97FL (00:00)
Hi, welcome. In this podcast, we talk B2B marketing and what it takes to know your customer, innovate and profit. We're glad you made it. This is the campaign by 97th floor.

Pax (00:20)
Hello everyone. Happy Friday. I am Paxton Gray, CEO of 97th floor. Nice and floor is a performance marketing agency focused on generating revenue and leads for mid-level to enterprise organizations, both through organic and paid channels. thank you for joining us today. This is the campaign, a B2B marketing podcast about better knowing your audience, innovating beyond best practice and converting visitors into customers. The campaign is a weekly conversation with B2B marketing leaders designed to

fit as much value as possible within 30 minutes. You can catch the campaign live on Fridays at two Eastern, and you can find past episodes on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, and at 97th floor.com. Today we're tackling the, ⁓ world. No one can stop talking about, is AI, especially as it relates to the search space. we have clients coming to us all the time asking, ⁓ how, how do we get our brand mentioned in AI chat bots and chat GBT and Gemini and search.

this has become an urgent question for so many, ⁓ and there's a new term for it, among some in the industry, is. GEO or generative engine optimization. Now there are two sides, to this argument about how we should approach this. One says GEO is really just SEO. The best way to be visible and generative, ⁓ response is by doing just great SEO, ⁓ because GEO doesn't exist in a vacuum.

So you're not going to show up in GEO if you don't have a strong brand with a strong SEO foundation. The only difference is the output format. If this is true, then really great PR is the way to get ranked in an LLM. The other side of that argument though is that generative search requires a completely different approach, either technically and or strategically than what is necessary for SEO. GEO is distinct from SEO and requires tailored strategy to work alongside SEO efforts.

So we're going to dive into this, not just GEO and SEO, but like what brand should be doing in order to respond to this and how can we still produce ROI from these organic channels. To help us sort through this and give us a preview of how search will continue changing through the rest of 2025, we are joined today by AI and SEO consultant, Marie Haynes. Dr. Marie Haynes is a trailblazer in the world of search.

Once a veterinarian, Marie jumped into Google search as a hobby in 2008 and quickly turned it into her full-time career by 2012. From running a successful agency between 2017 and 2022 to consulting and writing extensively on search and AI today, she's always one step ahead of the curve. Known for her deep expertise in Google search algorithms and machine learning systems, including the intricacies of EEAT, Marie is a fearless experimenter who thrives on exploring emerging tech.

She's laser focused on mastering Google's AI mode and harnessing the power of LLMs like ChatGBT and Gemini to prepare her clients for a future where AI agents revolutionize the web. Marie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Marie Haynes (03:21)
Hey Paxton, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

Pax (03:24)
This is going to be great. have, uh, there's a lot of people interested in this subject and, I want to state one giant caveat is that nobody knows 100 % of, uh, what is, uh, the optimal strategy and what's going to happen tomorrow. But in my opinion, that is one of the most exciting factors, uh, and, uh, something that, uh, makes this just a great thing, a great discussion. And this is where marketers should be thinking. So.

Marie Haynes (03:43)
in

Pax (03:51)
⁓ maybe let's start off with that, ⁓ debate that seems to rage on LinkedIn about SEO and GEO. ⁓ what's your, what's your opinion on that?

Marie Haynes (03:59)
Yeah,

I think they're different things. I think a lot of the things that we do as good SEO are also going to help us with is GEO what we're calling it now. I I've seen so many things. I wanted to call it a language model AI optimization, just so we could call it LMAO, but nobody didn't stick. But so a lot of the things that we do for SEO, especially when it comes to EEAT,

Pax (04:18)
I like that.

Marie Haynes (04:26)
are what are needed to be recommended by language models. But there's other things that we can do as well. So it's one thing to look good for a search engine that is retrieving information from an index. And it's another thing to have content that's semantically rich, that's written in a way that a language model might want to pull from. And so I think there's a lot that we can do to help us be better recommended in language models. And I think

I, maybe this is little bit controversial, but I think actually we shouldn't focus so much on language models, but more on AI mode that's coming. So I'm sure we'll talk about that. ⁓ so yes, if you're doing good SEO, you're probably already doing the things you need to do to be recommended by AI, but there's still a lot that we have to learn as well. And I think that's the important thing to you is that, you know, we're all kind of guessing. think I agree with you that we're in an exciting time where

Right now, Chachi BT or Gemini or even Perplexity, those are just small drivers of organic traffic to most of the brands that we'll work with. But that's going to keep improving and improving more and more, right? So we have a lot to learn.

Pax (05:42)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's easy to kind of get a headache from all the changes that are happening and just feel like, I don't know if I can take another update or another, another tool. ⁓ but something I've always said is chaos is great for marketers. It's great for us as a comfortable as it may be. It's it when there's no chaos, that's when you get Forbes taking all the traffic. Like when it's figured out these giant behemoths come in and just like push out everybody else. But when there's chaos.

Marie Haynes (05:58)
Mm-hmm.

Pax (06:11)
There's opportunity. So just developing that mindset of saying like, okay, it's uncomfortable, but I'm going to dive in and I'm going to figure out how I can take advantage of this chaos that's happening right now and when,

Marie Haynes (06:13)
Exactly.

Yep.

And, and I mean, I made it pretty much my full-time job to understand what's happening with AI and with search. And I have a hard time staying on top of all the things that happen. mean, just this morning, GPT 4.0 updated and this week Gemini 2.5 came out and now we have AI mode coming and like all of these things. So every business that wants to have a presence online needs people.

who are on top of what's happening, right? And so even if we don't, I'm sure a lot of people who are watching this are feeling like, I don't know what's going on. I'm not the expert, but we are ahead of the curve. Like anybody who's watching this is understanding or at least trying to understand what's happening in the digital world. And that's what businesses need. And I think we're only just at the start. think so Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google said that 2025

like search is going to change profoundly. Not just, you know, we're going to see a few AI overviews or, you know, a slightly different mode. He said change profoundly. So nobody is the expert in that. So there's tons of opportunity for us to, to, give businesses the help that they need.

Pax (07:34)
Yeah. So let's start by, ⁓ helping people see in your research as you're, ⁓ playing around with these and let's look. So I do want to have another caveat that I forgot to mention where this is a two-part episode. ⁓ so Marie does tons of, research around AI and AI as it pertains to search. today we're limiting our discussion to AI in search. And then next time we meet, we're going to be talking about AI in.

Marking as a whole and AI and business. And so we're to get a little bit higher level. So limiting to AI and search in your research, what are you feeling like are some of the keys that brands should be thinking about to win in the landscape today and, and moving forward, maybe, maybe limiting it to this year, knowing next year is going to be wildly different.

Marie Haynes (08:22)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think reputation is really important. So, and I don't necessarily just mean, do you have good reviews online. Being known as a go-to source for your topics is something that is important. Same thing with SEO, but even more so with language models. If I ask a question about a particular topic and it's something that, chat GPT is going to pull from the web from, then...

You might have incredible content, but if you're not known as a go-to source for that content, for that topic, then you're less likely to be chosen as a source. So I think that that's something where brands can really focus on. You mentioned at the top of the show, digital PR. I think PR is going to be even more important in this new era. Something about, like we've talked about EAT now, E-E-A-T for years now. And I think this is one of the reasons why Google developed

that concept was because it's not just looking good to machines that matters. know, people want to hear from legitimate, authentic brands. so authenticity is another thing. You'll see all sorts of people talking about cheap, quick ways to try to get a few eyeballs from search or from language models, you know, pumping out AI generated content with very little human oversight. People don't like that.

And in this era, if you are a brand that people recognize, that people love, if you have a reputation online for people saying, that topic, yeah, these guys are my favorite, then that's the type of thing that you need to be going for. And that's something that's really hard to build. Like if you come from, if you're brand new in business, you you can't just suddenly go out there and have everybody recommending you.

where there was a day with SEO years ago where like, you you knew the right places to get links or you had the right connections. You could jump to the top of the search results for a lot of queries. And more and more it's becoming about being a known brand. And brands are word that is thrown around a lot. I think brand's important, but also you can be an individual and be known for your topics. Like right now with all that's happening with AI,

Pax (10:35)
Mm-hmm.

Marie Haynes (10:38)
there's tons of opportunity for people to be known, know, get out there and study Google's new AI mode, or there's a few people, I talked to somebody this morning who's been studying AI overviews and building a name for himself as somebody who understands those. And so if you can produce content that is not just original in terms of words, but like originally valuable to people, then that's something that's of worth as well. So I think

the number one thing is to focus on quality, which sounds kind of like a buzzword, but like really it's what we need to do is to figure out how can we be uniquely helpful and valuable to people.

Pax (11:20)
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that we're recommending to clients are, I should say too, is it pertains to content is heavily investing in SME work, stuff like there's too much said that has already been said. And so you have to say something new and often the SME is a great way through that. so, ⁓ building out programs where you can engage and help SME produce content is, is, should be a top priority. And then number two is first.

Marie Haynes (11:35)
Yes.

Yes.

Pax (11:49)
person point of view content. It's one thing to say, you know, here, here's, ⁓ how to plan a trip to Alaska. It's another thing to say, here's how our family planned a trip to Alaska. And that's engaging for so many other reasons. And that is something that AI is not going to just obliterate, ⁓ in terms of like a production standpoint. There is one thing that I want to bring up here though, which is.

There's a, there's a connection that we have just taken for granted. feel like in the SEO space that's developed over the past, I'd say maybe 10 years, which is content and SEO are like best friends and they are almost one in the same in a lot of people's minds. And the reason for that was the content brought the traffic and the traffic converted. Now I think that AI is representing a decoupling.

Marie Haynes (12:38)
Mm-hmm.

Pax (12:44)
Of those ideas. so just an example, yesterday I planted some raspberry bushes and I have four different kinds and I was learning how to take care of them. It's, it's more, it's more complex than you would think. Anyway, ⁓ I searched, you know, how to care for raspberry bushes. And I just read the AI overview. No brand was mentioned. Nobody got any kind of credibility in my mind. I'm not going to go back to anyone, but Google. And yet that content was produced on the backs of people who.

Marie Haynes (12:55)
the

Pax (13:14)
We're assuming that they were going to be getting traffic and then hopefully some brand affinity or some conversion or a subscribe to their newsletter or something. But today they've gotten nothing out of that. And so I think it's a mistake for us to run headlong into this thinking that that connection is still there. I'm not saying it's completely severed, but it's not as connected as it was. So what's your take on that in terms of producing content?

Marie Haynes (13:41)
Yeah.

Pax (13:43)
at that these LLMs are gonna scrape in and serve.

Marie Haynes (13:46)
I think that Google used us. And I think that an era is ending. So let me explain that. know Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful to all. It's not to organize the world's websites. It's to organize the world's information. So for many years, how did Google get the world's information? It was by giving us a way to make money from producing content.

And so if I wanted to start a gardening blog, mean, there's, there's hundreds and thousands of people who have started gardening blogs, right? And there are probably thousands and thousands of posts on how to plant a raspberry bush. But the people who wrote those posts don't own that information. They just worked to pull together the world's knowledge and put it on the web. So for many years, Google needed that. Now.

If you ask me, how do you plant a raspberry bush? mean, I have a little bit of experience there and other people have shared their experience. It's kind of like world knowledge, you know? Now let's say that, well, actually my husband and I plant peppers, mostly David, he plants hot peppers. He's gathered knowledge on, he has these different ways to use lighting and he has this whole setup for things that are working for him.

Pax (14:55)
Yeah.

Marie Haynes (15:12)
and he has other pepper growers who like they all meet together and they share their ideas. That's knowledge that would be useful to write a blog post about. That's firsthand experience and that's what you're talking about, right? So if we wanted to write a blog about peppers, in the past what we would do is might write the most comprehensive post on you know how deep to plant the seeds, how much light they need, like all those things. That's world knowledge that's essentially already known.

Pax (15:24)
Yeah. Yep.

Marie Haynes (15:41)
That method of making money from publishing knowledge that is world knowledge is going away. However, what AI needs is the new information. So if I'm doing a search and I do deep research today for how to plant habanero pepper seeds, I'm going to get the basic research that everybody knows. But also there might be this extra, this person, this farmer over here developed this new method.

Pax (15:49)
Mm-hmm.

Marie Haynes (16:10)
You know, or this person over here did a bunch of tests and there's all these controversies over whether you chop the plants off, like whether how much you prune them and stuff. Well, somebody did a bunch of tests on that and that knowledge is needed. So when I think content is still very, very important, the problem is that it used to be that an SEO could create really good content for any brand. And now what's needed for content is real world experience. And so, ⁓ often my.

my barometer for is content good or not is if you took the content on your website and you removed it from the web, would the web be suffering? And a lot of the time for businesses, that's not the case. You know, like there's just somebody else that would come in and take that place. And so I think what we need to focus on is understanding the questions that our audience has and providing answers in a way that nobody else can, which is no easy task.

You know, you can't just take any business and populate content that's going to do well these days. really have to, the Raider guidelines for Google, the word effort is in there, like I can't remember how many times, it's like 180 times, something like that. And so we need to be putting effort into creating content that's not just the same as everybody else's. Not an easy task.

Pax (17:26)
Yeah.

Yep. That's right. It's not. So, ⁓ let's get into some tactical, ⁓ observations that you found in your research. let's say, you know, a brand is investing in producing some unique content and, it's, something they're adding to world knowledge. ⁓ what, what are some things tactically that they could approach in order to get this more, like increase the odds that this will appear in, ⁓

perplexity or AIOs or any kind of like AI response.

Marie Haynes (18:01)
Okay, so we talked about reputation, which is something that's hard to build. you know, not all brands have the money to go out and buy popularity and become a popular brand. So the next thing really is unique and original research. And it doesn't necessarily mean you need to put millions of dollars into creating research projects. Just do some tests at home, take some individual photos, produce language models really like

quoting statistics. And so if you can do a study where you take 100 of your readers and survey them on something, that's interesting on a topic. So Google's guidance on creating helpful content, the very first point in that guide is, the information original? Does it provide original research and insight as well?

So one of the things that I really like to do when I'm working with a small business is ask them to maybe do a Zoom call with their receptionists or their customer service team and ask them, what questions have people been asking or like, what are people confused about in your business? And so then the content creation comes out of the needs of the audience, as opposed to me as an SEO doing keyword research.

A lot of keyword research is us finding what other SEOs have written about and then trying to like slightly improve upon it so that Google thinks it's better where again, that worked for a while. And one of the things I saw with a lot of the sites that were impacted by the helpful content system is an over-reliance on people also asks. So in the search results, right? And there's a reason for that because

Pax (19:50)
Yeah.

Marie Haynes (19:54)
If you cover all of the questions related to a topic, you're going to look good to search engines. And so we overuse that for a while. And so it's not bad to get insight from the people also ask questions, but you need to make sure that you go beyond that and add something to the web that isn't that hasn't been done before again, which is like a really hard thing to do. So I often find this struggle.

A lot of what I have done historically is work with sites that are struggling in traffic and therefore don't have much budget. And unfortunately, the answer for these sites is like create something original, which you can't do on. I mean, you can do as an individual to some extent, but it's very hard to produce original research and insight. ⁓ you know, if, if you don't have it, if you're, if your method of action has been, ⁓ to write the same as everybody else.

Pax (20:38)
Harder. Harder.

Marie Haynes (20:51)
So yeah, language models like original research, they really like lists. And here's an interesting thing. Do you remember the API files that were leaked and, know, yeah, yeah, a while back and they had all of these attributes in them that we thought, you know, maybe used in search. didn't, wasn't exactly Google search algorithm, but some interesting attributes. That's what we learned about nav boost and things like that.

Pax (21:01)
Yeah, it's like a year ago or so, yeah.

Marie Haynes (21:18)
Well, there's been two more versions of those API files since I, it's been a while since I checked, but version six came out and the only new thing in it was this thing called chunks. And I really think that Google can take chunks of information from pages and there's a chunk that is called lists and there's another that's tables. And so, and then there's other, so I think Google separates pages into chunks of content and they really like lists.

of things. So I think it's just easier to organize and that's what people kind of like and language models really like them as well. So I wouldn't go out and make everything a list, but I think I would experiment with adding some lists and tables and graphics to images because now Google's models, like Google's Gemini models are multimodal. So they're much better at understanding whether images and video are helpful to people.

Pax (22:01)
Yeah. Yeah, we're.

Right. Right. Yeah. We're seeing the same, ⁓ there's a heavy reliance on lists, ⁓ in those results. I, I don't have the exact like number, but if I had to guess, I would, I would guess at least 60, if not 70 or 80 % of the cited sources are themselves formatted as lists. ⁓ and I have seen, ⁓ an interesting tactic being used that seems to be working. I doubt it will work for long.

Marie Haynes (22:35)
Interesting.

Pax (22:44)
where people produce lists of content on their own site, ranking their brand as the number one for whatever it is they wanna rank for. And then the LLMs are they're scooping that right up and then they're saying, well, this is the number one brand for this query. And our citation for that is the brand themselves. They say they're number one. So they're the number one on my list.

Marie Haynes (22:52)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, I've seen

it. I think that that's going to end fairly soon. Like I even saw if you ask Google for, no, if you ask ChatGPT for who are the best SEO consultants, I would do a vanity search. Like it always lists the same people, many of which aren't even in SEO anymore. Like Rand Fishkin, you know, does his own thing, but is not SEO anymore. then they'll, anyways, they'll list a bunch of people who previously were SEOs and it's always the same thing.

Pax (23:10)
yeah.

Marie Haynes (23:36)
If you ask in AI mode, it's interesting. At first it localizes your query and it'll tell you the best SEOs or the most recommended SEOs in your city, which is interesting. And then if you ask for, you know, worldwide, it'll give a list of the people who I consider to be the, I don't wanna say best SEOs, they're the most well-known in terms of.

Sharing on social media and speaking at events and having the reputation for that. So I think that that's ultimately I think the list thing is like a temporary thing that you can maybe take advantage of but eventually it becomes just the knowledge graph is that Everything that's known about people including your reputation including The Raider guidelines talk about even learning from comments that people have left on social media, you know if we

put this on LinkedIn and a bunch of people were commenting that it was helpful, that kind of feeds into the world's knowledge of you and I are known entities in terms of SEO. So really being public for your topics, that's something I think that as well helps with language models is if you want to be known for your topic, start talking on some podcasts, start even doing your own podcast and getting guests and just getting interviewed and mentioned across the web.

Pax (25:02)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a, bit of a, like a jujitsu move in strategy that a lot of people get hung up on. a lot of people are asking, how do I get my content crawled? How do I get my content cited in these results? But really, I think the main play should be, how do I get my brand mentioned or my name mentioned as the solution to the problem? And it may be that someone else's site is cited as the source.

But what you really care about is being mentioned as the answer. So really who cares, you know, who cited and how many people are really clicking on those little tiny link buttons at the end of the day. What really. Yes.

Marie Haynes (25:33)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Right. And then, yeah, that depends on what they're looking for. Right. Because a lot

of, a lot of businesses have made money off of, ⁓ information that they don't own, you know, just grabbing information. ⁓ I think that, ⁓ yeah, I mean, language models, something that you can do and sometimes this is good. Sometimes it's not so good, but if you're not being found in say, chat, GPT for your queries, ask chat GPT why now

Pax (25:50)
Right.

Marie Haynes (26:10)
The reason why I say sometimes it's good is because the language model's just trying to put together all of the information it's read on the web. And so some of the advice might just come from bad advice that's been written on the web. But sometimes, so if you say, how can I get better known for this topic? It will give you good advice. It'll say, know, see if you can get mentioned in this publication or go on some podcasts. Here's some examples of podcasts that cover this topic.

And so sometimes if you want to be better mentioned by language models, ask the language model for some hints on what you can do.

Pax (26:42)
Yeah. ⁓

I want to make sure before we end, ⁓ that we touch on that we get to AI mode. So tell for people who haven't done their research, they're not familiar with AI mode. What is it? What should we expect?

Marie Haynes (26:50)
Mm-hmm.

Right now AI mode's an experiment from Google and it may never come to light, but it seems very similar to when AI overviews first started and I really do think it's worth paying attention to. So if you go to Google Labs, you can opt into this experiment. You have to be in the US. You can kind of get around it with VPNs. I sort of get it in Canada, but it's tricky. And what it is is you do a query.

And it doesn't just search an index for the answer. It uses something called a query fan out technique. And so it's actually an agentic search. And what I mean by that is it's very similar to the deep research models that we've seen in that if I do a search, then it will go look at a few websites and based on what it sees on that website, it'll do another search and figure out, actually they want more information on this and do another search.

And in deep research right now, it takes forever for that to happen. And then you get a report. In AI mode, it's very, very quick. And the answer, the websites, so you'll see websites featured there, and then you'll see an AI answer. The AI answer is generated by Gemini 2.5, which is far better than any version of Gemini we've seen so far. In terms of one of the biggest issues with AI overviews,

is people have pointed out all sorts of inaccuracies with them. I've yet to see an inaccuracy with AI mode, other than sometimes if you ask for the most recent news, it'll like go back a little bit too far, but they're quite accurate and they're gonna continue to get better and better. So right now AI mode shows like a carousel of websites. It'll show a big long AI answer for everything.

Pax (28:34)
Mm-hmm.

Marie Haynes (28:47)
And then you also have the opportunity to do follow-up questions, which means that I think we probably won't get Search Console information for AI mode, because it's not like it's a keyword that was searched for, it's a conversation. So right now it's an experiment, I really believe that it will become the default for search. then more things will be added to it, there will be maps.

I saw just this week that with local searches now in some places, you'll get a little pop-up that you can ask with AI about local businesses. You can ask, do they serve this or what are their hours or whatever? And so I think it's all going to kind of merge into one where instead of searching, we're using Google's AI to get answers. And sometimes those answers lead us to websites, but not always.

So for some businesses, that's bad news, especially again, if your business has been focused on gathering information. If you're a business that has an audience outside of search, that has a purpose beyond, and I don't mean to, I I know many people who have worked very hard on curating information and some of those sites will still exist provided you have value beyond the AI answers. But for many businesses,

there's this whole new area of opportunity. I was researching for one of my e-comm clients this morning and this morning in AI overviews, their products started to be shown for AI overviews. And so now we need to figure out like, do we get them into that? And they're struggling a little bit in organic search, but when I go to AI mode, they're recommended as one of the top three websites for their products. So it's a totally different ball game.

Which means we probably need to learn things all over again, which is fascinating.

Pax (30:49)
Yep. Yeah. And there's a whole lot of ground to be covered when it comes to measurement. cause right now, I mean, there's a trust is doing some, some cool stuff. ⁓ there's some things you can do within Google analytics and looking at URLs, appendage, like adding onto URLs, but, ⁓ a lot of new grounds that we, need to cover. So it's exciting. there is one thing that I think is worth pointing out, especially if you're in the B2B space, looking at queries, and I almost don't even want to say queries anymore, but it's like looking at questions or needs.

Marie Haynes (31:02)
the

Pax (31:19)
⁓ and segmenting them differently is going to be like, need to respond to them so differently. ⁓ one area that I think is going to be impacted drastically are the comparison queries or needs blank versus blank. That the old strategy was if I can get my SAS company comparison page ranking, then I get to set the narrative of how I compare to this other SAS company. But that all of those are getting obliterated by AIOs because they're taking all that information being provided. And I'm sure this is going to just amplify in.

AI mode. And so really we need to think about it as we are arming, ⁓ AI with the information that we want, and it's going to go out there and it's going to do battle. so we need to provide as much information to, ⁓ you know, the LLM so that when those queries happen, we are being positioned correctly because we can no longer rely on that visitor hitting our page to do that research. They're going to be doing that in the AI.

Marie Haynes (32:03)
Yes.

Yeah.

That brought up an important thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is we to some extent can have control over how the language models represent us. So if you do a search for your brand, for your name, for your product, then look at where the AI answer is pulling from. A lot of the time, like if I search for myself, I see it comes from my homepage and my about page.

and it'll say the things that I've written about myself on those pages. So that means that I can influence that, you know, if I change those, and that's something I think brands should be experimenting with is, you if we change the verbiage, now you're not gonna say, you don't wanna be saying stuff that's untrue, but you can to some extent influence how these tools represent you.

And then look at where else they're pulling information from. So some of them are from third party sites. It might be your author bio on, you know, if you're somebody who writes for other publications. And then I believe it also pulls from just the general knowledge in the world. Like, again, if you ask AI, like what I'm known for, it does a pretty good job at like recognizing the topics I'm known for. And it's not actually pulling that from a

particular website like it's just all of the data points around the world so So two things there one you can influence what you've written on your own website and then two is You know in order to get known for stuff you kind of need to populate the web with other people talking about you in that context Which is not easy unless you're worthy of being talked about you know So that's PR though isn't it?

Pax (34:01)
Yeah. Yeah. If Honda wanted to be known as the luxury car brand, they couldn't just go to their homepage and say, where the luxury car brand. There's so many other places around the web where that doesn't corroborate. It's not corroborated. ⁓ well, Marie, this has been great. could honestly, ⁓ continue talking to you for a couple more hours. ⁓ but we, do need to wrap up and I want to end with some takeaways that, ⁓ I jotted down during a conversation. One, ⁓ if you're, ⁓ looking to.

Marie Haynes (34:07)
Exactly, yeah.

Pax (34:31)
⁓ amend your strategy, ⁓ in this new world of AI and search, ⁓ really focus on building that brand. Get, get your brand mentioned across the web in ways that you want it mentioned in, in position in the correct way. So really PR, ⁓ it should be a solid investment there to add to the world's knowledge. If you're, I really liked how you put, ⁓ the raspberry bushes that, know, you write an article about that. That is not your knowledge. That is knowledge has been developed by humans for. Millennia.

Marie Haynes (35:00)
Mm-hmm.

Pax (35:00)
And,

you're not adding to it. You're just curating it. ⁓ so we need to add to the world's knowledge, adding research, adding a unique point of view. And then that I, that tip about asking AI why we're not showing up. Marie actually has a whole article. If you subscribe to her newsletter where she documents her journey, asking AI, well, why didn't this brand show up? And, she kind of, she kind of grills the AI or you kind of grill the AI. And I love how you just like, I wasn't happy with that answer. So.

Marie Haynes (35:29)
We had an argument about schema.

Pax (35:30)
I decided to get even deeper. So yeah,

it's a great write up. so we're going to take all of these tips and then some more, ⁓ action items from these that Marie gave us today. We're going to write them up for you guys. ⁓ if you're registered and you're watching here on LinkedIn and that should hit your inbox, ⁓ early next week, for everyone else who's watching after the fact, you can find all those resources and listen to past episodes of the campaign at 97th floor.com.

⁓ you can also follow and connect with Marie on LinkedIn, where she is always sharing what she's learning about, ⁓ in AI and search. You can also visit Marie Haynes.com to read her blog, join her newsletter and check out lots of amazing courses and offers she's built. ⁓ and as I mentioned earlier, this is a two-parter. So we're having part two, we're going to have Marie on again in just a few weeks on April 18th to continue this conversation with a look into how, ⁓ the future of AI will change.

the way we work and the way we live reinventing our entire economy and how CMOs and CEOs can help lead their orgs into the future with confidence. So the link for that event will be in the comments for this event. Marie, thank you so much for joining today.

97FL (36:41)
Thanks for listening. The campaign is produced by 97th Floor, a 20-year-old marketing agency that helps companies like McKinsey, Pluralsight, and Checkpoint know their customers, execute innovative campaigns, and drive profitable growth. If you have an allocated growth budget and product market fit, we'd love to do research and build a proposal for you. Visit us at 97thFloor.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe. See you next time.