How We Maximize Conference ROI and the Truth About Google vs. ChatGPT | Ep. 3032

All right, so I'm on the go, but the difference is I brought my mic. See, I had a mic issue before, but see, Neil thought I wasn't going to get it together. I have this other mic over here, wasn't working, but it was okay. I had a backup mic. Okay. So anyway, that's—

I digress.

So I wanted to bring up— so Neil and I, we're both speaking at HubSpot's Inbound next week, and that's a conference. It's sold out. There's— I think there's like 30,000 people or so coming. And it's in San Francisco. And, you know, HubSpot's a nice conference to talk about. And I think we can probably talk about how we're preparing for it, but also talk about how people can get the most ROI from these events. And if you are going to be at HubSpot, I'm sure, Neil, you had people hit you up. I've had people hit me up too. So come say hi to us. I think we're speaking at 2:45 PM next Thursday, 2:45 PM Pacific. And then, Neil, what time is your session? I think your session's the day before on Wednesday. What time is yours at?

I think it's like 4 o'clock or something like that.

4 o'clock, yeah. So, Neil will be on the main stage for that one and then we'll be on the education stage, which is upstairs that can fit 2,500 people. I think Neil's stage can fit like 7,500 people. So, we'll be doing a Marketing School session at 2:45 PM on Thursday, again, September 4th. And then on the 5th, I'm doing my session, same stage actually, at 11 AM. And so, you can catch us for any of these. Come say hi and happy to hang out. I think we can probably just jump into our preparation a little bit and also how we're making the most of this one. So, do you want to jump in first and then I'll kind of talk about what we're doing?

So, when you mean preparation, like preparing to go on stage and speak or how we're trying to get the most out of the event or?

That's a good question. So, I really mean, maybe let's talk about how we maximize our ROI for these because Neil comes in and out for these. I tried to make sure that even though Neil and I are going to be in the same city, I I try to make sure we get a marketing school session in. And so, I found a podcast studio, or rather, one of my team members found a studio near us, and basically, we're going to get a recording session in. Usually, I'll try to throw a dinner as well. Usually, we'll try to meet with a couple of customers, for example, because you build the in-person touch, right? And I think a lot of people, they go to these events and they kind of just, they do it, they're not really thoughtful in terms of how they plan. They're like, I'm going to check out a couple sessions, maybe I'll hang out at a networking event for a little bit, and then I'll just go hide in my hotel room, right? Yeah. If you're going to go to these things, it's a lot of time and a lot of money to spend on these things. You might as well try to figure out how to maximize it. And even if you're not speaking, for example, I was looking at HubSpot. They have these things called brain dates. And so, if you're going to go to these events, SaaStr has these brain dates where you can hang out with people and talk to people you're interested in talking about. You can form little groups too. And it's really the relationships that you're trying to build from this. That's why I like throwing these dinners. That's why we like meet— we do sometimes what we'll do, these little meetups, right? It's all about the relationships. And even if you might not do business with someone right now, you might end up doing business with them a couple years later, or they might refer someone later. So you don't know what's going to happen, but you do know that really relationships are the main currency from these things.

Yeah. And what I tend to do is I look at everything as— because we more focus on enterprise, and I don't know how many enterprise businesses are going to be at HubSpot, but they have been going upstream over the years. So there are more enterprise businesses that use HubSpot now than let's call it 3, 4 years ago, not just because they're a bigger company, but I think They've made a deliberate goal to not just help SMBs, but also help enterprises as well. And what I'll do is San Francisco being a big city where a lot of major tech companies are and even non-tech companies are, I'll just set up meetings with people I already know and just continually build relationships and foster them because a lot of these people are CMOs of large corporations or they're in product or they run different parts of marketing. And I'm not necessarily looking to try to get a business deal or anything like that from these meetings. It's just more so to maintain relationships because you never know when these people are going to bring you deals, whether it's that company or they move to another company. So you just want to maintain them. And if you're going after enterprise-type customers, what you'll find is most of your business is going to get— is going to be brought from referrals over time. And that is why we just continually network and meet up with them.

Yeah, if you guys are watching me on the camera, and the reason I'm like bending backwards because my back hurts. But so what I will say too is—

Why does your back hurt, Eric?

Well, no, I was playing tennis this morning. No, no, it's an innocent response. But so what I will say is, we have had— because LinkedIn is actually in the city. Okay, so Carrot is a LinkedIn account-based marketing product. We didn't know that Account executives, so salespeople from LinkedIn, were actually referring to Carrot. So a lot of the leads that we've had coming in on a more enterprise side, it has actually been LinkedIn referring them. So I asked for the name of names of a couple of these reps because that's how we got Snap as a lead, also Snapchat. And I I ended up reaching out to some of the reps, and I'm just going to hang out with them for a little bit and and you know break bread or you know drink tea at the at the tea gardens and things like that. But again, like you say, you're maybe you're you're trying to deepen a relationship, or maybe you're trying to start a relationship. But I think we've talked. about this maybe in the last episode, but financial wealth is nice and everything, but upstream of that is really social wealth and social wealth leads to the financial wealth.

So you're going to SF, LinkedIn has a big office there. Maybe their headquarters are still there. I'm assuming they still are. They're in SoMa. Yeah. So why aren't you having LinkedIn throw an event with all their top advertisers and then you just give them advice and you help and then you can plug in Carrot? You know they do that, right? We've done it quite a few times with LinkedIn.

That's a great idea. I don't think this guy has enough power or some of these people have enough power. I don't think we're talking to the right people.

Yeah, just reach out to people at LinkedIn who run like events. I forgot what title they are, but we go and we reach out to them and we'll do like events.

Is it just like app manager?

I don't know what the title is. We've done it a few times with them, but here's the key. You reach out to them in advance. It's not going to end up working for this one coming up in like You know, it's too, too, too fast.

All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side.

What we do with LinkedIn is we will— if you reach out in advance, They will invite their big advertisers on LinkedIn and they'll do an event. You speak and you help them out with marketing on LinkedIn as well as outside of LinkedIn. It's a value add that LinkedIn's providing to their top advertisers for free. You are networking and getting to know them. So typically when we did our sessions at LinkedIn, they'll fill a room with like 30 different companies. I'm making up a number, but it's somewhere around there. Call it 20, Not really 40. We usually see like 20 to 30, somewhere around there. And these are like some of their big advertisers. They do a few different speeches. LinkedIn will talk, you will talk. They may bring in 1 or 2 more speakers. When I was doing one in Brazil, Ryan Bonici, who used to work at HubSpot, he was supposed to be a speaker, but he got sick sadly. Hopefully he was okay. And a few different people will talk and then they set them up into groups. And what we like doing is everyone on the group come up with like a few of their biggest problems, and then you go around and you help answer those issues and you help them solve it. And then you're building a good rapport with them. You're plugging in your own business when you talk, and it's like fishing with dynamite. We think it's one of the best events for us.

I think that's a very underutilized way of doing it. I remember we've done a couple of these things, but it's more been proactive from the other side. And I think what you're saying too is you're, It's better if you're proactive about sending them out because they have the budget to do it anyway and they always like to—

No, no, no, it's free. It's in their office. You're using their own space. And then after you're done—

What about food and stuff? Food, beverage, all that?

No, they even provide food. That's what I'm saying.

They have a little budget for this.

No, no, no. They provide food in their office on a normal daily basis for their employees.

Oh, you mean they're just pulling the same cafeteria food and the same snacks and all that?

Yeah. So we would go to like, when I was— did it, the last one I did was in Brazil. We did it in there after. We like doing it in the morning. And then you eat lunch with them.

Why do you like the morning?

Because then you can eat lunch with them and you can get to know them on a personal level. Oh, okay.

And people are tired at the end of the day.

Yeah. And then LinkedIn has a cafeteria, so we all just go there and we eat their food, which they've already made. It doesn't really cost them any extra.

Yeah.

Like maybe a little bit for food, but they probably have a lot of wasted food anyways.

That's a good idea. So guys, feel free to steal that one. I think it's worth it. It's definitely worth it for us on the carrot side. But that goes again, like I think What we're really getting at here is if you're trying to maximize ROI from going to any conference or any live event, you have to be proactive. And that's, I think that's the takeaway from this one. But anyway, you want to pick the next one?

Yeah. Did you see ChatGPT is using SERP API now? So for a while now they've been scraping Google. Was it The Independent or someone who ended up releasing the article on that?

I don't know, but I know they were hesitant to reveal someone. And I know like a year or two ago, there's like one company making tens of millions, maybe like close to 9 figures because OpenAI was paying us. And now we find out it's SERP API or whatever it is.

But here's the cool part, right? Or the interesting part, not really cool. Everyone's just like, Google search is dead. There was even an interesting article that I just read recently on how Google's traffic is declining by really, really, really small, like a fraction of a percent. So not even 1%. And they were saying ChatGPT is growing really fast. It'll catch up to Google. It's a question of when. And I get it. And they're just like, Google isn't relevant anymore. But yet you're seeing tools like ChatGPT still scrape Google because the results are relevant.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, what is it? Google still at 42% of searches. And then I think ChatGPT is like 0.19% or something like that, but it's growing quickly. But things, things like this don't die that quickly, even if it was dying. Right. I think it's— I do think website traffic slowing down a little bit, but I think search behavior is changing. And I think we can all agree with that.

Yeah, and here's another interesting topic. This one's from Kevin Indig, I believe his last name is. I could be wrong on the name. No, you're good. So he wrote an interesting article on Search Engine Journal, and what was interesting is he put something in there and I'm just going to end up reading it. Recent data from SEMrush and Perfrance suggests that 1/3 to 2/3 of user intent when interacting with AI chatbots is generative, meaning users use ChatGPT to do and less to search, right? And we see the same thing. Like when I use ChatGPT on most cases, I don't know about you, I'm not using it like search. I'm using it to more so help me do stuff.

That's interesting because I'm looking at my— so I'm looking at my ChatGPT log. Okay, so today I have my tennis training calorie burn because I'm on vacation right now. So I was playing tennis this morning for like 2 hours. So I was doing research, I guess.

So you Yeah, but you're trying to get it to analyze and help you figure out how many calories you're burning versus— Yeah.

And then, but I'm asking a lot of questions and I'm dictating a lot and it's not like 1 or 2 queries. And then also I'll ask calories and macros and then human philosophical things. So I think I'm doing much deeper research that I normally wouldn't have done before because it would take too long.

But how many of it is transactional when you just look at your history?

What do you mean by transactional?

Leading you to buy a product, learn about a product.

Okay, I got one for you here. No, no, but how many?

Because it shows you your log, right?

I'm looking at the last, let's take the last 10. Okay, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. My last 10 searches, maybe only one of them were transactional because that led to me buying something for, I was buying like Korean skincare yesterday.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, you know, and I find that most my usage on ChatGPT is to get it to help me do something or become more efficient or save time. I also do use it for deep research. I do not use it for the same purposes I normally would use Google for. It's very different. Yeah.

I just ask a lot more questions. I'll just say that, like, I'll ask a lot of philosophical things I normally wouldn't have asked. And so now I have a lot of useless facts in my head, but at least when I'm in the middle of a conversation, I can spit these things out. So I will say though, I looked at the top 11. So 2 of 11 were actually transactional. So the one right after it was transactional. So, and by the way, like we all behave differently, just like we process things differently. So I think it's still going to take a little more time to really have the data down.

Yeah, I agree with that. But going back to what you were saying on deep research, I think a lot of people use it for deep research. It's one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT. And Google, you can try to use it for deep research. It's just not as good. AI mode's not bad, but I think people have it ingrained in their head that if you want to do deep research in AI, you just go to ChatGPT.

Yeah.

Even if AI mode provided better results, I think they've just won the consumer. They won on the branding game.

Cool. All right, guys, that's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you later.