What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers

What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers

What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers with Bill Buchanan and Nicole Jennings Google Marketing Live 2026 dropped a wave of announcements that left the marketing world buzzing. In this episode, Brad Stephenson sits down with Level Agency President Bill Buchanan and EVP of Service Delivery Nicole Jennings to explain what actually matters, what brands should do right now, and what they'll wish they had started sooner. Bill attended GML in person, including a rare behind-the-scenes session with Google's keynote team. Nicole brings her perspective from Brand Performance and her leadership over Level's full service delivery organization, which spans media, SEO, creative, and development. Together, they unpack why Google's pace of change is unprecedented even by Google's own standards, and what it signals for where search is headed. This episode was recorded just before Brad took the stage at SMX Advanced to speak on unifying the search experience. The conversation covers how AI mode is reshaping the funnel from top to bottom, why the new ad formats are less important than the foundational infrastructure beneath them, and why the brands that get the data foundation right now will have a compounding advantage heading into the back half of 2025. Bill and Nicole also walk through what CMOs in higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services need to prioritize, and close with the one thing everyone will wish they had done sooner when they look back at this moment a year from now. What You'll Learn: * Why Google's shift to AI mode is unprecedented even by its own historical standards, and what "ripping the Band-Aid" really means at this scale * The three things Bill says every brand will wish they had done earlier: fix the data foundation, compete for AI citations, and treat SEO, paid, and content as one unified solution * Why YouTube strategy and AI Max are the two things Nicole says to pressure test your agency on immediately * How AI is blurring the line between SEO and PR, and why brand mentions are the new backlinks * What QFCs, attributed brand searches, and Meridian mean for CFOs who still believe in last-click attribution * Industry-specific takeaways for higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services * Why Nicole's single highest-leverage move for a CMO this quarter is a scalable, repeatable YouTube strategy Featured Guests: Bill Buchanan is President of Level Agency. With decades of experience in digital marketing and a front-row seat at Google Marketing Live 2026, Bill helps shape the strategic direction that guides how Level partners with clients across SEO, media, data infrastructure, and AI adoption. Nicole Jennings is EVP of Service Delivery at Level Agency, responsible for the full range of client-facing services including media, SEO, creative, and development. Nicole brings a practitioner's perspective to big-picture platform changes, translating what Google announces on stage into what brands actually need to do on Monday morning. Connect With the Guests: Bill Buchanan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wbuchanan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/wbuchanan] Nicole Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolejennings/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolejennings/] Connect With the Show: Level Agency: level.agency [https://www.level.agency/] How to Support the Show: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone on your marketing team who is trying to make sense of AI search.

When LLMs don't like you: Has your brand's SEO survived the search-pocalypse?

When LLMs Don't Like You: Has Your Brand's SEO Survived the Search-pocalypse? Featuring Matt Beaulieu, SEO Director, Level Agency Episode Summary The search engine results page has changed more in the past two years than in the entire history of SEO. In this episode, Brad Stephenson (SVP of Marketing and Sales Enablement at Level Agency) sits down with Matt Beaulieu, a 15-year SEO veteran and Level's resident expert on AI brand visibility, to unpack what is actually happening to your brand inside large language models, and why most companies have no idea. Brad and Matt break down the shift from a 10-blue-links world to one dominated by AI Overviews and zero-click environments, where informational queries are being answered without ever touching your website. That is not the real problem, though. The real problem is that LLMs are building a consensus about your brand from sources you may have forgotten existed, including outdated social profiles, Glassdoor reviews, Reddit threads, attorney websites, and Wikipedia, and the picture they are painting may be costing you business right now. The good news is that this is fixable, and the brands that move first have a real window to pull ahead. Matt walks through Level's AI Brand Consistency Audit process, the content and technical levers that actually influence how LLMs cite and recommend brands, and how to approach reputation repair in a way that is authentic and durable. Whether you are a CMO who has never thought about schema markup or an SEO practitioner trying to evolve your approach, this conversation gives you a clear place to start. What You'll Learn * Why clicks from search are down 45 to 50% for many brands, and why leads can still be up if your content strategy is right * How LLMs build a "consensus" about your brand across dozens of sources, many of which you do not control * The most common culprits behind unflattering LLM outputs: outdated social profiles, negative reviews, regulatory mentions, fee criticism, and Wikipedia * What an AI Brand Consistency Audit looks at and what Month 1 of an engagement looks like * The content formats LLMs love most: answer capsules, FAQs, ordered lists, tables, and simple extractable language * Why off-site activity (backlinks, brand mentions, Reddit, UGC communities) matters more than most brands realize * The "black hat" LLM tactics that worked briefly and got shut down, and what that means for content strategy * Why challenger brands have a real opportunity to overtake established competitors in AI-driven search right now * The one thing Matt wants every CMO to do tomorrow Featured Guest Matt Beaulieu is an SEO Director at Level Agency with 15 years of experience in search. He began his career at a white-label SEO company working across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise brands before joining Level three years ago, where he now specializes in higher education (with a deep focus on trade schools) and financial services. Matt leads Level's AI brand visibility practice and developed the agency's proprietary AI Brand Consistency Audit methodology. Resources Mentioned * Level Agency [https://www.level.agency] * Reddit + AI Virtual Insider Session Replay [https://youtu.be/r453GebnJ9E] * Free AI Brand Visibility Audit [https://www.level.agency/ai-seo/] Connect With the Show * Brad Stephenson on LinkedIn [https://linkedin.com/in/bradpstephenson] * Matt Beaulieu on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-beaulieu-9a61a438/] How to Support the Show If you found this episode valuable, leave us a review and share it with a marketing leader in your network. Every share helps us keep bringing you conversations that go past the surface level.

Stop Treating AI Like a Tech Problem

Episode Summary Charlene Li has been right about every major wave in technology for three decades, from the internet's disruption of media in 1993, to social media's challenge to organizational power, to the AI revolution reshaping business today. In this episode, she makes a bold claim: most leaders have their AI strategy completely backwards, and the gap isn't technical; it's a leadership problem. If you're still treating AI as an IT initiative, you're already behind. Charlene unpacks why organizations that are winning with AI aren't doing it by chasing tools or running endless pilots. They're doing it by connecting AI to their actual business strategy, building cultures of psychological safety, and developing what she calls "superhuman", humans and AI working in integrated intelligence. The distinction between a company that knows AI is important, one that's using it, and one that's actively leading it is what separates the winners from the rest. The conversation also goes deep on the human cost of AI adoption, the truth that not every job will survive, and what leaders owe their people in terms of transparency, reskilling, and trust. Charlene doesn't sugarcoat it. She challenges leaders to stop promising safety they can't guarantee and start building the scaffolding that gives people confidence, no matter what comes next. What You'll Learn * Why putting "AI" next to "strategy" is already the wrong move, and what to do instead * The Double S Matrix framework for prioritizing AI initiatives by size of value and speed to value * How to identify the knowing-doing-leading gap in your organization * What rituals and ceremonies actually move the needle on AI adoption (and the Ally Bank example) * Why the cost of being wrong is now almost zero, and why most cultures still act like it isn't * How to build "superhuman" organizations that combine AI efficiency with the five uniquely human capabilities * What honest leadership looks like when AI is displacing jobs Featured Guest Charlene Li is a New York Times bestselling author, former Forrester analyst, and founder of Altimeter Group, the independent research firm she built to tackle cross-functional disruption problems before selling it to Prophet. She has advised 14 of the Dow Jones Industrial 30 companies and is the author of seven books. Her latest, Winning with AI, argues that everything most leaders think about AI strategy is backwards. She is a recognized expert in digital transformation, leadership, and what it takes to thrive when disruption arrives. Connect With Charlene * Website: charleneli.com [https://charleneli.com/] * Book: winningwithaibook.com [https://winningwithaibook.com/] * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/charleneli [https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleneli/] * AI Leaders Community: charleneli.com/community/ [https://charleneli.com/community/] Connect With the Show * Level Agency: level.agency [https://www.level.agency/] * Patrick Patterson on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/] * Myles Biggs on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/] How to Support the Show If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with a leader in your network who's still treating AI like an IT project. Subscribe to Good Enough Isn't so you don't miss what's next.

Why Distribution Wins: Lessons from 4 Exits and the AI Era

Why Distribution Wins: Lessons from 4 Exits and the AI Era with Raj Singh (VP of New Products, Mozilla) Episode Summary This week, Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson sit down with Raj Singh, a serial entrepreneur who's built and exited four companies across the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19, and now the AI wave. He's currently VP of New Products at Mozilla, where he's building an AI-powered small business suite for the ownership economy. Together, they break down what it actually takes to build something that wins: how to find insertion points before the market does, why distribution is still the hardest problem in tech, what the "95% rule" means for AI product design, and why the team, not the technology, is almost always why startups fail. Whether you're a founder, a product leader, or just trying to understand where AI is actually taking us, this conversation is packed with hard-won perspective from someone who's been in the arena through every major disruption of the last 25 years. What You'll Learn in This Episode * Why distribution is still the hardest problem to solve, no matter how good your product is * The "95% rule" for evaluating which problems AI is actually suited to solve * How Mozilla is building a Shopify-equivalent for solopreneurs and service providers * Why Raj believes it's always the right time to start something and what that really means * The "explore, expand, extract" framework for knowing which PM archetype your product needs * Why teams burn out and how that's often what actually kills startups * What the next 12 months of AI adoption look like inside enterprises * How the web itself is being rebuilt for an agent-first world Featured Guest Raj Singh — VP of New Products at Mozilla, four-time founder with exits spanning the dot-com era through the AI wave. Builder of AI calendars, remote work tools, food communities, and now an AI small business suite (Solo, Trunk, Pencil, Post Full) inside Mozilla. Connect With Raj * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rajansingh/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajansingh/] * Twitter/X: @mobiletraj [https://x.com/mobileraj] Connect With the Show * Level Agency — https://www.level.agency/ [https://www.level.agency/] * Patrick Patterson's LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/] * Myles Biggs' LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/] How to Support the Show * Subscribe so you never miss an episode. * Share this episode with someone navigating the AI wave. * Rate & review if it brings value — it helps us reach more listeners!

From Behaviors to Exits: The Business Psychology Behind Every Great Transition

In this episode, hosts Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson sit down with Laurie Barkman, succession and exit strategist and founder of Business Transition Sherpa. Laurie has lived a remarkable arc: one of the first professional digital marketers at American Eagle Outfitters, CEO of a 125-year-old logistics firm, and a private equity veteran who now helps founders build businesses that do not collapse without them. What holds it all together is a conviction she has carried since the start: business is psychology. Whether you are selling jeans for a hundred dollars or guiding a founder through a hundred-million-dollar exit, how people decide and trust has not changed. The tools have. Tune in to learn why hope is not a strategy, how to build a business that thrives without you, and what the early digital marketing pioneers can teach us about navigating AI disruption today. Key Takeaways * Business Is Always Psychology: The fundamentals of how people decide, connect, and trust have not changed. The tools are different. The psychology is not. * Build a Business That Thrives Without You: Owner dependency is one of the biggest risks to enterprise value. Laurie breaks down the three dimensions of exit readiness: personal, financial, and business transition, and why starting earlier is always the right answer. * Hope Is Not a Strategy: Most founders do not know what their business is actually worth. Laurie explains how to think about multiples, what buyers really look for, and why working on value drivers every day is just good business. * Anti-Fragility Is a Competitive Moat: Fragile systems break under stress. Anti-fragile ones get stronger. Laurie unpacks why the human ability to unlock clarity for clients is something AI cannot replicate. * The Entrepreneurial Gene: Patrick argues for unending curiosity and ego-free humility. Laurie adds risk tolerance. Together they map out what separates founders who scale from those who stall. * Write Down Your Processes. Now: The businesses that win are the ones with documented decision-making frameworks. If the knowledge walks out the door with one person, you do not have a transferable business. * The Interviewing Framework That Works: Strengths, motivations, and fit. Laurie shares the framework she used to land her CEO role. The reframe: every hiring manager is trying to hire the least risky person. Resources and Links Guest: Laurie's website: lauriebarkman.me [https://lauriebarkman.me/] Laurie's book: The Business Transition Handbook [https://www.amazon.com/Business-Transition-Handbook-Succession-Pitfalls/dp/1959508016] Laurie's podcast: Succession Stories [https://lauriebarkman.me/succession-stories] Laurie's LinkedIn: Connect with Laurie Barkman [https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriebarkman/] Connect with the show: Myles's LinkedIn: Connect with Myles Biggs [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjbiggs/] Patrick's LinkedIn: Connect with Patrick Patterson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattersonwork/] Level Agency: Learn more about Level Agency [https://www.level.agency] Special Offer: AI Visibility Audit: Find out how prepared your business is for the AI Search Revolution. Get your AI Visibility Scorecard today. [https://info.level.agency/ai-visibility-scorecard]