Last updated August 2026
Marketing tools and deals
On My Radar
See what’s on my radar right now, from tools I recommend to time-sensitive deals. Check back to see what’s changed.
🔥 Dave’s Hot Takes
Traditional SEO still matters
AI Search Visibility may account for around 5% of your traffic. Don’t let it distract you from the other 95%.
AI Search Visibility has a sampling problem
If one tool checks 10 prompts and another checks 100, their scores aren’t measuring the same thing. Know what’s behind the percentage.
Stop shopping for software like you’re choosing a spouse
You don’t need your forever tool on day one. Start low risk, cover the primary use case, learn what matters, and upgrade later if you outgrow it.
🛠 From My Tech Stack
A few tools and resources from my own marketing stack that I think are worth knowing about.
Link Management
I bought Switchy for $39 in 2019, and remarkably, that’s still the lifetime price today. Development appears largely paused, which is worth knowing, but this is also the kind of tool that does not need constant reinvention once the fundamentals are solid.
Switchy handles the core link-management job well and supports integrations with 136 different tools and tracking pixels, giving you a lot of flexibility for retargeting and attribution.
My take: I would still buy it today, but I would buy it for what it already does, not because I expect a steady stream of new features.
Social Media Management
I have tested a lot of social media management tools, and workflow matters more to me than having the longest feature list. If a platform creates friction every time I use it, eventually I stop using it.
SocialBu currently fits my workflow particularly well. One important differentiator is being able to publish posts on X (Twitter) that include links, functionality many competing social media management platforms have limited or removed as API costs have increased.
My take: SocialBu is the social media management platform I’m choosing to use right now because it gets the everyday workflow right.
SEO and AI Search Visibility
SEO is changing quickly as AI search becomes another part of how people discover brands and content. Traditional SEO platforms are adding AI visibility features, newer products are trying to cover both, and specialized platforms are going all in on AI search.
I don’t think most marketers should assume one platform will necessarily do everything well. The right combination depends on whether you need traditional SEO auditing and rank tracking, AI search monitoring and recommendations, or both.
My take: There is enough difference between traditional SEO and AI search visibility that I currently evaluate the two categories separately.
Compare AI Search Visibility tools →
⏰ Deals Ending Soon
These deals won’t be around much longer. I bought and use all three, and here’s why I think each is worth a look.
ZeroRank
Price increases September 1, deal continues
Tier 1 lets me track up to 41 prompts on one AI model, or spread them across multiple models. More importantly, its recommendations give me specific actions to improve my AI search visibility.
SnowSEO
Deal ends September 3
One lifetime purchase covers both traditional SEO and AI search visibility, with monitoring credits that renew monthly. A particularly strong value if you’re building your SEO toolkit from scratch.
WP Security Ninja
Deal ends September 6
Daily WordPress security scans keep me informed. It recently flagged an unusually long line of PHP in my own SiteSqueeze plugin as potentially suspicious, which I was able to quickly correct.