The Learning Center

The podcasting studio of Sutherland Weston, with a microphone pointed towards the camera
Podcasting 07/07/26

The Trust Medium: Why Podcasting Matters More in an AI World

by Elizabeth Sutherland

If you’d have asked me five years ago whether every professional services firm should have a podcast, I probably would have shrugged. Nice idea. Great for some businesses. Probably unnecessary for most. I don’t think that anymore. Good marketers know that most marketing tactics borrow someone else’s attention. A well-placed ad interrupts a social media […]

A.I. 06/01/26

AI Is Changing Who Gets Found, and It’s Putting PR in Charge

by Dan Cashman

As AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews increasingly decide which businesses get recommended, earned media and public relations are becoming critical drivers of visibility. Learn why PR now plays a central role in helping brands get found when AI delivers answers instead of search results.

Maine Insights Lab 01/13/26

You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem. You Have an Insight Gap.

by Elizabeth Sutherland

How Strong Organizations Drift Without Realizing It This week, we’re taking a brief step back from sharing insights about Maine to talk instead about why insights themselves matter so much, and why acknowledging their role in good decision-making was one of the reasons we created the Maine Insights Lab in the first place. One of […]

Talking to potential customers conceptualized
Strategy 08/03/25

Knowing Your Audience Isn’t Enough. You Need to Think Like Them.

by Elizabeth Sutherland

Too often, marketing goes off course not because the audience was unknown, but because they were misunderstood. You might know the age range, the zip codes, the job titles. You may even have a decent idea of their buying habits. But if you’re basing your messaging on assumptions—especially unspoken ones—you’re still at risk of missing […]

A woman sits at a laptop. She looks at the camera and gives a thumbs-down motion.
Web 05/19/25

The Most Popular Website Problems For Small Business Owners

by Sutherland Weston

1. Our website doesn’t convey our company image Studies have shown that visitors judge the quality of a company and its services by their impression of its website. Fair or not, this means that if your website doesn’t reflect the look, feel, quality, or culture of your company then you may be losing the opportunity […]