Dave Burnett

Toronto

About Dave Burnett

Dave Burnett is an AI entrepreneur, investor, and digital marketing strategist who has spent more than 25 years building and scaling businesses online. He’s best known as the founder of AOKMarketing.com and PromotionalProducts.com, and as co‑founder of Achievers.com (originally I Love Rewards), which was acquired in 2015 in a deal valued at roughly $110 million.
From Toronto, Canada, Dave now focuses on AI-driven SEO, paid media, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)—helping brands show up accurately in search results, AI answers, and assistant-style tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Early entrepreneurial spark

Dave studied business at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he launched one of his first ventures: B&P Management Group, a liquor and beer sampling company that hired dozens of students and taught him how to sell, manage people, and handle logistics.
Shortly after graduation, he founded what would become PromotionalProducts.com, building a promotions and branded merchandise company at a time when most sales were still door‑to‑door and local.

From early SaaS to major exit

In the early 2000s, Dave co‑created the concept behind I Love Rewards, later rebranded as Achievers.com, an employee recognition and engagement platform that helped companies reward and retain top talent. The company evolved into a major enterprise SaaS vendor and was ultimately acquired in 2015 for $110 million USD.

The recession, a crisis, and a pivot to digital

When the 2008 global financial crisis hit, corporate marketing budgets were slashed, and Dave’s promotional products business suddenly found itself losing roughly $70,000 per month.

Instead of shutting down, he went all‑in on digital:

  • Acquired around 3,000 domain names across North American cities and verticals
  • Launched about 500 lead‑generation websites targeting specific local searches
  • Learned SEO by necessity and turned those sites into a major source of inbound business.

As competitors started asking how he was outranking them, Dave formalized that expertise into an agency—AOK Marketing.

AOK Marketing & the rise of AI-driven SEO

AOK Marketing began as a search-focused agency, then expanded into Google Ads, paid social, and full-funnel optimization. Over time, Dave and his team shifted from “ranking websites” to building measurable growth systems that connect marketing activity to sales outcomes.
In the mid‑2020s, Dave became one of the clearer voices on how AI and large language models were changing search itself—moving from ten blue links to conversational answers. He popularized the idea of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) as a framework for earning presence inside AI-generated responses, not just traditional SERPs.

Credentials & Recognition

  • Work
    • An Opportunity Knocks