There was a time when digital marketing was comparatively simple. Figure out what people were searching for, get a business onto the first page of Google, and the phone would ring.
That was a pretty good business.
It isn't that business anymore.
Google changed. The search results changed. Social happened. Mobile happened. Maps became enormously important. Now AI is changing how people find answers, and nobody really knows where that's going to end up.
I'm still here because figuring that stuff out is the part I like.
Lucid Crew
I founded Lucid Crew in 1999. We started as a web design company in Memphis and eventually moved to Austin.
For years, clients would come to us because they needed a website. Later they needed SEO. Then local search, content, social media, video, and everything else that got added to the list.
But I've become less interested in the list.
If you come to me and tell me you need Facebook ads, my first question is probably going to be: Why do you think you need Facebook ads?
If you tell me you need more leads, I want to know what happens to the leads you're already getting.
How quickly does somebody answer the phone? How long does it take to get a quote? Can somebody make an appointment immediately? How many prospects do you close? Why do you lose the others? Where do your best customers actually come from?
I can't tell you how to market a business until I understand the business.
That seems obvious to me. Apparently it isn't.
More Leads Aren't Always the Answer
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
One of our clients told me their leads were down. There are plenty of things we can do to try to generate more of them, but some of the decline is coming from things neither of us controls.
So I started asking different questions.
What percentage of the leads you already have become customers? Why do you lose the others? Is it price? Response time? Follow-up? Are people trying to make an appointment and discovering they can't?
We recently found several prospects for another client who had either gone to a competitor, couldn't get hold of anyone, or couldn't make an appointment. We'd already done the hard part: there was a person who wanted the service.
Getting another lead while allowing that one to disappear doesn't make much sense.
That's taking my work into areas I wouldn't necessarily have called "marketing" a few years ago: AI voice agents, intake systems, automation, appointment scheduling, follow-up.
I'm fine with that.
I'm much more interested in solving the problem than worrying about whether it fits neatly inside the boundaries of digital marketing.
I've Watched the Rules Change Before
At one point I built and operated hundreds of niche and informational websites. We used many of them to help promote our clients.
I put a ridiculous amount of time into them.
Then Google changed what it valued, the rankings disappeared, and eventually I was sitting on a collection of websites that weren't particularly useful anymore.
It sucked.
I could turn that into a nice business-school story about resilience and the lessons I learned from failure, but that's not really what happened. Something worked. Then the environment changed and it didn't.
So we changed too.
Today we put much more emphasis on building the client's actual brand: expert interviews, video, useful articles, local visibility, and putting people in the places where their potential customers actually spend time.
Sometimes that's Google. Sometimes it isn't.
That's one of the things I think marketers get wrong. If you sell Facebook ads, every problem starts to look like it needs Facebook ads. If you're an SEO company, everybody needs SEO.
I'd rather figure out where your customers are and go from there.
Before Websites, I Sold Bad Movies
I didn't grow up dreaming of becoming a digital marketer. That would have been difficult, since the job didn't exist.
I wanted to be an actor.
I studied theatre, decided acting wasn't for me, and eventually got a job in a video store because I loved movies. That led to Blockbuster, then buying movies for a Blockbuster franchise, and eventually to the other side of the business.
I ended up at Trimark Pictures, where I was Regional Sales Director from 1993 to 1997, selling movies to video distributors and chains.
Some of the movies we sold were not exactly destined for the Criterion Collection.
Leprechaun was probably our crowning glory.
By then, the rental video business was starting to change too. DVDs were coming in, movies were getting cheap enough to buy instead of rent, and another business built around a particular technology was starting to lose its footing.
I didn't think of it that way at the time, but in hindsight it was the first time I watched a technology wave build a business and then start taking it apart.
Building Things on the Web
I've always liked building things, but what interests me has gradually moved beyond the thing itself.
Early on, somebody needed a website, so we built them a website.
Eventually I realized that wasn't a particularly satisfying stopping point. A website can look great and still not do anything for the business.
That's really how I ended up moving from web design into SEO, marketing, content, and eventually the broader consulting work I do now.
The question became less about what we were building and more about what problem we were trying to solve.
I Don't Have an AI Formula for You
AI is obviously changing this business again.
I use it constantly. I'm building things with it. I'm experimenting with AI search, automation, voice agents, content systems, and how language models understand businesses.
I also don't believe most people who tell you they've already figured all of this out.
If somebody says, "I can get your business to show up in ChatGPT," I have at least two questions.
Can you really?
And are your customers actually looking for you there?
If you're a plumber, I don't particularly care how exciting ChatGPT visibility sounds. I care whether somebody with a leaking pipe is asking ChatGPT for a plumber.
Maybe they are. Maybe they will.
Let's find out before we sell them an AI visibility package.
"I don't know yet" is still a useful answer around here.
What I Actually Do
I suppose "digital marketing" is still the easiest category to put on the box.
In practice, I spend a lot of time talking to business owners, asking questions, figuring out what's not working, and trying to come up with a better way to do it.
Sometimes the answer is a website.
Sometimes it's Google Maps, SEO, content, video, or advertising.
Increasingly, it might be an automated intake system or fixing what happens between the moment someone becomes a lead and the moment they become a customer.
And sometimes the answer is that I don't think I can help.
The clients I work best with are the ones who are willing to have that conversation. If you've already decided exactly what the answer is and just need somebody to execute it, I'm probably not your guy.
There are plenty of agencies that will happily sell you what you ask for.
I'd rather figure out what you need.
Why This Site Exists
A lot of our client work involves interviewing experts, particularly attorneys and doctors, and turning those conversations into videos, articles, and other useful material.
It turns out talking to someone is often a much better way to discover what they actually know than asking them to sit down and "create content."
I've recently discovered the same thing about myself.
I don't spend much time sitting around writing down what I believe about marketing, business, AI, Google, or where all of this is going. Most of those ideas come out when I'm talking through a problem.
That's part of what this site is for.
I'm opinionated. I change my mind. I don't have much patience for people selling certainty they haven't earned. And after more than 25 years of doing this, I'm probably more interested in what I don't know than I was when I started.
Things are changing unusually fast right now.
I want a place to think through that in public.