Latest / Amplify Your Marketing Message with Christine Campbell Rapin / 179 - AI Search & the Death of Guesswork: Winning Digital Strategy for 2026 and Beyond
Transcript
- 0:03If you are a B2B service based business owner and you are
- 0:06looking to gain more clients, create more impact and more
- 0:09revenue in your business, TuneIn to amplify your marketing
- 0:13message with Christine Campbell Rappin.
- 0:15Every week we're going to take you through how to build an
- 0:17audience of buyers, mastering your marketing message and
- 0:20making offers. Welcome back everybody to a new
- 0:24episode. I am excited to introduce our
- 0:26guest today. We all are a little rattled
- 0:31around AI and if you're a business owner, you're also
- 0:34wobbling in terms of what will happen as it relates to being
- 0:38found by your next client. And can we actually embrace the
- 0:42guests work or say, not on my watch, let's kick that to the
- 0:48curb and actually create a winning strategy so that we can
- 0:51continue to see that real waterfall effect of dream leads
- 0:55finding us showing up and saying, I love what you're
- 0:58doing. I think I need that result.
- 1:00Tell me more about your services.
- 1:01So I'm super excited to introduce our guest today.
- 1:04This is an element that's coming all the way across the pond.
- 1:06So 2 super fun for that. It's fun to walk through my own
- 1:09storyline of the UK accent. Please welcome Adam Hammer Dash
- 1:14to our show. Super excited to have you here.
- 1:16Welcome, welcome, welcome. Great.
- 1:18Thank you, Christine. Thank you for having.
- 1:19Me absolute pleasure. You've been at this game quite
- 1:22awhile and you believe that every business has its own
- 1:27obligation to build a digital asset.
- 1:29So talk to me about this concept that you said to me you have to
- 1:33have an AI shadow and you have to manage it.
- 1:35What does that mean? And start me at the beginning.
- 1:37Yeah, sure. So I mean, I think you know, for
- 1:40if we break it right down to the most simplest of formats, you
- 1:43know, we do a lot of SEO, search engine optimization, search,
- 1:46it's probably more accurate to say search everywhere
- 1:49optimization. Now, obviously with the, the
- 1:52emergence of AI search and, and all the, the AI platforms, what
- 1:57seems to be happening. So traditionally what used to
- 2:00happen is you would make a branded search about a
- 2:03particular business and say, Hey, I'm interested in this,
- 2:05this particular business. Tell me more about that.
- 2:07And you go to their website or you'd make a non branded search.
- 2:10So we do most of our work in the hotel and hospitality sector.
- 2:13So it might be, you know, hotels in New York that you search for
- 2:17and that's a non branded search and you get a hot load of
- 2:19offers. What, what tends to happen or
- 2:23what previously happened is you'd rather pay for some ads to
- 2:27try to get that visibility when people are making those
- 2:30searches, or you would invest in like search engine optimization
- 2:35to, to appear in the Page 1 and, and get a really high organic
- 2:38positioning. What's, what's different now is
- 2:41that sort of this bit in between and I, I kind of like to refer
- 2:44to it as your AI shadow. And it's like an interpretation
- 2:47of your brand. So this can take many different
- 2:50forms. It could be on ChatGPT, it's a
- 2:52summary of your, your business on Google.
- 2:55It could be an AI overview, or it could feature in Google AI
- 2:59mode or any other other platform.
- 3:02But the key distinction is that as a business, as a brand you
- 3:07own, you've worked hard probably to own your digital assets.
- 3:12So you've, you've built your website, you've curated your
- 3:14social media feed and you've optimised aggregator listings,
- 3:18if that's relevant for your, for your sector.
- 3:22The, the, the new AI shadow is not something you own, but
- 3:26increasingly it's the thing that customers are seeing before they
- 3:30even get to any of that other stuff that you've worked hard to
- 3:33create. So it's almost like a
- 3:35combination of your online reputation, your unique selling
- 3:40points of your business or your product.
- 3:42And as and as sort of a, an impartial critique, as if, as if
- 3:47you're a restaurant, like a, like a journalist has come and,
- 3:50and, and experience your, your, your dining and has given a sort
- 3:53of impartial critique about your, about your product.
- 3:57That's all kind of wrapped into one.
- 3:59And the problem is, is that sometimes that's really great
- 4:02and, and very favourable and other times it's not.
- 4:06And that's where I think a lot of businesses need to be aware
- 4:10of what their AI shadow is and basically AI is saying about
- 4:13them. This is interesting because it's
- 4:16actually it's it's people are taking great weight from what I
- 4:20hear in the opinions of others, which has always been true.
- 4:23Social proof is a huge part of getting to yes fast with a
- 4:27client. Because while you can say you're
- 4:29great with the fact that somebody else actually says your
- 4:31grade has a bigger weight in many influential decisions.
- 4:35And you're saying that you have to be aware of what it is.
- 4:39And while you can curate it, you also should audit it because if
- 4:43it's not as glowing and that's it.
- 4:45So a biggest fear for people in the digital age is business
- 4:49owners is what happens if I find somebody spewing hate or leaving
- 4:54bad reviews or leaving an impression in the marketplace,
- 4:57that has huge implications for my business.
- 5:00And I wanna ask you, is there anything specific we can do to
- 5:06influence it or to start seeing First off, what's the first
- 5:10impression AI is offering in a response to a search?
- 5:16Yeah, I mean, I think the obvious thing is to to just what
- 5:19we traditionally say Google your own business.
- 5:22But now it's probably more accurate to say ChatGPT if
- 5:25that's such a term, you know, go ask an AI platform and and
- 5:31multiple ones. Obviously ChatGPT is, is growing
- 5:34in, in such high volumes and such rapid numbers.
- 5:38So go into ChatGPT and asks, ask it about your own brand brand,
- 5:43but also ask for a pros and cons list of I, you know, I'm
- 5:47thinking about working with this business.
- 5:49Tell me about the pros and cons of perhaps working with them
- 5:53and, and what is happening there is the, the, the large language
- 5:57model that you've, that you've asked is effectively scouring
- 6:01the Internet across all, everywhere that you're
- 6:05mentioned, whether you're mentioned in the press, your
- 6:07website, your social media, if you, if you're a sector that has
- 6:12independent review sites like obviously this to say, we work
- 6:15mostly with hotels. So you know, TripAdvisor,
- 6:17Google, all of the, you know, there's huge amounts of sort of
- 6:21online reputation. It's picking out all of those
- 6:23things and it's trying to find the good and the bad and provide
- 6:27it as an impartial summary. So really what you, you've got
- 6:31to kind of think of it like cat TPT in this instance is working
- 6:36on behalf of the, the person that made the prompt, the
- 6:40searcher, not your business. So they're gonna get kind of
- 6:42give you the warts and all version of your business.
- 6:45So I tell you that that's probably a good place to start
- 6:48in terms of influencing your AI shadow.
- 6:51There's there's, there's a whole load of stuff.
- 6:53There's almost like they always say with, with SEO or anything,
- 6:57but is ultimately there to drive more visibility.
- 6:59There's about 300 different dials that you can sort of talk
- 7:03here. Sure, right, which I won't give
- 7:05you 300, but I would say probably the, the most important
- 7:08thing right now is technical. So technical SEO.
- 7:11So you do a, a basic site, a site audit, which has obviously
- 7:14been around for a long time. You, you could have the most
- 7:18beautifully crafted, aesthetically pleasing high
- 7:21converting website, but it could be a bit of a mess in the back
- 7:25end in terms of all of the technical errors and warnings.
- 7:28So understanding those, the reason why those are important,
- 7:32they've always been important in SEO, but now they're carrying
- 7:36more weight because a lot of the times those technical errors and
- 7:39warnings are impeding the large language models from properly
- 7:44crawling or technically passing through your website to be able
- 7:48to understand what you're about. And, and the harder you make it
- 7:52for them, the less likely they are to recommend you and you
- 7:56know, and, and sort of crawl through your content.
- 7:58So certainly getting the technical stuff fixed.
- 8:01For example, if you've got duplicate meta descriptions on
- 8:04and various pages, it's a simple 1A meta description is the kind
- 8:08of the two or three sentence summary of your page that
- 8:11traditional search engines use to work out what your page is
- 8:14about. Having duplicate ones is just
- 8:17kind of making things really difficult for those robots, so
- 8:20you wanna make sure that that's that's fixed pretty quickly.
- 8:24So everybody listen up, the time of thinking that SEO doesn't
- 8:28matter because AI is coming around is over.
- 8:31You need to just pop that bubble of missed expectation.
- 8:34It is imperative you take ownership of your site and you
- 8:37do not need to go now become a YouTube expert in SEO.
- 8:40You hire people like Adams and his team to come and say, give
- 8:44me the goods, fix this fast and let's build from here because
- 8:48intentional reputation management is really important.
- 8:52Guys, you are for sure wanting to influence where you can and
- 8:57the best way you can influence two would you say you're gonna
- 8:59do? I mean, this is just a given.
- 9:01I think you should have a high standard of service and you
- 9:03should represent yourself on the level because truthfully, people
- 9:07have really good DPS meters these days and you want to build
- 9:11the people that you want to serve finding you.
- 9:16And now it's also stepped into a bigger way because AI's having a
- 9:20bigger influence. And do you think that because AI
- 9:27has become so important in the last few years and it's just
- 9:30gaining momentum and certainly in the entrepreneurs, I think
- 9:33were early adopters more than the general population.
- 9:35And so if you are serving B2B guys, really important that you
- 9:38step into this. Do you think that if you had SEO
- 9:41done three years ago that it's good enough given the AI changes
- 9:44or do you think that there is significant ways to revisit or
- 9:49need to revisit now? I would say that if you, if you
- 9:54made an investment three years ago and you sort of had it for a
- 9:57period of time and you've got to a level of visibility that you
- 10:01were happy with in terms of that return, that's good.
- 10:03There's a solid foundation, but there are so many fundamentals
- 10:07that have changed in the, the discipline of search engine
- 10:11optimization or search everywhere.
- 10:12Optimization, as I say, is probably more accurate that you
- 10:16need to look at it again. You know, we, we've had from
- 10:20Google enormous sort of seismic, forgive the hyperbole, but it's
- 10:24almost like in enormous algorithm updates that just
- 10:28change the whole search landscape.
- 10:30You know, it means that, you know, business websites that
- 10:34have been traditionally ranking really, really highly.
- 10:38I've just dropped it down to the to, to, to the bottom.
- 10:41You know, for example, one, the, the last big update we had in
- 10:452025, which was around August time, that was a big shift.
- 10:49We saw huge volatility. The one before that was March
- 10:522024. And to give you an example, The
- 10:55New York Times lost 8% visibility overnight.
- 10:58BBC News here in the UK lost 37% visibility just from that update
- 11:03and there was a correction and it worked it out.
- 11:06But ultimately those in my sector now have to work
- 11:09extremely hard to keep abreast of these new changes.
- 11:13And, and I think the point needs to be made around that.
- 11:17There's a big difference between, there's a subtle
- 11:19difference, I should say, between how traditional Google
- 11:24you, you optimize for traditional Google sort of Page
- 11:271 and how you optimize for platforms like ChatGPT.
- 11:32And there are certain things that carry a little bit more
- 11:34weight. So I would say, you know, one of
- 11:37the first things that any, any business owner or marketer
- 11:40should be looking at is, you know, getting a, a sort of a
- 11:43full technical audit of your website done having a look at
- 11:47some of those things that you might not just be aware of.
- 11:49You know, a lot of us spend time in B2B marketing, you know,
- 11:53focusing on, you know, the, the non-technical stuff, social
- 11:56media, whatever the outreach e-mail, whatever it is.
- 12:00But some of the technical stuff can get sort of hidden from us,
- 12:04and those things can really harm our businesses.
- 12:07So everyone listening here, there's a really good take away,
- 12:09which is not only if you haven't looked at this in a while, it
- 12:13should be a shame on you if you did keep it into that place of
- 12:18ignorance. But more importantly, I also
- 12:19want you to be thinking about your business long term.
- 12:21This means budget every year for an audit, budget every year for
- 12:27staying current. Because I know I saw the same
- 12:29thing come across from my inbox from somebody I believe is a
- 12:32very strong technical expert. And he was talking about some of
- 12:35those significant. What happens if you just become
- 12:37a secret? Even if you have this massive
- 12:40reputation, most small businesses don't have the same
- 12:43luxury of BC they don't have the same awareness globally in their
- 12:47destination. Which case he didn't come up and
- 12:49search, I would still know how to spell your name.
- 12:51I'd still be able to go into the search bar and find you.
- 12:55But if you're a small business, guys, don't make this infinitely
- 12:57harder. There's plenty of things in your
- 12:58business that are super hard, but hiring a technical expert
- 13:01and budgeting for it every year to say, let's keep in touch with
- 13:05what's going on on the technical aspect.
- 13:07And it doesn't have to be you. Again, do not become a YouTube
- 13:10expert in this. Go hire somebody who's great at
- 13:12it because your biggest thing is finding your next client.
- 13:14Never mistake that. You've heard me say this time
- 13:16and time again on the show as a business owner, as the CEO of
- 13:20your business, your number one responsibilities, the next
- 13:22client, not the current client. And you should be budgeting for
- 13:26this because I want to shift gears here and talk about the
- 13:29fact that this is moving, right? So we're saying budget, we're
- 13:32saying go ahead. We're saying you got to stay
- 13:34current. But how do you build a future
- 13:36proofed digital strategy? What is the fundamentals you're
- 13:39saying are non negotiable? Wake up, smell the coffee.
- 13:42Let's go. Yeah.
- 13:43So, so I think to to to cover some of the maybe crossing
- 13:47ground that we've already covered, but the the technical
- 13:49side of things is really important.
- 13:51So I like to refer to these as a sort of visibility anchors, sort
- 13:55of anchoring your website from, from getting the, the, the
- 13:58visibility it needs. So making sure that your, your,
- 14:00your, your site is technically sound.
- 14:02So that's, that's the first, I would say there is greater
- 14:05weight that needs to be put on your online reputation.
- 14:10I like to think of it like this. Every, every negative review
- 14:15that you've got about your business is now kind of working
- 14:20actively working against you like never before.
- 14:22You know, for, for consumer facing businesses like like the
- 14:25often the ones that we work in the hotel sector, obviously you
- 14:28know, every hotel's got hundreds or thousands of reviews and you
- 14:31know, our 4.5% of 4.5 stars out of five is still pretty good,
- 14:36but there's a whole load of negative stuff in there.
- 14:39So it's trying to find those sentiments.
- 14:40So for, for more bTB business owners, I would say, you know,
- 14:45pushing more good, more positive reviews to platforms like Google
- 14:51is really, really important. It's always been important, but
- 14:53there's just that extra onus on, you know, it's, it's carrying
- 14:57that extra weight. But I would also say, you know,
- 15:01content is content on your website is now, you know, again,
- 15:04more important than it perhaps it's ever been.
- 15:07A big question that often is asked of me is, you know, can we
- 15:10actually use AI, generative AI to create website copy, whether
- 15:15that be our main websites or, or logs or, or what have you?
- 15:18And, and the answer is actually, yes, you can do that.
- 15:21For a time, it was a big no, no. But Google has kind of come out
- 15:24and said, yeah, that that that's OK.
- 15:26But a big butt. And the the big butt is it's got
- 15:30to follow a certain framework. So what Google is sort of
- 15:33alluded to, the algorithm updates have been happening over
- 15:36the last year or two. Much of that has been about
- 15:39stopping the plethora of AI, poor quality AI content that is
- 15:46sort of submerged the Internet we all found.
- 15:50Vomited all over. The place well, exactly.
- 15:52I mean, do you remember those days when we first, you know,
- 15:54when you first tried chat to PT and you're like, Oh my God, like
- 15:57I could churn out 50 blogs today.
- 15:59This is nuts. You know, so lot of lot of
- 16:02website publishers and owners did that.
- 16:04And of course, you know, Google sort of working hard to make
- 16:07sure that the bad quality staff is not ranking.
- 16:09So that's where these big algorithm updates have come
- 16:12from. So you can use AI to generate
- 16:14generative AI to write these these blog pieces, but it has to
- 16:18follow the EA T framework, which in plain English is experience,
- 16:23expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
- 16:26So to give you a practice, give your listeners A practical
- 16:30example of this. You know, make sure your blogs,
- 16:33if you're doing blogs on the website, they are written and
- 16:36they appear from a real person, not just a faceless brand.
- 16:40Use stories, not just, you know, sort of generic stuff that
- 16:44you're talking about to say, Well, actually, you know, my
- 16:46experience in this particular topic is this.
- 16:49And you know, bringing those anecdotes, that's what it's
- 16:51really looking for. So, you know, I would say
- 16:55finally, the last thing is just making sure that you know, what,
- 16:58what used to happen with SEO is you, you'd pick your keywords
- 17:00and you say, I want to rank for that.
- 17:01So I'll write a content piece. Now that doesn't really cut it.
- 17:04It's more about topical authority.
- 17:06So you've kind of got to take a topic, think about every
- 17:09conceivable way that you could write about that topic and then
- 17:13make sure you're creating content that follows that ET
- 17:17framework and then interlinking. So it gets a bit intense.
- 17:21There's a, there's a lot to consider and business owners of,
- 17:24you know, it's, it's the new thing that you've got to find
- 17:26some budget for. But I would say, you know, given
- 17:29where we are at the moment, it's expected that AI search will
- 17:33surpass traditional search by 2028.
- 17:36So we need to be working now to make sure that we're staying
- 17:40visible when you know when this big shift comes.
- 17:44Personally, this, this, this makes my like anticipated
- 17:48butterflies lift because I've said this for to the rooftops
- 17:52and it's not been a popular opinion the last five years.
- 17:55It's shifting now, but I've said since the beginning, you've got
- 17:59to remember you get hired for your opinion.
- 18:01And the world had been in a place where opinions weren't
- 18:04really comfortable. We middle to the middle of
- 18:06mediocrity. And I said, remember when you
- 18:08were especially a small business, I said, yes, you do a
- 18:10thing, but how you do it, the lens in which you carry is what
- 18:14will make the person who is your person say yes.
- 18:17And So what I hear from this is, you know, if you're going to
- 18:20just be average or ordinary and talk about a general thing that
- 18:26doesn't serve the audience, that seeking it doesn't serve as sure
- 18:29for sure of the buyer. And if I can lean into this is
- 18:32my opinion on something, this is my expertise on something, this
- 18:35is a personal experience I've had.
- 18:37You will have a lot of airtime and you will win this world.
- 18:41Yes, in a combo of personal and AI.
- 18:45And to me, that's super exciting because I said all my clients
- 18:48never forget. You have to have an opinion on
- 18:51something because you're pulling through the 8 million people or
- 18:548 billion people on the planet. To the people that say if we
- 18:58have common values, I want to learn more about your service.
- 19:01But if you never tell me what your values are because you
- 19:03never share your opinion or your face, there's a trust deficit.
- 19:07And trust is the hardest decent AI, which is why I'm sort of
- 19:10applauding the learned language models by saying we've got to
- 19:14find a way to bring the human into this.
- 19:19And it's not doing a fabulous job, but it's getting better.
- 19:22And I think it's interesting you say 2028 is just around the
- 19:25corner. I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's,
- 19:29it's not gonna sort of it's gonna be a gradual scale between
- 19:32now and then. And those are the best
- 19:33predictions. But I think, you know, 2026, I
- 19:37think is, is going to be the biggest shift.
- 19:39I mean, probably every, everybody has said that in the,
- 19:42in the year prior to the to the following.
- 19:45But I think, you know, the way in which ChatGPT is opening up
- 19:50to apps for the first time in, in its history, which should be
- 19:55sort of coming mostly to to a global audience in early 2026.
- 19:59That means you know you. Book hotels, you can design
- 20:03stuff in Canva, you can do all manner of things right within
- 20:06the platform. So yeah, it's, it's gonna be a
- 20:09big change in every, every business needs to be ready.
- 20:11I sat last January in a room with somebody who was talking
- 20:15about the the already present capabilities of agentic AI and
- 20:19it was mind blowing. And I was like, it's also
- 20:21terrifying. But I'm like, I can't wait till
- 20:23the time where I as a human could talk as a human and say I
- 20:25need the following done and then watch it with her do it.
- 20:28And I was in a room just last month where we started to see
- 20:31it. And it's not that it hadn't
- 20:34existed, that it hasn't commercialized, been broadcast
- 20:37as available. And that's gonna speed and
- 20:39that's gonna be where 2026 comes into play.
- 20:42And so, you know, this is super exciting, but I love that it
- 20:45will take the guesswork out of it.
- 20:47And guys, you're going to take the guesswork out of it by
- 20:50saying it's a priority, I'll budget for it and I'll hire for
- 20:52it. So as I lead to that, I always
- 20:54want to ask every guest that comes on to our platform what's
- 20:56working for you right now to bring clients into your business
- 21:00and to see that gain of momentum from some of the cool things
- 21:05that you have expertise on. Well, I mean, I think there's
- 21:08probably twofold for me in my, my agency.
- 21:11The 1st is visibility. So we've obviously we, you know,
- 21:15we, we practice what we preach. We, we, we treat ourselves as
- 21:19our own client on what we, on our specialism.
- 21:22So we're actively working to improve our visibility across
- 21:26traditional and AI search. Certainly that one.
- 21:28But also I think for me it's, you know, speaking this year,
- 21:31I've, I've, I've travelled to, I think four or five different
- 21:34countries to do keynote presentations.
- 21:37We've done more LinkedIn live the not care to remember, you
- 21:42know, just just sharing our thought leadership around, OK,
- 21:46we, we see what's happening in the marketplace.
- 21:48This is where I think businesses need to be aware of and you
- 21:51know, and, and, and banging that drum and, you know, every once
- 21:56in a while someone who, you know, come put their hand up and
- 21:59say, that was really interesting.
- 22:00Can we talk? So for sure those two things are
- 22:03really working for us at the moment.
- 22:05Well, and speaking is is something that I can't duplicate
- 22:08because it is a real human delivery and it is I think for
- 22:11sure the fastest path to cash. So I applaud you both.
- 22:14So talk to us about you've got an opportunity of something
- 22:16that's launching in the new year and people want to know about it
- 22:18and get on the wait list and be involved.
- 22:20Tell us all about it. Yeah, great.
- 22:22Yes, we've, we've developed our, aligned with our conversation,
- 22:25we've developed a, a platform called Score plan.
- 22:28I think what I'm very mindful, I could talk for days on this, as
- 22:32you probably gathered, but the, the idea that AI search is
- 22:36coming, you know, everybody's got their own ideas.
- 22:38Is Google gonna die? Is SEO gonna die?
- 22:41There's so much noise around what brands have to have to
- 22:45actually do. So we thought we, we set about
- 22:48trying to simplify that message. So we the the platform will
- 22:52ultimately give you one simple score and one simple plan on
- 22:55what to action. So it's gonna find that score
- 22:58from about 30 different data points that are are all aligned
- 23:02with how these large language models and traditional search
- 23:05are showing you in on the Internet.
- 23:09So give you one simple score and then a sort of a prioritized
- 23:12action plan. So we're we're launching the
- 23:14platform in 2026 and we've got a wait list live right now at
- 23:18school plan dot AI and we're going to be offering it for free
- 23:22to a handful of first customers to trial the crack form.
- 23:27Show us what you think. And we put whole loads of value
- 23:30and the free version too. So yeah, go to school plan dot
- 23:33AI to to join the wait list and we'll we'll keep you abreast of
- 23:36those changes. OK, this is the easiest
- 23:38invitation to not make this complicated, so I want you to
- 23:41take advantage. You get the link down in the
- 23:43chat below. I want to make sure you connect
- 23:46and follow and look to hire this service because I think it is
- 23:51imperative that you focus where you're great and you recognize
- 23:55the importance of the technical back end.
- 23:57It is going to be more and more important than ever before and I
- 24:01know this with certainty. You've got great things to do.
- 24:03You got people that need to find you and let's get you found out.
- 24:06It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on our platform,
- 24:09guys, This is about AI search and winning with it.
- 24:14Step forward, say yes, grab that resource.
- 24:17Look at that as a key critical part, part of your success
- 24:22story. Thanks for being on our show.
- 24:23Today. Great.
- 24:24Thanks, Christine. That's a wrap on another amazing
- 24:30episode of Amplify Your Marketing Message with me, your
- 24:32host, Christine Campbell Rappin. Be sure to subscribe on your
- 24:36favorite podcast platform so you don't miss another great
- 24:39episode. And be sure to visit
- 24:42christinecampbellrappin.com/podcast to get a free resource on how to
- 24:47master your marketing message. We'll see you.