Contrarian Marketing Podcast (by Kevin Indig and Eli Schwartz)

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Today we discuss the big Marketing themes of 2023:

* The impact of AI on marketing

* Social media platforms that could replace TikTok

* Trends in attribution and privacy

Key Takeaways

* AI, especially products by OpenAI, will have a significant impact on marketing.

* AI Content still requires editors to produce good quality content. Writers should upskill themselves to write better than what AI Content generates.

* YouTube and Meta can potentially fill the gap if TikTok gets banned.

* Blunders caused by Google Analytics 4 may flourish new attribution products in the market that provide a complete data picture.

* Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and GDPR will impact users’ privacy and business models of performance marketing solution providers.

How AI impacts marketing

Kevin thinks AI is hyped and has the potential to significantly impact marketing:

“If I had to make some definite statements for this year, first of all, I 100% expect Google to launch a chatGPT competitor. I'm very surprised that they haven't reacted to a lot of this stuff yet. Other search engines like Neva and Perplexity.ai have already started to embed a chatGPT-like feature in the search engine and it looks really good.

I'm not saying Google is doomed, but I expect them to react and publish something that makes them compete directly with OpenAI. Then there is Bing, which is also set to embed ChatGPT in Bing search. I also think we will see a lot more multimodal AI happening.

I also think that we're going to see some companies build a generative AI video feature where they show you a video that stitches together some of the best moments from other videos about a specific topic – I call it the video summary.”

Eli shares a contrarian view on how AI is not going to change much as it has always been here for quite a long time and is expensive:

“Google Assistant is like ChatGPT, except they can't write papers. I also think from an AI standpoint, it can do things on video, it can identify things, stitch things together, and it's just going to be an improvement on something that already exists.

I'm going to give a real-time answer that AI is very expensive from a computing standpoint.

So right now, open AI is free. There are free tools to play around with it. I think once the doors get shut and it starts costing a lot of money from a computing standpoint, I don't think it will be as simple for people to do. There's a reason people pay subscriptions for Jasper and all these other AI tools. AI is expensive, and it's very expensive.

So I think AI's here, it's been here. Not necessarily new, and I don't think it changes much.”

Is AI content worth the hype?

Kevin shares how AI content will increase the demand for editors and writers with domain expertise:

“You still need a human editor to fix spelling errors, grammar errors, and to just make the thing pop a bit more.

We've seen some big companies experimenting with and launching AI content like CNET, and Yahoo has started to experiment with AI content. I'm not talking about the type of AI content Associated Press has been publishing since 2015 where they launched about 1700 pages with AI content that are only two or three sentences long. This is not the type of content I'm talking about.

I'm talking about long-form content and for that to come from an AI, it's just not yet ready to be published raw. It still needs editing, grooming, and some maintenance.”

He further adds how mediocre writers may face a challenge from AI content if they do not upskill:

“I think this (AI Content) is the biggest threat to Upwork and Fiverr right now. A huge swath of writers that write very mediocre content will just go away.

Editors will gain in value and will be in high demand, but I think the writers that are writing basically on a level or maybe below the level of what ChatGPT can produce today, I think they really need to retrain and look for other work because they're not going to have a future.”

Eli thinks that AI content lowers the bar for what content will cost, and bad quality content gets ignored even today anyway:

“One goes to other countries that are a lot cheaper to pay writers and the quality might not be as good. You pay like $5 a piece of content, $50 a piece of content.

Now it's basically free – so there's just too much content out there.

There is a huge use case for AI content – writing up the news, and sports scores, and doing financial reporting. You can just write an article about the latest earnings report that extracts the numbers from the earnings report and puts it into a blog post. It's a great use of resources rather than having some analyst in some country, and you're paying 50 bucks to put it together.

So I think AI content is just a tool. I agree with you that it just needs to be groomed and improved. But I don't think like there's doom, and gloom for real writers and copyeditors out there.

This is a research tool. It allows people to gather information and produce information at a far cheaper rate.

Also, if it'll be cheaper or free, then people will ignore all this useless content, which you're probably ignoring anyways if it's written by low-quality writers.

So it doesn't change much – it just moves things around on the big chess board of life.”

Listen to our dedicated episode on AI Content - tool or toy?

Who steps in Tiktok’s shoes when it gets banned?

In our 6th episode of Contrarian Marketing Podcast, we discussed the future of TikTok and if it can replace Google Search. In this theme, we discuss which platform can replace it if it gets banned:

Kevin thinks YouTube can take over TikTok’s share of users:

“In my mind, the platform that's most likely to take over TikTok is actually YouTube.

They have a comparative user base, and they have shorts, which I think is actually a pretty good product. They have a lot of content and they share revenue with creators. So I think the most likely one is YouTube.

But I also think that several platforms can gain at the same time from TikTok going away simply because people spent their time in other ways. So it's not just a single winner, but actually multiple ones.”

Eli thinks Facebook and Instagram would tap into TikTok’s share of users:

“I think it becomes Instagram because it's already there. The video's already there, the concept's already there, and Facebook's amazing at stealing ideas. They're just going to take all the best stuff from TikTok and do it.

But one thing I would add is –  not enough people talk about when it comes to Facebook is that how Facebook is the best place to buy and sell stuff. There is so much untapped potential there. Facebook doesn't monetize that. They monetize it if you pay or ship through Facebook. But otherwise, this is a peer-to-peer transaction, and it has so much potential there. So yes, it's not really a social network, but it's the best place to do this kind of thing. Craigslist doesn't really exist for this anymore.

I think Facebook gets revived a little bit this year, especially if TikTok goes away.”

Kevin also shares his thoughts about where Twitter stands in 2023:

“I think there's a massive opportunity right now for another social network to come and finish Twitter off, but there's also no great alternative. 

Elon Musk has promised all sorts of improvements – but I haven't seen any reduction in bots. I've seen a lot of improvements in speed, which nobody cares about. I don't think anybody ever complained about Twitter being too slow. So I don't think the product is advancing as he promised it would.

So I think it's not in a good spot and the time is really good and ripe for a competitor to come along.”

The underdog problem: attribution

Eli and Kevin share their thoughts on the new Google Analytics 4 and potential trends around attribution:

Eli thinks GA alternatives may use this opportunity of blunder caused by GA-4:

“I think there's going to be a lot of tools that are going to start filling the gap because if Google's struggling users to move over from Universal Analytics to GA-4, there's room for other tools to come out there. The analytics market has been really small now.”

Kevin agrees and further adds:

“I don't see competition for Google Analytics, but what I do see is that the product cannibalizes itself. I think that they will transport or transfer a lot of features from Universal Analytics to GA-4.

I think that is also an opportunity for somebody else to come along and present something that is also free or at least has a free tier, is as extensive as Google Analytics, maybe privacy first, and also very customizable – and this poses a real threat to Google.”

Eli shares how important to get the complete data picture, something that Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics might fail to provide:

“Ahrefs, our sponsor, help you get that whole data picture. It may not be accurate, but then again, GA may not be accurate too because of privacy issues. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here. Analytics tools like GA, and Adobe analytics – really look at that internal data. But if internal data's not accurate and it's super expensive from a resource standpoint, you could probably get a good sense of how things are working when you use a tool like Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, or SEMrush.

(It helps in) understanding which channels are working for you, where you should put more money, and where you should pull back.”

The impact of privacy on Marketing in 2023

Kevin thinks there will be a big tectonic shift in privacy thanks to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT). This may also result in a potential clash with Alphabet:

“We've already seen ATT throwing a major wrench into attribution in general, destroying many billions of dollars for Facebook and for other platforms. Then, Apple themselves kind of stepped into that gap – where they restrict data, which makes it much harder for other platforms to provide value to advertisers.

I think this has shown us the power of hardware manufacturers and hardware providers on a whole different level. Any platform that provided performance marketing solutions –  I think there's going to be a big change (for them).

I'm very interested and curious about how Alphabet will actually respond to that. Will they follow something similar or actually provide something different in order to grab more market share from advertisers against Apple?

So I think those two companies are going to clash a little bit when it comes to privacy.”

Eli thinks GDPR, and more nations adopting it is a bigger threat to tech giants when it comes to privacy:

“The really important thing to call out is that it's not really up to them, it's up to governments. So GDPR was a fundamental shift in tracking and data. I remember when I was at SurveyMonkey, we spent a year implementing Google Analytics premium and spent like $108,000, and got it implemented a week before GDPR.

So we get this thing going, we bring all this data, and then GDPR comes out and you can't track anymore. So it blows up the whole thing. We can't see the European continent, we have no idea what our data is because people have to opt in and by the time they opt-in it becomes a direct visit. So GDPR and laws like GDPR are having a huge impact on what companies like Apple, Google, and then everybody tracking any sort of data can do.

Going back to the Ahrefs – in a privacy world where there are no first-party data, nothing is shared, and all you have is estimates. I don't know necessarily where Ahrefs gets their data, but they're using AI to estimate things – so that's a better bet.

I think other countries are going to imitate GDPR – they will look at this and say, – okay, cool, this is like a great way to make tech companies pay taxes. They weren't already paying, so we'll pass a law that they're guaranteed you're going to break.”

Show Notes

* Agency SEO skills matrix by Tom Critchlow – SEO MBA

* Marketing conference recommendations:

* Pubcon – Pubcon 2023

* SEOktoberfest - 2022

* SMX Munich – SMX Munich 2023

* Online marketing rock stars in Hamburg - About 

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Let us know what else we should have on our radar for 2023 in the comments!

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Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* Apple Podcasts

Today we talk about building and thriving a consulting business based on our combined SEO and consulting experience of over 10 years.

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we cover:

* How to transition into a consultant role

* What makes one a good consultant

* Why Neil Patel Digital works as an SEO brand

Key Takeaways

* Many people do not understand SEO and accept mediocre work as ‘quality output’. Thus, real SEO experts can use this gap as a good opportunity to grow in the SEO industry.

* Focus on gaining experience in-house or at an agency before venturing out as a consultant.

* Work on creating a strong referral network by building a trustworthy personal brand among your peers and clients.

* Learn to pitch and sell your expertise with confidence

* The best way to get promoted is to make a switch

There is potential in consulting for the SEO industry

Eli shares why there is a huge untapped potential in the SEO industry for talented experts and where the opportunity lies:

“I don't know him (Neil Patel). I don't know his practices. I've never worked with him. But I do think that Neil Patel and Neil Patel Digital, in particular, demonstrate the massive upside there is in this (SEO) industry. He was recently on the My First Million podcast, and I think he said they do over a hundred million dollars a year in revenue – most of it from SEO. That's the potential.

There are so many companies out there that don't understand SEO.”

He also shares his experience with PRNewswire on how people accept not-so-great quality output, and true experts can tap onto this potential to deliver great work:

“I remember PR Newswire approached me pre-Covid about this webinar and they were charging  $900 to go to this webinar and – they sold it to their customers. There are so many people out there that don't understand marketing. They don't understand SEO.

Then, they look at Neil Patel, PR Newswire, and all these other agencies who may not do the kind of work that we think is of high quality, but everyone else thinks it's of high quality. And to me, that's the potential of this industry.”

The key is to build a strong personal network

Kevin shares how his 12+ experience in the SEO industry via his job, speaker opportunities, and personal branding efforts helped him successfully transition into an independent consultant role:

“How people perceive you, whether you're an agency or a consultant, is incredibly important, and I have never thought about it more than right now.  I have been active in this industry for 12-13 years now. I've worked even at Shopify and did things outside of SEO, but I'm still recognized as an SEO (expert).

But having the blog, having spoken at conferences and all that kind of stuff has contributed massively. I was lucky to get a full portfolio of clients before I even announced that I am a consultant now.

So, a strong network helped immensely. People were so kind to connect me with clients and all that kind of stuff.”

Eli agrees by sharing his personal experience about the power of sales and having a strong network:

“There was a company I talked to recently, which I was referred to by someone I sat next to at my very first job 16 years ago. So the longer time you spend within companies, the bigger network you'll build, and some of the best deals that I have signed have come from my former coworkers – they've referred me, and they've been at these companies. You have to build that expertise within your network.

I don't have a blog, but I wrote a book, which really helps in closing deals.

But it's so much more important that you have a network that can refer things to you, whether it's investors or friends, or past coworkers or past clients – that's where you're going to get so many things. And I've met some terrible consultants who do just fine because they have that network.”

First, get hands-on experience in the industry 

Kevin also advises that its crucial to get legit experience in your industry before getting into consultation:

“You and I were both fans of Alan Weiss's Million Dollar Consulting and how he approaches this practice. One of the things that he preaches is to be out there to build a brand, put content out, and demonstrate your expertise.

I think that's something that you need to do to send out, and build a reputation, and this is also something that needs to be built on (top of) experience, right?

So if somebody would really ask me – Hey, I'm a college grad, should I become a consultant?

I would actually say, – No, that's a stupid idea. You need to gain experience first. As somebody new to the industry, I think you need to learn from others first – for which an agency or in-house is your best bet.”

Be confident about yourself and your work

Eli shares his experience of an encounter with a confident consultant and how being confident helps build trust and close deals.

“I have seen some fantastic consultants and I'd say the thing I learned the most from is a guy named Aaron Sheer, who unfortunately passed away many years ago. So I was working at this startup and Aaron Sheer was our SEO consultant.

He did well – like he was a consultant for eBay and Zappos. The one thing I really learned from him was his level of confidence.

So he would come in, and the team would say – should we do ‘A’ or ‘B’?

And he would say – you should definitely do ‘A’, and they would say – how do you know?

And he'd say – you're gonna do ‘A’, like, this is my experience. He was super confident about it.

And then it failed. ‘A’ totally didn't work, we got less traffic.

And he'd say, –  well, there was a 99% chance it would. Unfortunately, it fell into the 1%. I'm super confident my recommendation was right. I'm never wrong, but it happens to be that I don't know everything. I'm not Google. And I learned that confidence from him.

And that's what people look for in consultants – an external expert who's not doing what those internal experts are doing for them, or they don't have an internal team, and they're looking for an expert to really weigh in and give them a point of view and not someone who's just going to be doing busy work.

The real upside is saying – I will solve your SEO problems.

I learned that from Aaron Sheer – he was super confident. I don't know whether he helped us grow or didn't help us grow, but everyone certainly thought he helped us grow.

I think the most important thing for building a successful consulting career is really understanding sales. And it's not just about whether you can close the deal, but can you continue to have that confidence and direct your clients that they want to keep working with you because you know what you're talking about.”

Build a good reputation among your peers

Kevin shares how your reputation in the industry is important for making it as a consultant:

“I think putting yourself out there is a critical element.

As you said, the network, and sales (are important), but then being visible in the industry and being perceived as someone in the industry who is good (is crucial too). I think it's often underestimated, but SEO is actually a smaller industry than most people would think – people know each other and people are getting asked.

So, you have to make sure that your peers respect and appreciate you.”

What can you learn from Neil Patel's brand?

Eli thinks that the SEO industry’s black-box nature makes it necessary to build a reputation that instills trustworthiness and expertise:

“I don't think SEO's that hard or differentiated –  it's pretty basic.

I think if you were to do SEO for CNN, or if I were to do SEO for CNN or Neil Patel would do SEO for CNN or Rand Fishkin – the results and the recommendations would be very similar. The problem with the SEO industry is that it's hard. You have to trust. It's a black box.

We really don't know exactly how this is going to work. It's not like paid marketing – I spent this money, I returned this amount, should I spend more? I don't know, but I will spend more and I'll find out.

You don't have any of those insights (for SEO), so it comes across as how confident are you in the ability of the person hired to give the right recommendations.”

Kevin adds further about Neil Patel’s ability to retain clients:

“I think the art is to not only get in through a really good pitch but then also keep clients and keep delivering. That's always where, where I would love to just peek behind the scenes for once.”

Eli also mentions how the SEO industry mostly re-packages data from SEO tools as recommendations, and how Neil Patel’s ownership of tools like Answer the Public, and UberSuggest act as trump cards in sales pitches:

“There was a company I talked to last week that raised this insane amount of money and they're using an agency. I showed them Ahrefs, and they said – oh, our agency uses it. We don't have access to it.

I'm like, why wouldn't you just buy a trust for $120 a month? You don't need to spend $5,000 a month with a kid doctor. So, the data's there – their agency is packaging it and telling them what a fantastic job they're doing because they're using Ahrefs. There are basic tools within our industry – Ahrefs, Semrush, SimilarWeb, etc, and everyone else is just packaging and representing it.

Neil Patel Digital owns some awesome tools, like, he has UberSuggest and they bought Answer the Public. So they have some of their tools, but they bought them, they didn't create them. I'm certain that when they go into a pitch, they are like –  these are your keywords, this is your content gap.

So the whole industry is relying on the same tools and the same data, making the same recommendations – it's just how you sell it.”

The best way to get a promotion is still switching companies

We asked you via our LinkedIn post to share what you think is the best way to get a promotion. Interestingly, switching companies was said to be the most effective method to make your way ahead on the ladder.

Eli supports this insight by sharing his example of getting promoted:

“I tried to switch companies when I was moving to Singapore and I got a new job. I was at Survey Monkey at the time, and when I went to give notice, they convinced me to stay and I got a 40 raise. So, I got a 3-level massive promotion, and it was completely unintentional. I wasn't trying to negotiate it for it, but I do think this is valid.

I think that companies don't necessarily appreciate their employees until they're gone and you could threaten to leave and get that promotion and you force them to really say – oh, we do appreciate you, and are willing to pay you more, willing to promote you. Or we could just go to another company who will appreciate us – I think that's the sad reality.

With the layoffs, people might be scared to ask for promotions, but the truth is, the employees that are still within a company, they're even more valuable.

I also always looked at other people and watched them rise in the company and they went from junior to senior pretty quickly. They seemed to have it all together. And the thing is, they were good at positioning how to do what they're doing.”

Kevin adds further how one should work towards being ‘seen’ by their managers:

If you think that you have proof to back that (your promotion) up, it's totally fine to go and ask for a promotion. As you said, you might not get a big promotion as you did in 2019, but I also agree that just because layoffs are happening, that does not mean that no one should get a promotion or that you should not get a promotion.

I think the art is in making the case well and having proof and having a fit with your manager. Meaning knowing what your manager wanted in the first place and then delivering.

You also don't want to just do stuff, but you want to make sure your manager sees it, your manager's manager sees it, and other people see it too.”

We discuss a few more views shared around getting promoted in our previous episode 9: Marketing predictions for 2023.

Show Notes

Book recommendations:

* Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice by Alan Weiss – the book shares a time-tested model for creating a flourishing consulting business, while incorporating and focusing on the many dynamic changes in solo and boutique consulting, coaching, and entrepreneurship.

* The Trusted Advisor by David Maister –  learn how to build credibility, respect, and trustworthiness with clients and prospects.

* Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell by  Eric Schmidt – the book shares management lessons from legendary business executive and coach Bill Campbell. He mentored some of the most successful modern entrepreneurs and has played an important role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit.

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Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

Would you like us to host ‘The Contrarian Marketing Conference?’

What should it look like? – Should it be online or in person? Recorded or live?

Reach out to us and let us know whether there should be some summit, conference, or mastermind – happy to take your input!

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* Apple Podcasts

After Bing and Microsoft both announced new AI chatbots in Search, Marketers are worried that search engines won’t send traffic to websites anymore. However, what if sites receive less but more qualified traffic?

Tune in to learn how we think about AI chatbots in Search, what search arbitrage is and whether users really change their habits.

Thanks for tuning in,

Eli & Kevin

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Today we teach you how you can still score a strong marketing budget in a recession. We also cover:

* How to cut a marketing budget the right way

* How to make the most of your marketing budget

* Hacks on saving money on your marketing spends

Key Takeaways

* Know how your budget decision-maker ticks

* Optimize your current campaigns for payback period

* Reduce your ad budget for branded keywords

* If your organization is facing a hiring freeze, propose to outsource those tasks to freelancers or contractors instead of employees

* Narrow your focus down to best-performing market segments, geographies, product verticals, or customer segments.

* Negotiate with your tool vendors for annual discounts, long-term contracts, or retainer prices

* Repurpose the top 20% of the content or pages that are performing well.

Understand the motivation behind the budget allocation

Eli advises how as a first step, one should understand the motivation of the person allocating the budget –

“I think anybody who wants to be successful at really maximizing budget and maximizing their effectiveness is to understand the motivations of whoever is giving that directive.

So, for a public company, it might be the investor, for a private company, it might be the VCs, for a very small company, it might be the small business owner. So, it really comes down to how you position yourself most effectively and utilize that budget so that person is the happiest and feels like you're achieving their goals. It's not about I saved you a thousand dollars.”

Take a look at the payback period of your customer acquisition costs

Kevin shares how brands are becoming mindful of a campaign’s payback period as they look to save costs –

“Right now, especially in the SaaS space, a lot of companies are looking at their payback period – (which is) how much money they spend to acquire the customer and how long it takes for those customers to spend enough money with the company so that they can recoup the acquisition cost. So, companies are looking to shorten the payback period – which basically means that they try to acquire the same customers with less money. 

(For this) you may want to look at which campaigns drive the most customers. Where do we spend more than we get back? That sounds like something you would do anyway all the time, but it's not true. (That’s because) for the last maybe 15 years, the default has been growth – to just get in as many customers as possible. You still want to look at the payback period, but it's not the deciding factor.

But now, it's a deciding factor. So, companies are trimming the edges of their ad budgets. They're trimming the fat and trying to reduce the spend it takes to get customers.”

Reduce spend on your branded keywords

Kevin advises reducing the budget on branding during tough market conditions –

“One of the best practices that I noticed is to just reduce the spending on your brand. Companies spend a lot of money on bidding on their brands in Google Ads. The margins or the net benefits of that are not always that great.

I think now is a good time to see, – hey, what happens when if we stop bidding on our brands? Or at least what happens when we cut our brand spend in half? How many customers do we still get versus how many would we lose potentially?”

Outsource more by hiring freelancers

Eli advises hiring freelancers or contractors instead of full-time people —

“If you've been told that you have a hiring freeze, instead of not hiring people, just hire freelancers.

I don't think there's a chance that the companies that went through the big layoffs, Google, Facebook, and all the other companies are not hiring freelancers or contractors. There are still jobs that need to be done and unfortunately, they need to cut full-time employees to make the street, their budget, and CFOs happy, – but they still need someone to do it. So they shift that budget over to freelancers. 

When you agree to hire a freelancer and you make the pitch for a freelancer, remind them that it would be ideal if you would actually have a full-time employee – and this is a compromise to have the freelancer. So hiring freelancers, even if they cost more money, that's my favorite hack in a tight budget environment.”

Focus on impact and efficiency

Kevin advises brands should double down on what is already working for them. He explains how you can apply this across customer segments, resource management, target geography, market segment, and verticals –

“Biggest hacks for doing more with less is just to refocus on what works and refocus on impact and efficiency.

So what that means is – you can ask everyone to track their time, or you can just do the work yourself. See where your time goes, and then just do less of the things that don't yield results. You can adopt that philosophy as a single person, as a team, or as a whole company. It's basically refocusing the organization and refocusing the team.

This can also apply to customer segments. Many companies maybe start with an SMB focus, then go up to mid-market and eventually enterprise – and (these changes) shift focus, costing a lot of money in efficiency. Maybe now is the right time to say, – hey, let's refocus on our most profitable market segment, or let's focus on just one market segment.

It can also be geography,  where you say, – let's not focus on 30 countries, but maybe five.

Or it can be a vertical where if you serve several industries, you just go down to one. 

My favorite story on focus is about Peter Theil and PayPal.

So at PayPal, Peter Theil was known for having a very extreme dedication to focus, and he would expect every employee to have a number one top priority. He would only talk to employees about their number one priority, nothing else mattered.

It's a great example of how you force a team, an organization, or a company to really just focus on the most important thing and make sure that that works flawlessly.”

Pay in advance for critical tools you need

Eli advises saving money on important marketing tools by purchasing their annual or long-term contracts. He also shares a hack on negotiating a retainer price –

“Layoffs may or may not have happened, but you can prepare for it. So one thing that I've always done when I'm afraid that the money might disappear is I'll go and pay in advance for things.

So, Ahrefs is our sponsor over this episode and I'm sure that Ahrefs would love it if you would buy their annual plan if you're currently on a monthly. I'd recommend you get their enterprise – it's an awesome tool, especially if you compare it to the hundreds of thousands of dollars you'd have to spend on unnamed enterprise SEO tools.

But their enterprise is $10,000 a year if you pay annually, whereas it's a little bit under $12,000 a year if you pay monthly. Now, suddenly if your CFO says, – oh, we can't afford a thousand dollars a month anymore for this tool, or show me how having this tool provides us value, – that's not a conversation you want to have. So if the budget's there, you can point out to the CFO, – oh, I'd like to pay in advance and save us a couple of thousand dollars.

Do that with all the tools you have that you're afraid might get pulled out of your toolbox by paying for them in advance or signing longer contracts.

On the flip side, if there's a tool you're not really using but you'd like to use and you think it's too expensive, this is the time when you can go back to the software, person, or vendor and say – I have less budget this year and cannot afford to pay this price. There may be retention pricing available if you just ask for it. Obviously, you have to be prepared to cut it off and say, well, if I can't afford it, I will not pay for it.

So, just make your stack more efficient. Pay for the tools you need. Get better pricing. Pay annually. Get those contracts out there.”

Repurpose the top 20% of your content

Kevin advises brands to focus on high-performing content and repurpose them –

“A great way to do more marketing with less budget is to just repurpose content.

A lot of times marketers don't think enough about what actually drives results. And there's this interesting 80-20 rule that you find in most marketing data – where maybe 20% of your blog articles drive 80% of email signups or 20% of landing pages give 80% of leads, right?

One good thing you can do is to just look at or think about how can we repurpose these 20% of our content or pages. Maybe you can create a video out of one of your best-converting blog articles, or maybe you make a podcast episode or maybe you post about it on social or you send it as an email campaign, or like a drip sequence.

So content repurposing is one of my hacks. And you want to focus on the few things that already work well, and then think about how can you squeeze more juice out of the fruit.”

Show Notes

* How the culture at Payal gave importance to focus - Quora answer by Keith Rabois

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

We have opened a paid assistant position to get help with the pre and post-production of this podcast – so do reach out to us for more details.

Also, if you have any good ideas on how to hack a budget, save money, or look better in recessionary times – share them in the comments!

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Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this conversation, we discuss one of the hottest topics during the pandemic's shift to remote work: meetings.

Meetings can be helpful in some cases, but they are often unnecessary and a waste of time. Even for those that are helpful, there is a big spectrum in efficiency based on how they’re run.

The most common issues with meetings are:

* Too many attendees

* Lack of preparation

* Unclear agendas

People often feel obligated to attend meetings, even if they are not necessary or relevant to their work.

Overall, the key points of the conversation are:

* Meetings can be unproductive and inefficient, but they can also be beneficial if run properly.

* Common issues with meetings include too many attendees, lack of preparation, and unclear agendas.

* Good meeting hygiene includes being on time, taking good notes, preparing in advance, sticking to the agenda, and following up on action items. It's also important to be intentional about scheduling meetings and deciding whether they are necessary

Top tools for better meetings

* Bubbles

* Notion

* Range

* Coda

* Otter Ai

Top 10 tips for better meetings

* Have a clear goal and purpose for the meeting.

* Set a definition of success or a definition of done for the meeting.

* Prepare in advance, including sending out pre-read materials and an agenda.

* Be on time and have good meeting etiquette.

* Take notes during the meeting.

* Follow up after the meeting with action items and hold people accountable.

* Determine if a meeting is necessary or if information can be conveyed in an email.

* Discourage multitasking during meetings to improve engagement.

* Use tools such as Koda and Otter Ai to improve productivity during meetings.

* Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your meetings and make adjustments as needed.

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

We have opened a paid assistant position to get help with the pre and post-production of this podcast – so do reach out to us for more details.

Also, if you have any good ideas on how to hack a budget, save money, or look better in recessionary times – share them in the comments!

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

This episode has been sponsored by Bubbles: Fewer meetings, more work done

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast, we dive deep into the challenges of navigating marketing budget cuts, layoffs, and job hunting in the ever-changing tech landscape.

We share our insights and experiences on how to make the most of shrinking budgets, renegotiate targets, and adapt to the new reality.

This episode is sponsored by SEO Monitor Forecasting is one of the trickiest topics in the SEO industry, especially when you have to do it. SEOmonitor has created a tool to help you easily eliminate error-prone spreadsheets, unreliable data, and hard-to-maintain formulas. Simply choose your keywords and select your ranking goals to get estimated sessions & conversions. The forecastgin algorithm is completely transparent. Sign up now and get a 3-month free trial for simplified and accurate SEO forecasts!

4 key strategies for successfully navigating marketing budget cuts:

* Focus on what works: When making budget decisions, prioritize the marketing strategies that have proven to deliver results. This will help maximize the effectiveness of the budget you do have.

* Renegotiate targets: If your budget is cut, be proactive in renegotiating your targets with stakeholders to set more realistic expectations.

* Be specific and logical: Clearly communicate the impact of budget cuts on your forecasts and outcomes. Use data and logical reasoning to illustrate the consequences of reduced budgets.

* Outsource: Find ways to work more efficiently with a smaller budget, such as utilizing contractors or freelancers instead of full-time employees to maintain flexibility and reduce costs.

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

We have opened a paid assistant position to get help with the pre and post-production of this podcast – so do reach out to us for more details.

Also, if you have any good ideas on how to hack a budget, save money, or look better in recessionary times – share them in the comments!

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this podcast, we compare Google's AI language model, Bard, to Microsoft's Bing. We look at the user experience, utility, and creative capabilities of both models through various scenarios.

Bard has serious accuracy and reliability issues, and we don’t see a strategy for integration and monetization. Ultimately, Bing has a more effective approach to capitalizing on its head start and providing a seamless user experience.

We really stress-tested Bard for this show and even went as far as asking it to create a commercial script for Donald Trump, but Bing's AI politely refused and told us it would not be appropriate.

Well, listen for yourself…

5 ways Bing is better than Bard

* User Experience: Bing provides a smoother and more enjoyable user experience, allowing users to be precise or creative in their queries.

* Citations: Bing offers citations for its answers, making it more reliable and trustworthy compared to Bard.

* Answer Quality: Bing tends to give better and more accurate answers, while Bard sometimes makes up information or provides incorrect responses.

* Responsiveness and Adaptability: Bing seems to move faster and improve more quickly, capitalizing on its head start in the AI language model space.

* Monetization and Integration: Bing effectively connects users to monetized search results, while Google has not tied Bard's utility as well to its search ecosystem.

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

Influencer marketing has become an essential part of any marketing strategy. It involves partnering with individuals who have a significant following on social media platforms to promote a brand's products or services. However, finding the right influencers for your brand can be challenging. In this podcast episode, we discuss the importance of influencer marketing and how to approach it effectively.

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast, we discuss the benefits of using LinkedIn to build a following or boost your career.

We share tips on how to optimize your profile, engage with your audience, and create effective content.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we discuss the current state of media based on the near-bankruptcy of Vice and the shutdown of BuzzFeed News.

We think smaller, niche media companies can provide content that larger media companies cannot fulfill, and non-media companies like retailers can fund media teams to fill the gap.

We predict that AI will play a significant role in the future of media, for example, in gathering and distributing news and sports coverage.

We also announced plans to create a highly curated Slack group for solopreneurs to share experiences and help each other navigate the challenges of running a business. Apply!

Show notes

* Kevin’s LinkedIn post

* Episode about remote work:

Time stamps

00:00:45 - Introduction to the state of media industry

00:04:20 - Non-media companies funding media teams

00:08:40 - Smaller, niche media companies filling the gaps left by larger media companies

00:14:00 - The Role of AI in the future of media

00:23:00 - Announcement of highly curated Slack group for solopreneurs

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this Contrarian Marketing podcast, we discuss Google I/O 2023 and highlight several key announcements:

* The Google Workspace integration with search results, which allows users to quickly copy information to a Google sheet

* Google's AI music tool, Music lm, which Eli was not impressed with

* AI search results and the inefficiency of SEO

Finally, we debate whether AI will replace artists in the future, with Kevin arguing that AI will make it easier to bring ideas to life and allow for more remixing and ideation, while Eli believes we are heading towards a future where people will date computers and stay home.

Shownotes

* All Google IO announcements

Timestamps

00:01:00 - Introduction to the Google I/O event

00:06:00 - Discussion of the Material You design language

00:09:30 - Google Maps updates

00:13:30 - Google Workspace integration with search results

00:16:25 - Launch of Google's AI music tool, Music lm, and debate on whether AI will replace artists in the future

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🤔 Did you ever think that becoming a parent could make you a better marketer?

👶 As Kevin Indig and Eli Schwartz discuss in their recent conversation, there are some hidden lessons in parenthood that can actually make you a better digital marketer.

Here's what they learned:

1️⃣ Patience: A key skill trained by parenthood.

- SEO campaigns and content marketing often take time to generate results.

- Patience helps you maintain a consistent strategy and not jump to conclusions prematurely.

2️⃣ Emotions: Connecting with your audience on a deeper level.

- Children express raw, unfiltered emotions, making it a learning opportunity to understand human emotions better.

- Marketing is all about connecting with emotions, and observing children can provide valuable insights.

3️⃣ Management & Adaptation: Parenthood hones your management skills.

- Managing a child's needs and emotions requires flexibility, adaptability, and quick decision-making.

- These skills can be translated into managing marketing campaigns and client relationships.

👉 While children may not be direct consumers, they can teach us valuable lessons in marketing, especially in understanding emotions and managing different situations effectively.

Timestamps

00:02:10 Parenting lessons and how they apply to life

00:11:15 Changing the narrative

00:13:24 Learning marketing principles from observing children

00:14:59 North Stars in Marketing and Life

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode, we discuss our favorite creative marketing channels.

Kevin shares how Atlassian used Trello's email list to boost content from an SEO perspective, resulting in a significant increase in visits and shares.

Eli shares his experience partnering with the Toilet Association of Singapore to create a humorous survey on bathroom cleanliness, which went viral and garnered media attention.

Key takeaways

- Think beyond digital: Radio ads, Hulu ads, and outdoor media (such as billboards and TV shoutouts) can offer cheaper and more creative ways to reach your audience.

- Utilize community marketing: Building strong online communities around your product can surface product ambassadors who help push the product forward. These ambassadors can feel more genuine and effective compared to traditional influencers.

- Don't forget email lists and messaging apps: Email lists, text, and WhatsApp can potentially reach many users, but it's important not to overdo it or cause brand damage. Being careful with communication and frequency is key.

Show notes

* Eli’s SEO course: https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/3824-seo-growth-strategy-and-content-planning

Time stamps

[00:00:05] Discussing New Life and Creative Marketing Channels for Customer Acquisition

[00:01:54] Eli Schwartz Launches SEO Course for Beginners

[00:04:02] Innovative and Creative Marketing Channels

[00:05:56] The value of out-of-home advertising

[00:07:22] Discussing Growth Strategy for a Fictitious Self-Cleaning Diaper Product

[00:07:47] Innovative Marketing Channels: Product Ambassadors and Online Communities

[00:10:16] Exploring Innovative Marketing Channels with Eli Schwartz and Kevin Indig

[00:15:17] Exploring Untapped Advertising Channels Such as Radio Ads and More

[00:18:06] Innovative and Creative Traffic Channels for Growth Marketing

[00:20:54] Exploring unconventional digital marketing channels

[00:21:58] Quick Marketing Channels for Startups

[00:24:19] Leveraging Email Lists and Creative Marketing for SEO

[00:27:55] SEO Emergency? Be Proactive, Communicate, and Prioritize

[00:28:58] The Contrarian Marketing Podcast: Disrupting and Challenging Common Marketing Practices

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this thought-provoking podcast episode, we dive deep into strategies for becoming better marketers and the power big tech companies have on our lives. We cover topics such as:

* Are users powerless against big tech algorithms?

* How can one protect themselves from unjust bans by tech giants?

* In what ways is AI impacting marketing and the tools available?

* How can marketers reduce the risk of being banned from major platforms?

Back when Eli was responsible for SEO and driving traffic at a previous company, he had to hit the front page of social media, and Digg was an important part of the job. But one day, shockingly, the platform closed his account without warning.

Despite not doing anything wrong, Eli couldn't get his original account back, and even worse - the CEO of Digg misattributed an unrelated account to him, worsening the situation. Transparency on these platforms can sometimes be seriously lacking.

Eventually, he started a new account, which ended up being more successful. But the lesson was clear: algorithms have power, and they aren't always right. This raises questions about our reliance on Big Tech platforms and their potential repercussions.

Fast forward to today, and we see this power dynamic continue to evolve. For example, Substack, Facebook, and other platforms can sometimes inaccurately or unfairly penalize individuals, leading to loss of income and reputation damage.

So, what can we take away from these experiences? Recognize that Big Tech wields significant power over our work and lives and that their decisions aren't always accurate or fair. Be proactive in diversifying your online presence and digital strategy!

Keep an eye on the power dynamics in your online interactions and identify where it makes sense to mitigate risks.

Show notes

* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

* Why accounts get disabled by Google

* Neuron

* Chat GPT for iOS

* Learn.xyz

* AudioPen

* The Verge

* Passionfroot

Time stamps

[00:00:05] Improving as a Marketer: Prioritizing Time for Thinking and Copywriting Skills

[00:04:15] The Importance of Copywriting in Social Media and Digital Marketing

[00:05:19] The Power of Big Tech and the Impact on Everyday Lives

[00:07:31] The Power and Potential Dangers of Big Tech Algorithms

[00:14:26] Google Ads Account Bans and Difficulty Reaching Support

[00:17:11] Unbanning and Reconciliation in Tech Companies

[00:22:15] Derisking a Ban from Big Tech Companies

[00:24:35] Eli Schwartz and Kevin Indig discuss AI's history and cool AI apps

[00:25:54] AI and Marketing: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Game

[00:28:57] The Art of Contrarian Marketing with Fred Joyal

If you want to sponsor this podcast and newsletter, please book a slot via Passionfroot.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🚀Get Ready for a Game-Changer in SEO and Marketing: Google's Large Language Model (LLM) Integration🔥

Calling all aspiring SEO mavens and digital marketing enthusiasts! We've got a front-row seat to what might become a seismic shift in search and marketing landscapes. Google is integrating its generative AI technology (LLM) into search results. Say goodbye to outdated approaches, and say hello to disruptive innovations! 😲

Here's what you need to know:

✅ Google's LLM uses predictive statistics to provide an unprecedented search experience.

✅ This integration runs EVERY query through a decision matrix with the potential of AI response generation.

✅ Expect a massive impact on the SEO channel and top-of-funnel marketing tactics.

✅ Early industry examples show Google now offering auto-generated responses for multiple types of search queries, replacing traditional search results.

So, what does this mean for digital marketing pros?

🔹 Prepare for new strategies to capture user intent through advanced search techniques.

🔹 Stay agile and adapt your content strategy to maximize organic visibility amidst this change.

🔹 Keep an eye on further developments and industry conversations to stay ahead of the curve.

Remember, the best offense is a strong defense - Stay informed and be ready to tackle the challenges of LLM integration head-on. 💪

Are you ready to embrace this LLM-driven future of search? Share your thoughts in the comments below! 👇

Highlights

1. The rise of newsletters and their effectiveness in promoting deeper thinking and engagement

2. Google's new AI-driven search engine incorporating large language models (LLMs)

3. Potential impact of the AI-driven search engine on SEO, user behavior, and brand visibility

4. The future of search and how AI will disrupt the current status quo

5. Adapting to changes in search engines and keeping a close eye on third-party reviews

6. The interplay between humans and machines in SEO and the critical role of prompt engineering

7. SEO predictions for the future, including the impact of Google's MUM update

8. Approaching content marketing with a focus on audience rather than on search engines.

Show notes

Aleyda’s newsletter SEOFOMO

Nerdwriter Youtube channel

SGE announcement by Google

Stephen Wolfram’s book on AI

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, we discuss Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels, and the future of Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

With TikTok taking headlines at the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference and Meta nowhere to be found, what does this mean for the future of tech companies? Can we really count them out? As Kevin says, "I think you can never ever count a tech company out, especially a tech company with tons of cash."

They also delve into

* The psychology behind contrarian marketing strategies

* How Apple's VR headset might change the game for communication and productivity

* Whether WhatsApp channels disrupt conventional brand marketing

* If AI can change the playing field in search

Join Kevin and Eli as they dissect these questions and much more!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Contrarian Marketing Podcast: Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels, and TikTok at Mobile Apps Unlocked

[00:00:00] Kevin: Stop.

[00:00:05] Eli: Hi, welcome to another episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast where we give you ideas you might not be thinking about today.

[00:00:11] Eli: We're talking about Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels and other news.

[00:00:16] Eli: Eli, you just went to an event that is not the Apple WWDC.

[00:00:21] Eli: Tell us about it.

[00:00:22] Kevin: So I went to an event in Vegas call the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference and they did an interesting thing where they allowed all marketers who are not at agencies to go for free.

[00:00:33] Kevin: So I'm not a big fan of paying 1000 $502,500 to go and attend a conference because if anything we've learned from the Pandemic, you could do a lot of learning without going anywhere.

[00:00:44] Kevin: I go for the network, but I don't know necessarily if a network is worthwhile.

[00:00:48] Kevin: So I don't really want to invest 1000 $502,500 in that conference because I can't go to that many.

[00:00:52] Kevin: Like I would certainly do that for most the most awesome conference, but for a conference I've never heard of before or vaguely knew about, not sure I'd do that.

[00:01:00] Kevin: But this conference was free for marketers.

[00:01:02] Kevin: Obviously I had to pay my own travels in Las Vegas.

[00:01:05] Kevin: It's called mobile apps.

[00:01:06] Kevin: Unlocked.

[00:01:06] Kevin: I think it was 1000 2000.

[00:01:08] Eli: People talks about mobile.

[00:01:10] Kevin: Of course, a lot of growth marketers there met fascinating people.

[00:01:13] Kevin: But TikTok was a headline sponsor and they had dozens of TikTok employees.

[00:01:18] Kevin: And they talked about all the things that TikTok does gaming, creative partnerships, a lot of things that go well beyond influencers.

[00:01:26] Kevin: Dancing to the latest pop on TikTok videos, but really like how they integrate and how they monetize and how they can partner with creators.

[00:01:34] Kevin: But what I felt was thought was fascinating was TikTok was headline sponsor.

[00:01:38] Kevin: Facebook was not there.

[00:01:40] Kevin: Meta was not there at all as a sponsor, as a booth, as anything, and they didn't even have any employees there.

[00:01:47] Kevin: Now I get there are austere times at Meta, they're doing layoffs, maybe they are not out there as much as they used to be, but to not be there at all seemed fascinating to me.

[00:01:57] WhatsApp and the future of Meta

[00:01:57] Kevin: So we're going to talk today about WhatsApp which is a Meta company.

[00:02:02] Kevin: But I think it's interesting that where Facebook is going and how they're going to retrench and how they're going to pivot.

[00:02:08] Kevin: I think you can never ever count a tech company out, especially a tech company with tons of cash.

[00:02:13] Kevin: Like how many times has Microsoft been counted out or how many times has even IBM been counted out?

[00:02:18] Kevin: And then they came out there with Watson and you're like, oh, IBM is cool again.

[00:02:21] Kevin: And people are saying maybe Google is behind the times because of chat JBT, lots of cash.

[00:02:27] Kevin: So Facebook, certainly the usage of Facebook has been declining.

[00:02:32] Kevin: I just saw this quote.

[00:02:33] Kevin: I don't know if you watch Ted.

[00:02:34] Eli: Lasso, of course, I just watched the last season of the third sorry, the last episode of the third season.

[00:02:40] Eli: Yesterday.

[00:02:40] Eli: I'm not going to spoil it.

[00:02:41] Kevin: No, don't spoil it because I watched it.

[00:02:43] Kevin: But we don't want to spoil it for our listeners.

[00:02:44] Kevin: But did you see the part where Keeley got in trouble because she had a it wasn't a sex tape but it was just like a tape leak.

[00:02:51] Eli: It was pretty close to sex tape.

[00:02:53] Kevin: Yeah, close enough.

[00:02:54] Kevin: Whatever.

[00:02:54] Kevin: It's not real anyways.

[00:02:55] Kevin: It's a show.

[00:02:56] Kevin: And they told her that she had to put out her apology on the socials and they said you don't need to put it on Facebook because that's just for old people and rapists or something like that.

[00:03:04] Eli: Pretty harsh.

[00:03:05] Eli: Pretty harsh.

[00:03:06] Kevin: That was pretty harsh.

[00:03:07] Eli: I'm always a shoestring away from deleting my Facebook account and yet at the same time I am going to say that Meta's total number of users has gone to all time highs and I.

[00:03:17] Kevin: Feel like Instagram and WhatsApp, but not through the Blue Facebook.

[00:03:22] Eli: Well, not for us.

[00:03:23] Eli: And I think even in the US they actually edit more Blue Facebook users.

[00:03:27] Eli: But it's not our generation.

[00:03:29] Eli: We're not the target audience of Facebook anymore.

[00:03:31] Eli: I think it's I don't know about.

[00:03:32] Kevin: You, but I am.

[00:03:33] Kevin: I'm old.

[00:03:34] Eli: Not that old.

[00:03:35] Eli: Come on, it's not that bad.

[00:03:36] Eli: We're going to talk a bit more about Meta in just a second.

[00:03:39] Eli: There is some exciting news, especially for creators and for brands.

[00:03:44] Apple Launches $3,500 VR Headset

[00:03:44] Eli: But first we got to talk of course about the news of the day, maybe for me and not for Eli, which of course is that Apple has launched a $3,500 VR headset.

[00:03:56] Eli: Now I got my own opinion about this, but I know Eli, you are the biggest Apple fan out there, so I'm going to let you speak first.

[00:04:03] Kevin: So I used to be very anti Apple.

[00:04:06] Kevin: I never purchased an Apple product, ever.

[00:04:09] Kevin: I used a MacBook when I had a full time job because it was easier, of course.

[00:04:14] Kevin: But when it came to purchasing products, I was never part of the cult of Mac or the cult of Apple.

[00:04:19] Kevin: I've always had Android devices.

[00:04:21] Kevin: My wife had an Apple device for some time and I didn't provide tech support for it when things happened.

[00:04:26] Kevin: But I said if she was on an Android, I was going to be able to help it because I understood it.

[00:04:29] Kevin: But I wasn't going to go learn an Apple system.

[00:04:31] Kevin: So I've never purchased any Apple products.

[00:04:33] Kevin: But I did recently purchase an iPad and this is my first Apple product and it's sucker man.

[00:04:39] Kevin: I think it is a slippery slope to an iPhone, which is a slippery slope to maybe a MacBook, which next thing you know we're going to be doing this on a VR headset.

[00:04:47] Kevin: So I typically think that a lot of what Apple does is extremely high end tech.

[00:04:53] Kevin: It's not necessarily mainstream.

[00:04:55] Kevin: That's my first opinion of the VR headset.

[00:04:58] Kevin: I think it surprises me how many Apple watches have been sold because again, it's an expensive high end tool that you don't necessarily need if you're just trying to tell the time or get notifications.

[00:05:10] Apple VR headset and its future impact

[00:05:10] Kevin: Love to hear your thoughts on Apple VR headset and how you think it'll be used, especially at that price tag.

[00:05:15] Kevin: I mean that price tag, it almost needs to be used expensed by companies rather than individuals.

[00:05:21] Eli: The first thought is who is going to buy that?

[00:05:25] Eli: And I think this is fulfilling a couple of purposes.

[00:05:30] Eli: One is for Apple to have something out there.

[00:05:35] Eli: I do believe that in the future we'll use VR and AR.

[00:05:39] Eli: I don't believe that future is that close yet.

[00:05:42] Eli: This is a high end consumer product for the richest of the rich, for maybe a few hotels or experiences that might provide this.

[00:05:51] Eli: But this is not a yeah, you know, and maybe people said this about the $1,000 iPhone as well, but I don't see this being something that millions of people will buy just yet.

[00:06:01] Eli: Maybe in the future when the price comes down and the price will come down.

[00:06:04] Eli: The second thought is what's the use case here?

[00:06:08] Eli: And it's really only a few use cases.

[00:06:10] Eli: One of them is games.

[00:06:12] Eli: And I don't think there is a killer game out there yet that you need these glasses for.

[00:06:17] Eli: I might be wrong, I'll stand corrected.

[00:06:19] Eli: I haven't tried them out yet, but I don't see this killer game yet.

[00:06:22] Eli: The other one is sports events where you might be in the middle of a baseball field and that's going to be very attractive to people.

[00:06:28] Eli: And then the third one, and that to me is the one that has the most utility and value is the office.

[00:06:35] Eli: I think VR and AR is the best way to foster connections when people work remotely and that's where meta ism, is innovating heavily and I think that's their best trot.

[00:06:46] Eli: Right.

[00:06:47] Eli: I think VR and AR glasses are going to come through a work setting.

[00:06:51] Eli: They're going to be a productivity tool to foster connection and to improve the experience you have when you communicate with people.

[00:06:57] Eli: So that's kind of the first thought.

[00:06:59] Eli: Again, the last thought that I'm going to say, which I think is a bit more contrarian, is typically innovation comes from the bottom up.

[00:07:08] Eli: It's cheap and affordable, it comes from startups.

[00:07:11] Eli: But I don't think startups are yet at a place to build affordable and good enough VR AR headsets.

[00:07:18] Eli: So it has to be Apple.

[00:07:20] Eli: And I think Apple actually has the best trot at making this a truly broad customer or consumer success.

[00:07:28] Eli: But that time is not yet.

[00:07:30] Eli: So I don't think they're going to make money on this in the next five years, but I think they're going to might set themselves up to crush it over the next ten years.

[00:07:38] Kevin: Yeah, I think it's fascinating that they're trying this after Google failed.

[00:07:41] Kevin: I mean, Google Glass failed is useless.

[00:07:43] Kevin: Have you ever tried the google Glass?

[00:07:45] Eli: I have not.

[00:07:46] Eli: But Google is not a good hardware company.

[00:07:49] Eli: They're not a consumer hardware company.

[00:07:50] Eli: So this was a mood shot, and Apple has tons of experience in selling to consumers.

[00:07:56] Kevin: Okay.

[00:07:57] Kevin: And now Facebook tried, but Oculus is not saving Facebook as a company.

[00:08:01] Kevin: So it's just interesting that Apple is trying this when there have been some notable failures.

[00:08:08] Kevin: Oculus was not driven towards the business market, so maybe, maybe that's different.

[00:08:14] Kevin: But again, $3,500 for a remote work tool when all of a sudden apple included companies are requiring that their employees come back to the office.

[00:08:24] Kevin: Kind of interesting.

[00:08:25] Kevin: It is.

[00:08:26] Eli: I heard that the quality must be amazing.

[00:08:28] Eli: It must be absolutely outstanding.

[00:08:30] Eli: Again, I haven't tried it out yet, so I'm going to reserve final judgment, but those are the early thoughts you already started.

[00:08:35] WhatsApp Channels: A New Way for Brands and Creators to Connect with Users

[00:08:35] Eli: We mentioned Meta twice in this conversation.

[00:08:37] Eli: Once with the TikTok event you went to, and the other time the Metaverse and all the hardware that they built with Oculus.

[00:08:45] Eli: Now there's a new interesting development from the Meta side, which is on WhatsApp, and that is WhatsApp channels.

[00:08:53] Eli: So in essence, WhatsApp channels are simply channels you can follow.

[00:08:57] Eli: They're going to be interesting for brands and creators to basically broadcast their content.

[00:09:01] Eli: And I think that could be an interesting channel for brands moving forward.

[00:09:06] Eli: First of all, because WhatsApp has very broad adoption, I have to fact check myself and look at the latest numbers, but I think they're not too far away from a billion people.

[00:09:15] Eli: And there are not that many channels out there.

[00:09:19] Eli: We recently spoke about innovative marketing channels.

[00:09:21] Eli: You're going to find the episode in the show notes, but there aren't that many channels out there that aren't super crowded.

[00:09:26] Eli: And this seems to be more of a channel where you can select the content you get, but it is similar to an email where you get the content straight to your inbox, or in this case, straight to your WhatsApp phone.

[00:09:38] Eli: So I'm bullish while there's not a lot of information out there, got to keep an eye on this one.

[00:09:44] Kevin: Yeah, I think.

[00:09:45] Kevin: WhatsApp is an underutilized asset for Meta?

[00:09:49] Kevin: For Facebook?

[00:09:50] Kevin: They bought it for 19 billion.

[00:09:51] Kevin: I think it was 19 billion and everyone thought it was insane, but it was an amazing purchase.

[00:09:56] Kevin: And they've really grown that platform.

[00:09:59] Kevin: But the reason I say it's underutilized is because they're not monetizing it at all.

[00:10:05] Kevin: They've tried to put ads, I think in India, maybe they injected ads, but they're not monetizing it directly.

[00:10:11] Kevin: And there are a lot of different uses of it where they could inject themselves more into some sort of monetization strategy, but they're not at all.

[00:10:19] Kevin: And then one thing that is interesting about the one way they are using it, of course, is backlash.

[00:10:24] Kevin: But again, people are using the people that use Blue, Facebook.

[00:10:27] Kevin: So when they log into the regular Facebook app and they're people you may what do they call people you may know, or people you should know or people you should connect with or whatever it is you get freaked out by who shows up.

[00:10:39] Kevin: They're like, oh, that's my ex boss, or that's my ex girlfriend, or that's the person that tried to kill me, or something like that.

[00:10:45] Kevin: That's actually feeding off the context that you've uploaded through WhatsApp.

[00:10:50] Kevin: That's the way they're using it.

[00:10:51] Kevin: And it's helping, in theory, build that social graph in Facebook and maybe in Instagram too, but otherwise they're not directly monetizing.

[00:10:59] Kevin: So it's great to see an innovation within WhatsApp that allows them to do it.

[00:11:03] Kevin: There are things within WhatsApp, like there are businesses that post statuses.

[00:11:06] Kevin: They post the sales and you follow our business, here's our sale.

[00:11:10] Kevin: Facebook is not injecting themselves into that process at all and trying to help promote that status, helping to gather followers for that status.

[00:11:18] Kevin: There's so many things they could do.

[00:11:19] Kevin: So it's great to see Facebook investing in there.

[00:11:22] Kevin: And like we said earlier, don't count them out.

[00:11:25] Kevin: They've got lots of cash, they've got a huge network between all of their different platforms.

[00:11:29] Kevin: They have many, many billions of users.

[00:11:31] Kevin: So lots of potential there.

[00:11:33] Eli: Yeah, thanks for fact checking me here.

[00:11:35] Eli: I just want to correct myself.

[00:11:37] Eli: I said they're close to a billion users.

[00:11:39] Eli: Actually.

[00:11:39] Eli: They actually have over 2 billion users.

[00:11:41] Eli: So massive channel, I'll be the first one to start broadcasting there because I'm hungry for a new channel where I can be early and where I can establish a a presence.

[00:11:52] Eli: The thing that I'm going to be most curious about is the discovery aspect.

[00:11:56] Eli: So how are people going to find new creators and brands to follow?

[00:11:59] Eli: Because that will be its own little optimization game.

[00:12:02] Eli: Call it WhatsApp SEO or maybe don't.

[00:12:04] Kevin: Well, one of the things I love about Facebook is the ability to market and to use interest targeting.

[00:12:11] Kevin: So I would love if they could plug that into WhatsApp.

[00:12:14] Kevin: And you can get more followers for your channel.

[00:12:16] Kevin: You can get more people to see your channel, or more people to see your statuses or add to your groups and do all that with just Facebook marketing.

[00:12:23] Kevin: And I think that's great.

[00:12:25] Kevin: Facebook is the number one channel for doing interest targeting because they've got so much information, except with the usage declining, it's harder and harder to target people.

[00:12:35] Kevin: Again, like we said earlier, I don't log into Facebook that often.

[00:12:38] Kevin: I don't use instagram.

[00:12:39] Kevin: So yes, Facebook has my data.

[00:12:42] Kevin: You can in theory target me, but I'm not seeing those ads if I'm not on Facebook.

[00:12:45] Kevin: Facebook does actually have other ad or other ways of showing ads, and they have partnerships with apps, but it's far more limited.

[00:12:53] Kevin: If you don't have those apps, you don't have those gains.

[00:12:55] Kevin: But again, if they can get you on Facebook, they have almost everyone on WhatsApp they can get you on Instagram, then they can target you and maybe they'll revive Oculus now that Apple showed them there's potential there.

[00:13:06] Kevin: And they can inject ads into Oculus too.

[00:13:09] Kevin: And then you can have an immersive experience with an advertiser speaking about ads and broadcasting.

[00:13:15] Missing the boat: GameStop and CNN's failed attempts to adapt

[00:13:15] Eli: CNN just fired their CEO and there is another company who also fired their CEO, and that is GameStop.

[00:13:22] Eli: And there are interesting similarities between both of them.

[00:13:25] Eli: They both kind of missed the boats, but from different ends of the spectrum.

[00:13:29] Eli: So GameStop, they tried too much contrarian stuff.

[00:13:35] Eli: They tried to save their fading or eroding business with a crypto platform or a blockchain platform that went up in smokes.

[00:13:43] Eli: Business has been dying for years and nobody has really been able to turn it around.

[00:13:47] Eli: And then CNN, on the other hand, they've been moving too slow.

[00:13:51] Eli: They weren't able to really establish themselves as a streaming platform.

[00:13:55] Eli: They wrote off a 300 million US dollar check where they tried CNN Plus as a streaming platform and then overnight pulled the plug from that.

[00:14:03] Eli: And now the CEO has to kind of pay the price for not establishing themselves and CNN on the streaming horizon.

[00:14:10] Eli: Eli, how have both of these brands missed a boat?

[00:14:13] Eli: I mean, from your perspective, what is your opinion?

[00:14:16] Kevin: I'm going to be super contrarian here.

[00:14:18] Kevin: I think both of these businesses don't need to exist at all.

[00:14:21] Kevin: I think they're hanging on to an old vestige of something else that we just don't need.

[00:14:26] Kevin: I mean, GameStop is a retail store in a world where many people buy things online.

[00:14:31] Kevin: Do you need a GameStop when you can even go to GameStop.com?

[00:14:34] Kevin: A Sharper Image, like they went out of business, but sharperimage.com still exists.

[00:14:38] Kevin: You can still buy Sharp brand, it still exists as a brand, but you just don't need Sharper Image stores.

[00:14:41] Kevin: I think the same with CNN.

[00:14:44] Kevin: There's a lot you can say around the politics of CNN.

[00:14:47] Kevin: I think they thrived on Trump.

[00:14:49] Kevin: You wanted that narrative of anti Trump a couple of years ago already, that Trump has not been president.

[00:14:55] Kevin: Now, is there a need for media?

[00:14:58] Kevin: Is there a need for 24 hours media that you're going to watch and that's profitable now?

[00:15:03] Kevin: I won't argue against the need for media in general.

[00:15:05] Kevin: You're not going to have TikTok influencers and Twitter thought leaders and LinkedIn influencers flying to the interesting places in the world and riding in tanks alongside the Ukrainian army.

[00:15:16] Kevin: That's not going to happen.

[00:15:18] Kevin: You need the media.

[00:15:19] Kevin: You need a funded, official, accredited, organized media to do that.

[00:15:25] Kevin: So media should exist.

[00:15:26] Kevin: But do you need to watch it 24 hours?

[00:15:28] Kevin: Do you need a talk show to digest the latest thing that maybe happened in politics, when you can sit on Twitter and digest it just the same while you're multitasking, while you're supposed to be at work, you don't need to watch that online or on TV.

[00:15:41] Kevin: Even worse, do you even need to watch it streaming?

[00:15:44] Kevin: Do you want to catch up on the latest argument between two talking heads, five talking heads, or however many talking heads they have, when again, you could just go on Twitter and participate in it.

[00:15:54] Kevin: So I think that CNN is they've been around for a very long time.

[00:15:58] Kevin: They popularized the idea of 24 hours media when there was no 24 hours media.

[00:16:03] Kevin: And I think now do you really need 24 hours media?

[00:16:06] Kevin: So maybe that's what CNN struggling with.

[00:16:08] Kevin: Is it's an entertainment platform?

[00:16:11] Kevin: We had an episode on streaming.

[00:16:13] Kevin: Look at what HBO did.

[00:16:14] Kevin: HBO merged into Max and I just got a notification.

[00:16:18] Kevin: Do you have Xfinity or what do you have for Internet?

[00:16:20] Eli: There xfinity.

[00:16:21] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:16:22] Kevin: Okay, so did you get an email from Xfinity saying they're pulling peacock out of Xfinity?

[00:16:27] Eli: No, but what is peacock again?

[00:16:29] Kevin: Exactly.

[00:16:30] Kevin: So there's a million streaming platforms.

[00:16:31] Kevin: I got an email this morning saying, sorry to tell you, but you no longer get peacock for free.

[00:16:36] Kevin: There's a good reminder that I even had peacock for free from Xfinity because they're both owned by NBC, owned by GE.

[00:16:41] Kevin: I think it's a struggle, like all these streaming platforms, netflix, crackdown on, password sharing.

[00:16:46] Kevin: So do you need a CNN subscription?

[00:16:48] Kevin: Is there even a reason that you need to watch or even pay for a CNN streaming subscription?

[00:16:54] Kevin: So I think that bigger question is, should they exist?

[00:16:57] Eli: It depends on the content.

[00:16:58] Eli: They had.

[00:16:59] Eli: For example, one show with Scott Galloway, and I would have loved to pay for that because the guy is genius.

[00:17:06] Eli: However, I think there's going to be consolidation at some point where all these streaming networks are going to be facilitated by YouTube, TV or someone else.

[00:17:14] Eli: I don't think all of these are going to survive and people are not going to pay for all of them, at least not constantly.

[00:17:20] Eli: You might pay for a show for a while and then you got to cancel your subscription again.

[00:17:24] Eli: So that's going to be challenging.

[00:17:26] Breaking News and Dopamine Addiction

[00:17:26] Eli: But what's interesting, and one thing that I want to highlight is how breaking news and this kind of news real where you constantly have news and then a few ads in between.

[00:17:36] Eli: There was the original dopamine factory before Twitter came out, before these social platforms come out.

[00:17:43] Eli: And I'm just tired, man.

[00:17:46] Eli: I'm tired out of the constant dopamine cycles.

[00:17:49] Eli: I'm tired of Twitter, I'm tired of endless scroll.

[00:17:53] Eli: And breaking news to me is just endless scroll once the news broke their old news.

[00:17:58] Eli: And so basically, people watching that, I see it, I know people who watch that stuff constantly.

[00:18:04] Eli: And are they younger than 80?

[00:18:07] Eli: Slightly, but not much.

[00:18:09] Eli: That's exactly the point, right?

[00:18:11] Eli: That's kind of the dopamine addiction of the older generation and much older generation.

[00:18:15] Eli: And so they're going to die out of it.

[00:18:18] Eli: They're missing addressing younger audiences and bringing new audiences on board.

[00:18:22] Discussing AI-Powered Search and The Future of SEO

[00:18:22] Eli: So let's wrap up, speaking about one company that is struggling with something very similar, and that is Google and Alphabet.

[00:18:29] Eli: Now, YouTube, to be fair, is incredibly hot with the teens and the young generation.

[00:18:34] Eli: But Google is increasingly replaced by other platforms like TikTok.

[00:18:39] Eli: I see.

[00:18:40] Eli: It my fiance's sister, she's in her early 20s.

[00:18:43] Eli: She searches so much more stuff on TikTok.

[00:18:45] Eli: And I'm not here to say that TikTok is the SEO killer or the Google killer.

[00:18:49] Eli: This platform is struggling to address and keep young audiences as well.

[00:18:54] Eli: And they recently launched their search Genera Experience, which is based on AI, which we just recorded a full episode about.

[00:19:01] Eli: But Eli, a lot has changed since we recorded that episode a week ago.

[00:19:06] Eli: What's your freshest take on this?

[00:19:08] Kevin: So I actually think that Google is going to win.

[00:19:11] Kevin: I think because they own the platform, they have all the users, they can keep getting people back onto the platform from all their other, from Android, from Gmail, from Sheets and Docs and all the other things that Google does.

[00:19:24] Kevin: But I'm very bullish on Google's future.

[00:19:26] Kevin: I think what they're doing with Generative AI, it's buggy right now, but it will improve.

[00:19:31] Kevin: They launched an update to Bard, which is what's powering Generative Experiences to begin with, which you can now do logic.

[00:19:38] Kevin: And in this blog post, which we'll link in the show notes, they explain System One thinking.

[00:19:41] Kevin: System Two, which is based on Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning economics theory, which is System One is your initial emotional response, and System Two is more thought out.

[00:19:52] Kevin: So system one, where system two is more logical.

[00:19:56] Kevin: So system one is barred.

[00:19:58] Kevin: It's just language like it gives you a response, it may or may not be correct.

[00:20:01] Kevin: System Two can do logic and that's where Google thrives.

[00:20:05] Kevin: So Chat GBT is competing on the system one.

[00:20:07] Kevin: It's just a large language model, can give an answer.

[00:20:10] Kevin: System Two is where Google's been great at this for the last two decades.

[00:20:13] Kevin: And they're doing logic like you can ask it math questions, it's pulling from knowledge graph, it's using the massive superpowers of Google.

[00:20:22] Kevin: So I think that's where they win.

[00:20:24] Kevin: I think there's no competitor right now that's as good at both of those as Google.

[00:20:28] Kevin: It as long as they don't lose market share.

[00:20:30] Kevin: I do think Google wins, even with their buggy product.

[00:20:33] Eli: I think nobody can be Google and Search.

[00:20:36] Eli: I much more think that other companies are going to try to fragment search and kind of break it apart.

[00:20:42] Eli: For example, Microsoft.

[00:20:44] Eli: I've changed my opinion.

[00:20:45] Eli: I don't think they're trying to win with Bing.

[00:20:47] Eli: I think they might have a chance to win with Chat GPT, which is a completely different experience that now also features Bing search results, or they're just going to bring the whole damn thing into the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.

[00:21:00] Eli: They might break it out of the browser and bring it to the operating system level.

[00:21:04] Eli: So there's a whole lot of interesting stuff going on with AI search and SGE.

[00:21:10] Eli: But I think one of the biggest trends that most people don't have on the radar is that you might just not need the browser anymore.

[00:21:16] Eli: It might live natively in an app, or in Google Sheets, or again in your taskbar.

[00:21:21] Eli: And so I think the biggest chance for other companies is to change the game.

[00:21:25] Eli: Instead of trying to beat Google ad it.

[00:21:26] Eli: Google has one search period.

[00:21:28] Eli: But the question is now, how can you change the field?

[00:21:31] Kevin: How can you change the playing field?

[00:21:33] Kevin: Absolutely.

[00:21:34] Kevin: And you're right.

[00:21:35] Kevin: I don't think anybody's going to be Google.

[00:21:37] Kevin: I think the playing field is changing underneath Google, and they're now catching up and changing with it.

[00:21:43] Kevin: A recent newsletter, I talked about how this is what Google's always been doing.

[00:21:47] Kevin: These are featured snippets.

[00:21:48] Kevin: These are knowledge graph.

[00:21:50] Kevin: They had LLM to begin with, but they didn't want to release it for two reasons.

[00:21:53] Kevin: One, innovator's dilemma, because they would kill their business model, and they're definitely hurting their ads for the people that are in the beta.

[00:22:00] Kevin: And the second reason is that it's risky.

[00:22:02] Kevin: I mean, when it comes to Knowledge Graph, most of knowledge Graph is correct.

[00:22:06] Kevin: I know, like, you search certain people, like one search, I think Rand Fishkin, there was a picture of Neil Patel that was based on knowledge Graph is broken.

[00:22:13] Kevin: But for the most part, knowledge Graph is accurate.

[00:22:15] Kevin: It pulls off a structured data.

[00:22:17] Kevin: LLM is not LLM can say offensive, wrong things.

[00:22:21] Kevin: Like it can give you the wrong advice and you can follow and do serious harm to yourself.

[00:22:26] Kevin: So they can't control it because they don't know what's out there.

[00:22:27] Kevin: So I get why they didn't release it, but now that they are releasing it and they are working with it, I think they will win.

[00:22:34] Eli: We're green too much, Eli.

[00:22:35] Eli: We got to change that.

[00:22:36] Eli: But one area or kind of one place?

[00:22:39] Kevin: You're wrong.

[00:22:39] Kevin: You're just wrong.

[00:22:42] Eli: Do better now.

[00:22:43] Eli: So much better.

[00:22:44] Dealing with disagreements and building strong business partnerships

[00:22:44] Eli: One area where we're not agreeing all the time, or where we disagree more, is our new Slack Group.

[00:22:48] Eli: Eli, you want to talk about that secretly?

[00:22:51] Kevin: Not secretly.

[00:22:52] Kevin: We quietly discussed this a couple of weeks ago in an episode.

[00:22:56] Kevin: We want to launch a Slack Group that would help consultants become better consultants.

[00:23:00] Kevin: We have the slack group.

[00:23:01] Kevin: We're going to put up a link where you can apply to be a part of this.

[00:23:04] Kevin: We want to make sure it adds as much value to everyone that is in the Slack Group, and of course ourselves too, that we just want to have a high caliber of the best consultants out there.

[00:23:12] Kevin: We have not yet defined what the cutoff will be, but this will be for really, the best consultants.

[00:23:19] Kevin: And just to give a sneak preview to an upcoming podcast, the greatest of all time, the Goat of consulting.

[00:23:26] Kevin: Alan Weiss, who published, I think, six best selling books on consulting, the Million Dollar Consulting or Consultants book, which is the first one he came out with in the late eighty s I learned everything from and he's had six updates to that book.

[00:23:38] Kevin: So we just interviewed him for a podcast.

[00:23:41] Kevin: This is our very first interview ever.

[00:23:43] Kevin: So if you're not subscribed and you're just listening to this podcast for the first time, this one's coming.

[00:23:47] Kevin: This is going to be the best episode we have.

[00:23:49] Eli: Man, I'm still on a high from that conversation.

[00:23:52] Eli: There's going to be so much we have to record an episode about that episode, just digesting and commenting on all the nuggets that he got out.

[00:23:59] Eli: So, yeah, everyone look forward to this.

[00:24:01] Eli: That was an absolutely mind blowing conversation with many things he never mentioned before, many fun stories about tanks and trains and jeopardy.

[00:24:13] Eli: It's going to be a wild one.

[00:24:14] Eli: So, yeah, Eli, this is a wrap.

[00:24:16] Eli: Looking forward to talk to you again next week.

[00:24:17] Kevin: Thanks, John.

[00:24:18] Kevin and Eli Discuss Contrarian Marketing Strategies

[00:24:18] Eli: And now it's your turn.

[00:24:19] Eli: Head over to Contrarianmarketingpodcast.com and subscribe to the free weekly newsletter to get a summary of today's episode, key takeaways and community content.

[00:24:28] Eli: And while you're there, go to today's episode and leave your opinion in the comments.

[00:24:32] Eli: We'll feature the best thoughts in the newsletter and on the podcast podcast.

[00:24:35] Eli: Also, if you like today's episode, please feel free to leave five stars on Spotify and Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcast.

[00:24:41] Eli: As always, thanks so much for tuning in and here next week.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this "Ask Us Anything" (AUA) session, we answer questions from a Linkedin live about SEO & AI, the state of the economy, careers and more.

Topics

* Breakfast Routines

* Predictions on Economic Recovery

* AI and SEO

* Preparing for AI and SGE

* Eli shares the best career advice he didn't take

* The Importance of Working at Big Brands Early in Your Career

* Best Practices for Prioritizing and Implementing SEO Initiatives in Companies

* Impact of Generative AI on Jobs and Medical Professionals

* Building a Nerd Wallet Competitor in 2023

* Impressive AI SEO Marketing Tools

* Workspace Labs beta and Google's Keyword blog

* Eli and Kevin Discuss Marketing Evolution and Tactics in Today's Digital Landscape

* Companies Collaborating with Influencers

* Discussing AI advancements and future implications

Transcript

[00:00:05] Kevin and Eli Go Live: A Friday Conversation

[00:00:05] kevin: We're live.

[00:00:06] eli: We're actually live.

[00:00:07] kevin: Is this real?

[00:00:08] eli: Yes, it is real. We did it. Oh, my God. Eli, what's going on this Friday? How are you?

[00:00:14] kevin: Let's enjoy the podcast for the sake of all the people, all the millions of people that are not watching us live.

[00:00:20] Contrary Marketing Podcast: Live AMA

[00:00:20] eli: All right, sounds good.

[00:00:21] kevin: Hello.

[00:00:21] eli: Welcome to the Contrary marketing podcast, where we give you ideas you might not be thinking about today. Eli and I are doing a live AMA. Not MMA live. AMA we're beating ourselves up only verbally.

[00:00:33] kevin: No, AMU sorry. Aua ask us anything.

[00:00:38] eli: Ask us a good point where you can already tell by this highlevel. We ask each other questions, and we want questions from the live crowd that we're going to ask each other as well. Eli, you want to hit it off?

[00:00:49] kevin: Yeah, but Kevin, I hate to interrupt the flow here, but I'm not sure that we're live.

[00:00:52] eli: I'm pretty sure we have 33 viewers.

[00:00:54] kevin: We do. Okay, so they're there on my LinkedIn event. I just see our logo.

[00:01:00] eli: It's not a multiverse or what do you call it? Metaverse.

[00:01:03] kevin: Can't see myself. Okay, well, we have 33 viewers. Welcome, everyone. Welcome.

[00:01:06] Morning Q&A and Discussing Breakfast Routines

[00:01:06] eli: Eli, hit me with a question here.

[00:01:08] kevin: What do you have for breakfast?

[00:01:09] eli: I had egg beaters, cherry cheese, and two slices of bread. Kind of my standard breakfast. I have that almost every morning, and I don't mind it at all. And of course, coffee. Can't forget the coffee shopify, mark. Exclusive for the growth team.

[00:01:24] kevin: How about you? So it's a little bit earlier in the morning here on the West Coast, so I had to skip breakfast today. But I did have my coffee, and it's the first thing I do is wake up, think about the coffee, and run to go get it. But let's do a real question here.

[00:01:35] eli: Let's do a real question.

[00:01:37] kevin: I think we're full of SEO questions. One day we won't have SEO questions. Let's do a non SEO question.

[00:01:43] Predictions on Economic Recovery and AI-related Stocks Driving Bull Market

[00:01:43] kevin: When do you think the economy will get better?

[00:01:45] eli: Man, if I knew that, I would put all my money into the stock market at some point in time. Look, I'm not an economist, but I have very deep insights into a lot of companies right now and some companies who make a lot that make a lot of money. And I don't yet think we have bottomed out. I think we have seen some of the worst B, two B businesses that sell to other companies and that might slowly turn around or at least flatten out, but I think consumer businesses might get hit even harder. And so, again, this is not financial advice, and I cannot see the future. But if I had to make a guess, I think Christmas this year or maybe even summer next year. That's kind of a span where I think the economy will get better. But I can only tell by how good business is going for some of the companies that are working with. And right now, demand is down. Sales cycles are still very long. Revenue is down year over year. So that's my prediction. What do you think?

[00:02:44] kevin: I actually think the stock market has probably bottomed out. I don't know if you saw this, but we're in a bull market, which is crazy, because I always tell people, you can't pull your money out of the market because you don't know the bottom until you're months past the bottom. I forget the number, but this financial advisor told me that if you would have invested in the top of the market in 2008, right before the market, like, plummeted. So if you invested in the top of the market in 2008, and then you would have pulled your money out at the bottom of the market in March of 2020, when the market had dropped like 40% or something, you would have still made like 180%. So that's the market, right? So you look at trends and you think everything's terrible, but you have no idea. The only way you can really make money in the market is by keeping your money there. So I didn't realize it, but we're in a bull market. So a bear market is when the market is down 20% overall, and a bull market is when it's up 20%. So somehow within all of this, in 2023, we're actually in a bull market, and the market has turned. So I think the market will probably improve because a lot of the layoffs, a lot of the bad things, things have sort of already been baked in. Whether the bad things continue is a whole different story. So again, the market is psychology of the market is maybe things aren't as bad. So people invest, and there's money being made there. But I do think economically, there's probably a lot more layoffs. There's way too much spending for the amount of bad economic news and the amount of layoffs, unemployed amount of people. I think we're probably still a ways away from there. Maybe things turn around next year when there's an election, because markets are psychology, economics or psychology, and candidates can mess things up, messing around with things and make it look a little bit better. Stimulus might not be a good thing. Creates inflation. It created inflation. But hey, if they stimulate the economy and they start giving that money, people might spend, there might be more jobs. And we go back to those 2021 days, 2022 days, where companies just way overhired. I think around the marketing layoffs in general, there were just too many hires, so companies are just ramping down. I don't think it's necessarily a function of the employees. It's even a function of the companies. They just way overhired, and they need to pull that back. In Google's case, Google had never really fired anybody or laid anybody off. So they each had too many employees over two decades of growing, and they need to pull back. No one knows whether Google will do more layoffs, but they're not talking about it. Facebook continues or Meta continues to talk about doing layouts.

[00:05:10] eli: The one thing that you mentioned that's super interesting is that we're in a bull market. And when you look at the stocks that are actually up driving that increase, it's all stocks related to AI. So Nvidia is going absolutely nuts right now. Apple after their announcements, google, Microsoft is really those stocks driving the market, and it's all about AI.

[00:05:31] Kevin and Eli Discuss AI and Answer Questions

[00:05:31] eli: And that's one topic that we got a lot of questions for, and I.

[00:05:34] kevin: Think we have to drink now. Now. You just said AI. Oh.

[00:05:37] eli: Every time you say, oh, okay, here we go.

[00:05:39] kevin: I forgot.

[00:05:39] eli: Here we go. Coffee, a zip of water.

[00:05:41] kevin: There you go.

[00:05:42] Preparing for AI and SGE: Impact on Search Traffic and the Future of SEO

[00:05:42] kevin: All right, we made it five minutes without using the word AI.

[00:05:45] eli: It's a new record, I think.

[00:05:47] kevin: Yeah, it is a new record here.

[00:05:50] eli: The question I have for you is you wrote this series of posts about AI and SGE, google's new search generic experience. Let's cut straight to the chase. Most people tuning in here know what's going on and have heard about AI and Se. What do you tell people or companies who ask you what they can do right now to prepare themselves for SGE when it rolls out to the broader public and for AI in general.

[00:06:16] kevin: So I've been preparing for this for many years by focusing on users, by focusing on product led SEO. I was never really algo centric. So this is obviously AI and SGE is an algo adjustment. Well, not an algo, but it's an adjustment in this search layout and it's adjustment of the search page. So my focus has always been on building great things for the search user. So that's just a user that happens to come from a search engine, regardless of whether Google Bing, I don't know, Yandex or whatever. So I think that that is what everyone should continue to do, build for that search user. Now, the makeup of that search user is going to change. And I think the big way that's going to change is that search user is going to move from top of funnel, which is very generic searches, to more mid funnel. And I'll give you an example. I'm in the middle of planning a trip to Europe this summer, and I'm doing a lot of googling most of the queries that I Google, they are bringing up SGE. So obviously that didn't exist a month ago. So if I would have done that Googling, there wouldn't have been any generative responses unless I did it on Chat WT. But so there's now I'm Googling most of the names of hotels. When I Google, there is an SGE response. Now, is the SGE great? I don't think so. When I Google the name of hotel, there's a couple of things that I'm looking for around the hotel. One is where is it located? And two is what are the ratings? So where it's located? Obviously. That's Google. That's a Maps query. And what it's rated? That is TripAdvisor or Booking.com or anybody that's collected a significant mass amount of reviews. Google telling me that it is 176 room hotel built in 1992 and is in some neighborhood which I don't know the name of the neighborhood is not very helpful. However, the fact that that exists, that that content is there does mean that the people that are looking for that information are no longer going to go to TripAdvisor. So I'm still going to TripAdvisor because it has information that I need. But I think this SG is going to disrupt the top of the funnel and that may be a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing that there were so many sites out there before that created aggregated content that didn't give so much helpful information and they just ranked on Google and then captured the click and it wasn't helpful for the user. But by being number one, they got the click and now you won't get the click. So maybe that's a good thing for the users. They just capture that information right away. So I think everything about search is changing and traffic is going to change. And the interesting thing is I keep polling this on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn polls because I get a lot of responses. Most people in my polls have not seen SGE. Another one I did last week is 53% of people are not preparing for anything related to generative in the rest of this year. And then the insight that I took out of this is that many, many marketers don't know what it is and they just assume it's another Google algo change. This is something I just heard from a CMO of a company who reached out and said, hey, our SEO agency says don't worry about this thing. It's another algo change, we'll be fine. And I don't think that's correct. I think this is a fundamental layout change and traffic will absolutely change. And just assuming that it's no big deal is a huge mistake. Now, will it crush most sites? I don't know. Like, depends on the vertical, depends on where Google lands with it. If you're an informational vertical, wikipedia as an example is getting crushed. I think that marketers should be using this, should be paying attention, and things will change. What do you think? Are you in my Pessimistic camp or you're like, this is Google, this is Google being Google. You don't even use Google. You use chat GBT. You tell me this all the time or even this Google.

[00:09:50] eli: Yeah, it's funny. I do think things will change. So I'm halfway with 1ft. I'm in your camp.

[00:09:57] kevin: I do think don't agree. You're not supposed to agree.

[00:10:00] eli: No, it's just 1ft.

[00:10:02] kevin: Half agree, half a foot.

[00:10:06] eli: I agree with one toe and my other toe. Tell me that. No, it's it's a middle toe. It's a little longer than a piggy toe. I don't see SG going live in its current form. There was this interesting article that the chief Editor of Tom's Hardware published a couple of days ago fundamentally criticizing the accuracy and information in SGE and two, how it's still lacking references and how much it's copying, how borderline plagiarism it is. I do agree with that argument, directionally, but not to the same intensity, if that makes sense. But I think there's something there, it's in beta. It is great that it's in beta and it should stay in beta until Google has found a really good fit. I still also think that Bing AI search answers are much, much better.

[00:10:55] kevin: Right?

[00:10:55] Consequences of AI Integration in Search Results

[00:10:55] eli: So little sneak peek. I'm publishing this article on Monday, but one thing that I did so this article, the chief editor Thomas Pilch last time is Pilch of Tom's Hardware. He calls out one example which is best GPU and in SGE. SGE basically word for word copies a large part articles by Tom's Hardware, PC gamer and other authorities and then links to them like barely maybe the Corroborated results, but doesn't even give a good attribution. And I tried that same query, best GPU in Edge on Bing in the conversational AI search and the results were much, much better. Basically, I got a very quick list, clear attribution and citation and the accuracy was so much more on point. So, long story short, I don't think this train is stoppable, train is moving, AI is going to go in the search results. The question is how? I think the current form of SGE is too aggressive to go live and not have everybody up in arms. I think we'll see a more toned down version of that. But we still need to think about the question of how do we thrive in this world and what can we do to stand out? And there are a bunch of things depending on the vertical you're in, but it's a new game or 50% of the game is new. Let's put it this way.

[00:12:14] kevin: Totally agree with that. It's new and I also think it will keep changing. I think you're wrong about when it's going to launch or what form it's going to launch. I think that Google is rushing to launch things like maybe Google wants to wait a little bit and put it out next year. But every time OpenAI launches something new and they launch something new this week where it relates to functionality and they improved the capabilities of Chat GBT, I think that panics Google and someone's fingers hovering over that button that just puts it out onto the whole world, man.

[00:12:47] eli: I don't think they can launch like that. I think they said in the blog article they're aiming for December of this year. They already said that they made some improvements to SG. I think Denny Sullivan, the search liaison at Google confirmed that. But I still think it's way off these references. It's a small detail, but it's an important one. I think citations or references need to be an SG and they need to be clearer than where they are right now. But I'm willing to gamble and I'm willing to bet here. But it's a whole new skill set that we have to learn and some things that I've already noticed. Again, we cannot make deterministic statements about how it works before we see the change in traffic, before we see the actual public life version or the final version. But one thing that I've already noticed is that this idea of third party reviews for your products has become so much more important. And it makes sense why Google is launching product review updates for its current algorithm left and right. I mean, every year you see four or five of these and they are all incredibly impactful. I mean, I'm talking to some businesses who see decreases of 30, 40, sometimes 50% of organic traffic due to a product review algorithm, and they suffer because they don't have a clear indication of methodology, clear authorship, clear evaluation system for products. And so it makes sense now because in part, Google leads so hard on third party reviews for its SGE experience when it comes to ecommerce related searches or local business searches. So this whole idea of a review footprint and influencing reviews and getting reviews out there is just so much more important, and I don't see that going away. That's my take.

[00:14:23] kevin: Yeah. All right, let's move on to the next one. Let me ask you one. Go ahead. We're totally switching topics here and then we'll come back to SEO.

[00:14:31] Eli shares the best career advice he didn't take

[00:14:31] kevin: What's the best career advice you ever got and didn't take?

[00:14:35] eli: Wow, dude, I got no warning about this one. That comes out left field, so let me see if I can stand up a great answer that doesn't make me lay in bed tonight and think about, oh, I wish I would have said that instead of this. So, look, I'm going to be going to be completely honest here and completely transparent. Someone who I look up to and still do gave me the advice that I wasn't ready enough yet to go out on my own to advise companies at that level. I'm not aiming to toot my own horn here, but I'm catering to executives. I'm catering to CEOs CMO CTOs Coos C suite.

[00:15:13] kevin: Right. Head offs.

[00:15:15] eli: Somebody gave me the advice to say, you need to do a couple more rounds of years at a company in house, get to a higher rank, broaden your scope to be ready to really advise companies at that level. And I didn't take it. And it worked out for me. There is an alternate universe where I took that advice and where it worked out even better for me. So I cannot A B test it, but I decided to go out on my own. I'm very happy with it, it works really well and I'm learning a ton. So that's advice I didn't take.

[00:15:43] The Importance of Working at Big Brands Early in Your Career

[00:15:43] eli: Let me ask you that same question because it's a really good question.

[00:15:45] kevin: Well, first of all, I told you to go out on your own much earlier, so I'm glad you finally took my advice. You just didn't take it early enough and I'm glad you spent some time at some big companies. The advice I didn't take was I should have spent more time working at big companies. And I'll tell you why. This came from someone it's funny when you talk to like an older person, let's say someone in there, we're not going to go and blame people in their 40s or being old. None of you are old, I'm over 40. But it's more when you talk to an 80 year old and they give you career advice. And recently we interviewed someone on our podcast who is a couple of generations older than us, does not experience digital the way we did, but he was very insightful and we'll talk more about that in future posts and in future podcasts. But early in my career, an older person gave me advice that I should work for big brands. And at the time I wanted to work for startups because startups are cool and startups are how you get rich and all the cool stuff, work at Unicorns and write good things on your LinkedIn and writing your work at some major company and have some not so exciting job and boring title and boring job. Didn't seem exciting to me. But the advice I got was that I should work at big companies because big companies teach you things that you could then bring to smaller companies. I think that's true. And I should have spent more time at big companies. I should have when I got my first job, I took the first one offering a job because they didn't want to not have a job. It was a big ish kind of company, a few hundred employees. Eventually IPOed was not a startup at all. And then from there I went to a startup. I really wish at that point in time I had gone to a major brand, because there's something about being at a major brand where you learn how those things work. Yes, it's boring. Yes, you're probably not in control of a lot of things, but you see how those things work. You can bring those experiences to a smaller company because ultimately small companies want to be big companies. And then there's the brand cachet. So the company I worked at after that first job no one ever heard of, it was a startup got swallowed up by another company that no one ever heard of. And I learned an amazing amount, but it doesn't really make my resume look that exciting. I was fortunate that after that company I went to SurveyMonkey, which was a well known brand, which is more of a well known brand than it deserves because it's not a huge company, didn't have a huge valuation. However, so many people have taken surveys from SurveyMonkey, just in their mind it appeared like a big brand. For all we know, Pepsi or Coke couldn't be that. There might not be massive brands, but you just see it everywhere. Obviously there are big brands, but something you see everywhere, even if it's not huge, it's perception. So I was fortunate that it ended up being at a big brand, but I think I wish I would have stayed more in big brands and gone to companies like that. And I know we talk about Google a lot, a lot of people will say, oh, Googlers are not that smart. In 2023, maybe in 2005 they were very smart, but in 2023 they're not that smart. It doesn't really matter because everyone thinks they're that smart and that's all that matters. So when they go to their next jobs, when they go to do consulting, I wish I could say I'm an ex Googler and then go and try and do SEO consulting, but I can't. So that's advice to anybody listening that's early in your career, if you have a choice between some really sexy startup and Apple, take Apple, do it.

[00:18:52] eli: Yeah, it depends on where you are in career and stuff, but I broadly agree, which I shouldn't.

[00:18:56] Best Practices for Prioritizing and Implementing SEO Initiatives in Companies

[00:18:56] eli: So I'm going to move on to the other question. I did ask some people earlier this week for questions that I can ask you, and I want to bring some of those up. So one of them is from Clay Kramer. Thanks, Clay, for submitting a question. And it is, what are some good practices for prioritizing and implementing SEO initiatives in your company?

[00:19:16] kevin: So the best practice is one that's not followed in most companies, but is followed in the companies where SEO is the most successful, which is to think of it as an initiative instead of thinking of it as a thing to do. So in my career, and I'm fortunate that now my job is talking to many companies. Most of them I don't end up working for, but I talk to founders and I talk to C suite executives and learn about how SEO is done. In most companies, SEO is done as a tactic, as a thing to do. It does not elevate up to the level of executives. There's very little revenue reporting related to it. It's very black box. We're like, well, we don't know what's happening here, but it's magic, and we just fund the magic. And I think that's wrong. The approach is not that, it's this big strategic initiative that's tied into other strategic initiatives and it's part of a product plan, and everything we do needs to have some sort of SEO lens on it. Just like, well, there's the SEO person in the corner working their SEO black magic. And this is a tactic. And that is why a lot of the things that are talked about around SEO, they're just kind of considered tactics. And it's unfortunate that in a time like now where there's economic contraction and layoffs, the SEO who couldn't vocalize what they're doing couldn't communicate how all the things they're doing laddered into the broader picture could be on the chopping block. And I had a recent post on LinkedIn where I talked about how laying off an SEO team during a generational change in SEO makes no sense. That post was driven by how many SEO really, really smart SEO thinkers have reached out to me saying, I just found myself without a job. I was working at this big company, I'm doing these important things, and I was just laid off, and there's nobody behind it. There's nobody else doing SEO. I guess from our perspective as SEO consultants, this is good for us because when everything breaks and there's no budget to hire a full time employee, they will seek out a consultant to help them. But I think the first thing any company wants is a full time SEO employee that owns and drives and communicates what's happening with SEO. To me, that's the biggest myth is that it's not a strategic initiative. It's just a tactic, like build some links, like what we what'd you do on SEO this week? I built some links. Or what you do in SEO this week? I changed some title tags. Like, why? Like, how does that ladder into something? I just talked to a chief product officer at I don't know if they're fortune 500, but they're a really, really big public company. I asked them, like, what their roadmap was for SEO, and they're like, what would an SEO roadmap look like? They have like eight SEO people. And I had to talk to this CPO about how SEO should be important. And they're like, well, we're changing title tags. Then we're moving on to updating our XML sitemap. They're just things to do, and it's not an initiative. And they have eight employees, eight full time employees are spending a lot of money on and they have agencies and a bunch of other stuff. So millions of dollars a year, and it doesn't really tie to anything. It's not like we spend millions of dollars a year on SEO, and here's how we spend it on paid, and here's how it all ties together and CRM. No, we just do SEO. So that's my thing. What about you?

[00:22:17] eli: I want to offer a different take. Of course. This is a contrary marketing podcast. I have to disagree.

[00:22:22] kevin: Yeah, you just think SEO is dead. I'm with you.

[00:22:25] eli: Yeah, I'm post SEO. Now. What is the news? Words AI optimization. Who even knows semantic optimization.

[00:22:34] kevin: I don't know what's going on.

[00:22:35] eli: So look, here's the thing, right? I think you should have both. You should have very clearly prioritized SEO projects. Where I agree with you, we have to agree with you is that most SEO strategies are actually tactics, not strategies. But what I think makes other sense is you have your top three SEO initiatives, and then you have your top three bets. And this is my contrarian stance here. I think SEO is so much of a black box now that you cannot expect everything to be properly projected and estimated. It's just not possible. There are some things that you don't know will work and will work out, but if they do, you get a competitive advantage. So the only way to move these things forward is to actually take bets. And so I've started working with clients, basically. We did that back at g two, and it worked out wonderfully. We had our big bets. Most of them actually worked out, but not all of them were based on perfect data, good logical constructs and argumentation. Of course, it's not just like licking your finger and putting it in the air and see where the wind is coming from, but it doesn't have to be properly projected and estimated by agreeing on a bet. You basically ask people to take a gamble. You get around all of these questions of, oh, how can we test it at a smaller scale? Like, how can we derisk it? How can we polish the stone so much until it's not sharp anymore? Or the knife, right? You tone it down. You tone it down. You tone it down, you launch it, and then it fails. And so instead, again, I'm pushing companies to take bets, not betting the farm, right? Not life or death type of bets, but let's allocate some capacity on things that we don't know will work out, but have good reason to believe that they might and try it. And that has proven to be very effective in my mind when it comes to prioritizing stuff.

[00:24:22] kevin: Right.

[00:24:22] eli: It's not just the numbers, but you also need to take a few bets.

[00:24:25] kevin: I like that.

[00:24:26] Impact of Generative AI on Jobs and Medical Professionals

[00:24:26] kevin: All right. Yeah. Let me ask you a question related to this. So I got an email from someone, a medical doctor, a urologist. His profile picture had a stethoscope around his neck, and I checked out his LinkedIn, and he went to medical school as a real doctor. He's panicking about generative AI. Says gen of AI is cutting into his business. He didn't follow up yet. I'm curious why he's bothered by gender of AI, but that question generative AI is cutting into his business and is a urologist. It's interesting. What do you think doctors and service providers that don't provide a traditional service that you would think would be disrupted by generative AI should do about generative AI? I mean, ultimately, I think the doctor shouldn't worry is that doctor, and people come in and pay him to get treated physically, get treated. So cares. But I'm curious.

[00:25:16] eli: You basically want to look. Out for tasks that you do completely virtually or completely digitally and that are legwork, right? Like, for example, there are some accounting tasks that you can replace with even chat GPT or AI. Want to be careful? You want to double check this, right? Let me tell you before I give any advice here. None of the technology is good enough yet for you to blindly trust it. Anything you do has to be double checked and viewed carefully.

[00:25:44] kevin: Read the rest of the disclaimer. We're not medical advisors, lawyers, financial advisors. Thanks. And this has not been tested on animals. Okay?

[00:25:52] eli: But in all honesty, for example, my dad is actually a urologist, and I know that he does a lot of work. What do you call this? Where my English is leaving me, where we talk into a machine and then somebody else types it out for you.

[00:26:04] kevin: Dictation. Dictation.

[00:26:05] eli: Thank you. Dictation. That you can perfectly replace it with AI. There are even tools. There's a tool. I'm giving you a recommendation right now. I'm not affiliated or anything. They're called audio pen. I think the purpose is more on the journalism side, where you can just ramble and speak and speak, and then audio Pen will kind of transcribe it for you and summarize it. Sorry, I mean journaling, not journalism. However, you can use that tool however you want. So if I was a doctor, I would use that for dictation so that there's not a poor soul that has to listen to it and type it down. And the reason doctors do that is because their handwriting is unreadable. And I know for a fact, but no, in all seriousness, I would use it for those kind of mundane tasks. Mundane, legwork, completely digital. That's where AI can already help you right now. I'm convinced that we will get to a point where AI will help you with diagnosis. There are interesting studies where AI can detect cancer and MRIs much more efficiently than doctors. Fun fact, the best results actually come from a combination of doctors and AI. Not just AI or just doctors. I'm not sure if we're there yet for the broader masses, that might take years, maybe decades. But I think right now the application is for very mundane tasks, virtually. And then in the future, I think AI will flow into every profession and into every job and make a lot of things a lot easier. I'm also in the camp of people who truly believe that AI is not going to replace more jobs than it creates. I think it will create a tremendous amount of new jobs. It will be a net positive impact. Do you agree or disagree?

[00:27:40] kevin: No, I agree on that last point, that AI is not going to necessarily destroy jobs. It's like saying we don't want to have cashierless checkout at supermarkets because you got rid of the cashier's job. I don't know. Do you use this? There are sort of efficient, but then you have to call over the person, every other thing you check out to help you. So they're not great yet, but once they get a lot better, it's just a different job. I think AI is going to create a lot of new jobs. It's definitely going to take away old jobs. What you were saying around AI, and I think we should be clear about the difference between AI and generative AI. So AI has existed for a really long time. Like, there's AI that goes into cars, right? So like, obviously a Tesla is self driving that uses a lot of AI. I wrote an article about that recently. I think it creates a gigabyte of data every second. That's how much it's incorporating that's AI. It's like putting in all the sensors. But my car, it's not a Tesla. It's not a self driving car, but it has AI. That when I'm getting too close to a car in front of me and I'm driving too fast, it beeps and reminds me that I should hit the brake. So that's AI. It's just like processing information. So AI in general has been around for a really long time. Generative AI is newer, but the generative AI piece is that users can now access it and we can play with it and we can see how AI works. But it is actually not that complex. And we've talked about this before, it's just doing predictive statistics on future words and I think that is actually not that disruptive. It's just creating answers and sometimes it creates answers don't exist. Did you see the story about the lawyers who went to court with a chat chunk?

[00:29:14] eli: Yes.

[00:29:14] kevin: Those lawyers should be disbarred anyways because they didn't proofread their work. So I don't think all of a sudden it was like AI AI, but this is just generative AI. It's like, obviously uses neural networks and it's AI, but it is not certainly not taking doctors work.

[00:29:27] eli: Yeah, I agree a little bit.

[00:29:30] Building a Nerd Wallet Competitor in 2023

[00:29:30] eli: But anyway, I wanted to take some life questions because we got some really cool life questions. Thank you all for submitting them. So, question for you, Eli Bujal Patel asks, what are your thoughts on building another behemoth like Nerd Wallet starting now? Would you start a Nerd Wallet like site, basically an affiliate on steroids in 2023?

[00:29:50] kevin: Absolutely not. So I think that if you look at all the big affiliate sites, they stumbled upon something by accident and then it became massive and it worked out really well. I don't think you can go and look at something somebody else created and then say, I'm going to make a better Nerd Wallet or I'm going to make a better book site than Amazon and I'm going to sell my traffic back to Amazon. I think if you stumble upon something that there's like an open niche for and you create a bunch of content, there's potentially an opportunity. Again, it probably has to be more midfunnel than top of funnel, but I wouldn't go and say, oh, Nerd Wallet's missing this, and I'm going out Nerd Wallet. Nerd Wallet. One interesting stat I heard around the finance space in particular is Motley Fool. So now it's fool.com. I think it's been around for 20 years. They produce upwards of 100 pieces of content per day. So it's not a great content, but it's content. So if you were to create your own competitor to Fool.com today, you have to catch up with 20 years of 100 pieces of content. That's expensive. So don't disrupt something that already exists that is successful, because you have to outdo them. You have to outbrand them and show up in ranking. So I wouldn't go there at all. What do you think?

[00:30:59] eli: I kind of agree. I wouldn't build a copy or another Nerd Wallet. I would be much more curious about how can I build a chat bot that replaces Nerd Wallet? We are at the verge of a huge technological shift that opens up a lot of opportunities. And so instead of thinking about these SEO models, which are under severe threat from AI, I would much rather think about what does the next evolution of Nerdwall It look like? What are they working on right now that I can compete with them on? I would wonder, what APIs can I use to train and feed a chat bot to become incredibly good at giving credit card advice?

[00:31:34] kevin: Yeah, an interesting thing is I like this space. I like messing around with finance and seeing what's out there. So Google is they're pulling back from some of those queries. There was SGE on it. So if you look for Best credit card, there's no SGE on it anymore. But I think where Google falls, and I like your chatbot idea is Google can't do that next step. So if you did a query and again, it's gone. Right? But let's say it still exists, best Business credit card. And Google had an SGU and list out like, hey, here's this Chase card, and here's this Wells Fargo card, and here's this Discover card. Those aren't clickable results. So they basically replicate Google in an SGE response. It's not fulfilling. So I still think you go down to like, Nerd Wallet and then you click because from Google's little SGE summary, it's not enough to be like, that's it I'm Googling the Chase business card because that's what I want. So maybe that's why Google got rid of it. Maybe they got rid of it because they wanted to put the ads back. But I do think, yeah, chatbot is the way to go. Get more information. You don't need to read a 1500 word article to get a decision. Again, this requires huge behavior change. But you say, here's me, this is what I want. What's best credit card in response? And then there's your affiliate link.

[00:32:39] eli: Agreed. Man, let's do a couple more.

[00:32:41] Impressive AI SEO Marketing Tools

[00:32:41] eli: Igal staultner also asks live thanks for your question. Igal hey guys, if you're already speaking about AI, what's the best use of AI you have seen in SEO marketing tools? To this day, I haven't been that.

[00:32:53] kevin: Impressed with any SEO tool. What about you?

[00:32:55] eli: There are two that are really interesting, and I'm probably going to get comments from all the other ones that I didn't mention. So I think one that's really impressive is by Word by W-O-R-D. It can first of all create content at scale across many different keywords and it can also find programmatic SEO place just with a URL.

[00:33:16] kevin: Pretty impressive.

[00:33:17] eli: The other one is write Sonic. They just published their fifth version of their Writer and I tried it out. I threw it into clear scope and I got a B plus out of it. Not saying that clear scope is the ultimate indicator for great content. There's more than that, obviously, but I'm noticing myself changing my mind where I thought for a long time that AI content is always going to be trash. And I'm starting to actually see counter evidence that some AI content is getting really, really good. So I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of days rethinking what the human contribution to content is and what content even means on the web and for SEO in general. So I would mention those too. There are a bunch of really cool other AI tools. We're using Summarize for the podcast. In part it creates really good descriptions and intros and Summaries. And then one app that I also like, based on AI, is called Poised PO. I sed. It gives you live feedback on how you talk, if you use a lot of filler words, if you say a lot, if you ask empathetic questions, if you're confident, assertive, et cetera. There are some really, really good tools sprouting left and right based on AI. And if you think about the fact that it's only been six months since Chat GPT got so popular, I feel like the next six months are going to be wild and I feel like the next twelve months are going to be even wilder.

[00:34:37] kevin: So I thought you were going to say that around writing. I'm not impressed with the writing tools because I think most of them again, I haven't used byte words, but I think most of them are driven towards creating spam outside of SEO. Google just launched some new stuff. Did you see this? They improved Google Lens. Again. I use Pixels and use Android. But they improved Google Lens and got Now Google Lens can detect the skin condition. Just really cool. That's AI. And then I'm in the workspace labs. So there's a new thing in Gmail which is write for me so you can say what you're trying to say. It uses you and all the things you've written in the past to write an email for you. I did test it out, and it signed my name the way I wouldn't. Have a great day. Best, Eli. Right? I don't like that, so that's kind of weird. But again, it's kind of cool. Like, if you want to write a really long email, I hereby resign from this job. I hate this company, and all of you should burn in hell, or something like that. It can smooth that out for you. In general, I like Smart Compose, which I think most people use in Gmail already, which is it figures out what you're trying to say and just finishes your sentence. So this is right for me. Is that on steroids? So lots of cool AI stuff out there. When it comes to SEO, I think the approach to SEO has been more about, like, let's create a lot of high quantity content that may be of dubious quality. So not impressed yet, but please reach out if you have a really cool use case of AI and SEO.

[00:35:58] Workspace Labs beta and Google's Keyword blog

[00:35:58] eli: All right, I just signed up for the Workspace Labs beta while we were talking. Just Google workspace.

[00:36:04] kevin: Lab beta.

[00:36:05] eli: I thought I would get it automatically by being a customer.

[00:36:07] kevin: Anyway, actually, a funny note here on how you could find out about these things. So Google's product blog is called the Keyword. Have you seen this? Of course. Okay, so it's called the keyword. That's the name of it. It's like blog. Google.com. Or actually, it's Blog Google. They don't dot the blog post right there on the homepage is virtually try on clothes with a new AI shopping feature. Like, if Google had a drinking contest for how often they say AI, everyone would be drunk.

[00:36:34] Eli and Kevin Discuss Marketing Evolution and Tactics in Today's Digital Landscape

[00:36:34] eli: One question comes from Charlie Williams. Actually like this question. I'm curious to know how Eli's approach to marketing has evolved over the years and what he thinks are the most important tactics for success in today's digital landscape.

[00:36:47] kevin: I think my marketing has improved because I just learned more marketing, and that would be my advice for anyone new in their career, which is learn from what you're doing. I think that in today's digital landscape, it's just a digital representation of regular marketing. I love looking at old ads. Kevin, you ever go to museums and they show you like, I don't know, this is what it looked like in the 1920s.

[00:37:08] eli: I do sometimes, too.

[00:37:09] kevin: They were really good. They did good marketing. We're just doing it digitally. Something works on LinkedIn. Like when you have a viral post on LinkedIn, it's copywriting. So they did copywriting back in the day about, like, the invention of a washing machine or a car that had windows that you could roll down. I think marketing is the same. You're appealing to users and you're tracking them, and you're convincing them to trust you and give you money. Digital just allows you more tools. I don't know that tactics necessarily change. You want good copy, a great product, great message that resonates think the thing that many marketers potentially miss and actually working on a new book on this topic is they don't understand their users enough. So they understand themselves, they understand what they think will work, and they understand best practices about marketing, but they don't put themselves in the user's shoes. And sometimes that comes from, like, being a user, and sometimes that comes from good surveys. I had a friend who was he did market research for Skype. Part of his role was he went to all the places where people use Skype. So we went to India and Nepal and Bangladesh. His job was to not interview users, but he went to the users houses and he ate dinner with them. So props to Microsoft for doing that. Ate dinner, and he learned about them and how they were Skype users and how they use Skype to connect to people. Whatever it is you're marketing, understand the users motivations and why they want to pay you, then don't. Just like I watched a video on how to write good copy, and I watched a video on how to use TikTok for messaging. Ultimately, it comes down to humans buying things. So understand those humans. What about you? What's your evolution of marketing, man?

[00:38:47] eli: What's the evolution? So my evolution of marketing has become a better understanding of the right playbook for the right business. I grew up in this very Silicon Valley type growth world where everything is highly measured as a strong product lens, the rigidity of testing, validating, and launching. And I think that's mostly applicable for certain types of companies, usually marketplaces, user generated content platforms. But I think there's this whole other cohort of companies who might be even bigger than the first. They're not able to measure most things. One example are enterprise companies who have long sales cycles, right? I'm talking about more than three months, sometimes six months, or even a year, who sell highly priced software to other enterprises. And they just need to play by different playbooks. They're not going to be able to test and validate everything as much as these other companies. For them, it's much more a before and after type of situation. So my lens has become more refined based on the business that I'm working with and picking the right playbook for the right business. I think we're getting really close on time.

[00:39:55] Is SEO Dead?

[00:39:55] eli: Let's do one more short question. E G live?

[00:39:59] kevin: Is SEO dead? Sorry, that's not short. It's a short question. That's the long answer.

[00:40:05] eli: It's fair. You caught me on this one.

[00:40:07] kevin: You know what?

[00:40:08] eli: Yes and no. I know it's not the answer that everybody wants, but SEO in its old form, I think, is going away. And out of it comes a new type of SEO that has maybe that has a core, maybe 50% of it is similar to what we did before, and that 50% is different. And I'm personally very excited. We're basically coming out of an exploit cycle and we're going back into an explore cycle and I'm all here for it. So I would say SEO is dead. 50%. That's my quick answer.

[00:40:36] kevin: What do you think? No, it's not dead at all. It just changes. SEO doesn't die until search engines die. And I don't think search engines will die like Chat, GBT and generate. AI doesn't replace search, it just changes outwork. It's like saying SEO is dead because featured Snippets and Knowledge graph, I mean, I think links are going to probably go away in some way or another because links matter less in generative AI. However, brand matters and links and mentions and brand visibility matters. So just change what you're doing and change where you're going. Obviously, all those useless websites with guest posts that don't exist, those were a waste of money to begin with. So that probably have to go in. That's my quick answer. We'll do a whole Is SEO dead episode once it dies. So stay tuned.

[00:41:22] Kevin and Eli's Final Conversation Topic

[00:41:22] eli: Eli, you got one last one. All right, you did it in this one. Sorry, it's my turn.

[00:41:27] kevin: Last one. Quick. Short one.

[00:41:29] eli: Short one.

[00:41:29] kevin: Now I have to pick.

[00:41:30] Fears and Questions Clients Have About the Impact of Generative AI

[00:41:30] eli: What is the biggest question that all your clients asking right now? What are some common questions that we haven't covered yet that you see bubbling up amongst your clients?

[00:41:41] kevin: Do you have a discount available for startups? No, I don't, because I need to say bandwidth for the people that don't ask for a discount. I'd say a lot of companies are really freaked out by genera AI. I'm hearing it everywhere. If there's any listeners on the podcast that want us to do, like, a deep dive at your company on what we see in genera AI and our predictions, because I don't think anybody really knows we're available for that, we'll put a link in the show notes to how to contact us for that. Everyone's freaked out because there's change on the horizon. It's the same way when presidential elections happen, investment banks put out their statements of like, this is what we think Trump would do as president. This is what we think Biden would do as president. We're just prepared for all eventualities. I think when it comes to generative AI, it's really unpredictable and it's unknowable. So you have pessimists like me saying, everything's changing. You have optimists like Kevin. They say, don't worry, just keep doing what you're doing. And they don't know. They don't know. Do they hire for it? Do they fire for it? How do they plan? How do they message things to investors and board members and all stakeholders? So that's the biggest what about you? What's your biggest question?

[00:42:51] eli: Man it's also related to AI, but I'm trying to not make it related because we're talking about this so much and I feel like I'm just going in circles here.

[00:42:59] Companies Collaborating with Influencers like Sports Teams

[00:42:59] eli: So the other really big question is what should we invest in that we haven't invested in right now? One really cool thing that I'm seeing is companies collaborating with influencers, more like sports teams. They're almost on full time payroll. Influencers, that is, for specific companies, that creates a lot of amazing content and they build real audiences, they build great engagement. And it's this amazing partnership between people who stand out in a space or have a lot of experience and expertise in a space and companies who get a real benefit from them. It's a great win win mix. If I had to tie that back to the whole AI discussion. We've seen this new Perspectives tabs roll out on Google, and I personally have a huge wish and a huge hope that it will be a new ground where influencers or creators, whatever you want to call them, can get a lot more traffic and a stronger voice. And it's kind of a way for companies to find a new playing field and forge these win win situations together with influencers and audiences. So I'm going to keep it to that one.

[00:43:59] kevin: Love it.

[00:44:00] Discussing AI advancements and future implications

[00:44:00] kevin: All right, well, thank you, everyone. This has been epic. First time of recording live. Let us know if you want to do this again. And for everyone else that didn't record Live, well, follow us on LinkedIn and, you'll know, or listen to us live, follow us on LinkedIn, you'll know, next time we do it. That's a wrap.

[00:44:15] eli: Thank you, Eli, for being a good thought partner, as always. And thank you all for tuning in. Happy weekend, and we'll hear you next week.

[00:44:20] kevin: Thank you.

[00:44:21] The Contrarian Marketing Podcast: Exploring Unconventional Business Strategies

[00:44:21] eli: And now it's your turn. Head over to Contrarianmarketingpodcast.com and subscribe to the free weekly newsletter to get a summary of today's episode, key takeaways and community content. And while you're there, go to today's episode and leave your opinion in the comments. We'll feature the best thoughts in the newsletter and on the podcast. Also, if you like today's episode, please feel free to leave five stars on Spotify and Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcast. As always.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

SEO and Marketing friends,

We've recently been on the Evergreen Media Podcast, discussing:

1️⃣ The role of SGE in shaping the future of SEO.

2️⃣ Identification of verticals that AI search might severely affect.

3️⃣ Understanding how to prep for an AI-driven world.

4️⃣ Leveraging AI for a competitive advantage in SEO.

5️⃣ Some of our favorite AI tools that can aid your SEO strategy.

🚀 Key takeaways from the podcast:

• How to understand and adapt to the way AI might change SEO.

• Certain verticals, like publishing, are likely to face significant impact from AI search.

• There are tools out there that use AI to give competitive advantages in SEO.

The question about AI is not 'If' but 'When'. And we believe the 'When' is Now! Are you prepared?

Your thoughts and opinions are appreciated. Please leave a comment!

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, Kevin and Eli debate whether Reddit will live or die and what other UGC platforms can learn from that.

The Power of Reddit and the Open Web

Reddit is one of the largest online forums in the world, with over 400 million monthly active users. The platform hosts diverse communities centered around various topics and interests.

While Reddit's value lies in its user-generated content, recent controversies surrounding pricing changes for its API and its IPO plans have stirred up concerns within the Reddit community. Eli cautions that if Reddit continues to alienate its moderators, who are the backbone of the platform, it could potentially lead to the downfall of the company. He draws parallels to platforms like StumbleUpon and Digg, which faced challenges when they tried to change their algorithms and reduce the power of their users. Reddit must tread carefully to maintain its reputation and user base.

The Importance of Community-led Growth

Companies like Notion, Figma, and Miro rely on their communities to spread the word and drive user adoption. They moderate in-house and collaborate with community champions and ambassadors.

Rather than outsourcing moderation, which can lead to a loss of control and user trust, companies should establish clear boundaries and guidelines for their communities.

Reddit, being a platform that aggregates people and communities, must find a balance between retaining autonomy for individual communities and ensuring consistent content moderation is crucial for long-term success.

The platform heavily relies on volunteer moderators who have significant autonomy in governing their respective communities. While Reddit's leadership desires more control over content moderation to avoid controversies, attempts to exert control have sparked backlash from moderators and users.

❓What’s your take?

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Kevin here. Let's dive into a hot topic - the return to office and hybrid work. I strongly believe more employees should have the option to work from home. But not just to avoid traffic - there are more twisted nuances to this issue.

Companies are seemingly encouraging employees to move back to offices. And here's my theory - many are secretly using it as a ploy for silent layoffs. Forcing staff who made lifestyle changes during the pandemic to suddenly return can cause resignations.

Fact check: Execs from Apple, Meta, and Google resigned because they couldn't move back. Some companies even denied severance, stating office presence is a contractual matter. Is this fair? We're not so sure.

Now, let's talk about hybrid work. No, not the kind where all employees have both on-site and remote work days. Rather, companies that have some staff exclusively remote while others are regularly in-office. This can cause a huge divide.

In theory, a hybrid system sounds great. But in practice - if you're out of sight, you might just be out of mind...and opportunities. Remote employees may struggle to form relationships or read those contextual, subliminal cues in conversations. #RemoteWorkChallenges

Until we have groundbreaking tech like VR, AR glasses or the metaverse that accurately mimic a person's subconscious signals, it's only fair to have a unified system for all employees. Same rules for everyone. #workforceequality

Here's Eli's take - the whole AR VR tech replacing traditional office experiences seems implausible to him. Those water-cooler chats, hallway meetups - they hold value. You can't replicate these spontaneous interactions in a VR space. #workplaceinteraction

I agree with Eli - a full or partial switch to remote invites career growth challenges. The best assignments, the most visibility - they usually go to those present in the office. It's harsh, but true.

If given an option for hybrid work, individuals may make choices based on their personal situation rather than career progression. e.g., parents may choose to stay home for their kids, ending up compromising on their career growth. #WorkLifeBalance

To sum up, mandating return to office or hybrid work can come with repercussions to employee well-being and career progression. The key is to find a balance and ensure equitable opportunities for all. More to come as we explore this further!

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In a recent episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, hosts Kevin and Eli discuss various topics, including

* Google's new remote work policies

* the impact of return-to-office on employees

* the future of AI-generated content

* the challenges faced by affiliates in the SEO landscape

Google's Remote Work Policies and Traffic Woes

Google's implementation of new remote work policies, specifically the crackdown on hybrid work, has caused quite a stir. Employees are now required to be in the office. As a result, Bay Area traffic has significantly increased, leading to frustration among commuters.

Kevin and Eli speculate that companies might be using the return-to-office shift as an opportunity for silent layoffs, as many employees are unable to relocate back to the office after working remotely for an extended period.

The Hybrid Model's Impact on Career Growth

One of the concerns raised by Kevin is the disadvantage faced by remote workers in terms of career growth and relationship building. Eli agrees, emphasizing the importance of building connections and relationships in the office, which cannot be fully replaced by technology like virtual or augmented reality.

The hosts mention a previous episode that delves into the detrimental effects of the hybrid model, particularly its impact on the career growth of parents who prefer working from home. They also express skepticism towards the idea of VR/AR completely taking over the office environment.

Google's Responsibility and the Impact of AI Answers

Google has faced pushback for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) program, which tests AI answers and results. Critics argue that the program may harm the Open Web, as Google's traffic is pivotal for numerous websites and businesses.

AI-generated results provided by Google can potentially impact organic traffic and ad revenue for websites. Currently, the quality of AI-generated answers varies, with some being thin or incorrect. Google has been experimenting with ad placement in relation to AI answers, aiming to leverage the increasing availability of AI tools and compete with the abundance of quality content.

Eli and Kevin acknowledge the pros and cons of AI-generated content. While it has the potential to generate more low-quality content, it also enables search engines to provide more personalized and relevant information to users. They stress the need for a paradigm shift in the SEO model that goes beyond simply creating content.

The Evolution of SEO and Google's Role

Google search experiences often fall short of users' expectations, driving them to seek answers on platforms like Reddit. The quality of content on the web is declining.

Google's indexing of the web reflects the existence of subpar content rather than being the cause. Google has struggled to move beyond content as a ranking factor. Long tail search results were never satisfactory. The absence of a benchmark competitor may have contributed to Google's stagnation.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this week's Contrarian Marketing Podcast episode, we discussed several timely topics in the world of marketing and technology.

We talked about Twitter's controversial rebranding to "X" under new owner Elon Musk. We debated whether this rebrand would significantly hurt Twitter's user base and engagement. While the platform has already lost some users, we disagreed on whether a core community will remain loyal to Twitter regardless of the name.

Next, we explored the launch of Meta's new texting app Threads as a potential rival to Twitter. We had differing views on whether Threads can gain traction and find an engaged user base. While some marketers may join, we questioned whether Threads offers enough unique value to attract the masses away from Twitter.

We also addressed concerns about a potential recession and its impact on marketing budgets. We discussed the difference between "growth" budgets being cut and "fear of missing out" budgets still allocated to things like AI. While business is slowing, we considered whether companies have already squeezed budgets as far as they can go.

In addition, we discussed Google's new Search Experience called SGE. We felt it still needs improvement but may be better received by non-SEO users. We debated whether Google is overstating SGE's capabilities for now.

Finally, we previewed our upcoming interview with renowned consultant Alan Weiss 🎆. We highlighted insights he shared on consulting best practices and "value-based" pricing models. It promises to be a great episode for anyone interested in consulting.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this special episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, hosts Kevin and Eli have an in-depth conversation with Alan Weiss, author of over 60 books on consulting and considered an icon in the field.

They discuss Alan's background, his approach to consulting, writing, learning, and more. Listeners can expect to gain insights into becoming a successful consultant as well as Alan's perspectives on technology, AI, relationships, and personal development.

⚠️ In the episode, we announce the launch of a cohort-based SEO course!

Key Discussion Points

- On learning to become a consultant: get a coach, focus on marketing yourself, have money set aside, get buy-in from loved ones (00:39:00)

- On specializing vs generalizing: "You can generalize and thrive or specialize and die." Specialists become commoditized. (00:41:30)

- On what makes a great consultant: Have original intellectual property (IP), be resilient, tolerate ambiguity, have a sense of humor (00:34:25)

- On writing books: Writes books in 2 months, 20 pages a day, doesn't do much editing, has sold over 100k copies of books (00:12:23)

- On technology and AI: Sees it as an aid but doesn't think it can replace human creativity and relationships (00:18:15)

Quotes

"A consultant is somebody who is six yards ahead of you on the skis, demonstrating how to bend your knees and traverse the mountain." (00:39:37)

"It's not about what you do, it's about what you create." (00:08:02)

"You have to have original IP, original intellectual capital, and that doesn't mean it has to be brand new." (00:34:09)

About Alan Weiss

Alan Weiss, Ph.D., is the author of over 60 business books and founder of Summit Consulting Group. He has consulted for Fortune 500 companies for over 30 years and was inducted into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame. Alan popularized the concept of value-based fees and has written several bestselling books on consulting, including Million Dollar Consulting and The Consulting Bible.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, hosts Kevin and Eli have an energetic discussion covering a range of marketing and business topics. They provide commentary on recent rebranding efforts by Overstock and Buy.com, analyze the dramatic rise and fall of the virtual events platform Hopin, and share thoughts on best practices for hiring and interviewing.

The conversation pivots to the prevalence of advertising in sports, with a debate around embracing advertising opportunities versus preserving commercial-free spaces. Listeners can expect a free-flowing and insightful dialogue on current events and trends in marketing.

Main Discussion Points:

- Overstock's acquisition of Bed Bath & Beyond and the botched domain migration that redirected Overstock.com to BedBathAndBeyond.com (00:07 - 00:11)

- Hopin's meteoric growth during the pandemic to a $7.6 billion valuation, followed by its recent demise and pivot under new ownership (00:17 - 00:22)

- Observations on unhealthy hiring and interviewing practices like ghosting candidates (00:22 - 00:30)

- The prevalence of advertising in European sports compared to the US, and whether there should be limits (00:30 - 00:34)

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Backlinks have always been a hot topic in the world of SEO. They play a crucial role in improving a website's search engine ranking and overall visibility. But when it comes to backlinks, not all links are created equal. In this blog post, we're going to dive into a LinkedIn poll that raises an interesting question: Which would you prefer - a deep link on The New York Times website or a front page link on Reddit for 24 hours? Let's explore the insights and varying perspectives on the value of these two backlinks.

New York Times or Reddit?

According to the LinkedIn poll, the majority of respondents favored a deep link on The New York Times website over a front page link on Reddit. The preference for The New York Times link is primarily based on its perceived value from an SEO perspective. The New York Times is a highly authoritative and reputable website, and a backlink from such a site can significantly boost a website's credibility and search engine rankings.

The Business Value of a Reddit Front Page Link

However, when we consider the broader business objectives, the front page link on Reddit may hold more value. While Reddit may not have the same level of authority as The New York Times, it has a massive user base and can potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people within 24 hours. This kind of exposure can lead to direct engagement, retargeting opportunities, and potential conversions.

Perspectives on Backlink Value

The differing perspectives on the value of these backlinks highlight the distinction between SEO considerations and broader business objectives. From an SEO standpoint, The New York Times link is seen as more valuable due to its influence on search engine rankings. On the other hand, the front page link on Reddit offers the potential for direct business impact through increased visibility and engagement.

Real-World Examples

To further illustrate the potential impact of backlinks, let's take a look at a couple of real-world examples. Hoppin, a company worth $7.7 billion two years ago, recently sold its assets to Ring Central for a significantly lower price of $15,000,000.01. This sale raises concerns about the company's declining value and whether Ring Central may have overpaid for the assets. It highlights the potential difference between a link that Google sees as valuable and a link that generates direct business impact.

Similarly, Overstock recently purchased the brand assets of Bed Bath & Beyond, which had filed for bankruptcy. The purchase included a domain with 43,000 unique backlinks, estimated to have a value of almost $15 million. This acquisition not only provided Overstock with valuable backlinks but also led to a significant increase in their stock price. It shows how backlinks can play a role in enhancing a brand's overall value and market position.

The Importance of Backlinks in SEO

Eli, one of the voices in the LinkedIn poll, believes that backlinks have not mattered in the same way for many years. He suggests that contextual power is more important than domain authority when it comes to backlinks. To have an impact, the article that links to a website should be topically relevant. This aligns with the idea that backlinks that drive traffic and are more likely to be clicked will have higher quality and, therefore, be more valuable.

While backlinks may have lost some of their importance over time, they can still make a significant difference for a website's rankings. AI algorithms, like those used by Google, play a role in how websites are ranked based on backlinks. Manipulating backlinks has become more complex due to AI and the intricacies of search engine algorithms. However, building good backlinks remains an essential part of any comprehensive SEO strategy.

Conclusion

Backlinks continue to be a crucial component of SEO strategies. While their significance may have evolved over time, backlinks still have the potential to positively impact a website's visibility and authority. The relevance and quality of backlinks are considered more important than their sheer quantity. Building a strong backlink profile requires producing backlink-worthy content and establishing a strong brand presence.

Although the debate over the value of backlinks from high-profile sites like The New York Times versus highly trafficked platforms like Reddit continues, it ultimately depends on the goals and objectives of each website and its business. SEO considerations and broader business objectives may influence preferences and strategies when it comes to backlinks. By understanding the nuances and varying perspectives, you can make informed decisions on how to leverage backlinks effectively for your website's success.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast, hosts Eli and Kevin have an in-depth discussion about marketing agencies - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

They talk about their personal experiences working with agencies, red flags to watch out for when evaluating an agency, and green flags that indicate a great agency partner. They also discuss the pros and cons of building your own agency versus remaining a solo consultant.

Main discussion points:

* Common issues with agencies - poor deliverables, lack of actionable recommendations, expanding contracts when scope changes, long delays before providing value (00:10:28 - 00:12:13)

* Signs of a good agency - not requiring payment upfront before doing work, access to account manager, polished materials (00:20:28 - 00:22:17)

* The exit strategy - Building an agency as an asset that can eventually be acquired so the founders can "exit" versus remaining a solo consultant (00:18:43 - 00:20:05)

* Wanting to hire the person, not just the agency - Evaluating if the people you meet initially are the ones who will actually be working on your account (00:29:46 - 00:31:44)

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing podcast, hosts Kevin and Eli make predictions for 2024, including updates on the economy, artificial intelligence advancements, political developments, and the tech industry.

They discuss controversial topics like Donald Trump's potential election, changes in SEO with the release of Google's new search engine SGE, and how new AI technologies may disrupt companies like Meta.

Main Discussion Points

- New hardware and AI voice assistants like the Revit R1 gaining traction (00:03:43)

- TikTok facing government restrictions due to national security concerns (00:17:14)

- A potential economic rebound creating excitement and innovation (00:15:53)

- The launch of powerful AI assistants by big tech companies (00:18:37)

- Traditional media struggling while creators gain more prominence (00:24:12)

Key Quotes

"Google treats [SGE] almost like a reservist, where it will keep working on SGE and elaborating it, but it will keep it in beta until it's forced by some other player like OpenAI or Microsoft or Perplexity to actually roll it out and change the search landscape." (00:07:08)

"I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump's gonna get elected president, so that means everything's gonna change." (00:14:18)

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, hosts Eli and Kevin discuss how to bring the beloved Trader Joe's shopping experience online.

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast, hosts Kevin and Eli debate whether Google's new search experience powered by generative AI (SGE) will actually launch publicly soon or remain stuck in beta.

They discuss the motivation behind SGE, predictions for how it could launch, and whether AI hype in search will fade.

"I think the whole point of s g is they need to get Wall Street and the media off their backs."

"Putting it behind a paid wall is exactly like saying, guess what? We also have an LLM, but you have to go to, like, gemini.google.com to check it out."

Main Discussion Points

- SGE is already live in small ways, like product recommendations in Google Shopping

- Google needs to launch SGE, even in a limited capacity, to show they are innovating in AI

- SGE may be useful for certain verticals and listicle-style queries

- But LLMs can frustrate users by removing choice from search

- Google search has declined in quality and become too commercialized

- Voice search assistants still have lots of room for improvement with AI

- Both hosts believe Google search needs to improve, but disagree on whether SGE specifically will help

Many marketers are crafting their 2023 marketing plans right now and like every year, they have initiatives on things they will build, optimize and expand. But there's a surprise brewing: most of these marketers are going to fail if their goals are tied to top-line acquisition.

We are either in the midst of or entering an economic downturn which means demand is going to be on the decline. Marketers who don't get ahead of communicating this now are going to find themselves falling short of their goals to no fault of their own.

Without communication on how demand factors into marketing performance, marketers are going to be asked to tactically recover the losses in traffic. That is an impossible task and will only lead to further disappointment. No amount of tweaks on content, titles and links are going to make people search if they aren't searching.

In this episode, Eli and Kevin Indig discuss how marketers can still win in 2023 when the macro realities are likely going to overpower micro initiatives.

Will new devices fundamentally change marketing?

71% of Americans say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up — Reviews.org

While we’re busy being addicted to smartphones, the tech industry is pushing more devices like smartwatches, fitness bands, pods and glasses. Tech research firm IDC predicts that the AR/VR market will grow by 8x to $26b by 2025.

The explosive growth of smart devices raises the question, “will devices fundamentally change marketing or not?”

✅Eli says yes, devices remove friction and make reaching consumers easier.

⛔Kevin says no, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same, only the format changes.

In this episode, we talk about:

* the impact of new devices on marketing

* whether new devices open new marketing channels

* the role of privacy for devices

Is LinkedIn truly becoming the next hot social network or will its creator-first pivot lead to the path of Facebook?

✅Kevin says — Yes, LinkedIn has all the tools it needs to become the next hot social platform beyond professional communities.

⛔Eli says — No,  Linkedin has become too much like Facebook and is moving away from its goal of being a professional social network.

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

First, a word of gratitude: The Contrarian Marketing Podcast has hit 1,100+ downloads and 150+ newsletter subscribers from just the first 2 episodes. All thanks to you!

Personal branding helps entrepreneurs raise funds, job seekers get offers and salespersons close leads. Being out there can be overwhelming but also incredibly rewarding.

So, should you pull any strings to build your personal brand or stay within limits?

✅Eli says yes, do anything and everything to build your personal brand!

⛔Kevin says no, there are limits to what you should do to not hurt your reputation.

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we discuss:

* The limits of personal branding

* How to not kill your reputation

* 10 tips to build your personal brand

Key Takeaways

* Personal branding helps you stand out from the crowd and elevates you as an expert in your professional domain.

* To avoid unnecessary attention, draw boundaries about how you present yourself by knowing your target audience’s mindset and trigger points.

* Ensure you maintain a positive perception about yourself within the industry peer circle and not just your audience.

Eli’s take — Building a personal brand helps accelerate your professional goals

Eli shares what it means to build a personal brand –

“A personal brand doesn't have to be something that you're super famous for and everyone knows about you in the industry. It just means that you carry more weight than just your resume – that when you are introduced to someone, they already know who you are.”

He mentions how one should focus on gaining the perception of an ‘expert’ with your personal branding efforts –

“Personal brand should be a deliberate process of how one would like to appear as something – like, I would like to be known for something, and these are the actions that I'm going to take because I want to be known for doing that.”

Sharing the example of Neil Patel’s personal brand, Eli states how in the end, the way your target audience perceives your brand is what matters irrespective of what everyone else thinks or says –

“Neil Patel has built a fantastic brand, and the negative attributes of his brand are within the digital marketing industry. But his tribe is not these people – his tribe are the corporations. When they hear of SEO or digital marketing, they're like – I've seen Neil Patel everywhere and he did SEO for TechCrunch, so now I too want to hire him. Fortune 50 brands are working with Neil Patel Digital, and that's because of that brand. So, he knows his tribe includes people in these corporations that will hire his agency.

He focuses on his audience and doesn’t care about the other audience, because that doesn't really support what he's trying to do. Thus, he doesn't care if the digital marketers that maybe are on the same level as him hate him. The power of his brand is what makes those negative people look like the minority and not the majority.”

To this, Kevin highlights how many corporates vet agencies or partners by asking for opinions from other industry professionals –

“Everybody knows each other. Even if you have many clients but everybody in the industry doesn't have a higher opinion of you – over time you fade out. Hence, it's important to have a good reputation with other people in the industry and with your peers.”

Kevin’s take — Personal branding may attract the wrong kind of attention or audience that may hurt your overall credibility

Kevin warns about being mindful about how one conducts themselves since being known exposes you to criticism or unnecessary attention.

“There are limits to what you should do when building a personal brand because it's all about getting attention. But remember that getting attention at any price can get really expensive – and it can get very expensive very quickly.”

Eli agrees to be careful when putting yourself out there – “You shouldn't do things that are dumb unless it's a part of your strategy.”

Kevin shares how one can draw a line while building a personal brand –

* Define your moral limits

* Define your audience and understand their mindset as to what they like or dislike

* Know what your audience stands for and its limits. Align yourself as needed.

Kevin shares the example of Gary Vaynerchuck’s personal brand when it comes to staying within your limits –

“Gary Vaynerchuck stays within the boundaries of his tribe. He admits that he's a workaholic, curses and he shows how he fits that into his life. He owns that. It surely triggers people, but those people are not his tribe. He is respectful and doesn't care about that too much. So, I would say that Gary Vaynerchuck is a perfect example of staying within your limits and knowing where the boundaries are, and not doing everything.”

10 Tips to build your personal brand

* Use storytelling frameworks in your content to speak with your audience.

* Get logos and testimonials to bring credibility to your personal brand.

* Be open to being a student by sharing what you see, learn and understand about your domain.

* Get a headstart by buying followers on social media.

* Find 10 axioms for your industry, then develop a point of view around them, and then share content around these points of view with your audience.

* Increase your reach with guest spots on podcasts. You can start with smaller podcasts to hone your narrative for larger ones.

* Pick and work on a specific brand archetype that fits your voice and helps you differentiate.

* Set end goals for your personal brand and focus on working towards them.

* Find your content format for yourself.

* Get quoted in the media to build credibility.

Predictions

Eli – “Creators will have more power. Companies need to flip the script and find ways to associate themselves with these creators.”

Eli – “We're in the early days of building a personal brand. So if you wait five years, the concept of a personal brand will be quite saturated. It will be harder to make a name for yourself.”

Kevin – “If you want to have a career, you may have to put yourself out there. I'm not saying everybody has to post on LinkedIn every day, but that the power has shifted from companies to people. This will create a new ecosystem where people will be able to improve their career chances by putting themselves out there.”

Shownotes

* Perennial Seller - The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday: the book shares how one can build and market their work that gets remembered for decades.

* Pomp Podcast #358: Shaan Puri on Building Companies & Riding Trends

* Entrepreneurial You - Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive by Dory Clark: the book teaches you how to take a leap into the entrepreneurial world by making money doing what you love.

* Audience Building course by Demand Curve

* Follow Amanda Natividad and observe her tweets to understand how she is building her audience and getting engagement.

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

Do you have any personal branding tips that worked for you? Do share them with the community in the comments!

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you!

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

Today we cover one of the requested topics by our listeners - AI Content.

ChatGPT took over the internet to reach 1 million users within 5 days - and many wondered about their next business idea, feared job security or simply poked holes in it.

We also checked the search demand for crypto versus ChatGPT, and it already shows a very different trend compared to Crypto.

So, is AI content the next big tool, or will it fizz out as a trendy toy?

✅Kevin says yes, AI content tools are valuable to help work better, faster, and smarter

⛔Kevin says no, AI content tools are a cool technology toy, where utmost they can be used for applications having defined boundaries.

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we discuss:

* How is AI content used today?

* What are the limitations of using AI for content?

* How will AI content shape in the next 12 months?

Key Takeaways

* AI content tools can already solve small problems like writer’s block today.

* AI content opens up many possibilities for new tools, job roles, and business ideas.

* AI content cannot think or conduct original research on your behalf.

* AI content doesn’t yet have clearly defined boundaries, which is why you should fact-check and copyright-check its output before using it.

Kevin’s take: AI content tools are valuable and can make you better, faster, and smarter

Kevin mentions how AI tools already provide practical use cases for content creation today:

* Create content for topics with clear definitions, like glossary blogs

* Write product descriptions and category text for e-commerce sites

* Unblock writer’s block with tools like Lex

* Draft article outlines

* Add schema markup

* Improve grammar and spelling

* Suggest images or graphics

* Adopt the writing style or tone of famous writers or personalities

* Auto-completion of sentences for emails

Kevin further adds how it also opens up new possibilities and fields for individuals and brands to explore:

“It might be true that when everybody has access to the same technology, then the output is not valuable anymore. But I think it will open up the door to a lot of new possibilities. The central question in my mind when we talk about AI, generative AI, and content is when you can create anything – what do you create?”"

Prompt engineering will be a new, hot field. Some people and companies will have an advantage, and others won't.

An interesting question is: what new fields of work all of a sudden open up when others have been solved by AI?

AI content receives a lot of press and excitement from the public, but one should be careful about how they plan on using the tool:

“I think the AI tools that are coming out create hype not because AI is good enough to do all these things perfectly today, but because the next step is so clearly visible. But I would not outsource something completely to AI that does not have incredibly clear boundaries.”

Speaking about boundaries, Eli shares an example of how AI doesn’t work well in poorly defined conditions:

I asked ChatGPT if Kanye West was an anti-Semite, and it told me definitively no. But that's probably because it's not updated with the latest news. Still, I don't think you can completely rely on AI for things that don't have defined boundaries.

Eli’s take: AI content tools are a cool tech toy

Eli states that in the existing sea of content, AI content tools may be more useful for learning and simple fact-finding purposes.

I think these AI tools are great foundations. They're research tools the same way you use Ahrefs or SemRush – you do some keyword research to find ideas and then build on top of it. That's what I think AI content and AI tools are good at, but it's not the end.

Eli also mentions that many people make buying decisions when they consume content online - and bad AI content will lead to a terrible purchase or customer experience.

“If people have to make buying decisions and look at this terrible content that's written by bots, to make that buying decision, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

But, if we live in a world where bots buy from bots, that's totally different. If you just say to your Siri or Google Assistant that ‘I need soft toilet paper’, then Siri and Google can just look at what Amazon has, and choose it for you. But again, if it makes a mistake, you're the one using the toilet paper. So it's always going to be hard to live in a world where AI is just working with AI.”

Eli also highlights how you cannot make AI do original research, nor can it replace human intuition.

“I think you can use AI for text-related content, for which you were already going on Upwork and paying someone ridiculously low amounts of money to just write little bits of content. But if it's writing a book or writing a journalistic research piece, I don't think we're there.

ChatGPT, Google Assistant, or Siri also can’t help you decide who is the best plumber based on their distance, pricing, or services. Or it can’t decide where you should go on vacation or the things you should do. This is because you need to understand your own personal needs. No AI or no engine will ever do that - it can’t be you.”

Predictions

Where do you see AI content 12 months from now?

Kevin: “80% of marketers will use an AI tool every day that they haven't used until the release of chatGPT.”

Eli: “Google and other search engines will be able to identify and label AI content published.”

Shownotes

* Lex - an AI writing tool

* Byword - app for efficient writing on plain text for creating article outlines.

* Eli purchased a Google Pixel 7

* Kevin purchased a clip to attach a pen to any book

* Movie and series recommendation:

* The Matrix directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski

* Her - written and directed by Spike Jonze

* Westworld by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan on HBO

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

We intend to cover many interesting topics like TikTok vs Search, paid advertising channels other than Google/Facebook, the state of eCommerce shopping, etc.

If you want us to cover any topic of your interest, do let us know in the comments!

Enjoyed this episode? – Subscribe to Contrarian Marketing on Spotify/Apple podcasts/Youtube to listen to past episodes and get notified of upcoming releases.

Thank you,

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

Today we discuss the future course of one of the most addictive, engaged, and controversial social media platforms: TikTok.

Increasing privacy risk and disappointing revenues have raised questions about TikTok’s sustainability and position as a leading social platform.

As the US government bans the app from government-issued cell phones and its users gain visibility on its privacy concerns, will TikTok lose its sheen to get permanently banned?

✅Eli says TikTok will never get banned by the government, but maybe by the big app stores

⛔Kevin says TikTok will get banned by the US government by November next year

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we discuss:

* How TikTok can acquire serious and talented creators

* Whether TikTok might get banned in the US

* How marketers can use TikTok

Key Takeaways

* TikTok cannot replace Google search

* TikTok should adopt a revenue-sharing-based monetization model with creators (like YouTube does) to attract quality creators

* TikTok is an undervalued channel for B2B Marketing

* Use TikTok for content repurposing and advertising

* TikTok provides a first-mover advantage opportunity for niche creators

Kevin’s take: TikTok has no future

Kevin states how rising privacy concerns with the US government and beyond can strongly put an end to TikTok:

“I don't think TikTok has a future, not because of the product and the platform, but more so because of regulation.

The US government already imposes sanctions on lots of companies, especially Chinese companies, manufacturers, and creators. So I don't think it's completely unrealistic that the US government would put a sanction on Bytedance or force the company to sell TikTok.”

Even with its popularity and addictive algorithm, TikTok indeed faces competition with many other platforms like Google, Netflix, YouTube, etc. But this doesn’t mean it can replace Google.

Eli:

“I tried a bunch of searches and the quality is terrible. Let's say you do a search for the top place in the city. You're going to find content, you're going to find engaging videos. If you are the kind of person that is led by influencers, by all means, you will find the greatest things to do.

But if you are the kind of person that really wants to curate your experience, TikTok does not offer that to you. You have to go through so many videos before you find something that's not on the popular list on Google.”

TikTok also has an opportunity to share revenue with its creators to truly make them stick to the platform.

“The monetization is very different (than YouTube). I don't know how much exactly Charli D’Amelio got, but she got some money from TikTok and also made a ton of money from just influencer gigs.

Whereas Mr. Beast gets a lot of money from YouTube itself. YouTube shares about 50% of its revenue with creators. And I think that's what TikTok has to do as well in order to keep the creators and make sure they're not making money in other ways. This could also raise and groom the next wave of creators on TikTok.”

Eli’s take: TikTok might get shadowbanned

Eli predicts that TikTok will get shadow banned:

“My prediction is that the government's gonna make it very uncomfortable for the platforms, which are Apple and, and Google to host the TikTok app and provide TikTok updates to people that have the TikTok app on their phones. Apps like that have been dropped from the app stores and then it's effectively bent. Then in order to get TikTok on your phone, you have to sideload it and no one's going to do that. So that's done.

I just think that if they go this regulation route, it will be challenged. Trump tried really hard and he wasn't successful. I just don't know that we have tools in our system of laws to ban things –  like FTX could have been banned, and Crypto could have been illegal. So they don't have the tools to make things illegal like that. To make something really stop, you just tell Google and Apple to do it, so that there's no pathway for them to be successful.”

Rev share is key to keeping quality creators

Eli states how TikTok has reduced the entry barrier to becoming a ‘creator’. But it needs to become a platform that makes it worthwhile for genuinely talented creators to come and stay.

“I'm saying the creators are the future stars. They're not just TikTok stars - they're actual stars and real artists. TikTok needs to get them to stick to the platform. Here’s an interesting parallel – Think about Facebook or Meta - five years ago, who was going to compete with Facebook? Well, no one can, as all the users in the world are on Facebook.

Now look at them today - they're declining in users because users have found somewhere else to go, and that place happens to be TikTok. So TikTok needs to make the platform sticky for the people that create the content because, without the right content, you don't get the users.”

Eli further stresses how TikTok needs creators who are true subject matter experts to keep the content quality high:

“If you want to go onto TikTok and learn about something complex, do they have the most complex person that's truly the expert? Has that person been incentivized to put that content on TikTok for free? Or do they keep it on their own website, which is where Google brings them?

TikTok has to get those experts on there sharing their knowledge before this becomes the go-to platform to learn. It certainly has grabbed the attention, but if it has staying power, I think it's about the creators and not the users. Users, yes, they're sticky and users do things for a long time, but they can be, they can be taken.”

Kevin also adds how TikTok needs to bring in more niche creators on a revenue-sharing basis to raise the quality of content created on the platform:

“The interesting thing about TikTok versus YouTube is that TikTok recommendation algorithm is so much better in my mind than YouTube – and that's why it's such a stickier product most of the time. They need to enter the niche creator area, and they need to do that by sharing revenue directly with the creators.”

How marketers can use TikTok?

Eli suggests that TikTok has proven the case for short-form videos.

When you think about creating a short-form video, don't do it to build social engagement, do it to build a conversion funnel. So showcase your product and don't just build a following of people that want to see your employees dancing or your employees say funny things or your employee culture – unless hiring is your challenge. Use TikTok to build your brand and get people to buy your core products.

Kevin mentions how TikTok still has the potential for niche creators to become first-movers, and you can use Tiktok for content repurposing:

“I think there is an opportunity to create some cool content on TikTok for lots of niche fields. You would want to be one of the first movers on that app for your specific field, whatever that is within the marketing or even if it's outside of marketing.

Here's how I would do it - I would use TikTok as a repurposing channel. I see a lot of popular podcasts using TikTok for repurposing by uploading clips similar to YouTube shorts. That seems to work really well. I know some people with large podcasts who tell me that is one of their biggest drivers of new subscribers and new audiences.”

Kevin also adds how TikTok is also an underestimated channel for B2B marketing:

“A lot of people have faulty assumptions about TikTok – it's not just young kids dancing on this platform anymore. There's legit content. One of my clients ran advertising on TikTok, and they're a B2B company. The product is neither super techy nor close to a consumer product. And they got some legit leads and a legit pipeline from TikTok.

So I think it's underestimated, and that underestimation leaves a little bit of a window of opportunity for companies to be present there and create some good content. But finding sponsoring content creators is still very undervalued.”

Shownotes

* Miss Excel on TikTok - takes a boring topic like MS Excel and creates actionable content

* Charli D’Amelio on TikTok - has almost equal followers as Mr. Beast (YouTube creator)

* Inna Kanevsky on TikTok - debunks psychology misinformation by young TikTok creators

Join the conversation

Subscribe to the newsletter for a free summary, key takeaways, and community content once a week.

Have opinions on TikTok’s future? Or do you want us to cover any topic of your interest? Let us know in the comments!

Thank you,

Eli and Kevin

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

In this episode, we talk about the big trends that shaped 2022, so you can prepare for what’s to come in 2023.

This episode is available on:

* Spotify

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

Today we discuss if ‘work from home’ as a concept is truly beneficial for the dynamics of employees and managers in an organization.

Thanks to the pandemic, many organizations switched to work-from-home, but some of them, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, etc., pull employees back to the office. They have realized that in-person interaction may outweigh the many stated advantages of a WFM culture.

✅Kevin says working from home enables an employee to take control of their time for a better work-life balance.

⛔Eli says working from home limits an employee’s growth within an organization and beyond.

In this episode of Contrarian Marketing, we discuss:

* Impact of work from home on today’s workers

* How work from home impacts the various players of an economy

* Tips on how to work from home

Shoutout to our sponsor, Ahrefs!

If you’re looking for ways to drive more SEO traffic, you need to take a look at Ahrefs.

Ahrefs allows you to find and fix technical errors, keyword gaps with your competitors and internal link opportunities.

Many of the best SEOs in the game use Ahrefs, and so do Eli and I. It’s a key tool in our work; we’ve been using it for many years with some of the best tech companies in the world.

Check out ahrefs.com and sign up for free!

Key Takeaways

* Working from home is great for individuals who are disciplined and can work independently. Consecutively, one should work on these skills to truly ace working from home.

* Companies should choose between in-office or WFH culture but not mix since that could lead to remote employees being left behind in their careers.

* Young workers and recent graduates should explore in-office culture for better opportunities and professional development.

* Organizations should understand the mechanics of working from home to build or transition into a successful remote-first company.

* Organizations should explore repurposing the cost savings from adopting remote work for employee benefits.

Kevin’s take: Work from home enables employees for a better work-life balance

Kevin states how working from home has significantly cut down his commute time:

“My commute is now five seconds as opposed to over an hour. When I lived back in San Francisco in the Bay Area, I had to take the train from Palo Alto to the city which took me over an hour one way. The time on that train was not very productive. You can maybe answer a couple of emails or do some things, but you're constantly interrupted and oftentimes you cannot sit down - so it comes with all this stress.

Now, I wake up, make coffee, make breakfast, and go into the office. I work a bunch of hours and then I go to the gym, and then I'm done for the day. I'm saving over two hours that I used to have to spend on commuting.”

Eli shares a different take by giving an example of how he used his commute time productively:

“I use my commute time effectively to listen to audiobooks, and read physical books, and podcasts. That's the stuff I don't do right now (during work from home) - I hardly ever read. I hardly ever listen to other podcasts cause I don't have that time.

There's no buffer time. To be fair, I love working from home - I love that flexibility, but I don't know that it's necessarily good for everyone. The idea of working from home is permanent and being granted to people actually takes away something that many people benefit from.”

Kevin states that a ‘Hybrid’ arrangement, where companies have employees working full-time remotely or in-office, is the worst form of WFM culture:

“If some people work remotely and others in the office, then the people working remotely don't have the same access to other people to build the same relationships. They're not as present, not as visible, and that is a losing position.

I remember when I worked at Atlassian, some people were allowed to work from home completely remotely on a full-time basis. But these people were always passed for promotions. They didn't get a lot of visibility or the best projects.

So, in my mind, it's an either/decision - either everyone can work from home or maybe contractors can, but full-time people should ideally not work from home.”

Kevin also highlights the ‘silent layoffs’ culture, where organizations tend to misuse the growing WFH trend for laying off employees:

“A lot of big tech companies hired in the pandemic and now that revenues are coming back to baseline after the pandemic, they still have these people. Now, they have to reduce their headcount, for which there's no way around.

So, some companies are forcing people to return to offices as a way to reduce their headcount because they know that not everybody can come back or will come back - they moved during the pandemic, bought a house somewhere else, moved to their parents, etc. Now they're forced to come back and there's just no way that this is going to work.

So they're quitting and it's good for the companies - they saved their severance because the employee decided to not come back to the office, which was originally stated in the contract.”

Kevin agrees with Eli’s take about the need for young workers to get some exposure to in-office culture:

“I will acknowledge that there is probably a difference for certain people. I think it makes sense for young people in their twenties and college freshers to go to the office because they want to be around and meet other people.”

He also mentioned how working parents may find it difficult to cope with focusing on actual work with the added task of managing kids at home.

On the other hand, remote work actually increases equality. For example, people with disabilities or caretakers now have a better way to work or exposure to better opportunities.

In the end, Kevin shares how he thinks companies need to rethink their workplace culture if they have to adopt remote work:

“I think companies just have to change their mindset, right? You cannot operate the same way when everybody works from home.

At Shopify, we went through that whole learning curve. We had these regular meetups once a quarter. Sometimes more often where we would spend all the time forging relationships, spending time together, and getting to know each other because trust is one of the most important ingredients when it comes to baking a high-performing team.”

Eli’s take: working from home limits employee growth within an organization

Eli believes that working from home and various tools that enable it are changing the lifestyles of workers such that it forces people to stay constantly online. Today, one places unsustainable expectations of being instantly responsive. Although it's great for work, it may not be ideal for one’s work-life balance.

People may choose to work from home, but that might not be the best option for them.

He mentions how many employees are not able to forge relationships with other teammates who tend to sit in other countries with different time zones. In-office culture helps one collaborate better because people know each other and what ticks them:

“I went to this company’s team get-together that is conducted four times a year. They pick a city in America, and they all gather together - there were like 200 people in the room. So, I went to their marketing gathering - and they didn't know each other!

In theory, they were on Slack, they were a fully remote company. They did stuff - a billion-dollar company, but they didn't really know each other.

I've never been in a situation where like I didn't know my teammates. I maybe didn't always like them, and maybe didn't know everything about them, but I knew what made them tick. I knew if I really need to like talk to someone, I can be like - let's go grab a coffee downstairs, or let's go have lunch together.”

Eli also suggests how providing flexibility (by, let’s say, allotting 2 days of WFM per week) and  ‘forcing one to go to the office’ may actually be good because otherwise, one may never choose in-office to gain its benefits.

“I think some people need to be forced to go because when you're not forced to go, then some people will never choose in-office. I think being forced to go is a good thing.

There's this stat I read  - women that have children at home, if they're not forced to go to the office, they may choose not to go because it's difficult to go. But if they're forced to go, again, it's not ideal, but they make those accommodations to go to the office. And when they make those accommodations to go to the office, because again, they had to, they are open now to more promotions and more business networks.

I think about how much consulting I've done with my former coworkers. I built that network by being in the office with them. I don't know that I would've built it virtually.”

He further adds how WFM shields one from the real conversations that happen at in-office meetings:

“When I worked at SurveyMonkey, they had an office in Portland and another office in Ottawa and we'd do a lot of work with those offices.

But once the video conference was turned off, that meeting continued. You just cut out those other people, and when it comes to building those relationships and knowing who to promote and knowing who does a good job - they're not a part of that conversation. That conversation happened with the video off.”

In the end, Eli states how motivated people are gonna work hard regardless of whether they're home or in the office. 

“Goldman Sachs forced their employees back into the office.

The CEO said the reason that they're forcing the employees back to the office is because that's who Goldman Sachs is.

The people - they graduate college and work 90 hours a week at Goldman Sachs because they want to be forced into that brutal lifestyle and build those connections and learn, not because they want to work 90 hours a week on Zoom.

So they felt their differentiator for hiring is to make basically hell years of forcing employees to learn quickly and how to become whenever they become a Goldman Sachs.

If they didn't, then they were just another bank with recent grads on Zoom, so there was no differentiator for them. So, I thought that was fascinating.”

How does working from home impact the economy?

Eli shares a CNN source that mentions how few people are eating out since people are working from home.

“So in California Avenue, the second downtown in Palo Alto, there's a parking lot behind all the restaurants. I was never able to get a spot there anytime during the daylight hours because all those restaurants were always super popular and there weren't enough spots.

Now, whenever I go there, there's, they're like two-thirds empty. No workers are going out to lunch during the day. No workers are going anywhere. They're not going out to coffee. So I think that's bad for the economy. I think people sitting at home, they're not spending money is bad for the economy.”

Kevin shares a different take that working from home means people get to choose to opt for a better lifestyle for themselves:

“I'm not sure if it's a net negative (to work from home). You also have a lot less pollution from people, less crowded trains and streets. You have a lot more action in the suburbs as a result. Also, people just move out of the cities and meet new people.

On the other hand, companies have access to larger talent pools.

G2 has two floors of a large office building here in downtown Chicago - and that's some money you have to pay every month. It’s attractive to save that and repurpose it, where you can pay that back to the employees. At Shopify, we got annual grants for buying stuff like desks or chairs, gym memberships, and other stuff to make work from home easier.

So I think that money can be repurposed for a lot of good things.”

Does a work-from-home culture leave the essential workers behind?

Eli highlights how we should separate the WFM discussions concerning tech and non-tech workers:

“First of all, it seems unfair the tech workers can be home.

I was in California when the pandemic started and there was this attitude of - why can't everyone just stay home?

Whereas other places, especially essential workers - had to go to work. My wife is a teacher and she was home teaching on Zoom. That is very hard. How do you control a class on Zoom? The parents are off in the other room doing their zoom calls, and the kids are making fart noises on Zoom, destroying the whole class.

So essential workers, grocery store workers, doctors, and teachers - need to be present. And suddenly there's this unfair thing - they still have to commute. So that’s that part of it - the unfairness. But I think that there are companies that certainly pay it back, like the tech companies, as they want to retain these smart employees.

But there are other companies that maybe went work from home, and now they're looking at their cost savings - this is the employee's responsibility and they're going to have to take care of this themselves. I'll give them $10 a month for their lunch stipend, but they're saving all that money on rent and the internet.

So there is a total divide in the economy. I feel the sudden shift in the pandemic did something that we weren't really ready for. I don't know that we should ever be ready for it.

Maybe things change and we get back to a better equilibrium on who should be working from home and how should they should be working from home.”

Tips to productively work from home

Working from home provides one an opportunity to own their day and schedule as per what works best.

Here are some tips shared by Kevin and Eli:

* Block your calendars by creating separate slots for deep work, meetings, leisure time, etc.

* Plan the top 3 tasks you want to do the next day in advance.

* Use tools that help control distractions during work hours and track time.

* Start your day with a big task since you have more energy.

* Get dressed to get in the zone of work. It helps differentiate between a workday and a weekend.

* Prioritize tasks that require thinking and sharp execution in the morning.

* Leave the house every day - maybe work from coffee shops, try to meet new people.

Shownotes

* Book recommendation:

* Deep Work - rules for focused success in a distracted world by Cal Newport: learn how professionals can prioritize work productively in the age of distractions caused by social media, the internet, home, etc.

* Super Founders - what data reveals about billion-dollar startups by Ali Tamaseb: know about the patterns, backgrounds, and trajectories of successful billion-dollar businesses based on data-driven research.

* McKinsey article - 58% work from home at least once a week, but 35% work from home five days a week.

* The CEO of LinkedIn, in December 2022, said that right now, 50% of job applications go to remote jobs.

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Thank you!

Eli and Kevin