Surviving and Driving The AI Search Revolution

Hello everybody. This is Scott with another Valley Rally. Man, I am, I'm pinch hitting for Jake again and again. It feels like I'm doing every one of them. But I've got a friend who today doing some really cool stuff. We're going to talk about geo, which, you know, everyone talks about SEO. Dave Spanicke from Reunion Marketing. Dave, how you doing today?

Doing good. Always good to see you, Scott.

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a really interesting topic for everyone. I love this slide because it's on everyone, everyone of our mind. Dave, you're an expert in SEO and search, but we're going to talk about how that's changing today. But first before we get going, could you talk about you and your company and just give, give people a little background on you and why you're an expert in this, in my opinion.

Yeah, well, I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean I've been in auto for 20 years, so I mean I started a reunion with a few other folks that actually I hired as the marketing director for Leith Automotive. I spent 10 years there. I was, I oversaw 33 stores and their marketing plans and then hired some really, really smart guys surrounding myself with those. And then those last three years we were there, we increased the lead volume to the group by 400%. They went from 800 million to 1.4 billion in revenue. And we said, well, let's get this, let's start this ourselves. So we started 10 years ago, zero clients and you know, self funded and then now we're working with, you know, about 550 across the country and you know, since then also those founded with David Kane and Brent Williams the vendor 20 group. And we're both in, in that group together as the president of that organ. So that's, that's my auto background.

Well, you are an expert in SEO and I bet you've had to talk about or you've really had to look in the mirror and, and see the, the changes that have been happening. I know for our perspective when we look at our metrics, a year ago, Chat GPT wasn't, didn't even show up at the start of the year. It was like ninth on the list and last month it was fourth. I, I, I, we, we all know where it's headed. So could you talk about what is traditional SEO and, and what dealers have done in the past? A traditional dealer?

Yeah, you know, I mean the traditional SEO is actually, I think really easy if you do it right. You know, because you go into Google Search Console or you look at Google Ads Query data. And you can see here's all the different searches that, that consumers are looking at and basically you just need to show up for them. You know, what, what are the searches that make the phone ring? What are the searches that get people to the dealership? You can track all of that. And then basically, if you're not ranking for those things, prioritize your effort, build content, you know, be, be the one who's given the narrative. And that's the primary goal is, you know, those first one or two, you know, blue links on the Google search engine result page, those are the ones that get the vast majority of all the organic clicks. I mean, you know, those two alone, I mean make up for, I mean, 75% of all the clicks that happen on organic. And so you just want to be in one of those top positions or else you don't get considered and you're the only in that case that's shaping the narrative. So it's pretty easy. Just show up and be the voice that's, that's, that's discussing it. Very different than, than what's happening with Geo though.

Yeah, your technology is incredible and how you target it by region and, and such. But you've kind of had a look in the mirror moment, haven't you? Because, because everything's changing, right?

Yeah, you know, I mean, it was pretty scary I think, at first. You know, I mean, our approach is, you know, what's happening in your market. Right. So very first and foremost, you know, we like to just look at a map, where are you selling cars? And then let's prioritize being seen by consumers in all the areas that, you know, that we want to sell cars, we want to, you know, take market share from the competition. It's just, it's fun to, you know, build an SEO plan around that or SEM plan and then, you know, as Chat, GPT and Perplexity and Gemini and GROK and all these other AI LLMs are out there, more acronyms for this industry. We didn't have enough. It's like, well, this is going to dramatically change things. Anytime that there's that much change, it's scary. I think at this point though, now we are, I think, much more excited about it. The more complicated it gets then I think that's a better thing for any of the dealerships that are at the forefront to take advantage. This is a huge take advantage moment for dealers and those that are doing the right things to invest for the future are going to win over those that aren't.

Well, this is why I had Dave on today. You early adopters are going to have an incredible advantage. So what is GEO stand for and, and how do you optimize for it?

Yeah, Generative Engine optimization. And you know, you know, the funny thing is, I mean that's what a lot of people are going with. That might not end up being the long term name. You know, a lot of people are using different names for it. That's what the one that we're, we're adopting, that we're seeing the most as, as we are reading about it. There's no blueprints out there, there's no templates for this though. So I mean really a lot of people are just figuring it out as it goes. But essentially more and more consumers are making their shopping decisions based on information from those different generative engines. And what you want to do is you want to be one, seen across all of them, but you also two want to be seen with a positive light. This is very different than SEO where you build a page of content and then you show up in that first position and then you're the one telling the story. I mean these, these generative engines, you know, ChatGPT, it's, it's deciding how to portray, you know, each of the dealerships. So instead of just building a lot of great content on a website, which is still very important, in fact, I think more content is important so you can help shape how you're seen. But it's also pulling from dealerrater and cars.com and Reddit and the manufacturer and I mean like everything is influencing where and how you're showing up. So it's way, way, way more extensive, you know, than traditional search. And you know, it's going to be really important for dealers to get an idea of how, how to best measure it. And especially without being able to see information like you see in search console or Google Ads, query data. You know, there's no, there's no actual consumer usage data. So there's a little bit of guesswork that comes into it. But you know, that's, that's what been the exciting thing for us is doing that research and really identifying, okay, how do we best show up and, and be the influencers, you know, across those, those results.

So chat, GPT and the like, they're searching for content on your website Testimonials. Right, and reviews of the dealership as well. Anything else that, that really come into the calculation?

Well, I mean, you know, just to expound upon some of those, you know, these last Several years, a lot of dealerships have really focused their review strategy to just be Google business profile and have gotten away from, you know, getting stuff out on Edmunds and Cars.com and Dealer Raider and all these other, these other review sites. You know, right now it's really important to make sure that what's being said on those other sites is, you know, one is being refreshed with new, relevant content, that it's good that you are managing your ORM strategy in a more complex environment. It kind of like, you know, it really does kind of bring me back to when online reputation was first being talked about back in, you know, 2007, 2008, 2010, when people started to focus on it because, you know, they're getting stuff everywhere. And then it got narrowed down. But now, I mean, if you have one, you know, I was doing a search just today, actually building out a deck for, for our friend David Kane's conference that's coming up. And you know, they talked about all these good reviews on Cars.com and on DealerRater and then there was one bad review on Yelp and they referenced that one bad review. I mean, it is that dialed to where it's pulling information from everywhere. And if you're not keeping an eye on what's being said about you, what we keep seeing over and over again is, you know, there's stuff on, you know, cars.com 2019 Dealer of the Year, you know, 2017, you know, best service, you know, on, you know, dealer rater. And so people haven't been updating these pages. They haven't really thought or consider these pages, I mean, about their dealership and what's being communicated out there to these, you know, these different LLMs. And so, you know, it's. It's actually very surprising. Often, you know, bbb, all the stuff that's in BBB is influencing them. So, you know, beginning to start tracking what's being said about you is what this is all about. And very. There's very few technologies out there that are even doing it because it's so new. But, but, you know, if you want to look at what's happening, just like you said, I mean, ChatGPT being, you know, the fourth, you know, biggest traffic source for one of your stores. It is, it is growing so much faster than even people were predicting the usage of this. I mean, me Personally, I use ChatGPT more than I use Google, you know, and me, four months ago, I don't know if I would have said that. You know, I know I Know, I wasn't saying that. You know, I'm surprised. I am. It just, it's just way, way easier for how I like to go about looking at things. And then the shopping experience is going to get that much more robust and, and good as, as they keep doubling down. I mean, they, they keep making updates all the time.

So is there one review site that is weighed heavier than others? Do you have any idea or do you really just need to, you know, the breadth of the, of the Internet or the universe? You've gotta, you gotta have, you gotta be conscious of all of them.

Yeah, I mean, you know, somewhat surprising to me, Dealer Raider is the one that we've seen the most. So we've been running all sorts.

You.

Know, prompt result of research projects. I mean, we're building some pretty neat tech that's actually just about to fully come out. It's in beta right now. That, that shows, you know, what your visibility is, how positive or negative it is, and then how many citations, basically how many sources are fueling that result. And, and so, I mean, dealerradar gets a ton of those cars. Dot com gets a ton, Edmunds gets a ton of those ones. I think we see the most. I don't have the specific percentages ahead of me, but I mean that's, and it does vary by whether it's ChatGPT, which that's the one that you really want to focus on the most. That's 82% market share I think, right now, versus the other ones. So we really are just like Google owns the search market, ChatGPT owns the generative engine market right now for these LLMs. But, but I mean, those are the ones that we're seeing the most. But then at the same time, you know, like just if you do just some, some basic searches, if you want to just check out on your own, go to chat GBT and say, which dealership should I choose? You know, between, you know, you and your competitor or your competitors. And then you'll see, you know, where it's pulling from. I mean, do that a few times. You know, where, where should I buy a Ford F150? You know, what should I consider in this market for doing that, those kind of searches, you'll see a lot of that stuff. And the ultimate goal is to be feeding it mostly with as much as you can get on your website as possible. Because we know that if you end up driving traffic to your website, it's the land and no competitors, there's no, the leads from your website usually convert Two to three times higher because you're not also sending stuff out to a third party where you got competitors that are getting leads too at the same time. So you want to do that, but knowing that this new environment, we can't just dominate the same kind of way as SEO. We just have to be there and be as visible as possible. And it's a little bit more like trying to do the old Anheuser Busch model, where you just have as many spots on the grocery aisle as possible, but knowing that there's going to be other people there as well. So how do you own that market? And frankly, I mean, it's been so ignored a lot of these other sources because we've been as an industry really trying to focus on driving traffic just to our site, that there's a lot of work to be done for dealers who, who have not been paying attention.

So you don't really just pick one. The work you do populates all of them.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, well, it's just, it's really important to prioritize too, because there's so much to be done. You know, where, where are, where are you being seen the most? What's influencing the most? And just work backwards. I mean, just like SEO, you can make it mathematical and, you know, and the thing is, I mean, it's far and different when it's whether it's new car, you know, related, you know, prompts or used car related prompts or, you know, just dealership by dealership. You know, One of the things that goes into this that I think is very important is that PR is kind of back with SEO. It's like, look, let's. Let's get them the inventory. You know, the cars are the stars. Let's let them shop. You know, people are looking for things they can, they will make their own decisions based on, you know, what, what they're looking for. Now, what's being said about you or what you're saying about yourself goes into these answers. So all the awards and accolades you've had over the years, what is the actual experience like, you know, in the service department? What are you offering and making, you know, your customers feel, you know, throughout the process, what are the expectations that people can. Should expect, I guess, when they're going to the dealership? And is that part of what you're building, you know, when you're building your content out, when you're talking about yourself, you know, when you're asking for reviews? Those are the things that are now fueling a lot of this narrative. So I mean, PR is a pretty important part of this that often has been maybe overlooked in the past because it's just how do we get the cars in front of the people looking for it the fastest?

Right. Well, it massively changes your business too, right. Because instead of you placing ads and you must be helping dealers with tons of content. Right?

Yeah, well, and I think this is the part that is, I think the hard thing right now because right now, I mean all search Traffic, it's about 95% is still going to the traditional search engines. So I mean people are still largely doing Google and Bing and Google owns that market. Right. But I mean Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, those other things, I think it's 94.4, I think was what the. Yeah, I'm just looking at the stat here. 94.4% is what the number is on that. And so the vast majority is still going there and just over 5% going to these other ones. But, but that's going to just change a lot over time. So you know, one of the mistakes that a lot of people make when they're doing SEO content is that they make it so robust that you're not getting the inventory in front of people and then it doesn't convert and people are not, they're not shopping, they're not finding the right cars, they're not making, they're not doing the things that are the shopping behaviors that get them to the dealership. So, so you, so you really need to have a mix of that because you don't want to lose that. Not the Edmunds type page or the OEM page. You want the inventory to show up. If someone's looking for a Ford F150 for sale near me on Google, you want that content to be all built around conversion. But then you also have to build a different kind of content for the generative engines where you're talking about the experience and you're talking about all the dealership differentiators and you're talking about what are all the expectations that you're going to see and experience when you're there at the dealership in a different kind of way. Long form content. So you want, you want, you know, content that converts on the SEO side where you, where you, you still are getting the vast majority of people, but you want to be building for the future. And so I think what a lot of, because we live in the 30 day cycle in this industry and you know, a lot of it is like, what's my immediate ROI on you know, what I'm spending in this part of the marketing plan. Geo is not today investment. It's an investment that you're going to be making knowing that if right now it's 5%, it's going to go to 10 and 20 and then no one knows for sure. Google's released their AI mode which actually I think that's gotten better. I've been using, I mean we play with all of them to get a good idea of how they're working. I mean they're looking to try to stop the bleeding that's beginning to. It's more than just a little scratch now, more than a little kick in the armor. But right now it's a balancing act because you don't want to miss out still in the 95% of searches. But if you're not investing in the future then those that are are going to be significantly ahead because there's a lot of work that goes into showing up in these things and a lot of dealerships right now are not built to do that. You know who's showing up right now is you know, OEMs or you know, the, the third party websites. And again the more that we can be the ones influencing, the more that we're gonna have, we're gonna get better leads, better quality leads, more to ourselves. I mean that's the ultimate goal is not to take them where competitors are, but to own the space.

So Google isn't dead yet, but better be planning for a day when they're a lot less influential.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean a lot of you see SEO is dead. I mean everyone says that, I mean they've been saying that, I mean since about a month after SEO was first coin I think. But it's certainly not dead. But it is way different. I mean even the zero click searches on Google, I mean that's 69% of all the searches on Google are happening without a click at the end of the day. But in the last three years the number of searches overall has gone from 4 trillion to 5 trillion searches. I mean people are because of these zero clip searches able to search that much more. And they are, they're asking a lot of questions first, they're getting answers a lot faster and easier and then they get to the commercial searches which is the most important ones. Those ones most time don't have AI overviews. It's about 10% of the commercial searches. That's what a lot of people are calling it, where you know, it's high intent in market Ready to buy, you know, like I said Ford F150, you know, for sale or Ford F150 prices, you know, in the Dallas market or whatever that, whatever the intent search is. That's where, you know, they still recognize that consumers want to do the shopping, they want to see the options. They're not going to get the quick answer. You know, they're going to, you know, I think that experience is starting to evolve and we're starting to see, you know, different ways in which they're experimenting with layouts on those kind of searches. But it's still, you know, the, the zero click searches are good because they get people into or down the funnel faster than having to do that themselves. And so that's why we've gone from 4 trillion to 5 trillion in just a few years in terms of total searches overall. I mean it's Google's being used more than ever, not less.

Okay, I have two more questions and then one bonus question. So number one, what should a dealer look for in an ad agency to help them with this? What, what, Give me, give me a few questions that they should vet their potential vendor on if they're going to have help with this.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think overall first it starts with, you know, market understanding. You know, does, does your agency know, you know, who, who's selling cars and where they're selling cars? You know, where are the pockets that are, you know, that you need to own in your backyard? Where are the real battlegrounds? You know, what are the comparisons between you and your competitors if you're not armed with that kind of knowledge? I think it's really hard to even prioritize anything. You know, you can't do SEO everywhere. You know, like there is a priority order. You can't do GEO everywhere. Like where are the areas that we really want to be seen in the most that are going to have the biggest impact on sales? I think that that's an important, you know, first step and then the next part is, I mean, just transparency and you know, in your data and direction, you know, I mean, you know, how, how well are you like, you know, are you tracking keywords in SEO? Are you monitoring your, your brand sentiment and your visibility and the prompts on, on the LLMs? You know, are you, you know, where are you spending money and where are you not and how does that relate to overall sales and market share on, you know, things like paid search and, and, and those kind of things? I mean it's, I think, I think those are, those are the most important parts because you know, that's where the roi, the immediate ROI is measured and it's also where the long term investment, you know, in your future is understood by that kind of transparency.

What about without getting any into specifics, what should you ask a dealer or what should a dealer ask their ad agency about pricing? Because you guys have a very high touch and fixed pricing model that I thought was very reasonable. So give some basic questions that they should ask when they're interviewing ad agencies to help with stuff like this.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean transparency and pricing is also something that is I think a pretty major talking point right now in advertising. You know, I was talking to, and we were actually talking before this interview about our mutual friend James Clouse about just how many agencies out there are just ripping dealers off left and right and just overcharging on margins and not being transparent. So I think first off, anytime that there's any kind of media buy, I think having a very source driven reporting system, everyone should have access to their own Google Ads. I mean are you charging commission versus just you know, flat fee? You know, because, because then if you're advising people to spend more money and you're charging commission, I mean obviously there's a, there's a direct correlation there on, on, on, on how that works, you know, and, and, and, and I think just, I mean anytime that I recommend any, any kind of marketing spend, I like to look at the, the marketing cost per car sold equation. This is the, the former VP of marketing in me. You know, I think if dealers don't often have that as a goal to set up their overall marketing plan in general, I think that's, that's the overall starting point is how many cars you want to sell. How much should we be spending for each car? I think as an industry we're spending about twice as much as we should be back in, I mean I know it's been 10 years now, but when I was the VP of marketing back there, we were about $200 a car on marketing. I mean several million dollar budget. I think it was about 8 million. But we were, I think a lot of people overspend because they don't, you know, they don't set those kind of goals. And I think all those things come into the equation as you're, you're talking to your agency or any of your marketing partners.

Okay, last question. Beside before my bonus question, give me, you're a, you're a prospective dealer, you don't have an agency to help you with this. Give me the top three things that a dealer should start doing now to, to get ready to, I don't know, index well on these, on the chatgpt groks of the world.

Yep. I mean first and foremost to identify how you're showing up now you gotta, you gotta have a benchmark somewhere so you can make sure that you are progressing throughout that time. So whether that is you're just running your own prompts in your markets or you find some tools out there, you know there aren't many right now for GEO in the industry, there are actually very few. But, but some way that you can start benchmarking how visible you are now and then following that then make sure that you are buttoned up on the online reputation management space. You are across Google business profile but way beyond that to all these directories that you're getting reviews everywhere and that those reviews are positive because the negative sentiment, unlike SEO again on the GEO side you can show up you know, 85% of the time but it could be 100% negative sentiment because they're pulling this information in from your review. So ORM online reputation management is, has never been, I don't think more important than it is right now because it's always, it's always had an influence in the SEO side. But this is what's being said about you. I mean they are deciding what to say about you. You don't get to pick anymore. And then finally you know, your visibility on the third party websites too, you know the autotraders, the Edmunds, the Cars.com dealerships have not cleaned up their images on that. You know and so I mean I'm not kidding. I've seen you know some of those pages as Non updated as 10 years + in the past that people haven't gone through and made those updates because it hasn't really mattered I think to a lot of dealerships because those pages were showing up in position page two of Google. Right. Where no one ever goes, you know, I mean you know getting further and further back. So just being buttoned up across the board. There's a lot of work to do. But again it starts with benchmarking and then building a plan. Oh I guess. And then lastly build some major content, you know, some, some long form content about your dealership so that you are the, you know, you're the one who's doing the most narration as in terms of what's being said about you. So keep your SEO strategy but then build that long form content that's Going to help you get, help you craft the narrative.

So what you're saying is the about us and any community pages they have really matter nowadays.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that that would be one of the first pages to do, you know, your homepage and the about us pages. I mean, those ones are, those are very important now you know, more than ever, I think.

Okay, so here's my bonus question. It has nothing to do with Geo. Guys, this has been an awesome volley rally. I hope that you've stuck around this long because Dave's company does an awesome job. And this is about traditional SEO. I, I see a lot of dealers do terrible job on Google My business. That, that portion of, of of that page. What are the couple things that you need to make sure you've done? Because Google my business is such a powerful, I don't know, you want to call it a lead magnet or landing spot. Give us a couple Google My business tips.

Well, I mean, so there's about a hundred things that comes through in the API. I think I've just shown with you a little bit of our tech when we go through. And we like to rank how optimized the page is. But I mean, you got your primary page, you've got your service listing, your parts listing underneath it. And within each one of those things, I mean, there's, I mean, you want to make sure that you're updating photos. You want to make sure that you are, you know, have your, your, you know, your cars listed, your inventory actually listed. You want to make sure that, I mean, that you've got all your categories. You know, probably the most important thing is that you have your categories, because this is what a lot of dealers don't have. And then there's actually a tool called GMB Spy. Even though it's Google Business Profile, GMB Spy that George Nenny created, that you can go click on and just see what your categories are if you wanted to look it up, like specifically. But I mean, there's so many things to optimize for. The nice thing is that there it is a limited list. So, you know, you want to have your categories, you want to make sure that your name, address, phone number, citations are all put into place. You want to have your link to your service scheduler, but there's only so much you can do. Just make sure you do all of it. And so basically what you're doing is you're telling Google, hey, here's all of the services that we offer so that you can show up more often. And then you make yourself look as good as you possibly can and you check every box and fill it up with information. And the crazy thing is, I mean, I would say like on the service and parts pages that 85% of dealers across the country don't have more than 20 reviews. So, so they're not, you know, they might be getting seen, but they, but they don't get phone calls. There's a direct correlation and I mean nearly everyone has not gone through and done this. I mean, it's not like now things do break, you know, but, but I mean optimizing that page, I mean a lot of it is just making sure you go through and check it all off and then just make sure that you are ongoing, you know, monitoring it to so that it doesn't change. But unlike your website where you can build content and content and content and content and content, there's only a limited amount of things you can do there. So just make sure you're doing it all so you can help tell Google, hey, here's what we want to show up for and here's what we're good at. And then get reviews.

Folks. That is one of the great services they provide. And I know of a couple other people that do it, but most ad agents, agencies don't keep that updated. These guys do it every month. Ask your ad agency if, if they're going to keep that updated every month because it is, it just blew me away and, and I've been looking ever since I saw Dave's tech to see and a lot of dealers do not keep that updated. So this has been awesome today. Tell everyone how they can get ahold of you.

Yeah, I mean, you know, email is always a good method. Davearunionmarketing.com Nice and easy. Or LinkedIn reach out. And I'm pretty active on there as well and I would love talking about it obviously, if you can't tell, but I'm very passionate about it for sure.

Okay, well, thank you. Have a good day, Dave.

Hey, thanks, Scott.

Goodbye.