Making the Move from Search Optimization to Answer Optimization

Dana DiTomaso: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to the Kick Point Playbook webinar. I am Dana DiTomaso, founder and lead instructor here at Kick Point Playbook. And today I’m gonna be joined by Wil Reynolds, who is the founder and CEO of Seer Interactive. He is consistently one of the top speakers in SEO and I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Wil for years and seeing many of his presentations.
Dana DiTomaso: I always love the fresh perspectives he brings to the table and how he tells it like it is, which is. You know something I try to do as well today we’re gonna be talking about making the move from search optimization to answer optimization, which really feels extra timely considering the announcement from Google last week about the expansion of AI mode.
Dana DiTomaso: I did not time this webinar like this on purpose. It was just very convenient. So please make sure to ask questions in the chat. We’re gonna cover those as we go because unlike our other webinars, this is not a presentation. This is a conversation between me and Wil. And if you have to drop out early, we’ll be emailing everyone who registered on LinkedIn, a recording of today’s session.
Dana DiTomaso: So if you’re over on YouTube watching this, please make sure to hop over to the Kick Point Playbook, LinkedIn page and register, or just message me on [00:01:00] LinkedIn and I can help you out. And now let’s bring in Wil and get this rolling. Hey Wil, thanks for coming.
Wil Reynolds: What’s up? Thanks for having me.
Dana DiTomaso: Of course. So just a reminder, please make sure to ask questions in the chat.
Dana DiTomaso: I have some that I’m gonna get started with, but I’m watching the comments come in. And definitely feel free to jump in because we, this is gonna be a great wide ranging conversation today. So I wanted to start by talking about how long you and I have been doing this. This is my 25th year working in SEO.
Dana DiTomaso: You’ve been in the space for over 20 years now, I think. When did you start?
Wil Reynolds: August of 1999.
Dana DiTomaso: Nine? Yeah. So six months before I did. So you’ve said recently, I’ve looked up a bunch of your talks, search is screwed, but answers are alive and well talk to me more about that.
Wil Reynolds: We get it right?
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. It’s, I don’t, I fundamentally have no evidence that people are asking fewer questions or have fewer needs.
Wil Reynolds: But I think for too long we have assumed that the only way people would really get those answers [00:02:00] is well, they’ve gotta search at some point. Yeah. And I think we’re in a world now where answers exist in so many different places.
Wil Reynolds: And people are very confident going to their places. Now, some people are Reddit people, some people are TikTok people, some people are different things for different industries. And some people are LinkedIn people, some people are WhatsApp people. So you have this there’s not a, there’s not a lack of questions, there’s a, but if you focus on SEO specifically, your data would lead you to think that why is the volume so low?
Wil Reynolds: I guess less people are looking for answers that we do and it’s Nope, you gotta go somewhere else. Fish in a new pond.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. So when someone asks you what you do now, do you still say SEO or how do you explain your job?
Wil Reynolds: I think when someone says, what do you do now? It’s what we’ve always should have done, which is you follow the customer.
Wil Reynolds: Like I got some clients who don’t have a high usage of. AI for their cohort, I’d be a moron to be like, it’s ai. ’cause that’s the new hotness. So I think one of the things I try to do, Dana, is I try to we bring in all of our clients analytic DA analytics data [00:03:00] and we can warehouse it in a central place.
Wil Reynolds: So we can just see what’s the stack ranking for you of this hypothesis that we have. Does it significantly affect you? Does it not? And then the consulting comes from there. If I see a bunch of Reddit showing up, especially when you join the paid and SEO data, you’re like, Hey, if I’m seeing these converting queries for you from paid, I can see what search terms and what converted, and I see that Reddit is sitting at the top five results, then maybe I should do a little bit more Reddit.
Wil Reynolds: It’s like you gotta start to follow the damn customer. Instead of trying to be platform specific, you almost have to be more people specific. Specific and say, all right, based on where the people are, I need to start to engineer my skillset and whatnot to be in those places. And to me it all starts with data and analytics.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause you gotta know and have confidence that you can look at these data, the data points across all these places that they’re going, which all have their own ways of determining what’s a view through, what’s a video view, what’s not. And you really gotta bring all that stuff together to be able to consult in this new world.
Wil Reynolds: That’s my opinion. [00:04:00]
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, for sure. And actually there’s a great question that just came in from Josh on LinkedIn which is super timely to this. So do you feel some of your reporting is shifting to more awareness focused metrics, like share voice impressions, featured snippets, et cetera?
Wil Reynolds: Oh, is my reporting shifting?
Wil Reynolds: So one of the things that’s interesting about the way that I tend to work is, I build the reports that I wish I had for my business. I don’t, but my job is to be super forward ahead of the curve. So therefore I do not push that down. But I’ll tell you, for me it’s things like direct traffic.
Wil Reynolds: I’m looking at direct, I’m actually looking at a little bit of time on site. Again, a little bit like it, it’s not like a completely useless metric. I’m looking at like newsletter signup, percentage by channel. And what was really interesting is like getting, because that’s my first, that’s my lead indicator that you give a shit about what we’re talking about.
Wil Reynolds: And what it’s interesting is I’m finding that it takes for every seven visitors we get from search, including my brand, I only need one visitor from organic [00:05:00] social to get the same number of newsletter signups. So then you start to be like, oh, okay, so now if my social traffic is only 19,000 in a month and my SEO traffic is a hundred thousand, those if newsletter signups is important to me, those actually become a little bit more equal.
Wil Reynolds: So you start being like, oh, like what does that mean now? Yep. And then I would say it’s important to look at, I look at things like, God, I hate to say this because it, some of it sounds so basic or things that I would crap on five years ago, but it’s what’s my follower account?
Wil Reynolds: What’s my follower account on social? Am I gaining influence? Am I gaining distribution? And then obviously when you look at things like share a voice, like how the heck do you even track share a voice in in, in TikTok, right? So what is your share a voice in TikTok? Are you going to find a way to scrape down all the videos?
Wil Reynolds: Pull down all their transcripts, transcribe them, look at how often your brand is mentioned versus others. It gets kinda hard. So I’m mostly looking at like billboard style metrics. Like impressions matter to me. Even in like AI overviews, it’s okay, how often does my brand show up? And the a IO overview, I gotta [00:06:00] track that.
Wil Reynolds: On the assumption that’s gonna come indirect. ’cause people are gonna Google it, it’s hair. It’s hairy. Josh, that’s a great question, man. I’m sorry if I’m rambling a bit, but you ask a good question and it means I don’t have a simple and easy answer.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, for sure. And I think too, this is where so there’s a post on our website about tracking people clicking links through from AI overviews because you get that weird snippet text that shows up in the URL and since we’ve added that to client websites, it’s so interesting to see just like the random old posts that clients have completely forgotten about that are driving.
Dana DiTomaso: AI overview traffic and things that they were like, oh, I forgot that thing existed. Yeah time to go back and let’s make sure it actually is it up to date? Do you have, did you go back and add conversion points to it? Is there a call to action? It’s so funny too I don’t know if you notice this a lot.
Dana DiTomaso: Clients are like, oh yeah, we need more leads. Maybe we should have some more buttons for people to click on to get in touch with you. Like it’s, sometimes it’s the basic stuff like that I find, especially with older posts that are like consistent winners over time that you don’t end up necessarily thinking about.
Dana DiTomaso: And that’s where one of my favorite [00:07:00] reports is actually looking at views since published date. So you take the number of days that a post has existed and then divided by the number of views. And often that can turn out some like surprise winners that consistently drive traffic, but they’re not new, so they don’t show up in your top page views because they don’t necessarily get the same accolades, but over time they’re just driving quietly consistent, solid traffic to your website.
Dana DiTomaso: And those are the ones that do start to show up in AI overviews for sure.
Wil Reynolds: Those little extra snippets that you’re talking about on a IO overviews. So we’ve been going a little deep on that because we’ve got a couple we run a couple million search terms every
Dana DiTomaso: yeah.
Wil Reynolds: Every month. So therefore we can start to look at like what page has the highest number of unique extra snippets on it, and you’re like, oh my gosh, this one page has 30 different types of questions.
Wil Reynolds: And the snippets are so small that you can’t really say I understand what that person’s looking for. Yeah. But what I am trying to do is, ’cause you also scrape the publish dates from the serp I know that’s not always [00:08:00] right, but you can look at publish state right there next to these URLs.
Wil Reynolds: And it’s just been fun to I, I feel like there’s a lot of value there and I’m scratching at it and digging and trying to be like, where’s the value? One thing might be templates. So we’re looking at which, for which basket of search terms does a competitor or a client have the highest number of unique.
Wil Reynolds: Different parts of that page. For one page. And you’re like, why do they have 50 different weird URLs for this one page. And we’ve got 12. Maybe. We need to look at their templates and figure out what are they doing in their template that allows them to show up for so much more than we do kind of stuff.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Like Schema, it’s, I know Google’s oh, we don’t use schema. You do. We all know it. Like it’s not. And if you talk to any AI program too, and this is where actually just a talk, was it last week? Last week to the Alberta Publishing Magazine Publishers Association because. They’re getting their lunch eaten a little bit by the internet.
Dana DiTomaso: And one of the things that I talked about was just like ask. So for example, I use Claude quite a lot as you do. And so ask Claude a question [00:09:00] like, what are the best restaurants in Calgary? Ask it. And what happened was this magazine who was actually, they were there on the call was the top results.
Dana DiTomaso: But Claude only returned information from like the seventh or eighth result, not the first one. And I asked Claude why and explained why, and I said, okay, can you go into more of the technical issues that made you not wanna do this? And it explained in detail exactly what I needed to change on the page to make Claude wanna return it.
Dana DiTomaso: It’s just just ask the ai, it is there to help you just ask it why? And so that’s good. The magazine was there on the call and they’re like, oh, I didn’t know we needed to do this. Yeah just ask the ai, it Wil help you.
Wil Reynolds: And you know what people try to get into like really funky, it could be hallucinating. You’re like it’s better than having zero answers. Like right now you have zero answers. If it gets eight outta 10, then just learn to sharpen up your spidey senses on the two. And that only comes from contact. But over time, like I’m with you.
Dana DiTomaso: I would
Wil Reynolds: take that any day a hundred
Dana DiTomaso: percent better than nothing. Which is, from Google, they’re like, just make great content. That doesn’t, that helps. No one
Wil Reynolds: that’s, and you know [00:10:00] what, a lot of times we get really hooked on what Google uses and doesn’t use. And I tend to think more because I don’t go that deep on that stuff.
Wil Reynolds: But what I do tend to think of is if I worked at Google and I was trying to solve the problems they’re trying to solve for, would I use this information? And you’re like, okay, so if AI overviews or anything that’s ai, AI mode kind of creates a. A lift in terms of processing answers. Why would I not use schema to help me not have to use as much maybe horsepower?
Wil Reynolds: Now, I’m not saying they do or don’t, but logically it’s if I can go to the company and be like, Hey, I could cut down our costs. If one outta every 10 answers is partially powered by something that’s already structured for us. Why wouldn’t I use that?
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, totally. And actually somebody just left a note.
Dana DiTomaso: Sometimes just FYI for LinkedIn, if you have security settings on, I can’t show your name, so I don’t know who asked this specifically, but LinkedIn user says on their blog last week, they published a blog and how on to use Schema. That was a surprise. Yeah. But they’d set up to this point that they don’t use schema.
Dana DiTomaso: And I’ve been pretty insistent with [00:11:00] clients like, we need to make sure to get this schema in here. So we develop websites as well. And one of the things we have in our default websites is making sure that if there’s an FAQ element, we have the FAQ schema built right in. Just check your schema, make sure you’re using it.
Dana DiTomaso: Check that rich results tracker. It’s sometimes it’s the basic stuff like just go back to technical SEO 1 0 1, use the rich results on a page and just make sure that everything is set up correctly and there’s no errors just. Just do that to one of your favorite pages today
Wil Reynolds: with ai. To your point now that they all have web browsing, so Claude does as well. Yeah. You’re like can I just send you my page and then be like, what schema is specific to companies like that? And be like, now show me my html or whatever and show me what it looks like with the schema on. It’s let’s just like basics, let’s do this. Like even if Google’s not using it like they could at some point, I think by the time Google says we’re using it, it’s something that other people have been like, we should probably do this for the last three years.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. And by the time Google says they’re gonna do something, they’ve already tested it, they’ve discussed it, they’ve been checking it out. They just, and now it’s public. So don’t, [00:12:00] it’s, I’ve never been a person who hangs on to everything that Google says.
Dana DiTomaso: It’s, everything they say is just this has been vetted through 18 levels of pr. Just do the thing that makes sense. So
Wil Reynolds: I remember I was in a cab once with John Mueller and it’s important for us to have empathy on our side. ’cause we’re trying to be like at the cutting edge.
Wil Reynolds: He’s yes, but I also have, whenever Google says anything, I also have people that are watching that, that are like hardcore, like spammers. I’ve got people that are small businesses. I don’t, I’m not like, so often when we talk about what Google does, we think of us as their audience and it’s like, no. Like you guys can read through certain nuance and tell certain things, but we have to wait a certain amount of time for it to be so explicitly stated. Because I’ve also gotta talk to somebody who spends a. 30 minutes a month thinking about their optimization. And I’m like, oh, you’re right. Like I get that.
Wil Reynolds: Or somebody who might be a spammer who’s trying to figure out like, if you say this thing, then I’m gonna, you know what I’m saying? I ever thought of that side of his job. Oh yeah. He is I have to also not just ’cause you, and I’ll be like, man, that’s some bs we know that’s not blah, blah, blah, blah.
Wil Reynolds: And he is [00:13:00] yes. But you could see how somebody in a small business might interpret that and not be able to read the tea leaves and end up making mistakes. And then that’s a problem for them. And I, it was just, it was an interesting conversation to actually have with somebody that has to be on the other side of these things.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. 100%. Like John has a difficult job, so everyone be nice to John. Hell yeah. Hell
Wil Reynolds: yeah. And he shows up every day to continue to try to help as many and the range of people he’s gotta help.
Wil Reynolds: Are all the way up to the people like Mike King. Yeah. And all the way down to, whoever just started a restaurant around the corner last week and is trying to figure out why they’re not showing up yet.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep. Yep. 100%. George has a great question. What do you recommend to track AI overview mentions and links? Lots of the big SEO tools seem to be inaccurate with this. What do you guys use?
Wil Reynolds: We were using is it peak? I think it’s PEEC. It’s either Peec or it’s another company we were using. We vetted so many of them and we were like these guys seem like good ones. So it’s either, I think we might recommend Peec for clients who don’t use us for Gen AI tracking. And then the other one is it’s something Dev I’ll remember [00:14:00] in a little bit and I’ll tell you exactly what that is, George, I’m so sorry. But there’s one that we vetted like eight of ’em.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause we don’t really want to be a we don’t want to be a company that builds the software. Yeah. We wanna have somebody that’s got an API that we can pull from. Yeah. So we’re constantly evaluating these folks and one of them I forget, is the one that we’ve been using for a while now.
Wil Reynolds: I’ll have to remember it.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, we’ll fy we send out an email after this with like information and links and stuff, so we’ll we’ll include that in there as well. Yeah, and what I find too with regards to the tools, I’m in the same boat. Like I don’t wanna make a software tool. I would like to give someone else money for their software tool.
Dana DiTomaso: And I find too, with clients just to go into agency world for a little bit, sometimes clients are like, we’re gonna make our own CRM, it’ll be great. And then they become a CRM company that like does the thing that the business does on the side. It’s a slippery slope,
Wil Reynolds: it’s funny, I think it’s very attractive for a lot of people.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause it seems like, oh, we’re not gonna have to deal with all these clients and all of this and that. And then most of my friends that have ever tried to go that path, it did not.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: It, very few people become Basecamp, let’s just put it that way. Like people are like, oh, 37 signals. They were like a, it’s oh man, [00:15:00]
Dana DiTomaso: don’t delete
Wil Reynolds: a height.
Wil Reynolds: They also,
Dana DiTomaso: also, yeah. Yeah. LinkedIn user. So popular thoughts on LLMs T files?
Wil Reynolds: Zero thoughts. I haven’t tested it. What about you?
Dana DiTomaso: No, I haven’t tested it either. I’m aware of its existence, but I haven’t, I think the big thing is not just don’t tell, don’t let theis don’t block them from using your website.
Dana DiTomaso: I think that’s the big thing where people do that and they’re like, I don’t want the AI stealing my stuff. It’s unfortunately this is the reality that we live in, and you have to let the AI steal your stuff. So yeah, if you wanna show up in AI overviews, you have to let the overviews and the various AI tools see your stuff.
Dana DiTomaso: I Wil. And it’s so interesting to see what percentage of, chat GPT traffic, for example, actually converts. It’s good traffic guys. Like you should let it happen.
Wil Reynolds: I will say I believe, and not in the near term, I believe in the long term, this concept of website as like [00:16:00] feed is yeah, I could i, so I think. I wish that the whole world of marketers would look at their job through the lens of friction.
Wil Reynolds: Because if you look at your job through the lens of friction, it takes you in a very different places than freaking like algo updates and crap. Like friction. A website is friction.
Wil Reynolds: Because everybody’s got their own way of laying out their own website. They’ve got their own navigation. Some people call it blog, some people call it insights, some people call it work, some people call it, whatever. And all that is a lift to the end customer who’s just trying to find an answer to a problem.
Wil Reynolds: And when, and if you think of it as friction, you go, oh yeah, that’ll go away. Like it’s very interesting to me to be like, it’s not that I have a dog in the fight of do websites, should they exist or not. I don’t care about that. Yeah. What I think of is opening up four different websites and having to train my, we’ve gotten so used to the thing.
Wil Reynolds: That we don’t realize the friction that it creates, right? Absolutely. Which is I gotta open up all these websites, all these [00:17:00] consent forms, and then every, some people like to do popups as soon as you get on, some people like to wait, some people like to wait for you to exit, right? So there’s so much stuff going on that isn’t my initial answer.
Wil Reynolds: That I think over time, eventually, whatever is the easiest way possible to serve up your content, whether it’s schema, LLMs dot text, whatever it is, do as many of the things as you can that remove the friction for them to index your content. Because I think ultimately the user’s desire to end friction on their side when they’re making a purchase is gonna be there.
Wil Reynolds: Oh, and by the way, the website is zip tie.dev.
Dana DiTomaso: Oh, that’s the one that we’ve been George, Jeff with zip tie. So good job, George.
Wil Reynolds: That’s the one that, that we have been
Dana DiTomaso: yeah.
Wil Reynolds: Most pleased with as we continue to stack it up against other ones
Dana DiTomaso: I have seen zip tie. Okay, that’s good. They’re a
Wil Reynolds: good team.
Wil Reynolds: They seem like they’re good team over there.
Dana DiTomaso: It’s funny you mentioned about website friction. ’cause we do websites at Kick Point as well. And one of the things is people are like, oh, I want this cool thing. Like at this point, we’re not reinventing the wheel here. People don’t want to be surprised by a [00:18:00] website, right?
Dana DiTomaso: Unless you’re going on like surprise dot com. You don’t wanna be surprised by a website. If you look at a book, books have a specific format. You got covers, you got pages, right? No one’s let’s reinvent the book. Even eBooks follow the idea of a physical book, right? And websites are really, I think, getting to this point where a website has a certain, you’ve got a navigation, the contact buttons up here, you’ve got some content, blah, blah, blah, right?
Dana DiTomaso: Let’s not, you can do stuff with design to make it you, but ultimately how people use websites. People want that consistency. They don’t wanna be surprised. And I get that you’re like, but we’re really cool. We’re not trying to win design awards here we are trying to make you money. And so that’s, just think about that with your website.
Dana DiTomaso: Cool is not, you’re not selling that you’re cool unless you’re an agency. And then I guess you wanna make like those cool websites. But our website we’re just like, come work with us. We Wil make money. That’s Who are you selling those cool websites?
Wil Reynolds: Who were you selling those cool websites to?
Wil Reynolds: I think the universe people that want cool websites will get [00:19:00] smaller over time.
Dana DiTomaso: Yes. As they realize that making money is actually important in the cool websites don’t necessarily make money like that Clio is not gonna, make you more money. Sorry, cleo’s advertising word for people who don’t know.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay. Alfik asks, I hear a lot of people complaining about AI overviews eating up their clicks, but it isn’t it really the informational keywords that are suffering? And does that really matter in terms of transactional keywords for the business? Bam. Yeah. Nailed it. There you go. We can just go home now.
Dana DiTomaso: I think. That’s, here you go.
Wil Reynolds: That is, there’s
Dana DiTomaso: the answer. This is correct. That’s the answer.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. So we’ve got data on this. I’m starting to realize that all these years in me just like preaching, get your data together, get it cross-divisional, get it, et cetera. Is paying off some dividends.
Wil Reynolds: Danny Gavin had posted something from Google Search Console, how much down his clicks were, and he posted it and I just left a little response. I said, if you wanna do the time, if you wanna take the time, take all those search terms that are in paid.
Wil Reynolds: And only isolate to the words in paid that also drove at least one conversion.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: And then rerun all your [00:20:00] numbers. All the clicks were up. Everything was up except for impressions. Like clicks were up, conversions were up like significantly 30, 40% up. So he went from being like 30 or 40% down on clicks and conversions according to whatever it was. I don’t know if it was conversions, but it was two metrics.
Wil Reynolds: And then I go, all right, now take out. Only keywords or only leave the keywords that have ever driven a conversion. He is oh, my traffic’s actually up and my conversions are up. And it’s because at the end of the day
Wil Reynolds: people still need to, it comes back to what I initially said, people still have questions they want answers to.
Wil Reynolds: The universe hasn’t gotten bigger or smaller. It’s the same people in market for the most part in most industries. Like it’s the same people in market trying to solve the same problems. They’re just finding it in new ways. So the fact that they’re not hitting a ton of your content in advance does create some problems, in my opinion.
Wil Reynolds: Like some of your ideas around like retargeting and things like that.
Wil Reynolds: You may not get those opportunities to do that, which is something I’m deeply intrigued by with Google and whatnot. ’cause it’s you haven’t on the paid ad side and the retargeting side, if I get more and [00:21:00] more of my answers without having to visit the company and I never go to the website to trigger the, the tracking to allow me to be retargeted. Like how how does that work? But they probably we got all kinds of stuff on the back and you don’t know about at all.
Dana DiTomaso: Oh, I bet that they, I bet that as they monetize AI on Google search, this is my completely, I have no absolutely no basis of fact for this theory.
Dana DiTomaso: This is my theory. So a year now, you can tell me if I’m right or not. I suspect what Wil happen, because right now, there’s Affinity audiences and PPC, so you can say, I wanna show this to people who like movies or whatever. I bet you those affinity audiences Wil be built out based on what we’re getting from AI mode.
Dana DiTomaso: Great point, right? Know, it Wil be like, I don’t want to, ’cause a lot of, for example, a lot of AI searches are people who are clearly writing research papers. 100%. Just like I’m googling this thing ’cause I have a paper due tomorrow. Yeah. I was that person. I didn’t have Google when I went to university.
Dana DiTomaso: I would’ve used the crap out of it if I had because I barely passed. But hey, I got that degree. And so I think that’s where it’s yeah, this is what people are doing. So if you could, like for example, say [00:22:00] I wanna show this ad to everybody who has Googled this in the past and is not in this affinity group of students, for example, right?
Dana DiTomaso: I think that’s where paid is gonna change. So just make friends with those PPC people because they’re gonna explain to you what what’s gonna end up happening. I,
Dana DiTomaso: I, yes. That because Google needs that ad revenue Yeah.
Dana DiTomaso: To survive Google. That’s what makes Google go around. Like Microsoft is in a different boat because Microsoft makes money off of all sorts of other things.
Dana DiTomaso: So Bing can take more risks than Google can, but Google’s got a, gotta pay the AdWords or Wow. AdWords is old. Damn. The Google ads bills, that’s AI without ads is just not gonna stay. Period. It, they’re gonna monetize it.
Wil Reynolds: It can, I’m hoping that, yeah. I’m hoping that ChatGPT continues to put pressure on them.
Wil Reynolds: Like in the sense of ChatGPT the longer they don’t put ads in, I think they’re a little bit more pressure it puts on Google. But I think Google, we can even see it already with AI over with AI mode. They’re like, yeah, nevermind. We gotta get these ads up. We gotta find a way to get ads in there.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. And they’ll just keep [00:23:00] tweaking and tweaking. But I, yeah, I’m not gonna use, I’m not gonna use it. I find myself using Perplexity and ChatGPT more, and I think that I would love to hear your perspective on, on personalized. Like I find it very interesting that Google had all this data on all of our searches and never really got to personal search.
Wil Reynolds: Like they never really got there. I think AI
Dana DiTomaso: mode is gonna get there.
Wil Reynolds: I think they have no choice. I think that’s,
Dana DiTomaso: that’s the ground groundwork for it for sure, because they’re gonna know all of your stuff over time. And it’s actually, but it opens up big privacy concerns as well, right? Like I can only imagine in Europe, like how is AI mode gonna be GDPR compliant?
Dana DiTomaso: Which is why it’s only US right now. Because if you’re tracking people’s searches over time in that way and following their thought process from A to B, now Google can draw a straight line from a question you asked five years ago to where you’re at now if they track everything with unique user IDs for AI mode.
Dana DiTomaso: And so it’s essentially like an external version of what’s going on in your brain, which is horrifying, but at the same time, like it’s also massive [00:24:00] privacy implications. So yeah, I. I dunno, using incognito, I guess if you don’t wanna track, but although at some point they’re gonna have to figure out how to do this for the European market and I dunno what they’re gonna do.
Wil Reynolds: That, that’s a great point. That’d be really interesting to watch. I wonder who are the people that I need to follow that would help me to stay on top of that? ’cause that’s a very like, niche thing, but I would love to keep my fingers on the Michelle puzzle. How Michelle Robins,
Dana DiTomaso: Who formerly with third Door Media and Organiz, the SM Xs and whatnot.
Dana DiTomaso: She worked at works at LinkedIn. Now anyway, she does a lot about AI and privacy, so she’s 100% someone to follow in this space. Every time I see Michelle, I always get some great information from her about AI privacy. Perfect. Okay, so I have a more tactical question here from Marjorie.
Dana DiTomaso: She’s asking, what do you do if you Google your company and a overview shows a synonym for your company name instead of your actual company? We deal with this too. ’cause we have kick point playbook, which we sometimes call KP Playbook and we’re just confusing Google at this point, I think. Have you run into any clients who have that kind of situation where they’ve got a synonym for the company [00:25:00] names instead?
Dana DiTomaso: The actual company name? It feels a bit niche. I’m not a hundred percent sure to solve it at this point though.
Wil Reynolds: It’s synonym for your name. So yeah, everything comes down to sales to me, so I’m like what are the odds that somebody’s going to do a Google search for my brand? See an AI overview that is like SEER as a acronym stands for something or something and they’re gonna go.
Wil Reynolds: You know what, I’m not gonna hit that company up. Nevermind. I’m gonna go talk to this.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: HVAC shop, if it’s close, if it’s close, like in the same industry, that could be a little bit more of a concern. But if it wasn’t close in the same industry I think I’d be okay.
Wil Reynolds: But what are your thoughts?
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. I think it depends on the industry and plus location obviously is a big part of that. So if you’re dealing with location brands, make sure your geolocation is set correctly, et cetera. For example, one of our clients is on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, but there’s also a Sunshine Coast in BC where I live.
Dana DiTomaso: So anytime I Google, pest control, sunshine Coast, I get results [00:26:00] for, right across the strait here. I’m on Vancouver Island as opposed to Australia. So then I have to put in Australia, which is not somebody in Australia, they would not actually type that in, for example. So also think about like how that sort of thing, if it is a local business, how that is impacted by.
Dana DiTomaso: That as well. And that’s just me putting on my local SEO hack. ’cause I did that for years and years. And let me tell you, be working in local SEO really prepared you for the zero click world because Google took away our ability to get website visitors from local SEOA long time ago with Google places, Google, and so I adopted a long time ago the philosophy that like I don’t really care how people got in touch if it involved a website visit or not. This is, I just want ’em to get in touch. Is it a phone call that never actually visits the website? Great. Did they send a chat message? Never hits the website. Also.
Dana DiTomaso: Great. I don’t really give a crap, just get in touch with a client, go drive to the store and never actually visit the website. Just hit driving directions also. Totally great. Don’t have a problem with that. And I think that’s why, at MozCon this year I talked to, or last year I talked about that efficiency metric of impressions divided [00:27:00] by.
Dana DiTomaso: In store sales or whatever it is, like that’s out of local SEO where it’s, again I just wonder how many times you showed up and how many times people actually contacted you. And if people don’t know what I’m talking about there’s a post on our website talking about how mar marketing analytics data is wrong.
Dana DiTomaso: Can it be fixed? No, it can’t. But we’ll make sure to include that link in the post webinar email we sent out as well, so you can read all about how to measure when you can’t when you can’t measure things as well as you used to.
Wil Reynolds: I love that local angle, like I’ve I think many of us are rife or like a ripe for a need to see how another division solves a sales problem.
Wil Reynolds: Oh, how do they solve for this issue? Oh, if you’re in local, you’re like, dude, this has been my reality for a long time.
Dana DiTomaso: Oh, yeah.
Wil Reynolds: And in order to show, so like maybe local. Could be the, some of the local people that are leading and local really could also help lead in this regard, oh yeah. It’s which is why I’ve even thought about not provided and the fact that
Dana DiTomaso: Oh, not provided so, so new SEOs, if you don’t know this. Not provided Once upon a time in the glory days of the [00:28:00] internet, we used to get the actual keywords that people search for in Google Analytics which went away, what, 2009 I think was, yeah.
Dana DiTomaso: It’s been about not provided apostles. It’s been
Wil Reynolds: about 13, 14 years. Yeah.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah.
Dana DiTomaso: That was nice.
Wil Reynolds: And, but yeah,
Dana DiTomaso: it’s long gone
Wil Reynolds: and it created a scrappiness like you, I think. I think all of us need to avoid people who complain about the lack of data, because you’re never gonna learn anything from somebody who is going, isn’t this unfair?
Wil Reynolds: It might feel great, it might get you a bunch of likes. It might get you a bunch of people being like, yeah, Google’s bad, or whatever. But the truth is that after that post has its viral moment, like you’re no better at your job. As a result. So yep. I think it’s really important for us to be like, all right, so what kinda world do we live in?
Wil Reynolds: Where, Gemini gives us no data where chet gives us no data. Okay, then let’s start figuring out other stuff. There’s gonna be little clues around. And I think, I’ve been saying this, I don’t have the right words for it, but it’s I think experience is gonna start to make a comeback, for so long, data-driven meant, you just throw the data in, ran a model against it sort descending.
Wil Reynolds: What is my highest most value this? And you didn’t have to do [00:29:00] any work, if I’m being honest. You could literally just rely, you didn’t have to think, what pages should I optimize? Lemme pull in this data set and this data set and that data set and sort this, and boom, there you go. And now it’s oh, I don’t have that data anymore yep. I’m gonna have to make some strategic bets. It’s almost like I think the safer you wanna play it, the easier you are replaced by AI not replaced, because I don’t think that’s on the near term horizon, but parts of your job are easier to replace.
Wil Reynolds: The safer you play it, what you really have to do is find those strategic inflection points where you can take a big risk and find out, oh my God, that worked. And AI would never say to do this. Yes. And you’re like, that’s my value. So it’s if you’ve got 10 projects you’re working on in each one, you might need to start having conversations with your clients that are, like, if everybody goes to ChatGPT and says, how do I optimize a webpage?
Wil Reynolds: How do I do this? How do I do that? How do I do this? Then we’re all gonna end up with the same thing. I gotta find places where we’re doing something different enough that we can come up with new answers that other people wouldn’t, that people are gonna want to read, convert on, et cetera. So yeah, I’m really [00:30:00] excited for this time.
Wil Reynolds: It’s like really hard to get sleep. Because like I, I haven’t woken up when my alarm went off and God knows how long, like I’m up before my alarm goes off because the minute my brain starts even just opening, it’s just oh my God. Today’s another day to try to figure this thing out.
Dana DiTomaso: The very last question I have on my little list of questions to ask you here, which I haven’t really been using ’cause you guys have been asking so many great questions in the chat.
Dana DiTomaso: My very last question that I was gonna ask you was, what keeps you up at night? What’s the biggest risk for companies that don’t adapt fast enough? So maybe I just ask that now. ’cause you said you’re, I sleep to my alarm but I’m sorry you don’t, but yeah. What is the thing that, that gets your mind spinning at night?
Wil Reynolds: So much, but it’s not it’s not about the industry. I’m really concerned about young people, like that. ’cause I haven’t developed any solutions like I have. No, I. Sometimes if you’ve got like a couple chips on the table, you’re like, okay, one of these is gonna everything that I’ve tried has failed when it comes to [00:31:00] how I see AI disrupting young people.
Wil Reynolds: One, many of us did jobs when we started our careers that were pretty much glorified copy and paste. Yeah. And you copy and pasted enough and you set your boss up for success enough that they started trusting you to bring you into meetings. And when you got in the meeting, you started to hear things and you went, Ooh, that’s the way this thing goes.
Wil Reynolds: I thought it was a fucking spreadsheet that I just had to put together. But really, the way that’s presented, the way that’s interpreted, those hard questions that we got, that we weren’t prepared for is how I’m gonna make a better spreadsheet. Yeah. Today, with younger folks, it’s like, where are they gonna cut their teeth and learn?
Wil Reynolds: So that’s the first thing, right? So I think that companies are gonna have to build out like a apprentice programs or something like, where you’re like, okay, I gotta. If you don’t give a shit and you’re just trying to maximize your company’s margins
Wil Reynolds: Then don’t do this. You won’t do it.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause you have no ethos.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah.
Wil Reynolds: But if you have an ethos that’s wait, we bring people [00:32:00] along with us here. Then you’re trying to find out, where can we, where do people need to be brought along with us, where they may not be? You’re like, oh my God, the entry level jobs are gonna be really hard to get.
Wil Reynolds: And for so many of us that have those and had those entry level jobs, at some point, that was our building blocks to prove what we were worth to put us in this position. You’re like so where am I gonna get my next senior staff if I’m not, not hire any junior staff. And so that’s one thing that I’m worried about.
Wil Reynolds: I think the university system, most of these programs that help young kids in my city, they’re not really prepared to teach them anything related to being ready for ai. I would be like a band, stop teaching them resume writing. Have ’em go build a custom GPT, look up the CEO or look up the person you’re interviewing, try to find a problem that someone with that job title might have, and then what would you build and show up with that, yeah. But then if you don’t hire any young people, you don’t have anybody to pass that knowledge onto, right?
Wil Reynolds: And I think for so long, younger folks have been trained to be like, okay, you tell me what to do. Yes. You as the per senior person, you tell me what to do. And I think they’re not, we have not prepared them for that. So I’m just deeply, if anything [00:33:00] keeps me up, it’s because I don’t feel like I’ve got any chips on the table that I see moving forward.
Wil Reynolds: Also with the population of youth that I tend to try to work with young people. Their follow through skills are horrible. So it’s man, like I hired two kids to build me a custom GPT just to try to get them more into AI and Yeah. They’re not getting back to me.
Wil Reynolds: I paid them for it too. It’s they’re not getting back to me and whatnot. And you’re like, oh, I’m trying to bring you guys are like really smart, talented young women in the city. You’re black women. I’m trying to help you out. And I’m like, nope. That was a complete waste of my time.
Wil Reynolds: Because they didn’t run with the ball that I gave them. And I paid them for, and you’re like, damn. So that’s when I say I’m failing. It’s every area where I’m trying to be like, okay, go meet some younger folks, 19 to 22, maybe college, maybe not, I don’t care about that. Bring them into the office, mentor a couple and pick out one or two that said the right things and asked the right questions.
Wil Reynolds: And be like, all right, bring them in separately. Sit down with them, talk to ’em about AI one-on-one. Try to do those things. It just isn’t working. And then I think remote work sucks for young people. Yeah. So for me. I got, I worked way too much back in 99, 2000. I got dumped on my girlfriend when I [00:34:00] was living in Connecticut and, and a guy that I worked with showed up to help me move.
Wil Reynolds: I didn’t ask him to help me move.
Wil Reynolds: He was like, that’s gonna be hard. Moving out is gonna be hard. And I had no idea how hard that was gonna be. And sure enough, I’m fine. We’re moving boxes, we’re chit-chatting, drinking beers, and eating pizza in between. When I closed that door for the last time, I fucking started crying like a baby.
Wil Reynolds: ‘Cause it was like a finality. And he was there with his hand on my shoulder to be like, that’s gonna be all right. That never happens in Zoom. Nobody shows up to help you move ’cause you’re spreaded out all over the country. And those connections and those bonds get created in a way that doesn’t, your age doesn’t matter as much.
Wil Reynolds: It is your exposure to other people and how you overhear them solving problems and whatnot that matters. And that is just unfortunately for me an area where I just feel like everything I’m trying to do there I am failing at. Woefully, although most of my entry level hires now when we are hiring, given the state of the economy and whatnot when we are hiring we are defaulting to try to find the talent here in Philly if we can so that we’re supporting our like local community but also giving them that [00:35:00] opportunity to to come and sit down and be around a few other people in the office so they can grow their networks.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Yeah, that’s fair. It’s I just spent the weekend with a bunch of 14 year olds at a lacrosse tournament and it is so interesting to see how the 14 year olds like navigate the internet and what they do and what they turn to first. But then also, yeah, that idea of follow through is really important.
Dana DiTomaso: That’s where I think, I don’t know, I’m a big fan of organized sports ’cause I think it teaches you a lot of things about discipline and how to show up and how to carry through. I played softball. A lot I did boxing. But yeah, I think that’s where it’s yeah. To teach those kinds of skills. I think it doesn’t have to be a sport, just like an organized something debate
Wil Reynolds: somewhere.
Wil Reynolds: You gotta show up something. Yeah. And somebody’s relying on you down your
Dana DiTomaso: team. Yeah.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. I was just chatting with a who was it? I was chatting with Jason Thompson, and he was mentioning something similar around of course he had data for it, but he was like, there’s been studies done on this that when somebody is like with another person in a survival situation, their likelihood of both of them surviving is way up.
Wil Reynolds: Because there’s this sense of I’ve [00:36:00] gotta do this for you. Versus at some point, if it’s just you can, it’s easier to give up,
Dana DiTomaso: yep, yep. Totally.
Wil Reynolds: So yeah, that’s what, that’s, honestly, that’s what keeps me up at night. ’cause I think, oh my God, who is gonna be most disrupted by this future state?
Wil Reynolds: It is highly likely to be people that grow up on the lower to lower middle income. Side of the bracket and it’s, I think it’s gonna be dis and those people tend to be disproportionately black and brown and you’re just like, damn. Like we’re gonna get left even further behind and like it or not.
Wil Reynolds: But most of ’em tend to like it. I remind ’em that, that they have an iPhone. They all have iPhones. When they come to the office for mentorship, I watch all the pictures they take of the skyline with their phones. Oh my God, you can see the city so well from here. And it’s yeah, you can also learn how to program an app with that same thing that’s in your hand.
Wil Reynolds: There is no internet for billionaires, there’s no iPhone for billionaires and there’s no chacha PT for billionaires. So last I checked is you have a little bit more of a level playing field than you did when I was growing up. I agree.
Dana DiTomaso: When
Wil Reynolds: I was growing up, there was gatekeepers to access.
Wil Reynolds: [00:37:00] And luckily I could go to the library whenever I wanted. ’cause I was born in the seventies. But then you take my dad’s generation, it’s like you can’t go to certain places. You are not allowed to be in certain places. So there’s been so much gatekeeping.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: That now with that lack of gatekeeping, at least on the technology side, ’cause you have the phone’s got internet and you can go to.
Wil Reynolds: Microsoft copilot and do ChatGPT stuff all day long. It stopped being on TikTok, bro. Like they’re turning us into product over there.
Dana DiTomaso: Yes. And this actually, so Kimberly just asked a good question. What about being an older person who wants to learn this? I’m finding ageism is a problem in this industry.
Dana DiTomaso: I think ageism has been a problem in computers for a long time. I say this, like my first job outta university was at a software company in 1997. And so yeah, ageism long time for sure. But have you dealt with this at all? We’re both going gray at this point.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah, I think this is a really authentic question, Kim.
Wil Reynolds: Kimberly. I like that you’re Wiling to put yourself out there like that and be like, yo, what’s up? So I tend to think that the older people are, [00:38:00] unfortunately the more responsibilities they have and the more they might need to make. Which then makes ’em harder to hire if I’m being real. So if I was older looking for a job, I would try to meet that head on.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause people might be making assumptions like, oh, you’re a certain age, blah, blah, blah. So it might show up. It is ageism, right? We’re not saying it’s not, but the place that it comes from sometimes might be like, I can’t afford this person. So therefore that’s an assumption somebody’s making.
Wil Reynolds: But when you’re getting thousands of resumes and people are right now, it’s ah, you’re looking for a re you’re just looking for a whiff, like to be like, Nope, out. Probably wants too much money. So I would try to I would try to be really front, I would own that. Be like, don’t eliminate me because.
Wil Reynolds: You think this? And then I would just come through with tons of examples of things that I’ve built and done to try to, it’s just like being black. People will say, people will ask. ’cause people make the wrong assumption that I have had a hard time in my career because I’m black and I’m like, Nope, never happened.
Wil Reynolds: Haven’t had to deal with any of this shit. ’cause I could [00:39:00] always prove my fucking value. And I think that that’s the beauty of being in digital for me, is like people Wil allow biases to creep in when you don’t give them a reason to not have it. Like people don’t care if I’m like, like their favorite sports team or like hockey or watch fucking Seinfeld, right?
Wil Reynolds: They don’t care about that. Once I show them that I can make them money, right? But I think that if it’s me going up against another person and I can’t articulate very clearly that I know what the heck I’m doing and that I’ve got numbers behind myself to prove it once they see the numbers.
Wil Reynolds: I think it’s a, people’s bias, at least in my experience, has been like, it doesn’t creep in as much, but when it’s on my resume it says like I can build custom gpt. And on this person’s resume, their resume says I can build custom gpt. And on my resume it says I grew something by 30% and on their resume, then when everybody looks the same, bias creeps in.
Wil Reynolds: That’s why you gotta go kill it somewhere. Do something that you can singularly put on your resume. I built a problem to solve. I built a solution to solve this problem for your company, I assume it is. I would be like, whoa, I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care if you’re in a diaper, [00:40:00] old or young in a diaper, you might just get hired because you’re solving problems and nobody else shows up with those.
Wil Reynolds: Nobody shows up to an interview with problems for me solved.
Dana DiTomaso: Yes, absolutely. So that’s how I would
Wil Reynolds: show up to an interview. And I think, I hope Kimberly, that would help you maybe break breakthrough. I love the vulnerability of your questions, so if you have any questions afterwards, just ding me on LinkedIn and I’ll just zoom you and we can just chat about it a little bit then.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Thank you Kimberly. Let’s see. So I’m gonna go back to my list of questions here. So one of the things that I definitely wanted to talk about was with regards to sorry, I just scrolled through here. So companies still spending 80% on Google and 2% on learning ai. How do you convince companies to start making that mind shift?
Dana DiTomaso: What are you saying to them? It’s look, you have to change how you’re spending your money. You have to change how you’re thinking about this.
Wil Reynolds: Oh, so do you know what’s so damn? It’s such a great time because our brains are [00:41:00] having to work the same way they worked when I was like 23 trying to prove myself.
Wil Reynolds: It’s like the game has been reset. So I’m not sure if this is gonna answer your question, so lemme get to it quick and then you can tell me if it does or doesn’t and you can.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay.
Wil Reynolds: Put me somewhere else. Friday. Friday in 30 minutes, I was like, all oh, this, I get the chills thinking about this.
Wil Reynolds: Okay, so I found out that all of my clients’ social spend is sitting in a table and it’s been sitting in a table for a while, right? But because I have SEO and paid data also in my data warehouse at the client level, I started looking in organic to be like, I wanna see in organic all of the SEO keywords where Reddit shows in the top three, let’s just say.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah, but because all my SEO and pay data are joined, I can say and show me the number of conversions that have come from those same keywords. Show me how much the client has spent on those keywords. And then because I’ve got this data in another table, I’m like, why have they only spent [00:42:00] 1% of their budget on Reddit?
Wil Reynolds: But yet on socials, when you look at their social budget, you’re like, it’s only 1% of your social or 1% of your paid. Budget, but yet it is showing up for 10% of your, of all the words that converted for you last month. And that number’s growing at this point over time, guys. So I am Dana. I built it on freaking Friday before I left.
Wil Reynolds: So it’s not ready to show, but conceptually you’re like, wait a second. So now I can say, if an image shows up, if Pinterest like an image to me in Pinterest, same. Same, right? So I can say if an image pack shows up and Pinterest shows up in the top five, go across every client and show me where that’s true.
Wil Reynolds: And show me how much they spent on those words and paid, and how much conversion dropped. And then how I can go across and be like, how much did they spend on Pinterest? Oh damn, guys. Like how are we spending so little in a thing where Google’s learned that the answer is images here. So now I’m starting to think okay, where is TikTok in the top 100?
Wil Reynolds: ’cause they probably don’t wanna rank that. Where is YouTube in [00:43:00] the top three? And you start thinking of all these different channels that I now have access to. YouTube Reddit, Pinterest. Meta and I’m going, where are there disconnects that I can use? The SERP plus paid search to know that these words are worth going after, and then compare it to your budget spend.
Wil Reynolds: I did it on Friday. It’s really raw, but it’s been really fun to put together and to be able to do that in 30 minutes. Now I can have a totally different conversation with my clients about where these is where we started. These customers are going in new places, they’re getting answers in new places. Now all of a sudden I can say, are we budgeting against those places appropriately?
Wil Reynolds: And I can at least show them my hypothesis around why I think they’re underfunding some of those things based on how much they’re showing up for organic audiences. And then they can disagree or agree, but you’re the first person I talk to about it. So there could be tons of holes to shoot through it, but it felt to me like, ooh, this kind of would be like a better way to go to a client than Google said This much should be spent [00:44:00] on YouTube.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Yeah, I think that totally. I love the idea of looking at, I love the idea of looking at the SERP results and saying there’s a video feature here. Therefore, we should be doing video ads because Google has decided that video is what people want for this query. Therefore, Google has the most information about people and what they want in the world, period.
Dana DiTomaso: Let’s, we can accept this, so therefore, if it’s a video result, that means we should be doing YouTube video ads. If it’s an image result, we should be doing Pinterest ads. If people end up adding on Reddit to the end, we should be doing Reddit ads. No, I think it’s a totally solid theory for sure. I think it’s a great idea.
Dana DiTomaso: I love the idea of combining what the SERP features are with. You put in for their recommendations for shifting their spend?
Wil Reynolds: You know what? We have a shared, see this, oh God. You know what, Dana? This is the second time in the last three months where somebody has proactively been very open about who they work with as an agency.
Wil Reynolds: I think so often, oh my God, with the, oh, I can’t tell you. It’s a [00:45:00] client in the, because you shared with me earlier a client that we share, I can run it for them and show you, and then we can both together strategize what might we tell them given this data? And you can see it yourself.
Wil Reynolds: So let’s,
Dana DiTomaso: yeah,
Wil Reynolds: let’s do that. I’ll send you a Loom.
Dana DiTomaso: So Wil and I are working with the same client it turns out, and yeah, for, I’m working with ’em on analytics and Wil’s team is working with them on on some paid stuff. And yeah, I find that’s where too, in agency people, I just wanna say for a second too don’t get too upset when another agency comes in, even if that agency has been brought into double check your work. I think that’s a great opportunity as well to be like, why is this client concerned that they need to double check our work? And the number one thing in all of my agency years, ’cause I have worked for myself this entire time in search ’cause I’m a very bad employee. They always say to me, the agency stopped coming to me with ideas and I had to tell them what to do.
Dana DiTomaso: This is the number one thing always all the time. So agency people, just make sure you’re going to your clients with ideas. Even if they seem weird or half baked or you’re like, I wanna try this thing, can we [00:46:00] take, 5% of your budget and pull it into this thing? I want to give a shot to like, this is where clients just want ideas.
Dana DiTomaso: They don’t hire you ’cause things are going great. They hire you because they need help and they want fresh perspectives and they don’t have time ’cause this is not their job.
Wil Reynolds: I was, once they do is their job. I was once told by Larry Waddell sometimes up into the right for another month gets old. And I was like, Ooh, and that’s how I learned that lesson is when I heard that from him, I was like, oh man, I never thought, I think so often we think up into the right is your safety blanket, and dare I say, after a few months, it becomes yeah, but if there’s a thing that risks that thing going up into the right, you’re not bringing me that.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: The better conversation is, yeah, we’re up again, 15% like we’ve been every month for the last six months, but here’s what I think could threaten that. Here’s what I think could make that go higher. Oh, what would threaten that? Yeah. So I’m with you on that. I’m with you on that because if
Dana DiTomaso: you continue to deliver up in write for a long time, then they’re like maybe I don’t need you.
Dana DiTomaso: So maybe I’m [00:47:00] just good now. And there is a point too, as a business where a business does become self-sustaining in just existing, right? And so your marketing may not be actually adding to it or be doing anything at that point. And that’s where you started getting into this idea of like marketing mix modeling and can if you just stop doing this with this other thing happen and, but I don’t know, marketing mix also depends on having good data and I feel like the data’s getting less and less useful.
Wil Reynolds: Dan, I, yeah, I don’t know. Okay, so let’s throw out a hot take before we wrap up.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay.
Wil Reynolds: I’m starting to very uneducated, hot take, extremely undereducated. This is gut.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay, love these. Hit me.
Wil Reynolds: I’m like mixed media modeling and attribution kind of feels like a farce. I’m just like, how do you know, somebody talked about you on WhatsApp, like that platform is growing like crazy. Yeah. All this traffic’s coming in direct so what do you think when you hear to me, I look at all these things and the amount of leads that come in. Where I message somebody and they’re like, oh, I saw you at some conference three years ago. Or, oh, my friend told me.
Wil Reynolds: You’re like, what [00:48:00] model’s gonna catch that? So why am I spending all this time trying to develop an attribution model? Maybe I should just go out to the world and keep doing what I’m doing and assume. On my experience that like maybe trying to help people randomly leads to good things.
Dana DiTomaso: There’s a podcast that I recorded pre COVID for a business series that airs on Qantas Airways.
Dana DiTomaso: We got a lead from it last week, and it’s just I don’t know. I just do every podcast. It asks now because it’s gonna take years. How do you, that doesn’t go into marketing mix modeling and like of course we’re not selling t-shirts. If you do things like sell a product, if you’re in the B2C space you obviously have a different perspective on this, but, and this is where I find that B2B marketers are the ones struggling the most with this because they have such weird, long, convoluted paths to conversion.
Dana DiTomaso: So yeah, just do the things and don’t worry as much about attribution, which I know is easy for me to say. And you’re like, but my CEO insists. I also did a [00:49:00] presentation to the Young President’s organization a couple of weeks ago and basically was telling their, the people there please stop trying to be, please stop making your marketers try to be a hundred percent precise ’cause they can’t be.
Dana DiTomaso: And I think that’s where, again, like if you work for a leadership who’s just so stubborn about this, I know it’s not a great time to look for a job, but. You might need to, because at some point their insistence on perfection is gonna impact other things besides what you do in marketing. And you’re like the canary in the coal mine at this point.
Wil Reynolds: I think it’s a great time to, I think you might have mentioned this earlier, it’s like it’s a great time to level up your strategic consulting. Yeah, I remember I once had a client, huge client, and they’re like, we invented this word. We’re not ranking in the top 10 for it. They’re like, but we invented it and everybody in the world uses it.
Wil Reynolds: And they fired two agencies and then they hired us and six months in, they wouldn’t do the things that we were. That we were asking them to do, and I just at one point was like, look, you’re gonna fire us next, so why not at least try it and get the learnings. Sure enough, it worked and they ended up being a client for eight years.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. [00:50:00]
Dana DiTomaso: And see that’s, I love that you said that to them. You’re like, yeah, you’re gonna fire us anyway, so might as well do it. Love that.
Wil Reynolds: ‘Cause you didn’t learn anything from the last two agencies that Yep. Were checklist mother Fers.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay,
Wil Reynolds: you don’t wanna do this, then Okay, we’ll find another way.
Wil Reynolds: But eventually you say they say no to so many things that you’re left with this really suboptimal set of things, but they didn’t think their goal should drop. So their goals stayed the same. They said no to your top five bangers, and now you’re dealing with numbers like six, seven, and eight, which may not add up to getting the success that you wanted, but you never told them that, right?
Wil Reynolds: Yep. So I think at some point, if you’re in a company and you’re, and your executive is still stuck on the old reporting days of what was trackable you might just wanna try to walk them through like a user journey. Hey, so you would expect that I’d be able to track that dot, right?
Wil Reynolds: Oh, then Apple launched this, so therefore if they’re on Apple, that all went away. Thank you Dana. And then, and and then we’ve got something new in email, ITP or whatever it is, I forget what it was called. There’s something in email, MPP or something that like, oh, now if we email them, we can’t track that.
Wil Reynolds: And hey, have you been putting any WhatsApp groups lately? Yeah, I’m in a couple [00:51:00] WhatsApp groups with a few CEOs. Yeah. That comes in. That doesn’t even come in. I don’t even know how that comes in. And even if they’re using web WhatsApp, that still doesn’t show up as a referral.
Wil Reynolds: Yeah. So therefore you don’t find that. And it’s so you see how yes, somebody has shown you five years ago a certain reality that I’m here to say, how would you do my job if I showed you this path? Given that I can’t track that that, and that with any confidence anymore. I think it’s our job to try to before we quit those jobs, to try to sit across from an exec and say, the world has changed.
Wil Reynolds: I. The things that you’re so comfortable saying can’t be said that with that same level of confidence anymore. And then if they wanna go, nah, I think you should be able to figure it out. And you’re like, Uhuh go. I can’t call Tim Cook and freaking Zuckerberg and be like, Hey, can you put referrals back in the fucking WhatsApp please?
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. It’s making my job really difficult. Mark, do you mind changing that? That’d be great. Thanks so much. My boss at
Wil Reynolds: this, like my boss at this three and a half million dollar a year company, would like me to talk to your like $20 [00:52:00] billion, 20 billion a quarter company. And have you make a change for us.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks so much that then I go looking for a new
Wil Reynolds: job.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. And yeah, I do talk about actually walking a leadership through actual conversion example in that post as well. About course data is wrong. Of course you do. Yeah. So about like we were hiring a pest control service.
Dana DiTomaso: It’s ’cause I live in an area where you have to spray for ants every year ’cause. It doesn’t get that cold here anyway, so just yeah. And I knew I screwed up the attribution path as soon as I did it and I was like, oh, I feel bad for this company. They’re never gonna know I got them through Google my business, but that’s what happened.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Okay. So we’re just about at time here. So I have two last questions. First off, if someone leaves this webinar and implements just one thing we’ve talked about today, what should it be? Just one thing.
Wil Reynolds: Join your PPC and SEO data, please.
Dana DiTomaso: Okay. Yes, that’d be great. Okay. Now where’s the best place for people to follow your work and continue learning from you?
Dana DiTomaso: I know you’re active in a lot of different places. Out of those, which one is the [00:53:00] one? I feel like it’s LinkedIn, but you tell me. Where do you think you’re active the most?
Wil Reynolds: It’s LinkedIn. So I would say go find me there. And also like I’m realizing how few things I get from people that I actually want to hear from.
Wil Reynolds: ’cause they’re algorithm is anyway. So go into the top little. Fuck anybody? Me, Dana, anybody go into the little top and there’s a little bell icon if you can that and say I want all their updates. I still don’t like the way they come in, but at least you don’t miss out on stuff from people. I’ve missed stuff from Rand.
Wil Reynolds: I’m like, me and Rand are tight as hell. I want to read this guy stuff. And they’ll be like, nah, we’re not gonna show it to you. So unfortunately with LinkedIn, that’s the the case. I got one thing to leave for you on that, Dana. Okay. We’ve increased our visits from LinkedIn by 1200% over the last 18 months.
Wil Reynolds: And we went from a staff of three and a half to zero at one point on marketing and had that trajectory happen. I did not get any replacement resources when people were starting to leave. And [00:54:00] Crystal was like, Nope, nope. Not giving you a body, not giving you a body. So if you’re getting lower and lower budget, I Wil tell you that at least for me in B2B.
Wil Reynolds: Pivoting to really being serious about LinkedIn is now more correlated. My LinkedIn followership is more correlated to my revenue trend line than search was.
Dana DiTomaso: Yep.
Wil Reynolds: Up until about January 1st, 2024.
Dana DiTomaso: Yeah, I fully agree with that too. Seriously, so active on LinkedIn. Yep. That’s where to find me.
Wil Reynolds: That’s where to find me.
Dana DiTomaso: All right, so last thing, next webinar, you guys. Girls, I have been working on this for months. I can’t even tell you. June 25th, me, Steve Ganim, director, product management from the Google Analytics team. He’s gonna have a presentation of course, but I’m gonna get to ask him questions.
Dana DiTomaso: He’s gonna be talking about what’s new and what’s next in GA four. And of course we’re, I’m gonna ask him questions and you know how I feel about some things in GA four. So I am very excited. I have been working on getting [00:55:00] Steve on here for literally months. Thank you to my business partner Jen, who’s like, why don’t you just ask?
Dana DiTomaso: And then I did, and I had to follow up a thousand times, but we got there. So you can sign up for that on the LinkedIn playbook page. I’m pretty sure it’s live. And if it’s not, it’s gonna be live as soon as we finish this webinar. And I Wil invite all of you through LinkedIn, everyone who’s. Registered for today’s webinar, so we’re gonna send out an email with the replay.
Dana DiTomaso: We’re also gonna send out a special discount for kick Point Playbook courses along with the replay of this webinar. If you don’t see that email or didn’t register, message me on LinkedIn. And thank you again, Wil for joining me today. This was a fantastic conversation. You and I don’t do enough Zoom hangouts and I know, so let’s do it this way.
Dana DiTomaso: Do this today. Invite everybody in, right? Yeah, love and made it work. Alright, thanks for having me. All right, thanks everyone. Have a good day.
Bye.