Alyssa Evans started school as an art major and finished with a science degree — and that creative-plus-analytical split is exactly how she runs Grow Your Strategy. In this episode she makes the case that the funnel is the wrong mental model entirely, and that what replaces it is a content ladder.

Alyssa is a growth strategist working mostly with fintech, real estate tech, and SaaS companies — including investors raising money for syndications and adjacent plays like storage units and ATM investing. Her first month with any client is spent auditing rather than executing, because until you know a founder's archetype and comfort level, you're guessing. She's blunt about what's failing right now: the last eight months of her work have included cleaning up websites wrecked by auto-generated content.

In this episode

• Why the first month of any engagement should be auditing, not acting — and how client archetypes change the plan
• The content ladder — showing up at the most basic question in your niche and every rung of complexity above it
• Auto-blogging is a liability: what Alyssa is seeing as she repairs AI-content damage
• Why LLMs favor content updated in the last three months — and what that means for your archive
• Cross-team collaboration as a speed advantage — what product and sales know that marketing doesn't
• Building feedback loops that don't backfire — where Slack and Reddit communities burn brands, and what works instead
• Community as its own marketing channel — word of mouth 2.0, and "growing in public"
• Why link building is becoming networking — non-competitor partnerships, cross-promotion, and podcasts as an authority engine

Chapters

• [MM:SS] — Meet Alyssa Evans: continuous improvement as a operating principle
• [MM:SS] — From art major to growth strategist
• [MM:SS] — The power of cross-team collaboration
• [MM:SS] — First-month friction: auditing before acting
• [MM:SS] — Finding the niche: fintech, real estate tech & SaaS
• [MM:SS] — SaaS's moving target: the release/marketing/satisfaction cycle
• [MM:SS] — Customer feedback loops that actually work
• [MM:SS] — Community as a marketing channel
• [MM:SS] — AI, GEO, and the content ladder
• [MM:SS] — Top of funnel is dead; go deeper
• [MM:SS] — Link building in the age of AI
• [MM:SS] — Where to find Alyssa

Notable quotes

"You need to make sure that you're found at that base level and working their way up — think of it as a content ladder."
— Alyssa Evans"If you really start to talk to your customer like they're building the product with you, you will just be much more successful."
— Alyssa Evans"Everyone will have an opinion, and they are valid in their world — but you have to stand your ground, and then the data will come later."
— Alyssa Evans

Resources & links

• Grow Your Strategy — Alyssa's strategy and content company
• Alyssa Evans on LinkedIn · @growyourstrategy on Instagram
• On repairing AI-generated content damage — human-certified, expert-sourced content
• On earning authority off-site — the complete guide to link building & authority
• On using interviews as an authority channel — podcast-powered link building
• Further reading — the evolution from traditional SEO to multi-channel marketing

About the show

Unscripted SEO is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Full episode archive at unscriptedseo.com.