Transcription
Oh, sorry. So, Google just quietly changed the rules again, uh, again for how many times? And uh, most agencies haven't really caught up yet, and I'm seeing it like all over the place. Um, AI is now writing, summarizing, and even recommending content like directly inside search results. Not really something new, but it's something we're all pretty aware of. Rankings are shifting fast, and short-form content is becoming a trust signal, but agencies, I think, are still relying on those like old SEO strategies, and those agencies are about to feel it. Yeah.
Today, we're breaking down the three biggest Google changes happening right now and really just how smart agencies are adapting before it's too late. And I think that, oh, welcome back, everybody. It's me, Aussie, and Zach. Together, we've built multiple businesses, including Advertis, where we've helped over 300, probably 400 now, marketing agencies scale smarter, grow faster, and escape the chaos, um, that most agency owners get stuck in. In each episode, you're going to find out that we're going to break down real-life conversations happening in real time into market today. Um, these conversations are, you know, for agency owners are around sales, operations, hiring, scaling, leaderships, the wins, the failures, all of it. And here's the thing, you as an agency owner, this show is really for you. But also, if you're a business owner, you could probably learn a lot about the marketing industry and really tap into some stuff and really appreciate that. But today, you know, we're talking about Google and really what has happened in the last, probably, I'd say, really the last quarter. And, you know, honestly, and Zach, I'm going to say this just directly this way. It's going to get you to light up 'cause you love Google so much. Google's prioritizing human content again. Again, again. Yes. Yeah. It, that isn't that funny? Again, I feel like we keep going in circles. So, for those of you who don't know, if you did SEO back in like the early 2000s, right, it was really easy to rank with just, you know, putting keywords in your H1, submitting your site, you know, uh, and indexing it via Search Console. And that was pretty much all you needed to do 'cause there wasn't that much competition. There wasn't that much content that was trying to be pushed out and to r and people were leveraging their websites as lead generation tools really a whole lot, but they were leveraging them for brand. And what was interesting is that the, the companies that focused heavily on brand, human trust signals, right, those were the companies that usually dominated in the search engine optimization game in the rankings because, fluff is what I call it, right? You know, I was speaking with one of our teammates and, and he says something funny. He's like, "Cos are kind of the janitors of the internet." Like, it, like people will post stuff online all the time, but then it's the SEO's job to structure it, optimize it, get it so it actually can rank and be picked up. But yes, basically expanded the number of trust signals that it's looking at when ranking a website. So before, I was like, "Okay, this website has a hundred articles talking about this keyword, and this website has 10 articles talking about this keyword. I wonder which one I'm going to prioritize and show the user?" Because at the end of the day, Google is only going to stay in business if it shows you relevant results that when you click on that blue link, you go somewhere that you get the answer that you want. Well, now with AI and these answer engines, um, and that's what AEO stands for, Answer Engine Optimization, Google is now also looking at other factors that have to play a part because the internet's just so crammed, right? There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of online websites all posting hundreds, if not thousands, of content, right? And now with ChatGPT and large language models, you can just pump out content as fast as possible. So, you have to have some sort of edge, some sort of differentiator. And one of the best ones is, is content optimized for humans, right?
Um, and the way that Google has done this is that it's kind of expanded it into YouTube, right? To YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, right? So, it's leveraging both short-form video content and long-form video content because now you can transcribe all the words from that video, and that can be used as a ranking factor, kind of like its own little mini blog post, but it's just a video. Um, where Google is now prioritizing sites that actually have video content or more engaged social media posts, social media profiles, etc. So before, it was just what was on your URL on the website and what did other URLs say about your URL. Now, it's also social media profiles and videos and whatnot.
Yeah. It's funny. It's like I'm noticing the shift in it's not really a shift. It's kind of something that probably should have happened a long time ago.
It should have, right? I mean, Google owns YouTube. I feel like this could have been done forever ago. But yeah.
Yeah. I think they were, they probably had this in their back pocket and they were like, you know, let's just wait until everyone else starts to push on this so we don't have to worry about spending this money yet. But,
I think like, I think the agencies that are like leveraging the brand's ability to document what they're learning in real time, like throughout their business, throughout the journey of their business, like obviously like case studies, like recording content conversations around very niche subjects within your industry, which what we used to do in blog posts, right?
Yes. Vlogs and stuff. Like I think using those client case studies, like making video content around them, creating like blogs from that video content through the transcriptions, posting opinions, insights, like create that experience-first content. I think Google is rewarding people who sound like humans again. That's probably, that's what it feels like at least. And so, like, not even just Google, but most platforms. And I actually had this conversation with one of our sales reps this week. Um, he was talking about top of funnel, and he was like, "You know, I'm struggling to get anybody to respond." I'm like, "Let me look at your emails." And every one of them looked like a marketing templated email. And I said, "Man, people don't answer these anymore. You have to like, you need to misspell some words in here and you need to like,"
Yep.
"I was like, your biggest challenge now as a salesperson in today's world is you need to like, they need to know it's an actual person. They're in now. They don't want to talk to a bot or an automation anymore."
Yep.
"They get enough of that."
Yep. Yep. And aside from short-form content, but also like Reddit, forums, you know, Facebook groups, other community posts and guidelines like,
Precisely.
Um, Twitter. I mean, I, if,
Google and ChatGPT and Claude and basically all the all the LLMs, they are all trying to pull relevant answers for all the questions that people have. And what better way to get insider knowledge than going to the forums like Reddit, where people are complaining, like complaining in real time, you know?
It's authentic. It's real. Yeah.
It's authentic. Yeah. One of the, uh, one of the, we're, we're beefing up an FAQ section for, for one of the largest kitchen and bath remodelers on the East Coast. And as we're beefing up the FAQs, we're literally going into Reddit, and we are scraping every complaint that anyone's ever had about a kitchen renovation, a bathroom remodel, and we are, and we are posing those as questions, and we're creating answers for them, right?
Wow.
And that is going to situate them as a thought leader answering these questions because people go to Reddit to get those like questions answered, right? They're like, "I don't know if I can trust this, you know, this big company, this contractor. I'm just going to, what, what does social media tell me?" Right? And that right there, when we say that, that is implying that a business entity has lost trust with a potential customer or a lead. And social media, right, in its aggregate, has more trust. And so the user goes to social media for that for that additional trust, right?
Yes. Yeah. So if you can have video content, you know, organic post content, if you can be answering those questions before they even become questions, right? Then you are going to become a trusted thought leader. That's, that's half the reason why we're doing this. Honestly, that's actually a really good strategy for any of you business owners listening that are struggling to figure out content ideas. Go to Reddit, look up your industry, throw any of these communities into your, you know, Gemini and say, "Hey, crank out all the common FAQs and literally just create content after content after content of those answering those FAQs." Amazing. That's like, and again, it goes Google's, you know, the platform that's rewarding that experience-first. If I were to throw that into quotations, that would be like the biggest thing I would throw out. It's like experience-first content. So that's an amazing strategy, by the way. Thanks for sharing that. Um, yeah, take that and run, guys. Like, if you're,
Yeah, please.
That's like next-level stuff. That's, that's like instead of just writing and just creating articles, which I'm not saying articles and blogs don't work. I'm just saying they don't work just in and of themselves, right? You could even create articles answering all those questions that you find on Reddit. But there is a, and I think a lot of you out there will think to yourselves, "Well, I, I already have the answers to all this, so like, I'm fine with it." You're assuming that you will be at the right place at the right time talking to your dedicated lead or customer. You, you know exactly where they're at in the funnel, and they're going to ask you when you're on the phone with them. You will not get that chance. 90% of the time, you do not get the chance to answer sales objections. You do not get the chance to instill confidence. You either, you have people making decisions about how they view your brand every single day, good or bad, and you often don't get to control it. But if you have enough out there, right, enough content out there, and Google's rewarding people for it, right, is prioritizing people for it, then you can answer these questions before they even become problems ahead of time.
Absolutely. And, you know, it's funny, like I think kind of breaks into the next segment here of like how AI is becoming more of the operating layer. I think kind of boils back to that level of authenticity that the internet, I'm just going to say the internet because I sound like a typical millennial now. The internet 2.0, it is like, it's demanding. It's craving. Like, like I don't know about you, but I'm getting pitched like three to 500 times a day now. And I'm so dang tired of opening my emails and just delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.
And I think that's the reason why, you know, we captured this at our top of funnel about two years ago. We were using, just so you guys know, we were using a social platform. Can't say which one because they don't like it. Uh, and automating a lot of outreach, and it worked. I mean, we, we were able to tap into really quickly a lot of different, um, marketing agency owners. That's who we work with. Um, and it worked great and got saturated real quick about two years ago. And so much so, we had to start breaking down new strategies and new funnels, which we'll talk about here in just a second. Um, you know, it kind of brings me back to this whole, like, and then we're going to talk about this probably, it feels like in circles all the time, but AI is no longer just a content tool. And I think it's where a lot of, like, marketers get stuck and they're like, "Well, I can use this AI for this and that." It's like, "Okay, that's great to an extent." Also, it's not going to replace your job, so stop thinking that. Stop. Stop it. But I look directly in the camera for that one. But essentially, like the main point is that like Advertis, what we're doing with AI is more on the organizational side, like on the admin side of the business. So like right now, Josh is amazing. He's building some crazy dashboard tool for you and I. It's this giant executive dashboard so we can have hands-on, bird's-eye view level of everything happening all at once in the company. Um, and it pulls from a data s, like he calls it the point of truth of the data point, uh, data source, and we're using AI to build that, right? But then also AI is going to take that data and put it into report that our, you know, CFO doesn't actually have to go and manually input anymore. It's going to save her a ton of time. She's also my wife, by the way. So, it saves me a bunch of time and,
and space at home, too.
And so, it's, it's nice to be able to leverage AI for these types of support things. And even more so, like our account management team, they're, they're in meetings non-stop. Our partner success managers are in meetings non-stop. And so we have these AI note-takers, and they're able to capture opportunities and items that could protect or save or anything relationship, even sometimes when we can't as humans because we're human. And so it's kind of a nice safety net.
And so I kind of wanted to talk about that as well. Even more so with the AI note-takers, there are times where I'm training, you know, teammates, right, on like a new service line or talking about AEO, right, in the LLM and how to rank there. And I'm like, "That was a really good meeting. That should be a video." And I just, I, I download, right, the whole thing. And then I go to chop it up and post it on YouTube. And then there you go. This is a meeting that talks about and explains what AEO and LLM are and how to rank in them. And I can send that to anybody internally, but also people externally can hear what Advertis's position is and how we think about these things and why we believe that they're, they're important. Building more trust with our agency partners that these are things that we've actually thought through and we've created philosophies, methods, and systems and processes around them. That's stuff that I would, two years ago, I would train one person and then I'd go and I'd train another person and then I'd be like, "Okay, now I need to create like a, like a script and I need to do like a Loom video, right? And an SOP and I need to, you know, record the Loom video. I need to make sure I look good for the Loom video." And now it's like, "No, I, I, I've even taken just transcripts of videos and I've just said, 'Create SOP out of this.'" And then boom, it just creates like a document out of it. I know our team is so tired of seeing SOPs from me, but it, it's so true. And like, to Zach's point, like something that like Dan Martell talked about it in "Buy Back Your Time," the book "Buy Back Your Time," he said he was, this is like late '90s, early 2000s, he was in his car driving from Canada to the United States for his where his office was, like an hour commute. And he would literally hire someone to sit in his passenger seat and video record him talking about a subject so he can make a playbook to to train his team. So it's not wasted time, and it's brilliant. I mean, it's brilliant. And now we have all this tech and all these tools that can that can do the same thing. I used,
I used for case studies, and people are like, "Well, are you creating fake case studies?" No, in fact, I, we work with so many different clients and so many different projects and so many different brands and campaigns that I don't remember all of them. I just have like vague, you know, kind of like, "We worked for this, and it was this industry, and we did these campaigns on these platforms, and it yielded X results." And then I will just do a voice memo into ChatGPT, and then and then it'll transcribe everything, mind-dumping, and then I'll tell it, "Create a case study out of it." It'll create a case study, and then it'll just have a couple of areas that are blanked that I just go back and I fill in later, right? And then all of a sudden, I create this giant case study from a memory. And that's what people want. Like, people are wanting those ideas. And when you're, when you're the marketing agency owner, you have frame, right? You have context of your agency because there are so many times where clients will ask us, and I'm sure they ask you, "Have you worked in asbestos installation before?" "Have you wor-" That was a bad example, but "Have you worked in super niche?"
Plug super niche industry here. Yeah.
Right. Right. And then, and then all the time we're like, "Yeah, I think that one time or that one time." But depending on who you ask in the company, that person may have been in the company for four months. They don't know. How will they know, right? So, I mean, if you can kind of dump, just brain dump everything that's in here, people want to know it 'cause that's really what a business is, is it's 10xing yourself, right?
Yes. And that's what Aussie and I say all the time is like, we are creating multiple versions of ourselves for multiple different reasons to focus on multiple different areas of the business so that the business can grow and scale. And AI makes it easier now than ever before to get everything that's in here and get it out into a presentable way. You can put it into a slide deck with NotebookLM. You can put it into a a video and record it and just talk about it right on short-form content. You can put into a blog post. Like there's so many different ways to put it out there. You just got to put it out there.
And it's funny. It's like, um, you know, I, I think that's the first time we've said it publicly that we've scaled ourselves, actually. It's kind of funny, but it's true. You know, you business owners out there, I think this is probably something that came to me like in the last couple years. It was just like, while we're building the company, which we relate to all of you out there, Zach and I have been in every single role in this company too, and we had to fire ourselves and promote ourselves and sometimes demote ourselves, go back down, come back, like, you know, you do it as you build. And like, we know we raised this thing up by our bootstraps, but it's at the end of the day, like you are essentially replacing yourself constantly, and you're having to 10x you to grow. And you obviously grow throughout that time period, you know, as a, you know, a leader, as a, like anybody in business, like mentor, like consultant, like you're kind of going through all these motions. And now in the world of AI, like it's almost unlimited the amount of like knowledge you can learn so quickly. You know, we've had contracts sent to us, we're like, "Oh, we need to, you know, look at our, you know, get with our attorneys." And we're like, "Let's do some research preliminary beforehand before we get with our attorneys." It saves us hours of retainer time because we've already done our research because of AI. It's like things like that. But, uh, that kind of leads me, it's a off, but it's kind of down the same rabbit hole, I guess. But part of using AI to help rank within Google now with these new, you know, things that are being pushed is short-form video becoming like a trust funnel. And so, Zach and I have firsthand experience with this ourselves with this channel, actually. Um, a lot of these long-form videos that we're, you know, generating between 20 and 30 minutes long, we're able to cut up into shorts and cross-post omni-channel across multiple profiles, and it's bringing us several inbound leads per month through our website. Um, and so it's created what we would consider a short-form, um, video. Well, it creates a bunch of short-form videos, but it creates a trust funnel, essentially. Yep. Um, and so our sales team is getting on these calls, and then the, the prospect that's joined, they already know who we are. They already know more about the business than when, you know, two years ago when we had to start from scratch, right? Or five years ago, rather, or whatever that time. But all that to say is, short-form video content, it's building trust. It's feeding retargeting campaigns. That's kind of something that keeps your cost for advertising down. Um, it's improving omni-channel, which again goes back to that authenticity function for Google to start ranking, or, you know, that really pushes that. And then it creates, it creates more personalized experience around the brand itself. So many different benefits to this. We're not even getting into like, it can create blog content for your website. We're not even getting into like all the other sides of this, which Zach could probably dive deep into. But it really does, you know, help you have that more authentic presence online, which is really what we're trying to get to, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. The, I mean, our funnel is is pretty simple, right? We, we obviously do a lot of, a lot of one-to-one, right? That's kind of like your direct reaching out, your cold outreach. But then we also wanted to implement a one-to-many, right? And that one-to-many is choosing a platform, going all in on that platform. In, in our case, it was, it was YouTube, making sure that we go all in on YouTube and we create long-form content and we post it on YouTube, right? And we do as often as we can. And then from the long-form content, chop it up and then post it omni-channel across so many other different platforms as well.
Feeding back into the long-form. And then all the while, we are retargeting. So, anybody that sees, you know, a video here on YouTube is going to, uh, get retargeted with our ads. Anybody that sees it on Meta is going to get retargeted with our ads. Anybody that sees on Instagram get retargeted, so on and so forth. So, the whole goal here, sorry if you see our faces a little too often. My bad. But the goal here is that we know not everyone's ready to buy now. And that's fine, right? Not everyone's ready to buy right now. And so oftentimes, we, everyone gets so focused and competes for the 11% of your industry that is ready to purchase. That's not most people though. Most people hear about a brand, hear about it several times, finally have trust in it, and then have a need months later to actually engage with said brand. Right? For instance, tomorrow, right? If I need orthotics, right, for my foot, for my shoes, I'm probably going to go check out some Brooks, right? That's just where I'm going to go. That's a brand that comes right off the top of my brain. I sound like video right now, my guy. You really do.
Some orthotics.
You're like, "I have bunions."
I have bunions. I do. Anyways, this is not the point. And I need, and I'm going to need to like think of a brand, and that's the first brand that comes to my mind, and that's the one that kind of wins therefore my money. And that's the one that I kind of choose. Why? Because I've seen their shoes. I've seen their advertising months ago. I'm not like looking at them every single day. It's not like they're necessarily winning my funnel feed, you know?
Mhm.
That's branding, right? That's the power of branding is that when you think about, "Man, I need a good car," or "Oh, man, I need a nice leather belt," or "I need a suit," or whatever, and you're thinking about the things that you want that are quality, right? Then you're going to go to those places that you believe are quality, you believe are good enough because of all the marketing that they've done prior to that. That is marketing. That is the area that you guys live in.
I think that short-form, you know, content very specifically, it definitely helps build trust a lot faster, especially with today's like attention span.
Mhm.
I think like we were talking about this, I mean, probably three years ago, we seen, I think it was Alex Hormozi, he was like recording his his meetings and he was chopping it into short-form content and just posting it all over the place, like hundreds of videos a day. It was crazy. And you're like, "That's what we have to do." And I was like, "That's a lot of work. I don't want to do that." But now with AI, it's so possible. And I think like it just builds trust, you know? And again, going back to what you were saying, what is brand building a brand? It's building trust and it's,
Yes.
Creating that around the content, around everything that's pushed out from that, from the marketing funnels. So I think like, you know, if I were to kind of share final thoughts here, are he agencies that are adapting to shift early and really kind of understand how Google's, you know, passing out little like, "Hey, do this over here and do that over there." It, it really, if you're paying attention, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Um, over the next 24 months, and you all know this. I mean, we've been in the industry long enough. Um, the industry shifts all the time. Keep up with that and you should be fine. However, if you're tired and you're just so just beat down with all the innovation in this industry, gosh, I'm praying for you because it's every day. I feel like you're going to get stuck, and those agencies will suffer. And so, I'm telling you this now, it's really important to stay up to date with everything that's happening. And the best way to do that is coming and subscribing here and being a part of this community with us. You don't have to do the research. We'll do it for you. We're thankful that you're all here. And until next week, you know, I am hoping and praying that I won't have another show to talk about what Google changed in the last week, but you never know in this industry. So, but, uh, thanks for joining us. We'll see you guys next week. And if you have any content ideas or anything that you'd like for us to talk about, remember, we work with, you know, several hundreds of agencies every single month. We're seeing tons of trends come down the pipe. Um, and we want to help you grow your agency as an agency owner. And if you're a business, we want to help you grow as well. We want you to understand marketing. It's nothing that's scary. It's just something that helps support your business grow. So, we're here to help that. Um, that's what we've been gifted to do. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.