241. The New Rules of AI Marketing and SEO with David Meerman Scott
Marketers, we have a problem. Traditional SEO is being disrupted by AI technologies like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Join Ash Roy on the Productive Insights Podcast as he talks with David Meerman Scott, the author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Fanocracy , The New Rules of Sales & Service, etc., a leading marketing authority and HubSpot advisor, on how AI is changing the game and what you can do to adapt.
Timestamp:
00:00 Introduction: The Disruption of Traditional SEO
00:15 Meet the Expert: David Meerman Scott
00:29 Key Ideas to Smash Your Business Goals
00:51 The Impact of AI on Content Marketing
01:30 The Future of Generative AI and Content Creation
03:46 Becoming a Recognized Expert
05:14 Newsjacking: A Case Study
08:09 Conclusion and Further Learning
Ash Roy and David Meerman Scott's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy:
Marketers, we have a problem.
David Meerman Scott:
Traditional SEO is absolutely being disrupted. They stole my books.
Ash Roy:
Search results having AI overview, which is disincentivizing people from going to websites.
David Meerman Scott:
Huge changes, as you suggest.
Ash Roy:
I decided to bring in one of the world's leading authorities on marketing.
David Meerman Scott:
Hey, it's David Meerman Scott. You're listening to my friend, Ash Roy's fabulous Productive Insights Podcast.
Ash Roy:
My friend, David Meerman Scott, advisor to HubSpot, will share three key ideas that will help you smash your business goals.
David Meerman Scott:
Number one, become the recognized expert. Number two, consider writing a book. Third way, identify something you're great at, name it, create the URL around it.
Ash Roy:
Be sure to stick around until the end because David shares a proprietary idea and how it can work in your favor.
Let's do this. Let's talk a little bit about chat GPT and artificial intelligence, search results, having AI overview and a summarization of search results. How do you see the content marketing game changing as a result of this?
And what's the best way forward?
David Meerman Scott:
Huge changes. As you suggest, the way that people have searched in the past, they enter a search term and they get links. And then you learn something, some of those links are from companies, some of those links are from people who have a particular expertise. You know, obviously super important as a marketing tool for companies.
However, when you use a generative AI service, ChatGPT, or my favorite is Perplexity, you get a summary. In the beginning, when ChatGPT first came out, And the other generative AI services first came out, they generally didn't surface the sources of the information. Now, I see going forward that these answers are always going to begin to cite the place that the answer came from.
And if you take a look at Perplexity, that's the way I think all of these chatbots using AI, Generative AI to create their answers will surface their results. So with perplexity, and there are others, but perplexity is my favorite example. You would still get a paragraph or two or three as an answer to your query, but it will then give what look like footnotes
I used to call them footnotes in college. You know, it's like, it'll say number one, number two, number three and then, below that, it'll say what that link is linking to. So think of it as a hybrid, it's kind of like the original answers of chat GPT from a year and a half ago, which was just a couple of paragraphs combined with what Google does, which is give you the links and it's providing the hybrid of those two things.
And I think that is absolutely the future because people who create content like me, three of my books were in those large language models without my permission and without compensation. Three books.
Ash Roy:
Was going to touch on that next, actually.
David Meerman Scott:
Yeah, I mean, basically they stole my books, you know, without my permission, with no compensation to train the models and how to give their answers.
I'm not going to try to fight that myself, but my publishers perhaps will be fighting that because they represent multiple books, but 183,000 books were used to train these models. So getting back to your original question, what I think is really important for marketers to think about is how can you create the kind of Content that will then become surfaced by these large language models together with the footnotes that will link back to you or, or link to your name or cite your work in some way.
And as I see it, there's a number of ways that you can do that. The first thing is to become the recognized expert in a topic that you know about. And be recognized expert, I mean, you know, you become the number one or certainly in the top couple of people in your area, and then you create that Content that will generate tons and tons of interest in that.
So over my shoulder is a Grateful Dead logo and my buddy Brian Halligan, who's the co- founder and chairman of HubSpot and I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.
Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead is about how our favorite band, the Grateful Dead, did their marketing. If anyone goes to one of those large language models, chat GPT or whatever, and they enter a search term related to the Grateful Dead and how they did their marketing, the Grateful Dead and how they generated such an interest from the public, and they're going to get some of our content because we became the recognized experts in that little tiny niche, but anyone who enters search terms related to that, we'll find our content typically with a footnote back to something we wrote, something we created or published.
Perhaps even a link to the book. So number one, become the recognized expert. Number two, consider writing a book. So the marketing lessons in the Grateful Dead book, great example, because that's often cited. Another way, third way is to identify something you're great at. Name it and create the URL around it.
And I've done that a couple times. Most notably in my world, I invented the concept of news jacking. News jacking is following the news, and then if there's a news story related to your area of expertise, you put out a blog post or some other type of content right away. And I'll give you a great example of that.
As we're recording this, It is the opening weekend of a film called Fly Me to the Moon coming out in 3, 000 movie theaters here in North America about the Apollo 11 lunar landing. They're having trouble with the Apollo mission and they want to film a backup in case there's a screw up and they can deceive the public about what happened.
I haven't seen the film yet. I'm going to see it in two days. Here's what's interesting about this. I wrote a book called Marketing the Moon. It is a book about The Apollo lunar programs marketing, and here's a film coming out, a movie coming out about Apollo 11's marketing. Wow. So here I am as an expert, probably 1 of 10 people in the world on the topic of how NASA marketed the Apollo lunar programs, because I wrote this book.
How amazing that this weekend right now, as we're recording this, this film is coming out. And we are the experts in the topic that the film is about. Here's a great example of newsjacking. My buddy Rich, my co-author, wrote a tweet two days ago. And he said that he had seen an early screening of the film as an invited guest because we wrote this book.
And he, he tweeted on, you know, went on X and did a tweet and said, saw the film. It's great. and then cited our book. And, um, the next day a reporter from Time Magazine contacted him, did an interview. This was yesterday, did an interview. The story in Time Magazine came out today, as we're recording it, it's today, so perfect example of this idea of newsjacking.
I'm still answering your question about chat GPT. If you create content As a recognized expert and you own the URL, like I do for the URL newsjacking, then when someone enters what is newsjacking into one of these models, often it will serve my content because I own this newsjacking URL.
So the three things I mentioned, number one, become the recognized expert. This is if you want to get surfaced by the large language models. Number two, write a book about it. Number three, when you create an expertise around something, especially if you invent the name of that thing, invest in getting the URL and building a website.
Newsjacking. com is all about newsjacking. Anyone who enters into one of these large language model, like perplexity or chat GPT and says, what is newsjacking frequently will surface the content with that URL. So those are just a few examples of how we as authorities on a topic can still get surfaced, even though traditional SEO is absolutely being disrupted.
Ash Roy:
If you found this video useful, you should definitely check out this video here, where I spoke to David about marketing in much greater detail.
I think you'll find it incredibly valuable on your journey.
