Is Search Dying and Does Content Really Matter Looking Ahead
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want to know how to navigate the ever-changing marketing jungle. And I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners

We've got a great episode for you today. Today, I'm going to be joined by Marcus Sheridan, and we're going to explore content marketing in the light of

Google search going away and what this is really going to mean to the future of content marketing. We're going to cover a whole bunch of amazing things. I think you're going to absolutely love this episode. I can't wait to hear from you. By the way, at the end of today's podcast episode, I'll explain how you can reach out to me and let me know if you like the show. If you're new to this podcast,

Be sure to follow us on whatever app you're listening to because we've got some great stuff coming up. Let's transition over to this week's interview with Marcus Sheridan. Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.

Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Marcus Sheridan. If you don't know who Marcus is, you got to know Marcus. He is a content marketing strategist that helps people scale their audience. He's the author of They Ask, You Answer. He's also a partner at Impact.com.

a coaching company that helps businesses share their stories without reliance on agencies. And he's got a million other things that I'm not even going to mention today. And he's a good friend of mine. Marcus, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today, bro? Yo, Stels. Been too long. So it's about time we brought this party back together. I know, man. So today, Marcus and I are going to explore if search is dying and whether content matters moving into the future.

And these are important things to talk about. But before we go there, the last time you were on the show, Marcus, was 2019, which feels forever ago because it's 2025. Yeah. We're recording this actually on New Year's Eve, but it's coming out in 2025. So I'd love to hear a little bit of what's been going on in your world since 2019. And since it's been a while, if you want to back up the clock a little bit to help provide context today, I think that'd be really cool. Yeah, I'll give the quick...

Very fast, 60-second story for those that don't know me in real life. I started in 2001 as a pool guy with this company called River Pools. And then the market collapsed in 2008, 2009. Looked like we're going to lose the business. And so that's when I started really learning about content marketing and inbound and all that stuff. And basically what I said is like, okay, so we're going to become the Wikipedia of pools. Yeah.

And that's what happened. And we called the framework. I called the framework, They Ask, You Answer. And we became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. And that led to this extraordinary journey where I started to write about it. And that led to me speaking at events. And that led to the agency. And that led to eventually me having this manufacturing company that was sold, as well as a franchise of fiberglass pool builders that was sold in 2020. And so it's wild though, Michael, because...

2019, now it's 2025. Crazy what happens. I've never seen change like this since I've been in the game of business since 2001. And I've been speaking about digital stuff, of course, since 2009, 10 range. And so now all of a sudden, I feel like what used to take three, four years, sometimes takes like three weeks.

And that's the world that we have to get used to. And it makes me think a lot about, there's a phrase that I really love that applies so much to today. And that is, we can't fit the future in the containers of the past. I see a lot of people doing that right now when it comes to the way that they perceive AI and its impact on the world. And this certainly affects our conversation today in search because the way they're viewing what's going to happen with search is based on history, but you can't do that

That's a different game now, right, Michael? And so we've got to think differently and it's a new set of rules. Well, and I'm going to share a little bit more of the story that Marcus has not shared. Marcus, I think part of the reason he kind of got a little bit famous is because Ian Hanley came

had you in her book, Content Rules, right? Wasn't that her book? Was it the name of her book or something? Yeah, that was the first person that really interviewed me about the Riverpool story. That's right. And then all of a sudden, I bumped into you at an event called Content Marketing World. Yep. And we became really fast friends. And Marcus had a blog called The Sales Lion. And his background really is in sales. And then eventually, he became someone who became a prolific salesman

speaker and writer specifically about content marketing. You were on the HubSpot bandwagon, right? And HubSpot was one of the tools. And you had a podcast, a number of shows that you did all around inbound marketing and all these kinds of things, right? So you really built kind of your second career, for lack of better words, in the back, and

of content marketing. Would that be a fair assessment? Yeah, 100%. You know, people have called me the Gary Vee of pools, right? Because, you know, he started with wine. I started with pools. We both had this like very relatable business story and we had to save these businesses, right? And, you know, it was interesting not to get too like off track here, but our personal story, Michael, is such an interesting one because almost nobody knew me until content marketing world.

the first content marketing world. And I met you there and actually just like came right up to you one night and said, Hey man, you used your sales skills on me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey man, I'm speaking to Mar. You want to come? But what was so funny about that is you actually came and you,

That day, you essentially, to a degree, took me under your wing and said, Hey, would you like to write for Social Media Examiner? So I started writing for Social Media Examiner. Hey, do you want to speak at Social Media Marketing World? So I started speaking at Social Media Marketing World. I'm not great at being very extroverted with people I don't know. But that night, you were talking with Amy Porterfield. And I literally interrupted you both.

and introduce myself. Totally out of character for me, but I did it and it paid off and we've had a great friendship since that time. I think it's partly because of that sales skill that you have. Like I remember he came up to me in this yellow shirt. He was wearing kind of his probably standard shirt that he would wear if he was going to knock on someone's door and do a sales call. And he just said, come to my session. His session, he got gypped. So he only had like 30 minutes and he was fast and he was funny.

And I believe I was in the front row. And then afterwards, I just saw something in Marcus, as I've seen in a lot of people.

that I saw his future flash before me. And I said to myself, this guy's got something. And it's really exciting. And flash forward to today, 2025, we're now in a world where a lot of these principles that you and I have been talking about for so many years on the content marketing front, which is just creating great content and drawing an audience to you is not

How have you dealt with this over the last couple of years? Because I would imagine it's forced you to rethink some things, right? Well, absolutely. And if we look at what's going on, I'm passionate about the subject, Michael, because I was listening to a podcast recently where it was a known podcast and they were interviewing an SEO guy who owns an SEO company.

And they said to him, so what do you anticipate happening with Google search in the coming years? He's like, you know, I don't see a big dip. Companies still need to be all in with Google search and it's still going to just be fundamental to your business. And I thought to myself, what a bunch of intellectual dishonesty. Come on, dude. Are you really being serious right now?

It bothered me so much because we see what happens whenever there's dramatic shifts in the marketplace. The leaders of the past are the slowest to generally embrace the future. And so this is why you see these SEOs are saying, no, no, no.

no, no, no, no, no, no. Google search is going to be really, really strong. And oh, if you look at the numbers, Google is still getting a lot of searches that they've seen a very little dip, you know, a small dip so far, you know, or they're being, you know, used more than ever. But the point is, it's not so much about are people using Google? It's are those people making it to your website? Can you as a business build a business that

and build a state of leads and sales ultimately on the back of Google search? And the answer is no, you cannot do that as time goes on.

And just to test this, I said, I want to go to ChatGPT and see if it will give me an honest answer here because most SEOs won't. By the way, there are exceptions out there, right? And Chat said, look, I would expect that Google will have a dip of 25% to 40% just in terms of people using them over the next 10 years.

But in terms of publishers, businesses, right, getting that visitor to their website in this era of zero click, which is what we're living in now, we're going to see, well, Chach says, a 70% decline. Now, because I've had so many companies that have been doing They Ask, You Answer, I've worked with them for years now. And by the way,

The Ask, You Answer is rooted in the obsession with the questions, worries, concerns that your customers are asking and the willingness to address those online, especially on your website.

Now, it has been one of the greatest SEO strategies ever that had an actual name. It was a very simple framework for people to understand. And that's why the book has resonated with so many and changed lives. Other than the fact that it really pushes this whole idea of radical transparency, being more honest and open with the marketplace and just give them what they stink and want, be willing to address their questions.

But that's search in many ways. So people that did They Ask, You Answer, they saw an explosive growth. And so since we've seen November 2021, ChatGPT, I've started to get all those questions, Mike, of people saying, so Marcus, what's this mean for They Ask, You Answer? What's this mean for Google Search?

And I always have a couple different answers to this because first of all, you have to understand this. If the only reason you are producing content on your website and online was for Google search alone, you completely missed the boat. Like you've missed the mark. I could come up with a list of probably like 40 different reasons you should be producing content and putting said content on your website. One of those 40 is good.

to increase your Google search results. One of the 40, but there's so many others, Michael. And so when I see people saying, yeah, I just don't know if we should be doing that anymore. I'm like, okay, first off, do you think people are still going to go to your website to vet you? Well, yeah. Okay. When they come to your site to vet you, do you want to be fed? Well, yes, I want them to be fed.

Well, are you saying you're just going to have an empty platter? You expect them to get 100% of the information from AI or from someone else, not from you? Do you not want to have your voice? And oh, by the way, we've seen very definitively that the companies that are really aggressive with doing the ask-you-answer, addressing those questions online, especially on their website, they're the ones getting recommended the most by AI, right?

And so now we've got this world of, you know, Google search was like one of the greatest marketing strategies we've ever seen over the course of 20 years, man. It was just amazing.

But now when we say search, we're so much more than just Google. And AI recommendations is the search of the future, whether we like it or not. Plus, of course, social media. Plus, of course, YouTube. So there's a lot there. I'm going to shut up, Michael, because I know you want me to shut up so you can ask me some good questions here. You may have already answered some of these questions, but I'm going to go ahead and ask them anyways, okay? Why? Why?

Without how, why should marketers care about content marketing in 2025? Just give me a succinct answer. Because content in many ways is the soul of your business. And you cannot understand the market unless you're obsessed with the market and giving the market what the market wants.

They want the content. They're going to get it from someone. They might as well get it from you. Now, if they get it directly from you, great. If they get it indirectly from you,

Also great, indirectly being AI recommends you. But either way, they're going to get it. So hopefully they're going to get it from you. Perfect. So we've already talked about some of the trends going on in search and why it's happening. I'm going to add a little bit of my insights in here and then you can share whatever comes to your mind. I saw very early that ChatGPT was going to for sure

steal search traffic away from our website as a media publisher. I started to watch the trends rapidly decline in the three months after ChatGPT came out. And I just knew this concept of the single best answer, which is a concept that has been around for a while when you think of Amazon's Alexa, right? Or Siri on the Apple device where it just gives you a single answer. And

You know, that's kind of where the world is going. Like most people that are searching are looking for a very specific answer. If they trust the delivery mechanism, then they're going to trust the answer and they're not going to necessarily come to your website. As a result of this, I moved my business to a newsletter first business. And I presented this on the keynote stage at Social Media Marketing World.

because my hypothesis was that it would be really important for me to continue to publish on my website, but more importantly, to nurture relationships through the owned media channel called Email Newsletter. And I just knew that search was going to continue to go down and I moved to an email first philosophy, right? And that's been really helpful for us to retain our list and we are delivering content to people that opt into that list.

But I do believe that chat GPT is a big part of why search is coming down. But I also want you to talk about what Google's doing with their AI answers a little bit, just so people can wrap their head around that. I don't think Google could possibly bury search results any more than they currently do. It is stunning. I mean, if you haven't gone and actually looked recently, go do a Google search right now.

First of all, the first thing they're going to show, of course, are sponsored ads. They try to make them look 100% real at this point because they want you to click on them and they want to take your money there.

And that's how they make the majority of their money as a business. Not in the future, but today, that's how they make the majority of their money. Then you've got AI answers. So that takes up another whole chunk of a page. I mean, we're talking like a lot. It's like two or three search queries, right? It's huge. Yes, it's huge. Then you've got related questions. Then you've probably got

Some stupid results from some chat form or something like that. Reddit. I don't know why they became obsessed with Reddit, but now they're obsessed with Reddit. And so you have to go through a marathon of scrolling just to get to those 10 goals.

dang blue links. So if you're number one, you're not really number one anymore. That's important for people. You're not even number like, if we look at the size of a page, you're like on page four today. If you're number one in SERPs, it's crazy. SERPs is search engine results or something. Is that what that is? Yeah. Yeah. Search engine result pages. It's like you are literally now

Oh, and one more thing. Google has, and I track the AI world because I've got an AI podcast. Google has recently formally said that they're going to give people the option to just have an AI option when they go to google.com instead of having the search queries. So we kind of can tell where this is going, right? It is inevitable and it's obvious. Now to people like you, the great thing about you, Michael, is you're not trying to protect previous business models, right?

And you see so many CEOs do this. You see so many people do this. Sunk cost bias. That's what they call it, right? That's right. I'm the guy that wrote They Ask, You Answer. And I am saying that if I was to start a swimming pool company today...

I absolutely could not repeat what I did 15 years ago and become the most known, trusted, and trafficked swimming pool brand in the world, which is what I became. This is why, by the way, there's the third version of They Asked You the Answer is coming out. It's called Endless Customers. It's coming out in April. It's available now because what's happening with AI and so many people saying to me, Marcus,

should I still be producing content? In the book, I have a list of all the reasons why you should be producing content. That being said, you should not expect to build your house on Google search. You now have to say, all right, what do we have to do to become a known and trusted brand? Brand matters more than ever.

and your community around that brand, which is why people like Michael here have this great newsletter. He says, I'm going hard into this because they can't take this. This isn't rented land. This is my land. I own it. This is my community. I can continue to nurture them. And it's never going to go up and down like it has with Google. He's not at the mercy of tech at that point. That's very important. But

If you're going to build a known and trusted brand in the future, we've got to go beyond what we've been doing up to this point. I'm sure you probably want to ask a question about that, Michael, but because I want to jump the gun here. Just jump the gun. It's okay. You know where we're going. Go ahead. We got work to do. So if you say, okay, Marcus, I'll play. I need to build a known and trusted brand.

How do I do that in 2025 and beyond? Well, it does start with this continuation of content, but you have to see yourself in this. I don't say this lightly. I mean it. I mean it so seriously. You have to see yourself, your brand personally, and your brand as an organization. You are a media company now.

Michael is smart. I've been a media company the whole time. You've been a media company the whole time. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. You've been thinking like that the whole time. But my life changed when I said, people, you say, what do you do? And I would say, if they were asking about my pool company, I would say, oh, you know, we're a fiberglass swimming pool company. Now I say we're a media company that happens to bring families joy by installing pools in their backyard. Okay. We're a media company first. That's a mindset I want our entire team to have. All right. If I look at all my companies now, I've got like

Seven different companies I'm a partner with now. Okay. All media first. That's the mindset. Now you might say, well, how does a media company think differently? Define what you mean by media company before you answer. How do they think differently? A media company says we have to show what we do.

And everything about them is like, how do we show and tell this story of the thing that you sell? How do we show and tell this story better? You become a media company when you do a few things. Number one, you invest in people that can produce that media for you.

For the longest time, I mean, I've been saying for a solid 10 years, I said, in the future, everybody's going to have an in-house videographer. Like any company that's over like a million bucks is going to have an in-house videographer. And a lot of people said, Marcus, you're crazy. They're going to outsource them like that.

Outsourcing your content is not the future of the web, people. That is not going to bring you to the promised land. If you think you're going to create a masterpiece by telling Victor Hugo how to paint, you're wrong. You need to learn to hold the paintbrush yourself and you need to put the paint to the canvas. So that's why the internet will be owned by those that can produce their own content in the future.

This is why you have to think like a media company. A media company is a master at telling great stories. You have to learn how to tell stories that resonate and land with the marketplace, makes your brand memorable. You have to show stories that make people stop and say, huh, that's interesting. That's fascinating. I didn't

didn't know that. I didn't realize that. That's what media companies do. A media company, let's say just with pools or whatever it is, but in the case of pools, if I'm a media company, I walk up on a job site and I say, everything here is a story. Everything I see here is a potential video. One swimming pool in the ground is literally 50, 60, 70 different stories about decisions a homeowner made

that could be shown to the world, but most people don't see it that way. And most aren't willing to invest

and that videographer. And most are still thinking that they can't show all these things. You have got to get very, very comfortable with showing it. Media is going to be your key. And as you produce this video content, then it can go to the places like the TikToks that continue to blow up, the YouTubes that continue to blow up, all the short form video that continues to blow up. All this stuff matters to your brand going forward. Well, and if anybody here watches H2O,

HGTV or the Magnolia Network, these are actually shows of people breaking houses apart and rebuilding them, right? And they're always have like Chip and Joanna or whoever the latest person is, right? And they show the personalities of the owners of the business. They're showing the transformation that's happening from beginning to end. They get it done in a half an hour. Now that can be done

For any type of business, you have an advantage, Marcus, when you're in a pool because you're starting with either ground that's flat and then you're finishing with the pool. But any kind of business could do something like this, I would imagine, right? What do you want to say to people that don't have a physical transformation? Help them understand how that transformation could still be documented.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you've heard me say this before, Michael, but that idea of my situation's different is a creativity killer. Very, very few companies ever do anything extraordinary when they sit there and they say, but my situation is different. And so you have to say to yourself, okay, I'm

I have something that I could show to the world. I just need to get better in terms of that storytelling, whatever that storytelling is. I mean, if you go to YouTube right now, you're seeing all these people that are like rich teenagers that are crushing it, crushing it.

crushing it because they don't sit there and overanalyze, how do I show this? They just start talking about it. The funny thing with art is generally, you don't learn how to do it until you start to walk the trail and then you see where the trail is supposed to go. It's the same thing as a CEO. You do this all the time, Michael. It's like you've got all these cool things that you're doing, that you're building. As you walk the trail, then you figure out where is this supposed to be.

A lot of people think that you have to be great with content out the gate. No. And this is why a lot of companies, a lot of brands fail to produce extraordinary content because they're not okay with imperfect. And they think it's got to be just a phenomenal, amazing from the beginning. Whereas what you just have to do is understand that, okay, it's a seven out of 10. Great. Eventually it's going to be an eight out of 10. It's just going to get

continue to get better and better, but we've got to give ourselves some leeway with that. Otherwise you don't have that learning curve and you don't do anything extraordinary. What if you could bypass months of marketing experiments and jump straight to what actually is working right now? Instead of endlessly testing, imagine getting proven tactics directly from experts who've actually done the hard work for you. That's exactly what happens

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For those that have been around for a while, they know I did a two-season episodic documentary called The Journey, which I published on Facebook and on YouTube. And it was just about the story of us trying to grow our conference and all the crazy pitfalls along the way. I today write, which is my preferred medium, weekly posts about the struggle of running this business. And people connect with it, and it's interesting.

I want to really explore the idea. A couple of themes that I've heard you say is number one, you can't build your business on inbound search traffic from Google, but your content should be built on

And you kind of talked about video a little bit. So talk about this other platform called YouTube and where you see it fitting into the grand scheme of content marketing moving forward. Yeah, it wouldn't shock me if YouTube made more money for Google in 10 years than Google search does today for Google. And the reason is because as we proceed forward, right, in this AI universe, we

What we're seeing definitively is more and more people are using the YouTubes and the TikToks of the world and the Amazons of the world to get the information that they want.

And many people don't just want to read it. They want to see it. I mean, this is becoming prolific. And we know the rate in terms of video. It's extraordinary. Right now, over 80% of all the time people spend online is spent watching video. That number continues to grow every single year. This is why

What I mean by you've got to think like a media company and you got to get very serious about YouTube. And once you get serious about YouTube, you've got these two fronts, of course, which is we got long form. We got short form. The cool thing about YouTube is it's still, for the most part, an unaffected search engine. Unaffected by AI is what you mean. Right, right. Whereas like Google has been destroyed, like Google search results have been destroyed. We already said you're on page four if you're ranking number one.

Whereas, if you're on YouTube and you're ranking number one, you're not going to be pushed down in such dramatic ways. So that's beautiful because the way they make their money is by showing you the best video. And within the video, you get the ads. That's how they make their money. So it's a different type of delivery for them and their product and the way that they generate the revenue. So I think this is the first time...

In the 15 years that I've been consulting with companies, coaching companies, Michael, that I've told folks that their first hire needed to be a videographer over a writer.

So for 15 years, I was saying you need a content manager. And that person is like the core writer for your business, right? Now, it's really interesting. I'm saying you need a videographer that can use AI to write well with you, for you. But they need to be video first because we have to take advantage of YouTube. And the thing about YouTube is extraordinary because once you become very good with video,

you start to see all the different places that you can use one single video, YouTube being one of them, but then you've got just the YouTube long, you got the YouTube short. So that's two places right there. Then we've got all the social media platforms that you want to post it to. So that's a multiplicity. It's like when we're talking about like building a known brand,

We just have to do more than just produce content and throw it up on our site. That's not enough. I was able to do that in 2009. I can't do that today and expect to build a known and trusted brand. So we've got to be on multiple platforms. I'm not saying that's easy.

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't focus on one first, but you are going to have to get great with video if you're going to have an extraordinary brand moving forward. And you're going to want to take advantage of YouTube. And you're going to want to make sure that your YouTube page cannot just be some...

thigh dish to your business. You got to see like this. I have two websites. I've got YouTube or three really with social, but YouTube has to be viewed with the importance of your website and not just like this redheaded stepchild, which is what we oftentimes see with so many businesses. I love it. And I think you're right. First of all, there's a lot more competition on YouTube, which is really important for people to process because you're

A lot of the younger folks that are listening to this already know YouTube is where they start. And it makes the most of, on a sense. And you've got a lot of podcasters now who used to be audio only, who are waking up to YouTube. We've been there for a very long time. The content standards are higher on YouTube now than they ever were before. But the big advantage to YouTube is discoverability. YouTube will show your video to strangers immediately.

which is exactly what we want as marketers, right? So it's not just search on YouTube. It's also suggested videos. It's the next video when someone's in like a thread of watching videos and it's huge. And along these lines, Mike, you know, people naturally say, but video is not my thing. And the problem is the moment you signed up to go into business, you lost the right to say, but that's not my thing.

Because nobody has ever come to your website before. That's like saying I don't need a website when the internet first came out, right? Correct. Nobody's ever come to your website and said, man, I wish I could see a video on this, but they don't have a video on it. But you know what? I'm sure video is just not their thing and I'm sure it makes them really nervous. And so I'm going to give them a pass. I'm just going to call them on the phone instead. Nobody has ever said that. What they say is, I really want to see a video so I understand this thing. That's what they're thinking in their mind.

And it's our job, it's our fiduciary as business owners, marketers, et cetera, to meet the marketplace where they are. That's why it's they ask, you answer. It's like if they want to learn in a certain way, we meet them where they are. We can't

as marketers to drive square pegs into round holes moving forward and expect to really stand out in the marketplace. We have to be willing to meet them where they are. And there's a lot of different ways that we can do that, but we've got to meet them where they are. Okay, so, so far what I'm hearing from you is that we need marketers

to continue to publish content on our website because even if they're on our YouTube channel, they're going to find out if they want to, you know, buy products and services from us, they're going to go to our website. And when they go to our website, there's going to be an expectation that there's the types of content there that a buyer would want. And I get that completely. The second thing I'm hearing you say is that video, video, video, we've been banging this drunk for a really long time, but it's the one thing

area that has not been disintermediated by AI yet. Even though it's true a lot of videos on YouTube are AI generated, the truth of the matter is that there's mostly videos from humans talking about things that other humans are interested in. That's right. The social platforms, I'd love to get your take on the strategy there. Yeah.

For those that know me, if you're following me on LinkedIn, you'll see that I do very well on LinkedIn. I'm not great necessarily. I don't have a focus on other platforms on a social level personally, but I chose to be great on LinkedIn because I'm a speaker and that's where my customer base is. But what makes me great on LinkedIn is the same thing that will make you great on Instagram. Same thing that makes you great on TikTok is I understand how to tell a story. And if I cannot give a post specifically

as a story, well then I'm probably not going to share the post. Because the truth is, the most valuable thing like information you have, I have learned definitively in the last five years on LinkedIn alone, I've done over 1500 posts and these are not small. Like, I mean, they're thoughtful. It's what my blog was back in the day, Michael, right? It's like, to me, that's the modern blog is really social media today. And

On a place like LinkedIn, for me, I have seen definitively that I can post something and I know it's incredibly valuable, incredibly helpful, but it doesn't have legs if it's not said the right way. And so that's why we have to be master storytellers. Look at the patterns of all my posts. You'll notice I almost always have this vibe of like, I was

like this feel of like, I was talking to somebody the other day and somebody said this to me. And recently someone asked me this question. And, you know, the other day I was in the store and it's like, we have to become better at that. I look at so many people failing on social media and it's simply because they just don't understand how to deliver the goods in a way that it really sticks and resonates with people. You're mostly writing.

but you're not just doing written content. Are you adding images and videos sometimes? Like what's your strategy on that? - Oh yeah, yeah. You know, it's a full mix, full Monty. I'm gonna do some images. You know, today I did an image plus a post

And I'm always thinking of like a full mix. I'll do at least one to two videos a week on LinkedIn. And so you don't know what you're going to get. Are they verbal riffs sometimes when you're making a video? Yeah. Sometimes it's just a verbal riff. Sometimes it's a video that I made in the studio. I mean, it's not like people look at my LinkedIn stuff and they're like, man, Marcus, you're really good. Like, do you have this like amazing backlog? It's like my backlog is that morning. I'm figuring out what I'm going to do. Literally, I am not prepared, but

I do understand how to tell a story and I got a lot of things on my mind. And so I just choose something from that. I cannot stress this enough. It's like at this point, I'm not hiring a marketer if they can't tell story. If I'm in the interview process, Michael, and literally I've got questions that I will ask to have to gauge their ability to tell me a story. And if they can't tell me a story and really get me into it, I'm not going to hire them. Can't do it today. I love it. Okay. And

And I will say from my own experience, there's really only three obvious platforms that you can post long form written content on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X, and that's it. Threads, unfortunately is very short form and it's just, it doesn't really work. So for those of you that are writers that are former bloggers, those are great platforms. Every one of the platforms has video of some sort. I'm finding that short form is the key on the social platforms. I'm

I mean, anything longer than a couple minutes, I don't think is performing. I mean, when you're doing your videos on LinkedIn, are you trying to keep them a couple minutes or what's your thoughts on that? That's not necessarily true, Michael. And I could be wrong. That's just my own experience. You can actually do longer form on LinkedIn effectively. And I've experimented with both. How long is long? Like 10 minutes? You know, I've done really successful ones that,

were like six to eight minutes long. Okay. So it's still pretty short. Now, granted, it's not 20 minutes, but no, in the short definition of 60 to 90 seconds, it is a lot longer than that. And a lot of people are thinking I can only do something that's like, you know, like 90 seconds. So five or six minutes, if it's a good story is more than. Yeah, absolutely works. Works well. Okay. Let's transition into where you think websites are going, because I think this is kind of cool. Talk to me a little bit about this. So you're like, all right, Marcus.

What the heck do I do with my website other than good content? And of course, good content continues to be just as a side note. It's really the stuff that no one else in your industry wants to talk about. So you got to be willing to have those conversations that others in your space are not. Now, in conjunction with that, though,

There's a stat that is changing everything from Gartner. And as soon as your audience hears this, they're going to be like, yep, of course, that's me. And that is this. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. I'll repeat. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. That means no salesperson, right? It basically means this.

We don't hate salespeople. We just do not want to talk to a salesperson until we are ready. And how do we define ready? Until we feel like we're informed and that we're not going to make a mistake. That's what defines readiness. And so...

You see a trend like this, and this number is only growing. You see a trend like this, there's two ways to perceive it. You can say, oh gosh, it's the end of salespeople as we know it. Or we can say there's opportunity here. You and I, Michael, we're going to say there's opportunity. And so we have this seller-free phenomena that's coming. And so how do you embrace the seller-free economy? The way you do that...

especially on your website, is through self-service. How can you replicate the traditional sales experience on your website? Now, let me give you the most classic one that if you've ever heard me, Marcus Sheridan before, you've heard me talk about the importance of discussing cost and price online.

Because if you're on a website and you're researching cost and pricing, you cannot find it, you get frustrated, and you leave. But if somebody's willing to teach you about it and at least give you a sense for it, generally speaking, you're going to say, oh, I appreciate it so much. You have businesses, for some reason, still living in the Stone Ages like it's 1995. That's the year I graduated high school, by the way, Michael. And they're still thinking it actually is helpful to not address cost and price. Folks, today, the phrase call for quote is the literal phrase.

middle finger of the internet. I mean it. And so how do you overcome flipping off your customers without you even realizing you're flipping them off, but they're feeling it. Trust me. Well,

There's different things that you can do. One of the most effective ways through self-service is what I would call a self-pricing tool or a self-estimator. Now, imagine somebody comes to your website and they're like, I don't know how much this is. I just want to get a sense before I'm going to reach out to you, before I'm going to fill out that form. And so they're able to go through an interactive series of questions, a tool on your site, and

They answer these, and then at the end, the tool gives them a range as to roughly what they're going to spend. Now suddenly they say, finally, somebody's willing to address this. I see them in the game, and now I want to get an exact quote. Now I'm going to fill out their form. And so being the guy that has been talking about how to address cost and price online for well over a decade, Michael, I came up or developed this tool called PriceGuide.ai. PriceGuide.ai is the fastest –

simplest, and least expensive pricing estimator tool on the internet today. It allows you, whether you have a product or service, to

with the help of AI, of course, to create an estimator tool that you can immediately put on your website and start generating leads. And just to give you a sense, for the people that do this, as long as they show it in the right place, like homepage, really clearly, visibly, you're going to get 3x the number of leads your website is currently getting by just having a pricing estimator tool. Now, there's other self-service tools out there, but that is one of the most effective. So check it out, priceguide.ai.

But there's so many more. And I'll say this as a prediction. And you can count this as a stone cold lead pipe lock in the future, Michael. And that is within the next five years, 90% of service based businesses are going to be forced to have some type of pricing estimator tool on their website. Why? Because the market will demand it.

And all it takes is a few dominoes to fall, and then everyone does it. You're now starting to see it in different industries, like lawn care. You're starting to see all of them are having it. Roofers, now they're all starting to have it, using different tools to measure your roof by Google Earth. And now, all of a sudden, they're getting your estimate because it works, people. And so that's why this is so effective.

Do this before your competitors force you to do it. Because remember, the rule breakers become the rule makers and everybody else becomes the rule followers. All right, so this is very, very important. This whole trend of self-service is just going to be huge. Can I mention just a couple other self-service trends, Michael? Sure. Okay, you're going to see a major trend of self-selection. This means if somebody is debating between choices, like let's say you have three products and they're like, which one should I use? An interactive tool that gives an unbiased assessment

as to what is the right choice. To give you an example of this, on my swimming pool website, we only sell fiberglass pools. I have a tool that allows them to figure out if they want a concrete, a vinyl, or a fiberglass swimming pool. It literally recommends. I tell dozens of people a day,

Based on your answers, you should go with a concrete pool. And I sell fiberglass. I'm sending them to the competition. That is what the market wants. That's how you become a known and trusted brand. But are most companies willing to do that? No. Should they be? Yes. It's no different than a simple tool that Michael Stelzner could have is fiberglass.

is social media marketing world the right event for me? And a series of questions. And based on that series of questions, they might get a score of just how right social media marketing world is for them. Okay. One great tool for this is called ScoreApp. Daniel Priestley, I think you know him. Good buddy of mine. Great, great tool to do

assessment tools, really, really powerful. So you got self-selection, self-assessment, self-configuration, self-scheduling tools. Last one little point, a little crazy story here, Michael. I've been helping a lot of my clients. We've been helping them get self-scheduling tools on their site. This is when somebody can schedule time with a salesperson without being forced to talk to a human first. But here's the caveat.

When you allow the person, the prospect, to see on the screen the different salespeople and allow them to choose which salesperson they work with, closing rates in every company I've worked with and done this to, double immediately, every time. When the person chooses their own salesperson, double closing rates. You see, that's the future of everything.

the website experience. Great websites are going to allow such incredible interaction, such control on the part of the buyer, the consumer, that they're going to call you up and they're like, I already did that tool on your website. I already know what I want. I already know what I need. I already got my salesperson. That's what they want. It's your job to meet them where they are. Folks, we're not done yet because I'm going to ask Marcus to put on his thinking cap and imagine one year to two years from now,

We talked about this crazy concept, which I want you to share with everyone. Where do you see this going? So, folks, this is going to happen in 2025. All right. You take it to the bank. You're going to come to my website. Let's call it River Pools. You're going to come to the River Pools website. And instead of a boring chat box where you can type some text, you're going to see a video version of Marcus or one of my team members.

And it's going to look just like me. It's going to sound just like me. It's going to be like we're on a Zoom call together almost, right? But I'll be in the corner and I'm going to literally say to you, welcome to the Riverpool's website. I am Digital Marcus. I'm not the real Marcus, of course, but I'm using all of his information that he has put on this website to answer any of your questions. Now, I'm going to give you two options.

You can ask me any question via text or audio and I'll answer them for you and we can have a full conversation. Or if you would like, I can give you a quote for your swimming pool right now. That's coming. Those are called digital humans, aka digital avatars. There's other names for them in the marketplace. And they're AI driven. They're AI driven. They are.

completely AI driven. And this is the future of the chat experience. We are going to feel like the whole chat stuff that we've been doing up to this point in one year from now, we're going to feel like that was like dinosaurs. When you feel like you're speaking with a human. Now I will caveat by saying, I think it's going to become a law anyway, that whenever there's any type of a digital human involved,

whether it's voice or video,

that it's going to be required that you say, hey, you're speaking with AI right now. This hasn't happened yet, but it's inevitable. And I think it's your fiduciary, your responsibility as a company to do that because it's the right thing to do. You should tell them that. But the technology from a voice perspective is pretty much already there. With the next iteration of ChatGPT, this is a slam dunk because we've got AGI and it's there. Not everybody's using it. I've already seen this. And for the record,

I feel like over a year ago, I had inbound salespeople calling me that were not people. They were AI. Yes. Yeah. And it already sounds exactly like a human. So I know that the tracking of your persona, whether it is really you or if it's a character that you license, I mean, I would imagine you're going to be able to hire, quote unquote, virtual digital humans that specialize in these things.

And then you tap them into your data set and they're trained on how to persuade or they're trained on how to educate or whatever it is. And it's just going to rock and roll. Michael, this is why you have to produce content, because if you don't have the content on your site, that database for that LLM to draw from, well, then you're not going to allow for this incredible chat experience.

The chat experience is going to be as good or as bad as what that bot, in this case, that digital human has been fed. Now, some people are hearing this, though, and they're saying, that doesn't feel very human to me. Oh, so you tell me this. What's more human? That somebody goes to your website and they just read some articles from you or they go to your website. They see what looks like you.

sounds like you it's using your brain and it has a full-on conversation with them and then when they meet you in real life they say you're just like your digital avatar that to me is way more human and so I

I'm all about it. I can't wait to do this. I am so jacked up. The interactivity of websites in the future is going to be extraordinary. It's a great time to be thinking about websites. I am so into it. And that's because of AI. To those that are concerned about this, put yourself in the mind of a customer. What's worse?

When, you know, you can't get access to someone because it's after hours or on the weekend and then you need something versus actually interacting with something that is competent and is actually able to schedule someone to be out to your house, like literally on Monday morning at 8 a.m. I mean, this is what consumers want, man. They want this stuff.

Marcus, we could talk about this all day long. I love your passion. We already know Marcus Sheridan on LinkedIn. If they want to go ahead and learn more about how to work with you in any kind of capacity, where do you want to send them beyond LinkedIn? You know, I would recommend everybody goes to endlesscustomers.com. My book is available on Amazon right now. So I would love your support there. I think there's going to be so many takeaways. If you know EOS and traction, this is like

the EOS of digital sales and marketing, this book. So I'm very, very excited about it. And anybody can reach out to me anytime, Marcus at Marcus Sheridan.com or message me directly on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you, brother, for coming on. Appreciate you. Hey, I forgot to mention Marcus will be speaking at social media marketing world. If you liked what you heard today and you want a chance to hear more amazing stuff from the mind of Marcus, be sure to grab your tickets today.

Also, if he talked about stuff that you didn't capture, well, we got it all for you at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 651. If you've been a longtime listener, would you give this show a review on your favorite platform? And let me know what you thought about the show. You can tag me at Stelzner on Facebook, at Stelzner on LinkedIn, at Mike underscore Stelzner on Instagram.

maybe let your friends know about it. And do check out our other shows, the AI Explored podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting socialmediamarketingworld.info.