Alexander Toth

Storyteller moonlighting as a marketer.

Free website blueprint:

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Dune shows us what makes customers buy. And why trying to convince them isn't always the right strategy.

Paul Atreides has more evidence that he's the Messiah than anyone in the galaxy. Prophetic visions. Bene Gesserit training. The bloodline. An entire civilization waiting for him.

He refuses for five hours across two films.

Your customers do the same thing. They have the problem. They've found your solution. They leave your website without buying.

This is What Marketers Can Learn From Dune, a series where I break down storytelling principles from great films and show how they apply to marketing, brand storytelling, and websites.

In this video, I break down the customer psychology behind Paul's resistance and show why the same pattern explains how your customers make buying decisions.

Whether you run a SaaS company, a professional service firm, or any business where conversion matters, this will change how you think about your marketing.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Why Paul refuses (and why your customers do too)
1:42 Evidence doesn't create readiness
2:58 Pressure creates resistance
5:45 Conditions create movement
8:03 How to apply this to your marketing
11:37 How we can help

https://t.co/AxCDYgqA3g

[Bear Grylls OBE @BearGrylls]

I've prayed some pretty ragged prayers over the years. God has never once needed them tidy.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

@howertonjosh @ShawnRyan762 The story's poetic, but it's made up. Jesus shared plenty of stories that answer the question. The Prodigal Son is the story of salvation, not this.

[Charles Floate 📈 @Charles_SEO]

HUGE AI SEO TIP THAT COSTS $0 AND TAKES UNDER 30 MINUTES ⏲️🔥🔥

STEP 1 - Pull the data

Search Console → Performance → last 90 days → filter to positions 9-30 → export > CSV.

Those are pages Google ALREADY trusts - It's testing them, its just hasn't committed.

And you don't need to build anything NEW, just update what is already there with the next few (easy) steps:

STEP 2 - Find the queries you rank for but never actually ANSWER

This is the bit almost nobody does.

Filter each page by its queries - You'll find terms it's picking up impressions for where the page never directly answers the question.

Google is telling you exactly what it thinks the page is about, and exactly where the page is failing to deliver it.

Free, sat there, but inored.

STEP 3 - Feed it to the AI properly

Drop the CSV into Claude (Cowork if you've got it) with the page content alongside it.

Do NOT ask it to "optimise the page" - You'll just get 400 words of air.

Ask it to do this instead:

"For each query this page ranks 8-20 for but does not directly answer, write a self-contained block: an header (H2 or H3/H4 if it can be under an existing block) matching the query as literally as possible, then a 1-2 sentence direct answer, then 2-3 supporting lines or bullet points or claims depending on the query.

Claim and evidence must sit in the same block - No intro, no padding, just give the machine what its looking for.

Add in 2-3 of the top surfacing competitors for even better consensus+uniqueness matching, and that's it! You've got a page that should skyrocket in visibility, and a system you can do over and over again.

STEP 4 - Understand why THAT structure

Because retrieval doesn't work like ranking.

Your page gets split into chunks (or "passages" for AI Overviews - If the answer is in one chunk and the proof is in the next, the model pulls one WITHOUT the other.

Self-contained blocks aren't a formatting preference.

They're the difference between being extracted and being skipped.

STEP 5 - Internal links, done PROPERLY

Get the AI to map every semantically related page on the site and plan the links both ways - Use your sitemap/s to support this + a Screaming From (or SiteBulb, or Ahrefs, or whatever you prefer) crawl of the actual site.

Rule of thumb still holds: Roughly 1 internal per 50 words, 1 external per 150.

But anchors matter more than they used to - "Click here" and "read more" pass link value and ZERO association - Use the entity, and use the relationship.

STEP 6 - Date it and ship it

Visible last-updated in the HTML, not just schema.

Freshness is becoming a live retrieval signal now, not a vanity stamp. An unmaintained page from 2023 loses to a mediocre one updated last week.

I ran this exact process on ONE old post earlier this year - it went from 17 visits/month to 4,000+ uniques, and $16,700/mo in organic traffic value (according to Ahrefs).

One post - One 30 minute update, no new linksn nothing built from scratch and AI did 90% of the work...

And every one of those pages is already inside Google's trusted set for that query. You're not fighting for entry, you're just fighting for the answer.

That's a completely different battle and it's a much easier one to actually achieve...

Stop building.

Start finishing what you've already got 🎩

[The Boring Marketer @boringmarketer]

new models are cool. but remember:

- building a company is still hard
- growing a company is even harder
- ai can create false productivity
- you still have to talk to customers
- you still have to have taste and think outside the box
- you still have to solve real problems for real people (not the ai bubble)
- you can hallucinate that you will be a billionaire in 6 months
- you still need to make $1 first with ai
- there are millions of people and businesses who hardly know how to use chatgpt
- we are so early
- you need to narrow your focus, then narrow further
- you should ship something before you start working on the next thing
- find a team who supports you
- touch grass
- have fun with fable 5!

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

@Kavanthekid Wow. Incredible. Great work.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

@bryan_johnson Look into Orthodox Christian prayers. A lot of history there. Helpful for those who need to learn how to pray (which is all of us).

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

A few years ago I would have told you that a small scrappy company had a big advantage.

I've since changed my mind and I understand the big advantages that larger companies have.

Once you get a machine rolling down a hill with 10 million or more in annual revenue, it is ON.

And the rich start getting richer.

The owner can afford to make investments to grow the company without skipping a family vacation that year.

And so they do and they win.

Why small businesses struggle:

-They can't afford leads

-They lose all of their people

-It is expensive to get leads and they can't afford to invest before the profit comes.

And all of their best people get recruited away by a bigger shop who can offer larger signing bonuses and higher pay. Ok so what now?

How do I overcome this as a small company? You copy what the big dogs do.

You spend money on a great website.

You invest in your Google Business Profile.

You spend money on SEO.

You spend money on marketing.

You fine tune your website so that it is VERY easy to become your customer.

And you recruit and hire like a madman.

You raise your prices so you can afford great people.

You utilize overseas talent like the big dogs do.

And you do a lot of the things that don't scale while you still can.

Building bigger has a ton of benefits that I'm appreciating more and more each day.

[Codie Sanchez @Codie_Sanchez]

35 lessons from selling three businesses before I turned 35:

1. Your first business will likely fail.
2. All your money gets made after that.
3. Most people give up too fast.
4. You'll outgrow almost everyone.
5. If you get distracted, you'll get beaten.
6. It will not happen between the hours of 9 and 5.
7. Late nights, early mornings, repeat.
8. Emotions can be cancer.
9. If you think you should fire them, do it.
10. Not in writing? Didn't happen.
11. Never be embarrassed for not knowing.
12. Bigger the problem, bigger the $$.
13. No one ever charges enough to start.
14. Your favorite words have 3 letters: CPA, COG, CAC, P&L
15. Be selfish with your f*cks.
16. Protect your energy, it's real.
17. Someone will steal from you.
18. Sales beats everything.
19. If they're not better than you at something, they're not for you.
20. You want it, cross it off the to-do list.
21. Everyone lies and they believe themselves.
22. Be your own motivational speech.
23. It's gonna suck... often.
24. Yet you'll wish you could do it again.
25. You won't win if you're not obsessed.
26. Balance is seasonal.
27. Ignore talk, believe skin in the game.
28. Leave money for a rainy day.
29. You can't eat net worth, cash is king.
30. Don't swerve in too many lanes, you get hit.
31. Work like a lion, not a cow.
32. Who... not how. Always.
33. You're one person away from your win.
34. Dream so big you outdream others.
35. You'll only regret not starting earlier.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

@Codie_Sanchez Best list I've seen. Especially, "Everyone lies and they believe themselves."

It's sad initially, but after learning this it made me more optimistic somehow. Most people don't lie intentionally, their world just looks different (or they want it to).

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Your customer doesn't care about your logo's deeper meaning. What matters is whether they can recognize you on a crowded shelf.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Common scenario: Company hires a copywriter. The new website copy sounds polished. Leads go down.

This pattern is more common than any agency will admit.

A founder brings in a professional writer, the language gets tighter and more sophisticated, and conversion rates drop. The founder can't figure out why.

The issue is a confusion between good writing and clear messaging.

Good writing impresses. Clear messaging converts. They're different skills.

The copywriter optimized for elegance. They replaced plain phrases with clever ones, traded direct statements for nuanced ones, and added personality where the customer needed information. The site sounds better at a cocktail party. It performs worse in a buying decision.

Messaging is a revenue function. The test isn't "does this sound smart?" It's "does a visitor know within five seconds what we do, who we do it for, and what step to take next?"

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

A test that can put you out of business is not a test. It's a gamble. Keep the experiment small enough that being wrong is cheap.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

AI search is going to change who gets found. Most companies aren't taking action yet.

Google's traditional search results show ten blue links. AI-powered search (think ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI overviews) shows a synthesized answer. A few sources gets recommended. The rest get nothing.

The companies that win in AI search share a specific trait: their content answers the question with enough depth and clarity that the AI pulls from it as a primary source.

Thin blog posts padded with filler don't get cited. Long-form content organized around a clear question, backed by specific data, written in plain language, does.

If your content strategy is still built around stuffing keywords into 500-word blog posts, you're optimizing for a search engine that's disappearing. The new game rewards depth and specificity.

Start by auditing your top 20 pages. For each one, ask: if AI had to answer this question, would it pull from my content or from a competitor's?

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Nobody wins in chess. Somebody loses.

Business works the same way. Stay in the game long enough, test small, and avoid the bet that can end you.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Most companies write marketing copy. The ones that grow steady tell stories.

Copy informs. Story connects. Copy says "we offer X service with Y features." Story says "here's a clear path to get what you want."

The structural difference shows up in one specific place: the order of information. Copy leads with credentials. Story leads with the customer's desire.

A services page that opens with "Founded in 2012, we have served over 500 clients across 30 industries" is copy.

A services page that opens with "Isn't it time your marketing budget started making you money?" is story.

The second version invites the reader into their own narrative. The first asks them to care about yours.

Most founders default to copy because it feels safe. You list what you do, mention your experience, and hope the visitor is impressed enough to reach out.

Story takes more thought. It asks you to understand what your customer wants and to speak to that desire before you mention yourself.

The payoff is a visitor who feels understood before you've asked for anything.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

A hypothesis is a bias. Start with a question instead, and let customer behavior answer it.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Two founders in the same industry, same stage of growth. One gets 15 inbound leads a month from their website. The other gets two.

Both sites look professional. Modern layouts, quality photography, clean navigation. A visitor glancing at both would call them roughly equal.

The 15-lead site does two things the 2-lead site doesn't.

First, it speaks to one specific buyer. The 2-lead site tries to speak to everyone (enterprise, mid-market, small business) and ends up resonating with none of them. The 15-lead site chose a lane and wrote every word on the page for that one person.

Second, it reduces friction at every decision point. One call to action, repeated in the same language, in the same color, at every scroll depth. The 2-lead site has "Request a Demo," "Download Our Whitepaper," "Schedule a Call," and "Learn More" all competing on the same page.

A visitor facing too many choices tends to make none at all. Clarity is the most important tool in your arsenal.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Clarity is the best form of differentiation. If your competitor and you sell the same thing but your message is clearer, the customer picks you.

[Alexander Toth @AlexanderToth]

Whenever we work on a client website, we brainstorm dozens of headlines to make sure we get it right.

The first version typically tries to capture everything the company does.

The second might be a clever tagline that sounds great in a meeting but means nothing to a cold visitor.

By the 20th, we've out the cleverness and answered one question: if a stranger lands here in three seconds, do they know what we do, who it's for, and why it matters?

That question is worth asking on your own site.

Hand your homepage to someone who has never heard of your company. Give them five seconds. Ask them what you do, who you serve, and why it matters.

If they can't answer, the headline is doing cosmetic work.

The headline matters because it sets the tone for the rest of the page. A clear one earns the visitor's attention. A confusing one gives them permission to leave.

The redesign follows this process. New structure, new copy, new calls to action, built on the clarity that headline created.

Getting the first sentence right makes the rest of the project easier.