VSSL Agency

07/17/2026

Hot take: LinkedIn isn't always the MVP everyone assumes it is.

We dug into the numbers across our client accounts and the channel doing the most for pipeline isn't always the one getting the credit. Curious where your team has seen the same thing.

06/17/2026

Google shows you what your buyer typed last week.

ChatGPT shows you what they're asking right now — mid-decision, mid-problem, in their own words.

That's the whole difference with ChatGPT Ads. Your brand lands at the bottom of the conversation, matched to the exact thing someone is trying to work out. Not a stale search. A live question.

We've been running these since the channel opened, and the early read is good.

Want to see what it looks like for your space? Twenty minutes, free, honest answer either way.

https://loot.vsslagency.com/chatgpt-ads

06/17/2026

Stop optimizing for CPL. Cheap leads are the fastest way to look “efficient” while your sales team starves for real pipeline. If you’re selling B2B, a low cost-per-lead usually just means you’ve changed the type of lead, not the quality of the outcome.

If you want to actually grow, track these instead:

✅ Percentage of leads that actually hit “qualified” status.
✅ Cost per qualified meeting (CPQM).
✅ Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate.

Stop buying traffic and start building pipeline. What are you optimizing for right now: CPL, meetings, or revenue?

06/17/2026

A prospect asked us last week why their traffic is flat even though their rankings are up.

Here's the short answer: their buyers stopped clicking.

That's the shift behind every "What is AEO?" conversation we're having right now. So let's actually answer it.

Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of making your content the source AI tools cite when they generate an answer. Not ranked. Cited.

The behavior has already moved:

→ ChatGPT now drives more B2B research sessions than Google for buyers under 40
→ Google's AI Overviews appear on ~80% of B2B informational queries
→ Click-through rates on those queries have dropped 30–40%

The buyer reads the AI's answer and moves on. Whoever got cited wins. Everyone else is invisible — no matter where they "ranked."

The work is part technical SEO (schema, structured data, clean entities), part editorial (content written to be extracted, not just indexed), and part authority-building (the trust signals AI models actually weigh).

Most mid-market B2B sites have at least one critical gap blocking citation today. Most don't know which one.

We built a free 60-second scanner that gives you a citation-readiness score and your top 3 gaps. No form, no call.

→ https://aeo.vsslagency.com

06/17/2026

Most agencies treat AEO and paid media like separate disciplines.

The smartest ones treat them as a loop.

Here's the loop:

𝐀𝐄𝐎 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫. A buyer who's already seen your brand cited in an AI answer arrives pre-qualified. Lower CAC. Higher conversion. Your paid budget stops doing the entire awareness job alone.

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐄𝐎 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫.
→ Paid drives traffic to ungated, scannable content — the kind of engagement AI models weigh
→ Paid social builds the brand familiarity that compounds citation credibility
→ Paid remarketing converts the research-phase buyers who clicked an AI citation before competitors get to them
→ Paid creates query demand — introducing concepts that become the queries you get cited for

Run them as one program and the loop compounds. Run them as two, and you're paying full price for awareness while leaving citation lift on the table.

If you're spending on paid and haven't audited your AEO footprint, the gap between what you're paying per lead and what you 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be paying is almost certainly bigger than you think.

We built a free 60-second scanner to show you where you stand on the AEO side.

→ https://aeo.vsslagency.com

06/17/2026

Meta’s targeting limitations aren't the problem. Your creative is.

For Sylectus, the challenge was specific: How do you reach box truck operators and cargo van fleets on a platform that doesn't let you filter by fleet size or MC number?

Most advertisers would walk away. At VSSL, we leaned in.

Instead of fighting the algorithm, we used the creative as the filter. We wrote ads so specific to the daily grind of sprinter van drivers and freight-matchers that the right people couldn't help but stop—and everyone else just kept scrolling.

The results of "Creative as Targeting":
✅ 1,678 leads generated
✅ $24 Cost Per Lead (CPL)
✅ 765% ROI

Stop waiting for Meta to give you better data. Start giving Meta better creative.

Check out the full case study in the first comment below. 👇

06/17/2026

Open ChatGPT. Ask it to recommend the best vendor in your category.

Did it name you?

If not, that's not a hypothetical problem. A growing share of your buyers ran that exact search this week. They read the answer, picked from the names they saw, and moved on. They never visited your site, never bounced off your pricing page, never showed up in your analytics at all.

You can't win a deal you didn't know you were in.

That's the blind spot every SEO dashboard has. AEO isn't about where you rank. It's about whether the AI names you when it answers — different game, and most B2B sites are still suited up for the old one.

We built a free scanner that tells you where you stand in about 60 seconds. No form, no call.

→ http://aeo.vsslagency.com

AEO Scanner — Grade how visible your brand is to AI answer engines.

06/17/2026

The biggest new ad channel in a decade didn't get a launch party.

No keynote. No countdown. It just quietly showed up at the bottom of conversations with 900 million weekly users — while most B2B marketers were still arguing about LinkedIn CPLs.

ChatGPT Ads are live. We've been running them since the channel opened.

The brands paying attention right now will be in front of their buyers before their competitors finish reading the announcement.

We're already running campaigns. We'd like to run yours.

02/09/2026

A clean sweep of our entries! 🏆🏆🏆

VSSL Agency is honored to take home 3 awards at the 2025 One Awards for our work with Beyond Type 1.

🥈 Silver: BT1 Website 🥉 Bronze: Thrive Out Loud Branding 🥉 Bronze: Beyond Type Run Re-brand

Shout out to the VSSL crew and our partners at BT1 for making this happen!