Episode 3
· 57:39
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the next installment of the Brick Marketing live podcast. I'm Nick Stamoulis. We have Catherine and John with us today. We are Brick Marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:We are a twenty year old digital marketing agency based out of Boston. And our goal is to provide our brains in insightful thoughts about things that are happening in our industry. So let's kick things off. So today, the first topic or article that we're gonna discuss. So it's a really, really nice article from Martech, the Martech publication.
Nick Stamoulis:And the title of the article is marketing looks successful but misses what matters. And, you know, so kinda, you know, the perspective of this article is from a marketer that's been in the industry for twenty years. And I think the thing that I really resonated with is there's a point in this article where the author essentially says that that part of, you know, they they talk about something called the marketing Mandela effect. And but they also talk about something that says, you know, the courage to say, I don't know. And I thought that was great because I think that, you know, unfortunately, many times in the marketing industry, marketers tend to have the we have to know everything about everything always.
Nick Stamoulis:And, you know, the reality is no one knows everything and we all continue to learn. You know, I've been doing this for twenty eight years. Catherine, you've doing it John, you've been doing it for a number of years as well, and we're always learning. That's the point. And so I I I think that one little piece in there really resonated with me.
Nick Stamoulis:Mhmm. Catherine, John, what do you the two of you think on that?
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. I feel like when people think about marketing, they fall into a trap of just going through the motions
Nick Stamoulis:Yep.
katherine Tsoukalas:And just doing the things that they've always done without really thinking about, like, why are we doing this? Technically speaking, marketing's role should be to align with business goals and work toward achieving those business goals. But a lot can happen along the way, and we tend to lose sight of what drives real growth, and that's what marketers should be working on.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. Completely. And Catherine says, yeah, marketing is supposed to align with your business goals. Business goals are always changing. Right?
John:So marketing should do that as well. Right? As as, know, some something changes within your business. Your marketing should also reflect that as well. So you can't just keep going in the motions.
John:You have to think of new ways to meet those new goals.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Mhmm. Good. Very good point. Good point.
Nick Stamoulis:Next article we're gonna talk about is an article, recent one from Search Engine Journal. And the name of the article is the AI Slop Loop. And I thought this was great because, unfortunately, we're we're in a in an error now in search AI search that, you know, AI search and search using, you know, the LLMs to search. It's a new newer phenomenon. But it's also one that unfortunately is very easily gamed.
Nick Stamoulis:And it reminds me of the early days of SEO. The early days of SEO, when we're talking, you know, go back 2002, 2003. You know, it was very easy to rank almost it seemed like overnight back then. Using, you know, various, you know, at the time was best practice, which we all know are are kind of black hat type SEO tactics, which none of us white hat folks engage in. And I feel like AI search is very similar.
Nick Stamoulis:And in that, it's it's unfortunately, it's easy to game the system. And so this article kinda talks about how, you know, that that some basically non authoritative type sources were generated and then quickly shown as authority sources incited in AI search. And so I thought it was fascinating, but I'm also not surprised. Our perspective at Brick Marketing is to take a marketing approach to AI search and AI SEO and generative engine optimization and follow everything by the book as best practice stands right now and as a change, you evolve with it. So I think that this was just an interesting article, the AI swap loop.
Nick Stamoulis:I just thought it was interesting. It was just interesting read. Catherine, John, what do you what do two of you think on that?
katherine Tsoukalas:Agreed. What I took away from the article is something that I've witnessed and experienced firsthand. It's that AI can hallucinate. We always say that you have to know what you're doing if you're gonna use AI for anything because you have to be able to look at it and kinda, like, catch it before things get out of hand. I I was even just researching something today.
katherine Tsoukalas:This was just off work time. I was researching something about the New England Patriots. Mhmm. And it was trying to correct me saying that Mike Verebo was not the coach of the Patriots. It was arguing with me saying that he was the coach of the Titans.
katherine Tsoukalas:Okay. That's an example of what can happen. It just goes on flights of fancy. Right. But can you imagine if it mattered, like, really matter who I was just chitchatting with it about something related to a sports team, but if you're in a situation where it matters
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. What what what AI platform were you using where it drifted that bad?
katherine Tsoukalas:Using ChatGPT for that.
Nick Stamoulis:Chat. Wow.
katherine Tsoukalas:And I have chit chatted with ChatGPT before about the New England Patriots, and and it, at the time, knew who the coach was.
Nick Stamoulis:So Interesting. Very interesting. Never know. It's crazy. John, what do you think on this on this one?
John:Yeah. I think that we're running into the issue where so much on the Internet is AI generated, like text. Like Yep. We know that right now, chat g b t and the, you know, LLMs take a lot from Reddit. It sees it as like an authority.
John:Right? And if you go on Reddit, so much of it is AI generated. It's all spam in, like, comment sections or or main posts. They're all spam. So what's happening is you have the AI is generating the content on Reddit, which it's using and then spinning itself, and then it's just a feedback loop.
John:And it's just getting worse and worse and worse.
katherine Tsoukalas:Interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. And I think as time goes on, I think you know, not think. I'm pretty pretty certain of it that a lot of these sources that are cited by the LLMs are gonna shift. So right now, Edditt is the you know, I think, John, you and I were talking about that too.
Nick Stamoulis:Like, Reddit is the is the, oh, you know, you need to do well in Reddit right now to be you know, to show up competitively in LLMs. The reality is, you know, that's no different than article sites, spinning sites in the early two thousands for SEO. Mhmm. Literally. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:And, know, the difference is it's a trusted site, but does every business need a Redditor profile and a Redditor account? No. They certainly don't. It doesn't make sense for a lot of businesses. So anyway, so that was an interesting read.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Next is a interesting article from the marketing professor's publication, The Future Funnel, Why Advocacy is the Engine of b two b Growth. And I thought this was an interesting read. This is one of those sites where you you need to have an account to read the full article. So, you know, we're not advertising or promoting any particular one, you know, news source or another, but this is a good publication for b to b marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:And so, essentially, what it's saying is that that AI I think the takeaway that I took away from this was that AI search and brands that are doing well in the b to b side of things in AI, it's adding as a as it puts it, a third party proof. And so and what that means is and we're seeing this firsthand with our b to b clients. And that is AI is end of sales cycle type individuals, and we're seeing it firsthand. It's folks that are highly researched, that are using the AI platforms and search to really prequalify themselves and educate a brand or a product or a service very well so they're ready to go. It's a different conversation.
Nick Stamoulis:And we're seeing that with our clients, with our own company. I mean, so, you know, yeah. I mean, I thought this was very interesting interesting article for marketing process. So, Catherine, John, what do you what do you think on that?
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. Well, we're in general seeing that the funnel is changing because of AI. So it makes sense that this type of phenomenon is being observed as well because AI doesn't just read a brand's website to figure out what's going on with the brand. It pulls information from all over the place. And when you are looking for growth, going to peer driven sites makes sense, like third party sites that mention your brand and stuff.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. John, what do
katherine Tsoukalas:you think? Interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. It is.
John:Yeah. I I don't have too much to add on that one. I agree that, you know, if your brand's out there and it's being, you know, like, you know, cited in AI or or on other other websites, like, that advocacy is, like, one of the most important things because the way you see it is somebody's recommending this product or this brand or, you know, or agency to you. So I think people are more likely to already know a little bit about them when they're going in.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. And what's what's I thought it was it was great to see this and it's actually great. It's very validating for the for those of you that are listening or watching that have attended one of the Brick Marketing webinars. We you know, one of our trainings or have watched any of our videos in social media. You see we the reoccurring theme of us talking about leads that generate from AI search.
Nick Stamoulis:And it's very nice and validating to see that these major industry publications are starting to report the exact same thing that we've been saying over and over and over in the actual results that we're seeing with our clients. So I just think it's
katherine Tsoukalas:it's fascinating. Yeah. That was that was a good take for me too. AI driven leads tend to be a lot warmer, and it's nice to see that people are sort of observing the same
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. As us. Alright. Moving on. Next is an interesting article from Forrester.
Nick Stamoulis:What Oracle's layoffs really signal for b to b marketing sales and revenue operations. So this is interesting. It's unfortunately, this is a not a really happy topic to talk about and that is thousands of people getting laid off by a fortune, you know, top company that's a public company. And unfortunately, you know, the marketing sales and revenue operations jobs are being targeted. You know, essentially, what the Forrester article is is essentially talking about is that, you know, that it's unfortunately, the marketing and sales function are in the crosshairs at a lot of these larger organizations.
Nick Stamoulis:I personally think and, you know, and and some of them and then we've talked about this in the past. When we've talked about layoffs and consolidations and stuff like that, you know, marketing jobs being consolidated because quote unquote AI. I think some of it is AI, but I think most marketers that I speak with are embracing fully AI in in its full capability. I mean, I don't I haven't really had any interaction with anyone, with any marketer that says, I don't use AI at all. So it's interesting to me.
Nick Stamoulis:So I I personally think a lot of these companies are using AI as a scapegoat because they're you know, they wanna increase their profitability and like, oh, well, you know, AI is the AI job loss is the flavor of the day, so let's just go with it. It's unfortunate. It really is. And I really feel for the folks that are probably do are good at their job, great at their job, obviously, to work at a company like Oracle to then just be canned. And apparently, you know, very unhumanizing approach laying people off too.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, they literally I think they emailed everyone at, like, six in the morning. Then said, like, that day. Right. So it's like, you know but again, it's so not again, not a happy topic to talk about when it comes to marketing, but it's an unfortunate reality in the world that we're in right So yeah. I mean, I don't know if you guys have anything to add on this.
Nick Stamoulis:This is just it's an unfortunate one to talk about, but I wanted to mention it.
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:Because I wanna bring to light that, you know, these larger companies just don't can your marketing and sales folks. Don't can the people that actually drive the revenue for you. Sure. Not everyone is good at their job. But that's that doesn't justify just getting rid of thousands of people like that in one swoop.
Nick Stamoulis:That's my opinion.
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. To tell you the truth, part of me feels like there might be more to the story.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I think there is.
katherine Tsoukalas:You don't know. Yeah. I I don't know. It was a good article to lay it all out there, and a sentence that I liked in the is Oracle isn't cutting jobs because AI suddenly works. AI didn't suddenly make people unnecessary, but the economics changed.
katherine Tsoukalas:So that's an interesting detail and an interesting point, and it made me think whenever we see a new technology on the market that's disruptive to the workforce, there yes. There is a period of time where people are getting let go, and we can blame it on AI or not. Also, our economy. I don't know. There's there's probably a lot more to the story.
katherine Tsoukalas:However, one thing I have observed with these technological disruptions is jobs end, but then jobs might eventually be added. But it's too early to tell. But probably that seems to be the pattern when technology changes.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I agree. I agree. John, anything to add or are we good to move on?
John:Yeah. I just agree that if this is probably more of like, you know, an economic issue. And also, I know that Oracle, you know, is a tech company. So they they probably are doing investing a lot in AI. But you see a lot of companies that are failing.
John:Right? That that might need to lay off a thousand people. Go ahead and say, hey. We're doing AI now. And then their stock will just go up.
John:Right? Because that's the buzzwords that you you that people wanna hear and they wanna invest in AI companies. So Mhmm. It could also be something like that. They're saying, you know, okay.
John:We're investing in AI. We're cutting off our, you know, marketing and sales, and then they see their stock just go up. Right? And they're being rewarded for that. But that's gonna be short term gain and then long term, you know.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I agree. I agree. I agree. Alright.
Nick Stamoulis:So let's just take a brief moment. We're gonna we're gonna plug this this podcast. So this is the Brick Marketing Live Podcast for those of you listening, available on all major streaming podcast platforms. Also streaming on the Brick Marketing slap brickbrickmarketing.com/live website, on the Brick Marketing website. And also on the Brick Marketing LinkedIn and Facebook pages live.
Nick Stamoulis:But you can catch it anytime. So just wanna plug our podcast. So thank you all for listening. Next topic is this is an interesting article from search engine land and kind of the reason why I picked this one is just to let people know that SEO still exists. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:All we talk about is AI search. SEO still drives without looking at the data billions of searches worldwide. Right? So it's it's, you know, yes, we're in the transitionary period to AI search and you need both, but don't ignore your SEO. And so this is an article from Search Engine Land entitled Google Spam Reports Can Trigger Manual Actions May Be Shared with Site Owners.
Nick Stamoulis:So basically, Google has a an area a spam report submissions section that if someone or an SEO happens to see a site that is your or a marketer or business owner sees a site that is trying to manipulate the search in, you know, algorithm in in any way, you can manually submit to Google that you're spamming Google, basically. And then essentially, it'll show up on your Google search console report and then it will actually it'll notify that that that owner. I think this is great. I really do. I think it's you know, I could see honestly in the one sense I can see being used for ill will too, unfortunately.
Nick Stamoulis:But, you know, if someone, you know, maybe jealous or competitive situations, someone's like, oh, this site is spamming. But I think, you know, the engineers at Google are definitely sophisticated enough to know what, you know, what brand and what site is violating their, you know, their their webmaster guidelines and best practice really art or something that may be intentional versus ones that aren't necessarily intentional. So, anyway, I just thought this was interest an interesting piece. So
John:I
Nick Stamoulis:don't know. Catherine, John, do you guys have anything to add on this?
katherine Tsoukalas:No. I just I just like it.
Nick Stamoulis:To add?
katherine Tsoukalas:It seems valuable. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah.
katherine Tsoukalas:That's all. Yeah. It is. It's helpful. Sometimes it's kind of like a transparency thing too.
katherine Tsoukalas:And, also, if it is spam and a lot of people do it on purpose, I think they need to know that they got called out.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely.
John:Yeah. I mean, I I got, an email on my personal email that that came from a a very good seemingly very good company, and it it went straight to my spam. This happened, like, yesterday. Right? And I I have to wonder why.
John:Right? You you look at it. The email is not spammy. It's, you know, completely like, everything is above board in it. Right?
John:You have to wonder why things like that are happening so often to people.
Nick Stamoulis:Don't know. Don't know. None none none of this stuff is perfect. Mhmm. Alright.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Next is another really good article from MarTech. Three AI shifts reshaping market research. So this is interesting. You know, I think the core one of the core uses for marketers of AI and all the LLM and all the AI tools is research.
Nick Stamoulis:Really, literally market research. You know, having level of data, obviously, recommend you check it. But, you know, check it out, you know, any you know, the results that you see. But so the one market market research shift that the Martech article is referring to is Anthropix projects turn AI into research partner with memory. The second is Google's Gemina Gemina models bring AI inside the corporate firewall.
Nick Stamoulis:And the third is multi AI systems introduce built in quality control. So I thought it was great. And what's happening here, and this is an indicator to me anyway, is that the LLMs and the AI platforms are evolving. That's what we're seeing here. The different models are being released.
Nick Stamoulis:More sophisticated language models are being released that are focusing in on research. Because I think if you take it early days of search, research was the core of search. Right? It was, you know, the old days of, like, oh, you know, you know, in the late nineties and early two thousands, oh, you know, you don't need to go to the library and spend hours researching information and old school way of of obtaining sources, especially if you're a college student or something like that. Now it's at your fingertips.
Nick Stamoulis:And I think this article at MarTech indicates that the technology is progressing nicely. And we've only just begun. I mean, I I think we're gonna see it really advance in the, you know, in the coming years. So, Katherine, John, what do you guys think on that?
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. We tend to think of AI as being helpful for productivity tool. We talk about its implications for marketing too. And I love the perspective of this that you can use it for insights and analytics and market research. And so it's just nice to stay informed with what's going on and and how it has the potential to grow.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Absolutely. John, what do you think?
John:And it and it has grown. Right? I mean, think about the leap between I can't remember the first version of, you know, ChadGBT that went public to, you know, g b t five. Right? It it's a it's a huge leap, and things seem to be slowing down, but, you know, things are going to change and and still continue to get maybe more accurate, maybe more energy efficient, you know, all those sorts of things that you might not even even notice yourself.
John:But, you know, hopefully, you know, we see good changes happening.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Absolutely. Next article is from AdAge. Answer engine optimization, AEO defined. So this is interesting because, again, we're in a true this transitionary phase and we keep talking about that.
Nick Stamoulis:And, basically, you know, the SEO world is shifting to AI SEO or it's also called generative engine optimization. So optimizing your brand, your company, your website, so it become comes in that conversation in AI search. But also, we're also hearing it referred to as answer engine optimization. Personally, I like AI SEO the best because it it encompasses all aspects of search, you know. And so it's like, if you think about it, it's AI search engine optimization.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So AI is essentially a search engine is being utilized as a search engine. And but so answer engine optimization, I think the easiest thing for people to understand what it is, think of it this way. Generative engine optimization is optimizing your brand, product, service, company for to become visible and to get in the conversation of the AI platforms. Answer engine optimization is to create content that answers specific questions related to a brand that isn't like the company, you know, it's it's like not as transactional.
Nick Stamoulis:Think of it this way. You know, generative optimization is like your highly targeted long tail keywords in SEO. And answer engine optimization are maybe broader keywords in SEO that are still highly relevant but are more, you know, in in the educational phase. Maybe mid level, you know, not end of sales cycle, like the GEO, general venture keywords might be. So I thought it was great because, you know, the industry, again, ad age, publishing this type of thing shows that the industry is just trying to really flush itself out and pick something, you know.
Nick Stamoulis:And and I can only imagine that if you're you're owner of a of a brand or, you know, you're a marketing person, it must be dizzying. It's dizzying for us. And and and and we we we do this professionally. And, you know, we help a lot of companies with this stuff. But yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:So I don't know. Catherine, John, what do you guys think on this?
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. I think we need to pick a term.
Nick Stamoulis:I know.
katherine Tsoukalas:People come to us almost not even realizing that all these different terms are the same thing. But that's an aside. I liked the article because I like what you said, Nick, about how it just goes to show you that we're things are changing, and we're trying to find structure in amidst all the changes. And I actually think this article did a a good job at highlighting the most important elements to laser in on so that our brands can get mentioned in AEO. Right.
katherine Tsoukalas:For AEO best practices, like adopting q and a formats, it's talking about we talk about that. Structuring for machine readability, we've talked about that in the past. Your citations, all of that is helpful. And I think that this article really did a lovely job at telling you what to focus on because otherwise, you could just get stuck in all the details. I mean, I I got stuck in a detail too thinking AEO.
katherine Tsoukalas:Okay. Is it AI SEO? Like, brain just wants to latch on to something that is standard and stable.
Nick Stamoulis:Let's call it let's call it AI SEO, people.
katherine Tsoukalas:Let's pick one.
Nick Stamoulis:It's really are you
katherine Tsoukalas:are we will call it AI SEO, and we want our listeners to call it that too, and we will make change.
Nick Stamoulis:That's right. That's right. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. I I don't have too much to add. It's just it's good that, you know, there are resources like this out there that can help you figure out what to hone in on. And Yeah. Yeah.
John:I'm I'm glad that there is something out there.
Nick Stamoulis:Mhmm. Absolutely. Next, an article from DigiDay. And so this article was originally published on modern retail. And the name of the the title of the article is creator content has become critical for retail media networks.
Nick Stamoulis:So I thought this was fascinating, but I'm also not surprised. All you have to do is take a moment, dive into TikTok, take a look at at the videos, go to TikTok live, and just watch and go to the the the the ecommerce areas of people, you know, trying to sell you products. You know what you know, I'm just not I wasn't surprised by this article, but I thought it was great to see it. But I think that's where we're at. It's almost like every time I see though and it's I get I get pulled into it.
Nick Stamoulis:I get sucked into it. Absolutely. Like, I go down the rabbit hole sometimes. And I see these these people selling all sorts of stuff. And even stuff I'm not even interested in.
Nick Stamoulis:It just but what fascinates me as a marketer is I say, wow. That's that's really great. I can't believe 2,000 people are actually watching this individual right now. Right? Like, about random like, some of them are like Timo special products.
Nick Stamoulis:No offense to people like shopping on Timo. But, you know, but they have very low quality. Great. But, you know, but it's it's fascinating to me. It's almost as if we're in an age that if you have a little bit of creativity and the time and effort and persistence and consistency in organization to be organized for it, that you can literally start like you're almost like your own QVC.
Nick Stamoulis:It reminded me, like, QVC back in the day. When I was a little kid, you know, I would go to, like, QVC or or, you know, the shopping network, which by the way, unfortunately, I heard that the tyrant filing chapter 11, I believe, which
katherine Tsoukalas:is really sad. Oh, that's interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:Don't don't quote me on that. But I heard that they were having financial issues. But I remember the day, I mean, literally as a little kid putting on those stations and just sitting there watching random things. Women's jewelry sold with my mother, like, why why am I watching this? Right?
Nick Stamoulis:That's not my market. But it but I thought it was funny, like, you know, so but this is interesting. But that's that's the era that we're in right now for retail and e commerce is it's kinda like if you if you own an e commerce brand and, you know, we've had clients that that, you know, oh, what should we be doing to drive more product? This is exactly what you should be doing. You should be putting yourself out there.
Nick Stamoulis:Doesn't need to be perfect, and it doesn't need to be professional. I mean, it does. But it doesn't need to be I think you I think you guys follow
katherine Tsoukalas:what I'm Right. You're saying you don't need to be perfect. And in fact, that's an asset now because Yes. It's an easy way to show that your content's not AI driven because
Nick Stamoulis:you have
katherine Tsoukalas:somebody that and it's totally real. Like, I've been getting retargeted all these protein powders because I've been researching protein powders, and the brands are actually putting money on the distribution of these influencer created content. But you tend to feel like, okay. This influencer is in her kitchen making this iced coffee protein thing. And you're like, and her straw is cute.
katherine Tsoukalas:I might try that protein powder.
Nick Stamoulis:And it's a regular person. It's a regular person. And it's not scripted. It's not a model. It's not an actor.
Nick Stamoulis:It's not AI. Yep. Right.
katherine Tsoukalas:Yep. They might even leave a blooper moment or that time when when the cat walked into the frame and Right. Try to, like, lick some of the protein powder off the spoon, and you're like, oh, okay. She has a cat. And then you're like, wow.
katherine Tsoukalas:I just watched this whole video. When's the last time? And I know the team of ones that you're talking about, they're taking the furniture out of a bag and they pop up.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're like, what is Where did this thing come from? It's like $6, and it's like a 200 pound box of something.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So, John, what do you think? Yeah. It It is.
John:I I I'm looking at this from, like, a completely different perspective where yeah. I do YouTube, and people will Right. Reach out to me. Right? And recently, like, in sponsorship finding agency reached out and they're like, oh, we can get you to work with, like, brands that would make no sense for me.
John:But they're willing to pay just because it's so, like, lucrative for them to, like, use say, we'll throw x amount of money at this person and then our brands out there and maybe we get a few sales. Like, one of them was, like, Bombas. I'm, like, I've I haven't personally ever had a, like, a pair of Bombas, but they're willing to pay money. Right? Yeah.
John:So it must be big brands are doing it. I feel like small brands should also be doing that. If you have a small a product, send it out to creators who who might be smaller, but are willing to take that product.
Nick Stamoulis:But it has to be relevant though, John. Honestly, like like, I don't care how much money's thrown out. I mean, you know, like, we've, you know, we have we have other sites and stuff, but it's kinda like right? Like, if that's an analogy is, like, for me to put, like, I don't even know something completely not related on the Brick Marketing
John:website. Of course. You have to do your research and find
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. Creative Doesn't matter. Right. That are at least within
John:the same realm. Exactly. Mhmm. This makes no sense whatsoever. But if it's not someone else was coming out if a smaller business came to me that had a a product within my, you know, my niche, then that would be,
Nick Stamoulis:like, a
John:perfect pattern. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So interesting. It's just interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:It's just very interesting top. That's why I picked it. I thought it was it was a really good
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. It's a good one.
Nick Stamoulis:Good one. It is.
katherine Tsoukalas:We're we live it. We might not even notice it.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah. Next. Interesting article. This is a pay per click advertising article from Search Engine Journal. Google is replacing dynamic search ads with AI Max.
Nick Stamoulis:So I think it's interesting. So it actually breaks it down. There's a really kinda interesting graphic that breaks down, you know, the targeting differences, you know, the creative differences now with AI Max, you know, reporting, the campaign workflows. So I think it's I think it's good and bad. And I'll tell you, you know, full disclosure, I've been managing Google Ads campaigns since 2001.
Nick Stamoulis:I've been managing pay per click campaigns since 1998. And so I it's evolved considerably, obviously. And so it's, you know, PPC management. PPC in general is a different ballgame than it was two years ago, let alone five years ago, alone ten years ago. The thing I'll tell you pros and cons.
Nick Stamoulis:I think this is good for certain type of businesses, but there's also a lot of caveats. Right? So I think that, you know, at the end of the day, you advertise to to to get some type of return on your advertising spend. That's why you advertise, to get business, to get leads, to sell product, whatever it is, there has to be some sort of ROI in return on your ad spend. But I think that for certain type of advertisers, having an AI mask that AI max, which essentially is automate automating every aspect of your campaign is good.
Nick Stamoulis:But sometimes it's really bad. And we've I've seen it firsthand, really bad, where Mhmm. It drives thousands of impressions, thousands of of of really non relevant clicks. Yeah. You know, the, you know, the advertiser, the client says, oh, this is great.
Nick Stamoulis:We're getting all this great visibility. But is it really great? The ROI is junk. Right? It's just not there.
Nick Stamoulis:The return isn't there. So to me, I think certain type of campaigns, if you're running a branding campaign, this is great. If, you know, you're not really tied to getting a heavy duty return, but it's maybe a long term, you're building a brand in a market, this is wonderful. Because now you can really comprehensively attack your target audiences at a massive level. But if you're, you know, a smaller business or a mid sized company selling a product or service in a local market or even in regional market, it's your waste.
Nick Stamoulis:You're gonna waste a lot of money with this and you're removing lack of control of your brand too. If it's gonna general if it's just gonna pull ad copy based on that landing page copy, in theory, that sounds great, but it's not always great. Because as marketers, we want our brands to be structured a certain way consistently over and over and over and over because that's how branding works. And when you have that inconsistency in messaging, that's where branding fails. And so I think that some pros and cons there.
Nick Stamoulis:So I don't know. Catherine, John, I wanna get your take on this one.
katherine Tsoukalas:Yeah. When when you tell Google to do an automatic program like this, like the AI Max, they just in theory, they should be optimizing and reading the network and stuff. And in theory, it should be smart enough to know how to set the reach for your campaign. I don't know how this works. I haven't looked at it.
katherine Tsoukalas:But one would hope that you could align your point and your goals and that Google will align itself with that. But, that that's a downside with automating, as you said, because if you can't, like, set your point, like, want to get get leads, the keywords that drive leads are totally different than the ones that drive your brand and expand the reach of your brand just for information purposes. Like, if you can't set your point, then I I can see this being frustrating. But if you have if you're a big company that has a lot of budget and it doesn't matter, it's kinda nice for Google to sit and
Nick Stamoulis:Well, you could run Well, I'll get it for you. Exactly. You can you can run one click experiments with this. So you can you can run a lot of series of tests. So if you if you're a larger brand, unless you you know, you could take 5% or 10% of your media budget on a monthly basis.
Nick Stamoulis:So, yeah, I'm gonna run this as rolling test. I mean, that's what I would do with this. Mhmm. Because if I had extra budget, I'd say I'm gonna take 10%, and I'm just gonna run a series of tests, a b testing, And just let let it run and compare it to our control where we know it, you know, is it's it it drives good quality results.
katherine Tsoukalas:So That's smart.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. So, John, what do you think on this?
John:Yeah. It it looks like it's a new tool. Right? It's, you know and we always say, like, over here, we're we're always trying every tool that comes our way. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:And Right.
John:This one, we might be forced to use because it's completely replacing dynamic search ads. But like you said, test it, see if it works. Exactly. What parts of it you like, what parts of it you don't, and then then, you know, cater your experience towards that.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Next. Interesting article from Moz.
Nick Stamoulis:Moz is a AI SEO and traditional SEO tool. It's a good it's it's a good product. And so so this is an interesting article that essentially talks about the complete AI research workflow from prompt discovery to content creation. So I thought I thought this was great. And it was very it was really a nice for those of you that maybe are a little bit newer to utilizing AI to help come up with topics and research for content, not write the content, but research the content.
Nick Stamoulis:I thought this was great because what it does is it shows using you know, obviously, this shows using the Moz tool of how to do a lot of the prompt tracking and a lot of the research. But I I think a lot of the functionality could be applicable without the MAZ tool, but I just thought it was interesting. I just thought it was interesting to, you know, how it kinda laid it out in a very simplistic fashion. But it's a good read. It's a good read.
Nick Stamoulis:And for those of you and again, this is not a paid advertising for Moz. We as John mentioned John mentioned, we use a lot of tools. We test a lot of products. You know, I've personally used Moz for at least fifteen years. So it's a good tool.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. So but, yeah, it's definitely worth checking this one out. I don't know. Too much to add on that one. But, Catherine, John, anything to add?
katherine Tsoukalas:Stuff. I do have things to add. I Yeah. It just really made me feel thankful for where we're at now. Because when I started using AI, I had no there's real there was really not much out there to teach me how to use it.
katherine Tsoukalas:I just jumped in and started. I started prompting. I made mistakes. I figured out how to deal with the drift on my own. I fig I realized that sometime when AI hallucinates, as I talked about earlier in the podcast, It might have been my fault somehow because of the way I prompted.
katherine Tsoukalas:It it was just a really good article for showing step by step how to get it to do something and to be intentional in that use of it. Because most of how I learned is just by feeling it out because it was so early. And we're in a good we're starting to get into a good place now where we're starting to learn. Here's a to z, what you should be doing, step one, step two, step three, and so on.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. Moving on. Next article is from search engine land.
Nick Stamoulis:Your homepage matters again for SEO and here's why. So it basically says here that, you know, how SEO inverted the web design. It talks about, you know, the great AI reversal and the erosion of the deep link and the psych psychology of AI, the path of least resistance. And it talks about, basically, framework for your website and how important homepages are. So let's take a step back and talk about homepages in general.
Nick Stamoulis:The evolution of homepages, it used to be, you know, homepage I remember it. Early days of the web. It was a you'd have a splash page. And so every so often, we still see it. These really image heavy homepages with no content, no call to actions, and just they're there.
Nick Stamoulis:And then you have to click one or two clicks away before you dive in deep to where the visitor really needs to go. And so what's and then it went from that extreme to the other extreme, which is put everything on your homepage and just slap it all together. I think now it's reverting back where there's a level of refinement. I think AI is helping us in brands with that because the homepage is so important. It's important from a brand perspective.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? It's it's your you know what it is? Your homepage is your fifteen second elevator pitch of your company. That's what it is, literally. Like, in a nutshell, who you who would who is your company?
Nick Stamoulis:What is your brand? What does it represent? What are the key things that are important? That's what your homepage should be. And, oh, yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:By the way, here's the easiest way to get to those spots. That's what the homepage should do. It should not be a a laundry list of accomplishments and awards that you've won. It's all about you, you, you, or you. It's not about you.
Nick Stamoulis:It's about your customers. So I think that and for the love of everything, don't start homepages with these huge graphics or these videos automatically start. I know you all like them, but they're just nuts, not good usability. John's laughing. But it's true.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, it's I've just seen these home pages, so many variations over the years. And it's nice to see that in our industry, people are starting to recognize again how important the home page is. Yeah. What do you guys think on that?
katherine Tsoukalas:This aligns with what we say. A few things that we say. The first is to not just because AI is here doesn't mean we get to ignore the rest of the things that have been working all along.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Right.
katherine Tsoukalas:Add AI to what already works. So revisiting, quote, unquote, revisiting your home page. What happened to your home page? Some of the stuff that's recommended in this article, it's not anything we haven't heard before. Right.
katherine Tsoukalas:And some of it, we may have known that we needed to do this all along. But time passes, and we get a little bit lax with stuff. And I think if anything, AI is this error is forcing us to revisit what works too because we don't wanna be ignoring our SEO results, which are still there. We don't wanna ignore our content programs. Everything has a place, and I love that they wrote this the way that they wrote it because it shows us that we really need to remember to stick to the fundamentals and bolster the fundamentals
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely.
katherine Tsoukalas:As we go along.
Nick Stamoulis:John, what's your take?
John:Yeah. I mean, your homepage is like your cover letter or or or your resume. Right? You're showing people who you are right away. Right?
John:And sure, you you might have a video there that has all that information. But if it's huge and in the way, people aren't people go to your website and they're gonna scan. They're not sitting there and watching the video. Right? Might, you know, if it's playing audio, it might scare them off.
John:If it's if it's slow, they might not stick around for the whole thing. So having Mhmm. Text and the video can be maybe towards the bottom, but having text that people can easily scan and, you know, AI can also scan is probably a way better way to do it.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. And if anything, I think if there should be official rest in peace of the homepage sliders, personally. Yeah. I absolutely detest sliders.
Nick Stamoulis:And, Catherine, you know this. It's I just I just no one wants to sit through a slider, and no one's gonna click through the eight sliders to get to the event that you're exhibiting in two weeks. No one's doing that. You know? Let's let's let's simple let's let's simplify it.
Nick Stamoulis:Go back to basics. Create home pages that are effective for users, effective for your customers, effective for conversion, and will help your SEO and AI SEO all at the same time. So Mhmm. Sit on that. Interesting article.
Nick Stamoulis:So this was interesting one that I found. It's from The Drum. And it's Charlie Stoney takes us inside the UN of marketing and its plan to reshape industries. Very fascinating fascinating read, you know, that basically, you know, it talks about that and and, you know, and and it uses the term agencies. So we're a digital marketing agency.
Nick Stamoulis:We're a small digital marketing agency in Boston. And that that focuses on traditional digital marketing and AI marketing, geo, AI, SEO. But it also this also refers to creative ad agencies, advertising agencies, creative digital agencies, video agencies. And so, essentially, what's happened is there's an organization that is of VoxComm that essentially is they're creating almost like a an organization that's gonna help all agencies, all flavors, all types of agencies coexist with AI. And, you know, it actually talks about that like, one of the one of the one of the questions it poses is how do you speak to how do you speak for an industry in crisis?
Nick Stamoulis:It's true. I mean, the you know, and then it asks, can agencies and AI coexist? I mean, it's it's we know here at Brick Marketing that they absolutely can. But again, we're not a, you know, a design agency. So it's it's you know, we're not a video production agency.
Nick Stamoulis:So it's it's a those are different mediums. And, you know, those folks are shaking their boots. No doubt. Because, you know, because, you know, a lot of those functions will be replaced by AI, unfortunately. And so it's kinda like we're fortunate that we can adapt and we have adapt and we are adapting and we're embracing it fully.
Nick Stamoulis:Both feet. Like, we we we truly love AI. We're not just saying that. So but I I just thought this was a fascinating article because, you know, I try to also put my shoes in, you know, that we have colleagues that have other types of agencies that are really struggling right now in this AI world. And so I think it's it's nice to have some sort of organization or higher body of folks, industry experts that will help really try to help each other through this period of time.
Nick Stamoulis:Catherine, John, what do you guys think on this?
katherine Tsoukalas:I think you said it pretty well. It's it's nice to have an overseeing agency to help us navigate the changes in the industry. Overs oversight can go either way, though, in my mind. It's a good thing. It can also be a little bit too much.
katherine Tsoukalas:I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see what happens just like anything
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I agree. Sarah. I agree. John, anything to add?
John:I don't really have anything to add on this one. Yeah. Okay.
Nick Stamoulis:Okey dokey. We'll move on. Next one from Search Engine Journal. Why your search data doesn't agree and what to do about it. So this was interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:Basically so what this article essentially is is talking about is something that we've been dealing with and we see daily is the lack of consistency of data from Google Analytics from Google Analytics four, the current version of GA, Google Search Console, Google Ads, maybe throw in a CRM system in there, and and maybe some of these third party, you know, maybe some of these third party AI tools. None of the data really coordinates well at all. And we'll go I'll go on record. I'll talk for myself. I know, Catherine, you probably agree.
Nick Stamoulis:I I really am not a huge fan of Google Analytics. We use it. We have to use it. It's the industry it's the industry standard. We're Google Analytics certified as a company.
Nick Stamoulis:But I feel a lot of the data I mean, it's it's I mean, I know I'm not alone and I know this isn't a new topic. I know this has been a few year old topic of marketers complaining about Google Analytics four. But what it did was it's destabilized data. Okay? So it's not a matter of like, okay.
Nick Stamoulis:It used to be very easy to use, easy to get information and actionable and from key points needed to make decisions from a marketing perspective, but it's destabilized things. Because GA four is different methodology than Google Analytics than Google Ads reporting if you're running PPC. It's different methodology in different data for Google Search Console on the SEO side of things. And if you're using any CRM system, right, if you're using Salesforce or HubSpot or any of them, it's the data it's not apples to apples at all anymore. Methodology is changing.
Nick Stamoulis:AI is changing AI search. I mean, we've talked about how, you know, you're not seeing the direct conversion immediately come in. And plus, there's no there's not, you know, like ChatGPT doesn't have a Google search console or analytics tool yet for brands and for companies. Google Gemini, you would think that they would have it. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:For Google Gemini anyway, they don't. Right? Microsoft does. For Microsoft Copilot, it integrated into the Bing webmaster tools, but it's very rudimentary. But it's better than nothing.
Nick Stamoulis:My point is the data's changed. It's, like, in disarray, basically. And so we're fine because as marketers, we, you know, we've know how to use we use all of these tools in tandem. None of them really connect, but it connects enough for us to make the the right marketing decisions to to be informed in what we're doing and what recommendations we're making. But for someone that doesn't understand, there isn't maybe a marketer and isn't as advanced as we are, honestly, good luck.
Nick Stamoulis:It's challenge it's a challenging world to navigate. Catherine, I wanna get your thought on this. And, John, you too.
katherine Tsoukalas:Really Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:What you guys think on this.
katherine Tsoukalas:I agree about GA four being more difficult than the previous system. It can sort of give you the same information, but there's caveats. Every now and then, I'll catch myself saying, oh, I used to be able to access that data. And, oh, I'm thinking of the old days in the other system. Okay.
katherine Tsoukalas:Right. I think part of things too, as marketers, we need the data to be able to look and see what's going on, but we always needed to take the data with a grain of salt anyway. But back then, we had data sets that we could rely on. I think part of the issue too is that we don't have reliable AI data, and AI is intervening on our profession and what we're doing and what we're trying to do to get businesses the word for businesses that we work with out there. And if we don't have the AI data, then we don't have the complete dataset as it is.
katherine Tsoukalas:So that, I guess, is why your search data doesn't agree. Right? It doesn't tell the whole story because it doesn't have the whole story, and we don't have the whole story. So we just kinda have to fill in the blanks.
Nick Stamoulis:And we do. I mean, we literally do. I mean, how many Yes. We do report reporting for clients. We'll use maybe five tools.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. And then we connect the dots. Like, we're not just using the Google Analytics anymore. Right. You know?
Nick Stamoulis:So, John, what do you
katherine Tsoukalas:think We can't anymore. Yeah. We can't use everything. I don't
John:know much about how it used to be, but I can tell you now that things are incredibly inconsistent. Not even only in, you know, Google search console. Even things as simple as, like, for me, I I do YouTube, like, I've said a million times. You even things like a view count will be different from one analytic tab to another. Right?
John:Like on the content screen, it might say it has x amount of views. The analytic tab, it'll say has a different number. And then if you go on YouTube itself and click on the video, it'll have a completely different number as well. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:There you go. That's Google. That's Google for you. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:That's Google for you. It is. It really is.
John:It's a whole yeah. Google issue. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:It really is. I mean, you would think what Google needs to do is my I'm just gonna throw it out there. They need to offer a paid tool. Charge us 250 per a month per brand. Heck, charge us a lot more.
Nick Stamoulis:Charge us $500 a brand. And take everything related to SEO, everything related to AI SEO, everything related to YouTube and video, everything related to your email marketing, your PPC, your Google Ads, and have one platform, one area to log in, and all data completely in apples to apples across the board and have it be the same everywhere. And just charge people money for that because I mean, I would honestly, I know our clients would gladly do it. I would gladly do it. You know what I mean?
Nick Stamoulis:And so that's I'll just throw that out there. No no one no one's listening to Google. But I figured I'd throw that out there.
katherine Tsoukalas:Well, maybe we want them to listen so that we can have our voices represented.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. It's okay. We're a small podcast. It's okay. Alright.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Interesting article from Martech. Have you had Martech articles? Is this for for this this I know. Understand.
Nick Stamoulis:Just a few. Yeah. It's good. Get some good really good content. AI rewards brand meaning and punishes everything else.
Nick Stamoulis:So I thought this was interesting. And it actually goes through and talks about, you know and it gives actually gives public information of, you know, different companies, different, you know, trusted brands, and it kinda breaks it down. And so and then it talks about the consistency variable no one budgets for. So this is it's so funny that even, like, large brands talk about consistency. And we talk about consistency as one of our core values of strategic marketing and the way we approach it is you obviously, you need, you know, you need to audit.
Nick Stamoulis:You have your strategy. You have your implementation, but you have your the consistency aspects. Regardless of what you're doing, whether it's social media or PPC or creating a podcast like this or video content, consistency wins the game. And consistency in how you and how you talk about and discuss a brand is huge. And this is literally saying everything that we talk about.
Nick Stamoulis:And when we when we do AI SEO for a client or company or brands, we try to get every source being consistent. Every press release, white paper, blog post, profile, ad, you know, sponsorship, whatever it is, wherever it is, it needs to be consistent in every way. And that's where where it says it rewards it. And it's actually this article talks about larger brands and how some of them just aren't consistent. And those are large brands with enormously large marketing teams and branding teams and branding agencies, and you still can't get things consistent.
Nick Stamoulis:And I I and I don't I think consistency goes more than just how visually the brand looks. It's the messaging and the words behind the brand that has to be consistent in the world of AI. And we we see that firsthand. But I just thought this was a great article because, again, it it it it really supports our methodology and it ties in larger brands. So
katherine Tsoukalas:Mhmm. Yes. I so if your brand is consistent and that is beyond, like, your logo and your brand colors, it has to do with your tagline and everything. If it's consistent, then you'll be rewarded with that consistency when AI mentions you. If it's all over the place, and, honestly, it sounds to me like the larger the brand, the more likely it is for something to go amiss with the way somebody mentions you.
katherine Tsoukalas:We know that any little thing can cause an AI engine to hallucinate or drift as I call
Nick Stamoulis:it. Right.
katherine Tsoukalas:Where why why did that drift like that? And then you realize maybe ten years ago, we were this is how we were talking about our brand, And we're not talking about brand that way anymore. So we just gotta watch. We just have to clean it up and and watch for it. And it's interesting to read this article for its use cases with the larger brands.
katherine Tsoukalas:It's interesting Right. Take.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Yeah. John, what do you think on this?
John:Yeah. I think that people should try and keep track of every single place that they're promoting their brand. Whether you have, like, you know, a word document or or a notepad, just keep track of where you have your stuff written down so that in ten years, you can go back and and reflect on those things. Go check and see if, you know, everything still is brand relevant or not and make edits if you need to or delete things or or just so that, you know, AI doesn't create, you know, there's no more hallucinating within what your brand is. Mhmm.
John:Totally.
Nick Stamoulis:Agreed. Couldn't have said it better myself. Alright. So on that note, we're gonna end it for today. I would like to thank everyone for who tuned in.
Nick Stamoulis:Definitely catch the Brick Marketing Live Podcast on any and all of the major podcast platforms. Check out the Brick Marketing website for the latest free webinars that we offer. Tons of useful information about everything related to digital marketing, SEO, AI SEO, content marketing, social media, tons of good stuff. So we will be back live next Monday, April 27, and we will be with you live at 04:30PM eastern. And until then, we'd like to thank everyone again.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep. Have a good one.
Listen to Brick Marketing Live Podcast: AI, SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media, PPC & More! using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.
