The End of Traditional SEO: Jason Kocina on Getting Found in the Age of AI

0:00This episode is brought to you by High Level. If you're interested in learning more, visit gohighlevel.com slash Ryan Alford for a 30-day free trial. If you run a business, you know leads rarely arrive when it's convenient. A call comes in while your team is helping another customer. Someone reaches out, but the follow-up gets delayed. An invoice sits unsent or a promising lead gets stuck in the wrong stage of your pipeline. That's why High Level's Voice AI and managed AI agents caught my attention. High Levels Voice AI can answer incoming calls, qualify leads using information from your website or uploaded documents, and even book or reschedule appointments.

0:32When your team is busy, Voice AI can keep that conversation moving instead of letting a potential customer slip away. Then High Levels managed AI agents can handle multi-step actions across your CRM. They can update pipeline stages, send invoices, and execute follow-up sequences across SMS, email, and social. For me, the real value of AI isn't adding another complicated tool. It's using technology to handle the work that slows your team down so your people can focus on building relationships, serving customers, and growing the business. If you're ready to create better systems and get more from every opportunity, check out GoHighLevel.com slash Ryan Alford and see what its AI tools can do for your business.

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2:06On today's episode of Right About Now, I talked to Jason Kosina. We talked all the things about marketing today, public relations, earned media, paid media. What? Hey, even the big change happening with SEO and AI. Are we looking for answers? Are we looking for questions? What's it all about? How do you get ahead with your marketing today? Small business, medium business? We dig into it all right here, right now. I haven't felt the way I feel about AI since the 90s. I felt that was a revolutionary time with the internet. And we're going to another one. And then people said, Google's never going to lose traffic.

2:38To see it happen, oh my gosh. gosh, something's happening. Mainstreaming of these tools that we've been looking at now for years, but they're becoming accepted and it's a new world all of a sudden. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford.

3:36OG like myself. Now he's the director of digital marketing, media relations. What's up, Jason? Not too much. How are you doing? Good, man. Hey, we're OGs, man. I got a little gray in the beard. You got a little gray in the hair. We've been around the block. 01 was when I started out in the business. I never thought I would say that. I don't feel old, but sometimes I'll throw these years around. I guess I do get older. We were talking before we got started here and I was thinking that, okay, 90s. 90s is when I started doing a lot of this stuff. I know. Teaching people how to reserve domain names, that really dates me.

4:07I know. We joke, things are moving fast now, but I'm still on GoDaddy buying domain names. So some things haven't changed, right? Some things never change, I guess. I know. That feels like we're racing towards, I don't know, that changing with AI and everything else and SEO changing and AI giving you answers instead of questions. I love it when it gives me questions and I'm going to get better answers. I know, but it does. It'll prompt you back. You'll be like, but what do you want that? Just figure it out. Just figure it out. Oh, just real quick on AI. I know you just mentioned it, but I haven't felt the way I feel about AI since the 90s.

4:44I felt that was a revolutionary time with the internet. And we're going to another one. And then people said, Google's never going to lose traffic. To see it happen, oh my gosh, something's happening. Mainstreaming of these tools that we've been looking at now for years, but they're becoming accepted and it's a new world all of a sudden. It is. Let me just go right at it, Jason. What works today from your standpoint? And I know we could get into B2B and B2C and this type of company and that type of company, but I'm going to ask you broadly on the PR earned media side, what's working today for your clients?

5:19Not just, hey, we did these things, but what has impact? And then maybe even on the more traditional marketing side, website, ads, social, that sort of thing. Would you go down two avenues there of what's working? I suppose I would go down to the two avenues to some extent. I think that there's a lot that's the same with PR. We've always fully defined the client's message before we got started and then adapted it to the news of the day so that we have better chances of getting picked up. That strategy has always been there and it's still what works. In constant communication, it's harder to get through to people now.

5:49Whether you're calling writers or reporters or you're calling someone to sell to, that's a problem. What has changed is really the other side of our business. We're kind of putting a publicist more in charge of PR and SEO and AI visibility and content marketing. These things all kind of flow together nicely. But what hasn't changed is understanding your messaging, getting it down, documenting it. It's the only way to let someone else do your marketing for you is if you go through that process to some extent. They'll be saying whatever they want to say. And that kind of defeats the purpose. If they're not spreading the message you want to the right people, then that's no good.

6:23But earned media still works to grow brand awareness blanket. You have to be aware of you to buy from you. I love performance marketing better than anyone, but unless you're hitting them at the moment of truth with a pack of gum and the checkout line and they need a pack of gum, short of that, there usually has to be some awareness and then consideration and purchase. I think we've shortened that cycle with digital marketing, but PR has always had a role in that awareness bucket. Hopefully I don't take it too far off. I was just the whole time you're saying the gum, while, I was thinking where that happens is the AI visibility side or the SEO optimization side.

6:59They're ready to buy. They're going and looking for stuff now. Boy, you come up. Yeah. Then you find them. That's who I want. I want someone who already knows what they want. I don't need to teach it to them. But you're right on the other side too. You need to get the word out there. I would say that the number of possible channels has changed. It used to be, boy, if we can get USA Today, everyone reads that and it's going to be out of the park. Now we can split it down to, I only want to target people who build things out of plastic from Western United States or something. And there's a show for them.

7:27There's a show out there for them. In some ways, it's really fine-tuned the targeted instead of the shotgun approach. But again, it's just the landscape changes and it has changed a lot. Today's episode is sponsored by Vented. I'm not somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about my closet. Honestly, I rotate through the same five shirts, a couple pairs of jeans, and maybe two jackets. But somehow my closet was still packed. So I finally went through everything and found a bunch of clothes I hadn't worn in forever. Instead of putting them back and telling myself I'd wear them someday, I listed a few on Vinted, the secondhand marketplace app.

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9:03Vinted was actually really simple to use. Getting the items listed didn't take much time. And when something sold, Vinted created the prepaid shipping label for me. I just packed it up and sent it out. and Vinted has no seller fees. So I kept everything I earned. Once that first item sold, I went back through another drawer and found even more stuff to list. It changes how you look at the clothes sitting around your house. What used to feel like clutter was suddenly extra money I could put towards something I actually wanted. Now I have more closet space, a little extra money, and I'm not hanging on to clothes I know I'm never going to wear again.

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9:47what's the most valuable media then okay podcasts having their day you're sitting here on a popular business show thanks to our audience and obviously you see value in that and you probably preach that to your clients but what are the most valuable media i mean it used to be hey tv and everything else in a lot of ways unless it was like a major newspaper or something unless i mean newspapers Yeah, when we used to do retail launches, oh my gosh, we got a football player to wear something. And that was like the hugest thing and getting on what was the show, the Today Show. And they'll still have a lot of viewers.

10:21That's who your target market is. They're still a great place to go. But boy, you're asking me, where do people go? I think that we always lay it out based upon who their target markets are. Do a little research on that. And any kind of marketing competitive analysis helps. Let's see what other people are doing, what keywords are they're targeting for, and how are they coming up number one for this? So marketing is, I learned it as marketing is always played with your cards face out. So everyone can see what you're doing, right? So incorporating that into your strategy a little bit or at least understanding it helps.

10:53You kind of were asking which channels? I think that the channels that we do have been broadened dramatically. 95 % of our business was through earned media in the past and now it's less than 50%. We're doing paid media, we're doing blogs, We're doing marketing automation tools. Sales was always like the fifth element that we partnered with, but we didn't necessarily get involved with. But then that automation stuff, you start to work with the salespeople. Whenever I've talked to a salesperson and asked if they had enough leads, they've always answered no. We need more leads. So I like helping those people out, too.

11:26If SEO is changing and AI is starting to erode traditional SEO, how should small to medium businesses be thinking about how to show up from an AI perspective? Focusing just on the AI, it kind of encompasses both elements of those shopping you mentioned before. For the people that are browsing or just starting to look at it, the AI element often would place it right in the top. say Google, you go to Google, you do a search. Well, Gemini puts up there the answer. If you're not shopping, you're just researching, you might see the answer there. It's important that you're getting at least referenced there.

12:04That helps so that your name gets out there more. And then when they do get into the part where they're actually ready to buy, then you want to make sure that you're coming up and search. Obviously, search is important to me, but I have seen partially because of what we just talked about, traffic from search going down for our customers, organic traffic going down, seeing more traffic coming from ChatGPT, from Gemini, from Grok or the other platforms. But this episode is brought to you by HighLevel. Make sure to check out the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14 day free trial. If you run a business, you know leads rarely arrive when it's convenient.

12:38A call comes in while your team is helping another customer. If someone reaches out, but the follow up gets delayed, an invoice sits unsent or a promising lead gets stuck in the wrong stage of your pipeline. I've built enough businesses to know that growth has a way of exposing every gap in your systems. That's why High Levels Voice AI and Managed AI Agents caught my attention. High Levels Voice AI can answer incoming calls, qualify leads using information from your website or uploaded documents, and even book or reschedule appointments. When your team is busy, Voice AI can keep that conversation moving instead of letting a potential customers slip away.

13:15Then high levels managed AI agents can handle multi-step actions across your CRM. They can update pipeline stages, send invoices, and execute follow-up sequences across SMS, email, and social. That means fewer repetitive tasks for your team and a more consistent process for every lead coming into the business. For me, the real value of AI isn't adding another complicated tool. It's using technology to handle the work that slows your team down so your people can focus on building relationships, serving customers, and growing the business. If you're ready to create better systems and get more from every opportunity, use the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial.

13:53Let's just go down the rabbit hole in a world where more and more people are adapting, prompting, and asking GPTs and language models these questions versus typing in Bojangles near me as a Southern guy in South Carolina. Yeah. Well, it still isn't as good as local stuff, I don't think. But if we're moving towards that space, I just wonder how will there be selection if there's only one answer? Those are the things that I think about, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of has been that way to some extent, though, right? You're going to Google and typing that same question in there, and it's going to give you the answer.

14:37Number one. Whoever's number one in the search results. Yeah. But I will say that I would consider a technology user. I would be someone that's kind of out ahead of a lot of people. And my usage for tech support stuff, here's a hint. I don't know everything. You know what I mean? When people ask me, why is my email not working or whatever question they have? Nine times out of 10, I know enough about it to ask the right question. And it was Google before, and now it's ChatGPT or whatever. My habits have changed that much, and now we're seeing that apply to the mainstream. Are you seeing the companies that you guys work with?

15:11With Chad GPT, you've got AI that can act as agents and do things. Are savvy businesses needing more agencies or less agency help? It is becoming to some extent more about having responsive, high quality people that can execute on those programs, use the chat GPT or whatever to really formulate what you're asking for better. That's always been a challenge and something that you need someone in there to kind of smooth that process out. Smart marketing people can use the tool, but I would say it's probably best to formulate a plan or starts of a plan so that you can make a request and then have professionals execute on it.

15:51I like it. It's a great tool. I have plenty of SEO prompts and ways to really use these tools to their maximum to get the most out of it. But it always goes to our professional writing team because they make it unique. To some extent, people that are smart in a particular topic are going to be more efficient with the tool. But I don't know that you're going to be able to sit someone down that has no idea how to program and say, just program me everything, blah, blah, and it'll just do everything. I set up one of our programmers in front of it and they ask very specific questions and they get to the answer a lot faster, if that makes sense.

16:27No, it seems to be making us more efficient. So we might can build less hours. You still need some amount of hours to get the final output that are needed. It brings more value that way as far as the efficiencies brought into it. The more paid advertising, getting out of sort of the PR side and even the SEO side, which is organic to a degree. Social media has such an impact and it's where so much attention is. It's hard to ignore. Is it knee deep in your playbook with just about every client? I wouldn't say every client, but certainly channels of our, we have a B2B customer that's doing stuff and they have a great LinkedIn program and they're putting out content on LinkedIn and they're using it to expand the networking that they do at trade events.

17:12And do you remember the days of Facebook for local marketing before they removed a lot of our capabilities. I still miss that some days where you could say, I want to target friends of all our friends that are interested in this, in this area, da, da, da, da, da. And it just worked so spectacular. I don't see it as well, but I still see it as an awareness tool, Facebook advertising and most of the product work we do where we're doing retail stuff. Yes, we are doing awareness in some direct sales through that channel, but a lot of Google stuff for that. Google shopping. I'm just talking advertising channels.

17:48Yeah. So I would say if you asked me those questions, it's going to be Google primarily that we use for advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can buy commercial advertising TV. You can Google ads now. So that adds a whole nother aspect to what's OTT and programmatic video. Yeah. Now you can not only buy the ad space, just like you were doing before, or you can use the AI to help produce a video or whatever. I don't know. That one, I haven't been able to get to work yet. I watched these beautiful videos made by AI. It goes back to that same thing. They probably understand video. And then they went to the AI tool and they could say, just the applicature or whatever words they use in their area of talent to get these beautiful things made.

18:28I go there and I'm like, oh, what is this garbage that gets produced when they produce the videos for you? Interested in futures trading and looking for a place to get started? With Plus 500 Futures, you can explore some of the world's most active markets, all from one easy-to-use platform. Trade futures on popular assets like the S &P 500, NASDAQ, oil, gold, Bitcoin, Forex, and more. Whether markets are moving in crypto, commodities, or indices, there's always something to follow. Plus 500 Futures is designed to make trading straightforward with a platform you can access wherever you are, right from your phone.

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20:49Yeah, I haven't correct the code on that one either. It's been more time than if I just edited some B-roll or footage we already have or something. because I don't know. Jury's out on that one for us too. And a lot of what I do with it is just, hey, my ideas don't always flow linear order. So I'm going to dump all my content into the system and then I'm going to say, okay, clean it up. Make it make sense. Put it in order or whatever. I'm feeding it what I want it to say and then I'm just saying, clean it up. Jason, as we finished out here, any tips, tricks, leave our audience with a nugget for something maybe they're not thinking about that they should from a marketing perspective.

21:23I would say get the CEO's Guide to Marketing this is about the basics of marketing so basically what i'm suggesting is get the foundation down for your messaging your target audience all that stuff because the channel side and the environment is constantly changing and it's an ever-changing process so get the foundation down so that you can more easily adapt when you get into picking which channels to push your content through everything will perform better if you understand who your audience is what motivates them what creates the emotion. That stuff has been consistent for a lot longer than I've been doing this stuff.

22:01That's past the test of time. It makes it easier when you're focusing on all the stuff that changes every day. It feels like I can't do anything because I start a Facebook page and then Facebook's no longer popular anymore or whatever. That's what I'd say. Get your messaging down. I know it's not very exciting, but it sure will make your efforts more effective. Yeah. And allow you to pivot as needed when channels change. if it is needed. Yep. I think that also people need kind of that. We have this paper interview side where we do a ton of PR and it's all based on how big the audience is and those types of things, depending upon how much it costs.

22:35We only charge when you get in the news when it actually airs. But on the other side of it is the adaptable side where you have a sharp publicist that's more than just someone that is pitching the media for you. They're also, they have enough understanding to talk with our other talent, SEO guy, or how do I be found in ChatGBT? That's kind of where our business has been going more towards that type of thing, where you have just someone that can smart and pivot, work with you to get your messaging down, and then try, analyze, measure what's working, and here's what we should do next. Jason, drop some links or places they can keep up with what you guys are up to.