Agentic Buying: How to Prepare Your Website for AI [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 179]

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

[00:00:00] Your next customer may never visit your website until AI has already decided whether or not you're worth considering. This is already happening. ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools are researching companies, comparing options, and telling buyers who they should talk to. So the question is, when AI does that research in your market, does it recommend you?

[00:00:20] In this episode, Mandy York and I break down agentic buying and what it actually means, why website traffic is changing so dramatically, and what makes websites easier for AI to find, understand, and trust. And we'll give you a really simple test you could run today to find out why AI is or isn't recommending your company and what you can do about it.

[00:00:41] Let's get into it.

[00:00:42] ​

[00:01:26] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast, and we are here with one of our expert coaches, one of my favorite people in the whole world, Mandy York. Welcome to the Endless Customers Podcast.

[00:01:37] Mandy York: Hey, Bob. How are you?

[00:01:39] Bob Ruffolo: Doing great. Now, you haven't been on the show in a while, apparently.

[00:01:42] Mandy York: have not. I have not. We've been really, really busy around here

[00:01:45] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, well, um, glad to have you back on. We have a great topic today. We're gonna talk about agentic buying, and the world is changing rapidly, and I know you've been all over it working with your clients. But before we go into that, uh, Mandy, for those that don't know who you are, and I know most of the Endless [00:02:00] Customers c- uh, community knows who you are, and you've worked with a lot of them, um, what is your role here at IMPACT?

[00:02:05] Mandy York: Yeah. So I have been at IMPACT for several years now, and definitely have worked with a lot of the folks that I hope are watching this right now. Um, but formally, my title is Endless Customers Coach here. Um, I spend most of my days working with marketing teams, sales teams, um, executive suites, and helping them implement the Endless Customers framework

[00:02:29] Bob Ruffolo: Okay. So by the way, she is underselling herself right now. She's worked with many of our clients, and almost every time somebody is on the podcast, they talk directly about working with you. Um, you're an incredible content trainer. You stay ahead on all things AI. Um, you are just phenomenal with the work that you do, and, and I'll brag for you.

[00:02:49] Bob Ruffolo: Um, so anyways, um, she is incredibly smart, and we're gonna go into a really good topic today, which is, uh, the world is changing with, um, agentic buying. Uh, if we were to think [00:03:00] back, uh, say, three years ago, um, humans used websites. They would go to Google, they'd land on pages, and they'd browse the website.

[00:03:09] Bob Ruffolo: They'd do their own research. If they liked what they saw, they stayed. If they didn't, they'd hit the back button, and eventually they'd just go through all the content. They'd say, "Do I want to reach out or buy from this company? Yes or no?" And then they would go ahead and do that. But now we're living in the world of AI.

[00:03:22] Bob Ruffolo: So Mandy, set the tone for us. What has changed or what is changing? What are we... I- if there's one thing that everyone needs to take away from this episode, we'll front load it right now. What do we need to know that's changing in this AI world with websites?

[00:03:37] Mandy York: Yeah. So that's a big question. Um, I would say that the main thing that impacts the majority of our clients whenever it's related to the way that AI is changing this landscape is that we are in this kind of in-between world currently, where you have to both appease these robots, the AI [00:04:00] agents, the, the Google algorithm that we've all always been fighting, um, social media algorithms, all these different things, then once you have played that game and you've convinced these robots to show you to actual human beings, then you still have to do the human being half of that, right?

[00:04:18] Mandy York: Like, you still have to connect to your audience with the same messaging and, and marketing and, and strategies that you have always used. But I think that's a difficult place that a lot of our clients are in currently because it's hard to do both equal measure at the same time.

[00:04:35] Bob Ruffolo: All right. Uh, I, and I'm looking down, but I'm ... You just gave a webinar on this, but let's back, get back to basics. I pretty much just asked that, right? What does it mean when you say ... I guess I can still go there, right? What do you mean when you say agentic buying?

[00:04:50] Mandy York: Yeah

[00:04:53] Bob Ruffolo: Great. So y- you just gave a webinar on this, and, um, a- and getting back to the real fundamental b- [00:05:00] basics, agentic buying.

[00:05:02] Bob Ruffolo: What does agentic buying mean?

[00:05:04] Mandy York: Oh, this is a big question as well. So agentic buying is one of the things that I think that we are in the early stages of. So in the webinar that I just gave, which everybody should go watch because it goes very in-depth into all of these things, but, um, I talked about, uh, a real-life experience that I had.

[00:05:23] Mandy York: So earlier this year, I took a big cross-country camping trip, and I think this makes it easier for you to understand what agentic buying actually looks like in real life. So whenever I was planning that trip, I went straight into a combination of Claude and ChatGPT and a couple of different AI platforms and just started typing things in. This is the state that I'm gonna be in, this is the type of things that I want to see, I need somewhere that I can camp that night, or we need somewhere that we're gonna be able to get dinner that night, or we need a hotel for this particular leg of the trip. And so I'm, I'm getting these [00:06:00] recommendations, right, back from the AI, and it's giving me a list of, you know, two or three different options that I could have. I'm selecting one of those options, and I, present day, am moving, or, you know, this year, am moving that information over into a spreadsheet for me to go and book later. The way that agentic buying, the trajectory that we are on, is at some point, not today, but in the next couple of years, it's gonna be possible for you to just connect your debit or credit card directly to that AI agent, and then it will go and actually make those purchases for you. We are not currently at that point now where you're gonna be able to completely make a, a buying decision without human input, but literal billions of dollars are being bumped-- pumped into that technology currently.

[00:06:54] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:06:55] Mandy York: right now, agentic buying means we have to be able to show up [00:07:00] for these AI algorithms to be one of those two or three options that are suggested to people like me, who are booking a trip or planning dinner or, um, you know, buying something for their home. in the future, the me part of that equation, we do anticipate that part being completely gone.

[00:07:20] Bob Ruffolo: You know, it, it's interesting you're saying that because I, uh, like you, planned a trip earlier this year. Um, we went to Italy in June, and so all April and May I was doing very similar research. And, uh, you know, where if this was a few years ago, I was going to Google asking questions and going in and out of websites, and I didn't do that.

[00:07:41] Bob Ruffolo: I went to Claude, and on Claude I would just ask, "Hey, what's a good restaurant?" And I gave all sorts of criteria, and it came back and said, "Based on what you're looking for, this is your best restaurant. And maybe if you're looking for a couple of backups, here are a couple of other options." And I would say, "Great.

[00:07:59] Bob Ruffolo: Go put that [00:08:00] into our spreadsheet. Go put that into our itinerary," and it went ahead and did that. Um, also listening to you, what, what I also find really interesting is that I think we're actually a li- even closer than, uh, you made it sound because e-commerce, for example, um, I'm not sure if you could check out yet, but it's presenting you products and, and basically within one click if it goes...

[00:08:21] Bob Ruffolo: If it's an Amazon product, you just one click and it's right there, right? So it's making all that purchasing decisions for you. Um, and I think you can actually through connectors, maybe it's a Chrome connection, you can just have your Claude or your ChatGPT control your browser and probably complete the checkout for you with permission

[00:08:41] Mandy York: Exactly. Yeah, you absolutely can. I think you see that more currently in e-com, um, or in B2B. It's beginning more common. I think we have maybe 18 months, until it becomes widespread usage among just regular people [00:09:00] making everyday purchases, especially large purchases. Like, if you're a homeowner and you're gonna get a new roof, I don't anticipate that happening next month, where you're gonna go make a $20,000 purchase without having oversight. But we are definitely headed that way, for sure

[00:09:16] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. A- and the reality is that if, if no one takes anything else from this, is that, um, AI is going through your website on behalf of your prospects and giving them all that information, um, and getting them as far down the buying process as possible with the goal of getting them all the way through the buying process, which again, we're probably, for most industries, we're not there yet, but we're, we could definitely get through the 80%.

[00:09:43] Bob Ruffolo: The 80% we've always talked about with They Ask You Answer, that's happening agentically right now, and, uh, a- and, but that's where we're going. So, um, you know, we also talk about zero-click. So how does this agentic [00:10:00] buying and zero-click play into it? I think we kind of alluded to that a little bit, but let's be very clear, 'cause people may have heard the term zero-click, and now we're talking about agentic buying.

[00:10:08] Bob Ruffolo: How do the two go together?

[00:10:10] Mandy York: I was hoping you would go there with the next question. So everybody has been watching their analytics go absolutely haywire for probably the last year, year and a half.

[00:10:20] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Yep

[00:10:21] Mandy York: of stats to kind of frame this is about seventy percent of all Google searches now end in zero-click behavior.

[00:10:29] Mandy York: Um, and about half of all internet traffic is now made up of non-human, so the robots. of that seventy percent of those searches that do not end in a click, they're just getting it from the AI Overview or, um, a bot is feeding it to them through a Claude or a ChatGPT window, about three-quarters of those are for top-of-funnel searches.

[00:10:54] Mandy York: So whenever I try to explain this to my clients, I say it's very, very likely that you're seeing your [00:11:00] overall traffic and everything to your site go down. Your click-through rates are probably going down in Google Search Console. Um, you're, you're seeing all these things, and on the surface, they feel like alarming numbers. But I always try to tell people, as long as that's not-- if you're not seeing a direct correlation with the sales in your business also going down at that rate, then it's fine. okay if people are not coming all the way to the site to read your article about what is an HVAC system, because that person didn't necessarily have buying intent to begin with. They might have just had a random curiosity, or it was a kid in high school looking something up for their shop class, you know. It wasn't necessarily something that was gonna result in a sale. Now, of the remaining searches that you have there, those are heavily concentrated in bottom-of-the-funnel content. So where do I buy this thing? Um, [00:12:00] specific brand name you know. They're, they're very specific and so that traffic that is coming through to your site is far more likely to make a decision that leads to a purchase, whether that's a contact us or it's a literal buy now button on the website. Those do still tend to be human. just in general, when we're having this AI versus zero-click discussion, we want to make sure that we understand that what content and what pages do we have that are resulting in zero-click behavior, and that actually matter? Because in a lot of the cases that I look at, it doesn't, it doesn't impact that bottom line.

[00:12:44] Bob Ruffolo: You know, it's so interesting you're saying that. Um, you know, if, if we think about our own behaviors, and everyone listening to this, and if you're new to these concepts, um, you know, you probably remember a time where you would say questions like, "What [00:13:00] do I need? H- what do I have to know about this? What's out there?

[00:13:03] Bob Ruffolo: How does this compare to this? How do I make a buying decision like this?" And we would go to Google, and we would go to Google, and we'd see a bunch of links, and we'd go in and out of links. And that's how we learned the answers to these, we'll call them top of the funnel, but they're, like, the early buying process questions we all have that we're all looking for answers for.

[00:13:26] Bob Ruffolo: Um, and what's interesting, I'll, I'll say here, too, it's like we've lost that human traffic going to our website, but then there's invisible traffic we're not really talking about, which is bots going to our website and doing that research. And we all know, we go to these, these platforms, ChatGPT, Claude, and we ask the question, and then it shows you a whole bunch of websites.

[00:13:49] Bob Ruffolo: It's like browsing 10 websites, and then browsing 10 more websites, and then browsing 10 more websites. In a minute and a half, it's gone to, like, 50 different websites. So there's still traffic going to [00:14:00] your site, still consuming the information on your site. It's just being done through AI, which then comes back and says, "I've looked at 50 websites, so you didn't have to.

[00:14:09] Bob Ruffolo: I did it in a minute and a half. Would've taken you three days to do this, and here's all the answers that you need to know." And we're like, "Great, that is so much better than it was three years ago when I had to spend three hours going in and out of websites." But, and w- again, sticking to our own buying behavior, it's the same thing.

[00:14:24] Bob Ruffolo: Then when we say, "Okay, thank you for the answer, chat. I'm gonna take it from here." And usually that's much more to what Mandy just said, what we would call bottom of the funnel or much closer to making a buying decision, and that's when we're saying, um, "I wanna see this for myself. I wanna go through the website and do my final confidence check before I either check out or book that meeting."

[00:14:49] Bob Ruffolo: And, and that's, that's the traffic you're still probably getting. And Mandy, you're very, very smart, just like you tell your clients. As long as those numbers are not going down, they keep going [00:15:00] up, you're doing probably as well as anyone could be doing in an agent tech world because your top of the funnel content you're still creating is still leading people to your brand, to your website.

[00:15:12] Bob Ruffolo: And when they're ready to start getting close to a, a decision, they're still on your site and ready to find you

[00:15:19] Mandy York: Yeah, absolutely

[00:15:21] Bob Ruffolo: Great. Now, you just mentioned that that's gonna continue to change 'cause that... Do you think at some point, this wasn't one of the questions we talked about saying today, but do you think websites will ever go away?

[00:15:34] Mandy York: I don't think that websites are ever gonna go away. I do think the way that they're structured will likely change in a fundamental way. now, a lot of people play this game where it's as much as possible. You cast as wide of a net as you possibly can. You publish a ton of blogs, you have a ton of service pages, you have location pages, you have all of these different things, [00:16:00] you don't necessarily need all of that for an AI agent understand because the AI agent doesn't need the nuance. so I think there's definitely a world where websites get much simpler, but I also think that you are going to need a website of some form for the legitimacy factor for the humans that are at the end of that buying decision

[00:16:26] Bob Ruffolo: Okay. So, so what does that look like? Actually, that was one of our questions here I had, was if I'm a business owner right now, how would I even know whether an AI agent can find to use my website in a way a real buyer would? So I think that these are connecting now. So you're saying website might have to be simpler.

[00:16:45] Bob Ruffolo: Um, what needs to be on a website today that's different than what would've maybe been on a website three years ago?

[00:16:53] Mandy York: So I talked about this in the webinar as well. I think that your website... And the [00:17:00] easiest-- Let me back up. The easiest way to check, in my opinion, if you don't have a developer, and you're just, like some person that owns a business, easiest thing that you can do is hop over to Google or Chat or Claude and type in something that one of your customers would type in. Preferably do this in a Google incognito window.

[00:17:20] Bob Ruffolo: Mm-hmm

[00:17:21] Mandy York: in, "I am a homeowner to get a new roof in Western Kentucky." And you're gonna type that in and then ask it to suggest the best possible person for you. Whenever I did this in the webinar, a lot of people, their competition came up, or they didn't come up at all, or maybe they did come up, but the information that showed was incorrect. And so the fastest route you have is go see what are... what is your audience seeing, what, uh, is your buyer seeing whenever they type those things in. And if the information's correct-- incorrect, go [00:18:00] correct it. And if you're not showing up at all, follow that question up with, "Well, I heard about ABC Roofing Company, why didn't you recommend them?" And then the AI will literally tell you why it didn't recommend you. And most commonly, when I've done this with clients, it's because you have some random review platform out there that you got one bad review on, and then you never got any other reviews on that platform, so now there's just this black mark on your, like, record with the AI. or it was your website is blocked by, by some sort of, um, TXT record or something. And so a lot of people aren't even aware that they have those sorts of things on their website because you had an agency build it or, you know, you don't even control your website, you know, whatever reason. And so going directly to the AI to find that information can give you a pretty good starting list of what do you need to do to make it easier to find you.

[00:18:58] Bob Ruffolo: Absolutely, [00:19:00] absolutely brilliant right there. I mean, it, the, the most simple thing is if AI's not rec- recommending you, just ask why.

[00:19:07] Mandy York: Yeah. And it's so, it's so deceptively simple that people, whenever I tell them to do that, they're like, "What do you mean? Isn't there some big

[00:19:14] Bob Ruffolo: Oh

[00:19:14] Mandy York: answer?" And I'm like, "No, there's not. Just go experience your business the way that your audience experiences your business."

[00:19:22] Bob Ruffolo: And, and, you know, we've talked about this in the show a lot. Um, it's artificial intelligence, and all it's trying to do is, um, think and act like humans would and, and, you know, a- and be on the behalf of a human and the behaviors that they would take, um, just do it a lot faster and, and really empower people better, right?

[00:19:43] Bob Ruffolo: So that's what AI is trying to do, just think like a buyer. And every company and every market and the way people make decisions in those markets is all gonna be a little bit different.

[00:19:55] Bob Ruffolo: It's all gonna be different. And what, what I think is pretty impressive, especially ChatGPT will [00:20:00] do this, probably even more than, uh, the other platforms, is when you go through and you say, um, "How would you make a decision like this?" Or, "What does this company need to do?" What it's gonna weight and prioritize for every type of business and every market is always gonna be a little bit different.

[00:20:18] Bob Ruffolo: So that's why I think what you just said was so brilliant, is you have to ask, "Why didn't you recommend this company?" And then follow that up with another question of saying, um, "What does this company have to do so you would recommend it more?" And you might be shocked at what it puts weight on in your market.

[00:20:36] Bob Ruffolo: In one market, sa- it might say, "Oh, this chamber of commerce has a great directory of roofers, and, and, and those that are getting reviews, and we went with this one 'cause they... This other company besides you because they had more reviews on this really weird site that they just felt was the most important site to pull from," which might be different i- if you went five towns over and, and you're another roofer.

[00:20:59] Bob Ruffolo: [00:21:00] So you have to go through that process. And the other part was, uh, also interesting because we've, a few weeks ago, talked about Reddit. All these AI platforms are using Reddit, and all of a sudden it's like, well, we're not using Reddit anymore. This changes. So the next thing you have to do is every few months you need to be asking it again.

[00:21:17] Bob Ruffolo: And if you're still not being recommended, why? What do we have to do different? You might get some different recommendations. You go to a different platform, you might get different recommendations there, too. So I think what Mandy just said was the, the most important thing that you can do here is, "What are you...

[00:21:31] Bob Ruffolo: What do we have to do so you can recommend us more?" Um, and it's about making your site easier to understand, really. At the end of the day it's gonna be a lot about your site and about, a lot about what's off your site.

[00:21:42] Mandy York: Yeah, for sure. For sure

[00:21:45] Bob Ruffolo: Um, you've talked about different layers of what makes a site agent-ready. Um, without getting overly technical, but we have a little bit of a geeky audience, so do, do it both ways. Let's get, let's, uh, not technical, and then let's get really technical. [00:22:00] Um, what is the difference between something a business owner or marketer could tackle themselves this month and something that generally needs a developer?

[00:22:08] Mandy York: Okay, so I have a different answer to this question than a lot of people might have, and it's that I believe a business owner or content person, organic specialist, marketing person, think they can do a lot more than we give them credit for. I think you have to go research. You might have to learn some new skills, but I think they can do a lot more than we give them credit for.

[00:22:30] Mandy York: So some of the, the really high-level stuff that anybody could probably do without even having to work that hard at figuring it out, make sure that your website has a clear site structure. You've got good headings. Make sure that there's a single H1 on each page. It's got an H2. It breaks down to H3s. All of those things are clear and easy for, um, the AI to read. Make sure that you're directly answering questions. If you've got a blog, for [00:23:00] example, that's titled How Much Does X Cost, and then you beat around the bush for the whole blog, then the AI is going to skip over that because it's too difficult to discern an answer from.

[00:23:09] Bob Ruffolo: Mm-hmm

[00:23:10] Mandy York: Um, so make sure that you're being all of the things that we've always said through Endless Customers.

[00:23:14] Mandy York: Um, you're truthful, you're honest, you're transparent. The answers are obvious. It's structured clearly. You have, um, good EEAT signals, and if you're watching this and you're not brushed up on what EEAT is, that would be probably your first bit of homework coming out of this is go read every single piece of literature you can find on EEAT signals. Um, but that stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, and those four different categories show... I'll be talking about this at Impact Live if you want to go watch that talk, um, or Endless Customers Live if you want to

[00:23:50] Bob Ruffolo: That's right.

[00:23:51] Mandy York: that talk. Um, those four things are going to make a massive difference in whether or not an AI recommends you. Um, you can [00:24:00] probably even, as a business owner, you can learn how to write your own schema and, and deploy schema. As a matter of fact, the AI will write the schema for you, and then it's an exercise in copying and pasting, which I'm positive everyone watching this can do. Whenever you get into the developer side is when you start changing those TXT records.

[00:24:19] Mandy York: It's when you start creating machine-readable resource packets. It's when you start, uh, changing the back-end code, um, and metadata on the site to help bolster those EEAT signals. And typically, I do not recommend that a marketing person or a business owner to do those things on their own because the stakes are a little bit too high.

[00:24:44] Mandy York: If you get it a little bit wrong, then you can make a really big problem that's hard for you to trace back to why did this problem happen. that sort of thing, I would recommend a developer, but if it's just on-page work, for it.

[00:24:57] Bob Ruffolo: I, I love that you said that, [00:25:00] um, because we are living in a world right now where any business owner could build their own website without anyone on their marketing team or working with an agency or, or a development firm. They can do their own content program without anyone. They could, but should they?

[00:25:19] Bob Ruffolo: That's a totally different question, and I think that's the, that's something that we're not talking enough about is that the world's like, "Oh, we're not gonna need marketers anymore. We're not gonna need the, all these people because AI can do it for the business owner." But there's still a learning curve, to your point.

[00:25:34] Bob Ruffolo: You can break things, and it's gonna come back and say, "Schema this, that, that," and e- and as a business owner that's new to this, you might say, "Oh my God, I have no idea what any of this means." And maybe you don't know n- need to know what it means. Just know that you have somebody on your team that can do that for you or, or whatever it is.

[00:25:50] Bob Ruffolo: Um, it's still an exercise in delegation and making sure that you're doing what you should be doing as a business owner and that th- these things are... You're using AI, you're, you're being as efficient [00:26:00] as you possibly can, but you might still have to delegate these things

[00:26:02] Mandy York: Yeah. Many of our clients are They're not brand new businesses, right? We're not talking about a startup environment where everybody's super scrappy and the owner of your business is, is out here learning how to do code on the weekends. We're looking at established, usually mid-size businesses that the owner or CEO, president, whoever, leader, main leader of that business, I don't want them actually bogged down in figuring out how to put schema on a blog page.

[00:26:33] Mandy York: It's not the most productive use of their time. And I kind of preach this at our clients a lot, that there's a balance. There's a work-life balance between is this person's skill set, so a business owner is gonna be an entrepreneur. They're going to have, um, you know, probably people skills and development skills and that big visionary thinking that we talk about. And I need other people, probably assisted by AI, [00:27:00] who are capable of doing what I call the nuts and bolts of that work that hold it all together. So yeah, definitely make sure that you're building up a strong AI-forward team that is willing to look for those efficiencies and actually build that vision that the, the business owner has. But you're gonna need all kinds of people

[00:27:23] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, for sure. Um, we've been talking a lot about this even with our own internal marketing team. We've been talking about it in the expert exchange, uh, that- which is a meeting that we bring all of our coaches and community together on, on Mondays. Um, and the idea that roles are shifting so fast, and what should you be looking for for a member on your team?

[00:27:48] Bob Ruffolo: And I would say the number one thing you should be looking for is agility. Now, probably curiosity and willingness to learn, anything that goes in with agility. Um, the worst thing that I think any business can [00:28:00] do right now is have members of their team that have this mindset that, " I was hired to do this job.

[00:28:05] Bob Ruffolo: This is my job. This is what I'm doing." Because that job that you were hired for may not be needed six months later, and that just might be the reality of, like, that AI just took that job from you, but the business needs you to do this now. And you're totally qualified to do it, but you have to be willing to learn some new skills, be curious, and be agile to say, "I'm gonna do things differently now."

[00:28:27] Bob Ruffolo: If you're a content manager hired from a business three years ago, your role is dramatically different today. If you're just doing what you were hired for three years ago, you're doing your business a disservice if you're not being agile and doing things totally differently today

[00:28:41] Mandy York: I sit down in my conversations with folks that I'm training, and I will literally tell them, "All right. Today we're gonna work on X, and six months from now, you're not gonna need this information anymore. This is not going to be true at that time. It might be parts of it, but it's [00:29:00] going to have evolved into something that I can't even predict currently. I can give you what my best guess, what my professional judgment's gonna be about where this is gonna go, but I know enough to know that I'm constantly surprised about what new thing comes out or what new tool or which way the market shifts with those things." And I would say agility and coachability and curiosity, which are three traits that thankfully tend to go hand in hand in

[00:29:27] Bob Ruffolo: Yes

[00:29:28] Mandy York: in...

[00:29:29] Mandy York: We call them A players here. Um, but you've got to have people that are willing to shift with that, and they're not resistant to change.

[00:29:38] Bob Ruffolo: That's right.

[00:29:39] Mandy York: Yeah. I don't believe

[00:29:40] Bob Ruffolo: That's right

[00:29:40] Mandy York: constant changing of things all of the time for the sake of change, but right now we're all in the same hurricane of, of, of shifting priorities, and you have to be willing to go with that flow

[00:29:52] Bob Ruffolo: So let's bring this entire conversation back to, to, um, to where we started. So the world is changing. [00:30:00] Um, we got robots doing research, uh, on behalf of our real prospects and buyers. Our website is where that research is being done. Used to be done by humans. Now it's being done by robots. We're seeing traffic drop.

[00:30:13] Bob Ruffolo: We're seeing zero click happening. Um, and then AI is going to go through a whole bunch of websites just like a buyer might, and then at the end of the day it's gonna say, "I did all the research for you and you should contact this company and maybe here's a couple of backups." You have to have an, a website that's ready for AI to recommend you and eventually do checking out for you or, or do the final consultation request for you.

[00:30:39] Bob Ruffolo: Um, and that's, that's happening in some areas, e-commerce, getting closer in all industries 'cause that's where the world is going. Uh, we have to have a website that's prepared for that. We have to address certain things on our site. We also have to do certain things off our site. Um, and that's trust signals and that's just being very clear with our content.

[00:30:58] Bob Ruffolo: So [00:31:00] who is ahead of the curve here, uh, Mandy? Is there anyone doing this really well? And, and also I guess if we're not doing this really well, should we be freaking out right now?

[00:31:08] Mandy York: If you're not doing it really well, you not necessarily be freaking out just yet. But if you're

[00:31:15] Bob Ruffolo: Just call Mandy.

[00:31:16] Mandy York: it ... If you're not doing really well by next month, maybe then you start freaking out. Like, I, I ... That's the kind of the point that I wanna make, is every single day, the game that we're all playing gets more complex.

[00:31:28] Mandy York: And so I'm gonna talk about a good example of this here in just a

[00:31:31] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:31:31] Mandy York: people that are ahead of the curve. But before I, I kinda jump into that, I wanna address this kind of conversation, which is the Like, if we go back and look at my trip, the recommendations that I got for hotels to stay in or restaurants or bars to visit or hiking trails to go on, whatever, I know in my heart that there were probably things out there that I would've liked more than the [00:32:00] things that the AI recommended to me, but I never saw them because the people that own those things, that restaurant, that hotel, they don't know that all of this is going on. And so they have a website or a product or a service or whatever that is functionally invisible to me. And part of that makes me a little bit sad, 'cause I'm a, like, a, a big proponent of the small hole-in-the-wall bar or, you know, like, the, the little, tiny family ho- owned hotel. But single day that we move through this, more and more people are picking up these strategies and taking that little mom and pop place and shoving them further and further underwater, and they don't even know.

[00:32:45] Mandy York: A lot of those little mom and pop places have no idea that we are all out here playing this game, and they, they haven't even picked up the rule book yet. And so if I'm gonna give a good example of a very small team that is near and dear to me [00:33:00] that I would recommend people go look at, I would actually recommend people check out Honest Fix.

[00:33:07] Mandy York: So they have worked with me for a long time across a couple of different businesses, and they have a really great page up which, Bob, I hope we can include, like, the link so that people can go look at that during this podcast whenever they see it.

[00:33:21] Bob Ruffolo: I won't include it, but somebody will. Yes.

[00:33:23] Mandy York: Somebody opened it. Um, they have a really great page in there that is specifically dedicated for how they want AIs AI agents to represent their business to their audience.

[00:33:36] Mandy York: So it goes through everything from this is the exact name, this is the location, this is the phone number, this is the owner. Like, here's all these base details, and then there's a section on this is the language that we want you to use. We-- This is, um, our, you know, guarantees that we have. These are what they actually mean. This is the cost of things. There's, you know, all of [00:34:00] these big long lists of things exactly telling the AI what they should be putting in those AI search results. There's a packet of machine-readable resources. There's, you know, code, schema, all of these things, and it's all put on one page, and when you open that page, it very obviously is not for human beings.

[00:34:18] Mandy York: It says that right across the top. I don't remember the exact language, but it's like, "This is for AI agents." And so if a human does happen upon it, they're gonna go, "Huh, that's weird," and then move on. But for the AI, that is extremely powerful,

[00:34:30] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. You know, it's interesting what you were saying about how AI couldn't discover certain brands, so there- therefore I never found them. Um, you know, a lot of what we talk about, I call it common sense marketing, because it's like you're basically having a business. You should be doing a great job with your business in terms of your products, services, offering, whatever you do.

[00:34:56] Bob Ruffolo: If it's a bar, if you're a location, if you're... Whatever it is, you should be running [00:35:00] a great business. Um, and therefore, if you run a great business, you should have a great reputation. Um, and there really is equal things the way I, I see it and, and I think we... It's what we're putting on our site so it makes us more discoverable, which is really within our control.

[00:35:16] Bob Ruffolo: It's like having great marketing for ourselves. But then there's also trust signals, and that is really some stuff that we can help control in terms of pe- making sure people are doing those things, are gonna give trust signals back to us. But also if we just run a great business, people might just do that themselves for us.

[00:35:33] Bob Ruffolo: There, you know, when people go to a Facebook community and say, "Does anyone know a great roofer or a great bar or a great s- you know, hairstylist," whatever it is, and everyone's like, "Oh, you have to go to this person. They're outstanding." And all of a sudden, like, you know, you get 50 responses and 30 of them are all saying the same thing.

[00:35:50] Bob Ruffolo: Those are all just trust signals. Again, AI is just trying to mimic all this stuff. That's why it becomes common sense. So build a great [00:36:00] business and have a great reputation and, and I think if you do that, even if you don't do it well on your website, your trust signals will still hold up your brand. Um, but yeah, if you're not doing your own stuff right, just like if you're not marketing your business, you don't have a good sales team, you're not doing this stuff, you're not gonna have as many customers as you possibly could.

[00:36:23] Bob Ruffolo: In this case, you missed Mandy on her road trip.

[00:36:25] Mandy York: Yeah

[00:36:25] Mandy York: for sure. And everything that you just said I'm gonna tack onto for just a second. all of those things, the, the off-page stuff that other people do, they, they mention you in the Reddit thread, they post about you on Facebook, they... The influencer does a, a, you know, unboxing video on TikTok, whatever it is. All of those things are directly stated by Google to be authority signals. Remember E-E-A-T. It's, it's all authority signals. You can't actually make your own authority alone. You can to a certain extent. You can show people, [00:37:00] "You know, I've got certifications in this thing, and I have this education." But it's a much, much more powerful signal for Google and AI if people unrelated to you are, are up that authority that you have, for sure

[00:37:16] Bob Ruffolo: So Mandy, to our listeners, if they were gonna do just one thing right now after listening to this episode, what is the one thing that they should do?

[00:37:31] Mandy York: Go open your website and start looking at each page of that site to ensure that it is as easy as possible a robot to access that information. I say that because somewhere in the world right now, there is some person in a boardroom whose whole job is to make it cheaper [00:38:00] for Claude to find answers.

[00:38:02] Mandy York: So following what you said earlier about common sense marketing, if we know there's some guy at Anthropic whose job is to make a bigger profit, the only real lever he has or she has to pull is either make it cheaper for the AI to run or charge more money for it. Right now, they're in the make it cheaper for the AI to run portion of that. So that looks like using less computational power to provide people the answers that they expect for those platforms to provide. you play into that and you make it where it i- takes less computational power for the AI agent to find the answers that the user is looking for, then you are going to be recommended faster. So that H1 header better have a direct question in it. The answer needs to be the next line. There needs to be images. There needs to be good links. There needs to [00:39:00] be all of these different things. If you just look at it through that lens, look at your website objectively or have a friend look at it objectively if you can't, just say, "What can I do to make it easier and therefore cheaper for an AI agent to pull up what information I want it to pull up and feed it to the masses?" And if you can look at all of those things, you're gonna be in a much, much better place than you are today

[00:39:27] Bob Ruffolo: And to summarize that in one sentence, ask AI how to make our website better so you would recommend it more.

[00:39:34] Mandy York: I mean,

[00:39:36] Bob Ruffolo: That's all it is. And then go do those stuff. If you don't know how to do that, then go find somebody that can help you do that or continue to ask more questions. Um, easy as pie. Mandy, you are brilliant, and I'm so grateful to have you as part of the team and, and on the show today.

[00:39:52] Bob Ruffolo: So thank you for all the work that you're doing with our clients and our community, um, everything you shared today

[00:39:57] Mandy York: Yeah. Thanks, Bob. Thanks for having me[00:40:00] 

[00:40:00] Bob Ruffolo: Now, if somebody wants to, um, pick your brain more, which I hope that they do, and, and I, and Mandy, you're certainly available for this, right? You'd love for people to reach out to you. Um, what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you?

[00:40:10] Mandy York: Yeah, absolutely. All you have to do, go to the IMPACT website. There is a Talk To Us button there. It'll ask you to fill out a form, and then whenever you go fill out that form, name drop me in there and somebody, and maybe, maybe Bob, I don't know, I actually don't know who opens those forms, um, is gonna route that over to me so that we can start a conversation, especially if you wanna talk through what do the actual nuts and bolts look like for your website.

[00:40:36] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing. Thanks so much for being on today.

[00:40:39] Mandy York: Yeah. have a great one

[00:40:40] Bob Ruffolo: All right, so this has been another episode of the Endless Customers Podcast. We will see you at the next episode 

[00:40:45] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.