Strategic Insights

UPWORDS started as a copywriting technique in 1998. Today I use it to write content buyers can picture and AI can quote, because the words that help people understand you help machines cite you.

The numbers belong to the engagements that produced them. Here's what I found in each one, what I changed, and the frameworks that carried the work, from AI visibility to agency restructures.

When buyers ask AI to recommend a consultant, who gets named? I ran 468 answers across five AI engines to find out. The big names win in strategy, and the firms that break through publish the pages AI cites.

When I asked ChatGPT about my own method, it named me. When I asked the same buyer question without my method's name, it named four other people. Here's what that gap taught me.

Flat organic numbers tempt teams to do more of everything. More content, more links, a new agency. Here's how I find the one constraint behind a stall before anyone spends another dollar on the wrong fix.

One framework will lie to you with total confidence. PULSE is the five-lens read I run before I touch a stalled business, rebuilt for the age of AI search.

When a buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire, the answer names a few firms and skips the rest. Here's how I help consultancies and other expert-led firms become one of the names AI search cites.

Most AI output sounds generic because the brief was generic. CASE is the four-part brief I use so AI works from my frameworks, my standards, and my voice instead of the average.

Article Summary An AI visibility audit measures whether AI assistants name a firm when buyers ask for help, which sources they cite to justify it,...

Wikidata had five Michel Fortins before I added mine. An actor, a mathematician, a politician, an archeologist, a dentist. AI can't recommend a name it can't place. Here's how I fixed that, and what it taught me about brand memory.

Rankings can look healthy while pipeline drifts. The Triple-P Model reads visibility in three layers, Presence, Prominence, and Performance, and the AI era just changed the units to claims, coverage, and demand.

Most companies that think they need more marketing actually need better marketing leadership. Here's what a fractional CMO does about it, and why the AI-fluent, multi-discipline version matters more than ever.

Power Positioning isn't a marketing tactic. It's the strategic framework I've built over 35 years and $3B+ in revenue to help growth-stage firms stop competing on price and start owning a category. Here's the full framework.

AI answers now settle most searches before a click happens. The visitors who still arrive are worth more, not less. SOME is the four-move framework I teach to become the source AI cites.

Paste your homepage into an AI tool and ask for a three-sentence summary. Do the same for five competitors. If the six summaries are interchangeable, you have a description, not a position. Here's the fix.

Michel Fortin argues positioning isn't a tagline. It's a company-wide operating decision (which buyer you're built to close, what proof you can defend) that marketing, sales, product, and hiring all inherit. His FAME pillars operationalize it.

Branding and brandifying differ. Branding decorates what already exists; brandifying names something into existence so it can be owned. I've done the latter for 35 years. Here's the line, the move, and why category-claiming firms must brandify.

Most audits produce reports. The IDEAL framework produces clarity. Here's the five-step diagnostic loop I use to run growth audits and positioning diagnostics, and how AI amplifies every stage.

AI cannot represent you if you never gave it enough of you to work with. This is the Context Vault I built to feed AI my frameworks, stories, voice, and IP so the output comes back wearing my fingerprints, not the industry mean.

Consulting firms grow through authority, not demand generation. Most fractional CMO playbooks are built for product companies and miss what actually holds a consulting firm back. Here is what the work looks like when it is done properly, why the standard playbook fails, and when the fit is right.

The smallest visible flaw sets the ceiling on how buyers judge everything else about your brand. This is the ketchup principle, the psychology underneath it, and how to make it work for you instead of against you.

A fractional executive is a senior leader who owns one part of your revenue system part-time, on retainer, and stays accountable for the outcome. Most companies hire the title they think they need (a CMO, CGO, or CSO) when the real seam that is broken sits somewhere else in the system. The role you need is an output of the diagnosis, not the input. Hire the seat after you find the leak, not before. The work I do first with every company is the diagnosis, and the seat we land on is often not the one they called about.

The shift to AI search did not invent a new set of content rules. It enforced the rules Google has been trying to enforce for the better part of a decade. The expert content that wins AI citation in 2026 is the content that should have been winning Google rankings since the Helpful Content Update in 2022. The operators who built to the principle rather than to the algorithm have a four-year head start. The operators who optimized against the algorithm are rebuilding for the third time.

There are two ways to use AI in an expert-led practice. One gives you speed. The other gives you leverage. The AI Amplifier model uses the 4S framework (Search, Sell, Serve, Sustain) and the CASE prompt discipline to compound an executive or founder's positioning instead of diluting it. Speed runs out. Leverage compounds.

Google's EAT 1.0 was the four signals the algorithm could measure: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. The problem in 2026 is that AI passes the surface test. EAT 2.0 stacks the human layer the framework was never asked to measure. Empathy, Authenticity, Transparency. These three are what authority now compounds on, and they are the move AI cannot imitate.

Most growth fixes sold today are plumbing. Pipelines, attribution, dashboards. Here's why the leverage sits upstream, in the position that decides whether anyone enters your funnel, and why AI makes it matter more.

A fractional CGO (Chief Growth Officer) owns the unified growth engine across marketing, sales, and retention. Here's how the role differs from a CMO, CRO, or CSO.

Every wave of technology triggers a counter-demand for human connection. AI is no different. Here's the framework I use to help companies balance automation with authenticity.

Most board-level AI conversations focus on cost savings and efficiency. The better conversation is about positioning, risk, and competitive advantage. Here's how to frame it.

Most marketing hires don't fail because of the person. They fail because of the role definition, the missing architecture, or the altitude mismatch. Here's how to avoid the same mistake twice.

The playbooks that drove growth for the past decade have quietly stopped producing results. Here are the three I see failing most often and what's replacing them.

Most fractional CMO searches focus on credentials and references. The better filter is strategic fluency. Here's a practical framework for evaluating whether a fractional CMO can actually solve your growth problem.

Most boards treat growth as a marketing problem or a sales problem. It's neither. Here's what I've seen go wrong at the board level and how the best companies fix it.

Companies over-index on charisma when hiring senior leadership. The fractional model demands a different profile: someone who diagnoses before they prescribe and listens before they lead.

Most consultants start with solutions. The best fractional executives start by reading the business through five diagnostic lenses before they prescribe anything.

When a strong offer underperforms, the culprit is usually the audience, not the price, message, or funnel. Effective targeting answers two distinct questions in order: Fit (who the buyer actually is) and Placement (where they can be reached). The Bullseye Method maps Placement as three concentric rings around the same ideal buyer. In 2026 the scarce resource is attention, not budget, and in enterprise the buyer often splits across three roles that sit in different rings. Get both reads right, in that order, and the downstream metrics fall into line.

How a company treats its guarantee reveals more about its growth maturity than most leaders realize. The strongest companies don't minimize risk. They absorb it.

Most marketing messaging fails not because of bad writing but because of broken architecture. Here's how I diagnose and fix messaging systems as a fractional CMO.

Most messaging fails not because it's poorly written, but because it doesn't match how your buyer actually processes information. Here's the framework that fixes that.

Doubt kills more deals than weak offers. FORCEPS is a seven-category proof framework that systematically removes skepticism from every stage of the buyer's journey.

35 years in marketing, a bankruptcy at 21, a drum kit, and one guiding principle. Here are 10 things most people don't know about Michel Fortin.

From bankruptcy at 21 to fractional C-suite executive. The career story behind how I developed my approach to positioning and organic growth, and the losses that shaped it.

Competitive intelligence isn't a research task you hand off. It's one of the most direct inputs into positioning decisions. Here's the framework I use to read a competitive landscape before making any strategic recommendation.

Authority architecture is a deliberate system for building credibility signals that search engines, AI platforms, and buyers all recognize. Here's how the system works and why it compounds.

Most businesses still optimize around keywords as a primary signal. But search has fundamentally changed. Here's why intent, not keywords, should drive your content strategy.

Most companies have content but no content strategy. Here's how I build content systems that connect to revenue, from architecture to distribution to maintenance.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Here's what it costs, what it gives, and how the same traits that made conventional work exhausting became the foundation of how I operate as a fractional executive.

Most buyer journeys break because companies skip stages. QUEST is the diagnostic framework I use to find where the journey falls apart and how to rebuild it.

Most messaging misreads the buyer. OATH reads two things, how aware they are and how willing they are to act, so your message meets them where they are.

I used to price by the hour, and the timesheet ran every client relationship. Here's how the three consulting pricing models compare, what each signals, and why the package is the position.

Most growth strategies focus on tactics. But the businesses that grow fastest invest in brand first. Three pillars, Awareness, Authority, and Affinity, create the compounding effect that turns expertise into market leadership.

Most companies use AI as a content factory. Expert-led businesses need something different: AI that amplifies their actual expertise instead of replacing it with generic output.

Most companies that plateau don't have a marketing problem or a sales problem. They have a strategy problem. Here's what a fractional CSO does about it.

Rankings don't equal revenue. Here's how I approach organic visibility as a strategic growth lever, not a technical checklist, and why that distinction changes everything.