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The Truth About GEO: Why AI Search Runs on PR · The Crowded Market

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Did you know that LinkedIn is now the second most cited source for AI relating to B2B sales?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Today I sit down with Joe Wright, who is the director of Strategy and Insights for Ambitious PR.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Today Joe sits down and tells us why AI has made PR the most important channel in B2B marketing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: PR is now thriving even more because of the integration of AI and specifically AI Search, actually, but I don't think a lot of people in the industry truly know how far that could go.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the people who are going to succeed are the people who pivot quickest.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Mutcrack came out and said around they they did a test for a long time.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's between 80 and 89% of citations are from media sources.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's huge.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Only 0.3 from paid, but that is a huge number, right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Between 80 and 89%.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the crux of the importance of it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the uh that's the headline.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: You need to get in the weeds though, because you can watch this episode on YouTube as well as listen on all major podcasting platforms.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy the show.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, mate.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Good to be here.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Big question.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll go a little bit into your backstory after, but is PR dead?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Good question, Luke.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I work in PR, I've got to say no.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the actual answer is no.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's been a lot of change in the industry, and this isn't going even back the last year, it's going back the last five, ten years.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Lots have changed, especially even since I've come into the industry.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but just like with everything, and I'm gonna say the main buzzword, which we're probably gonna talk about for most of this podcast, is you know, AI has changed industries across the board.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely changed PR, and people were skeptical when it first came in, especially from the job perspective.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, something that is incredible at writing, and for a profession that is mainly based around writing, you know, there was obviously um trepidations about that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, I think the opposite is true.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: PR is now thriving even more because of the integration of AI and specifically AI search, actually.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the main reason why is because now AI answer engines, LLMs, what they're reading to give you the answers to the prompts that you're putting in is more from the not media coverage, earn media coverage, and that's the core of our profession.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in a good spot actually.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, somehow it's it's pivoted PR.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people think of PR and they go, newspapers and magazines still and stuff like that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Long lunches with journalists, cup of glasses.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The good old days, the glory days, some of them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I was born earlier because that sounds great.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: The very very you know madmen-esque of um marketing, but it has pivoted in a way, so it's interesting.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: So AI has resurged copy almost, not that it was dying, but the energy for it has come back.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we've got to go back a little bit, right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because the the main change that came was basically the contraction of press and and and publications having to make lots of layoffs, lots of difficulties with keeping um journalists on staff, and basically the pool of who you could pitch your news story to to get your company's story told got a lot more difficult because there's less journalists writing less stories under a lot more time pressure and a lot more pressure to get clicks, so that's where you get those more salacious headlines coming in.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's still the case now, but because of the renewed importance of earned media coverage for AI answers, it it's now changed the game completely.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: You said it's pivoted, I said I think it's pivoting.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's we're still in a very much transitional period.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: New research is coming out all the time, people are trying to work things out all the time.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Google just released its biggest algorithm update in the past 25 years today, and that's completely changed the game.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now AI mode is going to be your default for Google.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Google's basically no longer a search engine, it's becoming an answer engine.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's changing all the time, yeah.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we in the PR industry are pivoting because we're still learning.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we know that we've got this like special source now, we know the importance of the product we've got, but I don't think a lot of people in the industry truly know how far that could go.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the people who are going to succeed are the people who pivot quickest, i.e., start adjusting your media strategy to you know leverage the greatest power that we now have, arguably, within the industry.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: A hypothetical question.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think would have happened within PR if LLMs and AI didn't happen?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you want your business to have a podcast that looks like this, then you need to work with us to produce it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: To work with us, link is in the description.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you know, just like with any industry, there's a level of resilience.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like PR is two things, it's brand awareness and it's reputation.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And companies, you know, across the board still need that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: That hasn't changed.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, PR isn't just media coverage.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ambitious, we you know, a fully integrated agency.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: We do the whole digital suite, content creation, video, like, you know, we're storytellers ultimately for our clients, and whatever medium we tell that story through, you know, it changes and depends.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, PR would have would have carried on as it is, but it now has that big potential to grow.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, economic forces aren't helping with that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a Gardner report out recently, um, which has got the PR world talking a lot that said PR budgets are basically going to double over the next two or three years.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hasn't happened yet.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Gardner probably spent hundreds of thousands of millions to get that stat, but you know, there are positive noises now about the the accelerated growth that we can now experience, especially from a budget perspective.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because look, we're getting people come to us all the time, solo marketeers who work, you know, relatively junior in their roles, but they're the most senior marketing person, coming to us and saying, we just heard about this thing called GEO.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: What on earth is it?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, can you help us?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's another thing on their plate at the moment.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So from that perspective, it's also an opportunity.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime one of our clients has a problem in a marketer, it means we can offer a solution, and and that's the place that we really want to sit.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, interesting.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh for anyone who doesn't know Joe, you're from Ambitious PR.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um a company that's very well known in Bristol, I think, um, is rightly to say, and you know, throughout the UK, you work with a massive range of clients, B2B, some B2C or not?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, B2C.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Mainly B2B specialists, yeah, exactly.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think a question I also want to ask is the world is noisy and getting noisier.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: How do you what are you doing for clients that's like trying to stand out?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you do you feel like things just get swallowed as soon as they're released, you know?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so from a media perspective, so this is why AI has had a slightly negative effect on PR industry, especially for journalists inbox, basically, because everyone now, quite rightly, I would do the same thing, thinks they can do it themselves.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because just like with AI in in our personal lives, you know, we're everyone's experimenting with it, seeing what things that they can do they don't necessarily have to pay for anymore.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you might not go to a travel agent because you can get ChatGPT to give you an incredible travel itinerary and sort out all your flights for you if you give it the right prompt.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally, people who have tight budgets, as is, you know, against what Gardner's saying, but you know, budgets are tight at the moment, they're thinking, look, you know, I can get I can get AI to write my press release, I can get AI to give me the top 10 journalists within my specific sector.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can even get it to write the cover email and and probably schedule the email out as well.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But all that's meant is that the journos inboxes are completely inundated now.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that element of trust has come back in, and that's again another kind of plus factor for working in the industry.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Having a knowledge of who the journalists are, having a relationship through pitching stories before, but also just knowing really what they want to see and actually not leaning on AI to write our press releases.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's not something we do as an agency.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: We might help it use it to help us for ideation and things like that, or spitballing ideas, but you know, we've been doing this a long time.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: We know how to write a press release that journalists is going to take interest in, we know the stats that they're gonna want to see.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you'd now get in the situation where Journo wakes up, looks at his inbox, and it's twice as full as it was a year ago.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they might see you know, my name or one of my colleagues' names in there and think they've pitched me a good story before.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Representative it actually means that we kind of stand out a little bit more.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we've actually had a lot of prospects come to us and say, Look, we've tried, we've put out a release, didn't hear anything back, crickets, we used AI to write it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help us?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, and all it takes is an email, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's we're like, Well, yeah, we can.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: You have sort of broken the news, so it's gonna be more difficult, but you know, it's it's just kind of a trend that we're seeing anyway.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Also with news as well, because a lot of this is is is about news and business news and business change and what these businesses are doing that's different or something new that they've released, news becomes old much quicker now.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like within seconds sometimes of things happening, whereas like 20 years ago you'd hear about this scandal or a business doing this thing, it would be the talk of the town for months to come, and it's just not the case anymore, isn't it?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, do you find that you have to, as PR exists, the volume that you have to produce has just massively increased?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I assume AI must be helping with that if if that is the case.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: To any sense, so uh news is the bedrock, what we're putting out.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, we can create news for a business, um but news isn't the thing that lasts, like you say.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thought leadership is what lasts.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Company X could expand into Y new market, and that's potentially a press release, or make a massive new influential hire, or start turning over double what they did the year before.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: That might get some cut through from a news perspective, and that's that's helpful.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: But establishing Company X as the true thought leader on a specific topic, something that's based in true insight that which we know is important to their customers, that's what lasts, and that's actually what's going to drive sales in the long run.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not I mean, media is just one small part of that, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't become a thought leader just by getting trade media articles out there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you need to like walk the walk.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a time where you could to an extent now, but that was the cool it's so holistic right now.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: You you have you have to hit all of those different channels and metrics, you know, you guys in video production, yeah.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's made your job so much more important now because that's how people consume media, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: You must have seen a change to that to an extent.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, massively.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's I mean, you know, going back to what you said earlier, it's it's it it's trust.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And 100%.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think there was the golden age of the work and it was similar to you.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: There was the golden age of journalism where there was the PR, they'd get a few emails every week, and it wouldn't be too crazy, and it'd be from three PR agencies that they know.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you'd kind of there was something that happened in the world.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: They had a time to investigate the story.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now inboxes are flooded.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And LinkedIn was like that, it was like there was a point of golden age where it eradicated the little black book.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fine, suddenly you could go and find that person that worked for that company and drop them a message directly.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, what they might be in Glasgow, but it doesn't matter.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter who you know anymore.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like you can just find them, be like, hey, yeah, you know, this business.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And when LinkedIn was first started getting popular in the UK, you could do that, and that's how I built my business.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just like by dropping people a line and being like, Love it, I've made this stuff for this company.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: We need to do the same for you.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they'd be like, Well, thank you, Luke, thank you for getting back to me.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is so great.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you you go, I've cracked it, I've cracked marketing, I don't need to do anything else.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: All I can do is message people all day.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually the world cottoned onto this kind of secret, and now everybody's and now everybody's LinkedIn messages are swamped, everybody's news feeds are swamped, everyone's sharing things a little bit.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: People see it spam now, don't they?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: You get a message on LinkedIn and it's like, what the hell is this now?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it is going back again.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: The little black book's coming back into fruition where it does matter who you know and who knows your name.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: LinkedIn will help with that because I think if you share content regularly and your name is in front of people, um, and the same with PR, if your name's in front of people a lot, eventually they're gonna create a subconscious association whenever they need that thing.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Problem is it's hard to measure that, but it is very hard to measure.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: But it's if you stopped it, people would notice.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the same thing that you did for your business.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you pivoted and thought, I need to actually show a leadership position in this industry, I need to be saying something bold, I need to be saying something different, I need to build my team, you know, and that has helped you then build that trust and build that inner circle and it and it goes further.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Gonna have to sell you some PR as well.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Speaking of LinkedIn, you actually, just before we started this chat, you you um said something quite important because the work of your PR, yeah, it's not just now for people to read the articles, as you said, it's for to feed into the LLMs, isn't it?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: As well.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Massive part of it.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of your job.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Would you say would you say that a lot of the PR that you do for clients, a lot of these articles aren't even being seen in the physical format, but they are aiding the results of AI.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's happening across the board with search.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So zero-click search is a huge thing.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: People aren't people are visiting websites, they're visiting them a lot less.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: You still obviously need a company website and needs to be all up to date because the LLMs can pull from that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the way search is going now is there's a lot less clicks in the journey.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: People are getting everything they need from you know your your AI overview box or just going straight into a LLM to start with.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So at the end of the day, we need to be thinking in this way.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: The good thing is, is we we've been doing all of this stuff the whole time, you know?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's about putting a new lens over it, especially if that is our client's objective.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always our client's objective, you know, but if it is their objective, we want to we've noticed an issue, we're not coming up in AI search, then we put a lens over our media relations, we put a lens over what we're doing on LinkedIn.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: That lens is baked into the strategy.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the insight, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: The insight is we've done some research, we can see the prompts that you need to appear for, that your competitors are and you aren't, the best of lists, the industry trends lists that people are searching for before they make that purchasing decision, especially if you're in procurement or something like that.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: These are the sort of deep research you're going to be looking at.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you aren't, we can put a lens over our media relations to say, you know, we want to target X, Y prompt.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to adjust our strategy from a media perspective to try and hit those marks, basically.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you like the way this podcast looks, then we can do this for you.
• 14:30
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• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Link in the description.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's weird because we're all making loads of stuff, i.e.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: websites, articles.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And some of it's not even being seen, but it is in another way, exactly.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: In another format.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like pages, there's you know, millions of words that aren't being read, but they're being cited.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: The next revolution needs to come when people actually start how to work out how to actually properly measure and track this.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's loads of tools out there.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of them are good, but they're still in their infancy.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the metric piece, is what needs we need to drill down into a lot.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm gonna hit you with some kind of statistics now.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Go, I think.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I love this, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously I've been reading up for the podcast.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's just all in my head.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um Mark Rat came out and said around, well, they've they did a test for a long time, but it's between 80 and 89% of citations are from media sources, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's huge.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Only 0.3 are from paid, yeah.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then there's kind of other sources within the from paid as in like ads, anything like that.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously the paid industry is in a difficult pace place at the moment, they're pivoting as well and they're adjusting and they're looking at AI search, but that is a huge number, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Between 80 and 89 percent.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the crux of the importance of it.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's the uh that's the headline.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: You need to get in the weeds though, because it matters different LLMs take in different citations, different LLMs cite at different rates as well.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, Chat GPT relies really heavily on Wikipedia.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so weird that.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, but does your company have a Wikipedia page?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you know, and so you have to start thinking, no, don't exactly.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should start on but now agencies are looking at how they can work with Wikipedia in an ethical way to you know get tell their business story on that profile.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um how would you unethically work with Wikipedia?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, that's another podcast.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is it interesting?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go into that next time.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's been lots of controversy over Wikipedia, especially in the industry, with agencies basically like putting things in that shouldn't be in there.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you ever go on the comment, if you go on the edit page of Wikipedia, it's it's some of the most entertaining stuff out there.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: People are obsessed with editing Wikipedia.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some people, you look log their hours, it's like you think you've got a lot of hours playing FIFA.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, these guys are I'm gonna do this.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: These guys spend a large part of their free time editing and curating, you know, the internet's encyclopedia.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they will they will find you if you're trying to put something in there that shouldn't be in there, so you have to, you know, you have to do it in the right way.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, there's you know, if information is relevant and should be on there, then it can be.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: But just going back to my point there, so like Gemini, for example, looks at Reddit a lot, so that it it depends about the cited sources, so you you need to get into the into the weeds of it a little bit to tailor your approach.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: LinkedIn is now really important, yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So which is great news because LinkedIn didn't used to be as important for SEO, it had a place, but it now is seemingly getting a lot more important for GEO and AR optimization, especially after even just the past couple months.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So now people have been quoting that it's for B2B perspective, it's cited as much as 25% of the time, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, like longer form articles are now coming back into prominence.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's like trends, it's like skinny jeans, baggy jeans, like LinkedIn articles were like everything when I first started working in PR.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then they were nothing, and now they seem to be coming back into fashion again because what the search engines are looking for is that longer form depth of content with authority expertise baked in that it can like reference because then it's confident that it's giving the right response to you know the people who are using their platforms.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so now it's becoming really important showing that expertise, particularly on personal pages, not so much on company pages, but all the more important for thought leaders within your company to be having a profile, having a personal brand, posting on LinkedIn, posting long form, in-depth, actual articles based on expertise, not just you know, a couple of lines and and fluff basically.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's weird that you're we uh you're making all this stuff and um it'll never be seen necessarily, but it will aids to it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we're all still making websites and we're all still making articles and we're all still doing this, and the the biggest impact isn't it even being looked at and acted upon, but more so yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it isn't it, isn't it?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Websites are gonna be vintage soon.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: But they're always gonna be needed because because AI needs to cite something.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's so weird, it's such a weird time.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: It is very weird.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like the minute so I don't am I wrong in saying this, but like do any LLMs directly cite transcripts on any video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean they could do if they're public if it's publicly accessible, it could be I think that's where we feel safe is that video is always going to be want to be watched.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like not everybody just wants to read something all the time.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and video could I mean it you know, I actually don't know the depths of this, but I bet you video always start be using it as a source if it's not already.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that could be another way, and that gives you that direct click through, watch the whole video.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um also video now for paid, for paid ads, paid ads are really struggling, so they need more dynamic, better quality ads.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that spend has to go up to get the actual quality of content higher because they can't rely so much on just kind of your more generic avatorials on you know PVC or LinkedIn because it's you know they're they're not cutting through as much.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I want to talk about this.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've got my notes here.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Caravans weekly.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now influencing AI search more than most national publications in its niche.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: You spoke about this to me on the R call, didn't you?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't even know if Caravans Weekly exists.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just I did a webinar a while ago and I made it up as an example.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um But this is a the point of this is super interesting, isn't it?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um niche trade outlets specifically.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, are are they growing in importance?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not they're not more important than the nationals, right?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, nationals still the gold standard, people still read the nationals, you know, that's not going away.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's reducing, but it's not going away.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when you say the nationals, you mean times tier one publications, you know, Daily Mail, even you know, Telegraph, Forbes, whatever.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Depend whatever you think about it, you know, it still gets eyeballs, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so LLMs have different factors of which they will check before they return a citation, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So size and reputability of the publication is will be one of them.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not that they've posted this stuff, but you know, what people have worked out through kind of research.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what it's also looking for is you you said it right, that niche expertise, so true authority on one specific topic.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, you know, if you had a trade publication, Caravans Weekly, that was just about caravans and been posting about caravans for you know 20 years, Gary, probably in his caravan writing the the articles for his publication, legend, he knows his stuff about caravans and AI thinks Gary, Gary knows his stuff.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's been writing about this for a long time, he's built an audience that is all focused on this one niche.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, if if my client, I can't think of any caravan brands, Volkswagen caravans, they met caravans.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe probably um, you know, if they get ref if they get mentioned in one of Gary's articles that's one are specific like product or feature or innovation that they've done, actually now maybe the readership of Caravans Weekly is twenty thousand a month or something.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could get one citation for Volkswartin that they put forward because they've they've been referenced in this super niche area.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that citation could be viewed 20,000 times a day.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's not trade media publications have always been important, especially in the B2B industry, because they shine a light on people who you know in quite niche, niche places.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but now they're becoming more powerful again because you're not just reaching that core, nerdy caravan audience, you might be reaching a lot more buyers who have just started thinking about buying a caravan for the first time.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: They might not be reading caravans weekly because they only thought about it in the shower yesterday that oh, I'm gonna retire in a few weeks, I'd love to buy a caravan.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, they're not they're not in the depths yet, they're not, you know, they're not they're not it's it that's where it brings that's the same as that's why it citing LinkedIn is really important to me because most everybody who has a personal profile on it, they are um like for me example, yeah.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: For me, for example, uh I talk all I talk about is pods, podcasts, and B2B and video within it and why how we can use it to actually create a destroy.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm known for just that thing, yeah, and AI's uh and LLM you know are citing me and looking at me.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, all he talks about is this.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, most people on my news feed would think, what an absolute waffler.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: But hey, I'm getting excited by LLMs now, you know what I mean?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because all that I'm known for is that.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: But how powerful is that, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Massive.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So not like you don't have to be Gary who's been writing about caravans and have a publication, you know, and and and have an actual media outlet.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can be an individual, you can be Steve, you just love caravans yourself and it's your passion, right?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you've been writing that about on your LinkedIn or you know, on your social media about you could now, you know, Steve could be cited as well.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, personal profile is now becoming more important, and you know, that's only going to continue.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's only been a fairly recent trade in LinkedIn, and I would caveat it to say, you know, the LLMs of what they return have already changed their mind quite a few times.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like Reddit has gone up and down in terms of it's how much it's been cited, so things can change again, but you've got to roll with the information that you're being given, you know, literally just today, basically.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Christ, mate.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is insightful, actually.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, mate.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's that sounds patronizing, it's not, I've always um I've got a little bit of a random question now.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and this is going to be for the marketeers who are potentially solo marketeers in B2B companies.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Work with a lot, yeah.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: If if I'm a B2B marketer, yeah, I've got no budget, I've got no PR agency relationship.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: What's the first thing I should do tomorrow?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: No budget to work with an agency, just yourself.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you can get if you can get$100 a month, 100 quid a month, you can get yourself a SEMrush one subscription.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: That will give you so SEMrush has traditionally been your um SEO optimization platform, keyword research, or everything you need for SEO.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: They now have an AI feature.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So for a if you get the upgraded package, you might need to squeeze the£100, you might even have to pay for it yourself, but you can then start to see a clear picture of where you're appearing in LLMs through search um for your brand across prompts, across geographies all around the world.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: It all starts with information.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can do your own research as well.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't have the money to do that, you could run some tests um just through putting in prompts and make a big spreadsheet, go on, you know, Gemini, go on Claude, go on ChatGBT, start mapping out, get AI to map out what are the key questions you think people are going to ask about my brand or my products.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Reverse engineer that, try and work out, do some maths, not my strong spot, yeah.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: But try and work out where you're appearing, where the gaps are, bench that mark that against your competitors, then start to think look, you know, how can I tailor my media strategy, my marketing strategy to try and hit where I'm missing.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not everything is about LLMs, right?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's growing, it's the most exciting thing in the industry right now, but it's not everything, but that is that's what I want to know.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: All starts with the insight, the information, need to know where you stand before you can build.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's oh how many businesses have upsold their packages to you can now get our AI extension for an extra£10 a month.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is actually interesting.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've never used SEMrush.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: We use a we do use an SEO agency, um, but I've never kind of it's been too much of a minefield for myself.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: It and it is it is a huge minefield, yeah.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very unique industry, actually, SEO and now GEO because you know Google puts out a statement this morning, it's just changed everything, I get it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what other industry can say that?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what we had um uh I had we had a guy from Google who came on one of our clients' podcasts.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh nice, he's an ex-Googler and he was like the classic case of we never Google never said that SEO was a thing.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, but the world has made a career out of it.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, yeah, they've got no SEO department in Google.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes they wind up people who work in SEO.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: I told you little Easter eggs in their release.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: But he was right, and he was like, No, we never said that SEO was a thing, but you know, and we don't have a department in Google, but like, yeah, loads of people have uh and it obviously it works, but it's just yeah, it's interesting, I thought.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um Joe, mate, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's been uh it's been actually really insightful, and I'm pleased I can already smell an episode too.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can't wait.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Mate, thanks for coming on.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers, Luke.