Ep 31: How Falcon Rebuilt Industrial AI Search Visibility

Falcon’s VP of Marketing & Sales, Krista Short, joins host Chelsea Drusch to share how her team navigated one of the biggest shifts industrial marketers have faced in a decade: the collapse of traditional organic traffic and the rise of AI-driven discovery.

Falcon once relied on a disciplined inbound engine: weekly blogs, tight keyword models, and a well-oiled SEO program. Then 2024 happened. Traffic dropped. MQLs slipped. But the leads that mattered most didn’t budge.

That discrepancy became the catalyst for a complete strategic reset.

Together, Falcon and Weidert Group rebuilt the discovery engine around AI search visibility, commercial-intent content, and new top-of-funnel pathways that actually match how industrial buyers search today.

Three guiding questions anchor this episode:

• What happens when traffic falls but sales stay strong?
• Where are industrial buyers actually discovering solutions in an AI-first world?
• What does a modern content program look like when weekly blogs stop moving the needle?

Krista shares how Falcon shifted from keyword chasing to audience-backed experiments, including digital PR, entity-driven visibility, deep topic ecosystems, and early AEO strategy. She also explains why internal KPIs had to evolve… and why bravery is now a core marketing skill.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

• 01:00 – Inbound foundations: Falcon’s early SEO success and why it stopped working
• 02:35 – Search intent vs. keywords: how AI reshaped discovery behaviors
• 06:18 – The first red flag: when traffic tanked but sales-ready leads didn’t
• 10:09 – Reallocating resources toward experiments, not routines
• 13:02 – Digital PR, entity visibility, and why sites like Wikipedia matter
• 16:29 – Using clickstream data and sales feedback to shape content ecosystems
• 18:33 – Shifting from keyword calendars to problem-first content ecosystems
• 26:24 – Advice to industrial marketers stepping into the unknown

CONNECT WITH US:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/weidert-group/

Instagram: instagram.com/weidertgroup/

Facebook: facebook.com/weidertgroup

X: x.com/WeidertGroup

YouTube: youtube.com/@Weidert

Website: weidert.com/changeoverpodcast

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Chelsea Drusch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseadrusch/

Krista Short: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristashort/