← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
How AI Is Rewriting SEO and Digital Strategy—With Adam Hamadache | Ep 1163
00:16:20
Loading summary
Transcript18 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Adam Hamadash. Adam Hamadash is a proven business builder, leader and digital strategist with deep expertise in both growing companies and navigating the evolving intersection of AI, SEO and hospitality. As a founder and CEO, Formula and more recently ScorePlan, Adam has spent over a decade scaling his own agency into a trusted digital growth partner for brands across the UK and internationally. With a background spanning marketing, publishing and software development, Adam's business acumen is both strategic and practical. He's helped clients grow revenue, build high performing teams and systemize success, making him a go to voice for anyone looking to scale with clarity and purpose. Well, good afternoon, Adam. Welcome to the show.
- [01:11]
B
Thanks Brian. Great to be here.
- [01:13]
A
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it too, because you're in the London area in the UK and I'm in Kansas City. So we've got about a six hour difference and I know it's hard to balance those calendars, so thank you. And Adam, if I could, I'm going to jump right into your first question. You've scaled Formula into a leading digital growth agency over more than a decade. What were the biggest turning points that took your agency from early stage hustle to a truly scalable systemized business?
- [01:40]
B
Yeah. Okay. Well, big question to start with. I would say, I would answer in three parts, Brian. I would say first, one of the biggest turning points is Covid. I think that was true for so many business owners. In January 2020, we were absolutely booming, but we were also kind of rattling as a business. We were kind of taking on a bit too much work and everything was just kind of bursting at the seam. So after obviously the COVID gaps that sort of ensued for much, many, many companies, that kind of pause allowed us to just take a breath and realize, okay, what systems are lacking in the business. And that sort of really helped us get to a faster, more stable level of scale. So that was certainly one. A few maybe a year or two later to the second point around that is eos. So for those unfamiliar, the Traction book, it stands for entrepreneurial Operating system. And I read that book and I was like, oh, yes, okay, I get it. So we started implementing that in our business and very quickly realized that I'm a visionary. I needed an integrator. An integrator is somebody that does the day to day execution, hold people accountable, stuff that I'm not really great at. And so I'm proud to say I've got one of those now and we work really well together. And also so things adding things like our weekly Pulse meeting, we call it, we have a dedicated space to tackle particular issues. Whereas before it was kind of like, ah, this thing's happened, let's all jump on a call. And actually that was kind of a bit of a time setup. So that would be the second point. And just finally I would say this year is probably where we've seen the biggest scale. We've completely. We decided to rewrite the agency model. We came up with this idea that actually imagine an agency that obsessed about its clients growth, not its own. So we made some bold choices to limit our capacity to 20 clients only. So we work with a very sort of select group of clients. We got rid of all the juniors in the team. We only have senior people, really experienced people in their particular field. We got rid of all long term contracts and we actually built our own proprietary score plan technology to allow us to add a lot of value sort of beyond our sort of small pool of 20 clients. So I'd say those three things are the biggest turning points to where we've got to today.
- [03:55]
A
Thank you for unpacking that and that helps. We have a lot of entrepreneurs that are in the audience but also on the show as a guest. But I liked how you learned a lot through this. You know scaling can go in spurts obviously, but the Pandit pandemic provided challenges for everybody, but particularly you highlighted that. But it allowed you to reset during this time. And I like, I want to focus on this. This has come up a few times on the show. Is the eos, that entrepreneur operating system. I've heard a lot about it and I think a lot of people probably should look into that if they're looking to kind of reset. So thank you. Adam, you've become a widely respected voice on AI's impact on SEO and hospitality. What are the most misunderstood shifts happening right now with AI driven search and how should businesses react?
- [04:42]
B
Yeah, so I think probably I would suggest that the biggest misunderstood or misunderstanding is that AI search is just another channel to think about. So I'm sure you might have heard the sort of, the plethora of acronyms that now exist. We've got aeo, geo, axo, obviously traditional SEO, all of these things just sort of make it sound like, oh God. That's another thing I've got to think about. And there's we need another agency for this and that. And actually, I think that's a bit of a misunderstanding. What is actually happening is that digital marketing itself is fundamentally changing. So if we consider that digital marketing, if we kind of distill it right down to its most basic terms, fundamentally, if you're in digital marketing, what you've been doing is you've been building brand assets that inform, entice and convert. So your brand assets are your website, you're creating your social media feed. We work a lot with hotels, so optimizing your aggregated listings like booking.com, but obviously that's true of many industries. So building those brand assets first and then the second part has always been to drive visibility and traffic to those assets. And you can do that through ads or through SEO to get higher organic ranking or build up your social following. So that's how digital marketing has sort of operated in the last 15 years. The big shift that's happening is that now that AI search is kind of getting involved, it's not just sort of coming in from the side and saying, hey, you've got to look at this too. I think digital marketing now really has two new increasing responsibilities. So those two things that I mentioned, building brand assets that inform enticement, driving visibility and traffic to those assets, those are still remain and they will be in place for some time. But most importantly, I think brands have to consider that the two new responsibilities are get recommended by AI and influence what AI is saying about you. So we call this the sort of the AI shadow. It's almost like the interpretation of your brand that AI is making and that's built up from kind of a melting pot of your online reputation, your unique selling points, but also almost like an impartial critique, as if you were a restaurant and a journalist has come around and given their sort of impartial appraisal. So I think being very mindful of those two new growing responsibilities is essential for brands and any businesses as we sort of move into this new era of search.
- [07:09]
A
Thank you. I think that's really important. And like you mentioned, digital marketing is really fundamentally changing traditionally. And you said this isn't changing. Building the brand assets and then driving visibility and traffic to those assets will always be there. But your big shift, and I want to highlight this for the audience, is that AI search getting recommended by AI and influence AI on your brand. So I think that's important. And Adam Hospitality is undergoing rapid digital transformation from AI powered chat to predictive pricing to automation. Which technologies will truly matter in the next three to five years. And which ones are just hype.
- [07:45]
B
Yeah. So I think to answer that question, I would suggest if we look at the what's happening in the Google traditional sort of page, I say Google, obviously it's all search engines, but we all know in the West Google is sort of the biggest market share by some margin. So if we take hotels, for example, you search for hotels in New York wherever, what you're greeted with in traditional search is 21 different options, and those can typically take the form of paid search ads. Now, AI overviews, there's typically three hotels in the hotel pack, and then you've got the hotel pack being the sort of little map feature that's relatively new. And then you've got the 10 organic links if you contrast that with what's actually happening in AI search. So whether that be through Google's AI mode or ChatGPT or perplexity or any of these other tools, what you're Getting is not 21 different options. You're getting four highly curated, highly personal options, specifically related to your previous browsing behavior, purchase behavior, and the prompt that you put in. So really, I suppose the question is, how do you be one of the four as often as possible? Because what we know in terms of what we're seeing in terms of predictions is that AI search will actually surpass traditional search within a couple of years. 2028 is the general prediction that companies like Semrush and McKinsey and Gartner are making. So really, how do we be one of the four? And I think what it comes down to is making sure that you've got things like reputation intelligence. Platforms are really, really essential. So your online reputation now carries a lot more weight in the sort of the age of AI search than it ever has really done in the age of traditional search. So really what it means is that each negative review is kind of working against you like never before. Previously it was a general sentiment and customers looking through in MySpace TripAdvisor for example, and just having a look and looking at the negative reviews. But now AI is being able to pull all of that out and feed that back in to customers as a way, and they see that stuff long before they ever make it to your website as well. So that stuff's really important. But I would also say rich, structured, constantly updated content is, has never been more important. Let me give you an example of what I mean by that. If you consider that you're a disabled guest and you particularly not particularly great at walking and you go to an AI platform and you say, look, I'm a disabled guest, I would need an accessible room and I really want to know how far the my, the accessible rooms are from the restaurant in that property. The AI tool that will recommend the AI tool will recommend the hotel in this example that has detailed that information on their website. Just, you know, it's a very obviously very niche example, but it's that, that I think is a good example of the level of features that as businesses we all have to be sharing as opposed to the benefits, which is what we've always done in marketing. AIs are really looking for the steak, not the sizzle. If we use that analogy, it really comes down to how much of that content that you can share and information that you can, so it can be easily plucked out from AI and then shared back to the customer. So I would say those are the big things in terms of the hype that you mentioned. I mean I was speak at lots of the hotel conferences in the world. I was in Greece last week. I was in high tech in Indianapolis earlier this year and I saw in both conferences robots that do mixology and they can do barista coffee. I think that sort of stuff. It is AI driven, but I think to be honest, it's all very novel and in my view not really going to take off in hospitality. So I'd say steer away from the kind of novel robotics and look at the sort of, the more data focused ways that AI is impacting business.
- [11:43]
A
Thank you, really appreciate that. Just to highlight a couple things here, traditional search we talked about, or you talked about having those various options. I think there was 21 options, but now you had these four highly curated personal options specific to you. And, and what I took away from that is really the big question nowadays with AI is how do you become in one of those four? Right. And yeah, you did talk about that. Reputation intelligence is key and of course producing rich, fresh and good structured content around your brand or your business is important. So thank you. And Adam, the last question of the day, looking ahead, how do you see AI reshaping the future of SEO, digital marketing and consumer behavior, not just in hospitality, but across industries adopting more advanced digital tools?
- [12:30]
B
Yeah, I mean I love this question because it's, I think really what you're asking is how far are we going to go with this as a, as a, as an industry, as a world with, in terms of the AI adoption? And I think it comes down to this when customers trust that AI will find near perfect travel options for them, or near perfect purchasing options for them, everything changes. So currently, most people, I think, are using AI like just another search platform. It's a bit more tailored and targeted and you can be a bit more sort of contextual and conversational with the prompt as opposed to looking for something like I need some black shoes or I want a hotel in this location, for example. But when every customer trusts their own highly personalized curated agent to research, book and purchase on behalf, on their behalf, that's game changing. I think we're way off this, by the way. I think we're years away, probably three or four, maybe even five years plus from this becoming mainstream, but it is becoming certainly more possible. And in terms of, I think what it really comes down to, if we, if and when we get to that phase, will start having to market to agents, not people. And then it comes back to. It's all about that kind of analogy I shared earlier. Sell the sizzle, not the steak is what we've told as sales professionals, because ultimately you want to be selling the benefits, not the features. Actually, we need to flip that on its head and be talking about all of the features in depth so that AI agents can pick that out and work out what's going to be best for their customer. And I think just to bring this to give you an example, in, in hospitality, you know, the Expedia Path to Purchase report, which they released in 2023, so a couple of years old now that they found that on average travel customers are spent, are visiting 141 pages of travel content over 45 days before making a purchase decision. I mean, that's enormous. And what that tells me is it's a highly considered purchase and it's a long process to find travel. So I think customers are now looking for those ways to streamline that process. Let the AI do the hard yards for them. And if, if and when we get to that phase where it becomes not so much AI assisted and human approved, it becomes much more like, hey, this is what I need. Go buy it for me, then. It's a really big shift for businesses in all industries. So I would say, yeah, that's the biggest change I can see, reshaping the how we do digital marketing.
- [15:13]
A
Thank you, I really appreciate that. And we've seen quite a bit of shift. We probably talked about AI the last two years on the podcast, but I've definitely seen a big shift in this agentic movement. And like you said, when customers trust when their AI will find that near perfect travel buying service options you talked about going into the future, marketing to agents will be more important than consumers because agents will be able to dial in those consumers specific interests. And then last thing is, I didn't know on average 140 pages of content over 45 days before people will make a purchase on a travel option.
- [15:49]
B
So.
- [15:50]
A
That's amazing. Wow.
- [15:51]
B
Yeah. It's just the data is pretty robust on that. Obviously, it depends on the importance of the stay as consumers. We're spending so much time researching, and I think we're all looking for ways to cut that down. So. Yeah. Interesting times ahead.
- [16:03]
A
Absolutely. Adam, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [16:10]
B
Thanks, Brian.
- [16:11]
A
Bye for now.