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The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™
How to Use AI Without Destroying Quality, Trust, or Margins With Nick Avaria
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- [00:03]
Nick
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential? Let's get started.
- [00:17]
Matt Bertram
Howdy. Welcome back to another fun filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I know, I am trying to say the Best SEO Podcast and I will have a new intro soon. I appreciate it. If you go to any channel, we have the handle Best SEO Podcast as well as Best SEO Podcast. We are sponsored by ewr, my agency. I don't mention it enough. I have a awesome guest for you today. Somebody that we had a pretty great conversation before and I had to say, let's save this for the audience. So I have Nick here with me from Agencyacquisitions IO. Nick, welcome to the show.
- [00:58]
Nick
Thanks for having me.
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Matt Bertram
So really a conversation that has been happening really since COVID and then really since all these AI updates and traffic is basically half the traffic has just left Google, gone everywhere else. So you can't just be an expert in Google and Facebook anymore. We were talking about how you need to become a full funnel builder. I'm looking at the type of issues that clients are dealing with and going, man, like, you gotta, you gotta embed somebody in these companies as like a fractional cmo. Because the things that are getting thrown at you from all the AI stuff to everything else, like you buy a service out of the box. Like, hey, you buy SEO or Facebook ads out of the box. That doesn't solve their problem anymore. Like you correct. It's not like you. Everything's fanned out. So you gotta be an expert in everything. And you. And not just like, like, just not like a generalist, but like an expert in everything. Because things are not going to go well. We're talking about new stuff all the time. I walked into a client's office today actually, and they were showing me data that I had never seen before that basically 27% of what is not even indexed in Google. And I was like, okay, like, where's this data coming from? Let's look at this study. Why is that? And then the conversation with. Went into. Are the LLMs reaching behind the paid wall? We talked about a lot of what, what is it? What is the, what is the website that mirrors the website that. So, so you don't get hacked a bunch. What is it called? It's called.
- [02:43]
Nick
Oh, I totally. I know exactly what you mean. I totally forget.
- [02:46]
Matt Bertram
My brain is. My brain is so fried right now. But, but essentially I'll think of it here in a second. And, and essentially it was like our. And there was that big up. There was the big thing where they put the switch on and they said, hey, we're going to block all the content and you got to turn back on if you want the LLMs to see it. And essentially it's like, is that's what's happening? Is the. Is the AI accessing stuff that's not indexed in the Google directory because it's private? Because, you know, Google doesn't respect. No follow. You know, the AIs are just like trying to find information. So where are they pulling the information from to give you that answer? They're looking at like mirror sites like way back machine or wherever to find this content that is. Is being blocked. And so like, I didn't know the answer. Right. And so.
- [03:38]
Nick
And I don't think that like it's reasonable for anybody to know the end because, like, I think technology is moving at such a fast pace at this point and you know, like to, to bring it to the whole point of. Around like, you know, the, the like do we need more fractional CMOs or the, like the full funnel builder, like, thought. Right. Is I think what we're gonna be seeing, and I think it's still early days is sort of like the, the re. Raising of the generalist. Oh, yeah, right.
- [04:07]
Matt Bertram
Where the planner, the branding expert and because you're not, you don't have tracking like, like Mad Men is coming back, which I, I love that. Yeah.
- [04:17]
Nick
Say it's like. Well, it's because AI is taking up like the, the more specialist roles or whatever else have you. But I don't necessarily think that we're talking about like a generalist, like kind of like a Renaissance man that knows a little bit about anything. It's like, I think we're talking about more so like maybe like a Leonardo da Vinci type character where it's like knows a lot of things really well. So it's like that kind of generalist. It's like it's a generalist that could be a specialist at like four different things. And this is giving rise to like a problem because there's not that many of those people out there. And people have gone really far down the rabbit hole of being like, say like a medic. Like, I mean, the flavor of the day. I mean, you know, I don't know.
- [04:58]
Matt Bertram
The Andromeda. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:00]
Nick
It's like, because it's like, you know, all of a sudden if you had some historical campaigns running, they're working real well still. But if you're turning them off and back on or like duplicating them or whatever. They're not working anymore like they used to. And it really begs the question of the value of like what the, like that this ad buyer, like if they're a meta only expert, it's like well now what matters? It's like, well your offer matters. So they need to consult on the actual offer. They need to consult on like what the positioning is given the brand. So they need to be able to like understand and interpret brand. They need to be able to you know, almost like CRO the landing page and like make it all congruent with the ads. Like this is no longer in the scope of like a digital strategist that specializes on a specific platform anymore. Like the skill set needs to be so much broader to be able to get these top tier results. And I think that we're going to see the shift happen more and more as these platforms move into these sort of AI models that are doing, I'm not going to say the easy work, but it's the job of processing huge amounts of data that we don't even have access to anyway because they're never going to give it to us.
- [06:09]
Matt Bertram
Well also the level of knowledge that you have to have like in prompt engineering to deal with these AIs and you got to understand what's going on. Like we were running a national ad campaign and I had to keep turning it off. Like my paid ad guys had to keep turning it off, turning it back on. And the client's like why do you keep turning this on and turning it back off? It was optimizing for spam. So it was getting spam and then it was showing it more to get more spam. And so it was like you had to turn it off, turn it on to like get it in the right track. Right. And, and, and that, and then even the conversation I was having before what, what I'm, what I'm saying, I think we're saying the same thing is you can't just take somebody that's good at one thing and, and, and maybe they know about the other stuff, but they don't know how to solve the problem and throw them into an environment with a client. Because a client's looking for outcomes, a client's looking for results. And you know, we, we had actually started kind of like the pre interview talking about the, the messy middle for agencies to grow and it's when you commoditize the services and we have a lot of great commoditized services. You can buy it off the shelf, it can do this. But, but now we're having to become a general contractor and layer in these things. But also we're having to become the architect to say, well, this is not working, we have to modify that, we have to change that. That's creating a lot more high touch accounts which is needed to maintain the client. But if you're selling a retainer, every time you touch that account, you go upside down. Right. Or your margin gets eaten up. And also what we were talking about too, as I was saying, hey, we're landing a lot of new business because we're doing a lot of AI stuff and people need that. And I think there's a lot of lip service out there of what's happening because I mean, I just had a text conversation, I'm on an account with like another, another SEO company and they're saying, hey, well a's eyes the same thing as traditional. I haven't seen like anything, blah, blah. I don't have time to have that debate, you know, and, and I said, but the client's sitting there in the middle going like, what do I do? I don't, I need to them.
- [08:22]
Nick
It's like, right. Because to your point, like they're looking for outcomes. It's like, hey, all these things are great, but what does it mean to like the actual goals? Like I have this Q1 goal, I have this Q2 goal, you know, for next year, like, how are we lining up to like meet this thing? And I think that the main challenge for like whether you're like a freelancer or an agency moving forward is you're going to need more of these strategic generalists.
- [08:45]
Matt Bertram
Yeah.
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Nick
And their price right now isn't overly high, but their price is going to command a premium in the very near future. Because I, and I think Matt, like what you said kind of like hit it the nail on the head. It's like, well, the point is that these people need to talk to the client.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah.
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Nick
And, and, and the second that you have to make these people client facing, the amount their bandwidth to actually do the strategic work goes way, way down. Because now they have to be like the primary communicators. And generally this is the type of person that you want to protect their time with like an account management interface. And so you're going to get less work out of them in terms of like numbers of clients that they can affect because of it, while the demand for these people is going to increase. And as an agency, like that's not a great position to be in because that means you're going to have to acquire very expensive talent that everybody else wants, which is going to drive their price further. I think if you're a freelancer, it's a pretty big advantage if you already have the skillset. If you don't have the skill set, it is actually like a pretty big danger.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah. I mean, I think there's going to be a bifurcation. Right. Because if you're a very narrow specialist, you know how to one do one thing, but if you don't have that, the orchestration of, like, the rest of the team to do it and then the level of communication. I'm just thinking about, like, small business clients. Right. Like a small business client, they have kind of a threshold or a price point that they can afford and they want to be able to buy that and they want to be able to get the outcomes that they're getting. And I had a conversation actually yesterday with a client that was like, going through the busy season. They're coming back. They're like, hey, we want to, we want to scale up. And I. And I said, Look, 58.5% of the traffic has left Google and it's not coming back. Like, how people are searching is completely different. And she's like, so we have to do all this other stuff. And I said, well, no, but you're going to have to do more than you're doing now and we're going to have to prioritize where we need to go. And yes, it's going to be more and it's going to be more expensive. And I know that that's not a good answer, but that's the real answer is it's to impact the results in the way you want to. Like, I even saw this Data point on B2B. Okay. Remember, it was like 11 touch points, like, to close a deal, way more. Now it's 30. Okay. I don't like that. Someone brought that up on a previous podcast and like, they gave me, like, the.
- [11:06]
Nick
Well, because we've monetized being able to get in front of people, like social media, like, blah, blah, like whatever else have you. It's like we've commoditized the ability to get in front of people, like, very easily. Like, I remember, you know, there's like a client that I was speaking with that they're like, I've been on your newsletter for the last, like, eight months. And I decided to reach out. I'm like, I. I've sent a lot of newsletters in eight, eight months. Like, not that many, like one or two a week kind of thing. But that's a lot of like, it's like that's well past 30 touch points, right?
- [11:35]
Matt Bertram
The trust. The trust level to engage with somebody and then. And then the.
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Nick
You hit that word on the head, though, because, like, I think we are in a position now where marketing in general is low trust. So I think that, like, look, everybody now is a media company, right? Because social media, etc. We've democratized the ability to get like before, you know, if we go back, you know, 50 years, it's like if you weren't on TV or radio, like you were no one right now. Everybody can be somebody. You just need to be engaging enough. But being engaging enough doesn't mean that you're good at what you do, right? So you have a whole bunch of people that have attention. And then they figured out, okay, now that I have attention, now what do I sell? People? So, like, that thing that they're selling ain't that good, frankly. And I think that this is where I'm seeing on the market as a whole, like, and I'm going to kind of bring this back to like, maybe like agencies and freelancers. More so than anything is what I'm seeing is that profitability of agencies and freelancers is going down pretty quickly over.
- [12:41]
Matt Bertram
The last few years. The expectation with AI is from the client side is you should be able to do more with less as well.
- [12:50]
Nick
And so the problem is that you can do more with less if it's slop. Like the AI slop conversation, right? And so, like, look, I ran into this exact same problem at like my own agency. Like even like a month ago. Like, we had an individual that was producing like AI slop for clients. Like, whether it was the ad copy, whether it was like it was like suggestions, they were grabbing client data and like, you know, basically like AI processing it, you know, and like, we're like the, the results that were coming back were nonsensical and our position even internally at my own agency has changed to say, hey, like, this is like human first. AI is our helper. AI is not like they're, they're sort of like the doer, but they're not the strategist. We're the strategist and nothing goes out without us like at least editing and, and surveying it in some way, shape or form. If you're producing something that is like 90 AI as the end outcome without review, it's like you're probably on the wrong side of the equation and we're going to get into trouble here.
- [13:54]
Matt Bertram
Okay, so concepts around that, like, that I've talked about are like Human in the Loop and certainly like I think Copilot was a great name. Right? You need to have that, that and you need to, you can't, it can't.
- [14:07]
Nick
Be in charge yet.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah, yeah, it can expand what someone can do, they can reach into more. But if you don't know what good looks like, you don't know what the output's going to be produced and somebody that's experienced can look at it and go that's wrong. Like we actually had a situation with a client where we were doing some analysis with a client and it wasn't grounded enough and it just made up some stuff. Right. Like the hallucinations I think are still at like 36%. And so then, so, so then what did is we're like, okay, we're building like a workflow now where one AI is checking the other AI first before we have a human elopes with the like LLM ops that like we're setting up. But, but I wouldn't have thought that like even if you ask it, you're like, hey, are you lying to me? Are you creating this? No, no, no, this is right. And then it's like it's, it's still not right. It's like you can't even trust what the outputs are unless you know what it should be. Is this going to get close? And you go, okay, that's better, but it's on target.
- [15:07]
Nick
And I think the fundamental problem that you're seeing because like look, it's like being in an agency or a freelancer is like sort of like a, it's generally like a younger person's game. Like there a lot of people move, you know, they move client side at a certain age. Right. The problem that I'm seeing with like some of the younger hires is that a lot of their training is because they've like prompted the LLMs to like tell them their knowledge. And so they're basically their basis of knowledge is the large language model. So it's like this self fulfilling loop where they're like, even if they query it with a great prompt, they're like this is good. And the reason they think that this is good is because that's where they learn from in the first place. So it's like a circular thing, like there's no outside input to their knowledge. And like for the less experienced people, like I'm talking like, you know, you, you came up in the last couple of years kind of thing. And like, you're, your most current knowledge is all based off of like AI from somebody like regurgitator or wherever else have you. That level of critical thinking experience isn't there yet. And so we're running into a problem really quickly, in my opinion, where that ability of critical thought and experience is going to come at like a massive premium into the market. And the problem, like, like, look, there's a problem of an opportunity here. In my opinion, done for you services as an agency is no longer enough. And I've been saying this for I think, 18 to 24 months now. I think that all agencies should have done with you services. And a different name for done with you services is basically consulting. Okay. There's many reasons that I, that I'm passionate about this because, like, look, number one, when people say, hey, like, my ideal client profile is this kind of client, I'm like, okay, what's the total addressable market of that? And they're like, oh, there's like 80,000 of these businesses in the U.S. i'm like, great, but that's not your total addressable market. They're like, what do you mean? Like, that's how many businesses there there are of this size. Blah, blah. I'm like, but not all those businesses are willing to go out of like, some of those businesses do all their marketing in house. Yeah, it's not your total addressable market. That's just how many of those businesses exist. So like, and by the way, there's different industries. Some industries bring everything in house. Other industries want to like, put everything out to an agency. So there's like, there's like a percentage, right. Of how many clients in that addressable market you can even target. But here's my point. When you add things like done with you, or like, call it consulting, if you will, you expand the total addressable market because some clients don't want somebody to do all the work for them. Some clients want you to come in and train their team on how to do it and be a second set of eyes. Yeah, right. Or maybe they just got burned by another agency and like, they can come to you and like, you can help them stand up their team as like a consultant. Right. At a much higher hourly rate, of course.
- [18:05]
Matt Bertram
Yeah. Well, I, I can tell you like one of the other buckets that I don't think you mentioned. I'd love for you to speak to it. And, and it's something we we were mainly selling packages, right? We were selling the packages. Here's what you're getting delivered. And, and it was typically, we were spending more and more time explaining, like, so what, what did you, what did you get from a consulting or reporting standpoint? Unless you bought, like, a specific package, you were getting a monthly snapshot because, like, you know, like, then you were getting some kind of, like, understanding of an audit by a consultant that made a video and kind of told you where you were. And here are your deliverables, right? So here are your deliverables based on your package. Here's your monthly report, which maybe it's more like a stand shop. And then there's a video that is like the audit or analysis of what's happening and what we should do. We were finding also in email. We were sending everything by email, and we could tell that they weren't watching the videos. Okay, so it's like, we're giving this information to you, and then we go, okay, well, a lot of these clients need to talk to somebody monthly. Okay, well, we layered that. That on there. Okay, A lot of these clients need to talk to somebody weekly, right? Or then they're like, starting to throw stuff at you. And so then we started offering these packages of, you know, there's somewhere on the spectrum from done for you to, we're going to, we're going to train your team and you're going to do it. Right. I found somewhere in the middle of, like, we have a problem. We basically need you to come in and fixed it. And we just need. We don't know what we need. We just need, like, a blanket retainer. And we want you to come in and just fix everything. Augment where you need to augment, plug in what you need to plug in. But, like, let's decide on the strategy. And we trust you. Well, that was tapping my team pretty heavily. And we were, we were burning a lot of hours, which was, which, like, it was okay because we were getting billed for what we're doing. But then more and more people needed that solution. So then I'm like, well, we only have this many hours. We only have this many people, like, and so it's like, I'm giving you my team here. I'm giving you my strategist here. Okay? You, you, you only think you need 10% of their time, but you really need 25 or 30% of your time.
- [20:24]
Nick
I think that this is the problem with the market right now, though. It's like, I don't think people actually know what it takes given like the shifts in technology. They're so fast now. Right. And in my mind like the, the time to do these, you know, packages that are like, hey, here's your monthly packages, what it costs, like it's not based off of hours necessarily. It's more like value based pricing. It makes sense in a, in a more static environment where like, you know, the inputs, you know, the outputs. But the second that the clients may be a bit bigger, maybe a little bit closer to like mid high mid or like enterprise level clients, you're getting into more of like a custom thing where the, the inputs and the outputs are sort of like unknown to some degree. And the, the grayer it is and like the foggier it is, the better we are to actually just do like a retainer model where we say to them, hey, like pay this 5 or 10k retainer, whatever it is, and we'll track our hours and deduct them at this hourly rate from the retainer. Because, you know, like, and, and I think over the last, I mean decade in agency plus, like the, the hourly model has really caught like a lot of like flack for being like, oh so bad. And it sucks. And it's like. No, no, no, no. It's, it's actually great for specific situations. But the question is, is the situation that we're in the ideal situation to deploy this model or not? Right.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, well, so that we're getting a lot more situations where that is what needs to happen or they're not going to get the outcomes they want. And then how are we supposed to as an agency scale because we don't know the demands to deliver for the client. And then if you're adding new clients too quickly and you're bringing new people on that are not working together or gelled. Okay, there's, there's an uptake of that, that time. And so we've had to limit taking on new clients because we can't handle that demand. Right. And so then it's like, okay, well.
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Nick
The scalability aspect of like the, the problem is, is that you have like two opposing forces. Like in, in my opinion. And I think that this is like just what the market is right now. If you are the type of agency or freelancer that is getting a lot of business right now. The problem is that the changes to technology are very disruptive to your way of doing things through others specifically. Right. So all your standard operating procedures, all like your mapping of who does what is kind of going out the window in real Time as these things get applied, which makes it kind of unstable and saying to yourself, well hey, like we're just going to redo the SOP is like, well you're, you're going to redo the SOP every like month because like that's kind of what's needed right now. And it's a huge, it's a huge issue. And these things are counterproductive to scaling profitably.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah.
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Nick
Like they, they just are. And you know, the, the, the only antidote to this is to hire people with higher levels of experience.
- [23:23]
Matt Bertram
Yes.
- [23:24]
Nick
And, and skill. And this is exactly goes back to the first point of like, you know, at the beginning of the discussion of like these people, these, these highly specialized generalists.
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Matt Bertram
Yeah.
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Nick
Kind of like a interesting juxtaposition is like they're going to be in such huge demand for that reason. Right. And so like the, it becomes cost prohibitive. So you have to sell at a premium and you have to sell hours at a premium, which is like never a nice thing to do. It's like, hey, pay this retainer. And by the way, like I have to charge you like 350 an hour for this because the person that's doing the work is so expensive. Right.
- [23:59]
Matt Bertram
You got it, you got inflation. Right. You got also like a lot of these tools, you got brand new tools and like, yeah, you're inching up more towards a fractional CMO or something like that and there's no other way around it. And so then I'm thinking these, these, like if you, if you're working at the small end of the market and a lot of people go in on the, on the small side of the market, you're working like service based businesses or something like that. It's very commoditized. You're running ppc, you're doing SEO, whatever. They can't afford what's needed to happen. Like, and I think, I think agencies are pricing stuff wrong because they don't want to charge what's needed to happen. And then that's where the churn comes in. Because they're not getting the outcomes they need because they didn't charge. Because in the client's mind they're like man, 10k is a ton of money. And then in your head you're like, man, that's going to be like 60k to get that funnel up and going or whatever it is. Right. Like, and so like there's, there's a disconnect and then AI is in the mix. So that that's changing it I mean, I could. I'll tell you a funny story really quick. I started using a tool to do some entity SEO, okay. And I was like one of the first to get this tool from like, they're actually selling it to agencies. So I was like, it's priced in Italian dollars, okay? So, so the US dollars dropped, okay? Over the last, let's say eight months, it's gone up over 70% of the tool. So then I had to like get on the phone and say like, guys, like, is there a way to like talk to finance to get like, like you've doubled almost your price on me on this price point. Because I'm like going, this is just ticking up like. But it's, that's, that's just one of the, all the other factors that are, that are getting peppered on what's happening. And then you got clients that, the drop of 50% of traffic or more, they've lost it. They're like, well, I need another agency because this agency doesn't know what they're doing. So then you go to another agency and they're like, oh yeah, we do xyz, okay. We didn't get the result we needed because they're buying those bucket of, of productized services because the playbook hasn't changed. And so now you got really frustrated clients that, that we're talking to. And I have to like, it gets escalated to me and I have to say, okay, like, let's break it down. What's going on with you? We need to do a strategy session which like a lot of clients that are service based clients or even B2B. I don't know what it is. Tell you, tell me what your experience has been.
- [26:35]
Nick
I think the problem is, is that like 10 years ago or even like less than that, everybody sold strategy at the front end of every single engagement. And like the clients, like, yeah, they're like, every time I switch an agency I need to like do another strategy. It's another sunk cost of like anywhere between like 8 and 20k at, on the low end, right? And it like they just got fatigued. And then this is where everybody specialized, right? So everybody specialized into like I now specialize in like, you know, plumbers or like I specialize in lawyers. And I specialize in whatever as a means of avoiding the strategy. Because it's like, I know the strategy because I have 20 clients that are lawyers and you're another lawyer. Guess what?
- [27:09]
Matt Bertram
So I can plug you in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [27:11]
Nick
The strategy baked into the, into this, into the Delivery of the service because it's on need to some degree. Now I think that we are in a period of time where like I think that there's going to be a resurgence of strategy and specifically I would say brand strategy.
- [27:26]
Matt Bertram
Yes.
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Nick
But because like everything else is becoming way too commoditized in terms of like, I mean, you name it, you know, the type of attention that you're trying to get. Like there's way too many like you know, other people in that space generally competing. But you know, tying it back to like, well, what's the, what's the business model problem here from like a agency freelancer? Like if you charge money, our inventory is always time. Right. So like productizing a service, making it value based pricing is a means of generating a higher billable value per hour. Yeah. And this is the whole conversation around like well, fractional CMO or like consulting done done with you. Like it's all the same thing. And I see this as an opportunity to capture higher dollar per hour.
- [28:18]
Matt Bertram
Yes.
- [28:19]
Nick
And transfer that higher dollar per hour into hiring these like top performers, very expensive people. So like I'm going to give you an example for one client that I was working with. Like these guys are like wizards at like Google SEO. They handle all types of accounts. Right. And I said to them like look, you guys know so much, you really need to done like do done with you consulting in some way, shape or form. And they said okay, we'll give it a try. And there was like a few deals that were coming in where people were asking them like, hey, this seems kind of expensive. They wanted like, you know, like 6, 7K to just do done for you. And they were like, can you just like kind of teach me? And they started pitching it. You know, it's like, hey, instead of this you, you can pay $4,000 a month. And what you get for $4,000 a month is we'll, we'll basically hop on a call with you 45 minutes every single week and we'll audit your account live with you, we'll show you what you did right and wrong, what the next steps are, blah blah, blah. And it's like okay, lo and behold, even with the pre work and the post work which they basically squeeze into the last 15 minutes.
- [29:27]
Matt Bertram
Yeah.
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Nick
Now they're billing a thousand dollars an hour. Like they're done for you services, their value based price, they're not billing a thousand dollars an hour. They're not even billing 300 an hour on a value based productized basis. So like guess what? The Profitability of the company, like, shoots through the roof because instead of selling an hour for like, you know, even like on their like, premium package, fully, you know, productized, it's like maybe 22250 an hour. Now they're charging a thousand dollars an hour across, like, you know, 10 to 12 new clients. It's like that pulls up the average really fast and it all goes to the bottom line, right?
- [30:05]
Matt Bertram
It's co. I mean, it's coaching, right? Like, it's. It's a coaching model essentially. And that's what everybody that's been listening to this for a long time, I keep saying I'm going to do and I really, really need to do it.
- [30:17]
Nick
I think it's both because I think that from a business model perspective, doing the done for you services and like getting great results shows legitimacy in your craft. Like, I don't believe in being a coach in something that you're not yourself doing in some way, shape or form, right? You've got to have your hands like kind of like on, on the pulse by actually doing the thing or you miss it.
- [30:39]
Matt Bertram
Especially with the way things are shifting now. I was at a business conference and the guy was talking about AI and I could tell by his answer he has not been an AI, because he was saying basically, chat GBT5 was like, fine. And I was like, chat TBT5 sucks. Okay? I don't care. I'll argue with anybody. Chat GPT4. Bring that sucker back. That remembered everything. Claude just launched where you can, you can now hear, you can, you can listen.
- [31:08]
Nick
It doesn't have the finger on the pulse, right?
- [31:10]
Matt Bertram
Like, he doesn't have it like. And I'm like, you're the guy. You're the head guy pitching this thing. And I can tell you're like three, four months back. You're not in it. Well, if someone's going to pay a premium for you and you're the new.
- [31:23]
Nick
One, it's like people pay a premium for the nuance, right? And the nuance cannot be generated without firsthand experience. It's just not possible. And I think like, you know, like, one of the conversations I had with this like, one other client was they said to me, well, like, well, you know, Nick, why can't I? Like, I just kind of want to shut down my entire agency and just do this instead of. Right? And I'm like, well, no, like, it doesn't work that way because you need.
- [31:50]
Matt Bertram
Case studies, you need data, you need.
- [31:52]
Nick
Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's like you're like, the majority of your legitimacy comes from the fact that like you're doing this, right? And so if you take away the legitimacy of like doing this, what are you like left with? It's like, oh, you're just another coach. It's like, who cares? It's like, you know how many coaches that are out there that like haven't done like a lick of what they've said that they've done? Like, that's like, I think that's the majority of the market. It's probably like 90, 95% of people that like, you know, got like an LLM to like spit out like a bunch of data and they're like, this is my program and this is what I teach people. And it's devoid of all nuance and real life experience, right? And so like the value comes in like the value in the done with you model housed inside of an agency is that doing the work via the agency gives you like a legitimacy be like the actual know how and the nuance required to actually get results rather than walk people through some like, BS stuff that is like, sounds correct but doesn't actually get them a result that.
- [32:55]
Matt Bertram
I mean, this is an LLM visibility SEO podcast. Like, this goes back to eat, right? This is why Google added the experience component. And what you talked about is real experience. Like, also it's like, oh, holding the product up or whatever. By the way, this is a water bottle that is tied to my phone and tells me what to drink. Okay. Like, I am building like a personal OS with like all this app and all this. But, but people, yes, like people need to be connected ear to the ground. That's what people are paying for. And things are moving so quickly. If you are not doing the work, you're not gonna have that edge. And that's what people are buying and that's that, that's even in the writing, right? Like, I could just create a bunch of like slop, right? Like AI slop and put it out there. Oh, it's not getting indexed. Oh, it's not ranking.
- [33:46]
Nick
And by the way, you will get like, and you will get the attention of people that you don't want, right? Like, because, like, look, I, I think that for example, like, look, if, if somebody said I have like this content strategy, I'm just gonna like do a bunch of prompts and say whatever it tells me to say without editing it. It's like, I think it'll work. Like, here's the, like, here's the kicker. But for who is it for your ideal client profile, do you think that you can move up market that way? It's like, I don't know about that. I think that you can get the beginners, the people that know like less than less and that they themselves didn't even query the AI. And so like to them this is like brilliant. Right? But to anybody that has the access to the same tool, like if you're representing the knowledge of the AI on its own, without you like morphing it in some way at this junct, it's not insightful.
- [34:40]
Matt Bertram
Yeah.
- [34:41]
Nick
Anymore. At least to the people that know what they're doing. You're not going to fool the people that know what they're doing.
- [34:46]
Matt Bertram
I, I would tell you, even in, in the last 30 days, really 45 days, I've seen a sea change. Like just like people are just waking up to like I, I mean I felt like the AI overviews, like this is me personally, the AI overviews were like a, a let's slow people down from going to the LLMs till we figure out what we're going to do and like get Gemini ready. Right. And moving up in the leaderboards. It's doing better. Like I'm starting to hear some debate about Google's going to come out on top and you know, all this kind of stuff. But, but I can tell you, like I had clients last quarter going, we don't care about AI. Like we're just using Google. But they've started to use the LLMs and now they're like, oh, I need this, I need this. Like now it's a big issue. I would also say the other thing that I'm hearing, I'm curious how, how you're viewing it and your perspective is attribution. So I have a client right now, okay, Like I have a client right now that like came in, analyze what they're doing and their lead flows like down, down, down, down, down. And they're just spending more and more money on paid ads to get there because that was like last click attribution. And as I'm like interviewing people, I'm finding out like, you stop doing this, you stop doing that because you're just looking at it from a two dimensional like viewpoint and saying this is just where the leads were coming from. I was like, no, there's a study, like one of, one of the guys I was interviewing a couple podcasts ago, there's a study out there that shows that your click through rate is tied to how high your review score is and how many reviews and the consistency. So people in their customer journey are doing all these things that you're not seeing, but when they're ready to buy. Also in like similar web data, I'm seeing the traffic that people are leaving the site. Okay. You know, one of the number one sources for a lot of the sites when I was doing like a market analysis was like Claude or ChatGPT. Like that was where people were going. I was like, that's interesting. I started to think about it. I was like, no, people are finding out about the brand, maybe through the ads or whatever, a social, whatever you're doing. And then they ask, so reputation management on what are they saying about your brand? Like, I have a publicly traded company or a company that's about to go public and they're like, hey, we don't like what Chat GPT is saying about us. Like, can you help us fix that? I'm like, these are new services and things that yeah, people haven't thought about. So it's like, I don't.
- [37:20]
Nick
But the attribution model gets like real messy, right?
- [37:22]
Matt Bertram
Yeah.
- [37:23]
Nick
And it's like. And I think that like this is the whole problem of like thinking of things in a simplistic model like, such like as a funnel. There's an element of that. Like, I mean, like, look, it's like I could, we could sit here and like talk about, you know, Marketing 101, where it's like 3% of the people that are currently out there are looking for your service and then there's like, you know, like another 7% that is like problem aware and like, you know, like solution aware and like they're not doing anything right now and blah, blah, so on and so forth. Right? But I think the point is, is that, you know, like when it comes to like, I mean, pay per click advertisers, like attribution is a nightmare right now because like the example that you gave earlier, like just now, you know, of the hey, like we're paying but the, this client was paying but they were getting no results and it was giving them more and more spam leads because it was basically like optimizing for spam leads. I mean I've, I've heard of agencies and like even my own, like go as far as to say like, okay, well until like if it's like a B2B company, for example, until we hit like demo and or you know, as like sales qualified lead status. Don't eat like automatically tell like automatically attribute them as like not qualified. So it's like it's it's rather than disqualification, you know, it's. You're feeding the system back like via like whatever, like your HubSpot or whatever have you. Instead of saying like, hey, this is, this is indeed disqualified, you're actually saying everything is disqualified unless I tell you otherwise. Because, like, that's how far we have to go. And weirdly, like, this goes back to like the whole funnel building thing where, you know, as an example, like, I used to not be like a big fan of like selling like, you know, like a document online or something, but I've seen a lot of people sell like, you know, an absurdly underpriced thing, like, hey, like download this thing for like 50 bucks when it's clearly worth like a thousand. And it's like a giveaway because then you can tell like meta or whoever to like optimize for purchase of that thing. And like, because it has like the full access to like, you know, the actual data and the how much money it made, it gives you like, reasonable results. But you have to get like, pretty clever about it, right? To some.
- [39:38]
Matt Bertram
No, that's interesting. I haven't, I haven't heard something like that. I, I mean, with the attribution, I about fell out of my seat when I was on some call and Rand Fishkin was talking and he was just like, all right, so like attributions out the window. Like run a billboard in this city.
- [39:56]
Nick
Yeah.
- [39:56]
Matt Bertram
The same demographic in this city. And if you get a 10 up with there, spread it all out across. And I was like. And I was like, he's like, dad, that's the best we got.
- [40:06]
Nick
I was just like, well, if you think about it, it's like, I'll put it to you this way, like in an example, like if you ran like a quiz funnel, right? Like on Meta, for example, and you tell Meta, it's like optimized for people to fill out this quiz, right? And it's to a specific icp. They're going to be like, great, we're going to send it in front of this icp. Now imagine that one of the questions in the quiz is like revenue ranges, like how much revenue you're currently doing per year? And now you tell Meta, it's like, actually the only ones that are qualified are the people that are doing like 5 million and above. That's a totally different signal that you're giving back to the platform, right? And so things like qualifying people based off of size, qualifying people based off of like number of employees on like a B2B side makes like a ton of sense. It really depends for like, other. For non B2B, it's a little bit trickier in my opinion. Right. Because like, when you're talking B2C, it's like a lot of people can afford your stuff, right? Especially depending on price point. But I think that, like, more so than ever. Like, you know, I was, I was talking to somebody. I'm like, man, like hyros and like triple whale and like all these other. They're so expensive. And it's like, yep. And like, what's your option? I'm like, good point. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, well, you gotta pay them because, like, you know, the funnels are no longer like this, like, last click attribution no longer works. It like, it. It's not terrible, but I mean, it's not what is gonna carry you forward from here on out, in my opinion.
- [41:33]
Matt Bertram
Yeah, so. So we're talking about all these things, and one of the things we didn't even really get to was like remote teams. Right? Remote team. Like, since COVID everybody's coming in the market. Like, campaigns that I used to run don't work anymore because it's too saturated. You got you now, you got remote people. It's the norm. People don't want to work, like, in an office. Like, it's like pulling teeth to get them to come in. Like, you've got all these different factors, right. And you're working with a lot of different agencies. I would love for you to like, set the table on. And I think we've talked about this a little bit, but let's put it together in kind of a concise, abstract, like, theme of, okay, where, where is the market at? What are the things people are dealing with and where, where is it going to be in 18 months? Because, I mean, I'm having a conversation, I had a conversation earlier today about the layoffs that are coming from the, the AI browsers that can do repetitive tasks for you. Okay. Like, I mean, I'm seeing like, billers, you know, banks. Like, all this is going to go to AI. So unless you're at the highest level.
- [42:43]
Nick
The, the people are the highest level with the highest experience are, are the ones that are safe. Like, I mean, like, if you. And if you're not there yet, it's like, go train yourself. Like, watch every YouTube from like a reputable source. Like, pay for a course like somewhere, like, you know, from somebody reputable. Again, like, go do that. But I would say from like a remote team perspective, like here's the thing, it's not like it was before. I think that the initial productivity spike that went up when we originally went remote after like post Covet was because we had like a cultural connection because we were all in office and then we were like reaping the reward of those relationships in productivity and the fact that like we knew each other but now that you know, there's turnover in teams and things like that, we don't know each other in that context anymore. And this is where like that connection is lost. So like number one, we need to be like way more intentional about generating connection between like ourselves and our teams and with, and, and setting up situations where they can set up that connection with each other. Number one. Number two, skip level meetings, like if you have, if you're like an owner and you have like a manager or if you're a director and you have a manager below you and then the front line, you need to start doing skip level meetings at minimum quarterly to see how things are going. Like this is a non negotiable in this world. The other thing that I'm gonna say is that standard operating procedures are more important than pretty much any other time in history in business. Because before if you didn't know how to do something, you could just like roll your chair over about like 3ft and ask the person next to you like hey, I'm stuck. And now people, it's been proven that people will sit there stuck and not say anything and wait until their next one to one with their manager, which could be days away and just be stuck the entire time. And that's not, that's not reasonable. Right? Another, I'm going to take a step further from standard operating procedures to say that every agency needs a racy matrix. And if you don't know what that is, please chatgpt it. It'll actually give you a pretty good answer about what it is. And then you need to implement a racy matrix in your own company. The, the last thing, and I'm going to say that this is the most important thing to be successful in a remote environment is something that I call having objectives, metrics and KPIs. Okay? Before we could judge people a lot on just like their work output, like hey, are you doing the work? I don't think that's good enough anymore. Not in a remote only environment. Okay. If you're in a remotely environment, you have to move Into Objectives metrics, KPIs. What are objectives? Like in an agency, for example, an objective would Be like client retention. Right. So that's objective number one. Objective number two could be like client results. Objective number three could be like productivity, like either dollars under management or like hours built. Right. Doesn't matter. But for every objective, you need a metric. So for example, I want client retention as objective number one. That's the most important thing to me. What is the metric of client of client retention? Churn. I can measure churn. Right. That's my metric. And I judge that objective by that metric. But churn is like a rear view mirror number. It's like really slow because like if the pro. If a problem happens and I have a churn problem, it's already behind me. I can't really bring the client back.
- [45:48]
Matt Bertram
Yeah.
- [45:48]
Nick
So I need a KPI in the truest sense. Like key performance indicator. It is an indicator of performance of the metric that it's tied to would be net promoter score. Because a net promoter score, if somebody like scores me like say like a 3 out of 10, so they're not that happy with me, that means that they're a churn risk. And if I salvage the account, I'm going to prevent them from churning. And to me, this objective metric KPI thing is like the number one most important thing to install in a remote first team. Because now it's like, hey, are the numbers congruent to success and are they in alignment with agency objectives overall and client objectives overall? And I call this triple net wins. It's like you need to set up objectives in a way where when people achieve them, it automatically creates a win for the client, for the agency and for the person themselves. Like the actual individual contributor themselves at the same time.
- [46:45]
Matt Bertram
I love that. Nick, you dropped like a ton of value. I'm coming up against a hard stop. How do people find out more? Because, like, you just, you just gave a ton of stuff there. I'm gonna actually have to go back and listen to it again. There's definitely like some value in there for me that I want to apply to what we're currently doing even. And. And so I've really enjoyed this coach.
- [47:07]
Nick
Leave the listeners behind with like a couple links. Yeah, so like some free resources. Like one of them is like a great dashboard that I use and number two is like a free training that is like ungated just to like go check it out. It's a lot of the things that we just talked about on this show, especially towards the end of, like, how do you get optimal performance out of your team in a remote environment and how do you optimize for your company and do right by your employees at the same time.
- [47:36]
Matt Bertram
So send me those links and I'll definitely get them in the show notes for when the episode airs. But is they're like, should they follow you on LinkedIn?
- [47:45]
Nick
Definitely follow me on LinkedIn. So Nica Varia A V A R I A on the last name. And also like, you know, if you check out those resources, you, you can.
- [47:54]
Matt Bertram
Always find me through Those and Agencyacquisitions.IO you go check out his site. He's got a great little funnel site there. If you're an agency owner, you're struggling, which I know that there's a lot of people out there. I'm in a small group. Everybody's kind of sharing all the shifts, all the changes. Everything's happening, you know, everything's moving out a thousand miles an hour. Nick knows his stuff. We were talking a lot before the podcast and I would love to keep this conversation going. Nick, I'd love to have you back on, you know, everyone, if you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet. We which was the Internet. But I'm not sure so much anymore. It might be LLMs at this point. And so AI, you know, reach out to best SEO podcast and we can point you in the right direction. We're working with a lot of different agencies. We're pretty maxed out at ewr. We are taking on some new clients, but we're very picky about that. Nick has a lot of great agencies that he's also working with and so, you know, hopefully you like this podcast. If you did, please leave us a review. Please like watch it or like it on YouTube. Like we're trying to move it over to YouTube and it looks sad. I'm going to need to start running ads because I'm embarrassed. But go check us out on YouTube at best SEO podcast. Thank you so much everyone for listening. Until the next time. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now. It.