Flip the Switch Episode 65: 2019 Marketing Goals

Today on Flip the Switch, we’re wrapping up 2018 by talking about our goals in 2019 as marketers. With the constantly changing playing field, internet marketing has become all about keeping up with where traffic is flowing, and how to reach that audience correctly. We’re going to be talking with experts out of the SEO, paid media, social media, and content department. Let’s get into it.

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01:03 AUSTIN: Welcome to Flip the Switch, presented by Power Digital Marketing. This is episode number 65.

01:09 JOE: Episode number 65, our…

01:12 AUSTIN: I didn’t get one.

01:13 JOE: Oh. It’s our 65th episode.

01:15 AUSTIN: 65th show! That’s right, folks. And not only is it our 65th show, but it’s also almost the end of the year.

01:21 JOE: Yeah, we… This is the last episode before we do our best of episode, which I think is gonna be a huge… It’s gonna be two parts. We had so many interviews this year that we decided to split it up into two shows because we had about fourteen people we had to choose from. And so, we pulled out the best little snippets out of each of those… Put them together. And I think those are gonna kind of be some of my favorite episodes that we do.

01:46 AUSTIN: Most everybody loves the interviews, which… We love the interviews the most too, because I’m learning just as much as someone listening when I’m interviewing these people. So, we did it some more and today’s show is actually an aggregate from our company. So, we brought in some experts from social media, paid media, and then we also brought in an SEO expert. So, everybody… So, three people that work at Power Digital came on our show and we asked them questions about 2019. So, we just wanted to get a feel for what they think is gonna work and then also what they think isn’t gonna work. And I think that those are two really important questions that you as a business need to be asking your marketing team.

02:23 JOE: And I think being around here every day and being around these people and working together, I had a pretty solid idea of what we were already gonna talk about… I was like this is gonna be easy, we’re gonna do this really quickly. And all three of them came in with things that I… Came out of left field. It was… I was definitely surprised. Kept me on my toes.

02:42 AUSTIN: Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. So, let’s go ahead and get into ’em.

02:47 AUSTIN: First up we have Brandon Connelly, an SEO account manager and the guy that sits diagonal from me in the office.

02:54 BRANDON: Yes, I do.

02:55 AUSTIN: And I must say he is a veteran SEO account manager. This man has been around the block in terms of strategy, seeing pretty much everything under the sun in terms of algorithmic updates, what you can and can’t do… So, I think what I’m really curious about to hear from you is where you think SEO is headed in 2019, and kind of your goal in 2019.

03:16 BRANDON: Yeah, well I mean on algorithmic updates, those are always gonna happen and we don’t know what they’re going to be ahead of time, so those aren’t something we can really plan for. It’s more about taking what strategies we do have and applying those so that when the updates hit, we’re in the best position possible. As far as moving into 2019, I think one of my biggest goals and I think what everyone who works in SEO, what one of their biggest goals should be is looking at other channels, seeing what they’re doing right, gaining insights from that and then applying it to your organic strategy.

03:49 AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s actually a really good point and something we’re working on a lot as an agency. What channels do you think specifically would best incorporate into an SEO strategy?

03:57 BRANDON: Yeah, so I mean I think the most obvious and the easiest, kind of lowest hanging fruit for that would be looking at paid… Looking at paid search, seeing what keywords are working and especially what keywords are actually converting. Because it doesn’t really matter if you get a lot of people to your site, if they’re not doing anything once they’re there. That’s always a big one. We even have deliverables that we do with clients, where we analyze their top converting paying keywords, and then we start applying that to our SEO strategy. So, I think that’s one of the easier ones, one that everyone should be looking at. But I also think there’s a lot of opportunity with social. And I know back a few years ago, likes and engagements and people sharing, that kind of thing… People had this theory that it was actually helping it with SEO. The truth is it isn’t. I mean having more people come to your page, sure, that helps a little bit. But it’s not helping you move up in rankings. But if you’re seeing a strategy that is working, if you’re seeing content that is being shared across social, that is something that you can look into, and it takes a little more legwork. You have to figure out why those types of stories are being shared and what about them are actually connecting with people. And then figuring out what the intent is behind it, and then applying that to your organic strategy as well.

05:14 AUSTIN: Yeah, so I think what you’re saying there is it’s really about the content, which is an incredibly important part of SEO strategy, that is on the social side, which we can take insights from as SEO’s and apply that, right?

05:26 BRANDON: Absolutely and I mean we… Bringing up content. We work with content all the time. Content is SEO. Google just eats up words. So, having that content in place is… That’s pretty much… That’s SEO 101. But if you’re looking at what’s working and what’s currently being shared on social media, since that’s a lot quicker to… Then a blog posting getting rankings… That is a great place where you can find very current… Very current insights into what people are looking for, what people are talking about.

05:58 AUSTIN: And I think you’re dead on there, because even with SEO, we want to know as much about our audience as possible. So, we’re constantly trying to appease an algorithm which is Google, but what’s become so important this year and I think more so next year, is understanding your audience and actually what your audience wants. And then I think from a behavior metric standpoint, Google’s really laid into that, both ecommerce and re gen from what I’ve seen, where if you’re not getting engagement on the page where people are scrolling through the page, if they’re not clicking into other pages, you’re gonna lose your ranking. So, it’s not so much about the word count anymore or maybe optimizing for a keyword. It’s becoming more so about the actual behavior on the page.

06:34 BRANDON: Oh, 100%. Your old-school SEO, you’re optimizing for a single keyword. More recent SEO, you’re optimizing for a group of keywords or an idea of keywords. Now, counter to your point, you’re optimizing for intent. Even if somebody searches a three-word query, it doesn’t mean that those three words are what they’re searching for. It’s about understanding what the intent behind those three words are. And I think social gives us a lot of insight into that.

07:03 JOE: In 2018, an industry that saw a big hit or had to make some big changes was the health wellness recovery kind of rehab space. And a few weeks ago, we had Matt Bruhin on here and he’s the CEO of apex recovery and we talked about that in depth. Are there any industries that you see Google could be kind of flipping the coin on this year and…? Or should I say flipping the switch on in 2019 that will shake things up? I mean, just in my head, I think the CBD or kind of the cannabis industry there could be something along those lines because of how highly it’s regulated. Do you think there could be something like that for a bigger industry or up-and-coming industry?

07:41 BRANDON: Absolutely. I mean, especially with a CBD cannabis industry, I feel like there’s going to be some type of paradigm shift and it might actually be the other way, the opposite way that the medical update went last year. Because regulations could be lightening up, more states could be legalizing different forms of it, so it actually could… We could see that flip the other way. But as far as kind of in the same line that happened with the medical in 2018, I think we could see even more of that. Because there are going to always be stricter regulations and so companies that provide an advertising platform for pharmaceutical companies, for rehabs, for any type of medical industry, medical professional… Any type of profession within the medical industry… We could definitely see further regulations and further just repercussions of people trying to advertise or market for those industries.

08:40 AUSTIN: I think you’re really onto something there and I did a lot of research when we had a couple clients that got drilled by that update that joe’s talking about, and one thing I noticed is that web sites that aggregate medical information… Maybe its content and you’re more of a general industry content website… Really lost out so Google… And what that means is that Google is more so leaning into specialists in their specific category. So, if you specialize in orthodentistry and you do braces and mouth work, you can’t be a website that maybe links up a lot of people, links up people with just the closest one in their area and then produce a lot of content on orthodontics. They’re not considering you to be an expert, because you’re not actually an orthodontist, if that makes sense. So, without a medical license in orthodontics, you can’t write about it. And that’s what Google’s saying, is there’s no longer the opportunity for you to just produce content because you’re producing content.

09:36 BRANDON: Absolutely. I used to work with strictly plastic surgeons, dentists and attorneys, so I know a little bit about this. We used to have every client that came to us, every single dentist wanted to be a dentist of all things, so orthodontist, pediatric dentists… I’m blanking on the name of it… Prosthodontist.

10:01 JOE: Endodontist.

10:02 BRANDON: Endodontist, thank you, yes. Every single dentist claimed they were an expert on all of it. But in reality, they only offered general dentistry services or cosmetic dentistry services or they did the full-on oral surgery, implants all that kind of stuff. But when they tried to go too broad, when they tried to paint themselves of the experts of everything they always suffered in rankings. When they concentrated on just one specialty, they did much better. Same thing with attorneys. I mean my old clients, their overarching

Area of practice was personal injury. But personal injury can be broken down into thousands of different types. And if you try and have a 2,000-word page explaining the differences between all those… Number one, the lawsuits are all the same so the actual process that you go through are exactly the same, and in the end, you’re really only suing an insurance company. You’re not suing the person you hurt you. So, trying to spread yourself way too thin is actually going to hurt you in the long run, whereas if you just stuck to motor vehicle accidents and what that can entail and what the steps of going through the… From meeting the lawyer to actually getting a payout. If you stick to that, versus trying to paint yourself as any type of injury, I can help you. It’s not gonna work. That’s why those type of lawyers are still advertising on bus benches.

11:27 AUSTIN: Brandon thank you so much for coming on.

11:29 BRANDON: Thank you for having me.

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11:35 JOE: Now joining us, we have Connor Sanner. He is the director of the paid social department here at power digital, and he and I work very closely together. We are best friends, and we are constantly talking about the landscape of paid social and paid advertising on social media. So, Connor, welcome.

11:53 CONNOR: Thank you thank you for having me.

11:54 JOE: I believe this is the second time we’ve had you on the show.

11:56 CONNOR: This is. I think, the other time I was on, it was the worst ranked podcast. So, let’s hope that uh… This isn’t a common trend with me as a guest.

12:04 JOE: We only got 1.2 million on that one, I think.

12:05 CONNOR: Yeah exactly. The comment section was brutal, so please be a little nicer this time.

12:11 JOE: Well, I think with the insight you’re about to bring us so… What about your predictions for 2019? Any trends in 2018 you saw that you think will carryover or blow up? Things like that…

12:21 CONNOR: Man paid social. What a year for 2018. Facebook ouch. They had a rough one to say the least. Actually, if you want to go check out my blog post too… A little cross-pollination of my marketing clout… I just wrote a blog post about what happened to Facebook in 2018. Obviously, they had a really rough year… A lot of negative PR, a lot of things that they had to deal with. From everything… From the stuff with the election and the Russians and just privacy issues… So, many different things that they’ve had to overcome as a company this year and honestly haven’t dealt with the greatest. There are some things that they have done that are really great but they got kind of overshadowed. You can check all that out in the blog post. But net, Facebook is in a very interesting spot. One their platform is becoming increasingly used by everyone so the costs are going up tremendously – which is making it harder to advertise on as a business. And secondarily just the net sentiment of the platform is trending downwards. So, those two factors are really hurting their business.

13:24 JOE: So, would you say… How everyone’s using Facebook… With that would that be coming in strong at the end of the year? Or do you see a decline throughout the year where a lot of those spins are shifting to Instagram or other platforms over Facebook.

13:37 CONNOR: So, that’s the funny thing too is a lot of people don’t realize that Facebook owns Instagram. So, it’s actually just like a placement on Instagram. But the reason that I’m saying that you can tell a lot of people are shifting into the space and advertising on the platform is because there’s a metric that’s called CPM which stands for cost per thousand impressions. And just over within the past year, I think it’s gone up about 300% for a cost to serve it now to an individual. And that’s a very starting point of your ad. So, that trickles down to affect the rest of your campaign and if you have a lower price point product, it might not even make it possible for you to have a campaign that’s successful on Facebook anymore. That, so the combination of the increased competition and then the increased cost on the platform is really making it so if you don’t know what you’re doing on there, it’s gonna be very difficult for you in the near future. I’m sure q4 a lot of people already kind of felt that, especially with the increased spend, like the big brands making those CPM even go up higher.

14:40 JOE: Is CPM both Instagram and Facebook that’s all aggregate cost?

14:45 CONNOR: Yep. So, it’s a metric that’s blended across all of their platforms that they own. You can also advertise on audience network, on WhatsApp… Yeah, things like that.

14:56 JOE: So, are you saying now… Because before it was so easy to go on Facebook. Just any person could go on, there’s no matter how big, small business… What you’re trying to sell, you could go on there and sell and have a good chance of turning a profit if you or say a rookie in the space. But now you… It’s getting a lot more complicated, it’s getting a lot more competitive, you have to be a lot more savvy and if you’re a business, it’s smart for you to hire someone that’s good at this or an agency at least.

15:19 CONNOR: A million percent. I don’t think that you necessarily need to hire an agency, but you definitely to know what you are doing. And you have to be way ahead of the curve nowadays. Especially another factor that’s going to be coming into place too is something that I’ve forecast for 2019, is that the targeting capabilities are only going to get more strict. As in like you’re going to lose the capability to target individuals based on certain criteria. So, what’s going to become super important in 2019 is we’re gonna shift back even more so into the fact that content is king, and you have to have incredibly high quality creative… It has to be engaging and then plus if you don’t know the basics of your targeting and have creative strategies to get that message out there, you’re gonna have a really tough time. It’s just the nature of how it’s going to be from now on. And also, I think you also start adapting to platforms or sorry strategies by platform. I think that’s gonna be something has to be interesting in 2019. Is used to have a blended strategy across Facebook, Instagram, all the other platforms that they have. But now I think you’re gonna have to have custom ones to the granularity of the platform itself. Because the demographics are splitting. So, the people on Facebook are typically… They’re a little skewed older now. Versus Instagram is where all the millennials are trickling towards.

16:36 AUSTIN: I was thinking about your point that they’re gonna have to crack down on targeting, because it seems like the average Facebook, Instagram user has actually become aware of the fact that they’re getting targeted so specifically, and it’s not going well. The overall sentiment seems to be going down.

16:51 CONNOR: Yeah definitely. Which is funny because a lot of that those targeting capabilities that Facebook has, every other paid media platform uses as well. Just Facebook cops a lot of the flack for that.

17:04 JOE: That’s very interesting.

17:06 CONNOR: It is very… I think they’ve copped a lot of heat in general this year. I think part of it too is just the nature of the platform. Like for example, paid search Amazon, other big players in the space, use the exact same data. The main difference is that you can’t really… The difference is that Facebook is a platform for like sharing your opinion, comparative to the other platforms. So, like paid search or you’re just actively looking to buy something, same with Amazon. Whereas Facebook you had that capability to share your political agenda, which we saw can be manipulated and really taken advantage of. And the other platforms don’t really have same ability. Which is actually like a benefit for Facebook but also has been their biggest drawback this year.

17:45 AUSTIN: Definitely.

17:46 CONNOR: So, it’s gonna be interesting to see how they like fight through that. They obviously haven’t done a great job so far. But I think they’ll figure it out. It’s just there’s never been a company with this amount of data and power, I don’t think, in our history. So, it’s a big weight on their shoulders to try and figure out how to properly utilize and ethically utilize all this information that they have.

18:06 JOE: I think a good point that you made was… Obviously pertains to me, is on the creative strategy where audiences are getting smarter. Even a lot of the paid platforms… I mean contrary to what you’re talking about with Facebook and social platforms like the ai that’s going into a lot of AdWords and paid search campaigns on the Google side of things, are now making it easier for you to find customers. But those customers that we’re now finding are now understanding that they’re being advertised to. Especially when there’s a lot of fear about if you’re talking about something and then next thing you know you get served an ad for it and there’s just little things where people are starting to get a little bit more cautious, I think, where before… And people are starting to realize when you put things on the internet they’re there forever. And it is a pretty much a free market for you to either do good or bad with. I think it’s just interesting for you to bring that up, because on the creative side it’s more… So, people know they’re being marketed to so it’s no longer so much about trying to persuade people to buy. It’s more so educating them or just giving them the opportunity to maybe purchase something that they would be interested in.

19:10 CONNOR: It’s going a lot more towards branding again versus where it was so direct consumer the past couple years. I think that shift is going to happen. I think some… What it is changing is from it used to be like you just have to know your funnel and nurturing them down the funnel. I think now it’s really… You’re going to have to know the entirety of your consumer journey and you know your digital marketing ecosystem in a sense, to the fact where you have to know where their first touch point was, how they’re being nurtured, like what their headspace is, where they’re on each platform, and like really taking a deep dive into the head of your consumer, and figuring out like what are they doing when they’re here? What are they doing when they’re on this platform? Like what’s the difference when they’re on Google versus when they’re on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest? There’s just so many different things that you’re taking consideration.

19:59 JOE: What uh… I totally agree and it’s kind of becoming strange, where you have to, one be a technician and be in your… I guess your craft. But also, being able to understand people, having emotional intelligence, having… Being able to just look into someone’s head in a way. And I think about… If I was in their shoes, how would I want to see this? How would I wanna be talked to? Would I be interested in buying this, things like that. But one thing you definitely pointed out was Pinterest and I know Pinterest is gonna have a big year.

20:26 CONNOR: Oh yeah big year. Dark horse 2019. If I were to put my money on anything it’d be Pinterest for next year. So, Pinterest, they have been making big moves this year. Funny enough the rest of the digital media world seems to have been trending down in the net sentiment aspect of just the public. And Pinterest has been kind of just flying under the radar just making big, big moves left and right. Some of which that they’ve done… And it’s funny it’s big in in relative to their company, but like just that the… If you compare them to like Facebook and Amazon and Google, they look like very minor milestones. But I forget the exact number but I think they just hit… Pinterest it just hit two hundred billion? I think. Don’t quote me on that but they just hit a big milestone in terms of like ad revenue through the platform that’s making them a huge or a big competitor in the space and it’s a big like validating aspect for their company. And they also just hired on at the beginning of this year someone who was high up in the Google ad technology development to be their coo for Pinterest. And they’re actually looking to go public or a rumor is they’re looking to go public in mid-2019. So, they’re shaping up very nicely right now. The main thing that attracts me to Pinterest is that the main benefit of Facebook is that they are a media rich platform that can target based off of the user behavior on the platform, just like developing interests and categorizing people based off their user behavior. And the main benefit of Google is that people are actively searching to accomplish something or buy something or they’re actively looking to do something. The benefit of Pinterest is that, it is in essence a search engine, so people are still looking to actively do things. So, it has that benefit that Google has but also, you’re able to serve that media rich content. So, like you can serve images, videos, recipes, or you can do… They have all these different types of pins too, like you can do bible pins, things of that nature. And funny enough the younger demographic uses it pretty religiously. There’s actually like some crazy stats at like 70% or something of people who have used Pinterest in like a buying decision in the millennial generation. There’s just some very interesting things coming out with that platform and like going back to like the headspace piece, you’re now able to capitalize on when people are actively looking to do something, but also just like poking around trying to like find something to do with their time.

23:12 JOE: Find the latest, like say bulletproof coffee recipe?

23:15 CONNOR: Exactly, yeah.

23:16 AUSTIN: It really reminds me of a combination of Tumblr and Instagram. I mean truly at this point. Because you can pin stuff and on Tumblr you could add stuff to your board or whatever once I can’t remember, and then with Instagram, you’re constantly just scrolling mindlessly just looking through photos. I’m curious about like… As a marketer what do you think the best strategy or maybe what’s the best industry or typical client that you would think could use this?

23:41 CONNOR: Definitely. There definitely is kind of like a stigma, I guess, about Pinterest. That it’s like trendy so if you have a trendy product, it will definitely do well. In terms of strategies we actually… Like I was saying earlier, it is a search engine. So, we’ve actually implemented our SEO strategy that we have at Power Digital to Pinterest, and I’ve been seeing some crazy results, like you should see these trend lines when it goes live, it doesn’t… It’s pretty incredible. But yeah, just trendy products.

Also, the demographic is definitely skewed towards women. But within this last year, I think they had a 70 percent growth in men using the platform, which is really interesting as well, cause I think that was one of their biggest drawbacks before is that it was strictly women using it. But now that they’re gaining both genders on the platform, that you’re gonna have a broader reach. And I think it’s naturally just gonna come with their growth over the next year too. But yeah trendy products, CBG products, recipes, food products would do great because people go to recipes on there, home decor products, just anything that you look up like something trendy for inspiration from, I would imagine would do really well on Pinterest.

24:53 JOE: Yeah, I mean, I agree. And I think just kind of the net-net of a lot of these things that we’ve been talking about is although your focus is in paid advertising on the social media side of things, how important… And I know Brandon brought this up as well and how much he’s integrated into other channels, how everything is becoming omni-channel, how all these other channels support each other. I’ve been thinking off the top of my head where on the paid social side, if I get served an ad by a company that I’ve never even heard of before, and I’m gonna immediately go and click on their… Say their Instagram profile. And from there I’m assessing, okay what does their organic Instagram look like? Can I trust them? Are they doing a good job? Is this quality? So, it’s one of those things where just all these different channels kind of coming into play. A lot of times you guys being the first touch. And now it’s all about figuring out how to be that first touch in this huge pool of like competition, advertisers, all the different regulations that are coming out things like that.

25:49 CONNOR: 100 percent, yeah. Like I was saying, it’s that ecosystem. There’s so many different touch points now. It’s like you said, if you go… Like saying I would do the exact same thing. If I saw an ad on Instagram for a new product, I’d go to their organic Instagram, see how they’re doing. If I trust them, I maybe go to Amazon, see how the reviews are looking. Like is it a good quality product? Or if I just search them online will I get served a paid search ad so I can actually find them? Are they ranking organically on Google? There’s just so many different factors that go into it. And I also have to give a shout out to Tristan for the ecosystem analogy. He’s gonna trademark that one, so keep a lookout for that.

26:24 JOE: Tristan, my other best friend.

26:27 AUSTIN: All right, Connor. Thank you so much for coming on.

26:29 CONNOR: Thanks guys.

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26:33 JOE: Wrapping up, we’ve got Ryan Larkin, the paid media technical director here at power digital. What’s up man?

26:40 RYAN: Hey, how’s it going? Awesome.

26:41 AUSTIN: Very excited to have you on. It’s been a crazy year. We were both in Google but on other sides of the coin. You’re in paid. I’m an organic. But I think what we’re really curious about is in 2019, where are we headed?

26:52 RYAN: Yeah great question. I think we’re definitely heading more towards an Amazon oriented ecommerce platform. More and more budgets that we’re seeing are being shifted from the search side to the Amazon search side. I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently and one big-name agency has shifted as much as 70% of their e-commerce budget from Google to the Amazon engine. It’s crazy, and it’s only gonna get bigger. They’ve done a phenomenal job of making the consumer path just so easy. I did all of my Christmas shopping in one fell swoop. Was able to ship all of these products as gifts to immediate family members that were not in the immediate vicinity here. So, they just make it too easy and that’s really, I think where a lot of the effort from companies has to be going in 2019 as e-commerce companies at least, right? So, I think that’s gonna be huge. I think some of the tools that have really done a lot of developing over the last couple years is things like jungle scout, helium 10, these Amazon research platforms. What’s really interesting to me right now is taking a look at the sort of market capitalization per search term on Amazon. So, we have a client right now that’s kind of pioneering the honeycomb space, so it’s been really interesting looking at how much available market cap is there within Amazon for search terms like individually-wrapped honeycomb. So, I think where there’s gonna be an intersection is looking at search trends from a Google analytics perspective, Google search trends and matching that up cross-referencing with what the market capitalization is per search terms on Amazon and I think there’s gonna be a lot of learnings that we’re gonna see, a lot more cross channel collaboration. I think people with strong Amazon and strong Google backgrounds are gonna have a really huge advantage going into 2019.

28:59 JOE: No just nodding my head because that seems to be the theme of everybody so far is that although we do have our channel specializations, there’s always the support. The omni-channel is always feeding off of something else. We’re all feeding off of each other type of thing.

29:13 AUSTIN: Yeah and that’s what we want to push in this, if you’re listening to this, is whatever channel you’re focusing on you’ve got to think bigger. Because there’s chances are that it’s changing right in front of your face and you don’t realize it. And there could be something within reach that might be better or boost your ability to focus on that channel.

29:31 JOE: Yeah, and I was gonna say too, it’s just kind of crazy to look back at the beginning of this year and I mean obviously you guys are still going to be focusing on Google. There’s still a huge market in Google. But this could be kind of the shift of the tide a little bit and just knowing Amazon’s kind of catching up to apple in terms of business size, how big of a company it’s growing, how fast it’s growing, how we use it daily. So, yeah just even on that note, you’re still gonna be looking at Google as a big player, just more so Amazon is the big threat.

30:03 RYAN: 100% yeah and on that point, something that we’re seeing a lot of is non-brand search. Which you rewind the clock five, seven years, viable strategy for e-commerce brands. Let’s go after these non-branded search terms. We’re seeing that be less and less effective. We still have a pretty good efficacy with shopping ads. Shopping ads are still working because price comparison engine… That still holds sway over the consumer. But we’re really seeing a massive drop in conversion rates from non-branded search ads. So, yeah, I mean for my money if I was running a big brand CPG firm right now, a lot of my money would be going to Amazon. I’d still have some money left over in shopping but my non-brand search, I would honestly just be ramping up SEO as hard as I could right now.

30:57 JOHN: Yeah because if… I thought about this as you were saying that. A non-branded search term… Say I’m looking for pants. I’m looking for blue pants. Something like of that nature.

31:07 RYAN: Maybe corduroy.

31:08 JOHN: Blue corduroy pants, sure.

31:10 RYAN: Can you get more specific?

31:11 JOHN: Those top sections or top positions in Google for those non-branded search terms are all gonna be taken up by Amazon. So, they’re even gonna be beating you out on that front so it’s… You might as well be utilizing them. Because they’re gonna be out spending you. They can. They can outrank you. So, you’re going to be using those non-brand search terms on Google just to take you to Amazon, and make a purchase through Amazon.

31:34 AUSTIN: Right, yeah. And we had recently had on Devon Kochefski… I think that was 2 or 3 weeks ago… And he talked about kind of the strategy for Amazon and how that’s really coming into fruition of being able not only do you have a basically SEO in the Amazon engine but also when you have a page rank well in the Amazon engine, it ranks well on Google. And that’s what’s really coming… Becoming crazy about what SEO is too is it’s no longer just Google. You have to SEO in other spaces of the world, right? We just talked about Pinterest. Same thing. So, you gotta SEO on Pinterest. You gotta SEO on Amazon. You gotta SEO on Instagram too, because those pages can rank. So, that’s another big part of this – like we’re saying is where you’re allocating your time it needs to be within reach to other channels.

32:20 JOE: So, do you think with the combination of Google coming up and a lot of their revenue comes to their technology, obviously, and their advertising side of the business. Amazon, same thing. Do you think that this could eventually lead to the death of Bing?

32:36 RYAN: Yeah, I mean I think a lot of people would argue that Bing has been a dead man walking for some time. It’s… You know man, I just actually listened to a podcast with Mercer Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo.

32:52 JOHN: Oh, he’s a good friend of ours. He was gonna come on the show.

32:56 AUSTIN: He’s a little stressed, so I told him it’s okay.

33:00 RYAN: Yeah. A competitor podcast, actually, it was Masters of Scale. But I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Yahoo and she was saying that they essentially, they still have Alibaba, right? Which is the big search engine for a lot of the Asian countries. So, they’re still doing well to a degree, right? They’re losing… They basically lost their foothold over the US. But they do have some other arms that are definitely doing well and they’re kind of supporting the business actually, at this point.

So… But for the intents and purposes of how are they going to be doing in the us, I think they’re gonna… They’re gonna cede more ground, more and more ground as we progress in 2019 and beyond for sure.

33:52 JOE: Well that’s good to know. And it’s good to confirm that whenever you used to call me crazy for my Amazon obsession as I was actually just ahead of the curve.

33:59 AUSTIN: Yeah, sure.

34:00 JOE: So, Ryan I’m very appreciative of you coming on the show today and dropping that knowledge with us.

34:07 RYAN: Yeah for sure. Amazon’s beast, Jeff Bezos, what an animal right?

34:13 AUSTIN: Thank you to the fellows, Connor, Ryan, and Brandon. Three very smart individuals for coming on the show.

34:21 JOE: Yeah it was good to have them on. Hopefully in 2019, we can have more episodes like this. Get more people involved on our team because at the end of the day, we have our specialists and we have our specialties, but it’s always nice to have some familiar faces on here.

34:33 AUSTIN: Yeah, I had my mind pretty blown by all three of them with what they brought up are things that I wasn’t thinking about. So, Pinterest was not even on my radar and you think about there’s individuals in here that are incorporating full-blown strategies with our clients already. And it just showcases you really the trailblazing aspect of this… Of this place and how brilliant the minds are and I’m really excited for 2019. And I’m excited to learn more from our company.

34:58 JOE: Yeah, me as well. And kind of wrap things up, we will be having our best of 2018 episodes coming out over the next couple days. It’s a great way to get a good look at what we did over the entire year. I guess the best of. Hopefully show it to a couple friends, rate, review, subscribe. And then other than that we will see you all in 2019.

35:19 AUSTIN: This has been Joe, Austin, John, and Pat signing off.