Web3 CMO Stories

What Ahrefs Learned Growing to $150M Without Outbound Sales – with Tim Soulo | S6 E43

• Joeri Billast • Season 6

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A lot of marketers are staring at AI visibility dashboards right now and wondering if they’re winning or just watching noise. Tim Soulo (CMO at Ahrefs, author of Discoverable) brings it back to something sturdier: how people actually find and choose products, and how to build a brand that gets discovered without needing a giant ad budget or an outbound sales army.

We unpack the simple framework behind Discoverable: people discover businesses through search, by noticing them, or through recommendations. Tim explains how “search” now means far more than Google SEO it includes ChatGPT, TikTok, YouTube, and social search and why discoverability is the scalable alternative when you can’t afford to chase leads one by one. We also dig into why marketing teams gravitate toward tactics, how specialisation shapes that behaviour, and why fundamentals are often the real advantage.

Then we go deep on AI in marketing. Tim shares why vibe coding feels like a superpower for marketers, but also why “AI x zero effort = slop” and why effort is still the signal people trust. Finally, we get practical about AI-driven discovery: what to track (AI referral traffic, AI bot visits, self attribution, sales feedback), how to think in trends and competitor benchmarks, and how to prioritise work using Tim’s BREW framework (Business potential, Reach, Effort, Who).

This episode was recorded through a Descript call on September 30, 2026.
Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/what-ahrefs-learned-growing-to-150m-without-outbound-sales-with-tim-soulo/

If you want clearer marketing strategy in an AI search world, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with five stars.

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