Episode 387: From Paid Search to AI: The Evolution of Digital Marketing

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

00:00:54:04 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m your host, Brynne Tillman, and I am excited that Andrew On today’s episode. Andrew is the CEO and founder of Foxy Digital. He was born for this, just his name alone, where he leads a full suite consultancy delivering innovative marketing solutions for some of the world’s best-known brands. With over 24 years of experience in marketing and advertising, Andrew has a proven track record of empowering businesses to achieve growth through strategic guidance and cutting-edge technology.

00:01:27:14 – (Brynne Tillman): His impressive client roster includes well-known companies such as Blue Station, Home Depot, and Fidelity, among many others. Andrew’s insights into the intersection of AI, marketing, and leadership promise to provide valuable takeaways to our listeners today. Andrew, welcome to the show. 

00:01:48:74 – (Andrew Fox): Thanks so much for having me, Brynne. It’s such an awesome honor to be here. 

00:01:54:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh my gosh. I’m so excited to dive into your expertise. But before we do, we ask all of our guests one question: What does Making Sales Social mean to you? 

00:02:07:43 – (Andrew Fox): Making Sales Social is probably the best phrase that you can use when you talk about sales because people don’t buy products; in my personal opinion is people buy people. And the more you are able to establish a connection with an individual or a buyer, if you will, the more successful that buy and that experience becomes for that individual.

00:02:39:29 – (Andrew Fox): And so social is an inherent part of selling, and it’s insanely important to the process.

00:02:48:76 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that answer. Thank you.  All right? So let’s go back into your early days. 23 years of experience. Yes. Talk to me about, first of all, why digital? Why marketing? Why? Why is Foxy Digital so cool? And how did you get here?

00:03:13:21 – (Andrew Fox): My background, my story, my history is, it is a windy journey. I actually studied acting and directing at NYU. And I immediately moved out to Los Angeles, and I thought I was going to be the next Steven Spielberg, and ended up in advertising. And how did that happen? I needed a job. So I applied to a company called Overture, which later I found out was the incubator for paid Search.

00:03:48:23 – (Andrew Fox): And through that experience, Yahoo! then purchased Overture. I was at Yahoo! for eight years, really helped to define their leadership, and helped to bring their sales team and their account management teams to a level that they had not experienced before. We were competing against Google even though we invented paid search. We were, you know, Google came in and obviously did it a lot better.

00:04:20:12 – (Andrew Fox): We all know the end to that story. But I was really able to capitalize on what it means to lead a group of individuals and lead people. And I think leading is really all about inspiration, and it’s all about helping folks define their path and become successful. And that success is really what prompted me to start Foxy Digital, because Foxy is really about helping good people be successful.

00:04:59:09 – (Andrew Fox): If I look at my career, the folks that have been on my team are the person who runs all of e-commerce at Pepsi, the person who runs all of advertising at Microsoft, the person who runs all of sales at Yelp, the person who ran marketing for one 800 flowers like the. The list goes on and on and on.

00:05:21:19 – (Andrew Fox): And I certainly won’t take credit for their success. They are wonderful, incredible individuals. But I will take credit for the foundation that I was really able to help provide them in terms of what it means to be proactive versus reactive. And I think proactive individuals, specifically in the advertising and marketing space, are one of the most important things that you can do in order to help individuals be successful, companies be successful, and your clients get promoted. And ultimately, that’s what we were doing. 

00:05:53:14 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. And, you know, I think your biggest successes are when you can have branches of successes, right? Like my big successes, the success of my children. Right. But these are like your professional babies. That you’ve launched into the world, and they really found a great space. So I love that.

00:06:16:09 – (Brynne Tillman): So I have a son who undergrad is NYU, so very, very connected, loves with sticks, and now he’s at Columbia for his master’s. That’s a whole other story for another game. But I’m going to go back to something that you said, and this is off my list of questions. But, you know, you were there for the birth of, like, search and paid search.

00:06:44:10 – (Brynne Tillman): It is now taking a turn where search is moving from Googling or Yahooing something, to now I’m going to AI. And even when I do Google something. Gemini’s answer first. So talk to me about where you see the future of search. 

00:07:08:16 – (Andrew Fox): That is one of the best questions I’ve ever been asked, and I’ll tell you why. So I’ve had this conversation so often recently because people are coming to me and they’re saying, we spend so much money on SEO and we’re not getting any leads anymore. And the reason for that is because if you do a search in Google, you’re getting that Gemini results underneath, that Gemini results are all of your paid listings. And then underneath those paid listings are the organic results, which is what SEO tends to focus on.

00:07:45:22 – (Andrew Fox): But if you’re below the fold and you have to scroll for the 3 to 5 seconds, you’re never going to get seen even if you have the best SEO in the entire world. So I’m actually suggesting to clients that we move more towards paid search again versus SEO. And will that change? Will that evolve? Yes, right. Like Google is actively working on.

00:08:14:23 – (Andrew Fox): Okay, how do we suggest and provide guidance on how to get into the Gemini results? There’s such a thing called, you know, AI search, which by the way, right now from a traffic perspective, is not that big. Right. Not a ton of people are going to ChatGPT and searching. Not a lot of people are going to be perplexed and searching or get clogged in searching.

00:08:37:26 – (Andrew Fox): So there’s not a lot of volume quite yet there to really be concerned. However, from what I understand, there is a lot of work being done on the SEO side in order to populate those types of results because they are organic; they are not anything that you can pay for, at least not right now. So I think the future of paid search is actually paying to get into those search results within AI LLMs, if you will. It’s back.

00:09:09:29 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s back. What about I’m starting to see YouTube videos pop up in some of my AI searches, like it’ll give me something. I’ll have a YouTube video. Any advice on how to get your YouTube videos to show up in search? 

00:09:27:28 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah, I would say the depth and breadth of your content that you produce has to be meaningful, and it has to contain certain buzzwords that are very specific to your business in order for you to get picked up.

00:09:44:23 – (Andrew Fox): And that’s really by any search engine. But specifically, when it comes to YouTube, Google is crawling those videos and calling them for specific keywords, and that’s how you’re showing up in the search. So you want to make sure that if you want to show up for certain queries that you mention, those queries are within the videos that you are producing.

00:10:09:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So, do you offer a comprehensive approach to digital, right? It’s not just advertising. It’s not just where YouTube falls into that today? 

00:10:19:15 – (Andrew Fox): So in my, so essentially what I have noticed is that there is a really big education gap for what folks have been doing and for what they can be doing when it comes to driving additional leads, additional sales, whatever the desired outcome is, maybe it’s more traffic, maybe it’s right.

00:10:42:29 – (Andrew Fox): Like, there are so many different KPIs and metrics that you can actually define as success. And the tried and true methods are still there, and they still work. However, there’s AI, there’s blockchain. There are layers and layers of different technologies that are emerging and are actually on the scene at this moment that folks can leverage, and they’re not that expensive from a solutions perspective.

00:11:16:21 – (Andrew Fox): So what I decided to do was I formed Foxy Digital with this concept of really wanting to help as many people, as many good people as I possibly could. And I went out and vetted over 100 different marketing solutions and walked away with seven that are truly moving the needle for advertisers. And these seven are absolutely incredible, and they range across the board, right?

00:11:44:25 – (Andrew Fox): So they’re everything from AI-driven analytics, where, based upon success metrics, the success of consumer journeys, or the journeys that you’re looking to achieve, or it will outline recommendations, do these five things in order to achieve your desired result. It takes the guesswork out of marketing. We’ve never seen that before. There is an emotional AI tool that I have that literally will analyze what’s happening on the other side of a phone call based upon dialect, based upon country of origin, based upon time of day, how they’re thinking, how they’re feeling.

00:12:24:27 – (Andrew Fox): It will be. It’s all about vocal intonations and where that person comes from, and it will guide the person who client service person, how to actually handle that phone call. It’s an incredible piece of technology.

00:12:39:20 – (Andrew Fox): I have an Instagram tool that helps people grow their followings, and we all know that we are at the behest of these platforms.

00:12:49:08 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah, right. All of them will be out there by the algorithm. The algorithm, right. It’s like, How do I conquer the algorithm? Well, you can’t conquer the algorithm because the algorithm is constantly changing. So, how do you work within that ecosystem? Well, there’s an Instagram tool that I have that actually sits on top of the platform that goes out and engages with your target consumers’ stories.

00:13:19:18 – (Andrew Fox): And why is that important? That’s important because the story is there and gone in 24 hours. And so when somebody likes your story, it causes you to go, That’s interesting. Right. And then how do I actually, you know, respond to that person and drive success? 

00:13:40:27 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s really interesting from the I haven’t heard anyone talk about that perspective, but my wheels are going now, if someone engages on my story, I have to engage fast.

00:13:53:16 – (Brynne Tillman): Yes. I can’t say I’ll come back and look at that next week. So I love that approach. I think that’s brilliant.

00:14:03:25 – (Andrew Fox): And it works. Yeah, that and that’s the end of the day. Like we’ve been able to grow folks from like 500 followers to over 50,000, from 50000 to 300000. It’s really a two-pronged approach.

00:14:17:21 – (Andrew Fox): The tool can only do so much. It will go out. It will be like somebody’s story. Right. And that will cause that person to have some interest, come back and visit that page. 

00:14:30:47 – (Brynne Tillman): Can you give us some tips on when they visit our page? What are some of the things you do with your clients for them to say, This is a good day.

00:14:39:09 – (Andrew Fox):  There you go. That’s part two. Right. It’s when they come back to the page, they need to be excited and intrigued around, you know, who is this person, what do they do? What are they offering? What’s the value add? So if I’m working with a real estate agent, for example, right? I don’t just want to see the listings that are on that page, but I want to know what’s happening with the market.

00:15:05:07 – (Andrew Fox): What’s going on right now within a specific neighborhood, or why is this listing a really cool listing versus something else? Or what makes you special? How many deals have you closed and and what are the metrics that you can represent about yourself? And so, like, there are ways to position yourself as an expert in really any field. And as long as you’re providing value to the community, then those people will want to follow you and they will want to come back to your page over and over and over again, which is the idea.

00:15:39:02 – (Andrew Fox): It’s not just about gaining followers. It’s about gaining followers who are engaged with you and people that you can build long-term relationships with, because that’s honestly going back to social selling. That’s what it’s about. It’s about building those relationships. And so if you can have more people to communicate with who are within your target, then you’re naturally going to develop those relationships and drive more sales.

00:16:03:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Love that. I really do. I think it’s very powerful. How important is video? 

00:16:08:02 – (Andrew Fox): Insanely important. People love sites and emotion. It’s just what we are accustomed to. We love it when we go to the movies. We love it when we’re streaming TV. I don’t know if you knew this fact, but half of YouTube’s content is actually on television.

00:16:31:06 – (Andrew Fox): So they are. They’re a huge streaming player. In addition to being online, most people think of them as, I’m just an online search engine. But, and they are the number two search engine in the world is YouTube. But half of their content is showing up on television. So, do you have your QR codes in them?

00:16:51:05 – (Andrew Fox): Do you have your, you know, things set up in a way where you can actually capture those individuals as well? So it’s I’m it’s it all works together, if you will. 

00:17:02:91 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, it’s kind of fun because, well, first of all, my daughter canceled cable. She just has YouTube TV, by the way. That is what she uses. But we were looking at YouTube on TV, and I just put in my name, and I’m like, my gosh.

00:17:21:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Now I would love to learn, and maybe this is a future conversation. How do you search engine optimize for TV? Like, that’s really interesting. 

00:17:35:68 – (Andrew Fox): I mean, it’s interesting that you say that. I don’t know that you can necessarily search and optimize for TV, but you can sort of create you can create videos that have special attributes that, when they’re shown on TV, people can take action against them.

00:17:53:00 – (Andrew Fox): So, having a QR code, I think people are seeing this more and more within a connected TV experience. So if you’re on Peacock or whatever, the app is, ads are starting to show up with QR codes that people can scan and actually take action on. So I’ve done that, by the way, as a consumer, and it works right?

00:18:14:17 – (Andrew Fox): Like, absolutely done that. And you want to have an offer. You want something that is going to be attractive to that person who’s scanning that QR code. You want to make sure that there’s something on the other side that gets them really excited about what it is that you have to offer. 

00:18:31:02 – (Brynne Tillman): So I’m going to go, and I’m so like off of what I thought we were going to talk about. But I love this. I hope you’re okay. Yeah. Talk about what to land a successful landing page would be then, right? So I scan the QR code, and I get to this landing page. What converts?

00:18:47:89 – (Andrew Fox): So it’s interesting that you ask that question because the consumer journey is different for everyone, right? A lot of individuals like to do a ton of research before they actually buy.

00:19:04:03 – (Andrew Fox): Right. But the most compelling thing is when you get to that landing page that you’re immediately attracted to something that means something to you personally. And there is software, there are things out there that can actually dynamically shift a landing page to make it more personalized, so it can understand who you are as an individual. So when you get to that landing page, it’s producing offers and things that are custom for you personally. 

00:19:39:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh my god, that’s AI on a whole other level. Yes. I want that. 

00:19:4:78 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah, it’s super cool. Like, a lot of people think, well, personalization like why is this shoe following me around or, you know, how does it know that? You know, I spoke about, I don’t know, a sweatshirt the other day. 

00:20:01:56 – (Brynne Tillman): And I run. 

00:20:03:23 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah. And it’s now serving me sweatshirts, right? Well, I would argue that that’s a really good consumer experience, unless.

00:20:11:02 – (Brynne Tillman): Unless I have an unless, you know.

00:20:03:23 – (Andrew Fox): My unless it’s the same as you’re unless is.

00:20:19:73 – (Brynne Tillman): You go first. 

00:20:21:15 – (Andrew Fox): All right, I’ll go first. Unless you’ve already purchased that Item one.

00:20:27:24 – (Brynne Tillman): I want a button that says I bought it. Right. Show me something else. 

00:20:35:53 – (Andrew Fox): Exactly. And by the way, for advertisers, that’s a wasted impression. So they should they should have an active suppression list of people who have purchased that we should no longer be serving ads to, or where we should be serving different ads to those people.

00:20:50:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, Harlan is famous for this. I bought a pair of sandals on the Cohen site, and for six weeks, I’m seeing the symbol that I’m wearing. I want to be able to say, I bought this. And then they go, if you bought this, you’d like this.

00:21:05:74 – (Andrew Fox): Cohen should contact me so we can fix their advertising. 

00:21:09:00 – (Brynne Tillman): Go on. And your fox is ready and waiting. Let’s go. We do have the best sandals, but yes, that’s all right, my friend. Gosh, I could talk to you forever. This has been the most fun I’ve had this week. 

00:21:27:53 – (Andrew Fox): I love that feedback. I’m all about having fun. Like, what’s the point, right? Like, let’s all have fun together. 

00:21:33:87 – (Brynne Tillman): Have fun, bring value, and make money. Yes, that’s it.

00:21:37:25 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s my number, my new mantra. All right, let’s go. And Andrew, what question did I not ask you that I should have?

00:21:48:03 – (Andrew Fox): I would say that. What is the future of advertising in general? 

00:21:56:12 – (Brynne Tillman): What’s the future of advertising?

00:22:00:21 – (Andrew Fox): The future of advertising is personalization. It’s these models that really begin to know you.

00:22:12:05 – (Andrew Fox): So AI that understands who you are as a person, and then those models integrated with technology in order to serve you something that is so specific to what it is that you’re looking for or what it is that you want that it compels you to buy, and it shortens that conversion cycle.

00:22:32:13 – (Andrew Fox): Because I think that the consumer journey sometimes is too long, but it really kind of depends upon what, like if you’re searching for a car, you can be in the market for six months for a car, right?

00:22:44:17 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah. But if you’re searching for a toothbrush, 6 minutes, it’s not even right. You’re like, it has soft bristles. Great. Perfect. Right. So I think there has to be a balance between personalization to match my bathroom. Yes. Well, that’s it. My two criteria. 

00:23:05:43 – (Andrew Fox): My mother would say the same thing. So I guess you know, so there has to be a balance between that personalized approach and also discovery.

00:23:20:06 – (Andrew Fox): Right? Because if you’re interested in sandals, you might be interested in that specific collagen sandal, but there might be other sandals that would be appealing to you as well. So yeah, right. 

00:23:35:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Goes with my skin. Yeah, it’s, you know, the color. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s like this really cool black and white and orange, and it doesn’t matter. It’s the best sandals I’ve ever owned.

00:23:49:09 – (Brynne Tillman): But they followed me forever, and I’m like, I own them. I love them. And I’m going to tell you one other thing, Cohen. If you’re listening, six weeks later, they were on sale. It was upset because I paid retail, and now you’re offering them to me at a discount. Yeah. Now, for six weeks, 

00:24:12:12 – (Andrew Fox): There should be coupon codes for when that stuff happens, right?

00:24:13:12 – (Andrew Fox): It’s like we know that you just purchased a sandal. It went on sale. We’d love for you to come back. Here’s 20% off your next purchase.

00:24:21:37 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh my God, Andrew, that’s brilliant. Because now I’m going to go and do what you say, I am. I’m going to be like, I’m not going to waste 20% off. That’s $20. I don’t have to spend even though I’m spending 80, right?

00:24:36:03 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s how I feel when it comes to Cohen sandals. Yes. My gosh, I love that. So instead of feeling bad that I missed the 20%, I get it for another purchase. All right. Really, I’m going to send this to all the marketing people on Cohen, right? I mean, I just made this all about me. So let’s stop for a moment.

00:25:01:06 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s all good. I’m here for you. So, you know, I. You what? All right, my friend. Thank you so much for your brilliance today. If people like Cohen or or by the way, let me just say, you work with Fortune 500, but you also work with small businesses. So you are listening to Andrew right now, and you’re like, boy, I’m a small business.

00:25:23:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Will hebe  able to help me? The answer is most likely. You can sort of. How can they connect with you?

00:25:29:64 – (Andrew Fox): Definitely. You can reach me at Contact at Foxy Digital Dot AI. it’s really easy. Just shoot me an email. I’m very quick to respond. I have a really great team here that is very supportive. We are all like, I have a very strict I’m sorry, I don’t know if this is censored or not, but I have a very strict no asshole policy and totally appropriate. Right. Okay. I want to make sure you know good people. You said that earlier, and I love that. I want to help good people. Me too. 

00:26:06:37 – (Andrew Fox): Yeah, that’s it. At the end of the day, like we have to help each other be successful. And if we can do that, then we can advance the human race in a way that is positive and also productive.

00:26:20:03 – (Andrew Fox): And I think that people want to be productive. And I think that people want to have a positive experience. They don’t want to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. So let’s create that world, and we can. And the technology exists for us to be able to do that. So I think that let’s go and let’s get it.

00:26:38:06 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. So I want to start a new hashtag, AI for good, AI for good. Thank you, my friend. And to all my friends out there listening, when you are out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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