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The Fintech Marketing Lab is a podcast where Araminta Robertson, Managing Director at Mint Studios, explores, experiments, and breaks down how fintech marketing actually works in practice.
intro: If you run marketing at a
B2C, FinTech comparison sites and
affiliate partnerships are almost
always one of your key channels.
But the problem is that everyone's
product looks the same on these
category pages and it's quite hard
to get featured in the first place
with a right offer, all these things.
So I wanted to talk to someone who
sits on the other side of that inbox,
the person who actually decides which
fintechs get featured, which ones
get ignored, which ones ultimately do
really well with affiliate marketing.
Zak Ali is the general manager of
Finder Us, the comparison site that
started in Australia in 2006 and now
runs in 83 countries with around 9.7
million visitors a month Before Finder.
Zak co-founded and ran Rant Media, a
media and tech company that grew to
hundreds of thousands of monthly readers.
He is an expert in all things SEO
content affiliate, so we're really
able to dig deep into those topics.
In this episode, we talk about
what actually gets a FinTech
featured on a site like Finder.
You know, the actual pitch.
What are the pitches that get ignored,
the ones that get you a spot on the
page, why the offer matters so much.
And it actually maybe even more, you
know, what are the rates, for example,
that actually convert whether you
should go straight to a platform like
Finder or when does it make more sense
to use a network like Impact and why
LLM visibility has become something
that affiliate partners will now pay
for, even when ROI is hard to prove.
Let's hear from Zach.
Generic intro: You are listening to
the FinTech Marketing Lab podcast.
I'm Arminta from Mint Studios, a
content marketing agency specialized
in the FinTech space, and this
podcast is where we experiment,
explore, and break down how FinTech
marketing actually works in practice.
Each episode I talk with top FinTech
marketers about what they're testing,
what they're learning, and how
they're pushing the boundaries of
brand strategy and team building.
With that, let's get into today's episode.
Araminta Robertson: Okay.
Amazing.
So I'd like to start off with kind
of talking a bit about affiliate
marketing partnership marketing because
it's been a tumultuous few years.
Not just an affiliate marketing
and content and anything that's
digital marketing, SEO Google.
It's been a wild couple of years.
And we actually used to work with
an affiliate marketing company
and it was, we were all going
through this transition together.
So I'd like to start off with kind of
what's something that maybe you were
sure about two years ago or kind of
when chat PD came out, AI overview
started changing that now you've
completely changed your mind on.
Zak Ali: So really I was quite afraid,
I mean you can never be sure of
anything in affiliate marketing, but
I was pretty afraid that it was going
to collapse um, as people started to
rely more on AI for their decision
making for the recommendations.
But what I found out as the years went on
is that actually there's, a large market
of people who want the exact opposite.
They actually want real people and experts
to help them navigate what's out there
and what, What product's right for them.
I think, you know, so many people add
Reddit to the end of their searches
because they want that human experience.
Like I think AI is great at giving
you tailored recommendations,
really good summaries.
but AI doesn't have to deal
with the consequences of a
misguided decision, right?
It can just kind of say, my
bad, you know, it's just ai.
integrity's not on the line if it gets
something wrong the way a publisher
is, or a person or an influencer is.
So what I was, I didn't know there
was gonna be such a strong appetite
still for human connection of it
all when it comes to affiliate.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson:
that's really interesting.
So are you saying that yeah, your AI
overview answers the best reward, credit
cards answer, but are you saying that then
people are going straight to the Finder
website to actually get that information?
'cause they don't trust ai?
Is that what you're seeing?
Zak Ali: Yeah.
So some people that will be good enough
for them, but then there's others who
are like, well, let actually go check the
source that that informed this answer and
see how they arrived on that conclusion.
So I'm not just accepting it blindly.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
I think also in, in the financial services
space, that's extra, we're in the, your
money, your life kind of sector, but
it's also like the stakes are higher.
So you know, you're not just
gonna go around applying to lots
of different credit cards, you're
gonna do your research and be
really careful before picking one.
Right.
So.
Zak Ali: Totally.
decision you have to live
with for a long time,
Araminta Robertson: yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So what are some ways that you've seen
the affiliate marketing kind of space
evolve over the past couple of years?
And what have you seen also are the
financial companies that are doing well?
That they're kind of, yeah.
That they're adapting correctly.
They may be even thriving in this new
kind of space or new kind of AI world.
What would you say they're doing well?
Zak Ali: So it's really hard for me not
to admire what Credit Karma's doing.
Um, think they're quite immune to a lot
of what's going on right now because
they have such an owned audience.
Whereas I think many of us in this
space just stopped the three, the free
traffic faucet was just gonna go on
forever and nothing would ever change.
And you know, you can see how
we're all kind of paying for it now
in terms of like having to adapt,
having to build more owned audiences.
I think I had seen a study, I think
this study actually came from one of
Credit Karma's decks that like 50% of
millennials have Credit Karma in the
us, which is just like an absurd number.
everyone has their app and who hasn't
heard of 'em and who doesn't use
them to check their credit score.
really admire what they've done with
the, owned audience, the foresight
to want to actually have people in
their own ecosystem instead of Rev.
so heavily on paid or organic
traffic and SEO and whatnot.
They actually just have, direct traffic.
There's, I think in that same deck,
it's like direct app traffic is their
Araminta Robertson: Wow.
No way.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I, I'm not super deep in the affiliate
space, so I'm not super familiar.
Like how, what have they done
to build that own audience?
Like what is it that they've
done that maybe others in the
space haven't done to do that?
Zak Ali: So their relationship with
their user is less transactional.
they've built a product that can get you
to come back in and and again, right?
They have, they show your credit score.
You can connect your accounts to
see what your, whole net worth is.
Track your spending habits.
They build, they built all the
infrastructure around the affiliate
to keep the user coming and get back
in so that when that user is finally
ready to take out a credit card or
car insurance, or a mortgage, they're
already in the app and they're in
an app with a brand that they trust.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
So is that something that
you're trying to develop?
How are you now trying to build
that owned media side of things?
Zak Ali: So at Finder we're offering
something called Finder Rewards,
which we actually take a percentage
of the commission we build we're
we're making from the partner, and
we're actually giving that back to
the user so that they're getting paid.
Um, is a novel, pretty novel concept.
You know, No one's really done
that in strictly a financial sense.
You know, There's Rakuten and
there's Groupon and all of that,
and they do it on, you know, the
whole landscape of all products.
But finders really dialled in on
the financial products and we're
offering pretty chunky rewards.
You Some of 'em are 300, 400 lowest
we've had was $50, but that was like one,
most of 'em are above a hundred dollars.
So, pretty f and users
are getting uh, out of it.
And I think that, that kind of feeds into
our ethos of trying to help people win
at money and building our memberships
that we can, you know, to them on
email and, and sort of give them a
reason to want to come back to Finder.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
So are you saying then that companies
that are doing well, or I guess comparison
websites, that kind of thing, the ones
that are surviving or are thriving even
in this space, are the ones that are
focusing on earned media and trying to
own that relationship more with the user?
Right.
Zak Ali: Yeah, they want to
build a real uh, relationship.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah,
Yeah, exactly.
So, to the, the companies listening
who are not comparison website, but are
other, financial companies, I think it's
really interesting to dig into how do
you succeed at affiliate marketing and
maybe specifically also finder, because,
when I talk to marketers in the space,
it's very much, especially if you're
like, you have a common product, it's
so saturated comparison websites and
affiliate marketing are always one of
the key channels for a B2C FinTech app.
But how do you stand out?
How do you actually, get those
comparison websites, affiliate
partnerships to work well for you?
So if we start with Finder, like
what have you seen are the fintechs
that do really well on Finder?
What gets 'em featured versus ignored?
What gets 'em to succeed
kind of in that space?
Zak Ali: Yeah, so I think it's, it might
even make more sense to just focus on
what gets ignored, because the opposite
of that is what gets you featured.
a lot of times there will be, we'll
get inbound from startups, you know,
or companies that are just now starting
to reboot their affiliate programme.
And it's always sort of the same pitch
of, Hey, we think we'd be a great
fit, for your audience, and then they
kind of jump into a description of
their product and leave it there.
And they think that's gonna be enough
for the client services person to
uh, I guess just be like, oh, this
is a great fit and we're definitely
gonna feature on our side, which
like, just doesn't happen that way.
Everyone's busy, they've seen
that pitch a million times.
And rarely do those sort of partnerships
work out because um, a new entrant.
They don't necessarily know
how the game works yet.
they don't know the rates work
and the end-to-end tracking.
And so there's, there's all of this that
goes into it that that we have to make
assumptions you already know how to do.
And if you don't that's
time we won't get back.
And there can be real consequences
um, if you aren't a great fit
for Finder or for our users.
So, unless you're a household name,
those sort of pitches are almost DOA
Araminta Robertson: DOA?
Zak Ali: or like Jet on Arrival,
like it's not gonna go anywhere.
We, yeah, we might take the meeting.
We might not, but more often not.
Um, But the folks who really have
stood out, they're the ones who
sort of come in with the goal
of trying to make us excited.
they are telling us who they're
already working with, what
kind of success they're seeing.
They're providing case studies of how
this competitor that they're working
with is, winning from using them or
and how competitive their rates are.
And they're really showing us the
incentive to want to take a chance on you.
Because what you're essentially asking
when we feature you on your programme
is we're gonna take some of the traffic
we're sending to partners that are
already working and making us money, and
we're gonna give some of that to you.
And so that's a big risk,
a big gamble for us.
And so you have to inspire us with
that confidence to want to feature you.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I love that.
Could you share maybe like an example,
you can obviously anonymous, but
like o of maybe a newer entrant, a
FinTech that's not as established,
and how they were able to get you
excited and then, succeed on Finder.
Zak Ali: Definitely.
So we're a global company,
headquartered in Australia.
We're in the UK and Canada and the us.
a lot of times entering a new brand
new market, we'll have someone who
does really well in Australia or does
well in the uk and they're like, oh
we're tying to build a presence in the
us So they're able to come in to the
space and basically say, Hey, here's
all the ways we are already winning.
We know the programme,
we know how this works.
We know your regulation,
we know your brand.
Like they, they're coming
very equipped to show up us.
And, or if don't already have
that established history and
you're like, totally brand new, and
we've seen specialised providers
work really, really well here.
And so there was an investing
company that's whole thing was
like, we are going to help.
They had a very targeted segment.
We were going to help
women learn how to invest.
And they were called like a
Linea or something like that.
And they had reached out and they were
saying, Hey we want to work with you.
and here these pages that have that
does exactly like, would be perfect.
And so it was like, oh, it'd
be impossible to say no to you.
Like you're actually a perfect fit.
and I may have misquoted the brand,
so I, it may not have been, there
may may have been someone else, but,
that was, that's an example of like
where they, have, you can tell they've
done their research, they've seen
the site, and they've actually seen
specific pages where they would make
Araminta Robertson: it
makes sense.
Yeah.
They've done their research clearly.
Yeah.
I think what you don't want is kind
of like someone who just outreaches
hasn't done any research, clearly,
kind of a lack of respect for your
time and energy, and you're like
why should I give you any time?
So it's about, it's like
a, a PR request, right?
Like you wanna, it is
kind of pr to be honest.
One question I often get actually
from marketers is also should we go
straight to the affiliate platforms
like Finder or should we work with
an agency who then works with Finder?
So, I don't know, do you work with
affiliate marketing agencies and
what have you found works best
typically for FinTech companies?
Zak Ali: Yeah, I think working with people
like Impact Radius is always helpful
because we know their platform, it's
one less platform to have to log into.
They have a lot of the tracking in
place, the end to end, they can, really
help them be more successful and they
have their own reps and, and whatnot
that we have relationships with.
So I think that, yeah, that for
a new entrant, I would go through
one of the networks, I think.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Makes sense.
I also wanted to ask about like,
what have you seen works well, one,
once the product is on the comparison
page and it's up there, what
differentiates the one that works well?
Gets a lot of clicks or the one that's
ignored or maybe the one that gets a lot
of clicks, but like very few signups.
What do you find makes
most difference there?
Is it the offer, the brand,
the, the rates, the disclosures?
Yeah.
Zak Ali: That'll depend like heavily
on the niche, but I gotta say the
offer is gonna be the strongest point.,
like if You're searching for a high
yield savings account, obviously the
yield is what you're looking for, right?
Whoever's the biggest number there wins.
To your point about whether people get
clicks and then they don't like convert
is when they, we advertise that big yield
and then, you know, we obviously put the
subtext only up to this amount of money.
People are just clicking buttons.
They don't necessarily read
the whole page all the time.
And so they'll get to that provider
and be like, oh, I'm about to get 5%.
And they're like, oh, but
it's only for the first 5K.
And then they're like, all
right, well this isn't great.
Araminta Robertson:
Yeah, that makes sense.
And then of course I have
to touch on attribution.
Before I'd like to talk about like
your content process and all that.
How have you found attribution
has gotten more difficult in the
past, couple of years because
of AI overviews and all that?
Are you finding that more and more
people are going straight to the offers
because they find them via chat BT?
Is that happening?
And if so, like how do you then talk
to your clients and customers and say,
this is how many signups we're getting.
Zak Ali: This is the golden question.
This is the thing we're all
trying to figure out right now.
Like, I mean there is a lot of
value that we're starting to see
come from partner visibility and
being able to assist partners show
up in the answers and in the LLMs.
and partners are interested in that
and sometimes willing to sort of pay
a flat fee just to work with us, even
knowing that the ROI on the affiliate
part might not be where they wanted
it to be, but it's not incredibly
easy to tie a monetary value to that.
And how do you track, and it's
really gonna be impossible
to track for the most part.
So you track prompts and you can track
where you show up and, and there are
tools that allow you to do that, that.
But how do we know it was the work
we did that assisted that conversion?
And I think this is why I think
PR and brand work is really sort
of the job of an SEO these days.
Because it's one of those things
where like, we don't know how to
track it, but we know we need it.
And, And that's what the partners
are thinking is like, we can't not
show up for best, you know, insert
the product that they work in or
insert the industry they work in.
if finder's gonna help me show up
there, then how can we work together?
And no one wants to work for free.
There still needs to be the value
exchange if we're gonna be creating
content that supports awareness of
your brand that you, we need to be
compensated from that in some way.
Um, we wanna work with you and we still
want to have the regular, you know, sort
of affiliate marketing situation in place.
But we're we are seeing a lot of
AI visibility as an interest for
Araminta Robertson: So you're saying
that people are almost, in a way,
you're kind of like an agency in
the sense that you're helping these
companies appear on Chacha, bt Claude.
It's kind of like you're helping them
with their visibility, their G-E-O-A-E-O.
Right.
Zak Ali: Exactly, but it's, of a grey
area though, because, you know, we are
still very editorially independent.
Like you couldn't just tell us to write
about, you know, we can't tell you to
be number one on our best list, but
we can sort of create content around
your core offerings and make sure
that you're mentioned there, right?
If you're actually delivering on
that, that helps us, that helps
our readers and that helps you.
And so we can feed into the win,
win-win, scenarios, but it's hard to
justify saying, yeah, we're definitely
gonna put you at best for this
when you're not clearly the best at
Araminta Robertson: No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do you track and report on that?
Are you like kind of using a
profound and saying, look, we've
helped you grow in visibility.
Like how do you even show that?
Zak Ali: So there's a few
tools we use internally.
Some of them self-built, you know, it's
because of ai, you can kind of build
your own prompt tracking tools using
certain APIs that exist on the web.
Yeah.
Instead of the thousands of
dollars per month you have to
pay for some of these tools.
But oddly is a good one.
We've worked with them,
They have got a great platform.
They're more affordable.
Um, And yeah, so we, I guess a mix
of internal and, external tools.
Araminta Robertson: Okay.
So if a FinTech is listening, a marketer,
a FinTech is listening to this and they're
like, affiliate marketing's clearly a
really big part of what we do, how should
they track kind of the success of that?
Are you saying that it should also
be a lend visibility in addition to
your classic full funnel the impact
tracking that kind of thing, or Yeah.
What would you tell them?
Zak Ali: Yeah, I think there needs to be
a dual, yeah, it's sort of a dual mandate
there, like a, like it, we're gonna work
with you on this basis and that basis,
like, because the, the straight ROI is
still there, but you know, again, everyone
is sending less traffic than they used to.
And even though our AI traffic and our AI
revenue is going up into the right, it's
still not as big a piece of the pie as,
regular organic used to be before Aios.
So, we have to figure out a way
to quantify like, what is it
worth to you to show up for best
brokerage app or best bank account?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, it's so tough.
What do you think is the future then?
Is the future just like people don't
track via channel so closely anymore
and it's just the overall signups
versus like literally what we spent
and what came out and that's it.
Like what do you think is the
future of marketing or digital
marketing in general when it's so
messy and complicated like this?
Zak Ali: I think that is it.
I think the last click model is,
is going the way of the dinosaur.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Zak Ali: Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
So it's just overall then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Cool.
Well I'd love to talk a bit about kind
of how you do content App finder, because
obviously you produce a lot of content.
You're ed editorial, independent people
read your content, you're trying to
build a relationship with your users.
You can't be just creating AI lop, there
needs to be genuinely good content there.
So in, in one of the other kind of podcast
episodes you were on, you mentioned
that you have like an interesting
waterfall process at Finder where
you try and repurpose and you create
a lot of different types of content.
So I'd love if you could
break that down for us.
Like what is your content production
strategy process at Finder.
Zak Ali: Yeah, so, It's really like
kind of how AI has made it from search
engine optimization to sort of a search
everywhere optimization scenario.
You know, You see in Google now and chat
BT and all they pull from every platform
they'll pull from a website, they'll pull
from YouTube, they'll pull from Reddit.
And so it's basically taking that one
piece of really good content and then
splicing it into all of the surfaces
where you know, your customer is.
And so, you see a lot of this happening
with really good data journalism as well.
Like people will have a really good study.
That study will turn into a bunch
of reels, it'll turn into LinkedIn
posts, it'll turn into the content
on the site itself, YouTube videos,
breaking it down, and social sharing.
And so that's sort of the same approach
we take is like a recent one is um,
Robin Hood launched a banking app.
Um, And so we wrote a piece of
content about that, and that content
turned into a YouTube video and that
YouTube video turned into some reels.
And so you can see how we're
getting, we're doing one piece of
research, you know, one topic, but
creating five surfaces from that.
And you get a lot more out of it that way.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Do you always start
with like a piece of content, written
content, and then do YouTube video?
Like what is typically the
initial type that you start with?
Zak Ali: So we've actually done
both it use it, it does tend
to be written content first.
Um, that's still the channel
that pays most of the bills.
But in the example of, you I use Robin
Hood to get Robin Hood strategy started
as a YouTube video and then became
written content after seeing the success.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Interesting.
And when you're repurposing,
what does that look like?
How does that done?
Is that, are you using
AI workflows to do that?
Like what does that look like in practise?
Zak Ali: We're definitely using
a lot more um, AI in the written
portion of our um, business.
But we're doing it in a way that
because it can't be the slop, right?
Like you said, it can't just be
a copy and paste of what's in
there or else why not just use the
AI overviews or the LLM answer?
So in order to maintain our integrity,
we, have to put our guardrails in place.
We have to put our systems in place.
We have to make sure that if we are using
ai it's, to enhance what we already do
really well and what makes us unique
and meets our standards of quality.
It's trained on our
copy editing guidelines.
It's trained on our editorial guidelines.
And, It's dangerous because it
can create content so quickly.
So to the scaled sort of content
abuse level of it is like we are still
creating content with intentionality.
So, right.
We're not trying to, the goal
isn't create 500 pages to try and
get as much traffic as possible.
It's still, we're very
still customer centric.
If we're creating a page we
know why we're creating a page.
we are passionate about that topic
and from start to finish, we know why
we're doing everything we're doing.
And so we don't ever just create
content just to create it.
And so I think a lot of the folks you
see penalise, they're like, oh, we've
got this amazing system now let's
do a 10, let's 10 exit, you know?
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson:
What do you still have?
Human writers.
Zak Ali: We have our editorial team
still very much involved in all,
everything that goes, leaves the
Araminta Robertson: Okay.
obviously I run a content marketing
agency, so this is something that we're
constantly debating, testing, reviewing.
Do you find that it's better if the
person does the writing and then the
LLM or The AI chat bot kind of edits
it and reviews it, or do you find it
better if the AI chat bot does most of
the writing and then a human edits it?
What have you found has been the
best kind of process for that?
Zak Ali: That might vary
on who the person is.
Um, Personally, I think for, especially
for like SEO type content, it, to me
it doesn't make much of a difference of
a human writes it or an AI writes it.
What matters the most is that it has the
soul and the personality and that little
extra oomph that can only come from
someone who like, has creativity and cares
about the topic and cares about the user.
And so who writes it?
I think most people probably default
to ai um, having and another way
is they'll have AI write it and then
they'll hate the writing so much that
they rewrite it and, sometimes they're
fueled by the bad writing and it's
like it makes it their job easier.
I always usually view it that way as like,
I'd have chacha, bt give me 10 subject
lines and I'd like, I hate all of these
and I know why I hate 'em, and now I
know how to construct the perfect one.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah I see what you mean.
I think what I found is that the, it
all comes down to the input, right?
So if the input is high quality, so
it'll be the output, but you can ask
the AI to write an article, but if you
don't give it a really comprehensive
outline with your own unique thoughts,
then it will probably be pretty bad.
So that's why I'm asking
about your process.
'cause I wonder like, where's the input?
Where are you putting it in?
What does it look like?
That kind of thing.
Zak Ali: So recently I built a,
like publishing agent that can do
the whole thing from end to end.
And we use the obsidian second brain.
I'm not sure if you've heard that yet.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Zak Ali: Claude, before it even starts, it
has routing, to our style guides, that it
makes a finder article, a finder article.
And so we are trying to get it to
a place where we can just say, Hey,
write a topic on this, and it gets,
it nails it a hundred percent, but it
has so much information that to, to
train itself on and to help steer it.
And that's making it bit easier.
And then it's connected to
all of our systems, right?
we have
Track 2: the
Zak Ali: hres MCP, so they can do
the keyword research on our behalf
and find the secondary keywords
and it has the WordPress MCP.
So now it can actually just take
that content and put it into
WordPress, but it also has our
formatting and development guide.
So it can construct the HTML so
that it's formatted correctly
and using the right short codes.
And the merch placement
is in the correct order.
It has the editorial agent
that needs to go over the work.
And so we've, you're almost replicating
your entire org chart inside of the
AI to do that process, end to end.
And the editors and the publishers,
they're becoming the orchestrators
of that ai and they're overseeing
the work and ensuring the quality.
Araminta Robertson: We've
also built something similar.
You could do it with Claude.
You can also do it with like AOPs, I
dunno if you're familiar with them.
Yeah.
They're another platform
that can enable this.
I think when it's maybe B2C and it's
a little bit more straightforward
topics, I think that works really well.
What I found is what if you wanna do a
really complicated topic and you need
to interview an expert for it, that's
where you need a human writer to step
in a little bit with maybe the outline.
For example, maybe not the
writing, but that's where it
can get complicated, I found.
Anyway.
Zak Ali: Yeah, definitely
a hundred percent.
I mean, there are topics
where AI just can't nail it.
It's trained on what it's trained
on and, it can't interview people.
You know, it can create an ideal customer
profile, but that's not a replacement
for someone who's actually done the job.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Talking a bit about like LLM visibility
and obviously now one of the USPS
of kind of publishing on Finder is
growing a company's LLM visibility.
Have you found in your experience that
these types of pages, these kind of more
editorially independent pages, tend to do
better on LLMs, like your top credit card
reward, credit card rewards page, is that
doing quite well and better than like a
FinTech company's own marketing pages?
What have you seen there
kind of as the influence.
Zak Ali: For best lists and
lists, roundups, that certainly.
And think the reason that is, because
there's forced uniqueness in there.
So everything in the y and wild
category, or at least in finance, you
know, you have to have a methodology
if you're gonna add ratings to a page.
And so not every website is
landing on the same ratings, right?
I mean, some providers, if they're
the only ones in the market for with
zero fees, then yes, they'll get the
best for zero fees across the board.
But a lot of thought and intentional,
process goes into how we determine
who goes in what order and where.
And I think that uniqueness and that
extra effort and things on the page,
like a methodology section and our rating
and links to the rating page when Google
crawls us, that's all sort of helping us
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Is there anything else that you've
seen works well for brands trying
to grow their LLM visibility?
Like you mentioned brand pr, but
like what is that specifically, what,
what does, what really works there?
Zak Ali: So there is a, and I don't
know if people are even calling
this anymore, maybe it's just SEO
or a EO now, but like entity, SEO.
So
Araminta Robertson: Okay.
Zak Ali: your website is
part of your, is an entity.
And um, and then your, YouTube,
and then there's your Instagram,
and then there's your Google My
Business and there and there.
So all the surface, your substack, your
beehive, whatever it is, your podcast,
all of these need to be linking to each
other and cross-linking to each other.
And so you're giving Google and the
lms, quite frankly, the best um,
way to in, you know, since it's all
interlinked, we're making it easier to
crawl you into understand who you are
and to I guess a better picture of you.
And so when it does that, when it
knows all of your surfaces, it's easier
for you to show up in the results.
And a lot of people, they have
these surfaces, but they're not all
interlinking the way they need to be.
Araminta Robertson: By interlinking,
do you mean like just an actual
link or is this kind of like,
how would they cross promote or
Yeah, how do they link together?
Zak Ali: So definitely actually
linking um, with URLs, but also like
embedding the content on in the places
where it makes sense.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Okay, cool.
You also said in another podcast
that you've killed the SEO team and
turned them into growth marketers.
So of course, I'm curious
about what does that mean?
Like, what is the change that
you made and has it worked?
What does it look like now?
The team.
Zak Ali: Yeah, so during that sort
of panicked phase where I'm like, oh
my God, and you could see it, right?
The helpful content update happened, AIOS
were coming, we were pretty afraid that
organic was gonna go to zero, and that
was such a large channel, and especially
at a time where a lot of restructurings
are happening throughout the business.
It's like, and I love our marketing
team, and so I was like, we gotta
make everyone here bulletproof.
And that means knowing
how to do everything.
And I, and they were really
proficient in SEO already.
Like they're at the, they got to
the point where it's you just need
to follow the dialogue from here.
You're not figuring out what schema
is, or what header hierarchy is.
Like, they've gotten past all the basics.
And so it's like, okay, this is
the perfect time while there is
this sort of transitional period,
and we do still have much organic
traffic coming in as we do today.
We can transition everybody into learning
how to do the paid services as well.
And so some folks took a natural bent
towards meta advertising and some
took a natural bent towards Google
Adver uh, you know, SEM and and some
were like, I wanna learn YouTube.
And so everyone sort of sprawled out and
started learning the different surfaces.
And yeah, there was some natural
talent on other surfaces for some
people and others for others.
And so, It was risky and it's been working
in the sense of like, I think while no
one felt confident at the beginning,
there's a lot more confidence now in
the ability to approach a marketing
strategy for a certain client or
programme we're running on these services.
but I would, I say like,
we've all, we've perfected it.
I wouldn't say we're there yet.
I would say it's still very much a
work in progress because platforms
are also changing at the same time.
like Google Ads, they've just killed the
DSA or they're in the process of doing it
campaigns, and now everything's AI max.
And, and AI is in everything now.
you have to learn those from
the beginning as well now too.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, it's exhausting
just trying to keep up with it all.
So are you saying that then the
SEO, turning someone into a growth
marketer means that they need
to know both organic and paid?
That's kind of what you're saying.
Zak Ali: And newsletter.
Araminta Robertson: And newsletter term.
Okay.
And how do you then, if everyone's doing
a bit of everything, how do you divide or
set up the team in terms of who does what?
Zak Ali: So at Finder, at
least we divide by niche.
So you're the lending specialist
and you're the banking specialist
and you're the brokerage specialist.
that's the way we sort of cut it.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: So it's kind of like
each marketer is a generalist or more
generalist and they've specialised in a
specific vertical rather than the opposite
rather than horizontal specialisation,
it's vertical specialisation.
Yeah.
Zak Ali: think
if we were to build back up,
we'd probably have a little bit
more horizontal specialisation.
Um, at the moment uh, yeah, we've just
kind of got everyone doing everything.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Well I think this is what I'm hearing
time and time again when it comes
to marketing and AI is that like the
future of marketing is everyone will
be a bit more generalist because
now with AI you can do so much more.
Right?
So like, is that what
you're thinking as well?
Like they use AI a lot more and that
allows 'em to be more generalist.
Zak Ali: Yeah.
So it's like with the time you get
back by, integrating AI and automation
into your workflows, you can use
that to do higher impact work.
And one really cool thing that
we're doing actually right now is
we have our Google Ads agent, right?
And so
this Google Ads agent is
reporting into Slack every day,
what it wants to do, you know?
'cause can't, it doesn't
have right access yet.
We're not there.
So it's making the decisions,
we'll action those decisions.
We'll correct it when we think it's off.
But each day a report comes
in like clockwork and says,
here's what we did today.
Here's the decisions I made the
judgement , here's what I'm waiting
for, here's what I'm watching.
And so this is where we get into
that orchestration piece where yes,
you have to kind of know, you have
to do, have to know Google ads.
But do you have to know it the way
a a deep, deep specialist used to?
Probably not because these
LLMs are trained on that.
And so you get to just sort of manage it.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: That's really cool.
Are there any other, like workflows
or interesting Claude skills or CPS
that you're using that have found,
you have found, have had a big impact?
Because I find that like everyone
else, I'm testing and playing around
with them a lot, but a lot of them
are just seem to add to the workload
or actually not that helpful.
So what are some that you're
like, this really has saved
me a lot of time or energy?
Zak Ali: Think the google or
Workspace, MCP, the hfs, MCP,
the fact that it can just do so
much more at once has been huge.
Connecting it into BigQuery
is another big one for us.
So it can do a lot of data analysis really
quickly and it's gotten a lot better
at getting all that analysis correct.
Um, Having the evals in
place is very important.
We built a gateway at AT Finder where
when people sign in, they can already
have access to like all of the tools
that they need to have access to.
And we have MCPS for our own internal
tools as well, which are quite easy
to build um, which has been a big
Araminta Robertson: Cool.
So it sounds like data analysis has
been the biggest use case then for you
Zak Ali: Yeah,
Araminta Robertson: workflows.
Zak Ali: I'd say data analysis
and then execution as well.
Just being able to, like, instead of
you manually updating 20 pages, like
title tags or formatting or whatever,
you can just say, Hey, you do it,
and I can get all 20 of 'em done.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah,
that's definitely one.
One of my favourite use cases has
been using air Ops, for example, to
automatically detect what articles
have lost rankings or citations,
automatically propose a fix
automatically, then update the article.
You can review it if you want, and then
export it back to your CMS and just like
that, we were maybe only doing one or
two a month, and now we're doing six.
Could do a lot more, of course, a
month just from that little unlock.
Zak Ali: I didn't even know
that they had that feature.
That's, That's a huge one.
And it's, we're actually doing
a bit of that at Finder as well.
Uh, We have a page age project where it's
like, our site map is so big and so we
have thousands of pages on the site and
with a team that's gotten as lean as our,
we can't update all of them all the time.
And so we built that sort of automation,
our fact checking tool that goes
through all of our content, finds
the ones that are really out date.
And we, and And we've, the US crew,
actually brought our average page
age for the whole site map down
from, it was like average page age of
over two years to just above a year.
And
Araminta Robertson: Nice.
Zak Ali: to go.
Yeah.
Araminta Robertson: That's great.
Yeah.
So same use case.
Are you using Claude skills for that?
How are you setting that up?
Zak Ali: We built
workflow using N eight N.
So we have our own.
myself and one other employee, when
we started getting really big into
cloud, we launched our own internal
tool programme called Finder Ops, which
folks can log into, everyone's sort of
adding their tools and shipping to it.
It has really good systems in place, so
that ensures like it's not slop or at
least it's all well designed and uniform.
Um, But that's, so yeah, people are
using it through finder ops um, which is
really great because it's, it all lives
in our, own datas and our own servers.
and it's, yeah, connected to
all of our different tools.
and we're using it at end
for the convenience of it.
We probably don't need to at this
point, but the fact that we can use a
service account connect to, and then
everyone has the ability to use these
same workflows without having to how
to prompt and Cloude whatnot, you.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
I think this is the biggest challenge
with marketing teams is that consistency
across, like, has everyone got the same
tools and getting the same information?
Did you have an engineer
build all of this?
Did you build it yourself?
Did you hire an agency?
'cause I think this is the question
that a lot of marketers have, like
how do you have a setup like this?
Zak Ali: So, one of the colleague
who's a, product manager, and him and
I just sort of got on the sticks and
built the whole thing from scratch.
I mean, we were both not
engineers, but technical enough
to, to know how we set it up.
we could code like JavaScript,
H-M-L-C-I-S-S, but once of
know the language a bit.
You what the guardrails are, but also
if you don't know anything, Claude
will walk you through everything that's
happening and you're recording that
in your, obsidion vaults or wherever
it is so that you can understand it.
Have, what's being built,
explained back to you.
make sure that routinely
ask for the security audits.
Like, Hey, is this secure?
Are we leaking our keys
and anything we're doing?
Um, I think that's the biggest
hurdle is folks don't realise
how easy it is to build.
because there's that technical hurdle,
there is that imposter syndrome of why
I'm just pressing yes to everything.
Like, I'm not sure if you use terminal,
but it's a lot of pressing Yes.
And not really understanding
what you're pressing yes to.
But starting is really the, is has been
the key is just like getting people
comfortable with, Hey, it's okay to ship
and it's not gonna be perfect on day
one, and someone will be here to help you
figure it out.
Araminta Robertson: figure it out.,
I think that's true.
I think, if A CMO is listening to this,
they don't have the time or it's not
really their remit to be building this.
Yes.
Maybe someone on their team.
But to be completely honest with
you, I think finder, you have to
be quite technical because you're
a SEO focused agency, but most
marketers I meet are not technical.
Right.
So in that case, I
think that's the hurdle.
I think you're right.
So, but it's also, they actually
maybe like the, like I've been
playing with NA 10 and like it's
still relatively, you do need to know
what you're doing a little bit there.
So I think would you then save someone
who has a team that is not maybe
the most technical, do you think it
would make more sense to have like an
outside team or maybe just an engineer
from the company, help build it out?
Something like that?
Zak Ali: I do think it would
help to have an engineer, but I
think they should give it a go.
I really think they would be
surprised at, they can accomplish.
like it's a great one 'cause
you can just copy the workflow.
Like literally you can copy all of
the nodes and then paste it in Claude
and say, I want this to do this.
there is also an N eight NMCP, so
you can use natural language in your
terminal or desktop app and say,
I need a workflow that does this.
And then you'll test it and
you say it doesn't work.
And then it'll say,
okay, well I'll try this.
And so you,
Araminta Robertson:
Everything that we built
Zak Ali: we did with natural language.
Araminta Robertson: Interesting.
Yeah.
That's great.
That's great.
Amazing.
Well, my last question is, to
any marketing leader listening to
this, they know that they wanna
grow visibility online, right?
Whether that's S-E-O-G-O-A-O, they
want to get their product out there.
how should they think about this nowadays?
Like, say they're mid, maybe not
super well established brand, maybe
B2B, let's just say like , how should
they think about, or B2B or B2C?
How should they think about
S-E-O-A-E-O affiliate marketing?
Like, what do you think works,
or what do you think is the main
thing to be aware of nowadays?
Zak Ali: So I have a philosophy
around this, which is that I think
you know more about SEO than before.
You know what SEO is because you
already know what you naturally click.
You already know what to
expect in these lists.
And if you asked yourself a question,
what would make it embarrassing
for Google to not feature you?
Like if I typed in best phones in
Google and it didn't show the iPhone
or the Galaxy or whatever, I would
think Google was a bad product.
So how do you become your i, the
iPhone or the Galaxy in your industry?
And just think about the
things that you would do.
SEO for got for so long became about
hacking the system and figuring out it
made a lot of marketers lose the plot.
They thought like visibility
was something to be gamed and
not something to be earned.
And so do the things that help you
earn visibility, true visibility,
be of use, be of value to your
customers and the industry.
Release your own data journalism
that contributes to the conversation.
Add products that people
can't stop raving about.
Don't think it's gonna come down
to these hacks and buying this and
buying that and tracking prompts.
If that's not what this is about,
I think you could not have a
single SEO tool and still rank
if you just did the right thing.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah.
To me it's sounding a lot like
brand is again, important.
Well, we seem to be going
through swings, right?
But like, if you wanna appear online
for all these as, as you say, for
all these things, then if you don't
have a brand that people trust or
excited about it's gonna be tough.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Amazing.
Well, thanks so much, Zach for coming on.
Really appreciate your time and
yeah, I think this was hopefully
really helpful to anyone who's going
down the affiliate marketing route.
It's a very crazy time to
be in digital marketing, so
Zak Ali: Yes.
Araminta Robertson: was, yeah, this,
I think this was really helpful to our
listeners, so thanks again for coming on.
Zak Ali: You so much for having me.
outro: Thanks for listening.
You can find show notes and
information about guests@www.mint
copywriting studios.com/podcast.
And finally, huge thanks to orama
TV for producing this podcast.
Thanks for listening, and
see you at the next episode.