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Zero Click Marketing is a marketing strategy podcast about content marketing, audience research, and how brands grow when clicks matter less. Hosted by Amanda Natividad, Chief Evangelist at SparkToro and Co-Author of the book, "Zero Click Marketing," the show explores how marketers reach audiences, build influence, and earn attention in a zero-click internet. New to the show? Start with Episode 2: What Zero Click Marketing Actually Is.
[00:00:00] Ross Hudgens: Having third-party reviews could be good with an indirect influence on SEO, I think, for a long time. But now it's direct for GEO. I think it's more clear that it's very directly tied to output.
[00:00:13] Amanda Natividad: I'm Amanda Natividad, and welcome to Zero Click Marketing
[00:00:20] Hi, Ross. So I don't do intros here, I just start talking.
[00:00:24] Ross Hudgens: There we go. Well, I'm ready to go. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:27] Amanda Natividad: All right, let's go. So friends, Ross is the author of the forthcoming book, or is it, or is the book out now?
[00:00:33] Ross Hudgens: Probably by the time it comes out October 12th, it, it comes out. Yeah.
[00:00:38] Amanda Natividad: Yes. Officially.
[00:00:38] That is right. So please order Ross's book. You can get it kind of anywhere, right? Generative Engine Optimization, literally writing the book on GEO
[00:00:50] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. You can find it on Amazon. Uh, we have it in our top nav on siege media, geo/book as well. But hopefully if you Google that term plus book, we'll show up, AI SEO book.
[00:01:02] D- trying to eat our own dog food a little bit.
[00:01:04] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Do you think... Is your book for me?
[00:01:08] Ross Hudgens: I think so. I mean, I do try to say it's written for a s- slightly advanced person, not like 10, 12 years of experience in search, but n- I think you're a great kind of descriptor there, where you have good knowledge of SEO.
[00:01:22] Maybe you're not day-to-day in the weeds of SEO. Okay. I think that's perfect for that person. So I'm not walking people through how to do keyword research or props research, I suppo- I mean, slightly, but yeah, yeah, I assume there's a baseline knowledge of SEO is the, is the easiest way to say it.
[00:01:37] Amanda Natividad: Okay, cool.
[00:01:38] I mean, I already ordered it. I just haven't read it yet. Yeah.
[00:01:41] Ross Hudgens: Okay.
[00:01:42] Amanda Natividad: And I'm excited. There you go. Okay, so my first basic question for you, I won't have only basic questions, but I do kind of wanna get over this first one out the gate. Is GEO the same thing as AEO? Do you care about the difference? Is there a difference?
[00:01:56] Ross Hudgens: It is the same. So my only instinct is go where the data shows, and currently, at least as of last week, I haven't checked today, GEO is still in the lead for our buyer. So a recent aha I had talking to David Mihm and, uh, the Near Media folks, which I thought was really smart, was choose whatever your buyer uses.
[00:02:17] So I'm open to changing. When I was writing the book, it was GEO. I actually kind of like AEO more, but like local folks, I think local business owners are using AI SEO a good amount. So you should actually shoot- choose that, in my opinion. But I think they're all the same in that, in actually what's practiced.
[00:02:34] Amanda Natividad: Okay. That actually is really helpful because I kind of tend to say all of them, and then I- Yeah ... look quizzically into the camera, so that's better. What do you think of when people say, like, "Oh, GEO is basically just SEO"? Do you agree with that? Disagree?
[00:02:53] Ross Hudgens: I disagree. There are scales. Going back to the local front, that was also an aha from that conversation.
[00:02:59] I think on the local side it's a lot similar because there's a lot of review volume that informs traditional results from Google, like the local pack, and I think it's a lot of offsite signals that essentially drive GEO. So it's a review, third-party endorsements. So in traditional local SEO, that technically is the same thing.
[00:03:20] So you happen to be really influencing that via the same process. But for other companies, it depends on just the scale of how many of those there are. Certain industries, there's a ton of that volume If you're in finance, NerdWallet, all these affiliate sites will drive a lot of mention influence. But if you're in B2B, very niche B2B, there's not a lot of third party.
[00:03:43] So you could make the argument a lot of it's done on your own w- uh, website and there's more there. The core thing I, I'll often say is, yeah, having third-party reviews could be good with an indirect influence on SEO, I think, for a long time. Mm-hmm. But now it's direct for GEO. I think it's more clear that it's very directly tied to output.
[00:04:04] Amanda Natividad: So I think something that people are struggling with in general, and this is also, these are also my thoughts coming fresh from content marketing world- Okay ... where I spoke to a lot of, a lot of kind of mid-level content marketing managers about how they're feeling about their jobs, how they're feeling about their current, their current directives, right?
[00:04:25] Where they're thinking about, they're worried about AI visibility, GEO. They're worried about whether or not they care enough, right? Or they're even worried about, well, where do we get started? How do we even start to care about this? How do we even start thinking about how we measure success and when? And the short answer I've kind of been saying to people is, and please feel free to push back, it's I see AI visibility as something that is the happy byproduct of really good marketing, and especially really good content marketing, PR, brand marketing, and having that visibility is what happens when all those things are kind of working together.
[00:05:13] But I don't think that's a satisfying answer for most people.
[00:05:17] Ross Hudgens: I, I think that's definitely true. You could kind of refine it slightly where I think of things like, is a billboard gonna drive LM visibility directly? Maybe not. But like when you say marketing, that often means a lot of different channels are impact-- Or like good work in a lot of different channels are impacting that, and there's so many channels now that impact it.
[00:05:41] Influencer, affiliate, product marketing, social media. Now, like UGC is kind of on the rise, Reddit, like all those signals hypothetically are driving influence. There are a few channels there, like you could argue PPC even helps, I guess. Paid social, maybe not as much. There are a lot of channels that if done well will influence it, but it's-- I think there are still little gaps in that Venn diagram that will less directly do it.
[00:06:08] Amanda Natividad: So tell me about those gaps. Like I guess it's maybe this is a question of as clients, whether they are existing ones or new ones come to you for help, how do you think about structuring that sort of partnership together?
[00:06:23] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. So we, we all use prompt trackers, and if you kind of insert their core transactional terms into these LM trackers using search volume as a proxy, so we're using search volume to kind of have a confidence that we're directionally going the right way.
[00:06:37] You'll see a set of source URLs, source domains. Within that, a lot of these tools will categorize by content type, so it's not uncommon to open that up and see they're never mentioned on Reddit. They're never mentioned on affiliate sites. They have no transactional content on their own site. So it's, it's identifying gaps in the strategy that we potentially can plug.
[00:07:00] So we start with that first practice and kind of use that to assess where we can help plug in and hopefully lift the visibility.
[00:07:08] Amanda Natividad: Oh, cool. That makes sense. That's a, that's a pretty, like, pretty solid starting point. That is... I like that it's, it's still grounded in that reality of, like, keyword search volume, but the correlation makes sense.
[00:07:20] But speaking of correlation, I want to ask about some of the recent research you've been doing, which I'm a big fan of because you're able to do a lot of these correlation studies at scale because you have all these clients whose, you know, whose KPIs you can look at and track over time. And I was reading up on, I think you published it in June, it was some Claude research.
[00:07:42] I took some notes on this. Here's my question for you. So I know you recently analyzed more than 100 B2B websites, and you found that versus pages, so I guess it's, like, pages that show product versus this product, that these had the strongest correlation with AI referral traffic. So my question is, why do you think that these pages are winning?
[00:08:06] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, and, uh, the framing that I maybe didn't clarify super well with that, it wasn't just that those pages are getting the most traffic, but the entire site is getting the most traffic. So that's an interesting kind of side product. And I think, yeah, it's a few different things. One, people are doing die-on-funnel searches on LLMs generally.
[00:08:25] So we're trying to get to that ultimate decision. We're, we're trying to get out Claude's, ChatGPT's context for us, this versus that. And that's a deep funnel refinement search people are doing. So by having that article, we're influencing that conversation proactively. We can help give our qualitative spin on w- who we actually are versus letting a third party control that narrative.
[00:08:48] I think that's one. I do think they're more likely to get clicks because it's super down funnel. Hopefully we're only comparing to one other competitor very often who's making that article. So I think that's a big component, too. And then, um, yeah, one thing I'm saying, I've been saying recently, which is not what you asked, but if, if people have a lot of conten- like, nervousness, you could work with influencers, with affiliate sites to create these same comparison articles on YouTube or on an affiliate site to run it for you.
[00:09:18] And obv- honestly, it'll help be more compelling coming from a third party versus your own site.
[00:09:23] Amanda Natividad: I like... I think what's really interesting about this is that it's sort of, it's treating GEO like conversion rate optimization, like CRO. And I think it's su- it's really interesting to think about how we are in this age where, in a sen- I don't know, I, I think you could make the argument that today GEO is CRO.
[00:09:48] Ross Hudgens: You just gave me goosebumps, Madelyn. 'Cause I literally just wrote a couple posts about that. Andy Crestodina also gave me the light bulb on that. We have a po- a podcast coming out on. I love that exact sentence, 'cause I 100% agree.
[00:10:02] Amanda Natividad: Oh, okay. So let's dig into this.
[00:10:04] Ross Hudgens: Yeah.
[00:10:05] Amanda Natividad: Okay, so CRO would end at the conversion on your website.
[00:10:09] So what happens to the whole optimization model if that conversion happens inside ChatGPT?
[00:10:17] Ross Hudgens: Part of my brain is like, at least now, I don't know that it's changing that much, because the models are getting smarter and smarter, and they're tr- the goal is to ha- behave like a human. So if we can convince a user to buy, we can convince an LLM to recommend us.
[00:10:32] So that's more and more, I just posted about it today, of like, can we throw those third-party datas points on our own website? I'm calling them credibility nuggets. Like, throw those everywhere. Put it on your homepage, have like a stats line, a stats block, have awards featured. A lot of those are obvious best practices.
[00:10:52] I don't think people do them on blog content very often. I think that's a clear gap we, we had in our program. Mm-hmm. But then yeah, versus transactional, I think that's completely correct. That's almost just a content type that fuels CRO. But all the other elements of traditional on-site CRO I've seemingly would drive the same outcomes too.
[00:11:10] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Wait, that's interesting. So you mean like when you were saying incorporating these stats like on your homepage or wherever, but also in your blog, do you mean even doing something like, this is a bad example, but this is all that's coming to mind, is like let's say your company wins an award and you kind of, you blog about it.
[00:11:27] And nobody would read that, I guess, but maybe that is my thought, but better.
[00:11:33] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, yeah. Agreed. So the, the better version, that's still a good thought, is repurposing that site-wide. We used to say, "Let's use data and repurpose it site-wide for LLMs," and that's still good, I think. Mm-hmm. But this is better.
[00:11:45] Like, if you have a G2 award, and we actually are doing this for a client actively right now, they just got named number one in category, we're now refreshing all of their content with that award. So we're kind of making it clear in that data point, and maybe the LLMs will find it themselves, but let's not make it hard for them.
[00:12:02] Let's hit them over the face with all those kind of core facts in the context of the page they may land on, and I think that will really help. And that's, uh, good for users too, right? And they're gonna convert- Yeah ... hopefully because of that.
[00:12:12] Amanda Natividad: Right. That totally makes sense. And I mean, and if you win the award in G2, then yeah, you want, you want everyone to know it.
[00:12:17] So, like, one, you obviously want to brag about it, 'cause who wouldn't? But also for customers, because of that, that's really good third-party validation. Because- Right ... anyone who's in SaaS knows G2, right? Like, I think the only concern I ever had as, as a customer seeing another company getting awards, right, some of it is just like, "I've never heard of that.
[00:12:39] I guess good for them." But G2 is a really good one.
[00:12:43] Ross Hudgens: Agreed. I think the way to do this wrong, that I've s- I don't think is wrong necessarily, but it's not gonna drive CRO or GEO, in my opinion, is, like, I've seen people put best workplaces or best for something else like that, like best marketing. Maybe that would work for us, but non-product relevant awards is kind of the, the stretch things that I just don't know that LLMs care that much about those, 'cause I don't think users would.
[00:13:07] Yeah. Maybe it's kind of anecdotal. I like knowing it's a good company maybe, but- Yeah ... it's not gonna be primary.
[00:13:12] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Okay. So on the... So I was also thinking about, so the versus page data, right? The, these pages that are more likely to get cited or s- you know, ci- cited in AI search, an example that is the versus pages.
[00:13:28] So I guess it's kind of like saying, you know, when you create all kinds of content, that actually helps your customers make a buying decision. Like, that's gonna win or that's gonna do well in... Yeah.
[00:13:42] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, yeah. It, uh, it basically maximize relevant, well-done content i- in that r- in that realm. I think that's absolutely correct.
[00:13:50] One thing I've been seeing as, like, a ran- a byproduct of this, like, we got cited for, and I didn't even think of this as a data point, but it was like Siege has 80 case studies, and I was like, "I didn't even know we had 80 case studies," but That's a lot. Well, but yeah, that's a lot. I should be using that data point.
[00:14:04] Uh, so it's like you could reinvest in volume in just case studies, obviously, and then you could sub-segment this by every landing page. Like, communicate those versions on every landing page, and now we're really powerfully w- most importantly, driving pipeline and sales, but, uh, also some LLM visibility too, hopefully.
[00:14:24] Amanda Natividad: Wait, we should talk about that. You have 80 case studies. How do they show up on your home pa- on your website now? I, I mean, I mean, I assume they're all there in some way.
[00:14:33] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, we have a customer- Yeah ... stories link in our top nav. Mm-hmm. We have four or so on our homepage. Over time, I mean, we, we, we haven't always taken them down, so there's definitely some age stuff there.
[00:14:44] We try to refresh them where possible. On our services pages, we have a block, a relevant service block of three for every, every service is sort of our current process. But yeah, we're, I... Sometimes for a lot of these things, I say it out loud, and then we're kind of a month behind actually putting it on our own website.
[00:15:03] Mm-hmm. But hopefully getting closer with some of it.
[00:15:05] Amanda Natividad: No, that makes sense. Also, like, that's a marketer problem, right? We have all these ideas- Yeah. ... and, like, ways we do things for our clients, but then when it comes to our own stuff, we're like, "Yeah, I'll get to it."
[00:15:14] Ross Hudgens: Right.
[00:15:14] Amanda Natividad: Exactly. That's a good, that's a good thing, I think.
[00:15:16] No, this is cool. So I'm looking at your case studies center, and you can filter it by industry, service type. I wonder if there's a way, if there's a world you consider having, like, a results page where it's all outcome-focused, and then if people wanna read more, then they go to the case studies themselves I don't know.
[00:15:37] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, yeah. For, ooh, so on that we have a data point. We have on our About page 180K in monthly traffic value we've generated for clients. At one point I kind of aggregated that all together just because I thought maybe it would be a compelling data point. And sort of a version of what you said. Mm-hmm. So if you do have a results communication, by all means, and I, I'm sure we, we could practice active CRO- Yeah
[00:16:01] more on our own site.
[00:16:03] Yeah.
[00:16:03] Amanda Natividad: We all could. Okay. I, I really want to ask you now about measurement because I get this question all the time. There are many different ways to answer this, but so we're talking about content, right? That generates AI referral traffic. And we also know that so much discovery and decision-making happens without a click.
[00:16:27] So how do you think about measuring the influence of content that might be influencing the AI recommendation without ever sending someone to the website? So yeah.
[00:16:40] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, yeah. I mean our current solution is to, is two-sided, our recommendation for clients. Two-sided. On your form have a self, an open-ended how did you hear about us CTA.
[00:16:53] And that's generally helpful for driving the understanding of how people are mentioning the current models that are influencing it. So we had Claude come out of nowhere as one example. I don't think you could capture that. Maybe just one other marketing podcast suddenly mentioned us and we see that and it's a good way to drive influence.
[00:17:12] That randomization of a dropdown doesn't do a great job of. The post-conversion is the secondary kind of more consumer minded version where you don't want to impact conversion rate at all, speaking of conversion rate. The best way to kind of account for that and still get a response in my opinion, is to do a post-conversion in a multi-choice, a randomized multi-choice.
[00:17:35] Maybe it says AI assistant as one of those, and you're at least getting a grasp. I did just talk to Rand. I'm sure you know, maybe this is in your head from the book. And he had some good counterpoints because he originally gave me that idea of self-attribution, and then he was saying people will default to what makes them sound smart in that.
[00:17:54] And I was like, "Oh, that's a good point. That's a smart point." Touche, Rand. I think it's the best of available options, and I could go deeper, but that's one, I think the clearest route to get some lens. And I know you are do- you all are doing, uh, what was it called? I'll, I'll let you speak to it. There's some alternatives to that as well.
[00:18:11] Amanda Natividad: Mm-hmm. Have
[00:18:12] Ross Hudgens: you- That's what we're recommending, yeah.
[00:18:13] Amanda Natividad: Have you tried the putting in, um, putting in a fake answer for how did you hear about us?
[00:18:21] Ross Hudgens: No, I heard about that from him. Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty-
[00:18:24] Amanda Natividad: Yeah ...
[00:18:25] Ross Hudgens: pretty interesting.
[00:18:26] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of a spoiler in our book, but Rand consulted for one company where he suggested they put a fake answer for how did you hear about us, and the fake answer was an influencer that was relevant to the space, but who had never talked about this product.
[00:18:44] Ross Hudgens: Hmm.
[00:18:44] Amanda Natividad: And I think it was something like, uh, now I'm gonna get this wrong, but a very sizable percentage of people selected that, the fake influencer, as that's the reason I heard about you. So the point there kind of being, well, these surveys are deeply flawed. But I guess absent a better alternative, it's, well, why not ask, right?
[00:19:09] It's sort of like-
[00:19:10] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, yeah ...
[00:19:10] Amanda Natividad: but sometimes you do get really good answers. And if it's open-ended and you read what somebody said, you'll know, well, that's true, at least to them.
[00:19:20] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. If they recollect it, that may be- Yeah ... some, some value.
[00:19:23] Amanda Natividad: Yeah.
[00:19:23] Ross Hudgens: I, I did get one advanced thing that we're, honestly, we recently hired a head of analytics.
[00:19:28] We're diving into it currently.
[00:19:30] Amanda Natividad: Oh, cool.
[00:19:30] Ross Hudgens: We had a great chat with Eric Wu from Ramp, and he pointed out car... Basically what they found, a lot of app traffic from LLMs will not pass a refer on apps because it is, it is an app. So a lot of the time it's just not gonna do that. He also just said sometimes in the browser it'll kind of go to this Chrome URL, won't pass a refer.
[00:19:54] So a lot of that's in direct traffic- Mm-hmm ... is the theory. So if you go to your direct traffic and you look at the, not the URLs that you wouldn't type in, like people are not gonna type in super long tail blog URLs most of the time.
[00:20:09] Amanda Natividad: Right.
[00:20:10] Ross Hudgens: If they behave the same as they traditionally did in search or in LLMs prior to that, that's a pretty good indication you could carve out that bucket from direct and say, "This is AI."
[00:20:21] And if you could do that, group it with traditional, the actual attributed AI and organic search, it may actually be a pretty decent story of growth. They're seeing growth from that model, which is really compelling.
[00:20:35] Amanda Natividad: Oh, that's interesting. That was inspiring me to kind of, to look at our Google Analytics to see if there's anything here that's interesting.
[00:20:41] I mean, I guess where I struggle with this question too, the, the measurement question is, I mean, I'm just, I'm big on looking at the metrics you can actually see and learning from that, right? So looking at, okay, well, what's happening in your Google Analytics? Are you seeing an increase in direct traffic or things like increase in branded search, right?
[00:21:02] Like, are you looking at these things and can you correlate those with past marketing activations? Like that to me is a lot more useful than obsessing over attribution, which is flawed for many reasons, right? But that to me at least signals, okay, you can work really hard on a given marketing campaign.
[00:21:23] Maybe it's event season, right? And your team has a couple of booths at different conferences, right? Those are things that you're already locked into doing. All you can really do is, okay, when you're there, capture leads, yeah, of course, take meetings. And then a month after that kind of look back and go, "Well, did anything happen on our website that's meaningfully different?"
[00:21:45] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. I like the framing, uh, and you have this in the book, to my understanding- Mm-hmm ... which I'm excited to check out around, I think you're describing incrementality testing.
[00:21:53] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that too.
[00:21:55] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. The, that, yeah. But like maybe you go to a conference in LA or you have a billboard in LA, you normally would measure just in that area and see lift.
[00:22:04] You could also invest in pushing one product. Do you hear that product generating more sales? That was my understanding, and it made, it made sense. My kind of concern with that as an agency was I think we feel good about these tests in time. Mm-hmm. But I'd love enduring measurement from that. It felt like more spot checking.
[00:22:25] Hmm. Which is still good. I'd rather- Yeah ... prove my value than not at all don't get me wrong. But spot, I, I want to keep searching for that enduring measurement framework, if it's at all possible.
[00:22:37] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Totally. Here's a question that I want to ask about, I mean, since as an agency operator, you know, you work with brands of all different sizes, probably mostly bigger brands, but if you were advising a smaller brand that can't compete with like Zapier's content operation or their brand re- recognition, where would you tell someone to start?
[00:23:01] Ross Hudgens: Define your positioning tightly. So hopefully you're, you're not trying to compete against Zapier head-to-head. You shouldn't be if you actually want to win deals. So you hopefully have some refined positioning that's right for you. Mm-hmm. That sh- could inform your strategy all the way down. So if you're informing that in the prompts you choose, the terms you care about, that's when it gonna give you an advantage over other people.
[00:23:25] But I do think all things equal, my broad recommendation to folks is ch- build a recurring motion to generate reviews, and make sure that's as polished as possible. And do it on the platforms that are driving influence in your vertical, and just do that for years. Sometimes it won't be two, two minutes, but if you do that in an enduring fashion and try to optimize as much as you can around, like you always ask for a review, obvious.
[00:23:52] Maybe there's high NPS people, you could ask for a second review. Make sure you have a motion to know when people are happy. We have an NPS survey that asks if people are happy. And if they give a 10, we're gonna ask them for a review. Like, some people just don't have those kind of core fundamentals set up.
[00:24:07] So that would be my, my number one recommendation, is think deeply about the review solicitation process and make sure you got that dialed in.
[00:24:15] Amanda Natividad: That's really good advice. That is very, like, simple and elegant and tactical, and I should take that advice for SparkToro.
[00:24:22] Ross Hudgens: Oh, I'm happy- I should ... to drop you a review somewhere.
[00:24:24] I'm, I'm, I'm, I'll give you a five star. Maybe I'm slightly biased- I might have to ... as a, as a angel investor, but yeah.
[00:24:30] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. No, I might have to, but it's funny 'cause I, so when I solicit reviews for this podcast, I do it in a very unscalable way, which is I think about one person I can email. So this is, like, once a month that I do that.
[00:24:45] I should do it more often. And I email one person and I say, "Hey, would you mind leaving a review of my podcast? I'm not asking anybody else. You're the only person I'm asking t- this month, or this week," whatever it is. "So I really appreciate if you take the time."
[00:25:00] Ross Hudgens: I honestly, I have not taken my own dog food for our own podcast for that.
[00:25:03] I need to do that. Because y- yeah, weirdly, podcast review generation is, like, not super simple for people to do. Uh
[00:25:10] Amanda Natividad: It's not.
[00:25:12] Ross Hudgens: Yeah.
[00:25:12] Amanda Natividad: It's not.
[00:25:13] Ross Hudgens: You gotta be on desktop, or you gotta be on your phone, I think, to review on iTunes.
[00:25:16] Amanda Natividad: Yes. Is that right? Yeah. And for iTunes, like, you have to have an iTunes account.
[00:25:21] Ross Hudgens: Yeah.
[00:25:21] Challenging.
[00:25:22] Amanda Natividad: So there's also that. Yeah. Yeah. And also, just people won't do it. They just straight up will not do it. They'll be, "Yeah, I'll do it today," and they don't. And you're like, "Mom, you said you would do it."
[00:25:37] Ross Hudgens: Come on, Mom.
[00:25:38] Amanda Natividad: Yeah.
[00:25:39] Ross Hudgens: Yeah. What are you doing, Ma? Got to give me that... I mean, yeah. Oh, I got to send that out for my book. Mom, give me the review, please.
[00:25:47] Amanda Natividad: Okay. One, one kind of final question here. Hopefully it's a fun one. Since you've been, and since you've literally written the book on GEO and researching what gets brands recommended by AI, is there anything that you've learned that has helped you change your mind about how marketers should do things?
[00:26:07] Ross Hudgens: I was thinking about what's changed since I writ- or I wrote it. Yeah. And I, I have like a little blog update thing. And, and mostly I, it's almost more additive. It's like what would I add to what I had? Because I think there's more and more advanced things, like the CRO component I probably could have talked more about.
[00:26:23] I don't know it's necessarily wrong. I have been saying one small thing is a lot of people are tracking perplexity and like generalized models, and that's a problem. I think it's been a problem because it's such a small influence compared to the heavyweight models. A lot of people defaulted to clicking that.
[00:26:42] And if everyone goes and unclicks that right now, they're gonna get a better overall view into the, the actual things that are driving influence. So if I had one, that would, that would probably be, be one I suppose.
[00:26:54] Amanda Natividad: That's interesting. Huh. Okay, fine. I have to ask on the other side of that, anything in marketing you feel like isn't really worth it anymore, or you think is less- Mm-hmm
[00:27:05] compelling today? Less effective, I guess?
[00:27:09] Ross Hudgens: I mean, top funnel is a, uh, someone who literally was probably our bus- biggest business line. I think it's more challenging from traditional SEO content wise. We recommend it when it's data driven. I think that's still getting referenced and has some, some legs for halo effects too.
[00:27:26] But top funnel for search, I mean, of course top funnel still has value, but we just gotta do it in other places, and that's where the zero-click marketing comes in.
[00:27:34] Amanda Natividad: Thank you. Well said.
[00:27:38] Thank you so much for joining, Ross. Um, friends, you have to get Ross's book, Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO. I'm really excited to read this because for many reasons, one of which is just it feels like everybody is trying to have their hot take on GEO, and it's something that like I don't, obviously I don't bill myself as an expert in, learning more and more about, but I've been really frustrated with seeing the amount of thought leaders that have emerged who don't have the receipts, who don't have the proof.
[00:28:17] And so I really appreciate that with the work that you do, you can show the receipts, you can talk about what's working, your point of view as the operator, as the agency owner. And so I'm really excited to, to keep learning from you on this topic.
[00:28:32] Ross Hudgens: Thank you, Amanda, and vice versa. Excited about your book. I mean, I hope everyone reading this go- one, gets your book and also reviews your podcast.
[00:28:39] Hopefully that's a takeaway from this podcast is review
[00:28:42] Amanda Natividad: Hopefully, yeah. And that they get both of our books because they're gonna be very complimentary.
[00:28:47] Ross Hudgens: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean, would you think of yours as, like, kind of top funnel-esque?
[00:28:51] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Like, I, I see my book as, like, people will get this, and they will understand, like, uh, here's how I should think about marketing overall.
[00:28:59] Yeah. And that they'll ... Like, we have a chapter on AI marketing, but, you know, it's just one chapter, right? So our hope, too, is that other people will, that people will also then go, "Okay, well, what are some other resources I can trust to help me dig deeper into each of these other types of marketing?" And then, yeah.
[00:29:17] Ross Hudgens: Nice. There's
[00:29:17] Amanda Natividad: the hand off. Good for all of us.
[00:29:19] Ross Hudgens: There we go.
[00:29:20] Amanda Natividad: Cool.
[00:29:20] Ross Hudgens: Well, amazing. Yeah, excited for yours. Uh, appreciate you having me on. It's a lot of fun.
[00:29:24] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Thanks. Thank you for listening or watching Zero Click Marketing. We'll see you next week