Agents aren't marketing's biggest problem. Your team structure is!

Every conference talk, every LinkedIn thread right now: agents, agents, agents. Mordy and Miruna think that framing is hiding the actual problem.

The real struggle for most marketing teams isn't the technology — it's that the team is built for a world that doesn't exist anymore. Marketing orgs are still structured by channel, the way digital marketing was set up 25 years ago. SEO owns one lane, social another, content another, PR another. A monthly sync gets called "alignment," and everyone goes back to their lane.

That setup is what's breaking under AI. LLMs pull signals from every channel at once. An agent answering "best place to buy X" might read your site, scan your reviews, and check your social in a single task. No siloed team owns that. And if you build agents inside the existing structure — a social agent here, an SEO agent there — Miruna's line lands hard: you're automating, but you're not future-proofing.

The opportunity is bigger than tooling. When agents take execution off the team's plate, you finally get to redeploy people for strategy, judgment, and cross-functional thinking. But only if you restructure around goals or funnel stages, not channels.

Talia Wolf, CEO of GetUplift, joins to push performance marketers somewhere uncomfortable: accept that not everything valuable is trackable anymore. Buyers now move through zero-click content, AI overviews, podcasts, communities, word of mouth. Future performance marketers can't think like media buyers. They have to think like brand builders.

Transcript

Mordy Oberstein (00:00)

Shhh, you hear that? Of course not. That's the whole point. Welcome to Say It Anyway, where we say things about digital marketing, you're supposed to kind of keep to yourself and wait for it. Say it anyway.

Mordy Oberstein (00:20)

Each week we're taking an honest, maybe even uncomfortable look at something that marketers need to know, but might be too afraid to say it anyway. I'm your host, Morty Oversteen, the head of brand at SE Ranking, and I'm joined by she who is the most fabulous of all that is fabulously fabulous. Ran out of ways to continue that.

Miruna Dragomir (00:39)

ways of synonyms and just one with the same one. But hey, thanks for joining.

Mordy Oberstein (00:44)

canal first cell, Maruna Dragomere. How are you?

Miruna Dragomir (00:47)

I'm good. Real ready for a rent. It's I'd say I'm fabulous. Yes. It's Thursday evening. I'm ready to I'm going on vacation tomorrow, ready to wrap off my week with a good old rent.

Mordy Oberstein (00:59)

You're in luck because we have a rant coming for you. Cause today we're talking about marketing's next big challenge isn't I'll put this in parentheses, just agents, which feels controversial and uncomfortable even to say out loud. Yeah. Or say anyway, but I'm gonna say it. Before we get into like why and what the next challenge actually is, I can feel like I whatever I want now, because like I'm leaving with a hook. Like, what is this next big challenge? Wait as I first promote SC Ranking and Planable and then get into the challenge. Hey, in anyways, brought to you by SE Ranking, which helps you understand your search and LM visibility. Be sure to check out our API and P so you can follow all of our data insights directly with now sifting through rows and rows of data, unless you enjoy that, in which case you can export And to CSV and be to spreadsheet all day long for all you SEO folks who do love that. And planable, which helps you create and collaborate the content and improve it across social, website, PR, and beyond. So you can track, distribute, and validate the impact of your data in an AI world. Also keep an eye out for that MCP, both MCPs, and the things that you can do in there are going to blow your mind. Is that over?

Miruna Dragomir (02:00)

No, no, no, no. It's gonna be it's great. What do you talk about?

Mordy Oberstein (02:04)

I used it. I think I'm the first user of both MCPs together. Yes. That's right. Blue wicks on things for certain like changes they didn't make. And then as I had the first website where they had like customizable redirects, whatever or whatever, and they're square my whole website until they fix the bug. So sometimes we're bad. In this case, it was great. Actually got some really great data from both MCPs.

Miruna Dragomir (02:07)

I've seen screenshots.

Miruna Dragomir (02:24)

Yeah, it's we're so many things are gonna come out on that topic. We're gonna do so many cool pieces of content and campaigns. So yeah, stay tuned, everyone.

Mordy Oberstein (02:33)

If you like MCPs, you'll love this. If you don't like MCPs, look at it anyway.

Miruna Dragomir (02:38)

Yeah, if you don't I don't know, if you don't like NCPs, I feel like future might be let hey.

Mordy Oberstein (02:43)

I think you know what's funny I think about the MC the C P thing I don't want to like this would be episode. I think people just haven't started using them. you should start once you evaluate, wait a second, like this is great for this. Certain things like are easier and other things, but this is great for this.

Miruna Dragomir (02:57)

go. It's a process. But we'll make sure that like for planable MCP and SC ranking MCP and how they work together, there'll be plenty of materials to go around and for people to work with. So yeah, I feel like people just need to give it a some curiosity it will blow their minds.

Mordy Oberstein (03:13)

First, I was thinking about that today, like when we're positioning the the new products, like we have to like educate the audience along with it because breaking the fourth wall here. But this show is not about MCPs. We'll do that at a different time. This show is that we live in an echo chamber from Google to open AI to SaaS platforms just like us. Too much? I said it anyway. Keep going. Yeah. So feeling like agents, I don't know if you watch Google IO. If you'd rather record this two weeks after Google IO, I watched it with my family, which is weird, but they were just here because they were expecting to watch something else and were angry that I was watching this Google thing. Until they saw the Google glasses and then they were kind of like, that's cool. Which I would never wear. I wear glasses because I can't see. Anyway, you might feel like agents are like that is like the thing. Everything is about agents. And agents are obviously a huge part of the narrative and a huge part of what's going to happen in marketing and not just marketing, beyond marketing, like in actual people's lives, which is the thing that we market, the things that happen in real life. I know that's a that's a crazy mind blowing moment. We market things that people use in their actual lives. Agents are gonna be used in people's actual lives, but the real challenge for marketing teams is not just agents, it's the marketing team. Let that sink out. Because the next big struggle is it's not just a gen tech. I don't think it's a I think agenda. We realize I think what we don't necessarily know that we need to figure out is it's an enormous struggle, is that the structure of the marketing team doesn't fit this ecosystem, which is what I'm I'm doing the calendar when this episode is coming out, which is what we talked about a breaking silos 26. Yeah. That's the whole thing. Like marketing teams are built on channels because when digital marketing was created, you the everything's about channels. And that's how marketing teams are structured. Is that how you should still structure them?

Miruna Dragomir (04:51)

No, of course not. This is a huge issue actually. And it creates it amplifies the struggle that you started with because you said, you know, agents are not the biggest struggle. But the existing marketing structure actually amplifies the agents structure because you may want to transform your organization to be a genetic in a way that fits your existing structure. That's not the way to go.

Mordy Oberstein (05:16)

So great. So I won't pull back like the fourth wall on this. Wait, we're doing a lot, you know, as a native AI company to push new workflows, new ways of integrating AI, new ways of automating. And it's a great point that if you're gonna do that, it's like you're gonna create the piece of content, you're gonna have to go back and edit it afterwards. But you ever have that feeling like you know what probably would have been easier to start all over again. Sometimes reworking things after the fact, very, very difficult. That's a great point. I didn't think of that.

Miruna Dragomir (05:43)

What are we talking about right now? We're talking about the silos that we're so, so used to and having per channel teams and and per channel approaches. And of course, however much we tried to make these people talk and work together, there's always been the struggle of alignment and the cost of meetings and discussions. So many times still the strategies are fragmented and not consistent enough, not saying the same message, not in sync, basically. If you build the agents with the exact same mentality, you're gonna build agents for social, you're gonna be build agents for SEO, you're gonna build and if you build those separately with these people that haven't been working together and won't be to work working together on these agents and they're not intertwined and they don't work in unison, you're automating, but again, you're not future proofing your marketing.

Mordy Oberstein (06:31)

that's so good. You're that should be a tagline. You're automating, but not future I can talk. Not future proofing. I've ruined it, not not being able to talk. Finger marketing. Because I was taking this from the point of view just changed my perspective on reality. I Yeah, no, it could. This is good change perspective. Sometimes it's too much damn perspective. This is not too much damn, which is a line from Spinal Tat, by the way. Old movie I'm just randomly referencing. I have some perspective, too much damn perspective. It's interesting because I was taking this from the point of view of okay, look, like LLMs. LLMs are accumulating all of the signals together. So now your SEO team has to work with your social team. What's happening on social impacts your S everything impacts each other now. And when your teams are working together, and we talked about this before, you're like, don't throw S LLM visibility on your SEO team. Okay, but that's what's actually the reason why we did that episode is because that's what's happening. The SEO team in that particular case of this, or it could be a social team and it's it applies to any team. The SEO team in that case doesn't have the wherewithal and the resources to unite all of the social team, the PR team, the content team. They can't do that. Everyone's broken up by silo, not by intent or ta whatever way you want to structure it, which visibility overall. But now you're This is an amazing. I never thought, but you're gonna have an agent go out there and do a task for you. I don't know. Like find out which is the best place to buy a cell phone near me. That agent may go and look at website content. It may run Googles, it could do it could go to social media and see like what is your social media? I found a great place. Let's check that now. The aid is gonna go to social media, verify they no, it's not actually real. They're a bunch of spammers that fake they have a fake Twitter account. X Twitter anymore, I do. It's one agent doing all of the things, looking at all of the things. Wow. Yeah.

Miruna Dragomir (08:18)

That's that's a great point. And it's I love that we're finally talking about structure because this it may be the root problem that is finally solvable via agentic and via automations. Because once you take a lot of that execution out of the mix, you can finally use your team for their real talents, which has have always hopefully been strategic input. And the alignment shouldn't cost as much because you can rethink how the structure and how the sub teams actually look like and make them maybe goal oriented, maybe stage of the funnel oriented, maybe I don't know what. That's it. But I mean, there's all sorts of ideas out there. I know we d there's no agreed upon solution right now, but lots of of leaders of marketing are thinking about this. But the idea is that it's actually a huge opportunity right now. And I don't want to spend two hour ranty vibe. But it is. And we're usually very focused on the negative. I do feel like, you know, now again, we you you're taking out so much of that that execution. So it's maybe finally possible to put that social media person that's usually spent all day writing articles and filming stuff and writing scripts and whatever. And with that free time, maybe put them in the same place as the content person and let them work together because a agents will execute on what their whatever their ideas are.

Mordy Oberstein (09:44)

That's a great way of like of automating. So it frees up the time into something that's actually something the AI can do, which is sync up cross-I feel like that's the hard part. Like the structure is the hard part. You have to re- You're talking about like it's not gonna happen over to take years for this to happen. Restructuring your marketing team, restructuring the way you hire, restructuring the way you work. It is the problem. Not because it's so complicated, because structurally it is so complicated. And what keeps have been getting away with all like for the last, I don't know, how long has the internet been around and then I don't know. 25 years is well, we have a monthly sync. So like we're synced up. That doesn't count. That's not actually being synced up. Maybe for the pet when you're living in a channel specific world, it is not anymore. Which I guess this is our our guest question. We asked the CEO of Get Up Lift, Alia Wolf. Val, how can you change performance marketers' mindsets, think a little bit more broadly than ask, and maybe break out of that silo just a bit? So here's Talia.

Talia Wolf (10:44)

I think one of the biggest mindset shifts performance marketers need to make right now is accepting that not everything valuable is trackable anymore. For years, marketing teams were trained to optimize for attribution, dashboards, last click conversions, ROAS, things that felt measurable and predictable. But bio behavior has changed. People are discovering brands through zero-click content, AI overviews and summaries, podcasts, LinkedIn posts, communities, WhatsApp group, word of mouth. They might see your brand 10 times before ever clicking anything. And a lot of those touch points never show up in your analytics dashboard. So the future performance marketer can't just think like a media buyer anymore. They need to think like a brand builder. That means understanding messaging, emotional resonance and differentiation, trust, memorability, category perception, the things that influence demand before conversions happen.

Miruna Dragomir (11:48)

Wow. Wow. I love this. Right. So Talia. Amazing. Attribution. I didn't even think of this. Of course, put them together because they are kind of losing their own Q results anyway. So like their own very clear attribution. Like this is my click. This is due to me. That's gone. So that's Might as well.

Mordy Oberstein (12:06)

That's kinda what holds teams back. And a lot of the times I have my KPIs, you have your KPIs. Sometimes when it's really bad, those KPIs conflict. At a minimum they're just they're your KPIs or my KPIs. So you do your thing, I'll do my thing. But with lack of attributions, you don't get to do that anymore.

Miruna Dragomir (12:22)

Yeah. Hopefully. So why not you all accept that we're all working towards this two, three big KPIs anyway? So

Mordy Oberstein (12:29)

She's trying to like build that brand visibility. Make sure you follow Talia LinkedIn mostly. So that's where I see her on LinkedIn. Check out the get uplift. She has a great newsletter. Ironically, Talia's a CRO person. That's her jam. And that's who's telling you like, wait a second, take your foot off that that gas pedal for just a second, which will probably help your team structure. That is a good point. Yeah. So what we're clearly saying, very clearly saying, is your mindset is in a silo. You have to break out of that silo and take out of that to deal with today's ecosystem.

Miruna Dragomir (12:58)

It's great. It's what you have to do, sales you're not. Do it now. We promise you break the silos and you will be visible.

Mordy Oberstein (13:02)

Do it now. Get started.

Mordy Oberstein (13:09)

That's great. That's another great slogan. Guaranteed. Instant impact. Unlimited. If you're ready to break your team silo, say it on social. Go out there and comment. Don't forget to tag us and say, hey, our team is too siloed. Even say your team. You could say someone else's team. Hey, the other person's team is too siloed. Mike. so say it, tag us, myself and Maruna and Plantable and SC ranking and tag away and comment away in our post about.

Miruna Dragomir (13:14)

Got your back.

Mordy Oberstein (13:34)

How you're breaking the silo. It's a real conversation that we're, I think, just starting to have. And the more we talk about it, the better. That's legit. I'm not being salesy. I'm generally not salesy. No. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And do that validation. Join us again next week as we take up marketing is flattening. Look for a new episode of Say It Anyway on the Planable and S E ranking social media channels. Or wherever you consume your podcast. Don't be shy about leaving us a review or a rating on iTunes, the Spotify, and so forth. Look for more from the podcast on the Plantable NSC Raking social media channels. And until next time, don't keep quiet.