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To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
Is AI the New SEO? How Contractors Can Win the Next Search Revolution
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- [00:02]
Taylor Hewlett
This is to the Point, a Rhino experience voted one of the top home services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the.
- [00:14]
Chris
And getting to the point. Hey, what's up? To the Point, listeners, It's your boy, Chris. I am by myself today because my co host is not here. And in all fairness, I knew he couldn't make it and I just didn't care. And I think on this particular topic, we don't need him to be here anyway, because it's already going to fill up the episode with all the questions that we have. And I mean, I'm always excited because I don't do this enough. And by the way, I'm doing this episode because of the feedback we're getting from our listeners. When we do some, like, individual trainings or things that you want to know where you just are looking for info, it's good to bring on the person who oversees those things. And today for that, for me, that is Taylor Hewlett, who's our director of train development, training and development at Rhino. And if you've been to Pantheon or Vertical Track or in the Linux meetings, you've been seeing him speaking more and more because he's taught, going out and sharing with all the contractors what we here at Rhino are doing on behalf of our contractors in the LLM world, or chat GPT or AI. Right. How are we. What, how and what are we doing for our contractors to make sure that they're coming up now, you know, first when search queries are happening on these, you know, chat GPT models, which is really, really important. And not that it's a massive number, but it's a number and one you certainly should be paying attention to. And I talked a little bit about this at the New Bay. The New Bay tour. And I said it, I said then, hey, I'm going to do a podcast on this particular topic. And a lot of people are, like, excited about it. So when we're gonna roll this thing out, to all of you that are listening, I appreciate you being there. But, Taylor, welcome to the podcast, man. Are you ready to get after it without any. Nothing like that, you don't speak this time. You're just, you know, just our listeners. So hopefully your explanations are very thorough that they can understand.
- [02:00]
Taylor Hewlett
Yes, yes. Nothing but the best for this amazing podcast. Thanks for having me, Chris.
- [02:04]
Chris
Yeah. And so just for some context, too, a little bit of background on Taylor, and I'm gonna jump straight into questions. Actually, Taylor and I met the first time. He was, at the time a nextstar digital marketing coach. I think this was back in, was 21, 22, somewhere around there.
- [02:20]
Taylor Hewlett
Taylor, when that was right, 20. The time that goes by so fast.
- [02:24]
Chris
These days because you've been working here like over two and a half years or something.
- [02:28]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, a little over two and a half.
- [02:29]
Chris
So that's where we met. And up to that point, we were not an extra partner because we, I, I, we could, we differed in opinion. Right. On, on marketing, KPIs that were being shared to the contractor and Taylor's kind of want to bridge the gap on that for us. It was the first time I believed in what, what was being told. We were sitting at a contractor, T.R. miller. The Sloan brothers love those guys at their place. And that's how we met. And it was like, it was great. And so the fact, whenever Taylor came on the market, I was like, dude, we gotta get this guy on our team. I really, really like him. And here he is two and a half years later and he's helped lead the charge on our AI, on all of our AI stuff that we've been working on for you, the contractors, the listeners. And so what we want to do on this episode is you got to pay super close attention. If you feel like, oh, this is boring, I'm not gonna listen to it. You're already screwed. There's a lot of things that if you ignore it, you are going to be in trouble. Like, I don't care what business you're in that you're listening to this podcast on. Like, I don't care. It's business, it's industry agnostic. Like, it is what it is. I bet you you're listening right now, you use Chat GPT today or you used it this week or you've used it period. But more and more people when we give these presentations say, how many people in here are using chat GPT? You know, daily, like 80 of the room raises their hands higher like, I.
- [03:44]
Taylor Hewlett
Was just at Lennox in Canada and they, and they 100 of the room rose their hand.
- [03:49]
Chris
The Canadians, The Canadians are loving some Chat GPT, some cards and whatever. But the point is, is like, we're going to give you some good stuff to pay attention to. And even if that means you listen to it and still don't understand what we're talking about, you can pass that to someone who does take some notes. You can even go into the show notes. Just copy and paste it right after you leave us a review and copy and paste it and send to whoever your marketing partner is or marketing coordinator or whoever the hell it is because for some of you smaller contractors, this is a way to win. This is a way to win. If you remember what SEO was back in the day and you're like, I wish I would have done SEO so much sooner. Well, this is that moment. This is that moment where you got to pay attention to it.
- [04:29]
Taylor Hewlett
I call it like turning into the, turning into the turn, right? When you're, when you're racing cars or in a swimming pool, it doesn't matter. You're in any race when the turns happen, that's when you can get ahead. And we're, we are on the precipice of a turn right now, which is so exciting, scary. All the things which we're all trying to kind of figure out as we move forward and, but this is the opportunity we get to turn into and, and it's exciting.
- [04:50]
Chris
I used an analogy that at nuve at the meeting over at Service Titan headquarters and I don't think it landed as well as that because I said remember when the yellow pages, like you used to be the yellow pages and that switched, you know, to like, oh my God, now I got to get a website. Like what the hell's a website? To me this is as important of a moment, right? Like you gotta have a website. Like ironically, that's the tool that a lot of these ChatGPT stuff's pulling from is what's, you know, the depth of that, of the information that, the things that you do in the website, it's different than actually, you know, the, the process for going towards just straight, you know, keyword searches on, on search engines. So these are things I'm going to jump into. You're going to walk away from this with a little bit better of an understanding of the why does it matter? How does it work? And then what do you do? So, and Taylor is, Taylor is super involved in that here with, along with a few other of our team members at Rhino on how we do this for you, the contractor today and having great success with it, like having our customers texting me saying oh just a little 24, 000 installation off of chat GPT. Thank you. You know, just sold a seventeen thousand dollar installation, just got this repair. Like that's the kind of, that's happening now. So Taylor, first off, why don't you just, why don't you just, why don't you just tell the listeners kind of what you've been up to, what you've been doing to be competitive, you know, on. And by the way, I'm referencing chat GPT, because I feel like it's probably the most well known, but this goes across, you know, all the large language model platforms.
- [06:18]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing that we have found, the cool part about this is here at Rhino, we got to put together an Innovation lab. And it's something that. I used to be a teacher, right? And so I get a nerd, I get to nerd out about this stuff. And we pulled maybe one or two people from every single department here in Rhino, and we got together and we said, okay, get your potato out, get your wires and get your light bulb out and see what you change. Like, did your light bulb light up if you wire it this way? And. And that's the analogy. That's the silly analogy I have to show. If we change something on the website, does that website rank in ChatGPT? If we change X, Y and Z, does what happens? Right? It's just a simple school science fair project. And with this Innovation Lab, we were able to find and get to share with you guys what influences directly ChatGPT rankings. And Chris, you said it best. Like, it's not a big number, but it's enough to look at. Because the why we're here, why it's important to be looking at this today, is Google's entire market share has kind of dropped a little bit, and that's happened for the first time in about a decade. And that's something we have to keep an eye on. ChatGPT is absolutely exploding with users, and people are going to ChatGPT to find the results that they're looking for. So we put the Innovation Lab together to understand what can we do here at Rhino to get better results for our clients in this new landscape of AI Perfect.
- [07:38]
Chris
And that's the stuff I want to talk about, because even though the number's small now, it's a growing and a growing fast number, right? So. So you want to be everywhere somebody can search. Well, this one, you know, it's going to be scaling and growing, and that's going to be another marketplace for you. I mean, by the way, you saw Chat GPT or her chatgpt Atlas, you know, comes out like their own search, like, shit's changing so fast. And geez, even by the time you did the Pantheon presentation, which, by the way, was the first time, I was like, oh, my God, we're doing all this at Rhino. Like, I had no idea. It was like the one thing that lit a fire for me when I was like, oh, my God, Taylor's so good. But we Were talking about how Reddit played into it, and then Reddit, that whole thing changed, you know, like what, just a few weeks later when you're presenting at Tommy's vertical track event. And like, so. But things are moving so quickly. So. So our hope from this is you can now what, like that Innovation Lab that we've had where we've learned all the things, we want to share some of those things with you now maybe since I just talked about Pantheon, for those who weren't there, what inspired, you know, the presentation of. And by the way, I loved our hook. It was AI ROI and wtf. Because that's kind of the way we all feel. And listen, no, I don't care what kind of that you're hearing in social media. Like, none of us have this thing all figured out. None of us do. No agency. Those that are, like, pushing you to build a website on this particular platform, if you do, you're going to be screwed. Don't believe everything that you hear. Don't believe the hype, as they say back in my day. But. But you got to pay attention to some of the basic things that we know as to be true. In fact, you know, that we've learned in our Innovation Lab team. So. So that's what I want to jump into. But, like, what inspired that for, you know, for. For you, Taylor?
- [09:14]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, I mean, it's exactly what you said around. I remember being at Pantheon and walking down some of the Expo halls, right? Some of the expo hallways that we have there. And every. I think every single person, if not every other booth, had the word AI. You got to be looking at AI. You got to be doing AI. And I didn't really see anything about, like, what. What does that mean? What can you actually do? And so putting this presentation together was like, this is what you can actually, actually take away from AI. And we're going to focus on digital marketing, right? That's what we here at Rhino do. But, like, AI is such a big tool that we have in our toolbox that as digital marketers, we can start to actually give you actionable items. Like, from that presentation. I always come into every single presentation I do, AI or otherwise. These are the things you can do tomorrow. Like, literally, while you're listening to this podcast, you can. You can start to execute on some things that are going to help your business grow within LLMs. Because when we start to look at the way people are searching, right? People usually go to Google, right? Your furnace breaks down, your toilet's overflowing. First you Go, oh, that's disgusting. Let me get on Google and find, find a solution for this. People are Starting to ask ChatGPT those questions, and when we started to go, oh, everyone is, is touting this big AI push, we were like, okay, what does, what, what, what can we actually do rather than just say, you should be doing AI, what does that actually mean? That was the inspiration because I remember you got up on stage in Pantheon and you said, everyone's just kind of figuring this out. And that's, that's why we have the Innovation Lab. That's why we're doing what we're doing. We are on the cutting edge of, of what we do to influence these LLMs.
- [10:55]
Chris
Yeah. And so, and so speaking of LLMs or Google, the game is trust, right? So I want you to walk the listeners through, you know, the trust phase of, or how trust plays into, not only how it's played into and still plays into Google, but also now into these. Ll, into these, you know, chat platforms.
- [11:13]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, yeah, 100%. So the biggest thing that comes comes to mind with this. And Chris, let me ask you this question. When. What's the last Google search that you made?
- [11:21]
Chris
It was, why do the Arizona Cardinals suck?
- [11:24]
Taylor Hewlett
I can imagine, right?
- [11:27]
Chris
Search I just made was for scores.
- [11:29]
Taylor Hewlett
For what?
- [11:30]
Chris
For scores. Football game scores.
- [11:32]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, football game scores. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So when you made that search on Google, did it give you hockey game scores, or did it give you the scores of a, of a restaurant down the street?
- [11:41]
Chris
Now give me football scores.
- [11:42]
Taylor Hewlett
Give you football scores. You searched exactly what you searched for, and Google gave you the results that you were looking for. Google has made it its mission to serve the end user really, really well. And they've actually monetized that. They, they have monetized our trust because they are so good at giving us the results we are looking for. You search for football scores. It gave you football scores. So when we look at that, that's why Google became a verb, right? We. We search for something, we trust the results. That's, that's given to us. The game has kind of changed in that way where ChatGPT came onto the scene and we have this, like, perceived, like, objectivity. It's almost like I'm sitting across from five different friends of mine and I ask it, like, hey, for football scores or H vac referrals or doesn't matter, right? I need something or a restaurant. It doesn't matter. I can get like, five different recommendations from Chat, GPT or my five friends. Google kind of gives me a list. Right. It becomes very transactional. So when I can have this, this efficiency and convenience and this, I'll put it in quotes, perceived objectivity. ChatGPT really comes to the playground with that and that's why they've been able to take some market share from Google because of this conversational style. Because think about it, the last time you were able to build trust with someone was a, was, was able to have a conversation with them. Right? And, and that's, that's the piece that ChatGPT does. Well, Google does not right now.
- [13:07]
Chris
So I actually I, I, I want to, I'm have a thought on that. Actually a good analogy on it that I, that I've been thinking about, you know, as I've done more and more of these and you talk about, you talk. Actually let me just start with that. I was just talking to somebody at the new Bay thing about using Chat. GPT is literally like getting a referral from one of your good friends. Like I believe it so much. It's gotten so much more believable, right? Like okay, my, the friend who used to lie to me is now telling me the truth a lot more. So now I'm starting to believe they're telling me the truth. But I've also got these other, you know, four friends over here who always like, I've always believed them. And so now I really believe that the responses that, that they're giving me are like the, the right answers. And so the conversion rate is incredibly high because you have, you've won the trust game. And, and these chat or the, these AI platforms, the, the LLMs are winning in the trust game and giving good results. And so we are trying to make you the contractor come up when somebody searches for who's the best contractors in, you know, San Antonio, Texas. So I want you to talk about when you say AI, you know, you say it hands you the answer instead of making you research it. Now what impact does that have on how businesses get found?
- [14:26]
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- [15:02]
Chris
Look, I've seen every new tech tool in the trades. When I first saw Contractor Commerce years ago, I thought cool idea, but will homeowners really buy systems and do estimates online? Well, they are big time. Summit Heating did over $500,000 in installs with instant estimates. Peterman Brothers is crushing it with their filter subscriptions. It's not theory anymore. It's actually happening. So yeah, Paw Paul's not crazy. This is the future. The future is now. Go to contractor commerce.com and see it for yourself.
- [15:41]
Taylor Hewlett
Let me start with the customer journey because I always like to try to put my customer hat on first, right? In order for businesses to be found, we have to go where the customers are. And studies have shown that customers are driving towards ChatGPT for the reasons that you just mentioned. So when we talk about helping our businesses get found on ChatGPT, ChatGPT is helping them research the answers that they are looking for. It knows things about them. You can prompt it in a certain way to give you the answer that you're looking for and give you that really solid trusted referral. Put yourself in the Google side of things. If you make a search for hey, plumbing repair, H vac repair near me or in this town, it's going to give you that we've all seen it, that list of results that then you have to go figure out. And we've always played the game of how can we influence that list, how can we get people to click on us, how can we get our reviews up to then build that trust. ChatGPT took all of those steps that you might go through. Hey, I'm going to go look at your Yelp reviews. I'm going to go maybe search you on TikTok. I'm going to maybe go look at your Google reviews and put it all in one. It put it all in one step that I can just search for one thing, I can ask it one question, prompt it one time and then ask it follow up questions. And it gives me all of the research that I'm looking for. It's, it's doing that work for me. I think about my attention span on TikTok these days and I think that happens to a lot of us, right? We're constantly inundated with this short form content and we want the efficiency, the convenience of that short form answer. That's where ChatGPT is setting itself apart from Google because, because it's able to give us that answer quickly and Google's just giving us transactional results.
- [17:19]
Chris
Dude, you want to hear what some of my, what some of my chatbots.
- [17:22]
Taylor Hewlett
Searches are, of course, as long as they're appropriate of.
- [17:27]
Chris
We're not always appropriate on this podcast, but the ones I'm gonna give, I did a podcast. Interview questions, of course. I, I, I plug in what, what the question. I plug in what I want to get out of a podcast and I ask for a bunch of answers and I use a mixture of the two. I did equity ownership tiers, video script and storyboard. Similar bands to Candle Box. Best roofing contractors in Carmel. See tactical question for founders.
- [18:03]
Taylor Hewlett
Wait, can I ask you a question on one of those. Yes, the, the best roofing contractors in Carmel, did it give you a map or did it give you just like a list of results? Do you remember?
- [18:11]
Chris
Yeah, it gave me. Hang on, let me look at it. It gave me a list. It gave me a list of results. And what I was looking for was Chad and I's roofing company. If it came up in there, which it did. No, it gave me a list and it told me overview services and why they are notable. Now, my prompt, my full prompt was, yeah, best roofing. Best roofing contractors in Carmel, Indiana.
- [18:34]
Taylor Hewlett
So I want to, I want to share a story on that one just for a second, because I was on the nexstar stage and I was talking about, hey, location, proximity. And then that's a really important thing. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But I was standing up there, I got done telling my answer and everything, and this guy came up to me, this contractor, really nice guy. I want to definitely tell everyone that he was super, super nice to me. He shoved his phone in my face and he was like, look, you're wrong. It's doing this now. This is what it's doing. And I said, give me that phone. Let me see when that was published. Let me see when that article was published. It was published while I was on stage talking through my answer, which was like, okay, hang on a second. Let's pause on that for just a second. Because it's constantly changing. It's constantly getting better. It used to give you a map of results. Now it just gives you a list. And some people are even saying it's pushing you over to Google map results, which is interesting. Like, it's changing underneath our feet right now, which is, which drives home, like, I'm just curious on, like, all the different searches that happened. How is it changing right now?
- [19:29]
Chris
Yeah, and listen, this is disruptive, you know, but disruption creates opportunity, right? And, and you can be fearful of it and do nothing, but I guarantee you a Lot of others are doing something with it. And that's why we're doing this, is trying to push you to do it. I mean, the pantheon, out of the blue, didn't tell Taylor, I said, hey, when they, when they scan this QR code, let's actually give them what their chat GPT results are for these top search queries for people looking for their type of business and see where they rank on it, which is what we started doing. And, and since then it's kind of like snow snowballed, you know, to do it, doing more and more of those. But it's cool for you to see and like, look, you can, you know, to Taylor's point, it's all changing so fast. So what we talked about last week might not be the same this week. So that's why we have to be.
- [20:16]
Taylor Hewlett
On the forefront for sure.
- [20:17]
Chris
But at least, you know, like, we are the ones who are like, you have or a contract, you got a job to do. My job is, you know, is to figure this stuff out on your behalf. And yes, while things are changes, we don't have it all figured out. Like I said, nobody does. At least we've got some things figured out. And when we learn something new, well, we adjust. That's the plan. We're talking about disruption, you know, creates opportunity. What kind of opportunities are emerging for contractors right now?
- [20:42]
Taylor Hewlett
So the opportunities that we have are to lean into this info retrieval versus generation. We have to agree that AI, ChatGPT or otherwise perplexity, it doesn't matter, doesn't generate any new information. It simply goes out and retrieves the information that's out there. We also have to take into consideration the interaction style that we are writing our content in. Content is definitely still king and we need to make sure that we're pivoting some of our styles to be more humanistic. And then finally, we have to know where ChatGPT is pulling its results from. Like I mentioned, it's not generating any new information. We have to know where it's getting its information and how it's formulating those answers. Those are the three big things that we need to know in order to step into this opportunity to step into the turn and pass our competition.
- [21:30]
Chris
Got it. And you know what's interesting about that is I used to say forever. You know, whenever I was still, you know, doing giving presentations and selling about content in general. Like I used to say, listen, these contractors would go with comb. Not all of them, very few actually, but some would comb through the content on their website. And be like, like, why does it say xyz? I really want to say xyz. I'm like, oh, no. It's because we were focused on search, like keyword search, and we wanted to say a certain thing, a certain way. Whereas now, like, depth really matters, man. On these, you know, on these paragraphs where I'd be like, why are you writing such a long paragraph? Ain't nobody gonna read it anyway. Well, that, you know that that stuff is changing, right?
- [22:09]
Taylor Hewlett
And Google, Google reads it. Google crawls that paragraph. But then the bigger thing is AI reads it, right? Google just kind of ingests it and looks for those keywords and it's very transactional and it ranks that page just based on that keyword search. AI can read it so fast and have contextual clues. It is so good at doing that. Which is why we need to lean into that more 100%. To your point, how does, how does.
- [22:33]
Chris
AI decide which businesses to feature? Or like, listen, local search is obviously a big deal, right? A big deal. So how was AI like, what are they doing to feature? Recommend a local search? Local search. You were talking about, you were talking about, you know, location and like, things like that.
- [22:51]
Taylor Hewlett
So let's define like how data flows within an AI model first. I think that's a good place to kind of go from a foundation. So when you use ChatGPT, you're kind of the user, right? And you prompt it and it has data collectors that are, that are going to go out and search the web, look at videos, look at blog posts. It's going to look at any information you gave it. Just this morning I gave it a PowerPoint and wanted it to make something different off of it. So it'll take the information I give it as well. All those data collectors will go out and grab and retrieve all of the data coming in. That'll pipeline that data into a nice answer that you can read. Right? That's, that's exactly what it does. And it pumps out that answer into more of a chatbot engine, which then you can ask follow up questions on. So how can we influence that data pipeline from prompt all the way to answer? What can we influence? Well, it's what we've done for 18 years. Or, or it's, it's been SEO, it's been the content on your website. So when, when someone comes to me and says SEO is dead, I'm like, no, no, no, no. That's been said for many, many years since, since I was even not born yet. SEO has been dead Right. No. SEO is now more important than ever and we have to look at it in different segments. The first segment I think you're, you're driving home towards, Chris, is on site content. How does ChatGPT look at your on site content to rank you better within the LLMs?
- [24:15]
Chris
Yeah. So you know, the methodology of we're going to create a service page in the specific location like of many locations that the contractor serves. And the more in depth, the better. Yes. Of what you're doing. Drain cleaning, you know, in, you know, Phoenix, Arizona or drain cleaning in Scottsdale, Arizona, or drink cleaning in Glendale, Arizona. And, but you can, you got to go more, you know, more in depth, you know, than that. So to me it sounds like what you're saying is, is content and the depth of the content, you know, in a, in a. Written in a slightly different way that's not so heavily focused on keywords, is starting to become. It's not a, or you're doing one or the other. It's, it's an. And there's got to be some variation of that. Is that right?
- [25:00]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, you're. You. So let's dive into that a little bit because I think what a lot of people miss the boat on for AI is like, okay, let's, let's just do, let's just answer our questions more in depth. What does that actually mean? Well, let me tell you, it's, it's FAQ pages on all of your service pages. Any question that your customer might ask, they're going to ask ChatGPT. And if ChatGPT can go find the answer on your website because you answered that question, well, then you're more likely to rank. So questions that customers are asking around their garage door, their H vac equipment, whatever the case may be. How do I change my furnace filter? When do I change my furnace filter? How can I clean my air ducts? We, we all love the question, and I love this one is how can I repair my own AC unit? Right. Like, we probably shouldn't be searching that, but the people do.
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Advertisement Voice 1
Right.
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Taylor Hewlett
That's what they do. And so if you can, if you can professionally in depth answer those questions on your website, you will be more of an authority within chat, GPT and the other LLMs. We have to be looking at that. So that's FAQ pages for sure. How you write that content. And speaking directly to your customer is even better. Right? Hey, this, I'm speaking directly to my customer, direct to consumer, rather than talking about the business. Yes. It's good to Advertise that we are 30 years in business, family owned and operated, professional licensed plumbers. Amazing content. We should absolutely still have that on our site. But we also need to add, and this is the pivot of content that we're talking about, the talking directly to your customers and answering their questions. And some of our listeners might be thinking, okay, well how do I do, how do I know what people are asking? There's a resource out there that you can use. You can use answerthepublic.com and you can search for your vertical and it'll give you all the questions in this beautiful circle that will, that your customers are asking right now. All you have to do is answer them. Like literally all. You're the expert, you have the answers. Just write the answers down on Your website and ChatGPT will look at those. Google will look at those. It's so, so important.
- [26:58]
Chris
You mean they should answer the public?
- [27:00]
Taylor Hewlett
They should answer the public. Answer the public.com. it's crazy. It's such a good resource to, to answer your, your customers questions. You can build your authority both within ChatGPT and Google. So not only are you, you're better in ChatGPT, which is what we're talking about today, you get a double hitter. You, you're better in Google too.
- [27:17]
Chris
Hey, so, so maybe also just tell, let the listeners know what are some of the other major resources that Chat GPT is pulling to help deliver, you know, the results.
- [27:29]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, we talked a little, a little bit about the next one which is we're gonna, we're gonna dive into off site SEO tactics and, and that, that's something that I love to talk about because I, I'll be up on stage and, and the audience, their eyes will start to kind of glaze over when we start talking about off site SEO tactics. I'm going to break it down. Really. What it comes down to is relevant. You got to be relevant within your market. Right. Proximity. We talked about the map that you had maybe for your, your caramel roofing searches. Right. And then your reputation. Those are the big three that we can dive into and, and help influence Chat GPT. When we're talking about kind of off site tactics.
- [28:05]
Chris
Yeah. But then I'm also thinking like what are other sites or platforms that they're pulling? Stuff like the thumbtacks, the, you know, stuff like that. Is there a couple of those that you can, that you can share from what you're saying, guys, like I said, it read it was a factor and then started to like lose it and Then it also started tanking in the stock and like you know, in the stock market, like all this was happening, I was like what the hell, I'm glad I didn't buy red stock and I almost did. But maybe just share a couple though so they can be like thumbtack what the. Or you know, better Business Bureau. Like what who the cares about. Like maybe talk about a few of those things just as from a ref. Not, not all of it because there's a bunch of. But like the main ones that you kind of see that we should be pay attention to. You're spending thousands to make the phone ring, but if your CSRs aren't picking up or converting, you might as well light it on fire. And what are the largest businesses in the country doing about this? They use Avoca, the leading AI platform in the trades.
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- [30:11]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So here at Rhino, as part of our innovation lab, we got to do hundreds and hundreds of searches on Chat GPT and we marked down basically anytime a company was was recommended. ChatGPT said hey, use this company when it wasn't from Google, Apple or Bing. So those three review sites that we we didn't want to look at, those are big ones that we've always been touting that we want to get reviews on. For sure. Anytime. It was not one of those big three. We wrote it down and, and some of the ones that we found were our contractors favorites like right, we all love the, the Better Business Bureau. That was one of them. ChatGPT pulls directly from the Better Business Bureau. Angie is another one. Three best rated is another one. And I'll give you one more. HomeAdvisor, which I know everyone loves. Right?
- [31:05]
Chris
Three best rated. I've never even heard of three best rated.
- [31:08]
Taylor Hewlett
I, we, we hadn't really. It's a directory, right, but we hadn't really either and it wasn't something that we would really tout and we'd want to be focused on Google, we want to be focused on Apple and Bing and Yelp and those types of things. But when we looked at ChatGPT, it's pulling directly from those sites, directly from those review sites. So you're probably sitting out there going, okay, what can I do about that now? Like how do I influence that? Well start encouraging some reviews over to those websites that I mentioned. If you start pushing some reviews over to Angie and Yelp and Better Business Bureau and three best rated and Thumbtack and owning some of your profiles over there, it's going to help you rank. We saw a direct correlation with this from the hundreds and hundreds of searches that we were able to do. And I know we're probably sitting, you're probably sitting out there going, yeah, none of those platforms work for me. I hate those platforms. Platforms. And, and that's okay. Like I, I get it, trust me. It's another thing to manage. But the data doesn't lie. And I said this before, if you don't go where your customers are going, which they're going to ChatGPT, you're going to miss out. So if you take nothing else, please go own some of your profiles, start getting some reviews over there. It's going to help you.
- [32:16]
Chris
Yeah. And then by the way, so let's talk about this. This is a great time for smaller companies to like, you know, for, for David to beat Goliath. Like this is a great opportunity for smaller or even lesser known, you know, no. Or lesser known companies or even new, newer companies, you know, to have an advantage. So maybe, maybe explain to them like, you know, you've kind of given some tactics but like, maybe let's elaborate on that a little bit on how some of these smaller guys can, can win. But and I'm gonna tell you what, here's my answer. Super high level start now onto these things that Taylor's talking about. Like yeah, moving on them fast, you know, and you know.
- [32:59]
Taylor Hewlett
Just, yeah, I'll break down a list for us that I think is, is important So I was up in, I was up at Lennox and I was giving this presentation and, and one of the questions that came in, which was, was really, really good of, well, that's a lot to manage. I'm already trying to just get Google reviews. You're telling me that I should also get reviews to some of these other platforms and, and I said yes, 100%. That is what I'm telling you. The first thing I would do is just own your profile, right? Go own or claim your Yelp profile, your thumbtack profile. Go make sure that your Better Business Bureau profile is up and running and accurate. If you do that one thing, you'll already be a few steps ahead of the Goliath of your industry. So Chris, when you said it perfectly, David versus Goliath, we have some smaller contractors out there that you might be, you might be in those shoes and you're looking at the Goliath in your industry, in your market, excuse me. And they have 30,000 some odd reviews, right? And you're sitting there going, I can't compete with that. Like, I can't. They are constantly getting more and more reviews. I'm trying to get as many Google reviews as I can, but there's no way I can make it up to their level. I agree with you 100%. I agree with you. If you want a way to start to chip and get some of your market share in that market, these review platforms is what I'm starting to look at. These review platforms, as people fled over to ChatGPT, are going to help you grow and take on the Goliath of your industry. So step one, I'm going to recap for a second. Step one is going to be owning those profiles. You've got to own them. It's going to help you with SEO, it's going to help you with ChatGPT. There's so much relevance there that I. You're missing out if you don't own them. One, two, start encouraging some reviews over there, right? If you have an amazing customer, Sally, that you always go out and service their equipment, you have a couple of them, right? They're always calling you back, they're a member of your shop, Go to them and say, hey, would you mind? I know you did a Google review. We love those reviews. Would you mind also doing one over here? Just have a conversation, do a happy call, get some reviews over there. I'm telling you, that is the opportunity that we are seeing from a ChatGPT ranking standpoint, from, from a review perspective.
- [35:08]
Chris
Or hey, real quick, let me chime in. Did you. I know you had one more. Right, but.
- [35:11]
Taylor Hewlett
Go, go, go.
- [35:12]
Chris
Okay, to that point, like, listen, we get that we're asking you to do a bunch of things. I'm like, this is like the perfect time to give a little shout out to Prolific Brand Design, because, you know, they do prolific email marketing too, and they're prolific at it. You're welcome, prolific. But. But this is a perfect time to engage your membership list. Like, those guys are fantastic at number one, keeping you out of the spam box, the spam folder, but then writing good, you know, subject lines to set the hook. This is a perfect example to use somebody like that to open email to go and leave the Yelp review at scale. At scale. And they're so, you know, so cheap to use them, too. So anyway, we started using it at Redbird Roofing, you know, to help increase these reviews on the platforms that we haven't been paying attention to, to help our chat model. And it's been working beautifully. So anyway, it's a simple, easy solution that you can do for a month, two months, whatever you decided to do. But anyway, there's an easy way you can, you can check that number two box you just talked about.
- [36:08]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, yeah, Driving those reviews, leveraging your current customer lists. Those are all things I'm looking at for, from a relevance and ranking on ChatGPT perspective. And then finally, then this is another double header because I'm always a fan of giving our clients, our customers, contractors out there, hey, if I'm going to do this, maybe I can kill two birds with one stone. That's kind of the goal here, right? We talked a little bit about how all of the things are going to help you both in the Google landscape as well as ChatGPT is going to be nap. And that's name, address, phone number. When you go own your profiles and you, you make sure that your name is there and it matches across your directories, your GBP and your website. You make sure your phone number is there and it matches across the web. Unless, of course, you're using a tracking number, which we can get into, and then finally your address. Those are the big ones. If you start to own some of those things, not only will it help you with ChatGPT, we found those results, but it's also going to help you in the Google landscape as well, because Google likes that consistency. The more we can play in their playgrounds, the more we can influence them, the better we can get, the more results we can get. From a lead generation perspective.
- [37:15]
Chris
Let'S. Since you're kind of going down that path, let's talk about, let's talk about proximity.
- [37:18]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah.
- [37:19]
Chris
You know, when we talk about who's coming up in the Google Maps section, proximity plays into it different than it does on the AI platforms. So you, you gave a really good presentation on that, a vertical track about that. And I think it's important to talk through it because again, I learned, I learned as you were talking about like, oh, and it changes the way that I started thinking about Redbird Roofing on, like, oh, we need to, we need to add X, Y and Z. Because proximity doesn't play in the same. It doesn't deliver the results the same on the. On Chat GPT. So maybe talk about how proximity plays into like the local, the local search.
- [37:57]
Taylor Hewlett
I will, I will. So, Chris, first caveat I'm going to give you is if I start to get a little too technical, then just wave your hands and cut me off and ask a question. Right? Like, pull me out of it. So when we, when we look at gbp, right, we're looking at location and the way that Google Business Profile. Google Business Profile. Thank you. Thank you. When we're looking at gbp, Google Business Profile, the way Google ranks those profiles is based on city center. And I'll give you the example that I, that I ran here in Boulder, Colorado. It's one of my favorite towns. It's just a 15 minutes up the road. So it put the city center kind of next to city hall. It's not locally known as the city center. Basically what I'm saying is Google is working off of outdated information for these city centers. And that's tough, right? When, when it's working off of outdated information of what's locally known as the city center. That can help or hurt your rankings, depending on how close you are to that city center. That's all GBP or Google Business Profile. Chrissy, you with me so far?
- [38:56]
Chris
Yep, yep, yep. Actually, I have, I have a, I have another question on it, but I'm like, finish your thought.
- [39:01]
Taylor Hewlett
Okay, cool, cool. So when we, when we flip this on its head and we started to look at AI rankings and ChatGPT rankings, we noticed that it's kind of pulling from the same data as Google's pulling from. So it's inaccurate. And this is the part that's changing for us. This is the part that's changing completely for us. Underneath our feet. When we looked at OpenAI's or chat GPT's results, when we do a location based search. It doesn't give us options that are really, really close to us. We are in a hyper local industry. We want to use people that are close to our homes. We want to make sure we're in those service areas. And ChatGPT was not great at pulling that information. Now it's getting better. From Pantheon, where I got to speak in Pantheon till now, it's actually gotten better. We saw that with your Carmel roofing example. It gives you a little bit more options. It's starting to engage with customers a little bit more, asking for more information. So not only am I giving it my address, I'm giving it information. It's asking, hey, where are you located? What are you interested in? What are you nearby? It's, it's prompting that conversation back to me so that it can give me better results, ultimately giving better trust. This, this proximity piece is on my watch list right now. To really understand what's coming down the pipe for us in how Both Google and ChatGPT are going to do proximity and location based ranking.
- [40:24]
Chris
Do you think you can you accomplish all this just by making those changes to, on your actual site or is it going to take some support from some of the other, like pro, like the other off site, you know, resources? Like, I know this is kind of off the cuff, but there's, I'm going someplace with it. So like, doesn't need to be a long answer, but like where? Yes or no? Like, is that yes? Can we all be accomplished on site?
- [40:45]
Taylor Hewlett
No, no, no, no. Sorry, I misunderstood your question. No, it cannot all be accomplished just on your website.
- [40:50]
Chris
Okay, so, because you know, what a lot of contractors will do and what we've, what they've been, you know, asked to do, especially from a marketing perspective, is, okay, well then go up, you know, go open up a, you know, another location in this, you know, over in this city, you know, so now here we are hopping around, open up an office here, an office there, office here, office there, like that, you know, that maybe is not even, you know, occupied. It's just for the brick and mortar to be able to set up a Google business profile. Now I'm just giving like an, you know, an example of what, you know, customers do in this instance. You don't have to do that to win in the LLM game. It's. Yeah, so, so it's, I'm not saying you shouldn't, by the way, because I, by no means is this podcast to say stop focusing on Google. It is still a behemoth and we 100 are folks focused on it. It's just an end. But you can win in some of those other places where you don't have physical locations on the chat platforms by doing this like. And that's, that's kind of where I was going to with it.
- [41:48]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. And this brings up the David versus Goliath thing again too.
- [41:52]
Chris
Right.
- [41:53]
Taylor Hewlett
If I'm a smaller shop and I don't have the resources to properly and I want to, I want to hit on that to actually accurately and properly open up a new location, another address in the city, over the subdivision, over whatever the case is. I can start to influence my rankings within Chat GPT and Google as well by doing some of the things, owning these profiles off site, making sure my address is, is accurate, all the things that we've talked about. But it brings up like if I'm, if I'm David in this scenario, I can have a little bit of market share. I can start to chip away at Goliath because they can go open up a new location. I can be a little bit more competitive in my backyard.
- [42:29]
Chris
Got it. Hey, real quick, I'm gonna, I wrote down something else. I don't want to forget to ask it. And I remember talking to, you know, to Mark internally on our dev team about this at one point in time saying, hey, explain this to me like a perfect example. Mike Bruner, who listens to this podcast, been on here before Iceberg, great customer of ours, good friend of mine is one of the guys that sent me and said hey Chris is, you know me, $24,000 installation of chat GPT because we've been actively working on his stuff. And now how does, how do they know right? If the customer doesn't say hey, I can't, I found you on Chat GPT by the way. They are, most of them are, are asking if you, if you the contractor are asking where the lead source came from because how are you tracking it? Is where I'm going with it is can you see the referral source you know of where it comes from? Like maybe explain how we are, how we are tracking that now.
- [43:23]
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Chris
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- [46:00]
Taylor Hewlett
For sure. You can absolutely see the referral source. So so so let's break it down from a customer perspective. I'm a customer. I'm searching on ChatGPT or prompting ChatGPT for a plumbing company. I then click on the website link right? I click on your website link I in my URL when when I go to your website it will have the Referral code of ChatGPT. It will have the referral code of AI. It knows that I came from that. We can even break it down from the different LLM, the different models. Perplexity Gemini. We can see where customers are coming from and what language model, what AI tool they are using and we Utilize tools like Google Analytics to do this. We report on those things so we can know from inception, from, from prompting to phone call to booking to revenue. Right. That's the ultimate goal. We need to map back what we're doing up Here in the ChatGPT realm all the way down to revenue. We can see and map that journey directly with that attribution. It comes with your URL when you click on the link from ChatGPT.
- [47:06]
Chris
Yeah, man. And what's cool about this is, you know, if, if you had to attach a cost per lead to it, you know what I mean? Even though it's really small number of overall leads in comparison, it's still probably your lowest cost per lead. Right next to a referral.
- [47:24]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, I mean this is the modern day word of mouth right here. Right here. Like, like when we look at ChatGPT, it's recommending your, it's building trust and it's recommending your company. So yes, the cost per lead is going to be lower because of that. It's going to be right in the realm of SEO cost per lead because it utilizes SEO best practices to make its recommendations.
- [47:46]
Chris
So, so actually I, I know why I didn't think about this. It you say because it's. People are spending money on SEO tactics right now, they're getting ancillary benefits if, like, let's say if you're a Rhino customer, they're getting ancillary benefits now on chat as well.
- [48:04]
Taylor Hewlett
Right.
- [48:04]
Chris
So that's one thing I gotta start to figure out is like, man, what are those resources? Like, I'd love to know what an actual cost is to generate a CHAT GPT lead. And obviously we're not gonna solve that on this podcast, but I'm just kind of thinking out loud, it's so low, but as it scales, you know, we're going to see more and more and eventually, eventually this thing is going to be monetized. Eventually, like we, with like DBT Atlas, there's going to be a paid portion of this thing, you know, to win the game. And when they do, we're going to be ready. We're getting ready.
- [48:34]
Taylor Hewlett
You have to be. Chris, do you remember? I'm too young for this, so I'm really young. I just want to make sure everyone knows that. But no. Do you remember when LSA was, was, was a 30 cost per lead, like when it was first introduced like that, way back when.
- [48:45]
Chris
Dude, let me just tell you. Okay, so for those who are listening right now, don't maybe not know this, you've Seen people like other competitors and stuff going to Google facilities and hosting events and like there like we were the OGs of doing that at Rhino. Google came here to Phoenix in 2014 of like when I say Google, there's like five of them. They came and said, hey, in the H Vac space, you guys are one of the largest, you know, of, you know, of niche, you know, niche H Vac customers. And we were rolling out this Google managed agency program and we would like you guys to, you know, to, to be our, our go to for it, our beta tester for it. And that included Google Home services at the time, which is what it was originally.
- [49:27]
Taylor Hewlett
Right, right.
- [49:28]
Chris
And, and it was so cheap and you. And, and it wasn't opened up to everybody. It was like these select people you could put in. So we were able to start pumping in our own customers into that and the cost even less than the 30 bucks. Like we're in the 20s and it was an amazing time. It looks nothing like that today.
- [49:45]
Taylor Hewlett
No, nothing, nothing.
- [49:46]
Chris
But just to date myself, we, we were the OGs of testing that out and then having events at Google and rolling it out together. We're talking 20 years or 10 years ago, man, like how long it's been good. Oh, and also, fun fact, you would know us, Taylor. But at that time, Anna was super pregnant and we actually were on kid number. God, what kind of kids I have now? Kid number four.
- [50:12]
Taylor Hewlett
Okay.
- [50:12]
Chris
And, or, and, and we met with Google that morning from like 9 to noon and then went straight from the, from Rhino to the hospital and she had found at 2:15.
- [50:24]
Taylor Hewlett
I think she told me that story and I remember thinking, wow, that's, that's hard. That's hard.
- [50:29]
Chris
Completely derailed us. But yes, I remember when it was very inexpensive, when it was very expensive.
- [50:33]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, yeah. So, so when, when LSA leads were, were really inexpensive. And what we're looking at, what I'm driving home towards is, is paid ads on Chat GPT or Chat GPT Atlas. Whatever they're gonna do is going to be cheap out the gate, right? When, when you start to jump on that and, and here at Rhino, that's what we're looking at right now is when are they going to monetize? How are they going to monetize? How is it all going to work? Now I am not going to be on this podcast to sit here and tell you, you that you can start to pay Chat GPT to influence the results. It gives customers or it gives people. Right? That's, that's a line that that open AI is going to have to figure out for themselves how they're going to walk. Here at Rhino, we can figure out how we can influence that. Once they draw their line in the sand, once they put that line in, we can figure out how we can influence it. And really, this is all to be said that we can, we can start to jump on paid ads. Some people are saying as early as next year 2026. Some people are saying it's going to be further than that with this introduction of Atlas. We just don't know. And that's why it's on my watch list. I have to keep an eye on what paid ads are going to look like in this open AI and this AI really in general, in this landscape.
- [51:42]
Chris
Okay, I'm actually going to piggyback off that. But first, before I go there, this reminds me of even today, this is still rings true. But you, there was nowhere in black and white where you would see that having really good SEO helped your pay per click performance better, make it, make it improve better. But everything that we did supported that. That's exactly what happened. Because it drove, you know, it drove up your quality score. Like, you know, and you were getting better cost per click. So because of the relevancy, like all these things didn't just accidentally get better together. Like when we ran a SEO to PPC campaign. What this makes me think about is that, that like right now we're kind of setting the foundation to come up in search, you know, in the search queries, you know, on the chat, on these, you know, platforms. I just have to believe somehow that translate, when this thing does get monetized in the same way to whatever, you know, whatever the paid platform is going to be. Maybe not, but I just wonder if there's gonna be a connection there.
- [52:43]
Taylor Hewlett
That's, that's why it has to be on the watch list. Because I would agree with you, like, if I were to be, if I were to take a step out into the unknown and make a prediction, I would agree with you that, that this is all going to be relevant to each other. Because we saw that when, when OpenAI first started searching the sites. Excuse me, started searching the, the Internet, we saw that it was leveraging the foundation of SEO. It was leveraging the foundation that Google had built and the trust that Google had built to give proper, accurate, good results. I can't imagine that they're not going to just build right off of that, the foundation of that into their paid ads platform. They're, they're going to do that. At some point, we just got to figure out what it's going to look like.
- [53:23]
Chris
Yeah. So I do want you to get your crystal ball out now. Okay.
- [53:25]
Taylor Hewlett
Okay.
- [53:26]
Chris
Now, oh, by the way, maybe be thoughtful on what you share because I do want to make sure we keep a competitive advantage here. So I'm going to ask you a. Actually, I'm going to give you time to think about it while I ad lib for you. Okay. And this is around like you guys are all certainly looking and trying things, thinking. Okay. You know, in 12 months, these are the, these are some of the changes that we expect to see in how AI is impacting, you know, local marketing. So maybe share like a few things or, or at least what you're paying attention to that may or may not happen. You know, it may or may not happen, but you kind of feel like this is something that we're going to pay attention to and, and maybe share just like a few of those things, like what's in your crystal ball?
- [54:12]
Taylor Hewlett
Good question. The first one is in the crystal ball because we're kind of, see, we haven't seen it in reality just quite yet. And the second one is definitely way out there. So the first one that comes to mind is thumbtack. We talked a little bit about thumbtack before and owning that profile. The reason I bring thumbtack up is because thumbtack is the only strategic partner in OpenAI's world right now. They are in bed together. OpenAI owns ChatGPT, if for those of you that don't know. And so when Thumbtack and ChatGPT get together, Thumbtack is the only one of our industry home services that is doing this. You, when a search happens utilizing ChatGPT, they're going to leverage the data on thumbtack in order to, to make those results happen. So owning that thumbtack profile is going to be super important. Those of you that don't know, Operator, Operator is another big one in ChatGPT's room. It's their highest paid option. It's 200amonth. I want you to think of it as like a smart assistant. Smart assistant that does things for you can start to take action for you. For example, it can't quite do this just yet. It's pretty, it's pretty new. But if I say, hey, go book me a haircut, it can go actually do the things. It'll, it'll book the appointment for me, which is really exciting. That's where AI is headed. Thumbtack is going to be at the forefront of that because of the strategic partnership. So that, that's the first thing I'm looking at right now. The other one is going to be around the partnership between Perplexity and Yelp. Yelp, I know everyone's favorite platform. I get it. But they're in bed together, right? Or they're getting in bed together. I have not seen this, this thing in the real, in the real world. I made a couple searches on Perplexity. I did not see Yelp in there as of yet, but it's on my watch list because of that strategic partnership. So as these companies as, as these large language models get in bed with other partners, that is what I have my eye on in my crystal ball moving forward.
- [56:09]
Chris
Got it. You know, but it's. Yeah, because it, it actually before I knew that they were, you know, that the thumbtack had the partnership with, you know, OpenAI, you would just think of it like, well, what if they do the same to Thumbtack that happens to Reddit, you know, like, then, then what? We don't know. Like, but you got to still keep trying all the things. You don't just focus on one platform or the other because this could happen, but at least in this sense, you know, like if they created a partnership, probably going to work together on some.
- [56:41]
Taylor Hewlett
Yeah, yeah, it seems like it's a.
- [56:43]
Chris
Little more like, a little more solid of a, or a sticky, you know, of a, of a resource to pay attention to.
- [56:49]
Taylor Hewlett
I would agree, I would agree with that. It's interesting that you say that too, because I've been kind of tracking like one of the things that I always talk about is if we were to freeze time literally right now, like, if we, if, if Google, if we froze Google. Let's do this. We'll, we'll freeze Google right now and we'll say, hey, you're not allowed to do any more, more work. Currently, ChatGPT users are the users going to. ChatGPT would far outweigh Google by as early as next year. Like, more people will go to Chat GPT than Google if, if we were to do nothing else right now. But exactly what you said. Gemini is here, right? When, when Google comes to play with Gemini and starting to work on that, they're, they're going to, to steal back some of their market share. So there's going to be this push and pull between Reddit and Google. And if, if, if Google notices that Reddit is giving results to ChatGPT, Google might not prioritize Reddit as much you start to get in the money game at that point. Right? Yeah, you got to keep an eye on those things.
- [57:43]
Chris
That's a really good. Yeah, that's a really good statement. I didn't think about. Yeah, there's going to be some favoritism. Yeah.
- [57:50]
Taylor Hewlett
I mean, it says, oh, we're the most trusted thing and we want to serve the end user. But they make a lot of money, right? Yeah. Why do you think they do that? It's because of things like this.
- [57:59]
Chris
Yeah, See, listen, listeners to all the contract, like, this is the. We have to pay attention to. Like, as if it's not hard enough to, you know, in the spring and fall for, uh, contractors to create, you know, some demand for you, like, we also gotta pay attention to this. God, it's crazy, but it, you know, it is. Like, I've even. I took a course on how to learn how to use all the different models. It was called courseive and it had all these different platforms. I had to go through and take a class on it. And it did take me, you know, almost 30 days to complete the damn thing. But, like, and it wasn't like it was 3:30 straight days. It's just. It took me that long to complete the course because of all the other I got to do. But what it really taught me was how to use the prompts. The best way. How do. How do, how to leverage the prompts to get all the things that you want and what it is, you don't even think about all the things you can do with it. Like, you could pump your financials into this thing, remove your name from it, you know, your name or anything that's personal from it.
- [58:52]
Taylor Hewlett
It.
- [58:52]
Chris
And you could have it, you know, you could have it spit out whatever you want. Hey, how much am I spending on average, you know, looking at this last year's numbers on, you know, eating fast food, you know, or doordash or uber. Oh, actually, maybe actually don't do it because you'll be pissed on how much money you're blowing doordash. It was enough for me to say, sweet, I can afford to have a chef come once a week on Monday and prepare good food for me. And it costs me less than what we've been spending on fast food. That's pathetic. But it was a really cool tool or a thing that I learned by using this tool to say, hey, help me find this. I'm just giving you an example. But the point being is it makes you more and more and more and more confident to use this thing. Over and over and over again. Right. But there's still going to be a massive chunk of people that are just not going to buy into it. A massive. And when they. And listen, Google's a big business, a smart business, or, you know, a great percentage of revenue for the state of California and a bunch of other states, actually New York, you know, Illinois or. Yeah, Illinois. They're going to continue to build out Gemini as well, and it's going to compete. There's going to be a lot of back and forth. But again, the point is, don't ignore it. No matter how much you don't know about it, know this, don't ignore it, or find a good marketing person who can help you to help do it for you. And then, like Taylor was saying earlier, it's trackable so you can trace it back. It is. It's its own lead source. You can figure these things out. And so better to get ahead of it now and start to get ahead of the game, especially if you're smaller or have small brand equity, like, get ahead of it, get ahead of it now. Just do some of these searches, you know, search queries, use the answer the public, you know, tool that he told you about, and then use some of those and do it in your own market and see if you come up or don't, there's a trigger for you. If you don't get on it, I can start doing opportunity.
- [60:40]
Taylor Hewlett
You got opportunity to make it better for you, Chris. Something that we didn't get a chance. I wanted to share as well that we're kind of doing a little bit different. We're one of the only people doing it is that ranking report that we were running with ChatGPT. We're running it like three different times with three different accounts to really get an idea of, like, are you showing up or not? For the queries that are most searched for, Most prompted in ChatGPT for your market, for your services, we can see, are you showing up or are you not? What percentage of voice do you have within ChatGPT? That's. That's something that's on the cutting edge, so we can understand that gives us data on how we can influence it, too.
- [61:16]
Chris
Okay, okay, listen, here's what we're gonna do. So to all of our. All, everybody that's listening who made it through this to, you know, to this point, we're gonna put a link in. We have a link because a QR code just goes to a link for this, right? So we'll just throw the link into when we post this, when this episode airs, you just go to our Facebook page to the point. Facebook page to the point. Home services podcast Facebook page. And in the actual content, we'll also share the link for you to go. And you click on the link and like Taylor's saying, this power ranking report pulls it for you, pulls the rankings for you based on the most popular queries in your market. So just go click on the link and then follow the instructions and submit it. It's easy. It's like, I don't even know what four questions. And then, and then we, and then we'll. We'll deliver you guys what the results are. So that way you have it. So I know I just added a lot of extra work, Taylor, for you.
- [62:06]
Taylor Hewlett
But, like, oh, I'm in for it, dude, are you kidding me? Like, this stuff is awesome. And the biggest thing that fuels me is I've been. I was with nexstar before. I was. I was. I've been in this industry for about four or five years. Been doing digital marketing for a decade. Biggest thing I love is to help people win. That's it.
- [62:22]
Chris
Well, then let's go ahead and close with this because we're buttoned up to an hour already. What's the biggest mindset shift that you want these contractors, these listeners to walk away with right now?
- [62:35]
Taylor Hewlett
Biggest mindset shift I think that is coming down the pipe for us is how people interact online. It's changing, and if you don't get in front of it, you'll get left behind. You have to get in front of it. The way people are interacting with these ChatGPT large language models is more conversational. That's the big shift. We're going from a transactional search of plumber near me to, hey, emergency services available now for a low cost in this area, My toilet's overflowing to this big, long prompt query. So that's the shift that we are seeing. It's more conversational and you have to have things in place so you can be competitive with that or you'll get left behind.
- [63:19]
Chris
Got it. And what he's saying, man, is this is not and an and situation, or excuse me, or it's an and situation. Like you got to focus on all the things. And clearly if you're a contractor, you can't be focused on all this. This is what our job is as a marketing company is to do, you know, content in a way that's still appeasing to Google, but content in a way that's also appeasing to these large language model platforms. So, like, what do you, you know, you, you know, I gotta, gotta do one or the other. Just focus on all of it.
- [63:49]
Taylor Hewlett
Right.
- [63:49]
Chris
I really don't want anybody to walk away from this saying, okay, I'm going to 100 focus on this. Please don't do that on this because there's still too much search volume, you know, coming into this platform. So. Yeah, then you're going to blame me. Like Chris told me, Taylor told me, don't do that.
- [64:04]
Taylor Hewlett
No, no, don't do that. We, we did not tell you that. You got to focus on both of them. But it's coming. We're excited for it. We're excited to be on the forefront.
- [64:11]
Chris
Yeah. And what we're going to do too, to the listeners too, is we'll, we'll do as we learn more. Like we'll, we'll do another check in. Maybe we'll make this one of our Thursday little micro micro episodes where kind of just do an update things that we've learned, you know, over time and, and that way you guys can hear from us so that way you don't have to wonder what's going on. We'll be at least be able to tell you what we've learned. So, Taylor, I appreciate you coming on doing this. You know, I, like I said the first time I heard you present on at Pantheon, I was like bought in. I was like, oh my gosh, I did not know that we did all this and I did not know. And now that I'm seeing the results of it from our customers and that's actually turning into, you know, installs for them, like, I'm getting more and more and more of these, especially, you know, from some of my guys I'm closer with and like, obviously my group of friends, you know, like, you know, Tommy and all these guys, they're, they're listening to what we talked about and implementing, you know, as well on different platforms and it's like, so it's cool to kind of see it all playing out and like, we are at the forefront of it. We're not just out there talking about it because we read it on some website somewhere. We're actually here doing it in our little innovation lab and doing on behalf of our contractors and seeing the results from it. So, like, we know what we know and that's what we're trying to share with you guys on here today. So, Taylor, appreciate coming on here.
- [65:18]
Taylor Hewlett
Brother Chris, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
- [65:21]
Chris
And the thing that you said that actually landed the most with me that I want all our listeners to take away is how much do you love word of mouth advertising?
- [65:31]
Taylor Hewlett
The best one.
- [65:31]
Chris
This is the modern day word of mouth. I love that phrase. And I 100 and bought in on it. I'm excited to watch what it does. I mean, this thing just keeps going. So. But to our listeners, if you take nothing away, it says you need to, you know, from this, other than the fact that, like, okay, I don't understand everything they said. I just know I need to pay attention to it. Well, then that works. Pay attention to it. Number one, do something with it. Number two, you don't got to do everything, but you got to do something. No. Zero days.