ZoomInfo's SEO torched, AI's early winner: consultants?, Steve Jobs on good ads, & more

So this tweet's from Gaetano Di Nardi. So, good buddy, and congrats Gaetano for your baby son. So, here's the collapse of ZoomInfo's organic traffic. It's a classic SEO story of feast and famine. Number 1, they were living and now dying off millions of auto-generated programmatic SEO landing pages. They basically used database SEO to create 2 flavors of pages. A, company profile pages. For example, Walmart employee contact info. B, people profile pages. Walmart CEO email address. Number three, the idea is that salespeople wanting this information would search for it on Google, land on a ZoomInfo paywall page, and sign up. This clearly worked tremendously well for for at least a few years. ZoomInfo was the first company to do it. Then RocketReach, Apollo, etc. started doing it, and so so they got hit in 2023, it seems. And so check out this big spam update in 2023 October. Yeah. Okay, and it just Drops off like a cliff. Wow. Yeah, so it might be working for Perplexity, but it's not working for ZoomInfo anymore.

And how long will it work for Perplexity?

Just being honest. Yeah, and because everyone's bragging about it right now, there's Google just like, oh, okay, oh, goodbye, another AI competitor as well. Oh yeah, exactly. Oh, we're not buying you guys? Okay, goodbye traffic, right? Yes.

Yeah, no dude, they can crush him. I bet you their traffic would go down You know, all these gains here would literally go down by that much.

I mean, if I'm Google, I'm just like, oh, you guys are spamming. I'm sorry. Like, you're going to lose your traffic.

Honestly, if I owned Google, I would just shut it down. I wouldn't give a crap what people thought.

You mean, when you say shut it down, you mean take away the traffic?

Yeah, I would take away the traffic.

Yeah.

It's competition. This is reality. People may not like that, but business is business. Business is business. You know what's funny, dude? This morning I was on a call with a buddy of mine. He used to live in India, moved to Seattle. Uh, he sold a company. He's worked at Microsoft, Amazon, managed tons and tons of employees.

Must be rich.

Very rich. He's done well. He would always joke with me. He's this—

I'm not joking.

Yeah, he is rich. No, but he used to always joke with me when he was in India. He's like, Neil, I manage more people in my household, like household staff, than people have in their company. And I was always cracked up by that. And he would treat people really well in his household. But just in general, you know, he's done really well.

How many house staff does he have?

I don't know, he's in Seattle now, so there's no way he has what he had in India. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My guess is he had like 30 people or something like that in India.

Yeah.

So when I was talking to him today, he's just like, hey, I want to pitch you working together. I was like, all right, cool. He's like, I got this programmatic SEO solution. And I was like, dude, I've been pitched this a lot and I haven't seen it work. And I was like, I've tested this a lot. I just haven't seen good traffic results from programmatic SEO. And I'm talking about testing it in quantity, right? There's some sites crushed it, but over time a lot of the sites eventually get hit and then their traffic goes down.

Even TripAdvisor. Yeah.

So I was just like, just long-term, I don't think it's a good solution. You may see short-term gains, but long-term. So I introduced him to one of the guys on our team and I'm like, dude, can you check this out and dig into it? And he's super technical, so he'll figure it out. But I just don't think it's a long-term viable solution. And you and I have been through this. We used to do so many things for SEO that would drive us traffic in the short run and we would be stoked and be like, look at this. You'd be like, look, I rank really high for senior living or old people homes and all this. And these are very lucrative keywords, by the way, right? There's like a lot of companies like A Place for Mom that are worth an arm and a leg that very few people have heard of that are going after some of these terms that none of us would ever think that are lucrative. And Eric and I have ranked for some of the most lucrative terms.

Online poker?

Online poker, yeah, I ranked for that.

I had a digital marketing agency for a couple years, yeah.

And it was funny, I ranked for online poker within like the top 2 or top 3 in literally, no joke, less than 30 days from zero to something. You can probably assume if I was climbing that fast, I was doing some funny, unique strategies that were short-term.

Dude, at this time we're in our mid-20s, so the story here is, um, we— I found out that Zynga was doing online poker, and then I reached out to Neil because I knew he had the website, right? And then Neil and I got on a call with Zynga, their executives, and then They were thinking about going really hard into online poker and we almost got a deal done.

We almost got a deal done.

Yeah.

Yeah, we tried. And I did something interesting. The site back then was called I Can Has Cheezburger. It was a meme website. And I went to them and was like, hey dude, I got this unique contest. I wanna do a poker cat contest. And they're like, okay, like have people create poker memes. They can do whatever they want. The winner gets X dollars and a trip to Vegas. Like, really? I'm like, yeah, I'll pay for it. But they gotta embed the meme.

Ah, the links.

And then I was getting links and no joke, I shot up to the top of It was really creative.

I did that when I worked for, for— I worked for a media site. And we generated so many widgets, so many links. And then Google would say, oh yeah, that stuff is not good. It's illegal or whatever. But no, they never like, you never got in trouble for that. Yeah.

And same with— I remember I bought a site one time called Battlefield Bypass. I didn't know it was like a national park or something like during the Civil War where something happened, had a lot of .edu and .gov backlinks. I changed it to online casino site and within 3 months I was ranking number 1 on Google for the term online casino.

Yeah, but that stuff is a lot of it's short term, right? I think the thing I'd say about PSEO is you can't— it's not the solution. It is like one potential thing. You can't also— you can't go overboard with it, right? Like that's something you can do for a little bit to get your location, like especially if you're like you have location pages and all that, but you can't bet all your eggs on it.

No, I think it's a bad long-term strategy. But the point Eric and I are trying to get to, and I know I rambled for a little bit, Eric and I have really tried a lot of these methods and they're just not long-term. It was just like someone hit me up a few weeks ago when I was in Istanbul or Norway. No, not Norway, Netherlands. I don't know where I was. I travel too much. I think it was Netherlands or Istanbul or Amsterdam or Istanbul. And when I was there, someone was like, yeah, I got this new hack. I can rank any website at the top of Google. I was like, how? And they're like, oh, I can't tell you, mate, over Skype or whatever. I was like, dude, I'm busy, I'm traveling, different time zones. And then eventually they told me on Skype, they're like, oh, we created this solution. And I had to call them, they wouldn't tell me.

Oh, you got on a call with them?

I got on a call, I knew them.

You're so nice.

I know they're a good SEO. So I was like, all right, what is it? And they're just like, oh, I got a way where we replicate clicks. So if you're on page 1 or wherever you are, We'll just click on your listing and act like a human and show the click signals so you rank top. I'm like, dude, I've already done all this.

10+ years ago.

Yeah, it's shortsighted. It's not the correct way to build a business or do your marketing. It's just like, you can do this stuff, you're just going to regret it because if you took all this effort and you put it into legitimate stuff that's long-term, you would make way more money and do way better in the long run.

You know what we've always said? We've always said you should do the, If you're going to do any black hat stuff, do the black hat stuff in a white hat way because you're going to do it anyway. And usually that ends up working out better, right?

Yes.

And so like, you know, back in the day in SEO, there's link wheels, right? Where you get links from Web2 properties to prop up this other link over here and that link gets stronger. Well, what if you just did that with legit websites and then it linked back to your website and that ends up being a better result at the end of the day? I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host's agency. So NP Digital. So Neil Patel Digital. What they do is they do a whole host of marketing services and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you can just go to mpdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. By the way, did you know who the early winner of the AI boom is?

OpenAI?

No. The AI boom has an unlikely early winner. Consultants. So let me give you some numbers here. Consulting companies are big winners of the AI boom as companies pour money into AI projects. 20% of BCG's, Boston Consulting Group's, revenue is now AI-related, while McKinsey's at 40%. Accenture made $300 million last year, while IBM did $1 billion in AI consulting revenue.

Wow.

And then all these people are like, you know, consulting consultants are like the scum or like the rats of the universe or whatever.

So it's kind of funny. AI is going to replace consultants. Oh, I guess they're making more money right now in the short run.

Yep. So I mean, it's, it's, if you're to go to anybody, yes, you would go to Accenture and McKinsey and all these companies because they charge like millions of dollars to get— give you strategies.

So do they do— You know what's funny? You know what I think Accenture should do? They won't do it, but I think they should do it. I bet you, I don't know this for a fact, but I bet you Dentsu is going to split Aegis off. So Dentsu has Japan, Dentsu Aegis. Let's call them just Dentsu to keep it simple. But Dentsu is a global ad agency. I bet you if I had to guess, because they've been struggling, they will split off everything other than Japan. That's my guess and hunch. I know enough people who work there where I've talked to people and it sounds like people are assuming, there's no proof, that they're going to end up eventually splitting off everything other than—

You mean selling assets?

Selling assets. So think of it as a big global marketing agency. They do extremely well in Japan. They've struggled outside of Japan, but they still generate not a billion dollars in revenue outside. They generate billions and billions. So they're, you know, formidable size. They're one of the top 5 ad agencies globally based on size, somewhere around there, maybe 6 now, or maybe they dropped a little bit. But if Accenture just picked them up, And they integrated them within their digital marketing division. Accenture, you know, is already, if it's not already one of the bigger ad agencies in the digital space, they would be in theory the biggest. Because they also do a lot of stuff in marketing, just people don't talk about it because Accenture is so big. They should end up doing it, but I don't think they will.

Do you guys do consulting?

We do a lot of consulting.

Dude, consulting's, I mean, when you think about McKinsey, they'll charge you, at least $1 million, if not a couple million. And sometimes the stuff that they find, like I'll read these stories, it's like the strategy was basically nothing. So, but I still think there's a lot of value in strategy because a lot of people just don't know how to think for themselves, or maybe they're just too much in the weeds.

Yes.

So yeah, I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners, think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this This first one comes from Carrie, and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Ollie, and he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric. Getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do So just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created, and our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you inside. Do you— did you hear about the story where Steve Jobs was taught the difference between a good ad and a bad ad?

No.

Okay. So Steve Jobs once told his advertising agency he wanted to cover 5 things one of their products did well in an ad. And the ad exec responded by showing him why it wouldn't work. So basically what happened, he said, hey Steve, I'm going to show you the difference between a good ad and a bad ad. So he crumpled up a piece of paper and he said, Steve, catch it. So he throws it at him, right? And Steve catches the crumpled piece of paper. And then so Steve catches it, the executive's like, that's a good ad, right? And then what happens next is the executive, he crumbles up 5 pieces of paper and then he throws them at Steve Jobs all at once, right? And he's like, that's a bad ad because you can't catch them all at once. You can catch one good idea. And that's how Steve Jobs was taught what a good ad looks like.

Ah, that's smart. I always try to tell my team members, you know, what is it called? Good advertising. Dude, I created this quote. I don't even know.

It's okay. It's 3:00 AM for you now.

I know. It's so early. Good advertising looks great. Great advertising doesn't even look like advertising. And I always try to tell my team, your job isn't to create an ad where people look at them and be like, oh my God, that's such an amazing ad. You want to create an ad where people don't even realize and then they take action and they make the purchase. That to me is an amazing ad.

You're saying you came up with that phrase?

Something like that.

Somebody else came up with that phrase.

Dude, I put that out there a long time ago.

No, it's not your phrase.

Good? Yes, good advertising.

Look, even Brad's like, what? No, no. Just because it's 3 AM right now.

It's either good advertising or good marketing.

Uh, pretty sure I heard that from somebody else. But anyway.

Great marketing. Here you go. Good marketing makes you look great. Great marketing doesn't even look like marketing.

Who said that?

Me.

What?

Yeah, you can go Google it.

All right, we'll find this later.

Okay.

What else? You got some stuff here. You got some interesting— I can keep going, but you got some stuff over here.

The first thing I want to discuss is the agency.

You mean the last thing.

The last thing, and then we can discuss your point. But I want to discuss the agency group that we have. So where can people learn about it? And why should they actually join?

Well, you know, I might just turn that back on you, but they can go to— so what is it actually? So it's an agency peer group. So Neil and I, we've— I've been in EO before, Neil's in YPO, I'm in YPO as well. But we wanted to have a peer group for agency owners to connect because community means a lot. And Sam Altman himself has said that communities, especially in-person communities in the next 5 to 10 years, are going to be even more valuable. And so we do these weekly calls, we even share leads in the group, people share leads with each other, we give a lot of the leads away too. And, you know, we're just there to help each other out. And, you know, you don't know what you don't know at the end of the day. And also, we're seeing that a lot of people live close to each other, so they can connect with each other. So you can go to marketingschool.io/agency and no long-term commitment to it. You can just pay as you go. And, you know, we'll continue to increase the price over time. But right now it's at where it's at.

Have we had any churn?

We had like 3 people churn or 4 people churn.

Yeah.

So pretty good. Because right now the group's at 45 paying people.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And yeah, you know, I—

And you joined one of the groups. You joined one of the calls.

I joined one of the calls, met a lot of people, talked to them about growing, gave them a lot of different ideas.

But yeah, it's—

It's a good amount Yeah, it was fun too. Yeah. On a side note, did you see that Google is dropping the continuous scroll in search results?

Uh, yes. But I'm like, to me, I'm like, is that just to serve more ads?

So— Well, I don't know if it's to serve more ads. Um—

I saw— I just don't know why people made this a big deal. I'm like, okay, whatever.

So— Well, when you scroll, you know, you can keep seeing ads too, right?

Yeah, now that I remember, I'm like, yeah, you're right. But I'm just so— I'm like, okay, why are they doing this? What do you think the reason is?

I think they're trying to figure out how to give people enough quality on page 1 where you don't need to continually scroll, especially with AI overviews and everything. Their goal is to— I think their goal is going to end up being, how do you answer it on the first page without someone going to page 2 at all?

You know, I saw an interview with the Perplexity CEO, I think it was on Lex Fridman. And he said he shared a lesson he learned from Larry Page, I think from Google. And Larry Page said that, he said, look, the user is always right. So, you know, the variation of this would be the customer is always But the user is always right, meaning that if your mom makes a user error, it's, it's still not simple enough, right? Your mom shouldn't be making errors, right? I think in this situation, it's— AI is going to change it so much where you should be able to get the first answer. User error would be having to keep scrolling past pages because the product just isn't good enough. We're getting to a place where it's becoming really good.

I agree with you. I don't think there's a reason for someone to continually scroll, although with the AI overviews, there's a lot of issues with it, but they've reduced AI overview results drastically. so there's not as many issues right now.

Guys, this is where we'll end. Go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. Join before we start to jack up the price more and more. And the good thing is there's no contracts to it. And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow. Let us know what you think about this format. We put a lot of time and effort into this format, so we've been hearing great things, but give us more great things to hear. So that's it for today, and we'll see you tomorrow.