September 8, 2025 • 48 mins
SEO veteran Ian Lurie joins Matt Bertram to discuss navigating today's chaotic digital marketing landscape and why traditional metrics are becoming less reliable. They explore how the decline in click data requires a shift to lift-based measurement that correlates visibility improvements with revenue changes rather than traffic alone.
• Marketers must focus on business performance over vanity metrics
• Measurement requires correlating visibility (in rankings, SERP features, or AI mentions) with revenue increases
• AI generates "average" content because it lacks human narrative capabilities
• Creating effective content requires using AI as a tool within a human-directed creative process
• Small businesses need to focus on teaching their audience and maximizing return on time invested
• The core principles of effective marketing remain constant despite rapid technological changes
• Tracking neutral user views rather than personalized search results provides better performance data
• Testing should focus on revenue impact.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfront-fold episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram,and for those of you watching on
YouTube, yes, I still need toset up my office.
I apologize for anybodywatching, but I don't apologize
for the guests that I've justbrought on.
Somebody that's an old schooldigital marker, somebody you
probably heard out there.
(00:39):
He was there at the beginning.
He's well known in the circlesof SEO, ian Lurie.
Ian, great to have you on theshow.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thanks, matt, really really excited to be here and,
by the way, I've been in thisoffice for three or four years
now and it's still not together,so I wouldn't feel bad about
that.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, I got some trainings that I want to do and
I have a whiteboard that I needto get up and I just haven't
done it because it's just onething after next.
Seo is like not just a movingtarget which I've always said
that but it's moving atlightning speed and every week
it's like new stuff comes outand it's honestly a little bit
(01:21):
overwhelming.
I'm sure other people arefeeling that as well.
I mean, what's your perspectiveof what's going on in the
marketplace today from how it'sbeen?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It's chaos and I love the chaos.
I kind of live for times likethis, and it's been 30 years of
this in marketing, right, I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm
, you know, kind of creaking myway up on stage here to speak,
but when I started, marketingwas being disrupted by digital
(01:52):
right and then SEO came alongand that disrupted everything.
And now, you know, then clicksstarted going away and that
further disrupted everything.
And now we've got AI, which isdisrupting the disruption, that
clicks are going away.
So it never really stops and Ienjoy it.
So if I sound like I'm kind ofgleeful about all the chaos
(02:13):
that's stressing everybody out,I apologize.
I do know how crazy andstressful it is.
I look at it too and I worryabout lost clicks and things,
but it's a really cool challengethat I think we're all working
with.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It is.
Seo is just a fun game.
Search is a fun game, justdigital marketing.
So from the aspect of like thetactician and the strategist,
it's fun From running a businessand continuing to implement new
SOPs and client needs.
So I actually just saw yourpost that Rand had done.
(02:48):
You had reposted Rand's post andI saw that, I think yesterday,
and I watched his video and likeeverything he said was dead on
and then I'm like that's reallythe answer, like you know, which
we've been talking about it,but it's that's hard for a
client to hear that we can'ttrack anything and you're just
(03:08):
going to have to do tests onuplift and it's impressions and
it's conversions.
And we've been telling ourclients that in quarterly
meetings that we've been havingand they've been all trained on.
Well, one of the metrics istraffic right to my site and
clicks and now most of thetraffic coming to the site is
(03:32):
brand traffic and you don't knowwhere it's coming from and how
are you measuring it and it'slike, yeah, we got a test and
the tools aren't effective.
I mean, I know demand sphereand I just had those guys on
came out with the new tool andthere's a lot of LLM stuff, but
LLM is not that big yet.
I mean, we're kind of skatingto where the puck is going to be
(03:55):
, but right now you don't havemuch visibility.
And so I'm just curious.
I know you're doing a lot oflike fractional CMO work and
consulting.
What are the things that aretopical for clients in the
conversations you're having?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
You know it's interesting.
You're talking about skating towhere the puck is.
You know, wayne Gretzky, um,I've always tried to tell
clients to skate where the moneyis.
You know, for us as marketers,yeah, we should always be
looking ahead, but our clientsneed to go where the money is.
For us as marketers, yeah, weshould always be looking ahead,
but our clients need to go wherethe money is, and that's part
of what I think we see happeningright now is, for a long time,
(04:34):
a lot of clients were trained toequate traffic with money, and
I don't know that that was evertrue, going back 10, 20 years,
and I don't know that that wasever true.
You know, going back 10, 20years, to the I mean pre-digital
.
The thing that we would alwaystell clients is you're running
marketing Okay, is the businessgrowing?
You know you're doing SEO Great, you're getting more traffic.
(04:57):
Awesome, got really highrankings for terms you think are
important.
Fantastic, what's happening tothe bottom line?
And you know, first Google tookaway keyword tracking from
organic search, which peoplestill haven't adjusted to.
Then browser security took awaysome refer tracking.
We all know how much trafficends up coming from direct now,
(05:19):
even though it's not reallycoming from direct and now
you've got SERP features and AIoverviews and other things again
taking away those clicks thething that I'm trying to tell
clients, the thing I keepbringing them back to every time
they get in touch with me.
And I have clients who aregetting in touch with me almost
daily now saying, look, I'mreally not enjoying this, it's
(05:40):
going away.
We're ranking for less and lessstuff.
And this is not one client,this is every client I have.
What do we do?
I say, well, take a look atyour core business performance.
Are you making more money?
If you really want to testwhich channels are working and
which ones aren't, you canalways do what we used to call a
(06:01):
holdout test, where you turnoff one channel and see what
happens.
I don't recommend that in earnedmedia like SEO and social and
AI.
I don't think that's a goodidea.
But you could do holdouttesting of other channels and
see what the effect is right.
If you do a two-day holdouttest on paid search and you have
(06:21):
an outsized impact, then youknow paid search may be having a
bigger impact than earnedchannels.
But I do not recommend doingholdout tests.
That's sort of my final, thefinal statement I make to
clients when I just can't bringthem around and I say, well,
okay, let's turn it off and seewhat happens, and generally that
kind of brings people aroundwhen I'm trying to persuade them
(06:42):
in those meetings.
Look, it's about the businessperformance.
It's not about your rankings,it's not about traffic.
Don't fire your SEO becauseyour traffic is dropping right.
Fire your.
SEO if your revenue is dropping.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
So I have kind of two follow-on comments to that.
The first one on the holdouttesting.
That's in my opinion, in mypersonal experience working with
clients.
Um, yes, I don't recommend thatbecause, well, if you have,
I'll give you an example.
Uh, a client came to us that hadbeen running paid traffic for a
(07:18):
couple of years with notargeting set up, okay, and I
was like, let's measure thistest by setting up another test
with parameters, run it and, youknow, compare it side by side.
And he didn't want to runanother test that would, you
know, eat up the traffic that hecurrently had.
(07:39):
And he's like let's install thetraffic on my you know my
campaign, because there's notraffic and I believe everything
you're saying.
And I was like I don't thinkthat's a good idea.
And he's like how it's not?
I say, well, the AI.
I don't know what the AI isdoing.
It's like learn to your stuffis right.
It's like a heat seekingmissile and it'll find what you
need.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
You're talking about Google ads.
Yeah, I'm talking about Googleads.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, I'm talking about Google ads, and so then we
got pressured to add targetingbecause I said that this is a
good thing to do, and it tankedhis performance because you
don't know, with the machinelearning, what's there and
you're basically resetting it.
So our recommendation, or myrecommendation, which I don't
know if this is likeindustry-wide standard, is like
(08:25):
once you turn on ads, don't turnthem off and even don't turn
them down by more than 25%,because it will collapse some of
the targeting.
I mean.
What is your view?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
on that.
It's a little after eight inthe morning here and my caffeine
is just now kicking in.
When I broadly define holdouttesting, holdout testing is
usually holding out part of yourtraffic, not all of it.
And just to make it clear, Idon't think I've ever had a
client actually do holdouttesting.
(08:57):
As far as turning off a channelor turning down a channel, and
yes, you're right With anyalgorithmic system, if you turn
things down, if you adjust them,you could have long-term impact
.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, and for everybody listening, I want you
to know I'm looking at Ian as amentor here.
Okay, he is a expert in thisindustry.
He's very modest.
He's been around a long time,so I'm asking him for what is
what I'm doing, right?
It's like this is how theconversation is going, just for
everybody listening.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And, by the way, that makes me feel really old when
you say he's been around a longtime.
But it's okay, it's all right.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No, it's in a positive light.
You're expert level, like waypast 10,000 hours, like you know
, right, right, you're, you'rean expert as, as a mentor, it's,
it's definitely meant to be acomment, a compliment, um, my,
my second question for you, uh,or or comment for you, going
back, was um, I've always had totrain my team and the, the, the
(09:59):
SEOs and the people doing thework, that just because you're
ranking them like top three inGoogle doesn't mean they're not
going to fire us.
Okay, Um, because rankingdoesn't equate to revenue and
I've drilled that in their headso much and, like, when I talk,
I'm like what is the impact ofthis?
(10:20):
And I feel like it's almostbeen reversed.
Like the client, even thoughthe revenue's up, they'll be
like, oh, traffic's down.
And I feel like it's almostbeen reversed, like the client,
even though the revenue's up,they'll be like, oh, traffic's
down.
And then they'll be upset.
I'll be like what, how'srevenue?
Oh, well, yeah, that's actuallydone pretty well.
And if you don't have thoseconversations to get like in
alignment, uh, and and thatexpectation in line, um, you
(10:41):
know, it tends to turn outnegatively, um, uh, from a
client interaction.
So there's this constanteducation with a client and also
team to make sure, we'relooking at the right things and
we're starting to speak in termsof revenue, not in terms of of
of ranking.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
The thing to coach teams and it's something I
always kind of coached my teamsas best as I could but the thing
to coach everybody is, you dostill need your numbers, you
need to have them in order andwhen it comes to this, this fall
of traffic right, this declineof clicks, decline of
attribution, you need to be ableto do this lift based
(11:19):
measurement.
Um, and I'm I'm going to stealthat phrase from Rand because
lift based is so much betterthan time-matched or anything
like that.
It just fits, but being able tolook and say, here's when our
rankings improved, or here'swhen ChatGPT started naming us
as one of the top tools for X orY, here's when ChatGPT started
(11:41):
talking about us in a differentway, here's when Google put us
into this particular SERPfeature.
And then look at this, a weeklater, revenue went up.
And then here, unfortunately,is when we dropped back out of
this particular prompt responseor this particular SERP feature
or whatever, and look at this,revenue went down a little bit.
You need to be able to match itup like that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
What are those tools you're using to do that?
And then what would be the KPIsyou would recommend to be
looking at today?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
I'm still using plain old Google Analytics.
And then the books, right, thebusiness's financial performance
.
Every business should be ableto tell me what their revenue is
and hopefully tell me whattheir revenue is from you know
digital versus you know in storeif they're doing in store or
(12:30):
other sources.
So I should be able toliterally just match up, okay.
And then whatever rank trackingtools I'm using, right.
So you know, like I use Gumshoeto track AI mentions and I have
my own hack together tool thatdoes that.
Like I use Gumshoe to track AImentions and I have my own hack
together tool that does that.
And then I use, you know,semrush or Ahrefs or Moz or
whatever to track rankings.
But those three things, right.
(12:52):
So some kind of trafficmeasurement like Google
Analytics, some kind of rankingsand share of voice measurement
probably two or three tools,because you're tracking multiple
places.
And then whatever the businessearnings are, right, wherever
you're getting that data, youshould be able to match those up
and you can get more granular.
So if you know that a clientdid a particular offer, or if
(13:15):
you know that a particularproduct or service gained
visibility, you should be ableto track to that one service
what happened to revenue forthis one part of the business or
this one product or this onesuite when suddenly all earned
media and I do include both SEOand generative engines of some
(13:35):
kind or another.
I can't believe I started sayinggenerative engines but because
you've heard me rant and raveabout Geo before.
But we should be able to trackwhen mentions in earned media
changed for a particular productor service or facet of the
business and attribute that justover time just lift based to
(13:56):
the sale of that particularproduct or service.
Or we may see unintended followon effects where suddenly we
got more mentions for product Abut sales for product B
increased, and then we want toinvestigate that.
There's a lot of homework to dohere and that's the part that I
find really cool.
But you do have to train yourteams and your clients that it
(14:18):
does take that kind of work.
It's not just going to GoogleAnalytics taking a look at where
your revenue is coming from andsaying, oh, it's not just going
to Google analytics taking alook at where your revenue is
coming from and saying, oh, it'scoming from direct, all right,
then I guess I don't needorganic search or paid search
anymore.
You want to be very, verycareful about that.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I had a question out of that.
I have gotten a lot of clientsmanually right.
They're not using all thesetracking tools that we have
manually doing searches fromdifferent spots on the phone, on
device and different locations.
Yeah, you know where I'm goingwith this and they're like your
data and I'm like it's not mydata, it's a.
(14:57):
This is either.
You know, um I'm using like arank math or GA four or a search
console or Ahrefs or SEM rush,like Mangalo tools, like we have
tons of tools.
Um, I've used nightwatch.
Like we've used all kinds oftools to track this.
Um, we use Moz.
Like every one of them is goingto give you a little bit
different answer based on whenit's updated, where their data
(15:20):
centers are, what it is.
And I've found myself inconversations with teams Okay
With, like you get on with theteam and you got the it guy
there and he goes.
This is all theoretical and I'mlike you're right, it is, but
these are the, these are theindustry standard tools that I
have.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I'm just pointing out .
So how?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
do you have that?
How do you have thatconversation pointing out so how
do you have that?
How do you have thatconversation?
Because when they do a personalsearch and it's like I'm not
seeing what you're telling me,you're telling me you're ranked
number one for all these terms,which I'm like this is what the
tool is saying and they're like,but I'm not seeing that because
of that personalized search.
And then I'm trying to ask themwhere they did the search.
And you know, I understand the,the, the chain of logic with,
(16:05):
like LLMs and like it stores allyour information.
It's going to give yourpreferences, but I think
Google's doing that to, to to apoint too.
So how how do we speak to that?
When people even go in, youknow, incognito mode and they
search it and it doesn't come upwith the data you have, how do
you handle that?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I really just explain all the details, and to me
that's actually an awesometeaching opportunity with
clients to explain to them justhow personalized traditional
Google search is, even today.
Even just the way the resultspages laid out can change from
person to person, even if youare incognito based on your
(16:46):
location.
And it is important also thatthey understand incognito really
isn't quite incognito, right.
So what I'll generally tellthem is you know, look, I'm
using tools that give us themost accurate user neutral view
possible and I am tracking fordifferent countries and regions.
So you know, for example, if Iswitch my VPN so I'm sitting
(17:07):
next to you in your office andthen they get really creeped out
, then you'll notice I'm gettingthe same result as you, but all
of your customers are notsitting in your office, they're
all over the place.
So when I use rank tracking,I'm tracking all over the place
and it is going to vary.
It's definitely going to varyand it is going to vary.
(17:29):
It's definitely going to vary,but this is us tracking your
performance over time Overall insearch-driven earned media.
This isn't about precisetracking down to one position on
the page, and this is somethingI really try to emphasize to
clients, and there'll always besomeone in the room who rolls
their eyes and says, yeah sure,this is what all the marketers
are going to say.
But what I'll say is you'retotally right.
(17:49):
We are not marketing toalgorithms, and even if we could
get you consistently to numberone on every search engine for
every location, for every person, with every search behavior on
the planet, there's still goingto be differences in behavior
and response in the audiencesthat are using these things.
We are not in a quantitativeworld as marketers.
(18:10):
We are not in a quantitativeworld when it comes to share of
voice and visibility.
We are in a quantitative worldwhen it comes to business
performance, but marketing, aslong as we're selling to humans
or even agents that areprogrammed by humans and
customized by humans, we arestill in a qualitative world.
We're not measuring precisenumbers.
We're using numbers to sort ofgive us a general idea of how
(18:33):
things are performing.
In the end, it does come down tothe business and, by the way,
I'd say I get fired about halfthe time when I'm having that
discussion with clients, butthere really is no other
discussion to have.
I mean, unless you want to goout there and tell people you
know what.
I can do this precisely.
Yeah, I know your numbers lookweird, but I have the right
numbers, which is just notaccurate, right?
(18:53):
You don't want to, you don'twant to corner yourself that way
and you don't want to makeassertions that, even as you're
making them, you know you can'tback up.
So that was a very long answer,but what I'm generally telling
clients is rankings vary basedon human and location, and
there's nothing you can do aboutthat, even an incognito session
.
What I'm using is tracking themost user neutral rankings
(19:16):
possible.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I love that.
I love that word.
I'm going to have to, I'm goingto have to utilize that word and
I'll definitely yeah, I lovethat neutral, neutral, user
neutral view and and we're notliving in a quantitative world,
so I'm going to use that and I'mgoing to definitely give you
credit for it too, Cause I thinkit's.
I think it's fantastic Causeit's, it's I was saying that and
we were communicating that, butnot as precise as that.
(19:41):
Cause that that answers thequestion for me.
When I heard you say that atthe beginning of your answer, I
wrote it down and I said, okay,that makes sense.
I just wasn't articulating itand I feel like a lot of
consulting with clients hasbecome being the teacher but
(20:02):
like getting in alignment withexpectations and, um, like I I
think a lot of clients,depending on who you're talking
to and the type of client, it islike this profile, some clients
don't even want to hear it,they don't want to learn it,
they don't understand it andthey you almost have to be a
marketing company or understandmarketing to run business.
(20:23):
Today.
If you're running it online,you can't just get louder and
say fix it and and that be thecase.
Uh, to transition reallyquickly to another topic that I
think, uh, I would love to getyour opinion on.
I just had a quarterly yesterday.
We have a client that hadengaged us six months ago.
(20:43):
We're first position, literallylike a couple positions or two,
but they were not ranking atall for every term.
Okay, like that, they want itlike literally every term, not
getting the kind of like theywere.
Like they want the head terms,they want the, you know, they
want that core term.
And I'm like I'm not, you know,and I'm like this website.
(21:04):
I'm not sure about this websiteand I I voiced those things at
the beginning, but I'm like, ifyou're paying me to rank it,
ranked it, we're at the end ofthe six month contract.
I'm like I delivered exactlywhat you asked me to do, but the
revenue is not there.
And you know, there was a coupleof people on the call and you
know, one was kind of gettingsour on the website and they're
(21:25):
like, okay, now we're open toradical changes on on branding,
design, everything with thewebsite.
So I, I still feel like we haveauthority, but but it's like
they've invested a bunch ofmoney and and they're not seeing
the ROI and I'm going, well,there's not a lot more juice we
can squeeze out of this lemon.
I mean, we can do some more wecan squeeze out of this lemon.
(21:45):
I mean, we can do some more.
So we're working on conversionrate optimization, we're
encouraging them to spread theirad budget around.
You know, there's somestrategies going after specific
LLMs that we're we're we'rerolling out there.
They're at a very nascent stageright now, but I'm like and
then I explained to him some ofthe stuff from, you know, seo
week like like here, yeah, and Iwas like this is where we're at
(22:06):
, and you know, I don't what,what do you want to do?
You know, and I, I, really, I, I, I think they were like they
understood and they're like okay, now lead us.
Like right, so we moved into,okay, we want to view you as the
trusted advisor and I'm going,okay, but I don't have a lot of
(22:29):
comps.
Like I have a few, but I don'thave a lot of comps.
I'm like like we got one clientin the AI overviews, uh, and
then got a link in there, right,and I was like, okay, I can, I
know how to do that, but I'mlooking at their traffic and
they're like why do you thinkthe website's not working?
And and and so?
To be completely transparent, Iwasn't a hundred percent on why
(22:53):
, why it wasn't working and andso we've set up like heat
mapping and like like I'm.
I'm doing things to try to getgranular, to understand.
But in the old world the oldgame, like that thing should
have been pumping out leads.
Now transactional type ofcontent was like two point,
(23:13):
whatever, and then informationalcontent was like 70.
So it was like so so I'm like,hey, all that's off page, you
know, and you got to build abrand.
I don't know.
That was kind of my answer.
I know that you don't know allthe details of it.
But tell me, critique me, howdid I do?
I'm curious, I mean, what youwould have done different or
that it sounds like you said allthe right things.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I mean, what I would generally say to the clients is
all right, let's start lookingat the site.
You know we've done thesethings.
Let's look at two things.
Right, you had these terms youreally wanted to go with and I
don't know how that initialconversation went and I had
mentioned maybe these otherphrases would make sense as well
.
Maybe we should focus a littlebit more on the chunky middle
(23:58):
than the head, but whatever,whatever.
But let's, yeah, let's take alook at the site, right.
So your traffic is up assumingtheir traffic is up but your
revenue's not.
Let's take a look at your site.
That may be the opportunitythat we're looking for, so let's
start tracking it.
The only other thing I would doand I do this and I do it
(24:20):
sincerely with clients is look,I know how frustrating this is.
You know humans are a pain inthe ass and that's who we're
selling to again.
Look, I know how frustratingthis is.
Humans are a pain in the assand that's who we're selling to
Again, and I know I bring thatup a lot.
But so we've done what we canwith the machines, right, we've
done everything we can to makeyou visible in earned media, or
at least you've seen some gainsthere, but those gains aren't
(24:40):
turning into money.
Okay, yeah, let's start lookingat your site.
Let's do heat mapping.
I think that's.
You know, that's exactly what Iwould do.
Let's take a careful look atengagement with individual
pieces of content on your site.
Let's look at the path explorerin Google Analytics and see how
people are navigating througheverything.
There's all sorts of steps wecan take now.
Just and the only other thing Iwould have said is the work
(25:04):
we've done isn't wasted.
Right, we have.
We have grown your traffic.
Right, we've got people comingto the storefront now.
Now we need to figure outwhether we need to change the
storefront or whether we need toadd other sources of traffic.
Or do we need to go where theusers are and maybe not look at
increasing traffic?
(25:24):
So do we need to have some ofthat content out there where
people don't need to click justto start to get a better sense
of your product?
But my gut tells me, if theirtraffic's up, you got them
ranking for the right terms.
The terms made general sense toyou.
Yeah, then it's about the site.
Let's take a look at how we getmore of those people on your
site converting, and let's alsolook at what our conversions are
(25:45):
.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I just want to stop there and do a quick commercial
for you.
Anyone that's listening.
Ian is a great coach and ifyou're looking at struggling
with dealing with client issuesright now, which I feel like you
know, with all the headwindsthat are going on, like I mean,
I'm right there with everyoneelse and and I appreciate, uh,
(26:07):
the input, hopefully otherpeople are getting value, um,
from this call.
But, um, ian's one of thego-tos that he's run an agency
for a long time.
He's seen it all.
Um, he's a great, a greatmentor and in that regard, so
reach out to him.
I believe he does consulting inthat regard as well.
So I just want to do a quickcommercial for you.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If nothing else, I can tell you all the things I
did that failed utterly.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That's that well you know, out of a ditch right.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Hiring.
People ask me sometimes youknow, can you help me with
hiring?
I can say I have made hires sobad that people who worked for
me 20 years ago still make funof me about the hires.
So but at least I can tell youwhat led to that and then you
can make sure you don't do thatso often.
My coaching is yeah, thisreally didn't work.
So I would.
I would try anything but whatI'm telling you right now.
But yes, I'm always happy to tochat with people about their
(27:00):
agencies or consulting or youknow, whatever challenges
they're facing.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I appreciate your humbleness.
All right, let's go to likewhat's topical right now.
I mean, what are the thingsthat you're dealing with that
you're seeing that you'rekeeping you up at night?
Like what's keeping you up atnight?
Like what are you looking at?
Or what's fun?
Right, like what's keeping youup in a positive way?
Cause I mean, I was sittingaround playing with my kids
Vimeo three, I'm making some AIprompts, right?
And letting their, their, their,uh, creativity come to life and
(27:29):
them seeing it.
And then I got my kids going uh, we want to make a YouTube
channel, we want to.
You know so.
So I I'm seeing like creativecreativity is opening up, and I
know that that's not the topicof this conversation, but like
I'm spending time in AI and AIis like permeating into
everything and I think it'sstill early, but I mean, if
(27:53):
Google's going to switch over, Iwas having a conversation with
a local like we've been doing alot of like SEO, local stuff
recently because I still thinkthere's a huge opportunity that
ties to revenue in that area andI was talking to a consultant
and I started going in AI mode.
The 10 blue links are going tobe gone.
(28:15):
What's going to happen to GNB?
And I'm like I've never hadthat thought in my head before.
Where is the'm?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
just, I would love to get your predictions and let me
tell you the things that keepme up at night in a positive way
.
Yes, ai is a tool.
You know its ability to.
You know do certain automatecertain things that we do, or at
least add another set of eyesto certain things we do, like
(28:44):
when I'm doing data analysis now, when I'm reviewing client
performance a quick example Iuse you know you probably do too
I use at least 10 differenttracking tools or I use little
warden to check if something'swrong with the client site.
Every single day.
I have rank tracking, I useGoogle alerts, I use visual ping
.
That's a lot of stuff cominginto my inbox.
(29:04):
So what I've done is I've builtsomething in cloud using their
Gmail MCP server that just goesout to my Gmail inbox and I have
a whole set of rules and itgoes and it looks through all
those emails and then it givesme a quick summary.
It says here's the, accordingto your priorities, these are
urgent you need to take.
And I just had one come insaying you know someone's robots
(29:24):
TXT is returning HTML instead.
That's a problem.
So you know those are the kindsof things it can do.
So I'm very excited about that.
I'm really excited about theway that AI can help us with
that.
The thing that keeps me up atnight, the two things that keep
me up at night in a bad way, arethe rate at which we are
adopting AI to generate content.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Because and I don't need to go into all the
technical explanations of how itworks, everybody's heard them
all by now but I mean AI.
When you ask AI to generatecontent, it's generating it
based on an average.
So that means any content youhave AI generate is average, and
people are generally using AIto generate content because they
feel like they don't have time,which to me means they're still
(30:12):
in that mode of cranking outcontent.
You should generate the contentthat you.
You should generate what youfeel you have time to do.
That's exceptional.
If you don't have time to do itand feel like it's exceptional,
why should your audience spendany time reading it or watching
it?
So that concerns me a greatdeal is the rate at which we're
adopting AI to create contentand the rate at which we're
(30:37):
adopting AI to help us findthings because it's not that
good at it yet.
At it yet.
I am not a Luddite and I am nothere to say don't use AI.
I use it every day.
I love learning this stuff.
I love working with it.
If you could see my desktopright now, I've got Cloud and
ChatGPT and I've got Windsurfand all these other things open,
(30:59):
but we are not sufficientlyskeptical when it comes to using
it to discover and using it togenerate content.
And we need to be moreskeptical because otherwise it's
going to be just like when wewere from pure marketing
standpoint.
It's going to be like when wewere using spun content to rank
right or we were going to linkexchanges and purchase links.
(31:21):
There's going to be a nastywake-up call and it's
fundamentally reducing thequality of our marketing.
So that may not be analgorithmic wake-up call, it may
not be Google coming andpenalizing us or something, but
we're going to all startwondering well, why isn't this
working?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It's because we're generating the average right and
that's the content side To addon to that and tie it back into
something we were saying before,and I agree with you.
I've talked about dead internettheory is just proliferating
right, and now you've got agentsposting on social In addition
to that, not just medium content.
(32:01):
I love how you said it givesyou the average.
I think that that's a goodframe of reference in people's
mind of what you're producing.
My fear and I am going to claimguilt on this publicly is there
was a recent article that Ishared about MIT and I know
(32:21):
other people have shared it aswell about how we've outsourced
our brain and our thinking, andthere was a time like a year and
a half, two years ago, whatever, I don't know.
Time goes by so fast I have noidea anymore where I was.
Like this is a bettercopywriter than me and if it
says something I'm just going tobelieve it that it's better and
(32:42):
do that.
And I recently had a uh, uh, along time uh in the industry
copywriter on on this podcastand he really opened my eyes,
which was being opened likebeforehand.
But he like, really like, hitit home, like the content is
just mediocre, um, and itdoesn't always solve that
(33:05):
problem.
And when you you said earlier,like let's look at the website
and see how it performs, right,and if people are outsourcing
their brain and they're writinga bunch of copy and then you got
a bunch of the watermarks inthere, right, you can see that
it's AI and the copies like I'mnot saying it's bad copy but I'm
(33:28):
not saying it's exceptionalcopy for what you're trying to
do and how it fits in to thewhole page.
And even if you like, give itthe page and it reads the page
and it produces the copy.
When I look at that in like acritical um set of eyes, like
I've read a bunch of Dan Kennedystuff and you know a bunch of
other you know've read a bunchof Dan Kennedy stuff and a bunch
of other direct responsecopywriting when I apply it
(33:49):
against those principles which Iguess I could upload some
documentation and training tofine tune it, but just out of
the box, llm like a chat GBT, no, like it's not there yet.
Man, it's probably way betterthan it was, but I've been
guilty of that and you've got toread what's being produced and
(34:09):
understand how it fits in and itneeds to be a helper, but it
can't replace what's in yourhead and your knowledge.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So I'm going to get a little theoretical Do it.
I love it.
You know, humans are narrativecreatures, right, we're driven
by narrative and semantics.
And AI is probabilistic.
It's predicting what the nextword should be.
That's why AI can't yetgenerate good content, because
(34:39):
it can't build a narrative.
And by narrative I don't meanliterally telling a story, I
mean this way of proceeding fromone idea to the next and having
the gut instinct around.
When do I transition to a newidea?
How do I guide my readerthrough?
Or my viewer I shouldn't justsay reader, my viewer, my
(35:01):
whatever from one idea to thenext?
Um, from one idea to the next.
Ai is not narrative and we are.
So I use ai to generate ideas,like you just said.
In fact, what I often say isyou should build an ai sandwich
on human bread.
So it should go.
Human comes up with ideas togive to the ai.
Ai generates more ideas.
(35:22):
Human generates the finalproduct, and I don't mean just
going through and sort ofrewording what the AI spat out.
I mean you're using your brainto actually turn it into a piece
of narrative information,semantically targeted
information that's going to pullthe right emotional strings,
and I mean that in a positiveway and be something that's
(35:44):
truly going to generate aresponse from your audience, and
that's a hard discussion tohave with clients, right?
Because the client's reallygoing to say, look, I just need
to produce 10 blog posts a weekand I don't have a great answer
for clients with that, exceptthat that is what everyone is
doing, and when everyone isdoing it, it's not going to last
(36:06):
very long.
There's certain things that wecan't outsource.
I just saw a great articlesomewhere that someone sent to
me about how good taste, justgeneral taste, I don't mean I
have good taste, someone elsehas bad taste, I have no taste.
By the way, I can see how I'mdressed, but there's this vague
(36:28):
sense of what is of high qualityand what is not.
You can't outsource that to AIand that's what we have to
appeal to in marketing.
And again, that's narrative,right, that's descriptive, and
that's what AI can't really do.
All it can do is take whateveryone else has said and then,
based on the percentages, sayhere's what the next word,
(36:49):
sentence, paragraph should be.
And, by the way, I don't, youknow people talk about, you know
, generalized artificialintelligence.
We're, hopefully, very far awayfrom that and even the day that
we get there, we're stillmarketing to humans, right when
we're marketing to AI is when weshould probably all watch
(37:14):
WALL-E a few more times andfigure out exactly which couches
we want to lie on.
I think we're pretty far fromthat.
I'm getting real philosophicalhere.
The short answer, the clearanswer, is AI can't generate
information and stories the waywe need to be able to tell them
to get people, to compel peoplein a positive way to buy the
(37:35):
products they need when theyneed them.
But that is not something thatAI can do.
Ai can organize facts andorganize words and generate it
for us, but it can't do theactual, the, the, the
storytelling part of this.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man, all that philosophical stuff.
I have a bunch of threads thatI would love to go down, but not
right now, but by that we couldhave a side conversation about
that.
I would love to hear more aboutyour predictions, as we're
talking about philosophically,like where do you see things
going?
Like what are the things that,like, maybe people aren't paying
(38:12):
attention to?
Or what, what are you hearingin the marketplace?
Like what's the tone of asyou're interacting with clients,
like where they're at versuswhere you see it's going, and
like where that gap is.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Clients are very concerned still about vanity
metrics like traffic andrankings, and those are going
away.
There's nothing we can do aboutthat.
Right, we are returning to 20thcentury, 19th century style
marketing attribution andthere's nothing to do about it.
And clients are struggling withthat and I totally get it right
.
I mean, it's a very difficultand scary transition.
(38:44):
So that's one thing.
Another transition that's scaryis we are moving into a world
where brand is even moreimportant, which is going to
make it very difficult forsmaller businesses, and smaller
businesses are going to have toget very good at building a
super powerful story and I'msorry this is so generic in
general, but around their brandfor a very small, super targeted
(39:07):
audience.
You're not going to.
You know, if you're running abusiness out of a spare room in
your house and you're competingwith Amazon, you're not going to
be able to just rank rightbehind Amazon and sell a ton of
stuff.
You're going to need to reallyfigure out, all right, who are
the hundred or thousand peoplethat I can sell to right now?
And if that's not going to work, if selling to a thousand
(39:27):
people isn't going to work, howam I going to change my business
to make it work.
So those are two big trends.
The third one that I don't thinkanyone has really thought about
yet is the rise of agents andagentic AI.
I actually think it's kind ofBS.
I don't think agents areparticularly effective as far as
transacting business, butthey're probably going to get
(39:48):
there for another reason thanpeople want them to, and so
businesses do need to thinkabout a time when their content,
their information, is beingdelivered to people second and
third hand.
Third hand right, googledelivers second hand, but if
there's agents involved, thenthey're going and finding the
products and they're bringingthe information back to me, the
customer, so that's third-hand.
(40:08):
You're going to have to figureout a way to have that narrative
show up when agentic AI isbringing information to people,
as opposed to people going andsearching, finding on our search
engine and landing on yourwebsite.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So, to add onto that, I feel like when people go
across the river is like theterminology I'm using, and they
start using like there's a lotof people and even clients, say
I'm still using Google.
I feel like AI overviews isjust holding them there, right,
and it's keeping them there, butthey're still searching Google.
But then Google's like oh,we're going to launch, you know,
(40:43):
ai mode, or they've alreadylaunched AI mode, and I've seen
people, if they're really using,uh, llms, like they almost
don't use search anymore, um, oror.
That's what I'm consistentlyseeing.
I'm not saying everyone.
And then back to your point oflike you need to do the real
research, because it can justgive you whatever it thinks.
(41:06):
Here are the six links now.
Or here are the six companies,here's the listicle, and you're
just going to go off of that.
So there's a lot ofoptimization absolutely around
that.
I would love to get any inputyou have on that.
I just kind of wanted to statethat I'm absolutely seeing that,
that that search is dying andthat kind of brings in the
(41:29):
comment about, uh, gmb, gdp, gdp.
Yeah, I hate that change.
Um, uh.
But the second thing you saidis really powerful, and I feel
like that's where, if you'reworking with small brands which
we've started to work with much,much bigger brands, because you
have to do so much to competeon that level there's this
(41:51):
bifurcation happening of if youcan actually compete online and
you can't.
And Google in the past has donea good job of like helping,
like small businesses make it.
You know, I mean even what theysunsetted on GMB GDP, how you
could build a website in othercountries.
You know you could build, and,but now that's not the case.
(42:13):
And so, to your point, you gotto have a memorable brand.
You got to have, like, okay,use AI, whatever, um, but you
need to have a mascot, like youneed to have a community that
you're selling into, and thenmaybe, uh, you know you're
talking about changing yourbusiness model.
If, if that doesn't work, like,where do you see that going?
(42:33):
Like, can you further push out?
Where you see that Cause thatpendulum of you need creative
people, mad Men is coming backright, like I think that there's
a pendulum swing back, but ifyou're a small business, I want
to know what you think.
The answer is to say to themthat this is the future you will
be facing, maybe not this year,but in the next two to three
(42:56):
years.
This is a reality.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
So I got to.
I got to.
I got to give you two answersbecause the first thing you said
is about search dying and Iwant to make sure people
understand search is not dyingClicks are shrinking right.
People are still searching forand discovering things, and that
has always been true.
In marketing and you know, asmarketers, we are all about
discoverability, whether we'rean SEO, paid search or something
(43:19):
else.
So don't worry about searchdying.
Worry about how you work in aworld where clicks are no longer
the primary driver of yourbusiness.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
And then when it comes to smaller brands and
bigger brands, but smallerbrands especially I have two
rules in marketing, right, twobasic rules.
The first one is maximizereturn on time invested, and if
you're a smaller brand, you cando this in ways big brands can't
.
What I mean is when clientsinteract with you wherever they,
or customers interact with youwherever they interact with you
(43:51):
social media somewhere elseexecute really well.
Make sure you're deliveringexactly what they need when they
need it.
Keep your ego out of it, right,think about what they need.
And that brings me to thesecond thing, which is you got
to teach the shit out ofeverything.
That's my second rule ofmarketing.
If you teach the shit out ofeverything, right.
(44:12):
If you are giving yourcustomers more information and
more support as they aredeciding what to buy and how and
I don't care if you sellbroccoli, rubber grommets or
bicycles they are makingdecisions based on information
you give them and you can teachthings implicitly, right.
You can just make sure yoursite is super clear and all the
(44:33):
information you communicate insocial media or wherever the
structured data you're providingto the LLMs, whatever is really
informative and informationrich right.
It gives me everything I needto make a decision right, then
and there, without gating andwithout forcing me to download
something, without forcing me toget in touch with you.
That's a critical first step.
(44:54):
Right, that's doing two thingsit's maximizing return on time
invested and it's teaching theshit out of everything.
And if you want to build yourbrand without needing Don Draper
right and Mad Men, you know, tome that's the most powerful
gimmick of all is making surethat you do a better job of
teaching your audience how touse a product than anyone else
(45:14):
is doing and you help them makea better decision than anyone
else does.
If you do those things right,then you've got one up on Amazon
, you've got one up on Targetand all of those.
And no, you're not going tomake a billion dollars, but you
will build that super, superdedicated audience.
I know this sounds idealisticand I know it's sent.
(45:35):
Your customers or your clientsare going to look at this and
say, oh my God, I don't havetime to do that.
What else are you going to do?
That is how.
That is how this, that is howbusiness has worked for a long
time, and I don't mean to beglib.
These are core principles thathave worked in marketing and
business for decades and decadesand decades.
(45:58):
So you're going to need to getback to that.
You're going to need to focuson that.
It's not going to be easy, butwhen you're done, you're going
to have something a lot moresustainable going to be easy,
but when you're done, you'regoing to have something a lot
more sustainable.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I love that and I I've really got a lot out of
this that I need to contemplateon at this point.
Is there anything else that ison your mind?
Speaker 3 (46:25):
that you think is valuable, that we could share,
that we haven't covered so far.
You know I have more general,the general advice that things
are always changing.
Obviously, right now marketingis very much in flux.
People's businesses are in flux.
It's scary or even terrifying,right.
It's frustrating.
You have to understand that.
This is.
This is sort of how marketinghas always been, and it may feel
(46:50):
like an unusually chaotic time.
But try to adjust to this andtry to not panic too much.
Rely on your experts, rely onyour expertise and stick to
those basic principles that makemarketing work and you will
come out okay on the other side.
I promise you will.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
You will come out okay on the other side, I
promise you will.
I love that.
Is there any unknown secret ofinternet marketing that you feel
like is underutilized that youwould like to share with the
audience?
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I do think teaching the shit out of everything is an
undersold tactic.
Everyone says, oh yeah, I'mdoing a really good job of
teaching, but think about onequestion all of your customers
ask you and then look at yourbusiness.
Um, everyone says, oh yeah, youknow I'm doing a really good
job of teaching.
But think about one questionAll of your customers ask you
and then look at your businessand see whether you provide them
that answer in a way that theycan get it Even if you're not
(47:36):
present.
Right, can they get that answerfrom you Even if you're not
right there talking to them?
Take that one question, answerit on your website, answer it in
social media.
Do that a few times and seewhat that does for your business
.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I love that.
Ian, lurie, everybody.
Ian, what's the best way forpeople to get in touch with you
if they want to hear more orfollow along with what?
Speaker 3 (47:58):
you're working on Probably just track me down on
LinkedIn.
I'm just Ian LurieI-A-N-L-U-R-I E.
I think there's only like sixof us on LinkedIn.
You can always send me amessage.
I'm happy to answer questionsand that's probably the best way
to reach out to me.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Awesome.
Well, everybody, just hang inthere Until the next time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
This is the Unknown Secrets ofInternet Marketing.
Bye-bye for now.
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfront-fold episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram,and for those of you watching on
YouTube, yes, I still need toset up my office.
I apologize for anybodywatching, but I don't apologize
for the guests that I've justbrought on.
Somebody that's an old schooldigital marker, somebody you
probably heard out there.
(00:39):
He was there at the beginning.
He's well known in the circlesof SEO, ian Lurie.
Ian, great to have you on theshow.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thanks, matt, really really excited to be here and,
by the way, I've been in thisoffice for three or four years
now and it's still not together,so I wouldn't feel bad about
that.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, I got some trainings that I want to do and
I have a whiteboard that I needto get up and I just haven't
done it because it's just onething after next.
Seo is like not just a movingtarget which I've always said
that but it's moving atlightning speed and every week
it's like new stuff comes outand it's honestly a little bit
(01:21):
overwhelming.
I'm sure other people arefeeling that as well.
I mean, what's your perspectiveof what's going on in the
marketplace today from how it'sbeen?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It's chaos and I love the chaos.
I kind of live for times likethis, and it's been 30 years of
this in marketing, right, I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm
, you know, kind of creaking myway up on stage here to speak,
but when I started, marketingwas being disrupted by digital
(01:52):
right and then SEO came alongand that disrupted everything.
And now, you know, then clicksstarted going away and that
further disrupted everything.
And now we've got AI, which isdisrupting the disruption, that
clicks are going away.
So it never really stops and Ienjoy it.
So if I sound like I'm kind ofgleeful about all the chaos
(02:13):
that's stressing everybody out,I apologize.
I do know how crazy andstressful it is.
I look at it too and I worryabout lost clicks and things,
but it's a really cool challengethat I think we're all working
with.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It is.
Seo is just a fun game.
Search is a fun game, justdigital marketing.
So from the aspect of like thetactician and the strategist,
it's fun From running a businessand continuing to implement new
SOPs and client needs.
So I actually just saw yourpost that Rand had done.
(02:48):
You had reposted Rand's post andI saw that, I think yesterday,
and I watched his video and likeeverything he said was dead on
and then I'm like that's reallythe answer, like you know, which
we've been talking about it,but it's that's hard for a
client to hear that we can'ttrack anything and you're just
(03:08):
going to have to do tests onuplift and it's impressions and
it's conversions.
And we've been telling ourclients that in quarterly
meetings that we've been havingand they've been all trained on.
Well, one of the metrics istraffic right to my site and
clicks and now most of thetraffic coming to the site is
(03:32):
brand traffic and you don't knowwhere it's coming from and how
are you measuring it and it'slike, yeah, we got a test and
the tools aren't effective.
I mean, I know demand sphereand I just had those guys on
came out with the new tool andthere's a lot of LLM stuff, but
LLM is not that big yet.
I mean, we're kind of skatingto where the puck is going to be
(03:55):
, but right now you don't havemuch visibility.
And so I'm just curious.
I know you're doing a lot oflike fractional CMO work and
consulting.
What are the things that aretopical for clients in the
conversations you're having?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
You know it's interesting.
You're talking about skating towhere the puck is.
You know, wayne Gretzky, um,I've always tried to tell
clients to skate where the moneyis.
You know, for us as marketers,yeah, we should always be
looking ahead, but our clientsneed to go where the money is.
For us as marketers, yeah, weshould always be looking ahead,
but our clients need to go wherethe money is, and that's part
of what I think we see happeningright now is, for a long time,
(04:34):
a lot of clients were trained toequate traffic with money, and
I don't know that that was evertrue, going back 10, 20 years,
and I don't know that that wasever true.
You know, going back 10, 20years, to the I mean pre-digital
.
The thing that we would alwaystell clients is you're running
marketing Okay, is the businessgrowing?
You know you're doing SEO Great, you're getting more traffic.
(04:57):
Awesome, got really highrankings for terms you think are
important.
Fantastic, what's happening tothe bottom line?
And you know, first Google tookaway keyword tracking from
organic search, which peoplestill haven't adjusted to.
Then browser security took awaysome refer tracking.
We all know how much trafficends up coming from direct now,
(05:19):
even though it's not reallycoming from direct and now
you've got SERP features and AIoverviews and other things again
taking away those clicks thething that I'm trying to tell
clients, the thing I keepbringing them back to every time
they get in touch with me.
And I have clients who aregetting in touch with me almost
daily now saying, look, I'mreally not enjoying this, it's
(05:40):
going away.
We're ranking for less and lessstuff.
And this is not one client,this is every client I have.
What do we do?
I say, well, take a look atyour core business performance.
Are you making more money?
If you really want to testwhich channels are working and
which ones aren't, you canalways do what we used to call a
(06:01):
holdout test, where you turnoff one channel and see what
happens.
I don't recommend that in earnedmedia like SEO and social and
AI.
I don't think that's a goodidea.
But you could do holdouttesting of other channels and
see what the effect is right.
If you do a two-day holdouttest on paid search and you have
(06:21):
an outsized impact, then youknow paid search may be having a
bigger impact than earnedchannels.
But I do not recommend doingholdout tests.
That's sort of my final, thefinal statement I make to
clients when I just can't bringthem around and I say, well,
okay, let's turn it off and seewhat happens, and generally that
kind of brings people aroundwhen I'm trying to persuade them
(06:42):
in those meetings.
Look, it's about the businessperformance.
It's not about your rankings,it's not about traffic.
Don't fire your SEO becauseyour traffic is dropping right.
Fire your.
SEO if your revenue is dropping.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
So I have kind of two follow-on comments to that.
The first one on the holdouttesting.
That's in my opinion, in mypersonal experience working with
clients.
Um, yes, I don't recommend thatbecause, well, if you have,
I'll give you an example.
Uh, a client came to us that hadbeen running paid traffic for a
(07:18):
couple of years with notargeting set up, okay, and I
was like, let's measure thistest by setting up another test
with parameters, run it and, youknow, compare it side by side.
And he didn't want to runanother test that would, you
know, eat up the traffic that hecurrently had.
(07:39):
And he's like let's install thetraffic on my you know my
campaign, because there's notraffic and I believe everything
you're saying.
And I was like I don't thinkthat's a good idea.
And he's like how it's not?
I say, well, the AI.
I don't know what the AI isdoing.
It's like learn to your stuffis right.
It's like a heat seekingmissile and it'll find what you
need.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
You're talking about Google ads.
Yeah, I'm talking about Googleads.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, I'm talking about Google ads, and so then we
got pressured to add targetingbecause I said that this is a
good thing to do, and it tankedhis performance because you
don't know, with the machinelearning, what's there and
you're basically resetting it.
So our recommendation, or myrecommendation, which I don't
know if this is likeindustry-wide standard, is like
(08:25):
once you turn on ads, don't turnthem off and even don't turn
them down by more than 25%,because it will collapse some of
the targeting.
I mean.
What is your view?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
on that.
It's a little after eight inthe morning here and my caffeine
is just now kicking in.
When I broadly define holdouttesting, holdout testing is
usually holding out part of yourtraffic, not all of it.
And just to make it clear, Idon't think I've ever had a
client actually do holdouttesting.
(08:57):
As far as turning off a channelor turning down a channel, and
yes, you're right With anyalgorithmic system, if you turn
things down, if you adjust them,you could have long-term impact
.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, and for everybody listening, I want you
to know I'm looking at Ian as amentor here.
Okay, he is a expert in thisindustry.
He's very modest.
He's been around a long time,so I'm asking him for what is
what I'm doing, right?
It's like this is how theconversation is going, just for
everybody listening.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And, by the way, that makes me feel really old when
you say he's been around a longtime.
But it's okay, it's all right.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
No, it's in a positive light.
You're expert level, like waypast 10,000 hours, like you know
, right, right, you're, you'rean expert as, as a mentor, it's,
it's definitely meant to be acomment, a compliment, um, my,
my second question for you, uh,or or comment for you, going
back, was um, I've always had totrain my team and the, the, the
(09:59):
SEOs and the people doing thework, that just because you're
ranking them like top three inGoogle doesn't mean they're not
going to fire us.
Okay, Um, because rankingdoesn't equate to revenue and
I've drilled that in their headso much and, like, when I talk,
I'm like what is the impact ofthis?
(10:20):
And I feel like it's almostbeen reversed.
Like the client, even thoughthe revenue's up, they'll be
like, oh, traffic's down.
And I feel like it's almostbeen reversed, like the client,
even though the revenue's up,they'll be like, oh, traffic's
down.
And then they'll be upset.
I'll be like what, how'srevenue?
Oh, well, yeah, that's actuallydone pretty well.
And if you don't have thoseconversations to get like in
alignment, uh, and and thatexpectation in line, um, you
(10:41):
know, it tends to turn outnegatively, um, uh, from a
client interaction.
So there's this constanteducation with a client and also
team to make sure, we'relooking at the right things and
we're starting to speak in termsof revenue, not in terms of of
of ranking.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
The thing to coach teams and it's something I
always kind of coached my teamsas best as I could but the thing
to coach everybody is, you dostill need your numbers, you
need to have them in order andwhen it comes to this, this fall
of traffic right, this declineof clicks, decline of
attribution, you need to be ableto do this lift based
(11:19):
measurement.
Um, and I'm I'm going to stealthat phrase from Rand because
lift based is so much betterthan time-matched or anything
like that.
It just fits, but being able tolook and say, here's when our
rankings improved, or here'swhen ChatGPT started naming us
as one of the top tools for X orY, here's when ChatGPT started
(11:41):
talking about us in a differentway, here's when Google put us
into this particular SERPfeature.
And then look at this, a weeklater, revenue went up.
And then here, unfortunately,is when we dropped back out of
this particular prompt responseor this particular SERP feature
or whatever, and look at this,revenue went down a little bit.
You need to be able to match itup like that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
What are those tools you're using to do that?
And then what would be the KPIsyou would recommend to be
looking at today?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
I'm still using plain old Google Analytics.
And then the books, right, thebusiness's financial performance
.
Every business should be ableto tell me what their revenue is
and hopefully tell me whattheir revenue is from you know
digital versus you know in storeif they're doing in store or
(12:30):
other sources.
So I should be able toliterally just match up, okay.
And then whatever rank trackingtools I'm using, right.
So you know, like I use Gumshoeto track AI mentions and I have
my own hack together tool thatdoes that.
Like I use Gumshoe to track AImentions and I have my own hack
together tool that does that.
And then I use, you know,semrush or Ahrefs or Moz or
whatever to track rankings.
But those three things, right.
(12:52):
So some kind of trafficmeasurement like Google
Analytics, some kind of rankingsand share of voice measurement
probably two or three tools,because you're tracking multiple
places.
And then whatever the businessearnings are, right, wherever
you're getting that data, youshould be able to match those up
and you can get more granular.
So if you know that a clientdid a particular offer, or if
(13:15):
you know that a particularproduct or service gained
visibility, you should be ableto track to that one service
what happened to revenue forthis one part of the business or
this one product or this onesuite when suddenly all earned
media and I do include both SEOand generative engines of some
(13:35):
kind or another.
I can't believe I started sayinggenerative engines but because
you've heard me rant and raveabout Geo before.
But we should be able to trackwhen mentions in earned media
changed for a particular productor service or facet of the
business and attribute that justover time just lift based to
(13:56):
the sale of that particularproduct or service.
Or we may see unintended followon effects where suddenly we
got more mentions for product Abut sales for product B
increased, and then we want toinvestigate that.
There's a lot of homework to dohere and that's the part that I
find really cool.
But you do have to train yourteams and your clients that it
(14:18):
does take that kind of work.
It's not just going to GoogleAnalytics taking a look at where
your revenue is coming from andsaying, oh, it's not just going
to Google analytics taking alook at where your revenue is
coming from and saying, oh, it'scoming from direct, all right,
then I guess I don't needorganic search or paid search
anymore.
You want to be very, verycareful about that.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I had a question out of that.
I have gotten a lot of clientsmanually right.
They're not using all thesetracking tools that we have
manually doing searches fromdifferent spots on the phone, on
device and different locations.
Yeah, you know where I'm goingwith this and they're like your
data and I'm like it's not mydata, it's a.
(14:57):
This is either.
You know, um I'm using like arank math or GA four or a search
console or Ahrefs or SEM rush,like Mangalo tools, like we have
tons of tools.
Um, I've used nightwatch.
Like we've used all kinds oftools to track this.
Um, we use Moz.
Like every one of them is goingto give you a little bit
different answer based on whenit's updated, where their data
(15:20):
centers are, what it is.
And I've found myself inconversations with teams Okay
With, like you get on with theteam and you got the it guy
there and he goes.
This is all theoretical and I'mlike you're right, it is, but
these are the, these are theindustry standard tools that I
have.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I'm just pointing out .
So how?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
do you have that?
How do you have thatconversation pointing out so how
do you have that?
How do you have thatconversation?
Because when they do a personalsearch and it's like I'm not
seeing what you're telling me,you're telling me you're ranked
number one for all these terms,which I'm like this is what the
tool is saying and they're like,but I'm not seeing that because
of that personalized search.
And then I'm trying to ask themwhere they did the search.
And you know, I understand the,the, the chain of logic with,
(16:05):
like LLMs and like it stores allyour information.
It's going to give yourpreferences, but I think
Google's doing that to, to to apoint too.
So how how do we speak to that?
When people even go in, youknow, incognito mode and they
search it and it doesn't come upwith the data you have, how do
you handle that?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I really just explain all the details, and to me
that's actually an awesometeaching opportunity with
clients to explain to them justhow personalized traditional
Google search is, even today.
Even just the way the resultspages laid out can change from
person to person, even if youare incognito based on your
(16:46):
location.
And it is important also thatthey understand incognito really
isn't quite incognito, right.
So what I'll generally tellthem is you know, look, I'm
using tools that give us themost accurate user neutral view
possible and I am tracking fordifferent countries and regions.
So you know, for example, if Iswitch my VPN so I'm sitting
(17:07):
next to you in your office andthen they get really creeped out
, then you'll notice I'm gettingthe same result as you, but all
of your customers are notsitting in your office, they're
all over the place.
So when I use rank tracking,I'm tracking all over the place
and it is going to vary.
It's definitely going to varyand it is going to vary.
(17:29):
It's definitely going to vary,but this is us tracking your
performance over time Overall insearch-driven earned media.
This isn't about precisetracking down to one position on
the page, and this is somethingI really try to emphasize to
clients, and there'll always besomeone in the room who rolls
their eyes and says, yeah sure,this is what all the marketers
are going to say.
But what I'll say is you'retotally right.
(17:49):
We are not marketing toalgorithms, and even if we could
get you consistently to numberone on every search engine for
every location, for every person, with every search behavior on
the planet, there's still goingto be differences in behavior
and response in the audiencesthat are using these things.
We are not in a quantitativeworld as marketers.
(18:10):
We are not in a quantitativeworld when it comes to share of
voice and visibility.
We are in a quantitative worldwhen it comes to business
performance, but marketing, aslong as we're selling to humans
or even agents that areprogrammed by humans and
customized by humans, we arestill in a qualitative world.
We're not measuring precisenumbers.
We're using numbers to sort ofgive us a general idea of how
(18:33):
things are performing.
In the end, it does come down tothe business and, by the way,
I'd say I get fired about halfthe time when I'm having that
discussion with clients, butthere really is no other
discussion to have.
I mean, unless you want to goout there and tell people you
know what.
I can do this precisely.
Yeah, I know your numbers lookweird, but I have the right
numbers, which is just notaccurate, right?
(18:53):
You don't want to, you don'twant to corner yourself that way
and you don't want to makeassertions that, even as you're
making them, you know you can'tback up.
So that was a very long answer,but what I'm generally telling
clients is rankings vary basedon human and location, and
there's nothing you can do aboutthat, even an incognito session
.
What I'm using is tracking themost user neutral rankings
(19:16):
possible.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I love that.
I love that word.
I'm going to have to, I'm goingto have to utilize that word and
I'll definitely yeah, I lovethat neutral, neutral, user
neutral view and and we're notliving in a quantitative world,
so I'm going to use that and I'mgoing to definitely give you
credit for it too, Cause I thinkit's.
I think it's fantastic Causeit's, it's I was saying that and
we were communicating that, butnot as precise as that.
(19:41):
Cause that that answers thequestion for me.
When I heard you say that atthe beginning of your answer, I
wrote it down and I said, okay,that makes sense.
I just wasn't articulating itand I feel like a lot of
consulting with clients hasbecome being the teacher but
(20:02):
like getting in alignment withexpectations and, um, like I I
think a lot of clients,depending on who you're talking
to and the type of client, it islike this profile, some clients
don't even want to hear it,they don't want to learn it,
they don't understand it andthey you almost have to be a
marketing company or understandmarketing to run business.
(20:23):
Today.
If you're running it online,you can't just get louder and
say fix it and and that be thecase.
Uh, to transition reallyquickly to another topic that I
think, uh, I would love to getyour opinion on.
I just had a quarterly yesterday.
We have a client that hadengaged us six months ago.
(20:43):
We're first position, literallylike a couple positions or two,
but they were not ranking atall for every term.
Okay, like that, they want itlike literally every term, not
getting the kind of like theywere.
Like they want the head terms,they want the, you know, they
want that core term.
And I'm like I'm not, you know,and I'm like this website.
(21:04):
I'm not sure about this websiteand I I voiced those things at
the beginning, but I'm like, ifyou're paying me to rank it,
ranked it, we're at the end ofthe six month contract.
I'm like I delivered exactlywhat you asked me to do, but the
revenue is not there.
And you know, there was a coupleof people on the call and you
know, one was kind of gettingsour on the website and they're
(21:25):
like, okay, now we're open toradical changes on on branding,
design, everything with thewebsite.
So I, I still feel like we haveauthority, but but it's like
they've invested a bunch ofmoney and and they're not seeing
the ROI and I'm going, well,there's not a lot more juice we
can squeeze out of this lemon.
I mean, we can do some more wecan squeeze out of this lemon.
(21:45):
I mean, we can do some more.
So we're working on conversionrate optimization, we're
encouraging them to spread theirad budget around.
You know, there's somestrategies going after specific
LLMs that we're we're we'rerolling out there.
They're at a very nascent stageright now, but I'm like and
then I explained to him some ofthe stuff from, you know, seo
week like like here, yeah, and Iwas like this is where we're at
(22:06):
, and you know, I don't what,what do you want to do?
You know, and I, I, really, I, I, I think they were like they
understood and they're like okay, now lead us.
Like right, so we moved into,okay, we want to view you as the
trusted advisor and I'm going,okay, but I don't have a lot of
(22:29):
comps.
Like I have a few, but I don'thave a lot of comps.
I'm like like we got one clientin the AI overviews, uh, and
then got a link in there, right,and I was like, okay, I can, I
know how to do that, but I'mlooking at their traffic and
they're like why do you thinkthe website's not working?
And and and so?
To be completely transparent, Iwasn't a hundred percent on why
(22:53):
, why it wasn't working and andso we've set up like heat
mapping and like like I'm.
I'm doing things to try to getgranular, to understand.
But in the old world the oldgame, like that thing should
have been pumping out leads.
Now transactional type ofcontent was like two point,
(23:13):
whatever, and then informationalcontent was like 70.
So it was like so so I'm like,hey, all that's off page, you
know, and you got to build abrand.
I don't know.
That was kind of my answer.
I know that you don't know allthe details of it.
But tell me, critique me, howdid I do?
I'm curious, I mean, what youwould have done different or
that it sounds like you said allthe right things.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I mean, what I would generally say to the clients is
all right, let's start lookingat the site.
You know we've done thesethings.
Let's look at two things.
Right, you had these terms youreally wanted to go with and I
don't know how that initialconversation went and I had
mentioned maybe these otherphrases would make sense as well
.
Maybe we should focus a littlebit more on the chunky middle
(23:58):
than the head, but whatever,whatever.
But let's, yeah, let's take alook at the site, right.
So your traffic is up assumingtheir traffic is up but your
revenue's not.
Let's take a look at your site.
That may be the opportunitythat we're looking for, so let's
start tracking it.
The only other thing I would doand I do this and I do it
(24:20):
sincerely with clients is look,I know how frustrating this is.
You know humans are a pain inthe ass and that's who we're
selling to again.
Look, I know how frustratingthis is.
Humans are a pain in the assand that's who we're selling to
Again, and I know I bring thatup a lot.
But so we've done what we canwith the machines, right, we've
done everything we can to makeyou visible in earned media, or
at least you've seen some gainsthere, but those gains aren't
(24:40):
turning into money.
Okay, yeah, let's start lookingat your site.
Let's do heat mapping.
I think that's.
You know, that's exactly what Iwould do.
Let's take a careful look atengagement with individual
pieces of content on your site.
Let's look at the path explorerin Google Analytics and see how
people are navigating througheverything.
There's all sorts of steps wecan take now.
Just and the only other thing Iwould have said is the work
(25:04):
we've done isn't wasted.
Right, we have.
We have grown your traffic.
Right, we've got people comingto the storefront now.
Now we need to figure outwhether we need to change the
storefront or whether we need toadd other sources of traffic.
Or do we need to go where theusers are and maybe not look at
increasing traffic?
(25:24):
So do we need to have some ofthat content out there where
people don't need to click justto start to get a better sense
of your product?
But my gut tells me, if theirtraffic's up, you got them
ranking for the right terms.
The terms made general sense toyou.
Yeah, then it's about the site.
Let's take a look at how we getmore of those people on your
site converting, and let's alsolook at what our conversions are
(25:45):
.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I just want to stop there and do a quick commercial
for you.
Anyone that's listening.
Ian is a great coach and ifyou're looking at struggling
with dealing with client issuesright now, which I feel like you
know, with all the headwindsthat are going on, like I mean,
I'm right there with everyoneelse and and I appreciate, uh,
(26:07):
the input, hopefully otherpeople are getting value, um,
from this call.
But, um, ian's one of thego-tos that he's run an agency
for a long time.
He's seen it all.
Um, he's a great, a greatmentor and in that regard, so
reach out to him.
I believe he does consulting inthat regard as well.
So I just want to do a quickcommercial for you.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If nothing else, I can tell you all the things I
did that failed utterly.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That's that well you know, out of a ditch right.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Hiring.
People ask me sometimes youknow, can you help me with
hiring?
I can say I have made hires sobad that people who worked for
me 20 years ago still make funof me about the hires.
So but at least I can tell youwhat led to that and then you
can make sure you don't do thatso often.
My coaching is yeah, thisreally didn't work.
So I would.
I would try anything but whatI'm telling you right now.
But yes, I'm always happy to tochat with people about their
(27:00):
agencies or consulting or youknow, whatever challenges
they're facing.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I appreciate your humbleness.
All right, let's go to likewhat's topical right now.
I mean, what are the thingsthat you're dealing with that
you're seeing that you'rekeeping you up at night?
Like what's keeping you up atnight?
Like what are you looking at?
Or what's fun?
Right, like what's keeping youup in a positive way?
Cause I mean, I was sittingaround playing with my kids
Vimeo three, I'm making some AIprompts, right?
And letting their, their, their,uh, creativity come to life and
(27:29):
them seeing it.
And then I got my kids going uh, we want to make a YouTube
channel, we want to.
You know so.
So I I'm seeing like creativecreativity is opening up, and I
know that that's not the topicof this conversation, but like
I'm spending time in AI and AIis like permeating into
everything and I think it'sstill early, but I mean, if
(27:53):
Google's going to switch over, Iwas having a conversation with
a local like we've been doing alot of like SEO, local stuff
recently because I still thinkthere's a huge opportunity that
ties to revenue in that area andI was talking to a consultant
and I started going in AI mode.
The 10 blue links are going tobe gone.
(28:15):
What's going to happen to GNB?
And I'm like I've never hadthat thought in my head before.
Where is the'm?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
just, I would love to get your predictions and let me
tell you the things that keepme up at night in a positive way
.
Yes, ai is a tool.
You know its ability to.
You know do certain automatecertain things that we do, or at
least add another set of eyesto certain things we do, like
(28:44):
when I'm doing data analysis now, when I'm reviewing client
performance a quick example Iuse you know you probably do too
I use at least 10 differenttracking tools or I use little
warden to check if something'swrong with the client site.
Every single day.
I have rank tracking, I useGoogle alerts, I use visual ping
.
That's a lot of stuff cominginto my inbox.
(29:04):
So what I've done is I've builtsomething in cloud using their
Gmail MCP server that just goesout to my Gmail inbox and I have
a whole set of rules and itgoes and it looks through all
those emails and then it givesme a quick summary.
It says here's the, accordingto your priorities, these are
urgent you need to take.
And I just had one come insaying you know someone's robots
(29:24):
TXT is returning HTML instead.
That's a problem.
So you know those are the kindsof things it can do.
So I'm very excited about that.
I'm really excited about theway that AI can help us with
that.
The thing that keeps me up atnight, the two things that keep
me up at night in a bad way, arethe rate at which we are
adopting AI to generate content.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Because and I don't need to go into all the
technical explanations of how itworks, everybody's heard them
all by now but I mean AI.
When you ask AI to generatecontent, it's generating it
based on an average.
So that means any content youhave AI generate is average, and
people are generally using AIto generate content because they
feel like they don't have time,which to me means they're still
(30:12):
in that mode of cranking outcontent.
You should generate the contentthat you.
You should generate what youfeel you have time to do.
That's exceptional.
If you don't have time to do itand feel like it's exceptional,
why should your audience spendany time reading it or watching
it?
So that concerns me a greatdeal is the rate at which we're
adopting AI to create contentand the rate at which we're
(30:37):
adopting AI to help us findthings because it's not that
good at it yet.
At it yet.
I am not a Luddite and I am nothere to say don't use AI.
I use it every day.
I love learning this stuff.
I love working with it.
If you could see my desktopright now, I've got Cloud and
ChatGPT and I've got Windsurfand all these other things open,
(30:59):
but we are not sufficientlyskeptical when it comes to using
it to discover and using it togenerate content.
And we need to be moreskeptical because otherwise it's
going to be just like when wewere from pure marketing
standpoint.
It's going to be like when wewere using spun content to rank
right or we were going to linkexchanges and purchase links.
(31:21):
There's going to be a nastywake-up call and it's
fundamentally reducing thequality of our marketing.
So that may not be analgorithmic wake-up call, it may
not be Google coming andpenalizing us or something, but
we're going to all startwondering well, why isn't this
working?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It's because we're generating the average right and
that's the content side To addon to that and tie it back into
something we were saying before,and I agree with you.
I've talked about dead internettheory is just proliferating
right, and now you've got agentsposting on social In addition
to that, not just medium content.
(32:01):
I love how you said it givesyou the average.
I think that that's a goodframe of reference in people's
mind of what you're producing.
My fear and I am going to claimguilt on this publicly is there
was a recent article that Ishared about MIT and I know
(32:21):
other people have shared it aswell about how we've outsourced
our brain and our thinking, andthere was a time like a year and
a half, two years ago, whatever, I don't know.
Time goes by so fast I have noidea anymore where I was.
Like this is a bettercopywriter than me and if it
says something I'm just going tobelieve it that it's better and
(32:42):
do that.
And I recently had a uh, uh, along time uh in the industry
copywriter on on this podcastand he really opened my eyes,
which was being opened likebeforehand.
But he like, really like, hitit home, like the content is
just mediocre, um, and itdoesn't always solve that
(33:05):
problem.
And when you you said earlier,like let's look at the website
and see how it performs, right,and if people are outsourcing
their brain and they're writinga bunch of copy and then you got
a bunch of the watermarks inthere, right, you can see that
it's AI and the copies like I'mnot saying it's bad copy but I'm
(33:28):
not saying it's exceptionalcopy for what you're trying to
do and how it fits in to thewhole page.
And even if you like, give itthe page and it reads the page
and it produces the copy.
When I look at that in like acritical um set of eyes, like
I've read a bunch of Dan Kennedystuff and you know a bunch of
other you know've read a bunchof Dan Kennedy stuff and a bunch
of other direct responsecopywriting when I apply it
(33:49):
against those principles which Iguess I could upload some
documentation and training tofine tune it, but just out of
the box, llm like a chat GBT, no, like it's not there yet.
Man, it's probably way betterthan it was, but I've been
guilty of that and you've got toread what's being produced and
(34:09):
understand how it fits in and itneeds to be a helper, but it
can't replace what's in yourhead and your knowledge.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So I'm going to get a little theoretical Do it.
I love it.
You know, humans are narrativecreatures, right, we're driven
by narrative and semantics.
And AI is probabilistic.
It's predicting what the nextword should be.
That's why AI can't yetgenerate good content, because
(34:39):
it can't build a narrative.
And by narrative I don't meanliterally telling a story, I
mean this way of proceeding fromone idea to the next and having
the gut instinct around.
When do I transition to a newidea?
How do I guide my readerthrough?
Or my viewer I shouldn't justsay reader, my viewer, my
(35:01):
whatever from one idea to thenext?
Um, from one idea to the next.
Ai is not narrative and we are.
So I use ai to generate ideas,like you just said.
In fact, what I often say isyou should build an ai sandwich
on human bread.
So it should go.
Human comes up with ideas togive to the ai.
Ai generates more ideas.
(35:22):
Human generates the finalproduct, and I don't mean just
going through and sort ofrewording what the AI spat out.
I mean you're using your brainto actually turn it into a piece
of narrative information,semantically targeted
information that's going to pullthe right emotional strings,
and I mean that in a positiveway and be something that's
(35:44):
truly going to generate aresponse from your audience, and
that's a hard discussion tohave with clients, right?
Because the client's reallygoing to say, look, I just need
to produce 10 blog posts a weekand I don't have a great answer
for clients with that, exceptthat that is what everyone is
doing, and when everyone isdoing it, it's not going to last
(36:06):
very long.
There's certain things that wecan't outsource.
I just saw a great articlesomewhere that someone sent to
me about how good taste, justgeneral taste, I don't mean I
have good taste, someone elsehas bad taste, I have no taste.
By the way, I can see how I'mdressed, but there's this vague
(36:28):
sense of what is of high qualityand what is not.
You can't outsource that to AIand that's what we have to
appeal to in marketing.
And again, that's narrative,right, that's descriptive, and
that's what AI can't really do.
All it can do is take whateveryone else has said and then,
based on the percentages, sayhere's what the next word,
(36:49):
sentence, paragraph should be.
And, by the way, I don't, youknow people talk about, you know
, generalized artificialintelligence.
We're, hopefully, very far awayfrom that and even the day that
we get there, we're stillmarketing to humans, right when
we're marketing to AI is when weshould probably all watch
(37:14):
WALL-E a few more times andfigure out exactly which couches
we want to lie on.
I think we're pretty far fromthat.
I'm getting real philosophicalhere.
The short answer, the clearanswer, is AI can't generate
information and stories the waywe need to be able to tell them
to get people, to compel peoplein a positive way to buy the
(37:35):
products they need when theyneed them.
But that is not something thatAI can do.
Ai can organize facts andorganize words and generate it
for us, but it can't do theactual, the, the, the
storytelling part of this.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man, all that philosophical stuff.
I have a bunch of threads thatI would love to go down, but not
right now, but by that we couldhave a side conversation about
that.
I would love to hear more aboutyour predictions, as we're
talking about philosophically,like where do you see things
going?
Like what are the things that,like, maybe people aren't paying
(38:12):
attention to?
Or what, what are you hearingin the marketplace?
Like what's the tone of asyou're interacting with clients,
like where they're at versuswhere you see it's going, and
like where that gap is.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Clients are very concerned still about vanity
metrics like traffic andrankings, and those are going
away.
There's nothing we can do aboutthat.
Right, we are returning to 20thcentury, 19th century style
marketing attribution andthere's nothing to do about it.
And clients are struggling withthat and I totally get it right
.
I mean, it's a very difficultand scary transition.
(38:44):
So that's one thing.
Another transition that's scaryis we are moving into a world
where brand is even moreimportant, which is going to
make it very difficult forsmaller businesses, and smaller
businesses are going to have toget very good at building a
super powerful story and I'msorry this is so generic in
general, but around their brandfor a very small, super targeted
(39:07):
audience.
You're not going to.
You know, if you're running abusiness out of a spare room in
your house and you're competingwith Amazon, you're not going to
be able to just rank rightbehind Amazon and sell a ton of
stuff.
You're going to need to reallyfigure out, all right, who are
the hundred or thousand peoplethat I can sell to right now?
And if that's not going to work, if selling to a thousand
(39:27):
people isn't going to work, howam I going to change my business
to make it work.
So those are two big trends.
The third one that I don't thinkanyone has really thought about
yet is the rise of agents andagentic AI.
I actually think it's kind ofBS.
I don't think agents areparticularly effective as far as
transacting business, butthey're probably going to get
(39:48):
there for another reason thanpeople want them to, and so
businesses do need to thinkabout a time when their content,
their information, is beingdelivered to people second and
third hand.
Third hand right, googledelivers second hand, but if
there's agents involved, thenthey're going and finding the
products and they're bringingthe information back to me, the
customer, so that's third-hand.
(40:08):
You're going to have to figureout a way to have that narrative
show up when agentic AI isbringing information to people,
as opposed to people going andsearching, finding on our search
engine and landing on yourwebsite.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
So, to add onto that, I feel like when people go
across the river is like theterminology I'm using, and they
start using like there's a lotof people and even clients, say
I'm still using Google.
I feel like AI overviews isjust holding them there, right,
and it's keeping them there, butthey're still searching Google.
But then Google's like oh,we're going to launch, you know,
(40:43):
ai mode, or they've alreadylaunched AI mode, and I've seen
people, if they're really using,uh, llms, like they almost
don't use search anymore, um, oror.
That's what I'm consistentlyseeing.
I'm not saying everyone.
And then back to your point oflike you need to do the real
research, because it can justgive you whatever it thinks.
(41:06):
Here are the six links now.
Or here are the six companies,here's the listicle, and you're
just going to go off of that.
So there's a lot ofoptimization absolutely around
that.
I would love to get any inputyou have on that.
I just kind of wanted to statethat I'm absolutely seeing that,
that that search is dying andthat kind of brings in the
(41:29):
comment about, uh, gmb, gdp, gdp.
Yeah, I hate that change.
Um, uh.
But the second thing you saidis really powerful, and I feel
like that's where, if you'reworking with small brands which
we've started to work with much,much bigger brands, because you
have to do so much to competeon that level there's this
(41:51):
bifurcation happening of if youcan actually compete online and
you can't.
And Google in the past has donea good job of like helping,
like small businesses make it.
You know, I mean even what theysunsetted on GMB GDP, how you
could build a website in othercountries.
You know you could build, and,but now that's not the case.
(42:13):
And so, to your point, you gotto have a memorable brand.
You got to have, like, okay,use AI, whatever, um, but you
need to have a mascot, like youneed to have a community that
you're selling into, and thenmaybe, uh, you know you're
talking about changing yourbusiness model.
If, if that doesn't work, like,where do you see that going?
(42:33):
Like, can you further push out?
Where you see that Cause thatpendulum of you need creative
people, mad Men is coming backright, like I think that there's
a pendulum swing back, but ifyou're a small business, I want
to know what you think.
The answer is to say to themthat this is the future you will
be facing, maybe not this year,but in the next two to three
(42:56):
years.
This is a reality.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
So I got to.
I got to.
I got to give you two answersbecause the first thing you said
is about search dying and Iwant to make sure people
understand search is not dyingClicks are shrinking right.
People are still searching forand discovering things, and that
has always been true.
In marketing and you know, asmarketers, we are all about
discoverability, whether we'rean SEO, paid search or something
(43:19):
else.
So don't worry about searchdying.
Worry about how you work in aworld where clicks are no longer
the primary driver of yourbusiness.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
And then when it comes to smaller brands and
bigger brands, but smallerbrands especially I have two
rules in marketing, right, twobasic rules.
The first one is maximizereturn on time invested, and if
you're a smaller brand, you cando this in ways big brands can't
.
What I mean is when clientsinteract with you wherever they,
or customers interact with youwherever they interact with you
(43:51):
social media somewhere elseexecute really well.
Make sure you're deliveringexactly what they need when they
need it.
Keep your ego out of it, right,think about what they need.
And that brings me to thesecond thing, which is you got
to teach the shit out ofeverything.
That's my second rule ofmarketing.
If you teach the shit out ofeverything, right.
(44:12):
If you are giving yourcustomers more information and
more support as they aredeciding what to buy and how and
I don't care if you sellbroccoli, rubber grommets or
bicycles they are makingdecisions based on information
you give them and you can teachthings implicitly, right.
You can just make sure yoursite is super clear and all the
(44:33):
information you communicate insocial media or wherever the
structured data you're providingto the LLMs, whatever is really
informative and informationrich right.
It gives me everything I needto make a decision right, then
and there, without gating andwithout forcing me to download
something, without forcing me toget in touch with you.
That's a critical first step.
(44:54):
Right, that's doing two thingsit's maximizing return on time
invested and it's teaching theshit out of everything.
And if you want to build yourbrand without needing Don Draper
right and Mad Men, you know, tome that's the most powerful
gimmick of all is making surethat you do a better job of
teaching your audience how touse a product than anyone else
(45:14):
is doing and you help them makea better decision than anyone
else does.
If you do those things right,then you've got one up on Amazon
, you've got one up on Targetand all of those.
And no, you're not going tomake a billion dollars, but you
will build that super, superdedicated audience.
I know this sounds idealisticand I know it's sent.
(45:35):
Your customers or your clientsare going to look at this and
say, oh my God, I don't havetime to do that.
What else are you going to do?
That is how.
That is how this, that is howbusiness has worked for a long
time, and I don't mean to beglib.
These are core principles thathave worked in marketing and
business for decades and decadesand decades.
(45:58):
So you're going to need to getback to that.
You're going to need to focuson that.
It's not going to be easy, butwhen you're done, you're going
to have something a lot moresustainable going to be easy,
but when you're done, you'regoing to have something a lot
more sustainable.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I love that and I I've really got a lot out of
this that I need to contemplateon at this point.
Is there anything else that ison your mind?
Speaker 3 (46:25):
that you think is valuable, that we could share,
that we haven't covered so far.
You know I have more general,the general advice that things
are always changing.
Obviously, right now marketingis very much in flux.
People's businesses are in flux.
It's scary or even terrifying,right.
It's frustrating.
You have to understand that.
This is.
This is sort of how marketinghas always been, and it may feel
(46:50):
like an unusually chaotic time.
But try to adjust to this andtry to not panic too much.
Rely on your experts, rely onyour expertise and stick to
those basic principles that makemarketing work and you will
come out okay on the other side.
I promise you will.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
You will come out okay on the other side, I
promise you will.
I love that.
Is there any unknown secret ofinternet marketing that you feel
like is underutilized that youwould like to share with the
audience?
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I do think teaching the shit out of everything is an
undersold tactic.
Everyone says, oh yeah, I'mdoing a really good job of
teaching, but think about onequestion all of your customers
ask you and then look at yourbusiness.
Um, everyone says, oh yeah, youknow I'm doing a really good
job of teaching.
But think about one questionAll of your customers ask you
and then look at your businessand see whether you provide them
that answer in a way that theycan get it Even if you're not
(47:36):
present.
Right, can they get that answerfrom you Even if you're not
right there talking to them?
Take that one question, answerit on your website, answer it in
social media.
Do that a few times and seewhat that does for your business
.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I love that.
Ian, lurie, everybody.
Ian, what's the best way forpeople to get in touch with you
if they want to hear more orfollow along with what?
Speaker 3 (47:58):
you're working on Probably just track me down on
LinkedIn.
I'm just Ian LurieI-A-N-L-U-R-I E.
I think there's only like sixof us on LinkedIn.
You can always send me amessage.
I'm happy to answer questionsand that's probably the best way
to reach out to me.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Awesome.
Well, everybody, just hang inthere Until the next time.
My name is Matt Bertram.
This is the Unknown Secrets ofInternet Marketing.
Bye-bye for now.
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