generation
Lead generation systems
Done-for-you and done-with-you pipeline building. This is bottom-of-funnel, high-CPC, high-intent demand. The people searching “lead generation consultant” have budget and a problem today.
Trigger
“Our pipeline is empty and I do not have time to figure out outbound myself.”
SEO + GEO
Getting found in search and AI
Helping clients show up in Google and now in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. You sell this. Which is exactly why being invisible for it yourself is the thing worth fixing first. The best proof you can do it is doing it for your own brand.
Trigger
“My competitors keep showing up in ChatGPT answers and we never do. Why?”
Workshops
Speaking and team training
Keynotes, workshops and team upskilling on AI and social. Forbes Top 20 is a booking magnet, but event organisers and L&D buyers increasingly shortlist by searching and asking AI for “ai marketing speaker” and “marketing workshop facilitator”. Visibility on those terms feeds the speaking pipeline directly.
Trigger
“We need someone credible to run an AI session for the marketing team offsite.”
Done-for-you
Content and campaign execution
Hands-on content, social and campaign delivery for brands that want output, not advice. Your existing portfolio (Brand24, Hootsuite, Kajabi, Backlinko, Visme) is the social proof. The gap is connecting it to the queries buyers actually use.
Trigger
“We loved your work for Kajabi. Can you do the same for us?”
None of these are a stretch for you. The work is not building credibility, you have a 21-year head start there. The work is putting that credibility in front of the exact queries, threads and lists where buying decisions get made.
The actual buyer queries
These are the commercial terms your services answer, with live US volume from DataForSEO. The “Lilach today” column is the honest part. You are not ranking in the top 100 for any of them. The “Who owns it” column shows who took the surface while your authority was pointed at blog content.
| Buyer query | Use case | Volume | Trend | Lilach Bullock today | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| marketing consultant | Core positioning | 18,100 | Stable | Not ranking | Job boards, Upwork, national agencies |
| fractional cmo | Fractional CMO | 3,600 | Stable | Not ranking | Fractional marketplaces, agencies |
| ai marketing agency | AI marketing | 1,600 | Up | Not ranking | AI agencies, listicles |
| fractional cmo services | Fractional CMO | 720 | Stable | Not ranking | Agencies, listicles |
| ai consultant for small business | AI consulting | 480 | Up | Not ranking | Directories, agencies |
| marketing automation consultant | Automation | 210 | Up | Not ranking | Agencies |
| lead generation consultant | Lead generation | 170 | Stable | Not ranking | Directories, agencies |
| ai marketing consultant | AI marketing | 140 | Stable | Not ranking | Chief Outsiders, Advisor Labs, Keenfolks |
| fractional cmo for startups | Fractional CMO | 110 | Stable | Not ranking | Marketplaces, listicles |
| ai marketing expert | AI marketing | 40 | Up | Not ranking | Agencies, listicles |
What this looks like when it works
Sales Intelligence SaaS
1K → 17K
Monthly organic sessions
Prospeo
Email finder SaaS. Crossed $1.5M ARR through organic. We owned the surfaces (Reddit, AI citations, editorial) while the category was still open. Your category, AI marketing consulting, is open in exactly the same way right now.
Read the Prospeo case study →
HR / People Tech SaaS
$5K → $20K
Monthly organic value
HR Partner
We grew organic value 4x over 25 months and outranked two category incumbents on their own commercial queries. That is the same move I’m describing for you: taking a brand that was strong but not ranking for its money terms and closing the gap.
Read the HR Partner case study →
Creative SaaS
DR 60+
Editorial backlinks earned
Viddyoze
Earned-media and Reddit-led authority building into creator publications. Different vertical to yours, but the same compounding pattern a personal consulting brand can run, and you already have the name recognition to make the outreach land faster.
Read the Viddyoze case study →
Who Lilach Bullock is actually selling to
Founders & early-stage operators
Series A to B SaaS and startup founders
- Need senior marketing judgement without a full-time CMO salary
- Search “fractional cmo for startups” and “ai marketing consultant”
- Decide partly on credibility, which is your strongest card
Service business owners
Agencies, consultancies, professional services
- Want lead gen and positioning fixed by someone who has run an agency
- Trust operators over theorists, and you sold an agency
- Find providers through referrals, listicles and now AI answers
Entrepreneurs & solopreneurs
Course creators, coaches, personal brands
- Want to use AI without losing their voice
- Search “ai marketing for small business”
- Often discover you through Forbes, podcasts and social first
In-house marketing teams
Brands needing AI upskilling
- Book workshops and fractional leadership to level up the team
- L&D and Heads of Marketing are the buyers
- Shortlist speakers by searching and asking AI tools
SaaS marketing leads
Brands like the ones in your portfolio
- Brand24, Hootsuite, Kajabi profile clients
- Want done-for-you content and campaign execution
- Evaluate on past work and category authority
How they actually find Lilach Bullock
Here is the honest sequence for how a buyer goes from “I need help” to “I’ll email Lilach”. The first two steps are where you currently leak, because your brand shows up in the awareness layer but not in the comparison layer where the decision narrows.
1
Problem hits
Awareness
- A founder realises their marketing or AI strategy is stuck
- They start with a Google or ChatGPT query, not a name
- This is where category terms beat personal brands
2
Build a shortlist
Consideration
- They read “best fractional cmo” and “top ai marketing consultants” lists
- They scan Reddit threads asking the same question
- If you are not in those lists or threads, you are not on the shortlist
3
Verify credibility
Validation
- Now they Google the names they found
- This is where your Forbes, BBC and portfolio would win easily
- But you only reach this step if you survived step 2
4
Reach out
Decision
- They pick two or three and make contact
- Close rate here is high for you given the proof
- The whole problem is volume into the top of this funnel
The shape of leads this brings in
Illustrative, not real, but shaped from the exact buyer queries above. This is the kind of inbound that lands when you are present in the comparison and AI layers rather than only the awareness layer.
JR
James R.
Founder, B2B SaaS (Series A)
$8,000 / mo retainer
MessageSaw you in a roundup of fractional CMOs and then your Forbes profile sealed it. Are you taking new clients this quarter?
PD
Priya D.
COO, services firm
$6,000 project
MessageAsked ChatGPT who could help us actually implement AI in marketing and your name was one we then verified. Can we book a call?
MK
Marcus K.
Founder, agency
$5,000 / mo
MessageOur pipeline is dry. Saw you ran and sold your own agency, which is exactly the experience we want. Availability?
SL
Sarah L.
Head of Marketing, scale-up
$4,500 day rate
MessageNeed a credible AI session for our offsite. A thread on r/marketing pointed to you and your speaking reel did the rest.
The pattern is consistent. The buyers already trust you the moment they see your name. The work is making sure your name is in the room when the question first gets asked, which today means listicles, Reddit and AI answers, not just a strong homepage.
Want to walk through this on a call?30 minutes, no pitch. Just clarifying questions on Reddit thread selection, keyword priorities, AI citation framing for Lilach Bullock specifically.
Book a strategy call →
The AI visibility check
I ran the buying-intent queries through AI search the way your buyers do. The column that matters is the third one. Across the category terms you sell, you are not in the cited source-set, even where your authority obviously outranks the brands that are.
| Query | Platforms ChatGPT cited | Lilach Bullock? | The gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| best ai marketing consultants | Agency sites, Forbes lists, firm roundups | Not cited | Brand strong, absent from the lists AI reads |
| fractional cmo for startups | Marketplaces, agency pages, listicles | Not cited | No presence in the comparison source-set |
| ai marketing consultant | Chief Outsiders, Advisor Labs, Keenfolks | Not cited | Agencies own the citation, not operators |
| lead generation consultant | Directories, agency blogs | Not cited | Pure bottom-funnel demand going elsewhere |
| ai marketing expert uk | UK agency sites, PR features | Mentioned, not linked | Name appears in prose but no cited link |
| marketing consultant for small business | Upwork, directories, agencies | Not cited | Marketplaces capture the intent |
| best ai marketing tools | SaaS blogs, affiliate roundups | Old content cited | Your tool reviews surface, your services do not |
| how to use ai in marketing | YouTube, agency guides, Reddit | Adjacent presence | Educational reach without the buyer handoff |
| fractional cmo services | Agency service pages | Not cited | No service page built for the query |
| ai consultant for small business | Directories, agency pages | Not cited | Rising volume, wide open, and you fit it |
The honest read. You are not failing at AI search, you have simply never built for it. There is a meaningful difference. The brands cited above did not out-credential you, they built service pages and got into roundups and Reddit threads aimed at the exact query. That is buildable work, and your existing authority means it compounds faster for you than for any agency on those lists.
Also worth reading
Reddit appears on 81.6% of B2B SaaS buying-query SERPs
When a buyer asks “who is the best fractional CMO” or “which AI marketing consultant should I hire”, a Reddit thread is very often the page Google ranks and the source ChatGPT quotes. You are active on social, but Reddit is the one community surface where your category conversations happen without you in them. Getting credibly into the right subreddits (r/marketing, r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, r/SaaS) puts your name where the shortlist actually forms.
Read the Reddit Citation Study →The listicles I’d target
These are the published lists and surfaces I’d target first. For someone with your credentials, getting added to most of these is an outreach-and-relationship job, not a credibility one. The hard part for everyone else (proving you belong) is the part you have already done.
| Publisher | Surface | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Forbes / business press | Top fractional CMOs and marketing consultants roundups | Pitch for inclusion |
| Influencer Marketing Hub | Best AI marketing consultants lists | Outreach for placement |
| Designrush / Clutch | Marketing consultant directories | Build verified profile |
| r/marketing | Fractional CMO and consultant recommendation threads | Credible participation |
| r/Entrepreneur | “Who should I hire” and AI marketing threads | Credible participation |
| r/smallbusiness | Lead gen and marketing help threads | Credible participation |
| Marketing podcast roundups | “Best marketing experts to follow” lists | Leverage existing brand |
| AI tooling blogs | Best AI marketing experts and creators lists | Outreach for placement |
| Fractional CMO marketplaces | Go Fractional, Chief, Bolster style platforms | List as available operator |
| Speaker directories | AI and marketing keynote speaker lists | Profile + outreach |
| Industry “women in marketing” lists | Authority and influencer roundups | Pitch for inclusion |
| Comparison pages | “X vs hiring a fractional CMO” editorial surfaces | Earned mentions |
Why one surface is never enough
You teach multi-platform visibility to your own clients, so this will feel familiar. The point is that your own brand only runs the first quadrant well, and even that is pointed at readers rather than buyers. The other three are where the buyer-intent traffic actually gets decided now.
Google SEO · Passive in isolation
Organic Search
- Build dedicated service pages for “fractional cmo”, “ai marketing consultant”, “lead generation consultant”
- Stop relying on blog authority to do a service page’s job
- Internal-link the 459 ranking pages into the new service pages
- Target the low-difficulty commercial terms first (most are KD under 15)
AEO / AI Citations · ACTIVE
AI Search Visibility
- Create the structured, quotable service pages AI engines can cite
- Get into the “best of” lists that feed ChatGPT and Perplexity
- Add FAQ and comparison content matched to buyer questions
- Track citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews monthly
Reddit · ACTIVE
Community Discovery
- Credible presence in r/marketing, r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, r/SaaS
- Answer the exact “who should I hire” threads that rank
- Earn mentions rather than self-promote
- This is the surface your personal brand is most absent from
Listicles + Comparison · ACTIVE
Editorial Source-Set
- Outreach for inclusion in fractional CMO and AI consultant roundups
- Verified profiles on the directories buyers and AI engines read
- Use the Forbes Top 20 credential as the door-opener it is
- Comparison and “best of” surfaces where shortlists get built
SEO in isolation is passive. These four surfaces working together is the active growth lever the category gives you.
What it costs
Two engagement levels. Both run as 3-month rolling cycles invoiced monthly. No fixed lock-in beyond the first 90-day cycle, but in practice clients renew because the work compounds. Four years building off-page authority for SaaS companies and operators, over 30 clients, more than 2,000 backlinks delivered. USD pricing.
Two honest options. You run a lot of this yourself, and you run it well, so I’m not going to pretend you need us to teach you marketing. What we’d add is the specialist off-page and AI-citation layer: the outreach, the Reddit programme, the listicle placements and the semantic context engineering that close the buyer-query gap. If a full engagement isn’t the right shape, the collaboration door is genuinely open too, because our audiences and expertise overlap more than they compete. Either way the analysis above stands on its own.
Authority Roadmap
Standard
$4,000
per month · 3-month rolling cycle
- 8 editorial backlinks / month guaranteed minimum
- Reddit programme: 6-8 placements / month guaranteed
- Brand mention building: HARO / PR-style placements
- Semantic context engineering: we shape the paragraph the link sits in
- Direct Slack channel with me as head strategist
- Monthly reporting on links, anchors, rankings, AI citation tracking
- Complimentary consulting on wider SEO strategy + on-page recommendations
★ Recommended for Lilach Bullock
Authority Roadmap Plus
$7,000
per month · 3-month rolling cycle
- 14+ editorial backlinks / month guaranteed minimum
- Reddit programme: 12-15 credible placements / month across r/marketing, r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, r/SaaS, r/digital_marketing
- Listicle and directory outreach: fractional CMO and AI consultant roundups, marketplaces, speaker directories (full outreach effort, no placement guarantees)
- Brand mention building + semantic context engineering so the paragraph your name sits in does the selling
- AI citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews for your money terms
- Service-page strategy for the commercial queries you currently miss
- Direct Slack channel with me as head strategist
- Monthly reporting on links, anchors, rankings and citations
What happens next, Lilach
This page is the deliverable. Feel free to pause anywhere, take what’s useful, share it internally. If the diagnosis lands and you’d like to explore working together, two simple next steps:
1. 30-minute strategy call. Walk through any clarifying questions on the buyer mix, Reddit thread selection, AI citation framing for Lilach Bullock specifically, or pricing tier fit.
2. Onboarding. We complete the ICP form, the buying-journey form, the existing-pages audit and the future-content roadmap together. First placements typically go live within 2-3 weeks of kickoff.
SEO alone is passive. Full-surface authority is active.
Didn’t want to make this too much of a pitch. Hope the analysis is useful regardless. Look forward to hearing back from you.
M
Matt Shirley
EMGI Group · matt@goemgi.com · emgigroup.com