Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 566 | Zero-click SEO: How AI is disrupting the B2B buyer’s journey

Transcript

Ep. 566 | Zero-click SEO: How AI is disrupting the B2B buyer’s journey · The Prompt

0:00
Hey Vincent, really excited to have you for the second podcast
0:03
episode we're doing together today.
0:05
We want to tell everyone before this episode even publishes one
0:10
of the most surprising takeaways you've had from zero click
0:13
research that you've done. Yeah, that's really a good
0:17
point. And just over the past couple of
0:19
days, really profound I think is that Google search is not
0:24
declining, it's relatively flat, but it is not going down as you
0:29
would expect it to as ChatGPT and perplexity and clod start to
0:33
eat away at it. So the logical conclusion is
0:37
that people are using Google as they always have, but also
0:40
adding in ChatGPT, perplexity, clod, etcetera, which is that's
0:45
huge, right? You think about how people in
0:49
the B2B buying journey have always tried to do research,
0:52
understand what the challenge is, what the solutions are.
0:56
Now it's so fragmented, but it's all part of that B2B buying
1:01
journey. So yeah, anyone who's of the
1:04
mindset that Google is going down in trend and ChatGPT is
1:08
going up in trend simultaneously, that's
1:11
absolutely not the case. Love it.
1:14
We'll, we'll be sure to put the full research under this video
1:18
when we post it online. We won't make you comment for it
1:20
either, folks. I know everyone loves that, so
1:22
we'll put that in. But excited to record.
1:25
So stay tuned for the full podcast episode, but check out
1:28
Vincent's research today. This is on base your one stop
1:33
shop for solving your most pressing B to B go to market
1:36
challenges. Each week, host Chris Moody and
1:38
Paul Gibson talk to sales and marketing leaders to get you in
1:41
depth insights and creative strategies to set your revenue
1:44
teams up for success. Hey, everyone.
1:48
Welcome back to the On Base podcast.
1:50
I'm your host, Chris Moody, and today I'm very excited to be
1:53
joined with Vincent de Castro. Again, this is our second one of
1:56
these episodes together, but we're talking about disrupting
1:59
the B2B buyers journey with AI and zero click search.
2:03
Vincent, thanks for joining us today and welcome to the show.
2:06
Chris, thanks for having me again.
2:08
Always a pleasure to get to chat with you.
2:10
So excited to jump into this material.
2:12
I think it's going to be super interesting.
2:15
Yeah, me too. I've read the research.
2:17
It's awesome. So that's the first thing I'm
2:19
really excited to dive into any new research that guides cool
2:24
insights and things I should put into slides and be talking about
2:27
more. Before we jump into it, can you
2:30
tell everyone a little bit about your journey and what led you to
2:32
what you're doing today? Yeah, absolutely.
2:34
So the agency has been around since 2009, and we actually
2:38
started as what I would term a traditional digital marketing
2:42
agency, primarily focused on search, so paid search and also
2:46
SEO. So we have a tremendous amount
2:48
of experience and expertise. We've obviously been in and
2:52
exclusively focused on the ABM space for almost 8 years now.
2:57
But there's just been this really interesting evolution and
3:01
these two passions of mine are now convergent and at this very,
3:06
very pivotal moment in really B2B marketing.
3:09
But it's, I think it goes beyond that.
3:11
It's pretty profound because it really has massive effect across
3:16
just business growth in general, especially at the enterprise
3:19
level. So I know I sent you that
3:21
article that comparing and contrasting NVIDIA and Intel.
3:25
I think it's a real serious cautionary tale for executive
3:28
that enterprise organizations that you know, you don't want to
3:31
be Intel, you don't want to be Kodak, you don't want to
3:35
overlook these opportunities in time where you have the choice
3:38
to go this way instead of that way.
3:41
So that's what I've been deeply involved in over the past three
3:45
months and and really excited to start to talk about this topic
3:47
with you. Yeah, I love that too.
3:50
And it is such a cautionary tale.
3:52
I mean, the incredible companies still.
3:55
But then you look at NVIDIA and I, I believe it's close to three
3:59
out of four people working there, millionaires now because
4:02
the stock has done so well, which is an incredible example
4:06
of when you get this right. Which leads me to a question.
4:09
And before we dive into all the research, what has pushed you as
4:15
you, you focus on ABM exclusively with your agency for
4:18
eight years? What has pushed you to be on the
4:20
forefront of the rapid technological change and AI?
4:24
Because I, I know that every single time we book time to
4:27
record, it's a struggle for us to hit the record button because
4:31
we're catching up on the newest tools and what we should be
4:34
trying. So we have to fight ourselves to
4:36
stop talking and hit record and record these episodes.
4:40
What's been the driver to put you in that seat versus just
4:44
trying to be attached to every single account and their success
4:48
from where they are today? Yeah, it's a struggle.
4:50
Like you, I just have natural curiosity.
4:53
And so when ChatGPT first really started to become popular or
4:59
people began to use it, I immediately started to think
5:02
about what are the implications in terms of like work flows or
5:07
what I would call now a gentic AI where these tools are
5:11
actually capable of doing full complete tasks for you.
5:14
And so I'm just really interested in how can AI
5:19
essentially optimize us as humans?
5:22
I think that's the best way to put it.
5:24
Like, how can I do more and do better with the help and the aid
5:29
of these tools that are now at our disposal?
5:31
And I just think it's an incredible point in time in our
5:35
evolution as humans, right? I mean, I think, you know, we've
5:39
never really had the opportunity in the past to, to just take
5:43
giant leaps forward in terms of productivity.
5:46
It's probably decidedly American perspectives, I think.
5:50
But there are implications in terms of really improving work,
5:53
work life balance too. I think there's huge opportunity
5:57
there as well as we go through this evolutionary state with AI
6:00
and it's going to happen at such a rapid.
6:03
I mean, it already is rapid, but as AI uses AI to create better
6:07
AI, it's going to be breakneck speed, man.
6:10
I mean, hard to keep up already. I don't even know what it's
6:13
going to look like in a year. Yeah, I am the same way.
6:15
I mean, I told you before you hit record, I got in a fight
6:18
with one of the AI tools last night.
6:20
It was giving me the wrong answer and I didn't like that
6:23
answer and I couldn't reroute it out of that path.
6:26
I know those things can happen. On the other hand, I've been
6:29
trying to teach my soon to be 14 year old how AI could assist
6:33
everything that he's doing and he runs a YouTube channel now
6:36
and does stop motion and builds cardboard weapons.
6:40
And I was like hey you know you could just ask.
6:43
Give me 10 ideas for stop motion with an action figure that I can
6:48
put in a variety of poses that would do well on YouTube.
6:51
And he was like, what? And I did it.
6:53
And they gave him step by step instructions for 10 different
6:55
videos. And they finally looked at it
6:57
after a week because dad doesn't know anything.
7:00
And then last night he said, man, these are actually really
7:03
cool. This is really nice.
7:04
This is your point. I think sometimes we try to
7:07
solve the biggest problem or the smallest problem, but there are
7:11
ways to use AI for everything in between.
7:13
And that's something I'm trying to remind myself every single
7:15
day. And I know one of the things
7:18
that more people should be paying attention to is how AI is
7:22
changing search. And the first entry point to
7:26
that we should talk about zero click search, make sure everyone
7:29
understands it, and then your pitch on why this is so
7:33
important and B to B. Yeah, it's happened rapidly,
7:36
which is really pretty amazing from my perspective.
7:40
I started with search way back when Google really came on the
7:44
scene and started to increase in terms of usage and then figured
7:47
out how to monetize traffic. And it was a very, very slow
7:51
methodical disruption to user behavior.
7:55
As Trent, you started to go down search engine, you started to go
7:59
up. It was, I mean literally the
8:00
course of like 5 years before you really got to that place
8:03
where it's like, OK, wow. Now prints gone, Yellow Pages
8:06
are gone and a lot of trade publications are gone and now
8:10
replaced by Google. This is this change is even more
8:14
disruptive and it's happened in really the course of like 6
8:17
months now. Google set the stage a while
8:19
ago, ChatGPT came on the scene and really forced Google to
8:23
accelerate it. But once they incorporated the
8:27
AI answer component into their search results page and made it
8:31
prominent, and when I say prominent, I mean in many
8:34
instances right under the paid section above the traditional
8:37
organic section, that was a game changer.
8:40
And So what my first kind of brush with that was odd
8:46
anomalies. When you look at analytics for
8:49
companies where you're seeing search impression going up
8:52
significantly, going up 5060%, that means that you know,
8:56
there's just more search volume, more people are searching,
8:58
you're going to get more search traffic.
9:01
But the conundrum was you're actually seeing Ctr. go down
9:05
significantly from like 2% to like .2% and search traffic
9:10
obviously following the same or similar trend.
9:12
And then you start to think, well, wait a second, what what's
9:15
going on right? Like, why is this happening?
9:17
These are two things that shouldn't be able to exist in
9:19
the same universe. The reality is this paradoxes
9:23
that people are staying on Google, they're getting their
9:26
answers now without ever going to a website.
9:30
And the implications for B to B marketers or B to B websites in
9:35
general is that now they're they're getting this synthesized
9:39
information about your industry, your brand, your competitors,
9:43
without ever having to visit a website at all.
9:46
And they're getting an all right there on Google or chat, TPT or
9:50
Perplexity or Claw. So many places I could take it
9:53
from there. I, I mean the, I think the one
9:56
that's coming to mind most for me, I came up through content
10:01
that was my big break in marketing.
10:03
So really focusing on content. If, if we could get a room
10:07
together, kind of content marketers, anonymous, if you
10:11
will, it's a safe space. And we have every person who
10:17
runs content strategy and B to B in a room and we're really
10:21
trying to make sure they understand these implications
10:23
and what to do about it. What are you going to be telling
10:27
them? Because look for eternity, I
10:29
wanted to say years, but it's, it's a lot of years.
10:33
We've tried to get people to search for us.
10:35
We've tried to get people to fill out a form.
10:39
The world is changing yet again, and I know sometimes we run
10:43
around here on fire and overreact to everything, but
10:46
this is a huge one. If folks are searching for us
10:49
and that traffic is not going down, which I know you're going
10:51
to cover, we've hit on that in your report, but they're not
10:54
clicking. What do we do as content
10:56
strategist? Yeah, that's a big, big
10:59
question. And you know, the short answer
11:02
is from my perspective is to break down the silos inside of
11:05
organizations. I think that's the very first
11:08
thing that organizations need to start to look to do because in
11:12
many organizations that we work with, enterprise is our primary
11:15
focus and we see very siloed brand content, lead Gen. demand
11:21
Gen. ABM.
11:23
And the reality now is that you have to be cognizant of making
11:29
sure your, your content, all of your content is consumable or
11:35
able to be consumed by the LLMS in the way that you want them to
11:39
consume it. And so when you think about
11:43
content marketing now takes center stage in a big way, but
11:48
it also needs to be supported by brand and lead and demand and
11:52
absolutely ABM, because the way these LLMS are, are consuming
11:57
this information, there's a lot that can be interpreted and they
12:00
do, they take a lot of liberty, quite frankly, in interpreting
12:04
your brand, your industry, the players in it, your authority.
12:09
And then below that is the nuance, like what are your value
12:12
propositions and who are they directed towards and how do they
12:16
get interpreted or worse, misinterpreted by the LLMS?
12:20
And so the smart organizations that we're working with right
12:23
now are really taking this much more holistic perspective on
12:27
content. And it has to be this way.
12:29
Otherwise you run the risk of kind of what you talked about,
12:32
you know, an LLM fighting you and not giving you the right
12:35
information, although it's wrong.
12:37
Like, you know, it's wrong and you try to report it as wrong.
12:40
But that's a much longer challenge to try and solve than
12:43
to do it right to begin with. Yeah, I, I'm curious about
12:47
controlling that narrative and trying to make sure the right
12:50
information is there and then, you know, not.
12:53
I love saying marketers ruin everything.
12:55
That's one of my favorite adages.
12:56
So I'm not saying this is the new keyword stuffing.
13:01
For those who don't know, those of us who came up through HTML
13:03
and CSS, one of the tricks to get your site to show up on
13:06
search was when you built the web page, you put in every
13:09
keyword known to man in the source code.
13:12
And then that would help pull up your web page.
13:14
And then the search engines are like, hey, that's pretty dumb.
13:17
Why are we pulling that? We should control it.
13:19
So I, I'm thinking both from the brand governance and guidance
13:23
perspective, and then also from the marketing side where we want
13:27
to shape the narrative and change perception and make sure
13:30
that it's accurate. I can say personally, I have
13:34
done some cool things with our enterprise instance of Gemini
13:39
and ChatGPT, but that is contained our enterprise.
13:42
So I even my brain wonders. Well, cool, I've built out these
13:47
great content kits. Your podcast episode we did
13:50
before is in one of the content kits.
13:51
So if if anyone's searching for certain news on account base or
13:56
what should I be sending to folks, I've built the packages
14:00
for them. But that's in our instance.
14:02
So what do we need to do across all the AI tools to make sure
14:06
that we're controlling our narrative and doing the best we
14:09
can as marketers? Yeah, no, that's you're 100% in
14:13
the right headspace because the conundrum is that ultimately
14:18
you've got very personalized experiences for many enterprise
14:22
organizations. So there and even personal
14:25
accounts, right. So ChatGPT knows who you are,
14:29
your preferences, what you like, what you dislike, what you're
14:32
care about. Probably, I think lots of people
14:35
post about this, probably knows you better than you know
14:37
yourself in some instances. And so when you ask for results,
14:41
it's going to give you what you want to hear.
14:42
Is that the same as what the rest of the world is seeing?
14:45
Probably not. So you have to think about it in
14:48
those terms, that it's a coin with two sides, which is to say
14:52
that you as the user are going to see what you want to see.
14:55
But on the other side of that coin, how do I influence that?
14:58
Because your search experience now is highly personalized,
15:02
almost exclusive to you, and so controlling.
15:05
You know, one of the stats of mind boggling to me is that
15:08
traditional search queries are generally going to be 4 to 5
15:11
words. If you look in your search
15:13
console, your Google search console, you'll be able to
15:15
confirm that yourself. Is this new approach to
15:19
searching or or understanding information.
15:21
Average prompts are 20 to 30 words.
15:24
Massive difference between how people use search engines.
15:27
But the underlying theme is how do I control that?
15:30
How do I influence that? How do I extract that like that
15:35
much information that's mind bogglingly complex to be able to
15:39
track that information and to really impact we'll see.
15:42
You have to have a plan. You've got to have a good solid
15:45
top down plan for what's my main theme?
15:48
What are the related topics to that?
15:51
How does that play into my ICP, the personas?
15:55
And so the the convergence point for me is ABM already has that
15:59
information, right. So when you run a good full
16:01
funnel ABM campaign, all of this stuff is already in your content
16:06
analysis. It's already part of the road
16:07
map. It's already how you're trying
16:09
to influence people. Now the secret is how do I turn
16:13
that into content that is accessible to the LLMS and that
16:16
they consume? Yeah.
16:18
It's the fun part, but it's also the tricky part because we we
16:21
have to get it right. I mean, we know that it's
16:23
something we need to be on the front end of.
16:26
And then ultimately, I will eventually get to a place where
16:29
I rant about the importance of creativity.
16:31
But before we can get to that, we need to be in front of people
16:35
and be in the consideration set. So, you know, do you have any
16:39
start here day one approaches to that?
16:43
If if someone's listening and they they know what AI is, they
16:46
know the importance of AI. They know ChatGPT perplexity
16:50
Gemini, some of the others, but they're going.
16:52
I mean, I don't I know how to do great content, but I don't know
16:56
how to start to better educate LLMS. Do you have a start here
17:01
tip? Yeah.
17:02
So the first thing, and I always start with this and even going
17:06
back to SEO days, it's always about a technical audit of your
17:09
website. Is it set up for LLMS to even
17:13
crawl and index your information even before you get into the
17:16
whole hierarchy and semantic piece of, you know, how these
17:21
tools are going to aggregate information?
17:23
Is your site really set up technically for these LLMS to
17:27
come and get the information and to repeat that process?
17:30
Because spiders don't only come once or even once a day, they're
17:33
coming to to your site probably every day, multiple times a day,
17:36
sometimes even, you know, 10/15/20 days.
17:39
So your log files, and this is where I'm going to get into a
17:41
little bit of technical information.
17:43
Your log files are going to be your best friend in the
17:46
beginning and really all through the process to understand when
17:49
is ChatGPT crawling my site? When is perplexity, when it's
17:53
clawed? What are they crawling?
17:55
Are there barriers? So there's a tool out there free
17:58
tool pro tip for anyone out there trying to figure this
18:01
stuff out. Screaming Frog download, They
18:04
have a software to be able to analyze log files, but then also
18:08
to analyze the technical makeup of your website tool that I've
18:12
used for a very, very long time. Great stuff to use to really
18:15
give you those initial insights. Like, are there barriers to
18:19
these crawlers from getting the information I want them to have
18:22
even before I start the structure how this content is
18:24
set up on my site? Yeah.
18:26
It's always funny to me. I mean, it's not funny, it's
18:28
frustrating, but it is funny. Everything is so circular and
18:34
cyclical and marketing because, you know, we went from obsessing
18:38
over our website, so spending so much time to spending ten times
18:42
the effort on what should we be doing on LinkedIn and other
18:45
social platforms. And now it's like, man, we, the
18:48
technical setup on our website may determine if we hit pipeline
18:54
or not for the next year or two years or three years.
18:57
That's always amusing to me, just how everything becomes new
19:01
again. I'd love to frame that with a
19:05
question that's directed more towards the marketing leaders.
19:08
So if they're marketing leaders listening, which we know there
19:11
are not necessarily the practitioners, what are the
19:14
biggest challenges they should be aware of with zero click
19:18
search and how AI is changing go to market strategies?
19:21
Yeah, that's where, where I've really been spending a lot of my
19:24
time and energy over just the past like 6 weeks is trying to
19:28
understand the bigger implications, not just, you
19:31
know, simple traffic to my site is down, you know, that's
19:35
affecting my lead volume and obviously pipeline and revenue
19:39
and you know, of course the attribution concern.
19:42
But how is this going to shake up the full buyers journey?
19:46
And how are your buyers now looking for information, trying
19:51
to make their buying decisions? And that's at the end of the
19:53
day, that's why we're all here, right?
19:55
Like 100% of us are in the business of helping to be able
19:59
to, for lack of a better term, help to guide that buyer's
20:03
journey. That's what we do as marketers.
20:05
And so now a big giant chunk, the first two stages, that
20:09
awareness and then that kind of problem solving stage of the
20:13
buyer's journey have been blown up.
20:15
Like almost all of that early stage stuff in that buyer's
20:19
journey is related to either search or coming to your website
20:24
for content, white papers, downloads, etcetera.
20:26
That's gone because the real underlying thing, and this is
20:30
where it goes back to that trust piece, is that your buyers don't
20:34
trust the information on your website to begin with.
20:36
If you think that they do, you're wrong.
20:38
They absolutely don't. I mean, I look at it in consumer
20:42
terms, which is I've bought 3 cars over the past five years
20:45
and I haven't gone to the dealership to do the deals in
20:49
any of those instances. I've done it all online and I've
20:51
done all of it virtually even including having the car
20:55
delivered to me without ever having to go to the mall.
20:58
I'm not the only person doing that and I can absolutely
21:00
guarantee you that that busy marketers at your targets also
21:04
don't want to talk to a salesperson, don't want to look
21:06
at your website information. They want unbiased information,
21:10
quote UN quote, right? Like we, the reality is, is that
21:13
none of this stuff is unbiased. These LLMS are still getting our
21:16
website content, but what they want is comparison done for
21:20
them. They want to know what other
21:22
organizations have had challenge wise that ladders up to what
21:25
they're dealing with. And then what are the solutions
21:28
and who are the people that or the organizations that can help
21:31
me? And so where you've had control
21:33
before or you knew they were coming to your site to a decent
21:36
degree, right? And as you saw more people from
21:38
the buying committee get involved, that's your signal to
21:41
say, Hey, this, you know, account is in market.
21:44
Well, what do you do now when that's gone?
21:46
That's the and I'm not a big alarmist.
21:49
Look, I've seen every major Google update come and go over
21:53
the past 20 years. And some of them have been
21:55
massively disruptive, and some of them, you know, like a little
21:58
blip on the radar. But I never got like, oh, my
22:01
gosh, the whole industry is gone or changing.
22:03
Well, this is that moment. And I'm not being dramatic, and
22:06
this is not hyperbole. This is a transformational
22:09
moment in time for B2B marketing because zero click search, well,
22:14
search in general, and visits to your website have been so
22:17
massively important in the early stages of the B2B buyer's
22:21
journey. And now it's still happening.
22:23
They're still looking for information.
22:24
They're just not coming to you to get it.
22:26
Yeah. I almost think it changes how we
22:28
think about intent data. You know where many would have
22:32
the argument intended is not that valuable and the case we
22:36
would always make. I think you and I both as you're
22:38
using it wrong. If you think it's not valuable,
22:40
it should help inform what you do, who you pull in, who you
22:43
target, how you multi thread all the things.
22:46
Now I think intent is going to be a stronger indicator because
22:49
there aren't as many superficial reasons to be on your website
22:54
for the more sophisticated personas because they're going
22:57
to get all their answers in AI. So it changes how we think about
23:01
that. I'm curious though, the value
23:03
props. All of us spend so much time
23:06
trying to perfect how we message to our buyers and knowing that
23:11
you and I have both had plenty of incorrect answers.
23:15
Or you know, LLMS pulling older information.
23:18
I was doing research on a company one time.
23:20
It had the completely wrong CMO who joined a competitive
23:24
company. And then I said, hey, that
23:26
person actually doesn't work here, they work there.
23:28
You're exactly right. Let me update.
23:30
I love that answer. You're exactly right.
23:32
I'm glad. It reminds me of the used car a
23:36
lot, right? Like, yeah, this car is perfect.
23:38
You know, they just took it out of a flood and vacuumed it, you
23:41
know? Right.
23:42
Yeah. Thanks.
23:44
So I I'm curious, how do we take our our best messaging, our best
23:49
value props that are accurate? We know there's bias, you hit on
23:52
that, but how do we start to influence zero click search with
23:56
our value propositions? Yeah, that's a brilliant
23:59
question and I think it's super appropriate and where most
24:02
people should be thinking about this process at the moment.
24:06
And ultimately it's going to come down to you've got to open
24:10
the kimono, for lack of a better description, that content that
24:13
you've kept, you know, behind a gate for in APDF or you know,
24:17
some other form. You really need to be able to
24:20
have that facing the public. It's got to be set up to be
24:24
consumed by LLMS and it's got to be structured based on what it
24:27
is you want your brand to be about, what you want it to be
24:30
known for, your value propositions.
24:32
How does it layer into not just your ICP, but the personas in
24:38
your ICP and what they care about?
24:40
So we know that the CIO and the CTO and the CFO and the CEO CEO
24:44
are all going to have different concerns about that decision
24:48
making process and even further down, like for different size
24:51
purchases. But when I think about ABM, what
24:54
are the most important and impactful applications, it's
24:57
always those large, large deals, very long sales cycles, you
25:00
know, top level executives involved.
25:02
How can you structure your data and your content on your site to
25:07
be able to answer their questions when they might be
25:10
doing research, if they're involved in the research or if
25:14
someone else is involved in that research, but they're thinking
25:16
like the CEO or the CMO or the CTO.
25:19
That's really where I feel like this convergence of content
25:24
marketing with demand Gen. ABM brand really need to come
25:29
together as a as a team to think through that process and to make
25:32
sure that that information is easily accessible, easy for
25:37
these LLMS to parse and start to aggregate.
25:39
And even then look, you know, we've all had instances of the
25:43
information just got is is wrong from ChatGPT or perplexity or
25:48
clod because they're operating sometimes on older information,
25:52
which another really important point.
25:54
So I've been reading some really incredible detailed data on
26:00
perplexity. I'll share the name of the the
26:02
guy who's been generating the reports and the data, but it's
26:06
incredible how much the freshness of your content
26:09
matters to LLMS even more so than it ever did to to Google.
26:13
So that Evergreen content that performs so well in the search
26:16
engines, you need to be updating it and iterating on it and then
26:19
building content off of that into more specific pieces of
26:24
content related to that same topic.
26:26
That's like in my opinion, one O 1 for LLM optimization, yeah.
26:32
Well, I'd love so many things. I mean, you're coming a lot,
26:35
man. I was just writing it down while
26:37
you were talking. I put the quote.
26:39
I'm not an alarmist, but dot, dot dot.
26:41
So if you saw me look to my left, that's what I was typing
26:44
in my notes because I want to pull that one.
26:46
But it is making me think what are the things we should be
26:49
doing differently? And sometimes you even hit on
26:52
this too. Everyone wants a similar
26:54
situation use case, right? Like you use different wording.
26:57
But my brain routed it as okay, specificity wins, which was the
27:01
topo mantra. And everybody wants to know
27:03
someone like me who solved a problem like mine and that helps
27:06
to build trust. So I'd love to hear what is your
27:08
favorite example or success story of a business that has
27:12
gotten this right so far and that they're catering to the AI
27:16
trends and how they go to market?
27:18
Yeah, they're definitely not in the B to B space.
27:21
I've seen a lot of B to C companies that are are actually
27:25
at the forefront of what I would consider to be cutting edge
27:28
optimization efforts geared towards LLMS. I can't remember
27:32
the, there was a major retailer I was just reading about
27:35
recently. I can't remember Kendra Scott.
27:37
So they've been deep in the weeds in doing content analysis
27:42
and audits, understanding the information that's being
27:45
surfaced through log file analysis and understanding what
27:49
these LLMS are looking for. You know, how they're, they're
27:53
sourcing the content. And then more importantly, how
27:56
are they talking about their brand?
27:57
And that's I think the biggest challenge right now for anyone
28:00
is going to be how can I really continue to report on this to
28:05
know in a big scope, which is I think almost impossible.
28:10
Probably someone will solve it, but you know, all of the
28:13
different ways that people are searching, awareness,
28:15
consideration, validation, evaluation for my topic, for
28:19
what I care about, that's going to be a massive, massive
28:22
undertaking. So, you know, you take it one
28:24
bite at a time and you really want to be able to know what all
28:29
four of these well, 5:00 because traditional SEO isn't dead yet.
28:33
Still, you'll still see organic traffic coming to your site.
28:36
It's just not nearly as big as it or impactful as it had been
28:40
before. So you've got these five
28:42
entities that you've got to continue to track to know.
28:45
So how are they mentioning my brands?
28:47
How am I ranking against my competitors?
28:49
Is the information accurate and true?
28:51
And then what's my response if it isn't?
28:53
How do I fix that? That's a big undertaking.
28:56
And so that's why I say it is a, it is not a individual siloed
29:01
team within an organization. It's a giant massive overhaul to
29:04
the whole process. And how do organizations look at
29:09
marketing, which now quite honestly plays a much bigger
29:12
part in the whole revenue process?
29:15
Because if and and I will say we start with this part as a a real
29:20
piece that is true right now. These large brands are really
29:24
the ones that are benefiting from this change because they
29:26
have so much authority. They are very well known and
29:31
they're on every single list of top whatever that's out there.
29:35
So, so they're really experiencing the benefit of
29:38
that, that brand awareness, what the, the, the nuance there is
29:42
going to be. If you take a no enterprise is
29:44
only focus on just the one thing that they're great at and super
29:47
well known for. Every big enterprise that we
29:49
work with has 4561015 other business units underneath that
29:54
that aren't as well known that they aren't the, you know, the
29:57
leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant or even on most
30:00
people's radar. We work with a very, very large
30:03
cellular provider in the B2B space.
30:05
Everyone knows who they are when it comes to their primary core
30:09
competency. But the other stuff that they
30:10
do, people don't know. And so that's going to be their
30:13
challenge is how do I now try and get mentions in these
30:17
conversations when people are looking?
30:19
So you want to make make sure you maintain your dominance in
30:23
your what you're well known for, but then how do you also make up
30:26
ground against the incumbents when you're talking about
30:29
industries that you're not the leader and that's going to be a
30:32
huge challenge, yeah. There's one more question I want
30:34
to hit on, and I typically have a lightning round at the end.
30:37
You and I have done this before, so for anyone who wants to know
30:40
Vincent's favorite people that inspire him or Goodreads, search
30:45
Vincent de Castro on base. You can get the other episode
30:48
for that because there's one question I want to spend the
30:50
rest of our time with. And then we'll hit on how folks
30:53
can get in touch with the after. And the question is, if we Fast
30:56
forward a couple of years, what does zero click search and AI
31:00
driven search look like and how do we best future proof our
31:03
strategies for that? Yeah.
31:05
I think it's real difficult to predict and and here's why.
31:09
When I look at the trajectory of AI, first of all, two years ago,
31:13
I don't think anyone would have predicted ChatGPT, very
31:16
unlikely. And and the other piece too
31:18
related to that is Google's been in AI for a long time, I think
31:21
like a decade. So this isn't brand new to
31:24
Google at all. Where where everything goes from
31:27
here is going to be hard to say. The predictions that I've seen
31:30
from Gartner, for instance, by 2020, 850% of organic traffic is
31:34
going to be gone. Does it happen sooner than that?
31:36
Probably. I think it's it's very likely to
31:39
be a lot sooner than that. But these LLMS are going to
31:42
figure out how to monetize like that's the other piece, right?
31:45
If you think back to Google, Google had massive users well
31:48
before they started selling clicks on their search engine.
31:52
And so their process of figuring out how to monetize that was was
31:56
pretty long, right? They had to buy another company
31:59
that they had technology to be able to use that internally to
32:02
start that auction environment. And that's where the invention
32:06
of paid search came from. Something like that's going to
32:08
happen in this space, without a doubt.
32:11
And so, you know, when you think about the comparison of
32:14
traditional search versus LLM optimization, the missing piece
32:18
of that puzzle is tracking. So you have Google Webmaster
32:22
tools for people like me in the SEO industry to see, you know,
32:27
all of the keywords that we show up for, what's the volume
32:30
associated, where is your average rank?
32:33
And you know, your, your inbound link profile, their technical
32:36
issues, all that stuff, you don't have that insight into
32:39
ChatGPT or perplexity or clod at the moment.
32:42
That's probably going to change. You'll see tools that are going
32:45
to come out by these AI engines to, to give you more insight,
32:48
but then they're going to figure out how to monetize it.
32:50
And we've already seen, I don't know if you've seen this open
32:53
AI, ChatGPT, whatever you want to call it, it has partnered
32:55
with Shopify to be able to provide end result links to make
33:00
purchases just like Google Shopping.
33:02
And so I think that's the writing on the wall is at least
33:06
from Chat GPT's perspective, how are they going to make money?
33:08
It's going to be similar to paid search, right?
33:10
You're going to you're going to pay.
33:12
And the Shopify arrangement, I believe is a percentage of the
33:16
proceeds of the purchase. So open AI gets a percentage of
33:19
whatever the person spends on that purchase.
33:21
So I think you're going to see stuff like that happen that's
33:24
going to accelerate. I think the usage of LLMS, it's
33:28
going to at some point in time, it's going to erode
33:30
significantly. I think the use of Google,
33:33
they're going to see more parity.
33:35
How do you future proof for that?
33:36
I think the goal should be collapsing the silos in your
33:41
organization marketing wise. It all has to function together
33:45
for you to have the best opportunity to be in the right
33:48
place at the right time, no matter what the changes are.
33:51
Because there will be massive changes.
33:52
And heck, there might even be a new player that comes on the
33:54
scene that we couldn't have even predicted.
33:56
Like that's chat, GPG store, making sure that your site is
34:00
technically set up for LLMS to get the information that you
34:04
want them to have. But the other piece is knowing
34:07
what is has been historically published.
34:10
So what we're calling that is kind of that shadow brand and
34:13
you mentioned it a little while ago, maybe earlier in our
34:16
conversation, all of this old historical information that's
34:20
still on the web that these LLMS are getting and crawling and
34:24
sourcing and that could absolutely be counterproductive
34:28
to what your brand is now. So really cleaning up your
34:31
footprint is, you know, doing that audit, understanding the
34:35
hierarchy of how your content should be laid out based on your
34:38
ICP, the personas they're buying, journeys that you're
34:41
familiar with, and then knowing what's out there on your brand
34:44
and cleaning that up, I think are the absolute most important
34:47
things you could be doing. Where this goes from here is
34:49
man, it's scary, but also exciting because it's, it is
34:53
truly pivotal in our lifetime. I don't think we're going to see
34:57
anything this foundationally altering ever again.
35:01
I mean, not in our lifetime anyway.
35:02
It's it's truly a unique moment of time, I think.
35:05
Awesome. Well for anyone who feels like
35:07
hiding under their desks, that is not the best thing to do.
35:10
So I think these are great tips. You know, we'll be sure to link
35:13
to the research that you've done on this.
35:15
So that's an awesome resource for everyone and if folks want
35:19
to get in touch with you, what's the best way?
35:21
Yeah, you can go to oursiteabmagency.com.
35:24
Super easy to remember that one. You can e-mail me directly at
35:27
vincentvincent@abmagency.com. Always happy to connect on
35:32
LinkedIn as well. So you can find me on LinkedIn,
35:35
Connect, direct message, et cetera.
35:37
Yeah, always down to chat about this stuff.
35:39
And Chris, always, always a pleasure to connect with you.
35:41
Yes, likewise, it's good to see you again.
35:44
Thanks for dropping all the knowledge and helping everyone
35:46
and we will talk to you soon. Thanks, Vincent.
35:48
Yeah, man. Thank you.
35:51
Thanks for joining us for On Base.
35:53
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