(upbeat rock music)
-: Hello and welcome back.
This is Joshua Smith here with William Haddad in the booth.
William, it's awesome to have you here.
Welcome.
-: I am happy to be here, man.
(laughing)
-: I love it.
William is a senior internet marketing manager,
if I'm not mistaken, correct?
With Scorpion.
What's that look like?
What's your day-to-day look like?
-: So, I have the privilege of working with
some of our VIP accounts in home services.
-: Yeah.
-: There is never a shortage of things that
just get thrown at you every single day
and problems to solve so it's a very high-intensity role.
But I get to work with some really, really great people
and some very, very smart business owners
and very smart entrepreneurs.
So every day is a learning experience for them.
It's a learning experience for me.
And we are just trying to make magic happen
every single day at Scorpion and every day for our clients.
-: Yeah.
What do you think gets you up in the morning?
What is most exciting about not only what you do
but just the marketing thing?
What drives you about that?
-: You know, that's actually very aligned
with what we're going to talk about today.
We are in the most interesting industry
at the most interesting time ever across everything.
(laughs)
There is so much technology happening all the time,
and you never know when there's just going to be
a curve ball and everybody needs to adapt.
And I think that that is so incredible,
and it's so exciting,
and to have to develop new strategies
to actually get results here and to maintain viability
as a business that we are.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
For everybody listening, today, we are going to talk about
something that's really to put on the forefront
of what's coming in the world of digital,
and that is this idea of voice and AI,
or artificial intelligence.
I want to talk about that but before we do that,
I want to talk a little bit about
how maybe the cheese has moved a little bit.
To pardon the pun of the famous little 40-page book.
If you haven't picked it up, you should check it out
because it's constantly changing in our space.
The cheese, so to speak, is constantly moving,
and so let's talk a little bit about
the evolution of search.
Where was it, where has it gone,
and where is it going, Will?
Talk a little bit about that.
-: As I said earlier this is the biggest shift
in the way humans interact with each other,
the way humans interact with technology,
and the way that we go about our daily business.
Everything that we do is now revolving around the internet,
and this whole internet thing is now,
I think voice search is a really true testament
to where we are at scale,
and the internet is so at scale now,
where it is just going to be completely intertwined
with every activity and everything that we do.
So, from all of these different home pods
and mobile devices which is just,
it's not even unusual anymore,
and now these home pods are popping up.
That's not even unusual.
We're going to start seeing this integrated in cars,
in homes, in everywhere.
This is just, this is the future,
and anyone that doesn't think is the future,
it's just, hold onto your seats because it's coming,
and it's coming very fast.
It's still very new.
-: Yeah.
-: It's still very, very new,
and I think it's at its infancy stages right now,
and it's still very simple.
Artificial intelligence is still growing and adapting,
and they're finding ways of how to actually
manipulate it and control it to make these machines smarter,
but it's saving everybody time.
-: Yeah, that's a huge part of it.
-: I think that's the thing.
I think that's a big part of it, right?
I just think about back in the days of
the phonebooks and the ads and pre-cellphones,
even before they were smart.
They were dumb cellphones, so to speak.
That you had to go into a physical location,
to a physical store to talk to an expert,
and that took time.
It took the drive time.
It took the conversation time,
and then you weren't even really sure
if you trusted the person yet,
and so you got to go talk to another expert.
And it's time and it's time and it's time.
It seems to be the digital space as it's evolved
and culminated even from when it started,
was developed around saving consumers time.
And it seems that we've seen a shift in
consumer behavior to follow that.
Is that what you've seen as well?
-: I completely agree with that.
You know I was listening to Gary V the other day
and he has a very interesting take on Uber.
For those of you that don't listen to him
or don't know who he is,
I highly recommend check him out.
He's very raw, very vulgar and just intense.
He's really entertaining to listen to.
-: Absolutely.
-: But nonetheless he had opportunities to invest with
Uber a while back when it first got started
in it's seed phase and before all the investors
got involved.
Anyways he had an opportunity.
So he's very involved in Uber and his analysis of Uber.
And what he said was,
you know the other day I was listening to one of his
articles or whatever it was,
and he said Uber is not selling transportation,
Uber is selling time.
And if you look at all of these smart devices
as a new search engine that's evolving
and all these home pods it's all that.
It's saving time and it's an invasion of privacy.
It's a huge invasion of privacy.
And humans are just going out and buying these things
and putting them in their house to save time.
-: Yeah.
-: And it's proving how valuable that is to us.
Just up there with good health and family
and religion and money, right?
Is time.
It's just as valuable and that's why these machines
are so successful and so lucrative as well.
-: Absolutely.
-: These big companies like the Amazon's and the Apple's
and the Google's of the world are just raking it in on time.
-: You know in some ways it's feeding into our over busyness.
So to speak, right?
How many people in the past week have you said,
"oh how you doing?",
and they're like oh you know I'm just busy.
I'm just busy.
It's like well what does that even mean?
What are we busy about?
-: Right.
-: And it's allowed us to take on so much more
than we did 20 years ago.
-: Right.
-: And so when the internet just started out,
Google hit it big.
They hit the nail on the head with search.
Whatever the search thing was.
How did that impact people's lives and what shift did we see
as they rolled out search and as they started to roll out
paid options for businesses to get in front of clients.
What did the consumer behavior do that made that
a reality for Google?
-: They have a big group of analysis and they're constantly
studying consumer behavior.
So these search engines were built around consumer behavior.
So just as much as they create something for consumers,
how we interact with it and what we do is being monitored
and analyzed so closely that then they can make shifts
in what they do all these algorithm changes as you will
and all the technicality that comes with it,
but they're making their shifts to then make it
more custom to us and keep us involved
and keep our attention.
And you know what's funny about with Google when it first
started and everything came up is where was is first?
We had Yahoo.
-: Yeah.
-: We had MSN.
-: Yeah.
-: AOL. Google.
So you had all these big players and then one emerged
as the primary voice.
And now we're just seeing a repeat of that,
but with voice technology.
-: Yeah.
-: And it's just what Amazon and Google are doing
are so intertwined from a search perspective.
So as we all know a big part of this,
and I'm derailing a little bit,
but a big part of actually which I'm sure a lot
of the listeners are very interested in
is how you show up for these and get ahead of this
as a business owner.
-: Oh sure. Yeah.
-: A big part of this is the local service ads
that came out with Google.
Amazon has the exact same thing.
-: Yep.
-: So we've seen this move.
We've seen this move from search.
Just basic search, go online, perform a search.
Movement to the as consumer behavior changed
we saw display ads start up.
We saw paid search start up.
Where you're showing up listings above the organic
so to speak search queries, right?
So now all of a sudden you pay for top placement
and you're still in front of people.
Then we saw consumer behavior change even more,
smart phones got even more involved and we started to see
the need to get in front of people at different stages
of that and so you see content Facebook advertising,
social things, YouTube, all of this good stuff
and now we're seeing the shift even further time wise
with the advent of voice, right?
So we see this content.
We're seeing this transition into that.
Who are the big players right now in the voice game?
And who's kind of got the mass market share here?
-: Yeah.
So as I said we have Amazon, the Amazon Echo as kind of
the home pod and Alexa which comes along with it.
You have Google Home and the Google assistant as kind of
their autobot technology, their person.
And then you have the Apple home pod with Siri.
-: Okay.
-: Those are the top players right now.
So one of them is a stand alone that you can put inside
of your house or in a bedroom or in an office,
wherever you see fit and it's a speaker technology
that's separate from the phone.
I mean the phone actually has built in AI into the
inner workings of the phone that you can use to manage
different aspects of your mobile experience
and then utilize to search and find information
as you can do with the home pods.
-: So the voice so to speak,
the Alexa of the dot or the Alexa of the Echo,
the Alexa is the brain the Echo is the speaker.
So you've got the AI technology or artificial intelligence
technology and it's all paired with a speaker.
Is that how that works?
-: Exactly.
Yeah exactly.
And I think having because we're always going to have
mobile phones and it's going to adapt
and pretty soon we're gonna have chips in our arms
and then we're gonna be able to see through our...
-: Life lines.
(laughing)
-: Oh that's coming. I'm ready for it.
I have said since day one give me the chip.
I would be a guinea pig, I want to try that.
But anyways the Echo or the speaker that actually goes
in the house I think that's going to be the first part
of how this actually gets us integrated
with smart home technology and we're already seeing it.
I personally think it's kind of a pain to set up now
unless you're buying a brand new house where this
is already built in you know?
But we're not gonna need a stand alone separate speaker.
That almost seems like it should just be in the house.
It should just be a part of the inner workings
of the house and the speaker and the TV and everything
I think it will be.
And you'll be able to control your air conditioner
and your sprinklers and your garage door
and your security and the cameras.
It's all gonna be intertwined, it's all gonna be connected.
-: We're gonna be moving around literally everything
will be synced up to the mobile device
and you're gonna have a little ear piece that you wear
24-7 and you just talk.
And all of a sudden you don't need to speaker right there,
it's just gonna be "Hey Alexa" dim my lights please.
Set the mood baby.
-: Right.
-: That's exactly what we're probably moving towards.
-: Exactly.
-: So you don't even need the speaker anymore.
It's just all tied into that mobile device.
-: Exactly.
And that's gonna breed so much information to these
big brands to learn even more about consumer behavior
and so you really want to talk about
the evolution of search.
The evolution of search is not having to commit a search.
-: Yeah.
-: The evolution of search is artificial intelligence
predicting what it is that we're gonna need
and anticipating our need before we need it
and then that's gonna...
Pros and cons for that right?
All of a sudden it's reading our vital signs,
but then it can call a doctor if we suddenly collapse.
-: That's so true.
That's a good one.
-: A pro.
But then all of a sudden I don't even want
to go into the cons.
There's a lot of privacy invasion,
but at the same time it's a lot of benefits
that come from that.
-: So much.
-: But we're even seeing that with all the Facebook stuff
that's going on right now, right?
With Mark Zuckerberg and all the trials he's been facing.
-: Privacy.
-: Your email has probably been blowing up
with privacy agreement updates.
Right?
So I think everybody is kind of facing that.
Which is an interesting thing right because
marketing companies and businesses in general
rely on a lot of that information to isolate their audience.
-: Exactly.
-: So how's that going to effect how's that privacy
adjustment potentially going to impact the marketing world?
-: That's a really good question.
That's such a good question.
The more it goes away from these big tech companies,
you know the Facebook's of the world to limit what they
can gather from consumer behavior and information,
limits the time saving and the user friendly
and all the great benefits that come from
this type of technology.
I mean how cool is that and how much time
does that save you?
You know you're looking at a pair of shoes
and then you see the deal pop up
and then boom there you go.
That's smart advertising.
-: Yeah.
-: And that's all based off of data.
-: Absolutely.
-: And those are tactics that agencies like Scorpion
and like many other ones are utilizing to get the best
results and get in front of ideal customers.
So small business owners and entrepreneurs,
we need this data.
And the flip side there has to be some level of restriction
on it especially with artificial intelligence.
So there has to be some restrictions
and there's gotta just be a good balance.
I think that's what everyone's trying to figure out.
-: Have you ever had the experience where you're talking
about something and all of a sudden you start seeing ads
on your phone?
What do you think?
That's the big question, are they really listening?
-: Right.
-: What's your beat on that?
-: Right.
That's the privacy invasion.
You know when you set your phone and so many of us have this
when you set your phone to where you can say "Hey Siri"
or "Okay Google" or these smart devices in the households,
they openly come out and admit that they're listening.
They have to be.
How does it do that?
So it's listening to your conversations
-: Totally.
-: And picking up keywords and doing whatever it's doing.
I don't know.
I don't think anyone needs to feel too worried about it.
At the end of the day there's seven billion people
and what makes what you're saying in your house
more important than the next person?
We're all just a blip into what's going on.
-: I had a buddy of mine we were on our way back
I was dropping him off at his hotel after a trip we took
and we were talking about this company Turo,
it's kind of like the Airbnb for luxury cars.
-: Oh cool.
-: Back in the day you had to pay $3000 or $1500 or so
to check out a Lamborghini for the day,
through this people who own these cars are just renting
them out the way you would like an Airbnb.
They own and they rent it out,
they make some money on it.
-: So awesome.
-: So it's like for a Lambo you're paying like
three to five hundred dollars and it's like a third
of the cost it's ridiculous.
Never even heard of it before,
but all of a sudden I'm scrolling on Instagram,
literally thirty minutes later and I see ads for it.
I have never ever even heard of this company before.
It's insane the level of what they're able to do,
but all of a sudden I was like cool.
I checked it out it was very interesting to me.
I liked their Instagram page.
Now I'm all of a sudden indoctrinated into what they do,
how they do it, I'm talking about it.
It's such an effective tool for business owners.
In your space with dealing with clients,
how do you see business owners leveraging this technology?
-: Totally.
How much do you think that Instagram ad was?
How much was that click?
-: I don't know.
That's a good question.
-: Thirty cents?
I don't know. Thirty cents.
So from that thirty cents ad you didn't just get the click,
you didn't just get the view,
now you have just started a whole conversation
and ecosystem with that person
and that whole network of people.
So right there that statement just proves the value.
-: Sure.
-: How do you see business owners working it?
That example right there.
-: Yeah.
-: That's it.
That's how it works on a day to day.
And it's hard to quantify that.
-: Yeah.
-: You really can't quantify what happens after the click.
Even with all this technology.
Maybe eventually you know you can quantify the conversation
that we're having right now with the AI and like Siri.
But nonetheless it's just so impactful for a business.
-: Is there a process that you've seen in your experience
yet maybe it's not even here yet,
about how business owners can get involved
with these voice technologies?
-: So there's a few different things at play
and I do want to stress this is still brand new.
-: Yeah.
-: This is brand new.
And I think that these companies,
Amazon and Google and Facebook and Apple,
they are going to find out how to deliver
the best results to this.
-: Sure.
-: So this is what I'd recommend to business owners,
just start try to get the leg up.
There is no way to really control,
you can't pay yet to just show up and be there when Siri
calls for your business in any particular area,
it's just not there yet.
When it is there then we can have those discussions.
But I think it's the first application available
with Google which is our largest search engine,
is going to be local service ads.
If we're involved in that and that's available in your area
and for your service.
You know the second thing is Amazon also has that
application available.
Utilizing Yelp.
You know a lot of these searches that come up
when I do a search for Siri for small businesses in my area
it's just pulling Yelp.
Just the way that Google is rolling out this application
and Amazon is rolling out their application,
I think that all of the business that came up from
mobile apps is just going to be voice apps now.
-: Yeah.
-: And so you have a whole business of entreprenuers
and in the tech space where there's angel investors
and venture capitalists all invested in this technology
and businesses and visionaries that are creating
applications to make life easier for consumers
and provide the best results.
These are going to be add-ons.
Hey do you want to add that $2.99 to your Amazon Echo
so that you can find XYZ small businesses in your area
that do this this and this and have reputation tied in?
That's gonna be some kind of an option.
-: Yeah.
Outside of that you know we're experimenting as well
with long tail keywords.
When you think about how voice searches are occurring,
you have the who, the what, the how, the why, the when,
that's how searches are being made.
And think about the intent level behind them
from a lead generation stand point,
if you say let's use a recipe for example,
how do I make Thai food?
-: Yeah.
-: It's such a different intent than where can I go
buy Thai food?
-: Totally.
-: And those are both different types of searches.
-: God, such a good point. Yeah.
-: That we would make on a smart device
using voice technology.
And so leave the voice technology and the Google's
of the world to deliver the best results because
they're gonna do that because they have to do that
because they're livelihood depends on that.
So what I recommend to business owners is be everywhere.
Engage in all of these new apps and technology
if it's financially reasonable for you to do so
and responsible for you to do so.
Be with an agency that you can be adaptable
and try these things out.
That's where Scorpion has a huge leg up,
we're so adaptable here and we can move so fast.
When something new comes up,
it's just like boom hey guys this is gonna be new
technology we gotta roll out this app,
let's do this thing.
-: Sure.
-: In a matter of months you gotta team and a squad
just developed to making this thing happen.
-: Totally.
-: So an agency like that that can allow you to be
adaptable and present these opportunities as well as
you know putting your best foot forward
with search engine optimization.
Utilizing these different types of long tail keywords.
FAQ style content.
We'll see how big this is but for instance,
a blog on different types of popular questions
that get asked for you industry.
-: And I think it boils down to value adding, right?
Providing real value not just this kind of phony
hey indirect you're gonna fulfill my need,
I'm gonna act like I'm providing value but in reality
I just want you to call me.
-: Right. Right. Right.
-: No a real value.
You're dealing with real people who want to be cared for,
who have intentions,
who have needs and concerns and it doesn't always
predicate on you making a buck.
But by providing real value you're able to,
that real value is a long term play for client acquisition.
-: Exactly.
-: But it's gotta be done in an authentic way.
-: Exactly.
-: Right?
It has to be authentic and these search engines,
Google is looking for that.
-: Yeah.
-: They want to deliver the best value to the people
that use Google.
-: Sure.
-: Always think that Google is just another consumer
and they're trying to deliver the best consumers.
It's a human analyzing and they're gonna deliver results
and utilize AI to act like a human would act.
-: Sure.
-: So what's valuable to a human is going to be
valuable to Google.
-: Yeah.
All right got one more for you.
What changes do you think we can expect in the online
landscape in the years to come with voice?
How is that going to adjust?
-: That's such a good question.
That's so big.
I think voice is the future.
Just the bottom line.
So I think right now the data point is like
twenty to twenty five percent of all searches
are happening via voice.
So whether that's from a mobile device,
whether that's with using a home pod,
whatever it is twenty percent, twenty five percent,
the analyst are saying that it's going to move
to fifty percent by 2020.
-: Wow.
-: So it's coming fast you know?
Two or three years away.
It's a lot of people that think in 48 months in four years,
every person is going to be interacting
with voice technology in some way or another.
And the more that people get accustomed to this
and technology gets more integrated into our day to day,
the more it's just going to be a regular aspect
of finding results online.
And whether that's finding businesses and generating
new business for small businesses in every community,
or whether it's just looking up food recipes
and expanding your knowledge.
-: I think you're so right.
Especially with the switch over we've seen in terms of
traffic from mobile devices.
I mean how quickly are those taking over
the amount of searches that are being performed?
-: Right.
-: And so when the ease of use is entirely a voice
predicated instrument you know and all of a sudden...
I think you're right on that.
I think we're just gonna see this blow up.
This is going to increase no question.
-: One hundred percent.
-: And making sure that you're in all the right avenues.
-: Yeah.
-: And doing everything everywhere.
Well this has been absolutely phenomenal man.
-: Yeah.
-: I appreciate you coming to the booth
taking time out of your busy day.
But no this has been absolutely fantastic.
Thank you.
For all our listeners if you found this valuable
definitely hit the subscribe button where you're at.
Tune in for more we'll bring you all the goodness
of all the tips, tricks and techniques
to make your business excel in today's online landscape.
From all of us here at Scorpion,
my name is Josh catch you next time.
Thanks.
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