Episode 14
· 01:10:49
Welcome to the Brick Marketing Live Podcast. I'd like to welcome everyone today. Today is Thursday, August 27. Running a little bit late today, but we appreciate anyone that's watching us live, listening to us live, we appreciate it. Brick Marketing Live Podcast is available on all major streaming platforms and at the brickmarketing.com/live website, a marketing podcast where we talk everything digital marketing, AI marketing, SEO, content marketing, social media, industry trends in news, and things that we think you all should know about.
Nick Stamoulis:So I'd like to welcome Catherine and John from the Brick Marketing team. Welcome. So let's get started. First article today is from the Brick Marketing blog entitled Building Business Momentum Through Digital Strategy. So essentially, what we're trying to discuss in this article is the fact that businesses, and we see this all the time, that businesses essentially ones that don't have a strategic strategy.
Nick Stamoulis:And there's a difference between the strategy and tactic. Right? A tactic is, you say, SEO, AI search, content marketing, social media, PPC, digital advertising, right, email marketing. Those are all individual channels of digital marketing, but those are tactics. The point of this article is you need a cohesive approach so every channel is striking at the same time in a coordinated manner as it makes sense for your business.
Nick Stamoulis:And, you know, we see it time and time again, businesses that have this approach do definitely have a momentum that is sustained long term. So, Katherine and John, if you all could chime in on this one, it'd be great.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. So this is basically at the core of the work that we do for our We believe that digital marketing is not going to be effective on its own unless you keep in mind your business goals. What are you trying to accomplish? So nail that down before you get your digital marketing strategy together, and then reverse engineer what do I need to do in my strategy to get there. And there's a lot that goes into it.
Katherine Tsoukalas:But if you miss the piece of thinking about your outcomes and what you're trying to achieve, your digital marketing ends up becoming a string of activities. And that's really it. It's not going to be as effective as you want it to be. Your investment's not going to be as effective as you want because it's not going to correlate with your outcomes.
Nick Stamoulis:It's very true. John, your Like
John:Catherine said, when things are just like a string of disconnected activities, you don't have a true plan, right? You're just saying, okay, well, I know that I need to post something to social media. If you're not putting the correct thought into it and how it plays into your entire ecosystem, then it's not going to be as good as if you have, you know, your your entire plan set out for you already. Like, you can have you know, you you can preschedule things because you already know what you wanna say when you wanna say it. And when you're sort of just posting on a whim, your your messaging might not be clear and consistent.
John:Your you you you might just you might just be posting for the sake of posting. Right? And that's not always good. That can be worse than not posting at all.
Nick Stamoulis:That's 100% true, John. We've seen that exact scenario hundreds of times over the years for sure. So moving on. Great article from Search Engine Land entitled Has Google Demoted Listicles? It says a 60,000 query analysis reveals where listicles still rank, where they've declined, and why ranking well doesn't guarantee clicks.
Nick Stamoulis:Essentially, says listicles are the most cited page type in ChatGPT answers at 43.8% of the 26,000 source URLs, including lists where brands rank themselves first. Google began demoting sites built on self serving listicles in January 2026 with several SaaS brands losing 29% to 49% of organic within weeks. ChatGPT cut listicle citations by 30% from December 2025 to January 2026 with Wikipedia and Reddit absorbing the lost share. So let's first understand what a listicle is. A listicle is, and according to the Search Engine Land article, is a combination of an article in list.
Nick Stamoulis:And so this I'm actually first and foremost, I'm a very excited Sergeant Gilland reported on this. Secondly, I'm very happy that Google has started to demote listicles and I'm also not surprised and very happy that ChatGPT is as well. I believe listicles are self serving. I think it's my opinion, it's garbage content. Quote me on it.
Nick Stamoulis:I don't care if it gets anyone angry. I know it ranks well. I know it drives visitors and does well in Reddit. For what? A month?
Nick Stamoulis:Two months? Then what? What happens to that listicle six months, a year from now? Especially, I mean, we've been on it. Brick Marketing has been on them.
Nick Stamoulis:Of other agencies, it's like, okay, well thanks. But at the same time, you're putting your own agency number one. Of course you're going to do that. And it's biased, it's not objective. And I just personally think it's garbage content.
Nick Stamoulis:I think they all need to go unless they're from third non biased third party that are not paid. Not paid, right? And not someone that's self serving. That's my opinion. So I'm very happy with this because I feel it's garbage.
Nick Stamoulis:Because I feel on the other end, a potential client sees that and doesn't comprehend many times or internalize the fact that that list is either paid or was generated by one company that's putting themselves first on the list. So anyway, I'm very happy about this. Catherine and John, what do you all think on this?
Katherine Tsoukalas:So if we think about who is Google's target market, it's the searcher. And they have always been, from their perspective, pretty good at making sure that the search experience is a good one. Listicles are just very thin, low quality content. I mean, how many times have I clicked through to what turns out to be a listicle sort of article that basically is a photo, and the photo might not even match with three sentences under it. And then I have to click click 10 times to get the rest of the content.
Katherine Tsoukalas:It doesn't really align with how people are gathering information and wanting to absorb the information, most especially now with AI's intervention on search. The days of clicking on a thing and having the patience to click through all that information. And like you said, it's garbage content for the most part.
Nick Stamoulis:Think it is.
Katherine Tsoukalas:But there's also another thing. A lot of people that maybe would use affiliate programs to generate revenue, whatever. Mhmm. Top 10 ways that you can increase, I don't know, something, something, something. And then way one is affiliate link.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Way two is an affiliate link. Way three is an affiliate link.
Nick Stamoulis:It's no different. It's no different.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. Exactly. Right. It's Yep. People are getting fatigued, and they don't wanna see that content.
Katherine Tsoukalas:They want to actually be helped. They don't wanna be given all these things that they have to buy unless
Nick Stamoulis:And I think the reason why you're right, Katherine. I think the reason why that the LLMs are pulling that, at least initially, now it's diminishing, is because it was easy and tidy and like a quick win for them to find data. Here's the thing, if the source isn't good, then it's garbage. John, what do you think on this?
John:Yeah, the other thing is I have two things to say. Firstly, I think it's better to just show rather than tell. Like, course you're gonna think you're the best, for example, for Brick Marketing. Of course you're the best digital marketing agency, right? But, you know, it's better, you can just say that, but you need to show why you believe that.
John:And I think just making regular articles that sort of prove that you're good at that thing is way more useful than just saying you're number one. And then the other thing is, you're also gonna end up promoting another, say you're doing top 10, you're gonna be promoting nine of your competitors anyway.
Nick Stamoulis:Not logical. Yeah.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Especially with LLMs, the LLMs are a little bit like less biased. They might like take it and you know change the numbers around with no reasoning. Right?
John:So it's like you're just giving opportunity for, you know, a potential lead for yourself to go somewhere else.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. And by the way, John, we are one of the best digital marketing agencies
Katherine Tsoukalas:in Boston. Exactly.
Nick Stamoulis:But I'll tell you, it's not all over our marketing cause we don't need it to be because you're right. We prove it by being in business for twenty two years and how we market. That's all. And results we get for our clients. I mean, doesn't go beyond any of that.
Nick Stamoulis:It's not that deep. So great, great, great points. Next, article from Marketing Dive entitled Today's Marketing Data is Too Saturated to be Oil, It's Uranium. It says an overabundance of data can do damage if marketers don't figure out how to turn it into better decisions. So it says here, essentially it goes on to say, it's a great article that says data rich doesn't equal strategy and data alone is not understanding.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says in franchising, because that's the perspective of this particular author, it says every dollar is an investment. So I think it's great. I'll tell you, I've seen this. I think we all have for the last several years of complete data fatigue. And in that data is important, right?
Nick Stamoulis:And we always advise our clients, whether they're service clients or consulting clients or training clients, we say, look, having correct data, accurate data is important. And data often tells a story for sure, but data doesn't tell all the story, right? Especially now, like if we use AI as an analogy, right? Where it's taking the funnel and turning it on its head and decisions are being made before people even come to a website. It's a lot different than it used to be in the past where the brand, you know, like we've said all things, like we said over and over, I know, Catherine, you said this many times, that all things point to the website, right?
Nick Stamoulis:So like that is changing. So if you look at data on the surface, you might say, oh my goodness. My SEO is not working because it's not driving any conversions. Or my PPC, you know, I was just talking to a prospect today, actually, potential client that, you know, is working with another agency. Their PPC numbers are terrible.
Nick Stamoulis:And, you know, and he's very reluctant at spending more. And then I don't blame him. And I said, well, look, said, you know, we went through the whole thing, but then the net end result of it was, you know, they, their current agency, hasn't dived deep enough into the data, hasn't done a competitive analysis, hasn't looked at the big picture to get into the weeds to say, it just doesn't work, right? So I think that data's important and reporting is important, but you should not overreport things so much so that it creates paralysis into your strategy and paralysis in your work because now you're so focused on crises that you see in specific nuggets of data, which are important, that you forget to omit the higher level, deeper strategy that needs to be in place. So that's my thought in it, but I think this is a great article for Marketing Dive.
Nick Stamoulis:I recommend everyone check it out. So, Katherine, John, what do you both think on this?
Katherine Tsoukalas:PPC comes to mind for this for me as Yep. Because if you, you should approach data as something that can potentially help you solve a problem or help you solve how to get from where you are to where you need to be. And the key is help you. So everything we do online lately generates data. Like literally everything.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Probably what we're doing right now can generate data right here on this podcast. We're gonna have data from this. Right. For example. But without knowing, like, why we care about the data and where we're headed because of the data or how it correlates to the outcomes we want, it just becomes noise.
Katherine Tsoukalas:And not every piece of information that we come across is gonna be important. Like in the case of PPC, let's just say somebody comes to me and says, okay, we increased our spend and it didn't add up to other conversions. What could be going on? I don't know. Let's look and see what's going on.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Let's see if we can figure it out, is how you approach the data. Somebody comes to you with a concern or a goal, and then you reverse engineer it. Otherwise, the data is clutter, and it's saturated, and it's not important, and you just it just doesn't matter. You may as well just not even look at it if you don't know why you're looking.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Mhmm. So true. So true. John, your thoughts?
John:Yeah. And the clutter gets worse not only when you don't have a reason to be looking at it, but when you don't know what to look at because there is just Yeah. When you're looking at your analytics somewhere, there's just so many different types of data. Like it gets, it gets like very minute, like what you can look at. You could be looking at impression, which is q like, a bigger number on a bigger scale.
John:You're gonna get way you know, a ton of impressions. But then you can see how many clicks something got. Then you can see where from. Then you can see, you know, just you can just keep going further and further and further down the line. And that's very powerful.
John:But if you're looking at the wrong thing because you don't know what you're supposed to be looking at or why you're supposed to be looking at it, you might get bad, you know, information from it. Like you might misguide yourself.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. A 100% true. Well said. Well said. Moving on.
Nick Stamoulis:Next article, a really great article from Fast Company entitled Your Marketing Growth Problem Starts with Organizational Design. It goes on to say, Marketing falters when you have a gap between strategy and execution. It says, basically it goes on, it's a really great article. It says, you know, asking the proper questions like changing your line of thinking. Which customers should we pursue?
Nick Stamoulis:What products should we build next? How should we price them? What experience will differentiate us? And it says, you know, that issues arise when you mistake activity for value. And it says diagnose the system before the turnstile, which is great.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says, you know, says here, before you replace the leader, cut investment or micromanage execution, step back and audit, we say that, the structural seat you have built, ask yourself four simple questions, the role, what marketing was expected to help shape the growth strategy or simple or simply communicate it? Participation, was marketing included when the business's most important growth decisions were made? Authority, What marketing was marketing giving meaningful influence over the outcomes it was expected to deliver? And measurement. Was marketing measured using metrics that connected to the enterprise value?
Nick Stamoulis:Great article at Fast Company. I highly recommend everyone check it out. And I'll tell you, this is the exact type of work that we do for consulting clients and specifically for our larger clients, which are more fractional CMO clients, which essentially part time CMO, we offer that for companies that are established, that have these exact issues. It really does start with the organization itself. Sometimes an organization is dysfunctional and processes within that organization are dysfunctional.
Nick Stamoulis:And when you resolve those challenges, your results improve. So, Katherine, John, what do you think on that one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Your brain went right to reminded when you were discussing what happens when you see that the issues that they're having with growth actually start with basic fundamentals, like how many people should be on our marketing team, who's handling which portion of the sales cycle, sales processes, things that a fractional CMO or a consultant can help diagnose. So sometimes we have a goal to grow. Please, digital marketing agency, help us.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Sometimes the situation on how that's fixed is not straightforward. It's not, oh, well just fix your social media. It's, get started from the beginning and make sure that your organization actually makes sense, that your C suite is buying into the process, that everyone understands what's going on, that your team is in place to make sure it happens, that, you know, you even know what your outcomes and your goals are. If you don't even know, how can you grow? Like, what does growth look like and We've
Nick Stamoulis:seen that. You're so right, Katherine. I mean, we've How many times have we seen that? On the agency side of things, on the service side of things, where a client basically says, Oh, we're tasked to do SEO or AI search now or content marketing, social PPC, whatever it is. But yet, there's underlying problems that we can't even touch as an agency that are functional problems, operational problems within the marketing, sales and biz dev unit as a collective.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? This is why we offer fractional CMO services, we can help companies identify those problems and challenges and solve them, so that everything else works as intended. I mean, it's even simple things like, you're running a social media program, you don't need 50 people on a call or in a meeting to discuss the topic of posts. Seriously, you don't. You need one or two corral everyone together internally and you need one coach to manage it and implement it properly and evaluate it.
Nick Stamoulis:Not everyone needs to chime in on marketing decisions, seriously. Literally. C suite does, right? Because they're paying for it. It's their company.
Nick Stamoulis:They're the sweet C suite, they should. Marketers, maybe sales, biz dev, high level, but you gotta cap it at some point. Right?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. So yeah. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:There's a
Katherine Tsoukalas:lot too that can happen and can go wrong. Like, for example, if you have this sales program, where is where is everybody going? Where's your traffic going? Okay.
Nick Stamoulis:You look and it's
Katherine Tsoukalas:like this weird page that has no call to actions on it. Of course, campaign's not working. Somebody needs to take a step back and diagnose these things and say, this, fix this, fix this. This. And then you bump into a snag.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Somebody internally says, well, we can't fix the landing page because fill in the blanks, compliance
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Budget, blah blah blah blah blah.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Or if you get seen a lot. Have seen a lot. Or and not not to beat up on sales teams, you know, here's the thing. Sales teams typically hate marketing teams for some reason or they just just don't work well as well as they should.
Nick Stamoulis:It's all the same goal, right? Like how many times, Katherine, have we literally generated excellent results for clients, for lead gen? Leads go into an abyss of never, never land. And then they say, well, we generate the leads, but our revenue is down. Well, let's unpack that.
Nick Stamoulis:Look at the leads. What's being done with them when they come in? Nothing. Or, yeah, a salesperson lobbed out an email. Are you kidding me?
Nick Stamoulis:How expensive your cost per lead is and it's just sitting there. I mean, that that's just another example of this, literally.
Katherine Tsoukalas:I know. We could go on and on with this.
Nick Stamoulis:We could keep going on this one. It's yeah. We could literally have a whole podcast. We you know what, Catherine? We should do a webinar about this exact topic next and you know what?
Nick Stamoulis:We're gonna do one about this because it's just such a big big thing that it's in some of it's so basic, you know. And I know we don't we don't get involved in company politics because we don't. We just don't. But a lot of it is that, and I know it is. But unfortunately, that too is a problem that stifles growth and stifles, you know, marketing, you know, type challenges as well.
Nick Stamoulis:So Catherine, John, your your thoughts on this one. We could keep Yeah.
John:I mean, yeah. I mean, you guys covered a a lot there. But like, it's true when there's, like, too many cooks in the kitchen, every things are gonna get stuck in limbo for one. Yep. Yep.
John:And then when you do involve all these different people and maybe people who are, like, higher up in each of these different categories like marketing and sales. You have, obviously, you have the C suite and everything. Egos also get in the way.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh,
John:yeah. And when your business or organization has these like struggles and power struggles, nothing gets done. You just you can't do anything. You can't finish a project you've started. And then once something does get done, it is not gonna be anything like the initial idea or the initial plan that was meant to work well.
John:And then you sort of end up with bad results and then you wonder why.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. So true. Anyway, the great article for Fast Company. I recommend everyone check it out.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Before we do, just wanna let remind everyone, this podcast, the Brick Marketing Live Podcast, is not only on the brickmarketing.com slash live on our website, but also will be posted to our YouTube channel, the Brick Marketing YouTube channel, and also will be available on all major podcast platforms later today. So tell everyone you know, you know, click that like, click that subscribe, listen to mean, hopefully we're entertaining, right? And hopefully you can walk away with something informational, educational along the way. So moving on.
Nick Stamoulis:Next article from the Martech website entitled The AI Governance Test Most Marketers Are Missing. It goes on to say, When AI gets a marketing decision wrong, the fix could belong in the rule, the control, the implementation, or the authority behind it. And here's how to tell. Great article. Really great article at Martech.
Nick Stamoulis:And it's interesting because this is one of the first articles I've actually seen about marketers utilizing AI and strategy for strategic decisions. I think it's great to a certain degree. You know, we as an agency are all in on AI. We say that not that it's accurate. We use AI as a tool to help us scale.
Nick Stamoulis:We do not use AI for strategic decisions. We may use it to bounce ideas off of, get additional insights, but the actual decisions strategically are being made by us, by our team, you know. We're experienced, that's what we're hired to do. So the concept of AI governance, I thought was very fascinating. So interesting article at Martech.
Nick Stamoulis:Definitely recommend everyone check it out. Katherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:So if you think about it, AI governance makes sense. It's a natural progression of where things kind of need to go for AI because there have been some high profile situations where AI has very publicly led people astray for whatever reason. For example, I've heard stories of like a AI customer service bot type of thing quoting something as being a policy and and promising refunds and things like that and not the company is like, that's not our policy. Where did AI get that from? Yep.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Well, that's kind of I I look at that as a governance issue. Organizations need to sit down and figure out what does AI mean for us? What does it do for us? And for them, a drift can cost millions or even more than that.
Nick Stamoulis:Don't want I agree. To
Katherine Tsoukalas:We need to rein it in. We need to make sure that people are getting accurate information and getting the process of governance involved is what's needed, especially for highly sensitive organizations that have data that can't be leaked.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah, I actually think at a certain point, I know we've talked about this on this podcast before, I know that, and we've talked about it internally as well. I believe that within the next year and a half to two years, we're going to see a wave of companies on our end as a digital marketing agency that have utilized AI for strategic marketing decisions that are going to be wrong, that are not going to have worked out the way they wanted. And it could be anything, anything related to SEO, AI search, content marketing, writing content, know, PPC, social media, you know, literally any channel of marketing. And then even at a higher level, releasing a new product, how the product is being launched, how it's being announced, what type of markets, what type of conferences. I feel like I think that it's gonna be used by non marketers in an inappropriate way that is gonna create honestly a lot of cleanup work, think, for a lot of agencies like us.
Nick Stamoulis:And I think it's going be coming in the next few years. I believe AI has its place and that's why I think governance is and understanding that concept is extremely important. And just one little note, then John, I'll get your thought. This article is geared for marketers, right? Not geared for non marketers.
Nick Stamoulis:I just want to mention that thing that, you know, where we may ask it for strategic recommendations, but we're making our decision ourselves based on our expertise and experience versus a non marketer that thinks they know marketing, they truly don't. This is exactly what's gonna happen. So John, what your thoughts on this?
John:I think that AI really cannot be trusted with anything important at all. It's just, it pretends it's smart, but it's really not That's
Nick Stamoulis:a delicate way of putting it. No. That's great. I love it.
John:It pretends to be smart, but it's really not. There's a really good video that came out, I think about a month ago, where somebody created two agents, one on Claude, one on ChatGPT, to build and run a lemonade lemonade stand. And the goal was to make a $100 in one day.
Nick Stamoulis:Okay.
John:These lemonade stands together spent over $10,000 building lemonade stands from over engineering them to hiring people and not regarding how much it would cost for them to come in and build a lemonade stand for them. With all this machinery, with all this unnecessary junk, and then hiring people to run lemonade stands, the goal was to make a $100, and they spent $10,000 between the two of them. It just sort of shows you that, like AI has no grasp of reality.
Nick Stamoulis:It didn't ask the question, and what's your budget? What's your
John:Exactly.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Like, Oh yeah. I mean, I've had conversations literally with chat, with chat GPT, with Claude, with Gemini. And literally I've pushed back hard. Like, you're literally wrong on this.
Nick Stamoulis:Here's why you're wrong. And I didn't ask you for this. And then it just comes back and says, oh yeah, good point. Okay. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:Or Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. I think we're a ways off from trusting
Katherine Tsoukalas:We are.
Nick Stamoulis:Artificial intelligence to help make us actual real strategic business decisions, quite frankly.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. We tell people you have to know what good looks like.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Tell it you have a $10 budget. It'll tell you to buy cups and lemons and get a table from your house. That's how lemonade tends Exactly. Be set
Nick Stamoulis:And write a sign with on some copy paper with a Sharpie and paste it out.
John:Exactly. No.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Right. Right. And and and have and have one of your kids wave people down to to sell I mean, there you go.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. Did it.
John:When you give it to an AI, it's gonna go overboard because it thinks it needs to optimize everything.
Nick Stamoulis:That's right.
John:Needs to be the most unique. It's yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:I'm gonna look for that article now, John. I wanna read it because that's probably entertaining. That's fascinating. It really is. Really is.
Nick Stamoulis:Anyway, moving on. Article from our website, from the Brick Marketing website. Social media builds trust before the sale. So essentially, we go on to say here that share expertise and culture consistently on social media to build brand familiarity, maintain an active presence to reinforce trust across across other digital marketing channels and strengthen audience relationships through valuable content before initiating sales conversations. So I think, and I know this is what we're trying to say here, but I think that whether you're B2B or B2C, I think social media should not be a place of only transaction.
Nick Stamoulis:Period. I think social media should not be, you know, we always say the eightytwenty rule, right? Of like, you know, especially for B2C clients that we manage social. 80%, you know, informative, non salesy, right? And then that 20% once in a while promoting something self serving, right?
Nick Stamoulis:I would even go even more conservative than that, right? And so the point is, especially in social media, especially B2B, right? We're not talking about influencers here, right, that are making their living selling products. We're not talking about that. We're talking about businesses, right, on business accounts, you know, got to be consistent.
Nick Stamoulis:And you have to understand that social media has its place. It should be building trust long term. So then when someone is actually in the need for what you offer, they will know your brand and feel comfortable engaging with you. So I think that, you know, the same thing goes for email marketing. I mean, always tie kind of both of them in together.
Nick Stamoulis:Same thing goes for email marketing. Right? How many times you see, you know, people say, oh, well, you know, we sent an e blast, which I cringe every time I hear that word. Right? It's just like it's like an, you know, a 2,005 terminology, e blast.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Well, then why didn't it work well? Because if you're always hitting your list, same thing with social media, to sell them something, people are gonna unsubscribe, opt out, not engage. Right? But if you're nurturing them properly, giving them free information, helping them understand, you learn more about what you provide, why it's important over a longer period of time, and then sell them once in a while, strategically, you will get conversions.
Nick Stamoulis:So anyway, so Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:If we think about our own behaviors, when we're looking for information, when we're trying to figure out how to solve a problem and then align with a company, what happens when you get connected with a brand and you think, okay. This this business has the potential to solve my problem. Then you click on their social media and it's just it's either a mess or it's been ignored. It's filled with silt salesy copy. Nothing to make me feel like this brand is looking out for me and wants to really help me.
Katherine Tsoukalas:It's all buy now or whatever, or worse it's been ignored. The last time somebody updated it was five years ago. So that all is a trust breaker, but on the flip side, what builds trust? When you do what Nick said and have the eightytwenty rule. Yes, of course, you're there to sell your stuff.
Katherine Tsoukalas:So put your stuff on there, but put other pieces of content on there too. An informational video about like, do you have this problem? Blah, blah, blah. Here's how to know. In other words, cover your every phase of the sales cycle in your social media and make things consistent.
Katherine Tsoukalas:You don't wanna post, not post for three weeks. It's very stressful for your audience to think, oh my God, when are they gonna post again? How can they're not that active. Does that mean about the company? Actually is I get stressed out by it, but instead of like really thinking too heavily about it, I'll just click away and maybe find a company or something that serves my need better because that was just a bit too up and down.
Nick Stamoulis:Mhmm. I agree. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. And I think you just need as many touch points as you can get, really. Like, if you're not on social media, like you said, if you're not active or posting there, you know, people are gonna be wondering, like, what's up with these people? Why aren't they keeping up? Are they
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
John:Do they no longer exist? Like, their last post was a year ago. To me, that seems like somebody doesn't really care about their brand or the brand just is no longer active. Yep. So you have two separate issues there.
John:One, you're not active, people get confused. And then the other, if you're not there at all, there's no chance for anybody to it's a lost touch point, essentially.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. And I'll tell you, what's interesting is I've actually at Brick Marketing, our own social media, we're aggressive for B2B. We are. We're sharing two videos a day, three to four posts a day, seven days a week. Here's the thing.
Nick Stamoulis:Okay? And I've actually had unsolicited advice from people that I know just, you know, in my own world that are not marketers. They really have no idea of the work that we do. And it's fine. I don't take the time to try to explain it to them.
Nick Stamoulis:And they'll say, oh, geez. You get you guys don't get a lot of likes on your stuff. I said, yeah. That's good. It's doing what it's supposed to do.
Nick Stamoulis:I just leave it right there. Because here's the thing. We have to understand something. Right? The organic, you know, not putting ad dollars behind boosting and stuff like that.
Nick Stamoulis:Organic, you know, only maybe one to 3% of your audience is gonna actually see your content. And if you're posting, you know, three, four times a day, right, do the math. Now it doesn't sound like a lot, but you have it's compounding results. You're literally you have now maybe 8% in a day might see one piece of
Katherine Tsoukalas:your
Nick Stamoulis:content. Map that over a week, multiply that over a month. Now there's a good chance that someone, you know, the people are going to see, you know, your content, whether it's on LinkedIn or Meta, you know, Facebook or Instagram or any of the other social platforms out there. The point is, you know, it's like at least in my mind in the B2B world, it's a place of nurture. It's a place of credibility, like you said, John.
Nick Stamoulis:You know, if if someone isn't posting regularly, I've I see that like that's one of the first things I do when I go to a business, seriously, is and if I see that they're not posting, you know, forget it doesn't matter what type of content. But if I see they're just not even, you know, one post every like six months ago, to me that's lazy. There's no excuse. Oh, we don't have time. We've got busy.
Nick Stamoulis:Really? Okay. I can tell you from having run a business for twenty two years and doing everything that we do, right? There's no excuse, no excuse. Especially now with AI to help you and all of these tools that are wonderful to help you.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, literally, it's, you know, so the point is get active, stay active, be consistent, and have your strategy, really. Implement it. Just day in, day out, like brushing your teeth. It just has to happen. Moving on.
Nick Stamoulis:Next, great article from Surge Engine Land entitled, Is Top of Funnel Content Still Worth It in 2027? And basically it goes in, it's a really in-depth article that essentially says that and analyzes some large brands in you know, in many B2B verticals. So cloud, consumer tech, cybersecurity, data, FinTech, healthcare, HR, legal and marketing. And then it looks at the trends and it says that year over year that all the traffic has declined except for tech, which is not surprising. And it says that success for top of funnel content largely depended on industry.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says that top of funnel and B2B tech is still a reliable strategy. And then it says that essentially I mean, it's really a long article. It's really great. So I recommend everyone really read it. But it says that scale that the AI scaled content, you know, people's businesses scaling content using AI is part of the problem.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says that that they actually even analyzed AI writing quality, that improvements in AI at all the LLMs writing quality is is slowing. That means the writing capabilities aren't getting better. And so anyway, it's a great article. I mean, there's just so much to unpack in this one. Catherine, as content expert, what's your thought on this one?
Nick Stamoulis:And then John, I'll get your thought as well. What do you think, Catherine?
Katherine Tsoukalas:So it's not surprising that these declines are happening. But I also believe that it is similar to looking at the data for search engine, organic growth, that kind of thing. There's more than meets the eye that's going on behind the scenes. And is traffic really the data point that we need to look at? So, what I mean by that is, and what comes to mind when I read this is, and my answer without looking at the analysis would be yes.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Because what we're seeing is that as more and more people are using AI to help them gather information, They're coming to your website and just coming to your website to look for you and to look for how to get in touch a lot later in the sales cycle. So if you have top of funnel content present on your website at that point, then might it get in the way of the sales process? I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. People are there sooner on your site.
Katherine Tsoukalas:So, I mean, later on your site when when they come in from this way versus in the SEO way where all roads led to the website sooner. So you needed content to kinda help them through the sales cycle process, And now you don't need that. So I think this analysis and this question shows that we have to really think about where are things at now for how people come to us? What's the sales cycle look like? Because whether you need top of funnel content or not is going to be answered with that question.
Katherine Tsoukalas:You have to look at the patterns because things are changing because of AI's intervention on search and AI's intervention on how people are gathering information. It's changing things. And this discussion is part of that, I feel. It's not a simple matter of, oh, and so this industry do this, and then this industry do that. That's not really how I would look at it personally.
Katherine Tsoukalas:I would look at it as where are we at? Where's your business at? And what does the sales cycle look like now? Not what you thought it needed to look like because it looked like that five years ago. And we have seen this with our clients.
Katherine Tsoukalas:They get stuck in the past sometimes and don't realize that things are changing. And the issue that we're having now is that we're in transition. We're not landed yet to the place where things are headed. We're in flux. We're kind of getting there.
Nick Stamoulis:I don't know
Katherine Tsoukalas:if that helps. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. John, your thoughts?
John:Yeah. I think a lot of your your top of funnel stuff is sort of getting replaced with people doing more research in, like, AI search and stuff like that. Like, they're getting a lot of information really, really quickly to where when somebody goes to your website, they're not really like clicking around to figure out who you are. It's not like the, oh, what is this brand? What do they do?
John:That's all getting done in in somewhere where up until very, very recently, you haven't really been able to track it. Now, you know, that there are more analytics for, like, AI search. When you're when you're looking, you can see what's popping up and all that sort of stuff. So I think a lot of that yeah. A lot of the top of funnel stuff is just, like, kind of going under the radar.
John:Not that it's not happening. It's just happening in a different way.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good point. Good point.
Nick Stamoulis:Next, great article from Search Engine Journal entitled AI Brand Preference Now Splits By Generation. Claude leads Gen Z more than seven to one. It says here that Claude is a preferred LLM AI platform by 10.6% of Gen Z adults who use AI and by 1.4% of baby boomers. And I find that that's, it's great. I mean, think it's interesting because I hadn't really thought of, I guess I hadn't really thought of by generation, by demographic that way usage.
Nick Stamoulis:But it's interesting. I think it's very interesting. I don't really know what to make of it, quite frankly. I know that usually older individuals in the boomer generation tend to gravitate towards whoever's first, Right? So, you know, in their mind, that's why, you know, if you look at an analogy in social media, that's why baby boomers are all over Facebook.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Like, you know, so are other demographics. But it's, I would say it's a boomer heavy. Right? Same thing if you think of like Bing.
Nick Stamoulis:Boomers love Bing. They love Microsoft products, you know, because in their mind, Microsoft was around in the 80s, right? In the 90s. And that's, you know, it's just early brand recognition. And I think it makes sense because ChatGPT was first to market as an LLM launching live on the open web and is obviously the most, is the largest.
Nick Stamoulis:Would say, most when people think of AI, they think of ChatGPT kind of first, maybe Claude second, close second, and then maybe Gemini, but they're like, oh, it's Google. So Google's huge. Right? Who doesn't know Google? So I just found this interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:But this just goes more more, I guess, evidence as to when you're, you know, optimizing your website for traditional SEO and AI search for AI SEO, you have to look at all the platforms And you have to optimize and pay attention to your brand, to the growth of your brand on all of the AI platform, all the LLMs. Not just ChatGPT, not just Gemini, but Claude too. You know? Because you think about it. Think of it this way too.
Nick Stamoulis:If Gen Z is using Claude heavily now, ten years from now are they still going to be using it? Probably. Because usually when a demographic gets into, just like I mentioned, the case scenario for social media usage for boomers generation, you know, the people tend to stick brand loyalty unless something really happens where they, you know, move off to something else. So anyway, it's a very interesting article. Definitely recommend checking it out and searching the journal.
Nick Stamoulis:So Catherine, what do you think on
Katherine Tsoukalas:that? I can see this. For us, we here at Brick Marketing are removed from having references because we use So all of it's kind of hard to it's hard for me to take a step back and think why might this be the case? But definitely ChatGPT was first to market. It's also has a more robust presence in the free version.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Claude, you can't even be telling. You can't even you can't even search on Claude unless you have an account to log in. Yeah. So there's there's that too.
Nick Stamoulis:So Yeah.
Katherine Tsoukalas:So I I don't wanna deconstruct like why is why, but I can see why. Right? Right. Claude, there's a lot of ads and maybe some influencers and creators that are like, Claude changed my life, and it's a gen z generation.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Right. So there's a lot of marketing and stuff associated with it.
Nick Stamoulis:And then Third party. It's a good point, Catherine. And then if you think about it, like Google has the AI overviews and you can go right to Gemini and you don't need to log in and you can just you just like kind of like chat, you can just use it. You know? It's not gonna learn from you if you're not if you don't have an account, you're not logged in.
Nick Stamoulis:No. And if it's if if it's a non paid account, you can still do basic searches on it for sure.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. That is you can you can be in the car and pull up Gemini and say, can you give me three options for ice cream places near me? And it'll do Right. It's good for that actually. You know,
Nick Stamoulis:it's easy
Katherine Tsoukalas:to think about. How upset would I be if I had to pay for that?
Nick Stamoulis:Well, I'll tell you, another one little nugget. Recently, I was abroad, you know, over in Europe on a trip, family vacation. And it was interesting. My wife only used because we have the paid versions even for personal. She only she only used the paid version of chat and I only used the paid version of Gemini the entire trip.
Nick Stamoulis:And I I you know, as a marketer, I'm like, okay. You know, even on my off hours, I'm still experimenting. Right? I found the I think we talked about this too. Like, offline, I feel the results at Gemini were just far superior just because it's integrated into Google data.
Nick Stamoulis:Google reviews, data, maps, just completely integrated. It honestly just so wonderful to use. And then Gemini or then Chat, ChatGPT was very disjointed. It was like it would use Google for some things. Yelp, I'm like, okay.
Nick Stamoulis:Well, I'm in Spain. Yelp ain't helping me out in Spain. Right? Like so so it's kinda like, okay. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with that. Right? So it was very interesting. It was just it was interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:So, anyway, coming back to the article. John, what do you think? What do you think? Your thoughts?
John:Sense why there are the the the diff like, the generational differences in what's preferred. It makes a lot of sense why Claude is, you know, doing very well with people in Gen Z because they position themselves as the most transparent of all the AI LLMs. Like, oh, we here's what we do with your data. Here's how we use it. And, you know, we, our whole purpose is to make sustainable and, you know, not intrusive AI.
John:Right? That's that's what they say. And that appeals to people in Gen Z because people in Gen Z have only lived in a world where all of their data is always being completely siphoned by every person ever. And when you have somebody knows really truly under the hood whether they're doing that or not, but when you have somebody who's saying that, that's very enticing. Whereas
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
John:People who might be in older generations lived in a world where that wasn't the case at one point, so they might not care as much about that specific thing. They might just care about the convenience of it. Right? Because Right. IGBT, like you said, you don't have to log in.
John:You can just have the app or go to the website
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
John:And and put something in. Whereas people from Gen Z well, maybe for boomers more so, like something like that where like older boomers might have a harder time making an account and logging in and remembering passwords. TryGBT is good for them because they can just go to the area and then use it. People who might be a little bit more savvy might take that slight inconvenience of having to have an account because they know that LLM is going to be better for them long term.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. No. Great. Great points. Remember, everyone that's listening, we as people are the product.
John:Mhmm.
Nick Stamoulis:We are. I mean, it was it's always been like that for social media and this and I don't have a doubt that it's like that for AI as well. I mean, you know, based on our prompts and the aggregate of the data over many, many years. And then as as we give all the LLMs and Chad and Gemini and Pod, as we start to give them access to different things, they're gonna have access to all of our data. So throwing that out there.
Nick Stamoulis:Anyway, moving on. That's a discussion I'm sure we're gonna see. I will be guarantee you we're gonna see that and be talking about it on the podcast. So, anyway, moving on. A great article from Marketing Brew entitled OpenAI lays out ad credit policies.
Nick Stamoulis:It says the AI company continues to build out its ad business saying that it recently published policies for ad credits, that how credits can be used among other topics. Credits are non refundable, non transferable. OpenAI will not replace any unused ad credits. And so I think it's interesting. Again, the reason why we kind of picked this one is just to give us an opportunity to talk about ChatGPT PPC because we haven't talked about it in a little while.
Nick Stamoulis:So OpenAI or ChatGPT ads have been live for about six months And they're still in beta, but they're open now, open beta. You have to apply, but you you know, for self-service. And we've been testing them the the entire time, literally since since they went live. And, you know, and, you know, we still we're testing it for a few clients, but we're doing definitely a larger test for our company. And I got to tell you, the results are pretty good that I've seen so far.
Nick Stamoulis:But I say pretty good in that, you know, we see business coming from it. But, again, it it it's hard to optimize. In fact, it's it's almost impossible. It's not p p it's not like Google Ads. It's completely different.
Nick Stamoulis:You know? So anyway, so they're continuous continuously improving the platform. Like I know now you can add a pixel and actually have retargeting. So you can add in in even your email list. You can upload email list and it will pull people.
Nick Stamoulis:So again, I mean, they're starting to beefing up their ad business, which is great. That's kind of why I picked this one just because it was okay, well, we needed to talk about this because we haven't chatted about it in a while. But anyway, it'll be interesting to see. It'll be interesting to see. We have yet to have a client ask us about advertising here yet.
Nick Stamoulis:And it's beta. Right? So it's new. We're involved in it just because we it's our business. It's just kind of we have to be.
Nick Stamoulis:So anyway, Katherine and John, what do you both think of this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:I feel like having ads on AI is a necessary evil. It is. It's been interesting. Yeah. It's been interesting to watch our experiments Yep.
Katherine Tsoukalas:With it and testing it out because it is telling that it is pretty targeted and working pretty well for us. I believe you can only see it if you're logged out.
Nick Stamoulis:Correct? Logged out. Yes.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yes. Yeah. Yep. So Yep. I don't often
Nick Stamoulis:You still see it if you're logged in. You do see it if you're logged in, on a free account.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Okay. Oh, got it. Yeah. Okay.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Paid accounts, you don't you don't see it. Yeah. But look, I I agree with you, Katherine. I mean, look, these these LLMs, these platforms, they need to make money to continue to improve their products, continue to exist.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, you can't have these hundreds of billions of dollars being invested and have no revenue being generated. You know, like I know Claude came out, Anthropic came out and said that they're not going to have any ads. I believe Claude is going to go the b to b route. I think they're going to become like the Salesforce of AI. And you kind of already see it.
Nick Stamoulis:Like, you know, and I actually heard a news story today that Anthropic is They're actually going to be launching a robotics division. Using their technology and robotics, which I think is awesome. Just really is. I just think it's great. So anyway, so that's my point.
Nick Stamoulis:My point is, unless you're going to go the path that Anthropic is, and that is maybe taking a B2B side of it enterprise level, then you need to generate ad revenue. I mean, Google's We see ads in Gemini. So we see ad in the AI overviews, PPC ads in the Google ads on the AI overviews and in Gemini, which, I mean, it's great. I like it there. I mean, it's good you know, that they they are incorporating it there.
Nick Stamoulis:So anyway, John, your thoughts on this?
John:Yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting to see the way that this is developing. I feel like I I very rarely use ChatGPT when logged out or anything. I I I just have my account. So it's rare that I see anything.
John:But from the times that I have seen them, I think that they're eventually going to, like, they're gonna change because they're very much like very out of the way to the point where I'm not sure if it's like gonna work for a lot of brands. Right? So I don't know. It's just interesting to see how how ads on, ChatGPT are developing over time. And I'm curious to see where this is a year from now, whether things will look different, whether, you know, the ad credit policies are gonna change again and so on and so forth.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:And we'll we'll continue to monitor it, and we'll definitely be talking more about it on the podcast as we see more stuff for sure about it. Moving on. Next article is from the Martech website entitled build content briefs around people, not keywords. It says better content briefs start with situations that drive people to search then use keywords to support the journey, not define it. I think it's excellent.
Nick Stamoulis:And I think it's been been some time since I've seen a keyword focused type of content related article, because this is absolutely applicable to SEO and traditional SEO and AI search and AI SEO, for sure. But I think it's great. I mean and often many times, it's under for those of you that aren't listening that are not writers, right? And Catherine, you will chime in on this, and John, both writers. But often many times you'll create a brief of the content, especially if it's an article or maybe a white paper or a longer form piece of content, you're gonna create a summary, an outline.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says that, you know, that people should be building it around the scenario, the outcome, the challenge in specific situation that will drive people to find it and and then use any keywords naturally to support it. I mean, that's the way we've always done it. You know? You know, I mean, Katherine, how many how many years have we been talking about this that, you know, when we write, we write for humans first. We never we write never we always used to say, we write for humans first, never for search engines.
Nick Stamoulis:Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever.
Nick Stamoulis:We've literally never written with the intent content for us, for our clients. In the twenty two years we've been in business, we've never written content just for the sake of SEO benefit. We write it content that will be tied to some sort of a early, mid, or late sales cycle or that solves some sort of a problem. So, agree with this article at Martech. It's a great read.
Nick Stamoulis:For those of you that aren't writers, I definitely, you know, definitely should take a look. So, what do you think, Katherine? John, you want to chime in
Katherine Tsoukalas:on this? I think that this at this point, one would think it would be obvious. Right. Because because writing for keywords has not worked since the very baby early days of SEO. Yep.
Katherine Tsoukalas:And since the first crackdown. It may have had its heyday and it may have worked at one point, but Google who is motivated by pleasing their customer base, which are the searchers
Nick Stamoulis:Mhmm.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Has cracked down on this because the content that is formed around keywords is not good. Right. Robotic. It's ineffective. It's spammy, and it's just not good.
Katherine Tsoukalas:And we shouldn't ever do it, and we should not have been doing it for at least the past fifteen years, if not longer. And the fact that we're still talking about this is interesting to me, but there is a whole new generation of people that are now in marketing dealing with this stuff. So for somebody who's been doing this for twenty plus years, I'm like, hello? But but somebody who is two years into their career might not have bumped into this information. And for them, it's like this whole you have to get into the whole history of it.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Has not worked for a while. Don't even try. Don't even bother. Trust us.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. John, your thoughts quick on this one.
John:Yeah. You're making content for the people. And sure. May maybe like like like Catherine's saying, like, this does not work anymore. But even when it did work and it brought people over to your website, they're gonna click on it and see spammy content and then click off of it anyway.
John:So it's always better to have people be the focus of your content and then sure you can optimize some things with keywords because that will help in some cases and, you know, behind the scenes and all that sort of stuff. But you have to make content that is worth it for people because that's what's gonna keep them on your site. That's what's gonna keep them reading. That's what's gonna keep your brand in their minds, not whether you were able to stuff 500 keywords into a single paragraph. You know?
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Right. So true. So true. It's it's amazing how things go in cycles, and we sometimes have to just just keep reiterating the basics.
Nick Stamoulis:Because like you said, Catherine, new groups of people out there. So it's definitely very interesting. Next, awesome article. I really love this article quite a bit at Fast Company entitled There's Never Been a Better Time to Be a Marketer. It says here, the article says that marketing work will change, roles will shift, and career paths will deviate, but the mission will stay the same.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says basically that, Welcome to the golden age of marketing. And it says, it's just really a great article that says that AI is the true next generation of marketing. And it wasn't the internet. The internet was an extension communications to accelerate, but the next phase of marketing and the evolution of marketing is AI. And it goes on to say, be the carpenter, not the hammer.
Nick Stamoulis:And I thought that was awesome analogy. I thought it was really, really was a great analogy because, you know, this is and we've actually been saying this quite a bit. When we do webinars, when we, you know, Katherine, when you teach trainings, right? When we do any type of public speaking on this podcast, we say it to our clients, we advise, we actually I literally say it so many times that right now we are in a time where marketing is changing. And I believe marketing is changing for the better.
Nick Stamoulis:And it's changing because we are you know, think about it, right? For decades, as marketers, we all had various tools and the internet helped us do our jobs better, right? We had more measurability. We're able to scale. We had new channels of marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:But now we almost have at our fingertips these tools that allow us to scale everything we're doing to do our jobs 10 times better. It's absolutely I agree with this. And I actually I feel it. I don't know if you two do too, but I feel we are entering in this golden age of marketing. And Brick Marketing is part of it.
Nick Stamoulis:We're part of it as marketers. You know, we're going to grow as a company. We're going to help a lot of companies out there achieve their outcomes and their goals. And I feel like it's we're all fortunate to be in this now. And it's just a great article, fast company.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree a million percent with it. So I don't know. I don't know. What you think, Katherine, John? What do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Look. Our jobs are a lot easier now. We have so many ways for data collection that we can analyze to see where things are going. We have tools that can make our lives easier. The tools can help people scale.
Katherine Tsoukalas:There's just a lot going on that's very useful as technology improves, but there's also another piece of the puzzle. And it's that a lot of industries are very saturated and it it's just really gratifying to help somebody overcome that because their marketing is solid. It's a really great feeling, and our jobs are able to be easier than they ever have because of all that's available to us. There's also a lot more that is being done from an education side to help businesses understand that ramping up your marketing and really being intentional is the way you grow. And Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:So it I'm having fun with it because I've truly never felt more respected as a marketer than I do now because people really are starting to understand how important it is. And we can be of help to I agree.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. John, what what are your what's your thought on this?
John:Yeah. I think it's definitely if not anything, it's a very interesting time to be a marketer because things are constantly changing. And, I mean, we talk every week about 12 to 14 new articles about things that are changing. It's not like like I I hear that, you know, maybe from, you know, the the late twenty tens to the, you know, early twenty twenties, things were pretty stagnant. Right?
John:Like
Nick Stamoulis:Yep.
John:You everything was sort of status quo, things are sort of being shifted and turned on their heads right now because of
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah.
John:People starting to use AI. So it's definitely a very interesting time.
Nick Stamoulis:I think it's exciting. Really I really do. You know? So anyway, moving on. Last article for today is from the Brick Marketing website entitled Building a Digital Foundation for AI Search Success.
Nick Stamoulis:We go on to say, build a consistent online presence to help AI Search accurately recognize expertise, maintain a strong digital foundation to ensure long term visibility in all the AI platforms, and invest in fundamental digital marketing strategies to improve both traditional and AI search and overall outcomes. So, I mean, yeah, that's a summary. I mean, it really comes down to, there's no shortcuts. There's no shortcuts in anything that you do right. And especially in marketing, especially in AI search and your visibility for your company and your brand, there's not a shortcut to it.
Nick Stamoulis:Work has to be put in. A brand has to be built. Proper content has to be written. The technical aspects have to be implemented properly. And you need to be patient, rinse, repeat, build citations through natural marketing over time.
Nick Stamoulis:And trust us, you will be rewarded not only through reaching the outcomes that you're looking to to to achieve, but through the results in you know, from each of these independent channels. I mean, the results will absolutely be there. So it's a great article. We wrote a great article on this and, you know, it's it's it's true. It's it's we're seeing it, we're living it, we're breathing it.
Nick Stamoulis:So so, yeah, Catherine and John, what do you what do you think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:A lot of people, when thinking about AI and the changes it's creating in marketing, they think it's that versus this type of scenario. But it's really not. It's a AI is forcing us to rethink what we are already doing and making some strategic changes that will help build a better digital foundation. Right? It's what are we already doing?
Katherine Tsoukalas:And if we're not already, for example, actively working a robust content marketing strategy, you gotta add that in and it should have been on your plate already. But so then you look at something like content marketing and you think, what in my content marketing existing strategy can be tweaked to help with AI search? It's not, oh my gosh, we have to add all this stuff. We have to put it in our budget. We have to do this.
Katherine Tsoukalas:We have to do Well, yes, you do. But you're already doing a lot of the stuff and you may not realize it. You just have to take a step back and repurpose and restructure what you're already doing to make sure that you're poised for success in the future.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. Absolutely. John, your thoughts.
John:Yeah. You you should always be having these things in mind from the start, you know, in in the AI era. And I've said this a lot, but if you were, you know, doing best SEO practices and and, you know, had good online presence and all that sort of stuff, a lot of a lot of this is already done for you. It's just about restructuring and being intentional about the way you say things and how you how you write things and what you're posting. It shouldn't Mhmm.
John:It shouldn't be that much of a, like, extra load on what you're doing. It's just being a little bit more intentional in having AI search in mind.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you gotta be consistent. This is just like you can't start and stop your marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, it's just it is not helping your your your cause for AI search. Definitely not. So anyway, so I would like to thank everyone for joining us, for listening to the Brick Marketing Live Podcast. We are here with you every week. Our next time we will be with you live will be next Thursday, September 3 at 4PM eastern.
Nick Stamoulis:And remember, this Brick Marketing Live is available on the brickmarketing.com slash live on our website and also available on our YouTube channel and on every major podcast platform. So like our podcast, please. Share it. Let everyone you know that's a marketer, that's a business owner, that might have interest in these topics that are really important to business today, you know, that just just share it share it around. And we hope it we hope it helps people.
Nick Stamoulis:So until next week, we we appreciate it. And on behalf of the Brick Marketing team, we will see you then.
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