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A podcast that explores how AI is transforming careers, businesses, and industries. Hosts Greg Boone and Erica Rooney deliver real-world use cases and actionable AI strategies to help professionals stay ahead of the curve.
Marc Sirkin: I think it goes all the
way, all the way through the supply
chain from, um, product development
and understanding what customers are
currently, you know, experiencing
with, with your products and services.
Uh, and, and in a rapid fashion because
you have access to data that you've never
had access to, all the way up through, you
know, crafting a memo and understanding
like, oh, I can actually synthesize.
All this data in different ways,
uh, and accelerate my thinking.
You know, the danger here is that you
rely on AI to like, do the job for you.
That's, that's not, that's not the point.
I know you agree with that, right?
It's, it's how do you add your
expertise and then augment
it with, with these things.
Greg Boone: AI isn't the future.
It's now, and whether you're in hr,
sales, operations, or leadership, the
choices you make today will determine
whether you thrive or get left behind.
Today on the podcast, it's, it's Greg
Boone here and my guy Mark Sirkin.
Uh, so let's just chop it up, man.
Yeah.
So.
Alright.
You, you told me that you, you've been
talking a lot about this lead flow crisis
and some of these challenges recently.
So what's going on, man?
Marc Sirkin: Yeah, a lot.
I, I think, you know, you said
something just then that's really
interesting, which is, uh, 2024.
But actually what I've been
thinking about is what happened
in 2022 when Ache Pete came out.
Right?
Because I think that was the
mo I was, I think that that
was the moment of disruption.
I think we didn't, some of us
realize it was important, but I
think now a couple years later.
It's evident that that was a watershed
moment for a bunch of reasons, and it's
changing a bunch of things, um, that we're
now starting to see in real time happen.
Uh, you know, 800 million, is
it daily or weekly, by the way?
Greg Boone: They said 800 million
daily, daily active users.
Marc Sirkin: Okay.
As I was listening to our other
podcasts and we said weekly, I was
like, I think that might be wrong.
So quick correction.
Anyway, 800 million daily users of these
tools, new tools rolling out every day.
I don't know if you've had a
chance to play with SOA and
some of the other video, right?
Like so we had talk about that too.
But the consumer experience, the buyer
experience is changing so rapidly.
The thing that you said earlier
that I think is interesting is, um,
not just, not just, I think it's.
Things changed in 2022 and not
2024, but um, the reality of the
lead flow crisis, depending on
what segment we wanna talk about.
And I do want to ask you kind of where
your focus so we can kind of tune
it to small, small, medium, large
is um, it change is hard, right?
And the reality is what I think is
happening is that it's scary 'cause
we don't know what's gonna work and
therefore we don't wanna admit that
what we're doing doesn't work right.
I think that's the problem in a,
in a, in a over generalized sense.
The metrics that we use, whether
it's m qls, page views, right?
Search, SEO, traffic, you name
it, all the current metrics.
I don't wanna say that they're
not useful anymore, but they're
not the primary metrics and we're
now revisiting in this world.
Uh, or we're, we're returning
to a world where brand is
coming back in the forefront.
Uh, and you know, my hypothesis that a lot
of us guilty as well, we've sort of forgot
how to measure brand on a regular basis.
'cause we're sort of addicted to the
direct, you know, direct marketing,
performance marketing machine that we
built, which is, oh, you can measure
everything and everything is click.
I don't know that it was ever true.
Right.
But now it's really not true.
So you're saying that when we
gave last click attribution,
that was a terrible idea.
It was a, it was
Greg Boone: a proxy for a
Marc Sirkin: good
Greg Boone: idea.
Marc Sirkin: How about that?
Fair, fair,
Greg Boone: fair.
Right.
What, what you described kind
of a second ago I saw on, um,
I was, it was on LinkedIn.
It was some thread that,
uh, Scott Wino had, uh.
Commented on and someone used an Upton
Sinclair, uh, quote, and I'm not well
read, so I'm not gonna pretend that
I am, but I've been using this of
late, you know, and it's from 1934.
And effectively, you know, I'm
paraphrasing a little bit here,
but it basically says that it's
hard to make a man understand
something when there's salary.
Depends on them not understanding it.
Right.
The incentives that's right for
change aren't really, uh, embedded
in kind of the movement itself, so
therefore people are, are rejecting it.
It's like, why would I do this
if it's gonna be detrimental
to my own career growth?
And then I think what you and I
are saying is like, if you don't,
it's gonna be detrimental to
both your company and yourself.
Correct.
That's a hundred percent right.
Marc Sirkin: And, and look,
it's, it's, it's scary.
I, I, I was talking to somebody yesterday,
uh, and sophisticated marketer building
a really cool lead gen platform.
He's got his own thoughts.
We are kind of sparring back
and forth, but what he's doing
is unfreaking believable.
Like, and now whether it's gonna
result in actual business, we'll see.
But if the choices do nothing
and get run over by a truck.
Or the tsunami, as you said last time,
or do something and try to figure it out.
I, I'm on the side of do something
and try to figure it out and not just
stand on the shore and wait to get hit.
And I think that's part of the challenge
because what does, what does solving the
lead flow crisis in six months, 12 months,
18 months, look like it's some weird
combination of marketing, sales, and ai.
Right?
There's no playbook yet.
It's being, it's being written and, and.
Today it's about experimenting
and trying things and being okay
with, eh, that failed or that
didn't work as well as we want.
But again, staying static in this
world right now seems like a bad idea.
I, I, in
Greg Boone: fact, it is a bad
Marc Sirkin: idea.
Greg Boone: That's a hundred percent.
It's a terrible idea.
And I think that's part
of the challenge, right?
Is that, and I, I, I think that
some folks don't even believe that
they're actually being static.
I think they fundamentally, like
I am empathetic to it, right?
I do.
I do fundamentally believe that they
think that what they're doing is change,
but what they're actually trying to do
is create this analog or this parallel
to a world that doesn't exist anymore.
Right?
And I can't see how
that's actually helpful.
Marc Sirkin: I think you get back to
incentives and you get back to things
like ego and, and leadership, which
is to say, um, you can do a lot of
activity and you can dress, look,
we all know you can make numbers.
Say anything you wanna make like
numbers, we can make numbers lie.
Um.
And not intentionally lying, but thinking
that, um, we increased, uh, traffic.
I, I, okay, so I use this ridic,
it's a admittedly dumb analogy,
but pretend you have a webpage.
I use a lot of dumb analogies.
Okay.
So, so it's a, it's a dumb story.
Uh, but I just keeps, keeps us a
third, fourth time I've told this.
So imagine you have a webpage and on
it you have this super compelling video
of a monkey that's clapping and you
cannot take your eyes off this thing.
And people just watch it on repeat.
They're like, oh my God,
this monkey's amazing.
Then you have high engagement
rates for the monkey.
Right?
Right.
Like a lot of us are playing games with
clapping monkeys and we're trying to do
things like, uh, rage bait, clickbait,
you know, thought leadership on LinkedIn.
Let's scare the hell out
of our, our, our ICP.
Like, is that actually productive and are
we actually having good conversations?
I think that's a reflection of we don't
know what to do next, and we're just
leaning on the existing metrics that
we have, for example, engagement time.
Oh, high engagement time
must mean they're good.
Lead does it?
Do you know, do you actually have an
attribution model that actually works
or are you pretending And so marketing
for, for many years, and I'm a marketer
and so I'm guilty as, as anybody, like
we have fallen trout to, um, a series
of metrics and incentives like M qls.
I dunno if you saw my, my, uh, so
video I put on LinkedIn of me talking
about how it make m qls are great.
No, no idea.
It's pretty funny.
And so like, you know, we're in this
weird moment in time where we have
the data and the intel to know what we
were doing isn't working right, but we
don't have the, the leadership or the
incentive structure to really fix it.
And I think that's where there's
an opportunity to hopefully turn
the tide on the lead flow crisis.
But some people gotta get
serious like yesterday.
Greg Boone: Uh, it's a great point.
Uh, we talk about this all the time, is
just the incentives, the, the attribution.
I mean, and, and that's one of the
more challenging things right now is
like, look, we've, we've basically
indoctrinated all of these executives
that these are the metrics to track.
And now if you walk into that
boardroom or into that meeting with
these same metrics, your year over
year numbers are gonna look horrible.
That's right.
Right.
And so it's like, I would've
thought by now that that was enough
incentive to start saying, look.
You need to have a level of education.
And, and I think part of this is not
just to the marketing group, like I
wanna also talk to the executives that
are out there that may be watching this.
Like, you have to understand and be
somewhat empathetic and know that
the world has radically changed.
Marc Sirkin: Right.
I agree.
I mean, I, I had a conversation with
somebody, uh, a couple weeks ago.
We were talking about
who owns Go to Market?
Who owns GDM, right?
And the answer that this person told
me was, it's the Cee o full stop.
The marketing person, the sales person
doesn't own, they execute go to market.
Oh, I was about to say Cee o, but yeah,
it's the Cee o. And so if the Cee o
owns go to, if it's true that the Cee
owns go-to market, and, and I believe
it's true, but the, the Cee o or the
executives don't understand how the
fundamental mechanics of marketing
sales have changed because of the
technology, we have a gap in leadership.
Yeah.
And you can wish upon a star all you
want, and you can grind people and
you can incent people and you can
carry and stick 'em however you want.
But the fundamental underlying.
Buying journey, again, depends on
the segment we're talking about,
but all of that stuff has changed.
And so you need a new vocabulary to
have a real conversation about this.
Otherwise, you're gonna find
yourself in deeper and deeper water.
And it sounds horrible and it
sounds negative, but it's also true.
It's true.
Greg Boone: And it is.
It's so true.
I mean, I was talking to our
internal team on Slack yesterday,
and I was sending this note, I said.
I said, 'cause I've been in New York
and Boston this week having multiple
different conversations and I will say
that at least one of the things that's,
I don't know if it's a net positive or
not, is folks are now saying, oh we, we
have to move from SEO to just GEO, right?
Isn't that right?
I was like, you mean just GEO?
I was like, if you just moved to GEO,
you just gonna go outta business.
I was like, I don't know how to
explain this to you any differently.
Like you were on a good day.
You may see one 10th.
You know, of the same traffic.
And as marketers, our goal has always
been to help grow and to get leads.
What we should be measuring is growth
in leads and those things versus
the vanity metrics or some of these
other things that we used as a proxy.
But at the end of the day.
You know, it doesn't matter.
'cause I was listening to a podcast
and they were talking about, well,
you know, you need to get on, in,
in line with the executive team on
what are the key metrics, right?
And so if we're, you know, if it was
page rank or if it was this thing or that
thing, it's like, yeah, but at the end
of the day, we know why we pay either
agencies or internal marketing is because
I want to grow, not because I wanted to
hit some metrics that you can almost gain.
Right?
I used to have a head of, uh, analytics
and he would say that you can torture
data to say whatever you want it to.
Marc Sirkin: And people will.
Right.
That's kinda the point I think we're
making, which is people will tweak and
change and li lie about the data to make
the align, the incentives align with.
'cause no one wants to lose their job.
Right, right.
But I think again, you're in,
you're in a moment in time.
We don't see these moments very often.
You know, the, the social
revolution, the mobile revolution,
cm, these were not this moment.
Those were those you could sort
of navigate through, right?
Um, the closest thing that I've
lived through is the, is the birth,
the commercial internet where
it was like you didn't need a
website and now you need a website.
And it, and it happened overnight.
You're like, oh crap, I need a,
and what is a website supposed
to do and how does it work?
And how do we maintain it?
And now I need a data-driven website and
now it needs to personalize and like.
That was a massive change in
how businesses was transacted.
And then, you know, that's not
even talk about e-commerce,
which changed that even further.
And we're about to go through
that times a hundred, times
a thousand, times a million.
I don't.
And so again, in times of disruption,
you see, you see these moments happen
and we have all the history to look
at, to sort of go what's, what do we
think is gonna happen structurally?
There will be, empires will
rise, empires will fall.
We're starting to see that
with with chat GPT and so.
A tacit acknowledgement
that, that we might be in.
Look, maybe, maybe I'm wrong,
but if we're in that moment,
you gotta have a conversation.
Your leadership team say,
we're in that moment.
I, I, I personally think that not
enough senior execs are putting
their hands on the technology
because there's something visceral.
I was talking to somebody and I
was like, remember the first time
you used chatt pt? I literally was
like looking behind the computer.
Like, is there somebody behind there
answering like, what's happening?
Like, right.
But it was like the first, remember
the first time you touched an
iPhone and you're like, this is
this, this looks like a picture.
Is that real?
And you're like, oh my God.
It's that moment.
And when you talk to people who
are really executing, um, and
experimenting with really cutting
edge, uh, use of, of AI technologies,
your mind kind of goes, oh my God.
Like that's pos that's possible.
It's possible to do that.
So I, there
Greg Boone: has to be some
acknowledgement of that.
A hundred percent.
And I think we all, I was having a
conversation this week with 40, uh,
uh, travel, uh, professional travel and
hospitality folks, uh, in Boston a couple
days ago, and I was talking to them about.
You know, when people say that they use
ai, like what does that actually mean?
Right?
And there was a couple points I was trying
to make and I was getting the folks that
said, how many do you, how many in the,
in the audience has the free version of
Chachi, bt, and it was most of the folks.
I said, okay, I have the pro version,
which effectively means that I get all
the new features six months before you.
So when you and I are having
a conversation for me, it's
almost like I step back in time.
Right, because I'm having a conversation
that may have been real six months ago.
That's right.
Right.
But it's not actually real.
So there's that disconnect.
I said the other is you don't
have the full set of features
and even understanding like
basic things like deep research.
Right.
We were doing training for some, uh,
HR professionals, uh, just last week.
And once we showed them deep research
and then we showed them tools outside
of just say, chat, GBT or Gemini,
like a gamma for presentations or.
Showing 'em how to vibe, code
landing pages, literal jaws dropped.
Yeah.
They had no clue.
It's magic.
It's magic.
Right?
And you have that first moment going
back to like your, your mobile example.
I remember the first time that I had
like a, I had like a, uh, what was it?
A Blackberry or something.
But the first time I had like the mobile
browsing experience and I could get
the ESPN scores before they were on tv.
And people were like, Hey
man, how did you know that?
It was gonna be the score.
Right.
And that's when, yeah,
I had my magic moment.
I was like, wow, this
is amazing right now.
And so, but to your point, if they don't
have, uh, my man Alec Kauflin, he's,
he's been on the, on the pod before he
say, you know, hands in the dirt, right?
Until the executives start to lean
in, they really have no clue what
folks are actually facing right now.
That's right.
Because it's so radically different.
Marc Sirkin: Yeah, I mean, and I think,
I think it goes all the way, all the
way through the supply chain from, um,
product development and understanding
what customers are currently, you know,
experiencing with, with your products and
services and in a rapid fashion because
you have access to data that you'd never
had access to, all the way up through, you
know, crafting a memo and understanding
like, oh, I can actually synthesize
all this data in different ways.
Uh, and accelerate my thinking.
You know, the danger here is that you
rely on AI to like, do the job for you.
That's, that's not, that's not the point.
I know you agree with that, right?
It's, it's how do you add your
expertise and then augment
it with, with these things.
And as far as the lead flow
crisis goes, like the data.
Is pretty clear that, you know,
CPLs are going the wrong direction.
Uh, sales cycles are
going the wrong direction.
Uh, buyers are, are undecided.
There's more competition.
We don't understand the impact
of, uh, sa you know, what's
happening in the SaaS world today.
Uh, long term, uh, at, at the,
at the s and b standpoint.
You know, you've got real challenges
in terms of like, that's just
basic SEO how do people find you?
So again, it's this turbulent moment
that I, you know, I've been spending
a lot of time this week just trying
to think about like, okay, so.
Got it.
Assume you believe it.
What do you do about it?
And how do you actually start
to put things in place to sort
of combat this lead flow crisis?
Because you have to do
something about it, right?
You can't lay down and
just go, I'm, I'm dead.
Greg Boone: Well, let me back
up just for, for the audience.
When we talk about the
lead flow crisis, right?
There's a few different elements
when I'm kind of describing it.
First and foremost, somewhere
between 60 and 70% of all Google
searches in without a click.
Right.
So organic traffic has dropped,
you know, off a cliff, right?
Right.
And so I keep trying to, I reiterate the
point when I say to folks, I said, I'm not
saying six or seven, I'm saying 60 or 70%.
Right?
So whatever you think about
whatever I'm saying next,
just come to that realization.
They don't know you exist.
Right, right.
That's thing one.
Thing two is I, I say to folks all
the time, I said, there's only two
forms of cold email scam and spam.
Right.
The idea that you're gonna convert
and just flood the market with a
bunch of emails doesn't work the
same way people distrust this.
Now.
Then on the other side, you have paid
media costs that are continue to go
through the roof because if the other
things aren't working as marketers,
the first thing they gravitate towards,
and now we, again, we've trained
executives on this, like, well,
we'll throw money at the problem.
Yeah.
Okay.
If everybody throws money at the
problem, then the cost goes up.
Then who can compete?
You know, off camera.
We had a quick conversation.
You see, we're asking about
different verticals and different
size of organizations, right?
Part of what I'm mostly concerned
about is mid-market and lower.
You have no brand equity.
That's right.
Like, no one's doing a name search
for your random retail store.
Right?
And people have to understand that.
And then one other thing that I
bring up quite a bit is what I
would describe as the filter bubble.
The idea that it's so highly
personalized, my search, right?
And so again, I say the same
thing over and over again.
I have on a pair of Jordans right
now, I talk about Nike and Air Jordan.
All the time to Chad, GBT.
Good luck, Adidas and
Under Armour showing up.
Yeah.
It's like all of these things compile,
you know, or compound in a way that.
It's gonna significantly drop off
everything and it's already doing it.
And that's why I would define
as the leaf flow crisis.
Marc Sirkin: Yeah.
It can't not.
It's a, and what you've described
is a compounding effect.
One, okay, search
traffic's down, but Right.
But when you compound those things
and you add in the reality of.
Recognizing that the metrics
we had been using aren't
necessarily the right metrics.
Now you're in a really, um,
it, it's a situation that is
appropriately named a crisis.
Yeah.
You know, and I, you know, again, like
I, where I'm trying to get in my head
is, well, what advice, you know, in
my, in my business, like, okay, how
do I help customers deal with this?
And like, I know what Walk West
is doing in terms of podcasts
and citations and all that stuff.
I think that's the right, I
think that's the right path.
I think one of the challenges
is, again, from a executive
standpoint, okay, we wanna, we,
we believe, we believe you, Greg.
We, we got it.
What's the ROI on that
Greg Boone: I, I had that
internal conversation.
I said, you want me to give you an ROI
on the thing that we just started doing?
Yeah.
Right.
I was like, I don't know how that works.
Doesn't, it doesn't work.
I said, the two things you can't
control right now are that you can
control are your personality led
growth, and community led growth, right?
What you're doing, what we're
doing, how you're on camera, right?
And then the ponds that you fish
in or curate the communities
that you partner with.
I saw recently, uh, two big Fortune 500
companies put out a job description for
a Cee o content creator that was paying
between 250 and a million dollars a year.
This is effectively people
that are being hired to help
do the personality led growth.
Wow.
Like new jobs are being
created in real time.
People are starting to figure this out.
Right?
Or you talk to smaller companies and
say founder-led growth, founder-led
Marc Sirkin: growth.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean, there's
limits to all of that stuff, but
at the end of the day, again, we're
in that experimentation phase.
So what does it look like?
You know, three, four years ago
there weren't that many CEOs that
had, let's say, a substack or a
separate blog and it, there was
always, you know, as an internal.
Marketing person for years until recently.
It's like, well, how do you, how do
you manage and mitigate personalities?
Like at like third door media?
So there was a guy named Danny
Sullivan back in the day.
He was like the OG search guy,
and he, um, started search engine
land and a lot of our marketing
was based on his personality.
He had 400,000 Twitter followers.
He had, right?
Uh, search engine land's a great
brand, but like it was built by Danny.
Right now it's a standalone
brand, but it took years and
years and years and even today.
The, the, you know, like someone like
Barry Schwartz has a huge following.
He's a one man wrecking crew.
He's got significant traffic
and a significant brand.
There was actually data, um, just
the other day I saw it on LinkedIn.
Somebody did a study, uh, manual.
It, it was interesting.
They dug in and they, were they
really trying to answer the question.
Um, can brands compete with
personalities on LinkedIn?
And the answer is not even close.
Yeah, not even close brand can have
hundreds of thousands of followers.
Cee o or somebody interesting
can have a couple of thousand
and far, you know, far outstrip
Greg Boone: their engagement.
You, you liked it.
And it showed up in my LinkedIn
feed, and then I connected
with the Cee O. That's right.
And he asked me, he said,
why did you, he said, what?
What struck you about my profile?
And I responded to him and I said, because
you get the personality led growth.
Because effectively I was
gonna say the same thing.
Oh, he did tag you.
That's right.
You tag me.
Right.
And so I saw it and it basically, the
data was something to the effect, and
we have to go back and figure out.
But it was effectively saying that the
Cee O had like, you know, a third as many
followers, but it was twice the level
of engagement and kind of lead flow.
Right.
And they were like, they were, they
weren't surprised because they basically
that that guy's company does this.
It was a thesis.
Yeah.
Right.
That was already their thesis.
Yeah.
Right.
They just showed it and
the data played out.
That's right.
We're doing the same
thing here at Walk West.
Right.
We talk about, our four P strategy is
podcast partnerships, PR and publishing.
Mm-hmm.
The whole point of it is how do you get.
Leverage the, the, you know, the
podcast is basically the perfect
medium for personnel led growth.
We got cameras set up.
We can, you know, be on YouTube.
We can create shorts, we can be on
LinkedIn, Instagram, other places, right?
All over the place.
Right.
The partnerships is all about
community led growth, right?
What are the ponds you're gonna fish in?
You're gonna curate.
I say the same thing
over and over the ocean.
That was Google that we
all fished in has dried up.
That's right.
What ponds are you gonna fish in?
Right?
And I think people have to understand that
these are the things that you can control.
And I was speaking, uh, to those
travel folks, I said, look, personality
led growth and community led
growth, neither one of those things
require you to be an expert in ai.
Now, if you wanna scale those
significantly, then sure, you need
to get understand the technologist
said, but you can control that.
Marc Sirkin: I think the challenge
is the mindset of, you know, building
a, building a brand like Nike is very
different than building a brand like.
A local, a local business,
a mid-market business.
So let's, like, let's put Nike and Adidas
and like, okay, we're very few of us get
the opportunity to build multinational,
multi-billion dollar brands.
Most normal business people are, are
stuck in this, uh, zone, which is
like, do I, you know, it's binary.
Do I promote the brand or promote me?
And where does those two, those
two things merge and match.
And when you have somebody, let's
say, let's you have somebody really,
um, facile and really good on
camera and you wanna do a podcast,
you're, you're a mid, you mid-market
business, small business, whatever.
And you're like, yeah, this is the
right person to do it, but what if
they leave or if they say something,
I want them to say, well, that's
not the world we live in anymore.
Right?
Like that.
Like there's no, like, there is no
choice to do a branded, you know,
I dunno, small business podcast.
Without a personality, it doesn't,
no one's gonna forget, watch it,
and it's not gonna be interesting.
So we're in this, again,
we're in this weird zone.
I, I had a conversation with somebody,
uh, the guy who running MarTech, actually
we were talking months ago about.
How do we, how do we manage, um,
the brand equity versus the, uh,
versus the personality equity?
It's tricky.
It really is.
It's like a weird balance and
you're so, like, we wanna invest
in these voices because they
bring credibility to the brand.
So it accrues brand value, but
also if that person leaves or says
something stupid, it's almost like.
You know, like if you hire, I don't
know, Kim Kardashian or something,
or something and something bad
happens in the marketplace, um, you
sort of get the stink of that on
you if, if something bad happens.
But like, I don't know that there's a way
around that there's risk in everything.
Greg Boone: I mean, there was some, uh,
data from late last year from, uh, it
was in a Forbes article and there was a
few other places that effectively said
that 49% of your brand's reputation
is directly tied to your reputation.
There.
It's, that was 49%.
And the smaller your organization,
the larger the percentage.
Right.
And I try to get that across
all the, all the time.
There is no separation right
now between Greg Boone's
brand, my brand, and Walk West.
Marc Sirkin: That's right.
In fact, you're the leading part.
You're, you're the tip of the spear
of like, oh, who's this Greg guy?
Oh, he's the Cee o of Walk West.
What the hell's walk west?
Yeah.
Like that's how it works.
That's effectively
Greg Boone: how we've
grown this last year.
And I'm not trying to sound
arrogant, I just understood how
the game has to be played now, and
I think that's where people have
to understand you have to lead.
You know, with your personality, and
it's not just the Cee o and you start
to expand with your executive team,
your board, we are trying to figure
out how do you find the right level.
I call 'em ambassadors, right?
Because sometimes, and I've come
across this where the Cee O is not
the right person to put on camera.
Like, Hey man, that you should
never talk in public, right?
You have great ideas, right?
We're gonna hire someone, right?
But then also, how do you have the right
PR and media team around you, right?
Again, how do you flood the zone and
show up in so many different places?
And I'm trying to explain
this, and I think.
Part of the challenge and, and part of
the reason why you and I kind of really
clicked on these things is that what
we were seeing is out in the market and
people that we respect and we know and
they're trying, they're very smart and
brilliant about, about what they're doing
from an SEO perspective and this and that.
It's like, but you're giving people
a false hope that they can still
leverage that as the only channel.
What I'm trying to get across
is like, that cannot be your
dominant channel anymore.
You don't control it.
Yeah.
And it's still
Marc Sirkin: trying to figure itself out.
You never could, you never did control it.
I mean, I think I, I, I think, you know,
if you're talking specifically about
SEO, which I think you are, you know,
the reputation that SEO had was, it's
basically free, free, free traffic.
Free re free traffic equals
free revenue right now.
Yes, you have to make an
investment in the person, da da da.
But that has been changing over.
It's not even ai.
AI has accelerated, but it has
been changing o over years.
It's always been.
Uh, metered and mitigated.
Google's always been the
filter for all of that.
And when they do an algorithm update
and you hear these horrible stories of,
I had a business and now I don't have a
business, this is not new necessarily.
Right.
It's just accelerated.
Right.
In a, in a massively crazy way.
Uh, because so many people are using, uh,
other mechanisms of, of finding things
and we're gonna exceed in acceleration of
that when they light up e-commerce, right?
As we talked about.
And so I do think there is some false
hope, and I think it goes back to
the beginning of the conversation,
which is how do we measure this stuff?
So when you look at, when you look
at your staff and you look at your
spending and you're spending X percent
on SEO, and now you're saying, well,
it's not just SEO, it's also GEO
now, or whatever you wanna call it.
It's a little disingenuous to
your, to your point, uh, both up to
the leadership and also if you're
an agency or telling customers.
And I, in fact, somebody literally last
night sent me, Hey, can you look at, um,
you know, she's doing some consulting.
Can you look at this kind of overview?
And she had a bullet point about
SEO and I'm like, that's incomplete.
You now you mentioned lms, like you
can't go to market with something that
doesn't even, like, it's wor it's bad
enough that you're promising SEO success.
'cause what is that even today,
again, SEO is really important.
I don't, I don't mean to knock it, it's
just, I think what you're saying is the
frame of, the frame of reference for
why SEO is important is now different.
It used to be essentially free
tr quote unquote free traffic,
good, high quality traffic.
It is not anymore.
'cause you're gonna get
a 10th of the clicks.
Doesn't mean you don't do it,
doesn't mean you don't have right.
Do the basics.
You should always do the basics, right?
Fundamentals still matter, but you
are just not gonna get lead flow
outta SEO the way you used to.
Not gonna happen,
Greg Boone: right?
And it's, and so that's
the, the challenge, right?
If you're spending, let's say you,
whatever your budget was that you
were spending towards that thing, if
you're gonna see a 10th of the leads
or the traffic or however you wanna
measure it, then what are you gonna do?
Are you gonna pay 10 x for that thing?
And still hope.
And my, I had a little bit of a
rant the other day on LinkedIn.
I said, I said, so lemme just
make sure I get this straight.
You're want to go tell people credibly
that you're gonna optimize against chat.
PT perplexity.
Claude, uh, grok Gemini, Google Chat.
PT Atlas.
Now perplexity comet.
Right.
All of these things, and then you're
gonna tell people you need to show
up in these other places like Reddit.
Oh, by the way, Reddit just
sued perplexity and a bunch of
other folks earlier this year.
They sued Claude.
I was like, you can't optimize against the
thing they're still trying to figure out.
And then the places that they're
scraping and pulling from, they don't
own those sites and they're pushing back.
I was.
I was like, I don't understand what we're
actually trying to solve for in that.
Now again, we both believe
that there is a place for SEO.
I'm not saying that, but you have to
look at your budget and you have to
think differently about what you're
doing and how you're spending dollars.
Marc Sirkin: Yeah.
And, and, and you know, I'm, I,
I keep in my head, I'm sitting
here going, okay, that's great.
I agree.
We agree.
Um, but then what, what do you do?
And I think part of whatever you
decide to do, whether it's, you know,
a podcast or, or some other thing, you
also have to recalibrate the efficacy
of those in terms of your old metrics.
Because if we're talking about lead
flow crisis, you're talking about
pipeline, you're talking about revenue.
You know this, this vehicle, this
medium, for example, doesn't work
the same way SEO or PPC does, right?
It's a different investment.
That brings me all the way
back to the brand investment
and how do you measure brand?
You know, it's like you.
You know it when you see it.
Oh, that's a good brand.
They've defined it Well, I get it.
I get it, I get it.
I see it all the time.
It shows up in all the right places.
Understood.
But even that doesn't guarantee the
same kind of measurement that you
had with something like SEO Flow.
We get traffic.
Oh, and we know that, you know, it it
for many years, it's like even still
today, if we get a thousand visitors,
we know we get 15 email subscribers.
If we get 15 email subscribers, we're
gonna get three trial customers.
We get three trial customers.
We know one of 'em becomes a customer.
Do more of that.
I, I think you and I are both saying that
world is pretty much over, and you need a
new way of measuring and metricing that.
And again, if you're in B2B sales or
if you're in some kind of PLG or a
consumer thing, it'll look different.
It'll manifest different.
But look, if you can't be found
and you don't have a brand,
you don't have a business.
Wow.
Greg Boone: I mean, a hundred percent.
I mean, that's the, that's
the net of it, right?
We're, we're telling folks now
about what I would describe as a
QLS or attention qualified leads.
Right.
I love it.
Right.
And the idea is like you have to
show up in all of these different
places, whether it's live events.
I do think we're an era
of, of taste and trust.
I've said this to a lot of folks, right?
You know, whether it's the scam and
spam emails, or whether it's the, the
fake SOAR videos or whatever people,
or the AI slop, people are pushing
back in a lot of different ways and
they're gonna start to gravitate to
the things that they can see and touch.
They're gonna gravitate to whatever.
Like, you may not be the perfect
agency or the perfect partner,
but they've known you long enough.
They're like, Hey, they're
at least not gonna steer me.
Wrong or do me wrong, right.
We're gonna be in this together.
But I do think that the, the executives
there has to be a level of, of, I would
say just education, but I need also
our, our friends in the SEO space also
to be helpful and be a little bit more,
you know, finish the sentence, right?
You need to do these things, but you
should not expect the same level.
Right.
Of engagement
Marc Sirkin: or that's, that's a big ask.
You know, because like, I mean, just as
from an SEO, if I'm an SEO professional,
I'm banking on high leverage traffic
content equals traffic equals Yeah.
Some kind of attribution to revenue.
And the moment you pull the traffic out,
the entire equation starts to fall apart.
And you know, there are some
people that are afraid of,
um, AI gonna take their job.
Well.
There's a bunch of people
in SEO O who are afraid.
Of AI making SEO just irrelevant.
And so you see that, you see that
community and they're doing some, some
are doing a really nice job and others
maybe less so, but you see that community
really trying to figure out what's the
parallel, like how do we become experts
in how to optimize for visibility
discoverability inside an LLM, it's.
It's similar, but different enough
that it's, there's, you know,
emerging thoughts on how to do that.
But to your point, that's all changing.
I mean, I, the thing I can't, the
thing I can't reconcile with that
particular issue is every time a
new model comes out, everything
changes and everything has memory.
Yes.
So what you said about Nike is true.
Like, like if, if I go to my chat
TV right now and I search for
X is, it is filtering for me.
It is my assistant, yes.
I like, I like, I don't, I don't know.
How, how do you crack that?
Greg Boone: Well, that, that's the part
why I do keep trying to explain to folks.
I'm like, we're, we're searching
for analogs and parallels, but
the reality is you're comparing
a bicycle to a space shuttle.
Yeah.
I was like, I, I was like,
you have to understand that.
Like I get the, the need to
try to create these parallels.
I was like, but it is not a true parallel.
Like, and so if you can break your mind
from assuming that these two things are
close to equal or just this thing, right?
Then you, you have a better
shot at actually moving
forward in some meaningful way.
You know, and my big challenge, I was
at Adobe Conference earlier this year
and I was having a, a conversation
with a, with a good friend there and,
and he was talking about, well, we're
not seeing this and that in our data.
I said, let me just be clear.
Nike is gonna be okay.
Yeah.
It is a record that people are searching.
What type of Nike?
Yeah.
Blah, blah, blah.
I was like, I'm not concerned
about the top 2000 companies.
No.
I said, once you get below that, you
don't have the brand equity and the
brand recognition, then what happens?
Right.
It all falls apart.
Yeah, and I think some of the folks
that we see, again, very well respected
and folks that, that we love and trust.
I think a lot of times what, when
they're talking about brand, they're
still talking about the top 2000.
Yes.
And I'm concerned about everything
underneath what happens, because if
all of that crumbles, there's nobody
to spend money with the top 2000.
Marc Sirkin: That's right.
And if, and if, if we are in a winner
takes all game where only the big brands
win, that's a very different world.
That's a different problem.
Yeah.
Um, and so yeah, I, I, I totally agree.
And I think, again, like in my
mind it's like, okay, great.
Tactically, what do you do?
And one of the challenges, again, you
know, recovering from performance,
marketing delusions or whatever, right?
'cause that world's changed.
PR kind of has taken a, you know, over
the last five or 10 years, PR kind of
got pushed aside because perform now all
of a sudden PR is back in the limelight,
but it's not pr the way it used to be.
It's, it's, it's getting
cited, as you like to say.
It's thoughtful conversations,
you know, um, sales outreach
now is almost a PR game.
Like you, like, it's not like, like
you said, cold email doesn't work and
so the playbook is completely busted.
There are pieces of it that we can
look at and go, okay, there's something
salvageable here, but we have to.
Measure it differently and
think about it differently.
And you're absolutely right.
It, the, the two thou, the top
2000 are, they're perfectly
fine, but even they're not fine.
I mean, let's be honest, like they're
fine 'cause they have a brand.
But are they gonna be, um,
challenged in terms of revenue?
Yes, they are.
Greg Boone: Yeah.
And they have, you know, the,
they have innovation, what is it?
Innovators dilemma.
Right themselves.
Right.
I was having a conversation at
breakfast this morning about that.
They were like, well, can't the small
companies there can be more nimble?
I said, yes.
I said, but the problem is the
big companies have recognizable
brands that the, the large language
models are already preferring.
Right, right.
And so that's the difference, right.
They've already curated their own
ponds and they're so massively
exposed across so many effectively.
They've been cited so much.
That they always are going to be the ones
that are picked up right now until either
the large language models and the AI
companies change how they're doing things.
Yeah, right.
And, but I still think that, you know,
the hyperbole I use all the time now
when I talk to folks, I said, look,
you know, to be able to compete in the
age of ai, I said, you need four to
six new, uh, roles across eight to 10
new capabilities or tools to deliver
10 to 100 x more content, twice as
fast, across four or five new channels.
If you have enough budget internally
to do that, then go at it.
Or otherwise, you're gonna have
to figure out a different path
Marc Sirkin: That's right.
Greg Boone: To grow or leverage
a different set of technologies
or partners or something.
I say, because it's not tenable.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I don't know how
you're gonna do that.
Marc Sirkin: So what you're talking about
is really, there's two layers to this.
There's executive reframing of what,
how to measure any of this stuff.
And then there's how do
you actually execute it?
And you're talking about partners
and you're talking about fractional,
which all makes a lot of sense.
But like Yeah.
Now, now it's, it's a little late.
But not, you know, not too late, but late.
So you gotta really start,
um, adjusting quickly.
Yeah, I, I appreciate that perspective.
Greg Boone: Yeah, so thank you, mark.
I appreciate the time, buddy.
Pleasure.
Yep.
erica: Thanks for joining
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