Episode 15
· 01:11:23
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the latest version edition of the Brick Marketing Live Podcast, where we talk about everything related to digital marketing and marketing trends, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media, and a whole lot more. I would like to welcome the Brick Marketing team. I'm Nick Stamoulis. I'd like to welcome Catherine and John.
Nick Stamoulis:Welcome everyone to the latest installment of the Brick Marketing Live Podcast. Today is Thursday, September 3. So let's dive right in. First article today we're going to talk about is from the Brick Marketing website entitled Improve AI Visibility to Reach Buyers Earlier. So essentially, this article is talking about how we're seeing trends that AI is reaching buyers a lot earlier in many cases in their cycle.
Nick Stamoulis:And we're seeing that consumers tend to that utilize AI search tend to essentially come over researched and ready to go. So AI is definitely putting, I would say digital marketing and SEO as a whole in its head in a great way, but things are changing. So anyway, great article that we wrote on the Brick Marketing website. So Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. That's the main key that AI has made it possible for people to get exposure to your brand early. But that doesn't mean that they're getting that exposure necessarily on your website. If you're visible in AI, then you're gonna be mentioned in the early stages of a conversation. And by the time they reach out, they'll be pretty warm.
Katherine Tsoukalas:They'll be ready to have a conversation or very close to being ready to have a conversation about who you are, what you do, and what you can do for them. Meaning, they'll be further along in the sales cycle.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. John, your thoughts?
John:Yeah. And a lot of people treat an AI recommendation or or something that pops up as in an LLM similarly to how they would do with a referral. So, you know, if somebody's searching something like pertaining to your business and they see your business pop up, they're going to treat it similarly to a friend or or some, you know, someone else referring you to that product or that company. So getting yourself in, you know, getting better AI visibility and being in the conversations for for LLMs is just bringing people to you a lot warmer, like we said.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Yeah. Well said. And I'll tell you that it's interesting because I read quite a bit on LinkedIn and your favorite place, John. But, you know, I read quite a bit that just businesses are still not grasping this concept.
Nick Stamoulis:And we'll talk more about it today, during today's podcast together. But I'll tell you, having that visibility in AI search is crucial right now as we remain in this transitionary period of traditional search still kind of working with the emerging AI search. All right, moving on. Next, great article from the B2B marketing. It's called b2bmarketing.net website entitled, What CEOs Really Want from B2B Marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:It's probably not what you think. It goes on to say the gap between how CEOs and marketing leaders value marketing's commercial contribution is real, but it also is one of the most addressable challenges in B2B today. It says that research found that many CEOs still see marketing as a support function rather than a commercial growth driver. They often underestimate marketing's contribution to revenue, question marketers' commercial credibility, and believe AI can help them do more with less. So this is a great article on the b2bmarketing.net website.
Nick Stamoulis:And it goes on to say, it says five ways to prove B2B marketing ROI. It says, bring customer insight to the boardroom. It says, measure what matters, align more closely with sales, become commercially fluent and make impact visible all year round. So this is actually a challenge that we see quite a bit with our clients. So at Brick Marketing, we're a digital marketing agency that offers services, custom training and marketing consulting.
Nick Stamoulis:And we've worked with hundreds of B2B companies, companies that are selling their products or services to other businesses over the years. And this is something that we see quite a bit, that the C suite, specifically CEOs or owners of businesses in many cases really don't truly, first of all, they're not marketers, right? So we've worked with clients and we're like, oh, the KPIs are right? Leads are up, sales are up, conversion rates are up. These numbers look good.
Nick Stamoulis:So you would think the C suite would be happy. So many times they're not because they don't really understand marketing. And with AI right now, we just talked a moment ago about AI search and AI search visibility. It's not a clear, concise yet thing where you can say X marketing activities are yielding Y results right now, right? And so anyway, the point is, I mean, I think that this is a challenge and marketers have had to kind of always have to kind of prove themselves and sell themselves and sell what they're doing over and over and over.
Nick Stamoulis:And my recommendation is, and this is advice to a fellow marketer, if you know your stuff and you're good at what you do and you know the results are good, you know, you shouldn't have to sit and sell it and prove it internally, continually. The numbers and the data speaks for itself. Results speak for themselves, quite frankly. So anyway, so that's my thoughts on it. Catherine and John, what do you think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Everything Nick said, and I want to add something. I noticed I've noticed this for many years. I've coached clients who maybe were in a marketing department through how to get buy in from their CEO. I have also witnessed this many times people in my life that work in marketing departments and other companies and them asking me advice, what do we do? I have learned something very interesting.
Katherine Tsoukalas:A couple years ago, I got my MBA. And ever since that happened, I noticed a difference in myself and how I relate information and how I talk to the C suite. I feel like that is also part of it. Yes. CEOs may not understand marketing, but I wonder how much of that, and I've observed this a few times, is a function of a marketing department letting themselves be pigeonholed into the role in the company that they think they need to fit.
Katherine Tsoukalas:When the reality is marketing is responsible for bringing awareness to the business, which is basically part of your pipeline. It's the beginning phase at the very least of your sales cycle. But if you do your marketing strategy correctly, you should be in the customer buying cycle all along and connecting with them. And so therefore you are a revenue driver. And if C suite doesn't understand this, then perhaps also the marketing department doesn't understand it.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Right. That's a great point. That's a great point. John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yeah. And I think it's getting even harder when AI is a thing and you can go to the CEO in the C suite and be like, Hey, we need to create these, a whole bunch of nice flyers and we're going to be bringing them to events or whatnot. And they can turn around and say to you, Well, why don't we have AI do it? So it's getting harder to prove your value when there's something that is actively trying to replace you and the things that you're doing. So it is a weird time, especially I feel like in B2B where you're sort of marketing yourself to other businesses, that you're not necessarily trying mass market to a general public, whereas you're trying to market to more like minded business people, and those are the people who are most receptive to AI stuff.
John:So I feel like being a marketer in a business like that where you do have to, you know, everything has to go through a C suite, it is getting harder.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah, it really is. And I'll tell you what you mentioned, John, is a really good point in that AI, it's, you know, and what we're seeing is that many times clients will kind of say, well, ChatGPT said X, Y, Z, and almost challenge our strategic recommendations. Well, here's the thing. Right? No AI we use AI quite a bit at Brick Marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:We use it to scale results, scale what we're doing, do our jobs better as tools, but it does not replace our critical thinking and expertise as marketers. And so, and experience, real experience, earned experience, decades of experience. So I believe what's going to happen is especially B2B. B2B, since the sales cycles are longer, the timetable would be longer. But I believe in about maybe two to three years, companies like us and strategic marketers are gonna see a ton of work of companies literally in trouble.
Nick Stamoulis:Because like you said, John, they say, oh, well, let's have AI do it instead. Well, you know that thing where they say there's no soul in it. Right? There's no soul in AI created strategic marketing. That's my opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:There really isn't. We love AI and embrace and use all the LLMs all day practically. But I'm not asking Chad or Claude or Gemini, create a whole marketing strategy for me. Right? And what do you think we should do with my business?
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Because, you know, it can't see it doesn't have the experience. It can't see all the variables like a real strategic marketer would. Right? It's like it's like you don't feel good and you self diagnose yourself on WebMD in the past or now Gemini or chat and you throw in your symptoms and it could be one oh, you have a headache.
Nick Stamoulis:Well, it could be 50 ailments. Pick one. Right? Like which one is it? Right?
Nick Stamoulis:You have a headache. Well, you could maybe you're just not drinking enough water or it could be something really serious. Right? So the point is it's it's similar in that AI is a tool and, you know, CEOs that are that are trying to replace marketers with AI, my advice is just watch out because it will bite you. It's it just it will happen.
Nick Stamoulis:So moving on. Next article. A great one from Search Engine Land. So Lily Ray is an industry an SEO expert and it's entitled Lily Ray on Why Shortcuts Rarely Win in SEO or AI Search. Great article, really detailed.
Nick Stamoulis:And basically the article goes through and she talks about kind of her experience of, at one point, she was buying links for clients and then an algorithm update came out and just completely wrecked all of the results. And she makes an analogy of to now where a lot of marketers and business owners and SEO people are, for instance, utilizing AI to create AI created content. Right? And so and she uses that as a direct analogy to the days of you could buy links and show up really well for SEO. And one update came out and it just wiped it out.
Nick Stamoulis:And a similar thing is happening and will happen with AI created content. And there's a lot more in the article. It's a great article to read. I actually see Lily's posts all the time on LinkedIn. So she really knows her stuff and has really good insights.
Nick Stamoulis:But I'll tell you, I'm not surprised by this. I mean, there's no shortcuts. We tell clients all the time. Sometimes clients will balk it. They'll say, okay, well, I'm interested driving more leads, getting more business from my website and I want to improve my results on traditional SEO and AI search and AI SEO and AI visibility and improve my content marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:And then we audit everything, create the strategy, start implementing it for a client. And sometimes they don't understand that it takes a lot of time and a lot of resource and a lot of expertise to do it, but it takes time because whether it's SEO or AI search or content marketing or social media, they're earned marketing mediums, right? You have to work it consistently for a long period of time and you're never done. Like we say it all the time, right? Like it's not a checkbox.
Nick Stamoulis:You say, yep, SEO is done, check. It's never done, right? So there's no shortcuts to any of this, especially for search and AI SEO in any form of digital marketing really. So anyway, Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:So Nick and I especially have been in this industry for a long time since the beginning, basically of SEO. And so much has happened and Lily Ray mentioned a lot of it or most of it that I have now equated shortcuts to eventually getting penalized. So I have no reason to think that AI search will be any different than that at this point, because at least in Gemini's case, it's created by the same people that created Google stuff or the same company, and they have the same mindset for it. We've watched all of those algorithm updates happen. And I would say most of the time, maybe a 100% of the time, the algorithm changes, especially for for stretch there, always correlated to Google cracking down on people creating results based on shortcuts.
Katherine Tsoukalas:And every single time it's been short lived. This was the case with content, with link buying, with just about anything I can think of or that anybody can think of has been shortcut. Eventually, you're gonna get slapped. And that's the way my mind works. It's just something to keep in mind for now.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's true. It's not a matter of if you're going to get a penalty or have something devalued or get poor results.
Nick Stamoulis:It's a matter of when, really. So, John, what are your thoughts on this one?
John:Yeah. It's just a continuous game of cat and mouse where people will figure out a way to game the system. And then whether it be you know, Google or maybe, you know, chat GBT now, they are gonna find a way to patch that issue and penalize the people who are trying to, you know, play play the short game and get, you know, you know, quick wins, so to speak. It's it's always you're going to find better results in long term good marketing and good SEO and good, you know, AI SEO instead of doing all these, you know, short lived tricks that in the moment might do really, really well for your numbers, but aren't really doing anything for your actual audience or the people who you're supposed to really show yourself to.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Yeah. It's true. It's true. It's it's you know, any digital marketing activity you do, it's to achieve outcomes and goals of the business, of your sales and marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:But it's like you said, John, it ties into the people that you're trying to target, right? So it can definitely be counterproductive. So anyway, moving on. Next, a great article from DigiDay entitled Why Fragmented Buyer Signals Are Holding Back B2B Marketing. It goes on to say that the buyer journey evolves faster than most marketing organizations can adapt and more buyer signals don't automatically lead to better decisions.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says connected data changes how marketing and sales teams work. So it's a great article on DigiDay, recommend everyone check it out. And essentially what it's saying is something that we've seen quite a bit that in many B2B organizations, they tend to be sometimes in data overload and sometimes can't necessarily connect the dots properly. So here's the thing. And here's what I've learned in my twenty eight years of doing this in the digital marketing for a living is you got to keep it simple, right?
Nick Stamoulis:Remember the old keep it simple stupid? I don't mean anyone stupid, but you know what I mean? That acronym. I think that applies to data. You want to look and say, okay, what are the most important things that I need to know when I'm analyzing channels of marketing, specifically data tied to channels of marketing?
Nick Stamoulis:What are the specific things that I need to look at? And I've seen it so many times. And I know, Katherine, we've both seen this stuff, right? Where clients report it so much so that it creates a fragment and or paralysis in decision making. And on the flip side, someone on the other end, it's too much, it's overwhelming.
Nick Stamoulis:So anyway, so Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:There's a couple of things going on here. One, we always teach our clients that you have to create your digital marketing foundation.
John:Mhmm.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Because we have seen this over and over again that your foundation needs to be solid and in place, and then that will make you more adaptable.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Because otherwise you're spending your mental energy where your foundational marketing activities are that feels like putting out fires. Nevermind adapting to buyer signals. And then there's a whole thing that we talked about in a previous article today where c suite doesn't necessarily buy into marketing because they don't understand it. So if you're in a department like that, of course, nobody's gonna even tell marketing any of the buyer signals. So how are they gonna know to adapt to it?
Katherine Tsoukalas:The c suite could be hoarding that information, not even realizing that marketing needs to care. So we just need to understand that markets we can look at the markets in our own behavior too. I I have stopped researching for making buying decisions just using the search engines alone. I stopped about a year ago. I started using Chat PPT.
Katherine Tsoukalas:What does that tell you? Or whatever AI platform I feel like using. That tells you that this is now a change in buyer signal. It's a change in search behavior, which results in a change in the buyer signals. We gotta keep our eyes open because if we let five years go by and from one moment to the next, we cared five years ago, then we care five years from now, there's gonna be a five year gap where all of a sudden everything that you're doing is horribly outdated and it's gonna take a while to untangle.
Katherine Tsoukalas:But if you have your foundation and you stay adaptable all along and react to these changes, then you're not gonna feel like you're playing catch up all the time.
Nick Stamoulis:The reality is, Katherine, proactive not reactive. Yeah. In every in everything that that you do as a marketer. So, John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yeah. Something that stands out to me always is like like Katherine said, is the foundation. Your foundation needs to be good and solid so that at the the very least, you know, your website, your socials are all and all that are are cohesive, and they're working together, and they're making sense, and there's nothing that's, you know, fighting with the other thing, right, like messaging wise. And then you can start looking at everything else because if you don't have that foundation correct, people are gonna be confused. They're gonna look at all of your stuff and be like, who is this business?
John:What do they do? Why over here does it say they have the service, but over here it doesn't say it? What what do they actually offer? So you need to have your your basic foundation there so that people don't get confused. It's very easy to just like set something and then leave it there for ten years without really looking at it again.
John:But you should be auditing all of your things.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh,
John:yeah. At least, at the very least for something like your website, probably every six months, take a look, make sure that any changes you made on one page are reflecting somewhere else and all that sort of stuff.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I agree. I agree. Being proactive and auditing, things change. So that's definitely very important.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on, next. Great article from Search Engine Journal entitled The Technical Signs AI Search Uses That Most SEOs Still Aren't Optimizing. It goes on to say that there's three layers of AI visibility. The first is retrievability. It says here, can AI fetch impartial content without stumbling?
Nick Stamoulis:And that it says that this is the reading bit, the foundational layer most SEO teams already optimized for directly related to AI. This is, but unless you optimize the second layer, you're basically crossing your fingers and hoping AI interprets your content correctly. The second it says attribution and meaning. It says, can AI determine what your pages are about and who owns them? This is how AI knows without simply guessing which number on the page is a product price, blah, blah, blah.
Nick Stamoulis:It keeps continues on. And then it says agent transaction and discovery. It says, can AI agents access your website's capabilities to carry out tasks such as completing transactions? It says the final layer is about the agency and it's the difference between AI merely parodying information back to the user and being able to interact. So fascinating article, really is.
Nick Stamoulis:And I agree with most of it. The thing I don't agree with quite frankly is agent transaction and discovery. I think we're a little bit off from agents actually autonomously doing functions on behalf of other people. I think personally, and I know, I mean, they call it the agentic web. I mean, that's something that industry folks have talked about.
Nick Stamoulis:I've heard it quite a bit in larger business media as well. On that side of things, the first two points I agree with a million percent for AI search and for our clients, when we're optimizing for traditional SEO, we integrate AI SEO, AI search with it. And those are aspects that we do. But the agentic piece of it, I think we're personally probably about maybe three years off from that because people have to feel comfortable. People have to feel comfortable with the LLMs autonomously executing things on their behalf basically.
Nick Stamoulis:We'll we'll we'll get there. But it's kinda like if someone's researching a brand or a company, you know, are they the question is, are people gonna eventually say, I want x y z company from, you know, service. Go schedule me 10 appointments for me. Right? Eventually, are we going to get to that point?
Nick Stamoulis:Maybe. I think we will. How? Not sure. But point is, I have that last point.
Nick Stamoulis:You know, I I I very rarely do I disagree with something in one of these articles that we talk about every podcast, but that's one where I'm kinda like, most I mean, businesses still aren't even looking at AI SEO yet. The majority of businesses. They're sure as heck not looking at that yet. They're not even thinking about that. And the web isn't sophisticated enough, and website design and web usability isn't sophisticated enough to actually interact in that way yet.
Nick Stamoulis:Anyway, moving on. Because that's a whole another I mean, we talk about that one a lot. But so Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:So regarding agents, I agree with you because I have personal experience trying to, for my own purposes, personal whatever, I I have yet to be proven that it can handle complex tasks. I've tried. Yeah. And it break like, might work for for a week, maybe two, and then you have to watch it. I I created an agent to help me look for events.
Katherine Tsoukalas:I'm a ballroom dancer. And I gave it a list of like 20 websites. Please look at these websites and deliver me a report once a week. Yep. Some weeks it looks at five.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Some weeks it only looks at 10. Some Right. Weeks it adds ones I didn't tell them to look at, like in markets that I definitely can't drive to like Texas. I'm like, what are you doing? I didn't tell you to look at this until I feel in my own experiments, in my personal life that these more and that's not even that complex of a task.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Look at these websites. Give me a report on which events are which for this week. That's not even that hard, but there's a lot of pieces because I gave like 20, maybe 30 websites for it to look at.
Nick Stamoulis:That's a lot for it to look at. Yeah.
Katherine Tsoukalas:It is a lot for it to look at, but until it can do that kind of stuff, I'm not gonna trust that it can Yeah. Handle buying decisions and things like that.
John:Like, I
Katherine Tsoukalas:need it to be proven that it can handle complexity before I'll personally trust it. And I feel like I'm further ahead than a lot of people.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah. I actually yeah. I actually set up an agent, believe it or not, like a finance one for, like, economy. And basically, one, I did it on Gemini. It's great.
Nick Stamoulis:Where basically I asked to go to I gave it a list of like Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg. And I said, Combine the stories of what's happening that day before the market opens and then look at I gave them like about maybe six or seven market strategists for the economy that I kind of read and follow on TikTok. And I said, look at these followers. And I said, I want you to give me a summary of Chatter. It does it every day.
Nick Stamoulis:It's great. But it's not actually doing an action for me yet. I'm not saying, hey, I don't know. Right? Like ghosts, like, for your ballroom dancing, you know, like, go sign up for five ballroom dancing competitions this weekend.
Nick Stamoulis:But, yeah, I mean, those those ballroom dancing sites don't probably couldn't interact with an AI agent properly.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Right? The web
Nick Stamoulis:is not sophisticated yet enough. It's like we're like in the like early days, if you wanna look at an analogy, we're like at the early days of Flash websites when it comes to AI. Seriously, for like the web. No one uses flash. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:But like, you see what I'm saying? So it was kinda like, so I don't know. So John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yeah. I think that there's a level of like autonomy people want over themselves. Right? Like they want to make the decision on what they want to buy and when they want to buy it, especially when it comes to things like money or signing up for something you're going go to. I don't think that there's going be a very specific subset of people that are going to go all in on, you know, agentic web and and, you know, allow AIs to buy things for them all the time.
John:But I think there's also a lot of people who long term are just gonna prefer to search for things that they want on their own. I think there's, know, value in something like what you're doing where it's like, oh, you know, put together, you know, a few a few different things, right? Like a few different articles for me to look at every day. Like, that's not something that's a big deal. That's something that's simple.
John:It's like, okay. Here's 10 links for me to read, and I'm gonna get value out of it no matter what, even if it's, you know, not perfect. But when it comes to your money and and things that you want, you know, things as important as your funds. Right? I I don't think that a lot of people are gonna be into that.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, no. Not at all. I actually No, read something that there was someone that does an experiment, created an agent under Claude and gave it a thousand dollars and said, I want you to invest this a thousand dollars, right, in the stock market and it let it autonomously go for like two months. And then they didn't, they literally didn't check-in on it until two months later. They didn't even know what it was doing.
Nick Stamoulis:It was just doing trade like, I mean, it's crazy. But anyway, came back and they lost a thousand dollars. And then they asked, well, why'd you lose it? Why didn't you tell me? It's like, oops, sorry, like one of those.
Nick Stamoulis:It made all these excuses, okay. Because it was trying to do like cute investing, kind of going in doing day trading. It's like, okay, man, like there's people that are real strategists that can't do that right and do it successfully. That's a full time job like to do that type of thing. So anyway, anyway, think we're a little ways off, but again, good article from Search Engine Journal.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree with most of it. That last piece, I'm like, the person who wrote it may be there, but the masses are not there yet. Basically, I guess that's the point. So moving on, great article from the Brick Marketing website from our blog entitled Why Content is Key to Staying Top of Mind. And essentially, as we say in this article, publish useful content across multiple channels to create touch points, answer audience questions with useful information to build engagement and build brand familiarity over time to drive visitor growth.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, literally that is the lifeblood right there of creating content in content marketing. If you're a business, you absolutely should be creating different types of content, whether it's articles, blog posts, press releases, white papers, video content, long form videos, short videos, whatever it is that will help your audience, your potential customers and customers engage with your brand, engage with your products and services, period. It's amazing to me that seriously in today's world, we still have to talk about this because we see so many businesses that literally have websites and they don't do any content marketing. All they do is literally just focus on dropping money on ads and spraying and praying and hoping for the best. Unfortunately, ads take you to a certain point and are very important.
Nick Stamoulis:But content marketing is the foundation and the lifeblood and always will be because without excellent types of content consistently that's relevant, that ties into the outcomes in your business goals, your business is invisible. So as you click pause on that ad campaign, you're not getting any people to your site and people are changing on how they buy. You still need to see the ads. I mean, we've talked about this many times where, why do you think these big, like why do you think Coca Cola still needs to advertise and Pepsi? Seriously, right?
Nick Stamoulis:Like why do you think Google does sponsorships on like major sporting events? Or those of you that watch tennis, like Rolex is a sponsor, right? Everyone knows, like the brands, Rolex and Google and Pepsi and Coke, seriously. But why do they do it? They do it for branding, right?
Nick Stamoulis:But that takes you so far. But they have content that they push out. All of these brands do, whether it's video content or long form content, written content. So the point is, I don't care how big or small your business is, or if you feel it's not, oh, it's not good for my audience. It's not applicable.
Nick Stamoulis:I challenge you, feel free to DM me in any of the platforms of Brick Marketing or feel free to reach out to me through the Brick Marketing website. I will challenge you on that because it is every business, it's very important. Catherine and John, what do you both My think on this
Katherine Tsoukalas:gosh, a client said to me once, I don't think our audience wants to read anything we write. I'm like, oh my gosh, totally missed the point. And not only that, but like the clients that say, okay, we just wanna run an ad campaign. We don't wanna do anything else. Think about what you just said.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Right. Ad campaign copy is content. The landing page that ad goes to has content on it. Cannot escape it. You cannot escape it.
Katherine Tsoukalas:It's there.
Nick Stamoulis:I know. I know.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Don't control the narrative and utilize the content marketing resource that you have in front of you. Somebody else might control it for you or they'll overtake you. Because if your competitor has a great content marketing strategy, which by the way is the foundation of pretty much your entire digital marketing strategy. If their content marketing strategy is solid, they're gonna overtake you in social media. Gonna overtake you when you're both running ads.
Katherine Tsoukalas:They're gonna overtake you with visits to your website because you're more they're more visible in AI and they have more people getting eyes on them. And that's if you think content is not important, look at how you're doing against your competitors, and then take a serious look at that. And maybe you should do your content if you're not Absolutely. Doing
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yeah. It's about keeping your spot as much as it is, you know, getting higher up, say, in a in a ranking. Right? Like Coca Cola, like we've said, doesn't need to advertise necessarily. We all know Coca Cola.
John:We go and some people, you know, drink Coca Cola multiple times a day. They don't need to be advertised to. But when you give your competitors the opportunity to gain an edge on you somewhere, that's where problems could start to arise. Like, if Coca Cola wasn't so out there and and and advertising as much as they do, RC Cola might have a chance to come back. Right?
John:You know what I'm saying? So you have to keep yourself in the top of mind of your customers or, you know, the people who are typically going to read your content or see you because otherwise, they might find alternatives when you're not at the top of their mind.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. It's so true. It's it's so very true. So moving on. Excellent article from Search Engine Land.
Nick Stamoulis:How to prove paid social drives paid search demand. It says, When attribution misses delayed in cross channel influence, here's how to measure the demand paid social creates and paid search captures. It says paid social can spark demand that shows up later in search. But when the journey spans channels, devices, and days, standard attribution often gives the conversion credit to search and leaves the social's influence invisible. So how do you measure it?
Nick Stamoulis:So the article goes on to say the measurement can make paid search look like failing. It says, for example, relying on last touch attribution, restricting credit to a twenty four hour conversion window and separating paid social into its own report. This is how to prove the demand paid social creates. It says how to execute it. It goes through and tells you a lot of details actually.
Nick Stamoulis:So I've experienced this firsthand many, many times with clients where a client is investing in a paid PPC campaign through Meta or through LinkedIn or other social platforms on TikTok. And they might say at the surface, well, it didn't really get that much engagement. It got a lot of views and get a lot of engagement, but then all of a sudden, right, conversion improves on the brand search side of things on PPC or their SEO starts to generate more conversions. The point is, I think what's important to understand here is marketing now and digital marketing now, and this includes paid social media programs and PPC. PPC is meant to capture demand, right?
Nick Stamoulis:Social media advertising is advertising, which helps create the demand. So the reality is it's a circular, big picture, holistic approach that brands should look at when it comes to connecting these dots. It's not one or the other. You look just at one and say, oh, it's failed, now you're looking at tactic. You're looking at, okay, did this social media ad campaign, it did nothing for me, right?
Nick Stamoulis:But the question is, during that same period of time, how did these other channels perform? How did your PPC react to it? How did your organic SEO? How did your AI search? Did you see more visibility there?
Nick Stamoulis:Did you see more people looking and getting them thinking based on the content and ads that you're sharing in social? So the point is, it's all interactive. In today's world, it should be looked at as holistically in a circle kind of encompassing approach, not an individual channel. I think that's the problem here. So the article is great at Search Engineer.
Nick Stamoulis:I recommend everyone really read it because it gives details of how to actually prove it. But the reality is seasoned marketers know, and there's a difference, right? Like for instance, if you're B2B and you launch, let's just say you're promoting an ad on LinkedIn and you know your sales cycle is six months or a year, right? You A, either commit to it and say, we're going to test this channel for a minimum of six months and then analyze the impact of these other channels or say, that's not gonna work for us because we don't wanna invest consistently in that social media ad channel for that period of time. But if you're b to c and you know you're selling maybe a less expensive product or service and you know relatively speaking based on seasonality, you can see the needle move, you can see results quicker, there you go.
Nick Stamoulis:So, and that's like an unsophisticated way to go about it. The article goes a lot more sophisticated. The point is sometimes you don't have to go that sophisticated to really understand how these channels interact properly. Properly. So Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:We've observed this phenomenon many times in multiple different ways, not just this specific scenario, Like running a campaign, and then all of a sudden your organic traffic gets a boost. Why? Well, some of it might be curiosity. I mean, there's just all kinds of things, and it just goes to show you to me this is proof of what we say all the time that digital marketing needs to be looked at from a big picture perspective so that you can take advantage of everything. Because there's a lot of intangible things that are happening behind the scenes with the way people discover you, research you, interact with your content and your information.
Katherine Tsoukalas:And a lot of this is stuff that we all do as well when we're interacting with brands. We might bump into a social media post. And then rather than clicking on a thing, we might go and search, say in an AI platform for the brand because we saw it on social media. So there's a lot of behavior that's not entirely tracked trackable that could give one activity could bump up the activity of something else or more than one something else. And it's just something to keep in mind.
Katherine Tsoukalas:But to me, the underlying thing is that it is proof that we need to approach digital marketing, big picture, create a full strategy, implement the full strategy, and just sit back and have patience, which is something we were talking about earlier. Nick and I related to something else. But a lot of marketing is patience. We can analyze numbers. We can do a campaign.
Katherine Tsoukalas:We can do all the things, and then if we don't have patience, then that's not gonna work either. Right.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. It's true. John, your thoughts.
John:Yeah. It's interesting because you can look at the direct statistics of like a PBC campaign and be like, oh my god. We had a 100,000 impressions and only a point 1% click through rate. Yep. But the point isn't always, especially when you have longer sales cycles, the point isn't to get people to your website right now immediately all the time.
John:Of course, it's nice when people do go over, but the idea is the same as the last one to just get yourself in front of people's eyes so that when they do need, for example, a marketing agency, they knew they know who to go to already. You're at the top of their mind because you have been and you've been investing in these sorts of things for, say, the past year now. So you can look at your campaigns that you're doing and be like, wow, this looks like it did terribly. But you have to look at the big picture and really think about why maybe your sales are up anyway. Right?
John:So, yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Big picture's key for sure. All right, moving on.
Nick Stamoulis:Next article from Forbes entitled, Why storytelling is a leadership skill, not a marketing skill. And I thought this was a great article because it says here, it says, The most expensive filing error in business is treating storytelling as marketing. And it says, Great leaders find stories before they tell them. So I'll tell you, I agree with this. I think it's great.
Nick Stamoulis:Along the way, I recommend everyone really read this because on this podcast, we talk a lot Obviously this is a marketing podcast where we talk about digital marketing trends related to AI, SEO, social media, PPC, all these different things, all these different channels, AI, all this stuff. But this one, it's interesting because it's basically saying that storytelling isn't a marketing skill. And I agree with that. I think good storytelling is something that successful business people have the ability to do, right? To list out an analogy, to paint a picture essentially.
Nick Stamoulis:And so whether you're in sales or business development, working in biz dev, or you're at C suite and you're a business owner or you're a marketer, over the years, it's been kind of thrown in the marketing realm, right? Like Catherine, we've seen that. Like all of a sudden, and not as much now, but there was a period of time, maybe like ten years ago, it was like, all of a sudden there was this trend. It was like director of storytelling. What the heck does that mean?
Nick Stamoulis:Right? You remember that? Like, I've been seeing those titles, you know, and we were saying storytelling is nothing more than content. And that's nothing more than like something that business folks should already know kind of how to do. And then that's to map, paint a picture and create a story, like a legitimate and be able to articulate it properly.
Nick Stamoulis:So I think it's great. It is a leadership skill. I believe storytelling is very important for in business, not just marketing. It's essential for marketers. As a marketer, you have to be able to paint the picture in your marketing of a brand, in a product, in a service.
Nick Stamoulis:But I think I agree with this article. I think it's great. So so Catherine and John, what do you all think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah, I love the perspective. If you think about it, and I, a long time ago was an English major. Storytelling is a human impulse. The desire to tell stories, How was your day? Then something happened to you and you want to share it.
Katherine Tsoukalas:The ability to give and receive a story is something that we all have innately inside of us. So to pigeonhole the concept of storytelling just to marketing misses out on the value of storytelling to attract good personnel, storytelling to shape your brand. Storytelling to help you come up with your elevator pitch so that everybody in your company is cohesive in how they describe the company. A sales representative telling a prospect, Picture this. Blah, blah, blah, Right.
Katherine Tsoukalas:That's a sales tactic, that's a story.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Well, always say, What's your elevator pitch? Need to be able to describe in one sentence, right, who your company is, what you as an entity or a product or service. I mean, we do at Brick Marketing, we do. One sentence, So it's like, it's important to do that.
Nick Stamoulis:So, John, your thoughts on this one?
John:Yeah. Storytelling, I mean, there are, like, multiple companies that I can think of that are super successful and popular because of their ability to storytell. That might be doing something that's kind of been done before, but because they're, you know, the way that they position themselves, they're so successful. For example, I think of like Patagonia, right? They sell jackets and outerwear, but the reason that you buy from Patagonia is because they're a green company who, you know, donates money or will take your old clothes and fix it up and give it to somebody else, right?
John:That's why people are loyal to that brand. If you have the ability to storytell in a similar way, then you're going to find not only customers or an audience, but you're going to find people that are going to keep coming back.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I think you're right on the money. It's about storytelling over time creates brand loyalty. Really, it does for sure, amongst many things. So moving on next.
Nick Stamoulis:Great article from Search Engine Journal entitled The Next AI Protocol Won't Save Your SEO Strategy. It goes on to say, Every AI audit adds another acronym to the roadmap. Knowledge architecture is the capability that makes the next one a publishing decision. It goes on to say basically that essentially that all of these great tools out there has all these different terminologies and arbitrary protocols, if you will, and it won't save your arching issues with your SEO strategy or your AI SEO or AI search strategy. Think it's a great article.
Nick Stamoulis:And it goes in and really talks about that. I agree with this. I mean, literally I've been doing this so long that I remember all of these metrics, all of these tools coming and going literally. Here today, gone tomorrow, having arbitrary data, things that don't really matter, don't really make sense. I mean, there's some good tools, there's tools that we use.
Nick Stamoulis:And I look at it for like AI search. I'm like, okay, well I can go to Google Search Console and we're very thankful for Google for providing us, for instance, AI search, the AI overviews brand visibility. That data is great from Gemini and AI overviews. But some of these other third party tools, just saw one today. Literally I saw one today on LinkedIn.
Nick Stamoulis:It was $50 a month and you put in your website and they'll give you all these reports, AI reports. I'm like, okay, it's all, like it's not gonna save it. So anyway, so the point is, take my opinion is utilize a lot of these arbitrary tools with a grain of salt. Use the tools that are proven, that have real data to help shape your strategy. But just buying all these tools, looking at all this information isn't gonna save your strategy.
Nick Stamoulis:That's my take from this article anyway. So Catherine and John, what do all think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:For sure, tools are not your strategy. They never should be. It's just like tactics aren't a strategy. You you always need to look at things from a big picture perspective. Mhmm.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Otherwise, you're not gonna get the results that you want. And why would this be any different? SEO is different now because search is search, and there's more going on than there used to be. Different things in a different way to look at it. And and having an AI tool or something to help you through that is not gonna help you through that because it's reflecting the changing needs of the audience and people's buying behavior and search behavior.
Katherine Tsoukalas:So you just gotta take what's out there and what's available to you with a grain of salt and really think about what is really going on. If you're trying to use a tool to fix something, that's not the way to fix it. It's an issue, a marketing issue that has to be looked at from multiple angles and really considered. Is is this even a problem? Maybe it's not even a problem just because SEO is different now.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Doesn't mean it has to be a bad thing.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Absolutely. John, your your thoughts on this one?
John:Yeah. This reminds me of a Reddit post I replied to a few days ago. Somebody was asking, like, every week, it seems like there's a new AI tool for me to use, whether it be for doing some sort of audit on my website or to, I don't know, edit my video or something like that. And my response was, it's no different from the start of the internet where you have all these different tools that are coming at you all the time, but eventually things started to simmer down and new tools stopped getting, you know, developed and you use your, you know, your tried and true whatever you like to use. And I think the other issue right now is that a lot of the AI tools, it's even harder to know because a lot of them are like vibe coded junk that don't actually work.
John:It definitely does make it harder than it was before, but I'd say, you know, just try the ones that you do see good reviews about and people are actually using. And then, you know, just wait a few years and that question will be answering itself.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree a 100% on that. So true. Next, article from Search on Jalana, great one, entitled Evolving SEO for 2027: What Still Needs to Change? Part of our article goes on to say, Search visibility now extends from Google results to AI citations and community conversations.
Nick Stamoulis:And it says here's where to focus your SEO effort in 2027. It says SEO is becoming less about optimizing for a channel and more about understanding the user wherever they look. AI overviews are no longer the experiment we're all watching. They launched in May 2024, got messy in public and Google tightened the triggers. It goes on to say that it says LLM answers versus social search.
Nick Stamoulis:It says LLM compress many sources into one answer. Social and community search do the opposite. They surface a specific human with a point of view in a thread or video. Users will take both. And it says here priorities, it says priorities that still hold.
Nick Stamoulis:It says great SEO in 2027 maps out a three-dimensional journey that spans more than platforms than just Google. And it says better questions now to say, not which keywords am I ranking for, but someone starts on Google in AI mode or chatty PT, what can we do so the brand shows up and is worth citing? It says, what do people actually want to consume on Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn in our category? And what do people ask LLMs to provide? And do we have a primary source answer or just another summary?
Nick Stamoulis:It's great. This is a great article. I recommend everyone really read it at Searchers and Land because I agree with this. I actually believe that the social piece that it was saying will be the future. I think that the foundational items of traditional SEO as a foundation, yes, your visitors aren't what they used to be from SEO, but your visibility is still there.
Nick Stamoulis:The impression share is still there. Right? And people see your brand there and then see your brand in AI search. And then remember people, you got to market heavily. If you want to really build your results, you have to stand out.
Nick Stamoulis:And that's not just launching an SEO program, AI search, content marketing with it, answer engine optimization, gender of engine optimization with that, obviously it's part of it. And then social on top of that and just hope for the best. It needs to be coordinated with all your other channels of marketing and advertising, right? So the point is, I agree with this article. I think that going into 2027, the foundational elements that we've seen continue to work in 2026 will still apply in 2027, but I think we will get more advanced.
Nick Stamoulis:And I also believe social will have a bigger role collectively, not just one person saying something, but a consensus. I mean, someone, I was actually talking yesterday with a colleague and it's someone that, great guy, marketer. And we were talking about Reddit. And recently ChatGPT has devalued Reddit, but still does show Reddit results quite a bit. But I still have this core and I was saying this with my colleague.
Nick Stamoulis:I said, Well, Reddit, I mean, to me it's crazy that ChatGPT is using Reddit or had been for a while as a primary source, right? I like Reddit, I do. We're active on Reddit. But the reality is, would a small and mid sized business that has no business being on Reddit launch a Reddit campaign just to show up in AI visibility? I think that's a terrible approach personally.
Nick Stamoulis:I've gone on record saying that's a terrible approach. So if it makes sense for your business and it does for us, then do it. But the point is, I think eventually in 2027, the LLMs, ChatGPT, Gemini is pulling right, from YouTube. Google owns YouTube. It's pulling from there.
Nick Stamoulis:It's pulling from LinkedIn. We've seen that on the B2B side and read it to a certain degree. But I think eventually the LLMs are going to learn to pick up different sources, more real time sources and including social media. I think social media is going to be much more important in 2027, in my opinion, for AI search visibility. So I don't know.
Nick Stamoulis:Catherine and John, what do you both think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:I liked the read and enjoyed the analysis. I also feel a little bit uncomfortable when it's do this, then this will happen, do this, I then this will
Nick Stamoulis:know.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Do this, and then this will happen because do this, and then this will happen might work this month. Like Nick mentioned, the likes of Reddit for the long time, go be on Reddit and then you'll get AI visibility and chat CPT. Well, do this and then this will happen. In that case, is not panning out because now exposure via Reddit is being throttled. So where does that leave us?
Katherine Tsoukalas:In the chat, in the discussion of saying that we need to work on our big picture digital marketing and have an all encompassing strategy that covers all of our bases.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep, I agree. Agreed. John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yeah. I have to say, you know, build your audiences because the more people are talking about you and using you as an example in their conversations online, the higher likelihood you're going to, you know, show up you know, AI results. And you can do that through creating really valuable, quality content online. And and where you're gonna do that is social media, like Nick said.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yep.
John:I also agree that social media is gonna become more and more important over the next few years as we, you know, get further and further into this AI LLM era because that's where the conversation is and that's what the LLMs want to see.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. I agree. Yep. Moving on, next. Article from Marketing Brew entitled How to Build a Brand Newsletter in 2026.
Nick Stamoulis:Great, great article entitled, and basically it goes through and it says that, and so the people that were interviewed in this one were actually folks at Substack, at Shopify, shared their insights. It's a great read. I recommend everyone really read this one. And so we never really talk about email marketing that much, but I'll tell you, email marketing is extremely important, right? And I feel like it obviously sometimes in many cases gets overlooked quite a bit.
Nick Stamoulis:Everyone's focused on SEO and AI search and social and content marketing and PPC and all these other channels which are unbelievable and work well together. But email marketing is a foundational element of marketing. And building a brand new site, it gave really great insight in this article. The one thing that stuck out to me the most, it says that constant communication. And it says when it comes to cadence, marketers agree that it largely depends on the type of content, but consistency is important above all.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, literally, it says the continuity, it keeps people coming back. And so to me, at the very end of this article, that is the sticking point because we say it all the time. We know the approach that we recommend to clients strategically is being consistent in every channel of your marketing. In email marketing, it's even more important. How do you think you can build a brand?
Nick Stamoulis:Equity in a brand. Trust in a brand. It's consistency. It goes more than just advertising. It's communicating your expertise, your products, your services, whatever it happens to be over time.
Nick Stamoulis:And so, I mean, we see with our clients email marketing, even for our own company, email marketing does extremely well. Extremely well. I can't even say enough. And you would think like, oh, it's almost 2027 and you're talking about email marketing. Yeah, we are because it's personal and someone opts in to an email, then you're instantly building that rapport with them.
Nick Stamoulis:They may not be ready to buy now, but you're nurturing it for the long term brand build, which is very important. So this is a great read in Marketing Brew. I recommend everyone really read it. And especially if those of you that are like, oh, we need to do a newsletter. Do it.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely do it. And be consistent with it. So yeah, Catherine and John, what do you all think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:Email marketing is a bit of a workhorse. And businesses that have maintained their lists for decades are just silently using that to help their pipelines and to get buyers and to nurture their audience and whatever they need to do. They've ignored the noise of, oh, email marketing doesn't work anymore. Oh, actually email marketing works again. Okay.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Yep. Just keep your email, keep your list, keep emailing your list and don't ignore your list and just keep going with it because it it may ebb and flow in popularity according to whomever's writing about marketing, but the businesses that are silently using it to grow their businesses have been doing so for decades. They're not gonna stop and it's gonna always work.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I really do. John, your thoughts on this?
John:Yeah. I think it's easy to to think like, oh, email, that's like that's gone the way of the dodo. Right? Like, that's old old marketing. But when you think about it, think about how many emails you still get a day from these big, big successful companies.
John:Clearly, it still works if, say, you're getting It says in here, like, if you're getting an email from Shopify all the time, it's clearly still working. There's a reason why these other companies are still sharing newsletters and doing email marketing. It's because, right, it's opt in. It's more personal than just seeing something on social media, and you have a lot more opportunity to really do whatever you want with it. Like, an email can link to your website.
John:It can link to a video. It can have its own content all right there. So it still is a very powerful tool.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Really is for sure. Alright. Last article for today. I want to remind everyone.
Nick Stamoulis:So the Brick Marketing Live podcast is available on every major podcast platform. So tell everyone you know, check us out. Just search for Brick Marketing or Brick Marketing Live, and you will find the Brick Marketing Live podcast on every major streaming platform. We archive this podcast and every podcast each week on the Brick Marketing website at brickmarketing.com/live. We also upload it to our YouTube channel as well.
Nick Stamoulis:So last article today from the Brick Marketing blog entitled Why Customer Knowledge Shapes Digital Strategy. We go on to say that learn exactly what influences customer buying decisions and core needs and use acquired customer knowledge to guide your overall marketing strategy and continuously adapt to changing customer needs to drive as their growth. This is hugely important and this is something that we often see many clients that come to us lack this right out of the gate, right? They may launch a product or service and never speak to their customers. They may say, Oh, we're going to launch a new marketing campaign.
Nick Stamoulis:Or, Oh, well, what do you think we should do this type of program strategically in these different areas? And we say, well, start with a competitive analysis first. And then second, let's look at your customers. Let's look and see, what are they buying? How are they buying?
Nick Stamoulis:What are their pain points? I mean, it sounds basic to say it, but the information from your customers do and sometimes should shape your digital marketing strategy and how it changes over time. I mean, we've interviewed clients or interviewed customers of clients before to obtain data. And that could be sending out a survey to customers. That's good intelligence.
Nick Stamoulis:It could be speaking to customer service people, right? It could be speaking to salespeople in an organization because they're on the front lines. They're the ones that are speaking to customers and potential customers. That's how you know what content should we write? What ad programs should we launch?
Nick Stamoulis:What is what will resonate with these audiences? What are their demographics? What's their psychographic? What is making them tick? So it's very important to look at customer information and knowledge along the way.
Nick Stamoulis:So Catherine and John, what do you all think on this one?
Katherine Tsoukalas:The more we know about our customers and our audience in general, the better we can get our an audience, a simple audience member to be a paying customer. Right? So sometimes things happen that we don't expect either. Customer knowledge and audience knowledge can uncover verticals that we might not have even thought of, for example. And in general, like Nick said, it can shape your content.
Katherine Tsoukalas:How many times? When we have a con when I've had conversations with clients, and I've told them that you have to ask the sales team, please to give you a list of questions that they hear from their prospects. We could turn that into content. Each question can be an article that goes live on the blog or elsewhere. You could take their knowledge of what they're hearing from prospects and turn it into an FAQ page.
Katherine Tsoukalas:If nobody knows what the customer knowledge looks like, then you're just stabbing in the dark. You're throwing darts at a wall blindly, well, blindfolded, and you're not gonna get the information that you need to actually correlate to success.
Nick Stamoulis:So true. And another thing, Catherine, cost customers' needs change over time. Just because it's one way now, in a year from now or two years from now or three years from now, it might be different. So you have to have your your your finger on the pulse of that as well. Mhmm.
Nick Stamoulis:So, John, what do you think on this one?
John:Yep. Not only do your customers' needs change, you also have to remember that you have many different types of customers, no matter what business you are. Right? So you could have put together a strategy for your main your your main type of customer. Like, oh, you know, I know that most people that wanna buy something from my business are on Facebook, but you're forgetting about the people who might not be and prefer to be on x or Instagram.
John:You you need to be everywhere, and you have to have multiple different strategies for different types of people. Yes. Need to know what all of your audiences are so that you can have a well rounded digital strategy.
Nick Stamoulis:100%. It's true. So true. Alright. So that's it for today.
Nick Stamoulis:I'd like to thank everyone for listening to The Brick Marketing Live Podcast. Remember, check it out on every major streaming platform. Just search for Brick Marketing. Tell everyone you know to subscribe, leave us a review. We'd appreciate it.
Nick Stamoulis:And you can also check this out on thebrickmarketing.com slash live on our website and then also on our YouTube channel as well. And so we will be with you next week, next Thursday, September 10 at 4PM Eastern. So we'll be with you live then. You can watch it right on the Brick Marketing website. Otherwise, check it out later on the tenth.
Nick Stamoulis:And we thank everyone for joining us. And thank you, John and Catherine. You guys did a great job and as always great insights and we'll see you next week. Thanks everyone.
Katherine Tsoukalas:Bye.
Listen to Brick Marketing Live Podcast: AI, SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media, PPC & More! using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.
