SEO Is Out. Answer Rank Is In. Now What? [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 108]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

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Patrick
stop writing blog posts.

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Patrick
and I don't mean stop writing blog post actually,

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Patrick
but I mean stop

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Patrick
thinking about what you're writing as blog posts or as advertisements for your business.

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Patrick
Start thinking about what you're writing as pages in the encyclopedia for your industry.

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Patrick
That's the authoritative mindset that it's going to take

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Patrick
to get shown in AI and get visible in AI and have.

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Patrick
I recommend you as the authority for what you're doing.

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Speaker 1
You're listening to The Endless Customers podcasts brought to you by the team at impact!

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Speaker 1
Ellis customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market.

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Speaker 1
you want to start to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller. Wherever books are sold.

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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
There are limited spots available, so make sure you register today.

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Speaker 1
And now onto the show. Here's your host Alex

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Alex
back to Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. Today, we're talking with someone who's been deep in the trenches of content, strategy, SEO, and brand building for years, and now he's helping companies rethink everything that they know about visibility in the a AI era. Patrick Moorhead is the author of answering a New framework that's helping brands show up where it matters most, whether that's Google, ChatGPT, or anywhere in between.

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Alex
He's worked with companies ranging from fast growing startups to fortune 100, and his perspective on trust, content and the future of search is one that you're going to want to hear about. Patrick, welcome to the show.

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Patrick
Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. It's great to be here.

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Alex
It's great to have you here. We are really excited to have you on the show. And you're calling us all the way from Prague, is that right?

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Patrick
That's right. I live in Prague. Czech Republic.

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Alex
very cool. Well, thank you so much for taking the time for being here. I have a lot of questions.

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Alex
our whole company here just went through the whole answer rank, program. We read through it, and there's a lot of amazing things to unpack in there, so I can't wait to have this conversation with you.

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Alex
I'm really excited.

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Patrick
Likewise. Thank you.

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Alex
All right, Patrick, to kick things off, can you tell us a little bit about answering how it came to be and why our viewers and listeners and other marketers out there should be aware of it?

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Patrick
Yeah, absolutely. I would say

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Patrick
if you're a marketer and you're on LinkedIn right now, it would be hard for me to imagine you're not aware of this

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Patrick
because I feel like it's just flooding the topic of sort of answer engine optimization. And LM oh,

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Patrick
is flooding LinkedIn. Right. So it is the the conversation destroyer. I would say.

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Alex
It absolutely is. Yeah.

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Patrick
I like to answer your question.

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Patrick
know, I spent the last ten years as an operating chief marketing officer in scale up SAS companies.

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Patrick
The first one that I did was sold in 2021,

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Patrick
and the one that I was involved with most recently is growing like crazy,

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Patrick
in no small part due to implementing they Ask you answer as the content marketing strategy at that company in 2022.

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Patrick
I left that job at the end of last year for unrelated reasons, but before I left, in the six months in the back six months of 2024,

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Patrick
noticed the trend in the data within the company around our organic search. I was obsessed by that data because I was super proud of it, because we had had a massive impact on our organic search ranking

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Patrick
and the pipeline and revenue that resulted from that.

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Patrick
And around the middle of Q3 of two, 2024, I started noticing this really weird signature in the traffic data. The signature was,

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Patrick
SEO organic ranking metrics were strong,

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Patrick
we were holding number one to number three position for all of our major

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Patrick
keywords, all of our major topic segments, all big five content, topic areas in our competitive set.

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Patrick
And we had a big moat around that, like none of our competitors could, could crack us in organic.

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Alex
That's great.

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Patrick
Yeah. But

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Patrick
organic site traffic was down and it was down month over month,

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Patrick
and it was keeping going down. And so I thought something was wrong with the website.

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Alex
Interesting. Yeah. Because you, you hadn't really changed anything you were doing. And it

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Alex
was working.

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Alex
It was working perfectly. It sounded like

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Alex
you're.

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Patrick
Running the playbook, right? We were publishing two, three big five blog articles per week. We had been doing that for 76 weeks, consecutive

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Patrick
wow.

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Patrick
and we saw the benefit. Right. But so and so SEO metrics are strong. Organic traffic is declining

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Patrick
but direct traffic is increasing. And prior to then I understood direct traffic is sort of,

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Patrick
brand associated.

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Patrick
Right. Brand marketing attributed sort of like ether awareness. Right? Yeah. But it was a really strong increase in direct traffic and it correlated with the decrease in organic traffic.

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Patrick
So I was like, what is going on? Right. Yeah. And this is funny. So then I of course, hey, here's how I'm trying to answer this question. I turned to ChatGPT and I'm like, why would this be in my data?

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Patrick
And then the light bulb went off and I was like,

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Patrick
ChatGPT is why is that? This is in my data because there's no click in ChatGPT. I was like, I got to understand that. I gotta I gotta figure that out.

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Patrick
And so that was kind of the genesis point of, of what ultimately led to the book.

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Alex
Yeah, that's really it. I think that's happened for most people. It happened to me. And it's funny how like you're using GPT and you don't realize it until you have that light bulb moment where it's like, oh, I'm the answer is the thing that I'm using right here in front of me. And it's,

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Alex
it's definitely shifted

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Alex
SEO in a major way.

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Alex
So can we talk a little bit about

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Alex
where you think SEO is going in this? I Eric, because it's 100% shifting the way people search and find things.

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Patrick
Yeah,

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Patrick
The short answer is I think we're going towards answer rank.

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Patrick
And the way we define answer rank is yes, it's about AI but it's actually about more than AI.

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Patrick
it's about trust at the end of the day. And it's about redefining how you create buyer trust with your marketing and content.

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Patrick
So if you think about things very simply

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Patrick
search used to be about capturing visibility in a stacked order,

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Patrick
And you've sort of battled it out and there was a winner. There would be the number one most visible right brand in your competitive set. That's that's the yogurt,

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Alex
Everyone wanted that number one spot

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Alex
on Google, right?

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Alex
Yeah.

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Patrick
in this new world, what I call the answer economy,

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Patrick
it's more about authority than it is about visibility.

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Patrick
matters less if you're the number one search result

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Patrick
because you could be the number one search result on Google and still not be the authoritative answer inside. And I

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Patrick
conversation that your buyer's having.

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Alex
Yeah, that's really interesting. That's a good point. Yeah.

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Patrick
Yeah I saw a piece of data yesterday that blew my mind. Which is

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Patrick
that I, models do not give any preference to the order of the results that appear on page one of Google, which means

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Patrick
that you don't necessarily need to compete for slots one through three on page one of Google in order to gain

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Patrick
visibility inside ChatGPT.

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Patrick
You could be number seven and still make it into the answer.

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Patrick
So the playing field is not only shifted, but it's leveled.

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Patrick
I can put effort into getting on page one, not just into the top three links and and the seventh link on page one

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Patrick
will be considered equally to the first link on page one when chat goes to answer a question about that topic.

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Patrick
that's just one example of, I think, the kind of massive change that that AI is having on search traffic aside,

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Patrick
I think visibility has moved, obviously, from a list of links to how do I make my brand. The answer

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Patrick
that the buyer is going to encounter when they interact with models.

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Alex
Right. That's what I was. That's where my brain was going,

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Alex
I love that you want to build trust. That's what endless customers and they ask you answers all about, because it's a principle that's principles based from from the get go. But

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Alex
when people are looking for answers, how do you how do you get those answers to show up in these AI

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Alex
platforms, whether it's Gemini or GPT or whatever people are using to search?

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Patrick
I would say 80% of the current SEO industry is focused on trying to answer that.

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Patrick
And in the book Answer Rank, I propose that essentially there are two components to answering that question,

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Patrick
and I would describe those as these. There is a technical component to how to become the answer, which has all to do with AI legibility

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Patrick
and eye visibility.

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Patrick
Okay. Meaning

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Patrick
there is an evolving but but known set of things that you need to do to your content publishing

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Patrick
in order to enable it to be seen by Claude Gemini, charity beauty. Okay. And this is the stuff you hear about,

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Patrick
ad structured schema, prefer tables over text explanations,

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Patrick
use reference data or reference data in your content that is from authoritative sources.

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Patrick
Right.

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Patrick
Rewire your h2 h2 h3 to have an answer. Semantic structure. Right. So moving from

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Patrick
how I will change B2B in 2025, right. Versus

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Patrick
what are three ways that enterprise are using AI effectively today? Something that someone would type into chat now becomes the semantic structure of how you need to set up your tagging.

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Patrick
So those are technical methods of creating

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Patrick
your content so that it's legible to I gotcha. And I think that the SEO industry is focused on that section of the market. But in the book, what I talk about also is that

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Patrick
I believe that's only half the battle,

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Patrick
because in the end, we're talking about trust. And and I connect the ideas of trust and authority.

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Patrick
so you've got to have a mindset shift when it comes to this as well.

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Patrick
and the mindset shift is about,

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Patrick
building a surface area of content. Right. It's about expanding the presence of your content across a much wider range of places than we're typically used to.

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Patrick
Now it's got to be read it now it's got to be Quora.

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Patrick
Now there's a legitimate case that

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Patrick
enterprise B2B customers, for example, might need to be on Pinterest.

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Patrick
You think about that, right? Yeah. It's becoming increasingly important

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Patrick
for public relations. And I think public relations is going to have a whole renaissance as a result of AI because

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Patrick
AI models can tell the difference between a paid placement that is essentially, sales pitch in a trenchcoat

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Patrick
and an actual piece of journalism covering an executive or a particular company or whatever it is.

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Patrick
Yeah. And AI models are going to prefer the latter because it has authority, because it's verified, it has context, and it's confident that if it uses that information,

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Patrick
it creates a good user experience for the. So I think it's those three things. I think there's a there's a visibility layer that is technical execution. And then I think there's a mindset shift that goes more towards okay, what are we doing.

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Patrick
What are we actually saying? Are we answering your questions? Are we ourselves presenting credibility, educational,

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Patrick
value? Are we presenting ourselves as authoritative leaders in the space? And then are we doing that in as diverse a way as possible?

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Alex
those are excellent points. And I've been hearing that too, the credibility piece from an AI standpoint because

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Alex
we, are very heavily entrenched in YouTube here, especially Austin and I is a video people.

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Alex
And there's been a lot of AI content that's been flooding the YouTube space and a lot of people making money off of ads from YouTube based off of AI content.

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Alex
And they're shifting away from that, and they're very much favoring,

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Alex
real content and not the AI generated content. And the same thing with AI results. They're looking for real YouTube videos and not these AI generated videos that people are making on the fly. So that credibility piece plays into the trust and the authority.

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Alex
Yeah, piece as well.

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Alex
And I think that's a big takeaway.

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Patrick
It does, you know, when I was writing the book, of course, I had they ask you answer and enlist customers

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Patrick
in the training data of me. Yeah.

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Patrick
the things discussed in those books changed the way that I approach marketing kind of fundamentally

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Patrick
and I think it's amazing to watch how the sort of answer rank EEO world is, is bending away from what

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Patrick
we believe to be true about SEO, and it's actually bending much closer back towards the fundamentals of they ask you answer

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Patrick
and endless customers totally bending back towards be the authority lead with an educator attitude.

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Patrick
Offer real value in your marketing beyond just selling, tackle the hard problems that that people don't want to face, right.

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Patrick
that you don't want to answer, that your competitors don't want to answer. I saw another piece of data on LinkedIn recently that blew my mind, which confirmed this, which is.

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Patrick
ChatGPT when answering questions about a product or a brand,

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Patrick
actively seeks out and looks at information on competitor websites for the company that's being asked about in order to create context for what the company itself is talking about on its website.

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Patrick
Wow.

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Patrick
if it can't find information about how the company being examined compares to its competitors,

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Patrick
from the company itself. It will rely on the next best source it can find. And if that happens to be your competitor,

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Patrick
then your competitor's version of your product will wind up in the AI answer.

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Patrick
And I read that and I was like, wow, that's big five. Topic number three head to head comparisons.

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Alex
Yes, it is.

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Patrick
Right. And so being.

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Alex
Transparent about your pricing which we have,

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Alex
you struggle with that with a lot of clients here that are that want to keep that very close to the chest

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Alex
want to get on a call with a potential prospect so that they can have that conversation. And I think those days are, are are dead, if not rapidly getting to that place where

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Alex
need to be transparent about it.

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Alex
You have to, because the way that you're talking about how AI is doing this, you don't want your competitors establishing what they think your pricing should be. You should be the the transparent, trusted source that's saying that right out the gate.

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Patrick
Exactly right. Alex. It's it is like ripped from the pages of endless customers, which is if you're not telling your version of the story, then somebody else will,

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Patrick
and you're foolish to think that your customer is not going to figure out how much your product costs. You're foolish to think that your customer is not going to figure out how you stack up against your competitor.

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Patrick
They will find out, and now they're going to find out real easily

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Patrick
from AI. Right? And so if your voice is not eligible in that conversation, then somebody else's will be and you will see that ground in an unforced error.

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Patrick
that becomes fascinating to me, because I also think about a lot about this idea

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Patrick
that I call conferred authority.

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Patrick
And this is the idea that when, by and large, when I when we ask AI a question,

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Patrick
I answers the question and we almost implicitly believe the answer to be true. And I think I think that's true right now for sure. I think we'll, as humans evolve out of that a little bit.

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Patrick
But this is why I hallucinations are so problematic, is because our kind of default setting around AI is that we just trust it.

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Alex
Totally.

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Patrick
See this in the data. You see that companies who are pivoting into more of an answer rank type strategy

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Patrick
are seeing their direct traffic click up, but they're seeing those leads arrive significantly better qualified converting faster, converting higher.

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Patrick
And the reason is that they've already made their buying decision in the chat. Right. Because I told them Acme Corporation is the best for this.

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Patrick
And so we give AI the authority that we, that we brands use to fight to, to achieve,

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Patrick
we give it away to AI implicitly. Right. And so if you don't have

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Patrick
head to head content on your website for AI to reference, if you don't have pricing on your website for ad reference, two things will happen.

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Patrick
I will go and find it out anyway,

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Patrick
and then be it will position whatever it finds out to your buyer as the truth, regardless of whether it is the truth or whether it reflects your branding or whatever it is. Right. And your buyer's going to believe that.

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Alex
I just watched this video with Sam Altman talking about OpenAI and GPT, and how he's fascinated with the fact that people. Exactly. To your point,

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Alex
whatever GPT is spitting out, like, that's that's the new truth, and they're not even really questioning it. And I do think over time there is going to be a shift away from that a little bit.

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Alex
But for right now, that's the reality of the situation. And

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Alex
it's funny too. Marcus Sheridan just did a webinar and he he said this, this takeaway that really stuck with me where there's two questions buyers have when they first start talking to you. It's

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Alex
roughly what's this going to cost. And then once they're once they're ready to make a purchase, then the same question happens.

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Alex
But one word changes and it goes exactly what is this going to cost.

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Alex
they can get that.

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Alex
But it's true. And if they can get that

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Alex
answer then yeah, they

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Alex
can get that answer on GPT. And they don't have to have that conversation. And they know exactly what they're getting into.

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Alex
That's where that one click or that that quick decision making really happens.

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Alex
And that's why these people

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Alex
are more qualified. To your point. Yeah,

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Alex
So for our viewers and our listeners out there and people that are on the endless customers system and are trying to implement this, which we think answer ranked pairs beautifully with endless customers. It's such a great value add.

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Alex
What advice do you have for them when it comes to this one?

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Alex
Click fast decision making AI world.

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Alex
should they be really trying to do to get around and to position themselves in a successful way, in a meaningful way?

00:18:04:14 - 00:18:07:10
Patrick
There's three things, okay. It's

00:18:07:10 - 00:18:19:10
Patrick
rethink your structure, rethink your approach to substance and start auditing relentlessly. And here's what I mean by those three okay. Structure.

00:18:19:10 - 00:18:26:11
Patrick
if you're practicing endless customers you should be already doing this. But if you're not you need to be building a knowledge hub,

00:18:26:11 - 00:18:27:14
Patrick
not just a blog.

00:18:27:14 - 00:18:36:18
Patrick
the way I think about that is rather than think about writing a blog post, think about it as you're writing a page in the encyclopedia of your industry.

00:18:36:18 - 00:18:45:14
Patrick
Every blog post that you're writing, you should treat it as if you're writing a page in the encyclopedia of your of your business. Okay?

00:18:45:14 - 00:18:48:22
Patrick
and you want that encyclopedia to have hundreds and hundreds of pages.

00:18:48:22 - 00:19:03:08
Patrick
So knowledge hubs that start to create a center of gravity around a, around your expertise, not your brand, your expertise, your value, your perspective, right. Your personality of your business.

00:19:03:08 - 00:19:10:10
Patrick
that's the structural thing that needs to happen. And yes, you can go and then distribute that in this, you know, diverse, multi-platform world.

00:19:10:10 - 00:19:22:21
Patrick
But creating that pillar strategy, that knowledge hub that can accumulate mass and become one of the places that I routinely checks to see what's true about this.

00:19:22:23 - 00:19:25:14
Patrick
How should I think about this? Right. That's one

00:19:25:14 - 00:19:49:09
Patrick
substance, right? And not no surprise. Focus on verifiable information. Start finding ways to support your content with verifiable, all trusted authority sources that you can link to. It's the opposite of back linking. Right back linking doesn't matter how many pages link to your site. Now I is going to say what things are linked from your site.

00:19:49:11 - 00:19:54:00
Patrick
Are you citing Harvard Business Review or are you citing some weird,

00:19:54:00 - 00:19:59:07
Patrick
obscure other website that doesn't have anything to do? Right. And that's where the pinata starts to come in,

00:19:59:07 - 00:20:07:18
Patrick
If your article is in a knowledge hub that is already having that center of gravity, and you're citing the Wall Street Journal to support the case you're making,

00:20:07:18 - 00:20:11:01
Patrick
that's how I is going to determine that your content has authority.

00:20:11:01 - 00:20:11:19
Patrick
So

00:20:11:19 - 00:20:24:10
Patrick
and that transparency and trust, all the things about big five and endless customers are true when it comes to substance. You got to stand for something. You got to showcase expertise. You got to educate. You got to be transparent, trustworthy, all those things.

00:20:24:10 - 00:20:24:16
Patrick
Right.

00:20:24:16 - 00:20:35:11
Patrick
And then the third one is audit. Now the market is flooding with high visibility tools. You can buy those and they all promise the same thing. See how you look in AI answers.

00:20:35:11 - 00:20:40:14
Patrick
Track your metrics. You know some of them potentially offer recommendations on what to do.

00:20:40:14 - 00:20:42:07
Patrick
You can buy those and they're useful.

00:20:42:07 - 00:20:43:18
Patrick
Or you can just do it yourself,

00:20:43:18 - 00:20:50:00
Patrick
set time aside or have your marketing team set time aside to improve your buyers.

00:20:50:03 - 00:20:51:22
Patrick
Right. This is unless customers

00:20:51:22 - 00:20:59:11
Patrick
impersonate your buyers. Log into ChatGPT. Act like someone who wants to buy what you sell and start asking ChatGPT questions

00:20:59:11 - 00:21:02:21
Patrick
that you think buyers would ask ChatGPT about and see what happens.

00:21:02:23 - 00:21:04:05
Alex
I love that it's it's almost

00:21:04:05 - 00:21:06:15
Alex
like role playing, but with with AI,

00:21:06:15 - 00:21:08:09
Alex
that's that's your fancy tech.

00:21:08:09 - 00:21:12:12
Patrick
To do this you need a GPT account and the right thinking.

00:21:12:12 - 00:21:15:02
Patrick
so I think if you combine those, those three things,

00:21:15:02 - 00:21:19:22
Patrick
you'll start to make a difference. The one mistake that I think people can make is

00:21:19:22 - 00:21:22:18
Patrick
relying too much on AI generated content,

00:21:22:18 - 00:21:27:07
Patrick
Do not fire your endless customers content writer in your company.

00:21:27:07 - 00:21:29:20
Patrick
Actually promote them. Give them more resources,

00:21:29:20 - 00:21:37:05
Patrick
Because if you flood your website with AI generated content, that doesn't do what I was talking about before, it's not going to work.

00:21:37:05 - 00:21:39:21
Alex
I think to your point, people are getting wise enough to see like

00:21:39:21 - 00:21:47:01
Alex
when copy is written with AI versus women or if it's AI and someone spun it with a human touch, you can start to see it now.

00:21:47:01 - 00:21:50:03
Alex
it's the turn off for me. I can tell pretty quickly on a web page if it's

00:21:50:03 - 00:21:55:04
Alex
just AI generated content, and I don't trust it as much as I would if somebody actually wrote it and took the time to do it.

00:21:55:04 - 00:21:56:14
Patrick
this is not me saying that,

00:21:56:14 - 00:22:04:15
Patrick
your copywriter now has to work over time, generate twice as much information, and everything has to be handwritten. And sure, right. With the big pen. Right. It's like

00:22:04:15 - 00:22:09:07
Patrick
your content writer should be using AI to write content. Don't get me wrong,

00:22:09:07 - 00:22:11:04
Patrick
but it's got to be human in the loop.

00:22:11:04 - 00:22:16:15
Patrick
It's got to be additive. Right? So. So your copywriter should be using AI to help flesh out ideas.

00:22:16:15 - 00:22:19:02
Patrick
should be using AI to do research

00:22:19:02 - 00:22:25:20
Patrick
that takes hours. Now it can be collapsed into minutes and it can use AI to proofread, polished tweak.

00:22:25:20 - 00:22:32:11
Patrick
use it for what it's good for, but don't use it instead of having the core, which is

00:22:32:11 - 00:22:36:02
Patrick
what is the human expertise that makes your business great?

00:22:36:02 - 00:22:45:11
Alex
have made some great points and you got my wheels spinning. Now on how does that play into creating an editorial calendar? So for the content manager, for the teams out there, that want to really leverage what you're talking about,

00:22:45:11 - 00:22:47:06
Alex
does that play into the day to day, and

00:22:47:06 - 00:22:53:21
Alex
how did that shift what you were doing, because you started out doing the answer 2 to 3 articles every week, really sticking to the plan.

00:22:53:21 - 00:22:57:08
Alex
what does that shift look like in in the day to day for folks now with AI.

00:22:57:08 - 00:22:59:08
Patrick
my first instinct is to say

00:22:59:08 - 00:23:03:09
Patrick
the amount of time we used to spend planning the editorial calendar.

00:23:03:09 - 00:23:11:01
Patrick
We we would use AI to do that. Like, that's a perfect example, like the function of planning the calendar itself takes a ton of time

00:23:11:01 - 00:23:13:21
Patrick
to get to the end result. I can do it in a fraction of the time.

00:23:13:21 - 00:23:16:23
Patrick
So use AI to plan the calendar. Not the topics,

00:23:16:23 - 00:23:22:10
Patrick
but the scheduling, the cadence. Right? The topic variability of like, hey, we're doing

00:23:22:10 - 00:23:26:18
Patrick
big five one and big five three. This week we're doing big five, two and four next week. Like whatever.

00:23:26:18 - 00:23:28:20
Patrick
So that's one, two. I would say,

00:23:28:20 - 00:23:35:06
Patrick
AI is a great sparring partner, I think, for writers to brainstorm, to workshop ideas, to find creative phrasing.

00:23:35:06 - 00:23:37:03
Patrick
Some models do better than others, like,

00:23:37:03 - 00:23:42:21
Patrick
I personally find Claude to be a much better content partner than GPT. Sam.

00:23:42:21 - 00:23:48:20
Patrick
I find Gemini to be a much better idea collaborator than a writing collaborator, for example.

00:23:48:20 - 00:23:53:20
Patrick
And maybe that's just about how I think and how I work with them. And everyone's different, right? But I think

00:23:53:20 - 00:24:09:18
Patrick
idea should be that you take the laborious and somewhat mechanical aspects of content creation and give those to AI, and the purpose is not then to create more content faster.

00:24:09:18 - 00:24:14:01
Patrick
The purpose is to liberate your content thinkers, to have more time

00:24:14:01 - 00:24:16:06
Patrick
to come up with better ideas,

00:24:16:06 - 00:24:19:04
Patrick
to how to showcase your human expertise,

00:24:19:04 - 00:24:26:11
Patrick
to build that knowledge hub right? To create substance, that center of gravity around your brand and around your expertise.

00:24:26:11 - 00:24:28:04
Alex
that makes total sense to me, I love that.

00:24:28:04 - 00:24:31:18
Alex
when I was reading through Answer Rank, a lot of it resonated with me. And I think with our team

00:24:31:18 - 00:24:33:01
Alex
here at impact as well.

00:24:33:01 - 00:24:41:20
Alex
Can you share some examples of brands that are dominating Answer Rank and aren't relying on this traffic based like vanity sort of metrics where it's like, oh, I have

00:24:41:20 - 00:24:43:10
Alex
all these followers, so you should trust me.

00:24:43:10 - 00:24:46:01
Alex
And like, how do we get that shift into a place where

00:24:46:01 - 00:24:47:21
Alex
brands are dominating in a meaningful way?

00:24:47:21 - 00:24:54:07
Patrick
NerdWallet is one that I've been super impressed by. Just, looking around

00:24:54:07 - 00:24:55:13
Patrick
the space a little bit.

00:24:55:13 - 00:25:00:08
Alex
That's funny you just mention that because I literally just signed up. I have an account with NerdWallet now because

00:25:00:08 - 00:25:04:11
Alex
I had a similar I think it's similar response to what I think you're going to say

00:25:04:11 - 00:25:05:13
Alex
they've been doing an excellent job.

00:25:05:13 - 00:25:12:04
Patrick
I would mention NerdWallet and I'm just glancing at my screen because I had pulled up another site recently. Oh, wirecutter.

00:25:12:04 - 00:25:14:23
Patrick
They are implementing the

00:25:14:23 - 00:25:18:06
Patrick
what I referred to earlier as sort of the technical

00:25:18:06 - 00:25:31:11
Patrick
eye visibility strategies into what they're doing. Right. So they're doing all of the things that you need to do to your content marketing to make it visible to AI.

00:25:31:11 - 00:25:38:23
Patrick
that's not to say that they're not doing the strategic things. I think they're having success because they were already doing some of the strategic things really well.

00:25:38:23 - 00:25:45:11
Patrick
they were creating that that semantics center of gravity around their subject matter.

00:25:45:11 - 00:25:52:19
Patrick
If they're not implementing, they ask you to answer. And endless customers, they're doing an amazing job having not read the books because

00:25:52:19 - 00:25:59:16
Patrick
they're taking the right approach towards answering key buyer questions, doing it in an honest, transparent way.

00:25:59:16 - 00:26:07:12
Patrick
trying to execute on that educator as leader type of persona within the brand. They were doing that already. So now they're adding those technical

00:26:07:12 - 00:26:12:14
Patrick
requirements for AI into the content and boom, right. It's happening. Right.

00:26:12:14 - 00:26:20:18
Patrick
So I think those are a couple of great examples. And it's no surprise HubSpot is doing fantastic in in AI.

00:26:20:18 - 00:26:22:00
Patrick
Why? Well,

00:26:22:00 - 00:26:30:19
Patrick
they're implementing the technical things that you need to implement to become visible, but they're implementing them on top of an already massive

00:26:30:19 - 00:26:33:18
Patrick
center of gravity around the authority,

00:26:33:18 - 00:26:36:01
Patrick
transparency and expertise.

00:26:36:01 - 00:26:43:23
Alex
And, you know, they they're on the leading edge of it to the point where they're so transparent that sometimes they rolled some AI tools out that didn't work, and they were like, hey, we tried. And guess what?

00:26:43:23 - 00:26:47:02
Alex
We don't like this, so we're going to scrap it or we're going to revamp it or whatever.

00:26:47:02 - 00:26:47:08
Alex
And

00:26:47:08 - 00:26:49:06
Alex
you know what? I love that because it's

00:26:49:06 - 00:26:55:07
Alex
it still builds, trust me, to show that there, even though it may not all be perfect, they're still pushing the envelope and trying to

00:26:55:07 - 00:26:58:03
Alex
give their customers the best tools and services possible.

00:26:58:03 - 00:26:59:08
Patrick
Yeah, 100%.

00:26:59:08 - 00:27:03:02
Alex
we talked about the do's and what people should be thinking about. What have you seen

00:27:03:02 - 00:27:08:14
Alex
that people are doing wrong and that like they should be aware of. And for our viewers and listeners like, hey, maybe don't do this or maybe

00:27:08:14 - 00:27:12:04
Alex
steer clear, be aware of some of these things that you shouldn't really be getting into.

00:27:12:04 - 00:27:17:21
Patrick
I think the, the number one thing I would say is assuming that

00:27:17:21 - 00:27:29:05
Patrick
the same type of thinking that worked well in search engine optimization is going to work well in this answer economy.

00:27:29:05 - 00:27:32:12
Patrick
It won't. And that can be scary,

00:27:32:12 - 00:27:44:07
Patrick
we actually haven't had a big sea change in the digital marketing industry like that since I don't know the the early 2000s when organic search really started to become a thing.

00:27:44:08 - 00:27:44:18
Patrick
Yeah. Right.

00:27:44:20 - 00:27:46:01
Alex
Like yeah, it's been a long time.

00:27:46:01 - 00:27:46:16
Patrick
It's so

00:27:46:16 - 00:27:59:07
Patrick
can be difficult for company owners and brand owners to sort of be forced into this place where it's like, wait a minute now I have to rethink. We were doing so good, right? And now I have to rethink everything.

00:27:59:07 - 00:28:06:20
Patrick
But you do, right? And the stakes are super high because again, you think about people implicitly trust AI.

00:28:06:20 - 00:28:10:12
Patrick
We know this is true because when direct traffic.

00:28:10:12 - 00:28:14:05
Patrick
Metrics go up on your site and your

00:28:14:05 - 00:28:17:23
Patrick
pipeline, and revenue conversion goes up simultaneously. It means

00:28:17:23 - 00:28:26:09
Patrick
is qualifying your buyer and they're arriving to your site to buy your product, right. So your website is important, but the function is different.

00:28:26:09 - 00:28:31:17
Patrick
let go of the idea that dominating organic search is your path to acquisition.

00:28:31:17 - 00:28:38:03
Patrick
Start to get comfortable with the idea that you've got to focus more on brand marketing, public relations.

00:28:38:03 - 00:28:43:21
Patrick
If that hasn't been a thing for you, it probably should be now, right? There's these big fundamental shifts.

00:28:43:21 - 00:28:48:11
Patrick
the answer is applying the old thinking to try and solve the new problem, which never works.

00:28:48:11 - 00:28:49:16
Patrick
I think that's a big mistake.

00:28:49:16 - 00:28:53:02
Patrick
think another mistake we already talked about a little bit, which is thinking that

00:28:53:02 - 00:28:59:08
Patrick
because I has removed the the limits of content creation, right.

00:28:59:11 - 00:29:04:01
Patrick
That content is unlimited. Now you can create a thousand blog posts in 30 minutes.

00:29:04:01 - 00:29:13:00
Patrick
because that is true, that you don't need craftsmanship in content

00:29:13:00 - 00:29:13:16
Patrick
and you do.

00:29:13:21 - 00:29:16:03
Alex
You definitely do. Yeah. That's a the.

00:29:16:05 - 00:29:18:22
Patrick
So thinking more is better in content marketing

00:29:18:22 - 00:29:21:07
Patrick
is a dead end. And I think that could be

00:29:21:07 - 00:29:22:18
Patrick
a big mistake. People are making.

00:29:22:18 - 00:29:24:10
Alex
Yeah. Great points. Very great points.

00:29:24:10 - 00:29:30:02
Alex
This has been an awesome conversation. And before we get into it yeah. No I've enjoyed it too. And before we get into I want you to

00:29:30:02 - 00:29:32:01
Alex
tell everybody about answer ranking where they can find it. But

00:29:32:01 - 00:29:33:08
Alex
yes, my favorite part of the show,

00:29:33:08 - 00:29:35:13
Alex
what's one thing? If you could sum up what we talked about,

00:29:35:13 - 00:29:37:08
Alex
one thing that people should really take away

00:29:37:08 - 00:29:39:05
Alex
as they listen to this conversation, what would it be?

00:29:39:05 - 00:29:41:16
Patrick
the way I'll answer that is I'll give you a little sneak peek.

00:29:42:04 - 00:29:42:17
Alex
Okay.

00:29:42:17 - 00:29:47:00
Patrick
I'm working on this idea of trust since

00:29:47:00 - 00:29:55:02
Patrick
the things that brands need to do, the signals that brands need to emit to

00:29:55:02 - 00:30:01:05
Patrick
foster buyer trust and AI authority at the same time.

00:30:01:05 - 00:30:05:00
Patrick
Right. And so there's a lot more coming on that topic.

00:30:05:00 - 00:30:19:19
Patrick
But I think calibrating the way that you leave this podcast and go back to your desk and start to work on your business around the idea of how are we approaching making ourselves in authority,

00:30:19:19 - 00:30:27:18
Patrick
and if your approach to being an authority is thumping your chest and and yelling, how smart I am, that's not it, right?

00:30:27:20 - 00:30:30:20
Patrick
It's got to be rooted in something better than that,

00:30:30:20 - 00:30:33:01
Patrick
And then you're going to have to sort of reexamine,

00:30:33:01 - 00:30:43:23
Patrick
how are we creating the center of gravity? How are we how are we distributing that center of gravity into a much more diverse ecosystem of places where we maybe didn't think we had a role to play, like Reddit,

00:30:43:23 - 00:30:53:06
Patrick
I think that trust is going to be it's always been important in this conversation. I think it's newly premium

00:30:53:06 - 00:31:05:00
Patrick
as a result of AI. There's a fresh new premium level of trust that is being created by AI and figuring out how to

00:31:05:00 - 00:31:12:06
Patrick
know the trust building behaviors and signals, as I would call them, for your business

00:31:12:06 - 00:31:16:01
Patrick
to play a role in that, I think, is is is a way to go forward.

00:31:16:01 - 00:31:23:14
Alex
love that trust is a premium and authority is is very important these days. And maybe beating your chest and trying to do the old,

00:31:23:14 - 00:31:32:05
Alex
showy, flashy kind of things that maybe worked at one point aren't going to work anymore. AI is too smart for that. So very, very great points, great takeaways.

00:31:32:05 - 00:31:35:09
Alex
Now I want to let you have a chance to tell people about answer rank and

00:31:35:09 - 00:31:37:22
Alex
where to find it, and a little bit more about it before we wrap up here.

00:31:37:22 - 00:31:38:06
Alex
Yeah.

00:31:38:06 - 00:31:40:06
Patrick
Yeah. So answer rank is a quick read.

00:31:40:06 - 00:31:47:23
Patrick
I describe it as the the first executive's field guide to navigating the shift from search to answer economy.

00:31:47:23 - 00:31:50:06
Patrick
It is both tactical and strategic.

00:31:50:06 - 00:31:56:12
Patrick
it's in three parts. It talks about sort of what's happening in a broad context and how important that changes.

00:31:56:13 - 00:32:01:03
Patrick
It talks about answer rank is sort of this, this new metric

00:32:01:03 - 00:32:12:09
Patrick
the proposed which is it's misleading the title because it's not about ranking. It's a for your answer rank is how authoritative or how trustworthy is your brand across search and AI and with humans.

00:32:12:09 - 00:32:20:07
Patrick
that's answer rank and it it goes technical and talks about, you know, some of the visibility technicals that that I talked about here on the show.

00:32:20:07 - 00:32:27:00
Patrick
It also goes strategic and suggests mindset shifts that business leaders need to adopt when they think about

00:32:27:00 - 00:32:30:21
Patrick
the marketplace landscape, their own brand and content behavior.

00:32:30:21 - 00:32:40:16
Patrick
And then it proposes at the end something I think everyone should be aware of, which is the monetization engine of AI, is not turned on yet,

00:32:40:16 - 00:32:47:06
Patrick
but it's going to be there is a a rapidly approaching future where you will have to pay for

00:32:47:06 - 00:32:50:13
Patrick
the inclusion in AI answers

00:32:50:13 - 00:32:53:00
Patrick
the way that you pay for sponsored links in Google.

00:32:53:00 - 00:32:56:21
Patrick
And I'm telling you, that's going to be the most expensive real estate on the internet.

00:32:56:21 - 00:33:06:03
Patrick
Now is the moment when you have the time to earn that inclusion in those AI answers by making the moves described in the book, and that we've talked about here on the podcast,

00:33:06:03 - 00:33:08:09
Patrick
and claim some of that real estate, well, it's free

00:33:08:09 - 00:33:11:22
Patrick
before they start charging for it and it becomes premium.

00:33:11:22 - 00:33:16:10
Patrick
And that's not that's not years away. That's 12 to 18 months.

00:33:16:16 - 00:33:18:12
Alex
Yeah. So rapidly approaching.

00:33:18:12 - 00:33:21:19
Patrick
So that's the summary of the book. You can get it from my website. It's free.

00:33:21:19 - 00:33:31:08
Patrick
My website is the sovereign cmo.com. And if you go to the sovereign cmo.com/answer rank all one word, you can get it there.

00:33:31:08 - 00:33:37:03
Alex
Yeah, absolutely. We'll be dropping a link. And it's it is an easy read. We've read it here and it's worth checking out. So

00:33:37:03 - 00:33:41:03
Alex
definitely go to the website and read their answer rank. And Patrick,

00:33:41:03 - 00:33:43:01
Alex
thank you for your time. This has been such a great conversation.

00:33:43:05 - 00:33:45:14
Patrick
Thank you. It's been super fun. I love talking about this.

00:33:45:17 - 00:33:50:23
Alex
I can tell you're super passionate about it and it just shows. And I think that's such a great and special quality.

00:33:50:23 - 00:33:53:11
Alex
And we're definitely gonna have to have you back on the show because this is,

00:33:53:11 - 00:34:00:02
Alex
can't wait. Yeah, very relevant topic. So again, thank you for your time and for everybody out there watching and listening. This is endless customers.

00:34:00:02 - 00:34:02:05
Alex
I'm host Alex. We'll catch you on the next episode.