Episode 5
· 01:08:13
Hello, everyone, and good afternoon. I am Nick Stamoulis, and welcome to the latest edition of the Brick Marketing Live Podcast. Today's Tuesday, 05/12/2026, and we have lots of great things to talk about today in the world of AI, SEO, content marketing, digital marketing. So we're gonna dive right in. So the first article that we're gonna look at today is the title is eight GEO metrics to track in 2026.
Nick Stamoulis:It's a great article from search engine land. And so, you know, rather than getting into each specific core generative engine optimization metrics that they believe are important to track in 2026, there's really two that stood out to me. It was actually the first one, which is AI citation frequency. So how often your brand content and website are cited in the AI generated answers at all of the LLMs or AI platforms. So that was one thing that I think is very important.
Nick Stamoulis:And then the other one actually was the number eighth one on the list, which was conversion influence after AI interaction. So I think my opinion, and I'd love to hear what the team has here to say, Catherine and John. But I would love you know, is conversion influence after AI interaction? I believe that that's actually probably the number the first one. And to me, that is literally conversion.
Nick Stamoulis:So how is AI influencing the buyer and what actions are they taking after they find out about a brand, a company, or product or service in AI? So I don't know. What do you guys think? Catherine, John, what do you think?
Katherine:Yeah. Anecdotally, from our own experiences and speaking with clients, it appears as if we have our impressions on how AI is affecting, decision making, but we don't know yet. So it'll be nice to finally see some data. I've big picture, I feel like this article is pushing us in the right direction because as it stands right now, there is very little that we that can actually track for data just because the tracking is not there. Like, the individual platforms aside from Copilot, which is part of Bing, are not giving us any information to look at.
Katherine:So if this articles like this start coming out and telling us what to track, then hopefully and perhaps at least the AI platforms will start giving us this information, or we'll have some third party stuff that will give us this information.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. No. I think this is great. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. We're still in the early days when it comes to, like, what to look for in in tools. Like, there are barely any tools out there for you to really track what's going on. So having an idea of what you should be looking at yourself even if you don't have all the data, just like like there for you to start thinking about. And then when we start to get tools, you'll be ahead of the curve, like, knowing what you should be, like, really focusing focusing in on.
John:So I think that's why like this article is great for that reason.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Awesome. Agreed. Next is an article from The Drum that is entitled by Mark Ritzan, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, marketers can no longer afford to laugh at Reddit. So I think this is fascinating because Reddit went from kind of this, you know, message board obscure platform to a, oh, well, it's helping an AI search and AI SEO and answers engine optimization and generative engine optimization.
Nick Stamoulis:So now it's, you know, we actually heard from a client earlier this week that says, you know, and their audience was definitely not the Reddit audience. And they're like, oh, well we think we wanna get a presence in Reddit. I'm like, really? So I think I think it's actually very true that I think that Reddit is absolutely a great place. But I also believe at the same sense, not for every brand.
Nick Stamoulis:I think, you know, there's some types of companies that are gonna get a lot more out of having a presence on Reddit. Like someone like us, we have a presence we're establishing on Reddit. We'll get a lot out of it. But I think a lot of other maybe b to c or non technical or just different, you know. Can you imagine a a wedding related business on Reddit?
Nick Stamoulis:I can't. Right? So like that that's my point. But again, I think it's a major player now. So, Catherine, John, what do you guys think on that?
Katherine:I think it's fascinating that AI has caused a rebrand for edit Reddit because Yep. We I used to just think of it as an entertainment thing. Oh, it was a place for me to get spoilers for a show that I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch. Yeah. It's random stuff like that.
Katherine:I never even would think of it as a viable place for a business, and and we never recommended it to clients as such. But slowly because of AI, because it became clear very quickly that AI was using it for some of its source material, you're like, and it caused the reputation of Reddit to elevate. So I feel like this article is spot on because I've still talked with people. Reddit? Why would you all people do is argue there.
Katherine:Like, I don't wanna promote my business there, but that's not true anymore. That's not I mean, it's still kind of true, but that's not all it is anymore, and it's rebranded naturally. Usually, when you hear of a rebrand, it's the company choosing intentionally, but this was the opposite. The circumstances caused it to elevate, and it's very fascinating. But like Nick said, you take it with a grain of salt, your audience still might not be there.
Katherine:You only wanna spend time with our limited time and resources for your marketing in places where your audience actually is.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. John, what do you what do you think, John? Because I know you you manage our Reddit, the Brick Marketing Reddit.
John:Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:So what do you think? What do you think?
John:I think there are two very, very different sides to the platform. There is, like, the the still, like, person to person aspect, which is probably still 80% of it. And then there's the 20% that is businesses and people marketing to each other. And I think they don't really touch that much. So in that sense, I think that the whole, like, marketing side of Reddit is in its own little bubble where people who are outside of it aren't going to touch it.
John:And that's, like, not that valuable, but where the value of Reddit comes is how it gets cited in AI. So, like, that's kind of the only reason your business should kind of be on Reddit right now, unless it's something that, like, people will, like, really resonate with, like, or, you know, or maybe somewhere they could put, like, customer service types of posts and stuff like that. That's the only other type of, like, businesses that might benefit from Reddit outside of, like, the whole AI thing. I I think that yeah. There's just it's we'll see if it continues to be that way or if, like, the rebrand will sort of, like, reverse after, like, AILLM start to, like, move away from Reddit because it kind of is a little bit of, like, a a risk.
John:Right? Because anyone can post anything and then it has high authority. So we'll we'll see we'll see how that changes over time.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. That's actually a really good point. I'm seeing that a lot on LinkedIn where there's, you know, there's other marketers that are quote unquote marketing themselves as Reddit experts that are essentially, like you said, you know, just posting new pieces of content and then it's getting cited in, you know, by the AI platforms fast as an authoritative source. And so I think my personal opinion, I think we got about maybe two years left of the Reddit train. That's my opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. And then I think the LLMs as learning AI platforms that they are, artificial intelligence is gonna learn to say, okay, been there, done that. Now let's go to legitimate news sources, real authoritative sites, know. The the reason We'll see. Yeah.
John:The reason why Reddit is used so much is because it's just free, open source. Yep. They can easily just take from that. And that's the reason why it gets cited so much. The only option for LLMs right now.
John:So but I think that's going to Yep.
Nick Stamoulis:Agreed. I want to take a moment and just let everyone know that we're we're broadcasting this live on the Brick Marketing website at brickmarketing.com slash live on the Brick Marketing official LinkedIn page and on the Brick Marketing official Facebook page. If you are not joining us live, we are also going to by later today, this podcast is gonna be available on all of the major podcast platforms. So grab your favorite podcast music app and search for Brick Marketing or Brick Marketing Live, and you will find this podcast. So moving on.
Nick Stamoulis:Next is an article from our blog, from the Brick Marketing blog, which is entitled Break Free From Analysis, Paralysis and Digital Marketing. And so this is something, the concept of analysis paralysis, we've seen this for decades, literally for years, regardless of the type of industry and type of client. And really what this means is you report so much, you look at so much data, which is important to do, but you miss the underlying goals of what does the data really need to accomplish. I mean, I've literally been on have, know, been in, you know, kind of these these strategic meetings with teams and organizations that they literally get in the weeds so much so that then we spend the next hour, two hours on up getting all these minuscule pieces of data, which then at the end of the day, like, really, was that really necessary? Because it's not helping us make any decisions better than it was if we didn't have it.
Nick Stamoulis:So the point is, report the things that are important to your business, important to the underlying digital marketing, marketing and sales strategy for your organization, and stick with it consistently. And don't be distracted by, I would say, the weeds type of, you know, miniscule subsets of data that maybe aren't as important, stick to things that are important to help you make your decisions in a timely fashion that you're not just paralyzed. You have so much data information overload, you can't move forward. So I don't know. Catherine, I know you and I have encountered this for years.
Nick Stamoulis:Years.
Katherine:Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:So what are what are your thoughts on that? And then, John, I wanna get your thoughts as well. But what do you think, Catherine?
Katherine:This article was written partially in response to the fact that we have seen over and over again some clients actually getting a bit stuck. They would see a piece of data that doesn't make sense, really wanna pick it apart, ask why. Okay. To some extent, that's great. But was that really worth the hour discussion that we just had that actually had no conclusion?
Katherine:Because, look, at the end of the day, the data might not be accurate in the first place. And then you think, what could I have been doing with that hour that would have been better than overtalking?
Nick Stamoulis:Writing an
Katherine:article that you could have put up on your blog, writing a batch of social media posts, for the next week. What could you have done with that time? You need to always make sure that no matter what you're analyzing that you do it and then you move on. And it's really big picture stuff that we're talking is the the best way to look at data. If it's taking all day to analyze it, we could have spent our time doing other things.
Katherine:You need to do is look at what you look at, take in the insights that you take in, and then go on with your life because Yeah. You have other things to do, honestly. No need to get stuck. Agreed.
Nick Stamoulis:Agreed. Yeah. John, what do you think?
John:And one of the worst things is when people get, like, stuck on, like, vanity metrics and stuff like that when it comes to analytics. We're like, oh my gosh, look at all these impressions. Well Right. What do those impressions get you? And then you look further, and it's like, okay, 1,000,000 impressions.
John:Only point 8% of people clicked on your ad there, and what did that get for you? Right? And it's it's the same thing with like like on YouTube. Like YouTube subscribers, it's like, okay, you have a million subscribers, but what what is the worth of each individual person? Are they good subscribers or did you somehow trick them into following you?
John:Right? So you really need to look at the more important things. I think this article has which data you really need, and that's a very, very valuable thing to look at.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Great point. Alright.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Next is an article from Marketing Week. There are no quick wins. Airwallex on benefiting from the compound effect of branding. So I thought this was a great article.
Nick Stamoulis:And to me, what resonated with me, especially in the b to b world, that the compounding effect of branding and the compounding effect that you could absolutely tie to digital marketing. And so that's something that that a lot of folks sometimes really miss the mark on. They view channels of digital marketing, let's just say, you know, whether it's your search engine optimization or your AI search or general engine optimization or answer engine optimization, your content marketing, your email marketing, your social media, your pay per click advertising, regardless of the channel of of digital marketing, you view it in a silo. But especially now with the advent of AI and how things are are moving forward, mean we've always integrated every channel of digital marketing together. And so that's the approach that works.
Nick Stamoulis:So you get that compounding effect. Right? If you if you just focus on one channel and you say, okay, we published this awesome article on this website and that's it. And you just, that's it. And you say, okay.
Nick Stamoulis:Well, we did a press release. Right? And then that's it. No. It's you wanna consistently do a press release with newsworthy topics.
Nick Stamoulis:You wanna consistently over time. Social media, the consistency of social media have a compounding effect with your marketing. So I I think that I thought this was a great article to see on marketing week. And so, yeah, Catherine, John, what do you guys think on this?
Katherine:Yeah. I actually was not able to read this one. So
Nick Stamoulis:Okay. Because they because of paywall. Well, thanks. Thanks. Thanks.
Nick Stamoulis:Thanks for sharing on that. Okay. Well, I mean I mean, honestly, but the the compounding effect sooner. Right? If we just stick to that, the compounding effect of marketing, which is what we focus on.
Katherine:Oh, yeah. I mean, that's true. We've seen that over and over again that it works. Like, that's why we tell clients to start with the foundation.
Nick Stamoulis:Yes.
Katherine:And Yeah. Build on that because we know that if you have your foundation nailed and it becomes a habit, then you can add activities and add activities. And then we I was talking about this in relationship to social media earlier. It may not seem like two social media posts a week is a lot, but times that by 10, now you have 20 social media posts, ten weeks.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine:And that really starts to mean something because when somebody clicks on your profile or they see you, they'll see all this marketing activity. And you don't have to feel like you have to do everything at once because your consistent efforts are what will compound.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. And, you know, we have have wear them down marketing. Right? This is literally that. It's Yep.
John:Yeah. It's it's all about long term, just like Catherine said, couple posts a week, you're going to keep showing up to those people who are, like, within your funnel. Right? And it's not about doing it once because what does one time do? Nothing, really.
John:Right?
Katherine:Right.
John:It's just having those, you know, systems in place where you're, you know, posting frequently, you're, you know, writing blog posts, you're, you know, you're doing all those things within digital marketing to get yourself out there, you know, long term.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. And in case for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, wear down marketing, go to Amazon and download the wear them down marketing, it's called, book that we published earlier this year. And and that is one of the very concepts is, like you said, John, consistency and the compounding effect. So Mhmm. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:It's a good call on that. Alright. Moving on. So here's an article, interesting, from CNBC. AI is disrupting the advertising business in a big way.
Nick Stamoulis:Industry leaders explain how. And so what the takeaway that I got from this is that it is, as they put it, a huge transformation. And and specifically, it quotes a report from Forrester released last June that showed more than 60% of US ad agencies are already making use of generative generative AI with 31% of those individuals saying they're exploring use cases for the technology. And so what's interesting about this, that's last June. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:That's almost a year ago. And you know, the CNBC article is is oh, it is a year old. But here's the thing. What does that look like now? Right?
Nick Stamoulis:So to me, I thought this was interesting is we know AI is disrupting everything. And you know, in our world, AI is absolutely fantastic for ad writing. Create, you know, the creative aspects of developing an ad program. You know, you still absolutely need the human approach to make sure the brand is consistent throughout. But there's no doubt.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, this is AI is absolutely a disruptor in the ad world and especially in the digital ad space. So Mhmm. In my mind, I think it's just a matter of time before it even gets better. But I don't know. Catherine, John, what do you guys think on this quickly?
Katherine:Yeah. I mean, it's still a disruptor. Right? It
Nick Stamoulis:it really is.
Katherine:This this headline is just as relevant now as it was a year ago.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine:Right? We don't know where things are headed yet. We still don't have too many answers from a year ago. And there's also a flip side, though. And the flip side is we have to be careful what we're blaming AI on.
Katherine:Is it AI's fault that the disruption is happening, or are people changing? Is it both? Like, we don't know what the reason is, so it makes me feel just a tinge uncomfortable blaming everything on AI. However, it really is a disruptor because it's causing our behaviors to change. So the same is true for advertising just like it is anything else.
Nick Stamoulis:Right. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. Like, this is a year ago, and it's already asking these, you know, asking these questions or or talking about how AI is disrupting. A year later, we know that AI is being used more and more. Right? So I guess it it was like a good, a a good, like, baseline, like, predictive sort of thing to be like, hey.
John:Write like, the writing on the was on the wall a year ago. Right? And now we're sort of seeing for sure, like, how, like, the timeline has, like, shifted to where like, now AI is being used a lot to the point where some people will call it out online. Like, people will like, hey. This was AI generated or I can something's a little bit off about this.
John:Right? So we've gone from just being like AI is going to be used in the advertising business to AI is being used in the advertising business, you know? Right.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting.
Nick Stamoulis:Moving on. Next is an article from Search Engine Journal. This is a great one. Seven common AI website mistakes that are easy to avoid. So what I found interesting about this, and I'm gonna read what the mistakes are, what I found interesting is that people are actually using AI to build their entire websites.
Nick Stamoulis:We know that's coming. We know I've actually I a few colleagues of mine that I'm connected to on LinkedIn actually did that for their businesses. They completely used AI to build all aspects of their site. So part of me is like, okay. It's good, but so to read to read the mistakes in the article.
Nick Stamoulis:Positive and negatives. Well, number one is generic design trends. Yeah. So like, you know, and it's talking about prompting, give me something modern. To me, that's a huge negative is if it's just like using AI to write content, quite frankly, without giving the big picture and really training the LLM to understand the full goals.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So like to me, if the same thing is applicable for web design. Right? So like, do you want your site to look like every other site out there or every other site in your industry? So generic, you know, generic design, that's one.
Nick Stamoulis:Unexpected user interaction feedback, I think that that's that's another that's another thing is honestly usability. AI can't see what your users are doing or know truly your audience and how they're going to react. It right now, it's not as intelligent to know that yet. Broken or confusing UX patterns. I agree with that.
Nick Stamoulis:How many times I've had discussions with with Chad or Gemini and I've pushed back on something and then it literally folds as, oh yeah, you're right. So like that's another thing. Another point the article says is weak messaging and product explanation. Again, the content piece. Poor information hierarchy and structure.
Nick Stamoulis:Lack of evidence based judgment and overreliance on AI. That's huge because lack of experience based judgment. Right? You know, it's it's even if you with highly prompted, unless it's really learned it, your business, your industry, your audience, and even then some, it doesn't necessarily have the right it can't make the judgment calls like you might be able to. And then, you know, so those are some of the points that it kinda this article talked about.
Nick Stamoulis:So, Catherine, what do you think? John, what do what do you guys think on AI mistakes for building a site using AI in this article?
Katherine:I listened, to this piece on a podcast. I think it might have been an NPR podcast, and I forget the podcast name. But the point was these podcast hosts discovered vibe coding on Claude and just went nuts. They were creating websites. One of them created an app, and everything functioned and it worked.
Katherine:And they handed everything to a developer and said, what do you think? And the developer was like, it's okay. Because he could see inconsistencies in the code. He found some vulnerabilities in the code. He said that it's generic design.
Katherine:Over time, people are gonna start to be able to tell that it was created with AI, same as content, same as anything. So I think that brings up a good point. I I think that this aligns with the points in the article, to be honest. You you just have to be careful just like with using AI for anything. Right.
Katherine:The tricky part is if I were to turn around and use AI to develop something, I'm not a developer, so I don't know what good looks like, especially from a back end perspective. That's the tricky thing. And the same is true for other people who maybe don't have the writing experience that I have. Do they know what good looks like? They probably know good enough looks like.
Katherine:But when you're representing your brand and your business, good enough is not gonna cut it.
Nick Stamoulis:And what does it look like under the hood? See, to me, that would make me honestly, that would that might keep me up at night. Knowing that my website was built by AI, you know, because I've built pages, you know, of code on our website, on some of our other brands that we own websites using Claude, using chat and Gemini. And it does a great job because I know how to read code. I can read code.
Nick Stamoulis:So I look at it and I say, okay. This is following a natural regression. I understand what they're doing here. Right. And it saves me a lot of time.
Nick Stamoulis:But like you said, if you don't know what you're looking at and you say, oh, this is great. Could be really messed up underneath. And to me in my mind also could be, you know, what if, you know, now we wanna talk about web security. What if five years from now you have hackers that go after all these sites that were built using these tools, using the AI platforms. Now that's a security issue if you think about it.
Nick Stamoulis:So John, what do think on this? And then we'll move on. John, do
John:I was basically going to bring up like exactly all of those points, like like one to one where it's like there are issues with security. They all look similar. They all yeah. It's it's all very clear. I think maybe it could be, you know, a fun thing to play with if you have an idea for an app and, you know, maybe as a proof of concept to send to somebody who knows what they're doing.
John:Right.
Nick Stamoulis:Exactly.
John:If you're publishing a website that was completely made by, say, Claude, I think that in the future there will be there's going to be something about them that is vulnerable and then all of them will have that same issue because it's all, you know, it's all coming from the same source. So I I think you should really, really hire someone who really knows how to code if you're Mhmm. If you're making a website for your business or if you're making an app. It's just that that's like an essential.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. 100%. Moving on. Next article. So here's an article that we wrote on search engine land.
Nick Stamoulis:AI SEO punishes lazy marketing strategies. So we we published this at the the good folks at search engine land. And I'll tell you the thought here is for years, everyone, myself included, quite frankly, and everyone that I know has pretty much relied on growth of lead gen and growing their businesses using search engine optimization, using pay per click advertising, maybe content marketing thrown in the mix, you know, to help your SEO, you know, social media maybe to a lesser degree, but social media as well. And that's really it. But AI search or AI SEO or generative engine optimization or answer engine optimization now require brands and companies to to market themselves properly.
Nick Stamoulis:In every channel, you need to in order to come up in those, you know, prompt search results on ChatGPT, on Gemini, on Copilot, on Claude, on Perplexity, right, in the AI overviews in Google. In order to come up in those places, you need to market yourself heavily. That means all the traditional stuff but and then some. Right? And that includes stacking citations of getting, you know, your brand, your product, your service, whatever industry you're in highly visible in the relevant places to your audience in coordinated fashion.
Nick Stamoulis:Real marketing. And so, you know, AI search and we're seeing this. I know, I'm hearing this from a lot of companies. Oh, geez. Well, we're just not visible.
Nick Stamoulis:Why is our competitor here? Well, let's look at it. Let's deconstruct deconstruct what your competition is doing. Your competition is marketing the heck out of their company in all these ways and your business isn't. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:All you're doing is maybe you have a PPC campaign running or an SEO campaign running, but that's it. So in my mind, and it's mean to say lazy, but we were all grouped in that because we all got complacent because it worked for decades. Now we're in a place where we have to rethink everything and really market heavily in a coordinated fashion in order to do well in AI search. So, Catherine and John, what do you think on this?
Katherine:Yeah. AI is exposing marketing vulnerabilities. Plain and simple. For years, as marketers, we have fallen into routines. Businesses have gotten to know what works.
Katherine:They lean on that. What works may have been 20% of all that is possible for a marketing strategy, and they just kept doing the same things over and over again without thinking, okay. Let's change things up. AI is forcing a shakeup of that. We never should have treated marketing this way.
Katherine:We always should have taken a comprehensive strategic approach, the collective we. I'm not sure who's doing it and who's not. But now AI is forcing us to remember what comprehensive marketing looks like because that sort of comprehensive, strategy is what gets rewarded if you think about it and the AI answers. Because the whole idea of citations and everything, that's basically if you think about it, that's your marketing. That should have been your marketing all all along.
Katherine:Yes. Press releases, for example, offer AI some additional data when they're searching for answers for things that people are asking. And so a lot of people are starting to do them again. Starting to do them again. We should have been doing them all along.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah. You're totally I mean, we stopped doing them years ago when there was no more SEO value and they weren't actually real pickups in press. But now, guess what? We're doing them again. You know, because we're seeing pickups in press actually and it's helping on the, you know, on the AI SEO side of things.
Nick Stamoulis:John, what do you think on this? Get your Yeah.
John:Thought on this. You know, AI switched everything up. Right? Now it's really more focused on the content rather than, you know, like you said, having those PPC campaigns, doing just base SEO, that's not enough anymore. And it's it's good that it's forcing your brand to do articles and press releases and actually getting out there and all that sort of stuff because it's just good in general.
John:It's it's forcing you to have like, I guess, better like marketing hygiene. Right? Like it's just you were supposed to be doing all of these things in the past, but it was easy to just like not because, you know, SEO was so strong. Right. But now it's a little bit less strong and there is more value in doing the other stuff.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Absolutely. Moving on. So this is a gated article. So those of you, I recommend you sign up.
Nick Stamoulis:But high level, marketers need to prepare themselves for the end of the click. If your growth model still depends on paying for search, you'll soon be out of luck. A strong brand is needed to navigate industry changes. So this literally ties into what we were just talking about, which is an article for marketing week, the way, opinion post. But this literally is talking about it.
Nick Stamoulis:It's the same lens as, you know, as people that were lazy marketing or or or just over overly dependent on traditional channels of digital marketing and and SEO and PPC only. This one talks about pay per click advertising and paid search. And if you're only depending on that, it's time to not just depend on that. And so those of you that are listening, you know, if you're in charge of your marketing, if you're in charge of you know, if you're a business owner or c suite, and this is this should you know, the alarm bell should be ringing. Seriously.
Nick Stamoulis:And you should be looking at your budgets for and if not this year, you missed the boat. But for next year, you should be absolutely not just putting AI search or generative engine optimization or answer engine optimization as a line item down. You should say, okay, to your marketing team, right, or your agency, whomever you're working with, we need to diversify what we're doing in marketing, how we're marketing our brand, how we're generating leads, and we need to do it fast. Because, you know, what's gonna happen is as SEO continues to get, you know, diminished over time, the transfer's happening to AI search, the companies that are really pushing hard and marketing properly are gonna be rewarded long term. We'll have a really good foundation.
Nick Stamoulis:And then guess what? You'll be stuck, you know, behind, literally behind. So Catherine, John, you guys want to chime in on this one?
Katherine:Yes. Let's think about what the phrase paying for search really means. That implies that there has to be search that is looking the way that we think it's gonna look.
Nick Stamoulis:Yep.
Katherine:We don't know what search is going to look like because of AI's intervention a year's a year from now or two years from now.
Nick Stamoulis:Exactly.
Katherine:It could look similar, but it might not. So relying on that, what happens if AI search, sorry, if paying for search, if the search model that we know is gone a year from now, and it might be, frankly.
Nick Stamoulis:I personally think it's gonna be gone. I don't know when. Yeah. And no one no one has a crystal ball to no one has a crystal ball to predict. Yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:But if I had to just an educated, been doing this for almost three decade guests, I would say it's coming down very soon. You know? Just take a look at take a look at chat and how, you know, their ad program, which, you know, for you know, those of you that have advertised on chat, please comment in social media. Let us know how it's going. I would love to hear because I'm waiting.
Nick Stamoulis:You know? And if any no one's listening. I guarantee you no one from chat is listening to our podcast. But if you happen to be, please allow Brick Marketing to advertise because I am dying to test it. That's so funny.
Nick Stamoulis:Yes. But I'll tell you, but like that, that's not keyword based. Right? No. So that's just it.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So it's it's Gemini one day is just gonna be thematic Yep. Type advertising, really.
Katherine:It will. And so then what would then there would be nothing to pay for. So what's happening now, what we're seeing is people have said, oh, no. Organic is going down, and now we need to figure out a way to get traffic. And one of the answers that people have been reaching for is to pay for search.
Katherine:But you're gonna be in a jam again
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine:Because paying for search implies that search has to exist the way that we understand it in order for to be able to pay to be represented on it. And it might not be the case. We have to be agile, and the best way to be agile is to have not all of our eggs in one basket to begin with.
Nick Stamoulis:And if everyone is thinking that way or if a lot of brands and businesses are thinking that way, like, oh boy, SEO is diminished down. Let's invest more in pay per click. Guess what? Come right? Like there's only what?
Nick Stamoulis:Two or three positions that everyone fights for in that tops in that top section of search results currently in Google. Everyone's fighting for it. Right? So, like, if you all of a sudden, have a flood of more advertisers coming in, click costs are gonna be higher, ROI is gonna drop. Then what?
Nick Stamoulis:You need to diversify your marketing. Market a lot of other ways. Get creative. Be places that your competition are not there. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:You want be where your competition is, but you want to be where your competition is not. That's how good marketing works, quite frankly. So John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. I think that the way that people search is just going to change pretty rapidly. I I feel like, you know, they're they're already like testing it like we talked about last week on YouTube where there's that new function where you can basically essentially talk to, like, an LLM that'll suggest you videos instead of going through your recommended or using the normal search function. I I feel like at some point, like, Google might be one of the first to just, like, flip the switch and you're gonna go to google.com and it's just going to be like a like a Gemini
Nick Stamoulis:I agree.
John:Area. Right? So it's like, who know? Like, I don't I don't think they're ready for it, but it's gonna happen eventually.
Nick Stamoulis:That's just And the way that
John:gonna be.
Nick Stamoulis:You know what I'm looking forward to, John, honestly? Because you and I and Cath, like the three of us and other members of our team, we've been saying this stuff since until we're blue in the face. So many places, in person, on webinars, on this podcast. And I'll tell you, I it's gonna happen. And I'd love to go back and say, see, to all the people.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? I mean, we called it just because you can just see it right in front of you. That's why you have to evolve, people. Can't just stay still. You have to continue to push.
Nick Stamoulis:Next, interesting article from Ad Age, the CMO mandate. Five shifts that matter now. So let me read the five shifts. Connected systems are the fundamental the foundation of growth. AI accelerates, but your gaps set the speed limit.
Nick Stamoulis:Agility starts with clarity. ROI requires shared ownership, and marketers are now change drivers. So these are all amazing points. To me, the few that resonated with me is AI accelerates your but your gaps are the set the speed limit. So it's true.
Nick Stamoulis:So AI is helping you move things forward as a tool like we've always said. If there's still if there's gaps in your knowledge, gaps in your skill set, it's gonna show. AI is not gonna fill that gap, and no platform is gonna fill that gap. Right? So it it's a tool.
Nick Stamoulis:And then the last one, I think, that really resonated with me is marketers are now the change drivers. And so which is interesting. And this even says here, is this is the CMO role is expanding in every direction. We're still expected to build the brand, drive demand, and now we're also expected to influence revenue, guide AI adoption, and shape operating models. Okay.
Nick Stamoulis:So what I just stated there is the reason why marketing people need to get paid more. Honestly, it's a I mean, we have a hard job. I mean, seriously. And so but this just goes to show you that as marketers, I believe that statement lends the case for why the people that specialize too much in one area of marketing are is gonna be the thing of the past. That's my opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:Because in order to do well with like, literally, we just read that, and it's true. It's you need to be generate revenue, build the brand. Right? Those are two separate functions. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:You need to help with AI adoption. That's a third function. Right? Like, you look at that, all of those things are true. And for marketers in today's world, this is why it's essential.
Nick Stamoulis:This is why we always say, you know, you need one eye on the big picture and one eye on the detail. Always. And so and, know, Catherine, we always talk about Big picture thinking. I mean, literally. This is exactly what we're talking about here.
Nick Stamoulis:So so, yeah, if you guys could chime in, what do you what do you think? Catherine, John, what do guys think on this?
Katherine:There was a time when marketing roles, the titles for these roles were very separated. Very. I remember meeting somebody that worked somewhere, and her role was director of storytelling. Right. But so that's an extreme example.
Katherine:But even, having titles such as EPC specialist or
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine:Content creation expert, we're seeing all of that fade away in favor of more generic director of marketing, marketing manager, marketing associate, roles like that because marketers have been forced to wear many hats at once. But in a way, I feel like it's a good thing because as a marketer, I've always believed that we needed to have a hand and a role in helping to generate revenue because if you look at the sales funnel, it's right it's all right there. Marketing is responsible for creating content and materials that can assist in the sales process, and that's really what we should be doing. But there was a time where there was such a thing as a marketing communications role, and they tended to do a lot of internal communication stuff in bigger companies, helping to create messaging for in house. Okay.
Katherine:All of that, do we even really need that? Because with the help of AI and people being more savvy about creating their own emails and whatnot, we we don't even really need that. I think that the trend of the marketing roles shifting is a good thing because we always should have had a hand in the revenue. That to me, that's always what marketing's been about. This is another example of AI being, like, a great way of exposing weaknesses.
Katherine:If you were not handling marketing this way to begin with, you had a weekend marketing department. Like, it has a way of exposing inconsistencies and gaps in places that you should have had addressed in your personnel
Nick Stamoulis:and you
Katherine:didn't and now you need to.
Nick Stamoulis:And it actually and it really is important because, you know, for those of you listening that have, let's just say, an agency or you have a PPC guy or you have a whatever you wanna call it. Right? I I have someone to do that for me. Social media intern. Whatever it is.
Nick Stamoulis:Make sure every member that is handling any channel of your marketing understands big picture, understands, hey. Here's what's happening on the PPC side. Here's what's happening on the social media side. Here's what we're doing on the search side, the AI side, the GEO side, the AEO side. Here's what we're doing.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Here's what we're doing to build citations. Here's what we're doing in email marketing because it's all important. You need a coach and a quarterback to really understand these channels well and pull it together. So, John, what do you think?
Nick Stamoulis:Really quick. Wanna chime in?
John:Yeah. I mean, like, that's one of, like, the the more, like, enticing things about marketing is you go in and you're doing tons of different things, especially now. Like you said, you know, in the past, there have been many, many different roles and very specialized areas of marketing. But I think now because of AI, I agree that everything is getting more generalized. And in some ways, maybe for the worse in some ways, like maybe people not being specialized means some messaging somewhere might be a little bit more inconsistent or the quality might be a little bit more inconsistent.
John:But people, you know, have the chance to do different things. And I think having a more diverse job will make people, you know, more passionate about what they're doing or, you know, feel like they're not doing the same thing over and over again and just getting, you know, bored of it.
Nick Stamoulis:Absolutely. Moving on. Next article is from The Drum. Is social media still social? The gen z strategist helping brands rethink influence.
Nick Stamoulis:I thought this was a great article. And it was great because it was written by, you know, someone younger in the Gen z generation that literally talks about, is social media still social? That question. I'll tell you. My opinion, it is not.
Nick Stamoulis:It is absolutely not. I remember managing campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, heck, even before that on Myspace. Right? I'm old. It's okay.
Nick Stamoulis:And on Twitter when it was called Twitter. Right? Where you would post something and it would literally be like the floodgates would open. People were dying to communicate, dying to really having that yearning of, oh, someone is sharing a photo or a thought that I'm interested in, that I've followed this page or in the algorithm would serve it up to them and they would see it and they would like it, they would share it, they would talk about it and clearly interact. I believe that still happens, but I don't think it happens the same way as it used to.
Nick Stamoulis:I mean, I'm seeing it. I see it firsthand. And, you know, in the b to b world, it's I think worse than the b to c world. You know, I think the only b to b platform that actually has engagement is LinkedIn. And when it does, it tends to be, you know, have an underlying negative and that's my own opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:And a lot of pat each other on the back type, you know, good old boy network, which I don't really like. But I love LinkedIn. Right? I've been using it since 2005. I'm not going to abandon an audience that we've built, you know, spent many years building.
Nick Stamoulis:The point is social is different now. And and, you know, and that's the question. You know? So are we maybe turning a page where people don't want to communicate in social media anymore? I don't know.
Nick Stamoulis:I don't know. Catherine, John, what do you guys think on that?
Katherine:Yeah. When those social media sites came out, the big ones, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter at the time, I was a full time writer with my own writing business. And as an extrovert, my days were kinda isolating. So I was using social media to literally be social. I would use the DMs to keep in touch with some of my friends.
Katherine:I mean, I had actually, the early days of my writing business, there were no smartphones, so texting was not easy. So I was using these platforms as sort of like a water cooler kind of feeling at work. You you need to get up from your desk. You need to take a little brain break. Oh, I'm gonna see what's going on in my Twitter feed and get some news, chitchat with some people, see if I can't meet other writers.
Katherine:I learned how to do some WordPress stuff back then. And when I had questions, knew that I had a lot of developers in my friend list. They would help me. I'd be like, how do you wrap a text around an image? Anyway, it was a very social thing at first.
Katherine:And over the years, especially as, for example, advertising started to come out, people started to realize that they can use social media to reach an audience, affiliate marketing, all that kind of stuff. It started to change the character of the social networks, And brands and businesses started using it, and then the the group of us that were using it for social stuff said, you know what? Never mind. I'm just gonna go out after work. I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Katherine:This is I can't sustain this, and now it's getting cluttered with businesses and advertisements. And fast forward to now to this article. Yeah. It's interesting to think about how now we need to help brands rethink how to use it more socially. That's it's a very interesting sort of full circle thing that's happening right now.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. I also think and this is my 2¢. And then, John, I wanna get your opinion because you're in the Gen z audience. I mean, you are. So you're you're a marketer, so I wanna get your opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:But I believe the beginning of the end of social media, my opinion, was during COVID. I think, personally, this is just my opinion. I think people got severely burnt from it, burnt out from it, burnt out from the negativity and the political environment. And even now, it's sustained of how dysfunctional it's it's really is awful. It's just awful.
Nick Stamoulis:There's no camaraderie of actually having intelligent discussions. You know? And so my my opinion is I think that has soured a lot of people in social media. I mean, they'll they'll go to TikTok and just doom scroll looking at random stuff that they're interested in, that's funny videos and stuff like that. But once it gets too real, they're out.
Nick Stamoulis:I think a lot of people are out. You know? So I don't know. That's my opinion. I don't know.
Nick Stamoulis:What do you think, John?
John:Yeah. I think social media, like you said, especially after COVID, like, it became way too corporate. Right? It became so lucrative that it's all ads. It's I mean, you'll go I'll go on Instagram and I'll I'll, you know, scroll reels or whatever.
John:And, like, every two reels is an ad. I know. You know, I scroll right by it, but it's annoying. Right? And the other Right.
John:Theory that I have, especially with platforms like Instagram, is you might see, like, less interaction because now your likes are public. Right? When you like something, everyone else is gonna see it. So why would I like something that, like, I only kind of was like, I like that. Right?
John:Right? It's like
Nick Stamoulis:Right. Right. Right.
John:Right. I don't want everybody to know everything that I thought was funny or I thought was useful in some way. And then, you know, I I think that because of that, like, it's returning to a lot of sharing with each other, but more in more private spaces. Like you might DM somebody a when you like it, instead of like, know, back to the like thing, that's what the retweet was for, right? You really wanted somebody else to see something, you'd retweet it.
John:Right? But now, like, just liking something is like calling out to everybody on the planet, like, I really like this post. Right? And and
Nick Stamoulis:that's my Like why declaration. Like a declaration. Yeah. Like, exactly.
John:Exactly. So I I think that's why you might also see, like, less interactions on your social platforms as well. Yep.
Katherine:I agree. Great points. There was a this reminds me a little bit of an SNL skit. You guys should check it out. Why did you say that?
Katherine:It was all about bringing people on this talk show to try to explore why they made the comments that they made, and it was funny. It's all out there. John's right. And that that that's humor, but there's humor based in truth.
Nick Stamoulis:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Moving on. Next article from Ad Age.
Nick Stamoulis:AI agents are making media buying mistakes. How to catch and prevent them. So to me Oh, boy. Interesting article. So, again, AI agents and, you know, we we get we do offer AI an AI agent for marketing service.
Nick Stamoulis:We don't get much activity on it quite frankly because I think the people that understand AI and understand what agents can do for marketing related tasks know that sometimes the the I would say the the punch isn't worth it, so to speak. That it's still buggy. It's better than it was maybe a year ago, but it's still not like we're envisioning it. Right? And so and this just goes to show you, you know, I would never personally spend my own money, our company's money, or client's money, and have AI have chat or Claude or Gemini autonomously make media buying decisions without me actually reviewing it and approving it before it goes live.
Nick Stamoulis:I'm just saying. I mean, that's money we're talking about. Right? That's not, you know, writing a social media post or rewrite creating a graphic. We're talking about spending, you know, ad dollars.
Nick Stamoulis:So I think we will get there. I think we will. We'll get to a time where it will be wonderful, and it will save a lot of time like it just think of how far, you know, the the LLMs have come from the last two years, three years. Since they went live in 2023, since chat went live 2023 on on the, you know, on the web. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:When it came out of beta, think of where we're at now. Think of where we'll be three years from now. I think we'll get there. Now is not really the time to trust it. So I don't know.
Nick Stamoulis:What do you guys think on that? It's my opinion.
Katherine:So I have a couple of really minuscule agents set up for myself right now. One is to aggregate some news posts for me. The other is to compile. I gave a list of websites to check for events because I'm a ballroom dancer, and I like to keep tabs on it. I'm a poet.
Katherine:I I do all these things. And AI can't even handle that, honestly. I don't know what I'm getting back from day to day or week to week. For example, the event one one week, all I got was, it it only read one of the websites and gave me all of the events listed at this bookstore. I gave it a list of maybe 30 websites to check, and it just did one or two checks.
Katherine:So it's like they went just to the top. If it can barely do that, I am not I am not trusting it to make ad buying Yeah. Media buying decisions. That's
Nick Stamoulis:for sure.
Katherine:It it's too
Nick Stamoulis:soon I agree.
Katherine:Too soon to use AI this way. It needs to be able to do the basic stuff first before I'll trust it for this kind of stuff.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. To to me, sometimes AI feels like somebody who, like, thinks they're really, really smart, like the LLMs. Right? Where it'll tell you things so confidently, but it's wrong so much of the
Nick Stamoulis:time. If you know it's wrong, you know it's wrong.
John:So it's like I know. Why would I if I can't trust it to like you said, look at a website and and give me the events. Yeah. I'm not gonna trust it with anything that has to do with money or anything that has to do with my brand like that. Right.
John:Right. It's going to make mistakes. You're gonna spend more time correcting it than it's worth.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. Yep. Moving on. Got a few more for today and we'll wrap here.
Nick Stamoulis:Next article is from Search Engine Land, tools for doing AEO now. So just for those of you that don't know what an AEO is. So you have AI SEO, that's what we call the umbrella of AI search. And under that, you have the generative engine optimization and that is the creating the clarity of a product, service, or brand, or company. And then you have answer engine optimization or AEO, which are answers of content that's related.
Nick Stamoulis:And so these are tools, according to search engine land, that that are great. And, you know, I'm not gonna go through all the tools. The number one tool is AI assistance, chat, GPT, cloud, and perplexity. I agree with that. You know, coming up with and we've tested a lot of the tools on this list and a lot of other tools as well, especially on the generative engine optimization side of things and the AI brand piece of it and visibility piece.
Nick Stamoulis:And I'll tell you, going to the source themselves is often very helpful. So putting in all the parameters of your audiences, all the variables, the goals, you know, looking at your content, looking at your you know, looking at the competitive landscape, looking what your competitors' content looks like, and then using some of the, you know, the AI platforms like ChatClot or Perplexity. I think it's great. I think it's really great. Out of the three, I'll tell you, I probably for for eight for answer engine optimization, I would probably stick with chat first, then perplexity, then Claude.
Nick Stamoulis:Claude, I the technical beast. You know, really for, you know, for for the, you know, coding and app development and stuff like that. But for this intensive purpose, you know, chat chat is great. Perplex is good. Actually, Copilot's pretty good too.
Nick Stamoulis:Didn't make didn't make the cut. But anyway anyway, so that just thought on that. Good article. I'm gonna keep moving here because we're almost at the hour break, at the hour time slot. And then for those of you that aren't joining us live on the Brick Marketing website, brickmarketing.com/live, This also will be available on all major podcast platforms later this evening.
Nick Stamoulis:So feel free to check it out. Next, I have one more after this. Article from Search Engine Journal, the ROI problem with AI traffic no one is measuring correctly. Brilliant article where basically what it's basically talking about and and and, you know, the article, I definitely recommend that you all go to Search Engine Journal and read this one. But what's interesting on this is it's talking about how the definition really what it boils down to, that the definition of ROI is really kinda changing.
Nick Stamoulis:That if there's no actual ROI that's tangible, can you still give it an ROI? And brands and it even says here that brands will need to invest in visibility work whose returns are not expressing clicks or referral traffic. Right? So what's again, very kind of more advanced article in search engine journal. Great article, but I highly recommend it.
Nick Stamoulis:But to me, again, it just sticks to the point of building the brand. And your if your ROI again, we all think of ROI of, you know, I'm spending a $100 in advertising and what is my return on that advertising investment? That is still the case, but the narrative for that is changing because AI is changing it. Right? If someone in between that process sees your ad, doesn't buy from you, but then goes to ChatGPT and sees your brand again and organically clicks on you on you know, and and researches your brand or product or service, and then they become a customer.
Nick Stamoulis:To me, that advertising has influenced that purchase. So there is an actual ROI on that ad spend, but you can't see that. And if you, you know, and if it's b to b sale for instance and someone in you and that individual is asked, would you find out about us chat? But they saw your ads. Right?
Nick Stamoulis:It's slippery slope, but I think that it it is a problem. But the the moral of the story is market a lot of ways. I mean, that's the moral of this whole podcast today is and I have a feeling we're gonna be talking about this every week in some shape, way, or fashion. And this just goes to that this just feeds right into that into that point. Catherine, John, if you guys share your thoughts on this.
Katherine:Right now, we're some leads that come in, some of the clients that we have, people that we've talked to, how did this lead come in? And the answer has to be, I don't know, because there just isn't the data right now to track Mhmm. To track it. Because what we're seeing is that a lot of leads that do come in are are pretty warm, where whereas they may not have been. And because what's happening, they might be in the AI Answers gathering data and information about a solution that they need, and then you they eventually get connected to your company.
Katherine:We don't have data for any of that. Once they get connected to your company in a AI Answers sort of format, then they might go and look. So and type in your website or or look up your brand to try to find more information. And we're seeing branded traffic coming to the site sort of increasing, and we're seeing the leads being a lot warmer. And it's because of this, but there's no in between data for us to look at.
Katherine:So we can't know for sure. We think it's coming from AI, but it's a guess without looking at the numbers, and we we're not gonna be able to look at the numbers till that data is available.
Nick Stamoulis:Yeah. John, what do you think? Good point.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Like, you you you don't know. Now that, you know, people might you don't know where people are finding your brand first, right, especially with AI. Because when it comes through, it just comes through.
John:Right? Like, anything organic and AI talking to your Chad GBT is considered far more organic than a paid advertisement. Like you don't know if somebody saw, like you said, saw your ad, then later saw your brand in ChatGPT somehow and was like, oh, you know, the neurons connected and they're like, you know what? I'm going to go with this person. Right?
John:You don't have that data. I completely agree with that. It's it's hard to know where people really are, like, where that first touch point is these days. And then you can't you can't figure out what your ROI is at that point.
Nick Stamoulis:No. It's so true. And yeah. And then I'll tell you next last article for today is on the Brick Marketing website. And the title is AI, SEO, or GEO increases marketing ROI.
Nick Stamoulis:This literally is what we're exactly talking about. Right? And so it's it is very true and and I'll tell you, you know, we're seeing this with clients literally. That you know, you're active, know, and it you know, in trade show marketing and you're doing PR and you're know, you have a good SEO presence and you're investing in PPC and, you know, it's like you're you're hitting all these channels. And it's like, where do you give that ROI to?
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So, like, is it the first point or the last point? In my mind, it's a blended attribution, personally. But unless I don't think right now the technology exists, it just doesn't. Like, how can we track that?
Nick Stamoulis:Right? It's like we can't. We've always, by the way, back, you know, when AI wasn't in play at all. We've always you know, for instance, you know, we would have a a client that would have a big, like, the have, like, a TV ad TV ad run. And then what would we do?
Nick Stamoulis:We would ramp up their PPC for their branded search. So it would capture people that didn't even don't know what the website is. They just search for the brand, and they didn't want any competitors to come up that might be bidding on their brand. So then they're capturing people's info. So PPC technically catch captured the person in, but how'd they hear about the brand from that TV ad?
Nick Stamoulis:Right? Unfortunately, in today's world, it's not that linear anymore. It's muddled. Right? So in my mind, it's, I would say, just a blended approach into with if AI didn't exist, my mind would be blended but less blended.
Nick Stamoulis:If you know that, okay, we're doing a huge trade show in your b to b and you're rich and you're running retargeting ads during that trade show, and let's just say you're, you know, you're putting a series of social media posts at the same time using the hashtags. This is going back years ago using hashtags, maybe, you know, promoting it, you know, maybe doing, you know, joining a podcast or having an influencer help you promote that event, then you you could more or less know that it came from that event. The event and then all these other channels led to the the capture. It's not like that now. So yeah.
Nick Stamoulis:So but I think it's I mean, it really is true, though. Again, this just comes to those of you who are in charge of your marketing, in charge of, you know, your companies, now is the time to invest in AI search. You know? And I I know a lot of you are probably, oh, we're gonna try it on our own for a while. Try it on your own.
Nick Stamoulis:But then when you see you're not getting the results that you should be or you could be, work with companies like us or professionals in general that, you know and and the devil's advocate because I've actually heard this from a few folks recently that said, oh, well, AI SEO is so new. How you know, expert? Let me tell you how anyone's an expert. How for those of us that have been marketing for decades, we're experts at it. It's a different communications vehicle.
Nick Stamoulis:Right? So, like so I don't know. Catherine, what do you think? John, I wanna get your your feedback, and then we'll we'll call it for today.
Katherine:This goes along with what we said and what we've been saying that it's clear that AI is just is changing the funnel and and how people behave in the funnel. And it's it is definitely increasing the ROI. It's kind of amazing because, for example, we have a client whose leads used to come in, and it's a a just they have a long sales cycle. Right. But AI appears to be cutting the sales cycle down because their first phone call used to be, we're interested in this.
Katherine:What can you do for me? Let's schedule a a follow on call. And now they're showing up on their first call saying, alright. We're ready to go. We're interested in this.
Katherine:We we wanna get things in motion. It went from discovery to, hybridity. So the quality of the leads coming in is has increased. We can't measure it, unfortunately, but we do we can measure the after effect.
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
Katherine:We can measure what happens when the phone rings, and and that is a measurable thing. And the only logical explanation is that AI is increasing, this marketing ROI
Nick Stamoulis:Yep.
Katherine:In my opinion.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. John, what do you think?
John:Yeah. And like we've said, with with no tools, it's hard to really track it, you know, get get raw numbers. You you just can't right now. But like we've been saying for weeks and, you know, since the beginning of the, you know, the Brick Live Podcast is like the leads are warmer. Like, that's just
Nick Stamoulis:Right.
John:How it is and what we've been seeing ourselves. So whatever you're doing is having, like, an effect in AI and people are, you know, finding your your brand and they're they're just warmer to it because, like I was saying in the last one, it's seen as a more organic, you know, finding of a brand. Right? So I think that whatever you're you're doing, whether it's, you know, ad campaigns or whatever, that everything ends up funneling into this AI ecosystem. It has more value now.
John:It's all like within one larger thing rather than like little bubbles outside of each other.
Nick Stamoulis:I agree. I agree. Great point. Great point.
Katherine:Yes.
Nick Stamoulis:Alright. So on that note, I would like to thank everyone for joining us today on the Brick Marketing Live Pod cast. We will be live with you next Wednesday, May 20 at 3PM. Check it out on the Brick Marketing on our website, on the LinkedIn page, on the Brick Marketing LinkedIn page, Brick Marketing Facebook page. Also, we will be sharing this throughout our social media, so feel free to follow Brick Marketing everywhere at brick marketing.
Nick Stamoulis:And we have upcoming webinars coming up for free, So feel free to register on the Brick Marketing website. And again, I'd like to thank Katherine John. Great job as always and thank you all for listening and we will see you all next week.
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