[MUSIC]

Awesome!

All right, year number five, thanks so much for having me back, [SOUND]!

I'm relaxed now, Im wearing sandals and shit.

All right, so I wanna chat with you guys about something that's just near and

dear to my heart.

I'm watching companies that I love working with, clients of mine, fail.

I'm watching them get disrupted.

I'm watching them lose.

And I'm watching my team and

myself not have the tools to turn that around for them.

So that's what we are going to talk about today.

Is it's an inspiration, unfortunately, from a bunch of pain that I've seen a lot

of people in businesses go through as their businesses fail.

Sometimes because they thought a lot more about search then they thought

about people.

So we're fully aware.

I feel like everything you've seen today, like seriously,

like you watch what Marty talks about.

Then you watch what Marshall talks about.

And you watch what Cindy talks about, and you're like my God,

when am I gonna start working on any of this?

Thank God Marta told us how to save a little bit of time, right?

So I see disruptions everywhere.

I stay paranoid about what's gonna disrupt me.

And you know what I realized is I come to a lot of conferences like this And

I share a lot of time with all of you, and I do love that.

But what I realized is I'm not learning marketing if I don't stop and

go back a ways.

And I went back to the 1890's and read a book by this guy, Claude Hopkins.

A book called Scientific Advertising.

It's funny, you would think, oh Willl you're on stage and you speak at all these

conferences and people come to hear what you believe and think.

I like being student a sometimes.

So I decided to go back to the 1890's and read this book written in the 1890's,

the book Scientific Advertising.

I then I read his other book My Life In Advertising.

And in one of those books, I forget which one, he has this quote.

It's funny. It talks about understanding human nature.

What is understanding human nature, and how people are led to buy,

have anything to do with getting more rankings on Google?

Nothing.

I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that traffic are people.

Clicks are people looking for things.

The question is whether or

not we're going to help them find what they are looking for.

When you understand human needs,

you can get way up in the funnel in ways that other people can't.

For instance, I click on an ad, a paid ad on Twitter from T-Mobile.

Anybody here from T-Mobile?

Okay.

They do some amazing advertising.

So they put an ad up to me on Twitter that said,

do you want your employees to think you're the best boss this year?

I was like, I hope so, click.

And I clicked on it.

I was a little fearful like if it was gonna be like, [SOUND], wrong,

[INAUDIBLE].

But no, I clicked on the ad and what it said is it showed me a business plan that

if Seer pays for our employees' cell phones,

then their whole family gets half off of their bill if they move to T-Mobile.

Now, was I searching for business plans?

Mobile, wherever.

No.

But the need that I had is I want to be perceived and

to have the feeling with my team members that I care about them, and that I'm

trying to leverage what our company does for their benefit as well as ours.

So when you go back to understanding what people need or

what they aspire to, you start realizing that

understanding how people make decisions is an undisruptable skill.

You don't have to worry about mobile coming along.

You don't have to worry about dark social.

Because you understand how people make decisions about the things they

want and need.

If Google went away tomorrow, and you spent the last two or

three years understanding how people make purchasing decisions,

it wouldn't matter to you would it?

Cuz you would just apply that understanding to email or

whatever was getting hot, SnapChat, I don't know.

So that's my belief.

And actually, the hard part, sorry to say this,

is that is a greater skill to understanding how Google works.

I'm sorry.

Today, I'm spending more and more time reading books about psychology, and

how people make decisions than I am trying to understand about how Google works.

Because what I can guarantee is there's a lot of disruption that's gonna happen.

And I wanna align myself with old school stuff that worked in the 1890s,

not that stuff that worked like three days ago on Google cuz you found this trick

about using double-dashes and URLs or some crazy shit.

>> So, I think the best marketers out there understand people's needs first.

Here's an example of a growth hacker.

So I was traveling in Turkey, and I just talked to a guy form Turkey recently.

And it's funny how we talk about companies being disrupted.

When in actuality it's called just understanding your customer and

their needs.

This guy stands in traffic.

On your way from the airport to some city I was traveling in.

And he knows what you're probably going through, because the traffic is horrible.

First thing he realizes is, you probably have a kid in the car.

You're annoyed. You wanna get that kid a toy

and shut him up.

He's got your back.

What's the other thing that happens in a car sometimes if you've been sitting in

traffic for an hour and a half trying to get to your airport?

Or trying to get to the airport to your hotel?

You might get a little hungry.

He's got some nasty snacks,

but you've all eaten nasty snacks sometimes when you're freaking hungry.

If you're in that car and you've been sitting there for an hour and half and

you start sniffing your armpits and going is that me?

He'll help you out with your car.

And then you've been sitting there on your phone so long texting, your battery died.

And you go, oh crap, I don't have any juice.

He's got you, now you can communicate.

That's a freaking growth hacker, if you ask me.

That's some real marketing shit right there, right?

That's understanding human needs.

This guy would probably do better marketing than probably about 90% of

the people in this room.

Cuz he doesn't care what Google thinks, he cares what people think.

If I took away Google, 90% of this room would never come up with that strategy.

Oh, my god, what am I gonna do?

Learn what people want.

And then apply your skills to that.

I love Dr. Pete's presentations.

They're scary, but they're also awesome.

So, the question, for me, is how do you handle disruption?

You got two options.

It's like black sheep.

You can get with this, or you can get with that.

When disruption comes to you you can do this

>> 2010 The Kings of Leon has

pulled out of a show >> Sorry Emma-

>> To bird turds.

Apparently in St. Louis Missouri a few days ago the band canceled their show

three songs in due to being bombarded by pigeon droppings, thanks.

A statement from management Rad quote, so sorry St. Louis.

We had to bail, pigeons [SOUND] in Jared's mouth.

Too unsanitary to continue.

End quote.

A twitter post from drummer Nathan Followill read quote,

don't take it out on Jarred, it's the [SOUND] venue's fault.

You may enjoy being s--t on but we don't.

Sorry for all who traveled many miles.

>> Fuck King Zulion.

Okay.

Sorry Emma!

So I'm not a big fan of King Zulion.

So when the birds are pooping if birds started pooping right now I'd

power through that shit.

I'd be like this guy.

>> I'm gonna go to the hospital.

[APPLAUSE] I'm gonna fix my leg and then I'm gonna

come back and we're gonna pray for you now!

[APPLAUSE] >> Seattle in the house right?

Dave Grohl broke his leg rocking out at a concert in Switzerland

was laying on the ground, and

the only thing he could think of in that moment was, I'm gonna be back.

I'm going to fix my leg, and I'm gonna be back.

As they are carting him out,

he is asking people on his team to play cover songs until he gets back.

He came back, and he rocked out.

Your brand has the option to do that with every customer you get.

Either you can be Kings of Leon.

Oh, it's the fucking venue's fault.

People shit in our mouths, we're out.

Or you can be Dave Grohl.

[LAUGH] I'm gonna be Dave Grohl, right?

I'm gonna break some shit cuz I'm gonna rock out, but

I'm not leaving you behind, right?

People feel differently about those two instances.

Imagine if you heard there were a bunch of birds flying around.

And you have tickets at the same time to see a Kings of Leon concert, or

to see a Foo Fighters concert.

You know where your bet should be.

See, for me, your competitors I've seen this happen.

It's sad to watch a company that you love to help, and you're helping them grow,

to watch them fail.

Your competitors are lying in wait and

I'm gonna talk to you about the speed at which they will pounce on your ass, and

sink their teeth into you, and turn you into this.

The speed by which you can become a carcass on the internet is phenomenal.

And I've got examples and pain from that.

I believe that if we don't disrupt ourselves, someone else will.

I think Rand talked about this earlier in the opening.

I'm gonna show you some examples of companies.

But the one thing I wanna remind you of is for the most part,

loyalty It's pretty hard to disrupt.

It's like having your little dog next to you.

I miss my dog a ton right now, but I got my son with me so, you know,

Can't put everybody on the plane anymore.

So smart companies, they disrupt themselves.

Apple, super innovative, we love them, yeah right, all that cool stuff,

don't look at me in the elevator, cool.

When it comes to music, oh that iTunes thing was awesome, right?

And now it's like oh that radio, oh what are we gonna do?

See when you get, I think the time to be most paranoid is when you're sitting

at the top, cuz you only have one place to go.

Google Now disrupting themselves.

How can we make sure that that doesn't happen to us?

Facebook's said shoot, that whole sharing images thing, we kind of missed it.

Let's just buy somebody now for billions.

And we all go oh my God how did that happen?

What I think is really neat is Amazon Prime has a 74% conversion rate.

Damn.

Getting into e-commerce is hard.

Amazon Prime has a 74% conversion rate.

Think about it for yourself.

You Google some shit.

You see an Amazon link.

You have Prime.

Do you click on anybody else?

The Echo to me is just amazing.

What's really amazing, is that Amazon has decided to launch their own Black Friday.

Disrupting themselves.

Less reliance on Google.

So as marketers, I want you all to be thinking how to disrupt yourselves.

Many of you work for great businesses and organization, and

I would hate to see some of the things that I've seen happen to you.

Too often are we being asked for a 2010 strategy in 2015.

I had somebody do an analysis for me right before this presentation.

50% of the leads that have come into Seer this year mentioned the word,

link-building.

Duh, gotta get that number down.

50%, well why is that a bad thing?

Well you guys are good at getting links.

No, I wanna be the company that helps customers find great stuff,

which I believe might build links.

And I'm gonna show you something that we've recently gotten ranked pretty well

with no outreach and no links.

I want to help people solve problems.

And I have to believe that that will get me the links and

the other things that I like to see my client's attain.

The problem is is when prioritize channel over the problems of you audience,

this may very well happen to you It scares the everliving crap out of me.

The problem with marketing is that it amplifies.

And if what you are marketing is crap,

like the Segway, there's no amount of marketing that can fix that.

And I think we have to remind ourselves of that.

Or if you're making picnic pants.

>> [LAUGH] >> Nobody really,

you know what, maybe that guy in Guatemala, wherever I took that picture,

maybe that guy figured it out, but picnic pants?

That's horrible.

Or if anybody here ever owned a mid 90s Saab 93?

Remember this freaking cupholder that you couldn't even hit the fucking buttons on

your own radio, because somebody decided to put it in front of the freaking buttons

and the timer?

I wonder what time it is?

Let me remove my Slurpee out so I can see what time it is.

Horrible!

There's no amount of marketing that can fix that.

And I think a lot of us are being asked to fix people's bad businesses.

And they're saying, go get me more links and stuff.

Maybe we should say no to some of that crap.

And to be honest with you, I've been doing this for a long time.

Marketing that doesn't focus on people is kind of getting a little old to me.

It's cool to think about the psychology.

I find myself when I'm reading a book lately, it's always about how people make

decisions, whether it's nudge, or switch, or predictably or rational, I don't care.

But I love the process of how people go about making the decisions they make.

Like when you pick up an orange,

this is an example in Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible.

When you pick up an orange,

many people make a decision as to how good that orange is by the color of the orange.

When that has nothing to do with what's on the inside.

That talks about how people makes decisions.

Now with that, could you apply that kind of understanding of

people's decision making to search, paid search, social, email, billboard?

Could you apply that to some other stuff?

Understanding that people sometimes make decisions on things they see

that have nothing to do with what they actually want.

That to me is exciting.

I'm gonna try to speed to through the beginning of my slide, so

that I don't rush at the end.

So digitally when I think of people's needs,

we're lucky in that they usually start off with some kind of box.

Not always, and I'm gonna show you examples of that.

But, it's nice.

Thank you for offering this Pinterest.

Drop down what people are looking for.

Pinterest to me is a database of intentions and aspirations.

And as a marketer and a brand I wanna be there.

I wanna be connected to the things you aspire to,

not always just the things you search cuz you need it right now.

It'd be nice to have a combination of both of those.

So the choice is yours, red pill, blue pill.

I want all of you to be content heroes.

And it's funny how often we produce content that

really doesn't make us very heroic.

We all saw Marty, hero.

[LAUGH] Second time you're gonna see this slide in the last two days.

What's interesting is when Brandon Marty sat down, let me tell you what brand is.

Marty has brand.

You know why?

Because the last six weeks I've been spending doing nothing but

understanding how Facebook, and Twitter, and LinkedIn advertising work.

So I've shutdown doing a lot of other stuff, and I focused on that.

When it came time for

me to decide to start understanding it, I did a search on YouTube for Marty's video.

I didn't want just any content somebody produced on this topic,

I went to Marty's first, and in doing that six weeks ago.

In this example, he's talking about who needs batteries, external batteries?

I'm going, people at conferences need external batteries.

And the thing that Marty's realizing that many of us have not is that for

most of us at SEO, we go, okay, you sell external batteries.

All right, cool, let's type it in, right.

I love this. Don't hit Enter.

That's me, I say that all the time.

And it's like, okay these are the words we can rank for.

And I can build these assets from that.

There's a problem with that.

There's a difference between who needs external batteries, and

who searches for external batteries.

And if you do search, and you think your job is to rank things in little boxes,

you realize you're only solving half of that equation.

I'm gonna give you a really good example of how I ended up on this stage that will

show you that this whole research thing, that person's plan,

brand search, I'll show you.

When people travel, they probably want external batteries.

You can't take pictures and send them out to people if your phone is dead.

So instead of it being versus, how about we look at that as an and.

And if I said if we do both of these,

then one of them takes away people typing stuff into little boxes, doesn't it?

Now ask yourself.

If you looked at this year and the time you've invested in understanding how to

market to people, if I told you I wanted you to do both of these, you probably have

a lot of expertise on the people who are searching in the little boxes, and

maybe not so much on the people who may be influenced way up the funnel.

So how do we get started?

The first thing that everybody here needs to do and I just believe in this,

I like brands who place their flag on something.

We've got to raise our flag on what we believe and you're gonna see something,

I believe, pretty hard.

It might cost me a good amount of money doing it.

You've gotta raise your flag and

you've gotta get super loud, which is what I'm doing today.

One day I asked myself, how can I begin the process of getting people,

even on my team, to think differently about our role in search?

So, we started giving these tiles out to people.

And I've got like 200 of them still to give out to all of you who want them.

There's a lot more than 200 of you, so when I run out, don't come after me.

But I want people on the day they start Seer to see this.

How about we become the people who help people to find what they are looking for.

Not the people who just get rankings.

Same day to day tactics,

different way of thinking about how those tactics are deployed.

How would it feel if we were the people who help people to find solutions?

That sounds nice.

I like that.

I help people find what they're looking for, kinda like a concierge.

I'm looking for a good steak.

Let's go over here.

I talked about that last year.

What's interesting is that changing your mind can, Just lead to amazing outcomes.

What do I mean by that?

I read, there's a book called The Upside of Stress,

by Kelly McGonigal, really good book about stress management.

And one of the examples she leads in with is this study from Harvard.

And what they found is they took two groups of maids in Boston and

this group, they said Exercise is good.

We're gonna get you all together in the break room.

We're gonna tell you that exercise, good thing.

They we're gonna go to this other group and we're gonna tell them,

do you realize that the work you're doing every day is the equivalent of like

running a 5K every week?

And then they went back six months later and

evaluated how that intervention affected two different groups of people.

Guess what happened?

These people, same weight.

These people on average lost like eight pounds.

Their heart rate had changed, their blood pressure went down.

They never changed what they did,

they were just told that what they were doing was different.

So what if told you that today, those of you out there that are hustling to build

great content and help that content to be found, because you

believe it might actually help somebody somewhere who's lost, solve a problem?

You're being the concierge for the whole Internet.

Versus, yeah, you get rankings.

So how do we tell ourselves for a second that we're those people?

Now again, you can choose to use your skills to get people to great content,

or you can use your skills to make them get to crap content.

And I'm gonna show you the outcome of the two of those.

But I think we can begin to deflect some of the disruptions that are coming for us.

By using the skills we have, you saw Marty do it.

Marty got that stuff lit.

Understanding people's needs and

aspiration is a great place to be as a marketer.

There is no disruption for that.

But we've got to start thinking of channels first, or

we have to stop thinking of channels first.

Because we're tackling so many customer problems with SEO first.

That strategy's running dry.

I think so many of us are winning at search, and losing at people.

What do I mean by that?

Look at some of the stuff we produce at scale.

You want examples?

Okay, I got examples for you.

Where we think we're winning, and our users are like, [SOUND].

>> [LAUGH] >> Think about, that's us.

You know what's one of the most interesting dichotomies?

Is we'll go out there and put shit out on the Internet all day long to get rankings.

And then when we click on that same shit,

we're pissed off that an SEO tricked us into clicking on their top ranking.

>> [LAUGH] >> Oh man,

I got tricked into this crappy SEO crap.

Wait a second, I do that for all my clients.

Here's your first example.

If this was your brand's growth in your brand name,

this is the brand name of a company.

You probably feel pretty good about your company, until you saw this,

which is the brand name of one of your competitors.

Company A had a six year head start.

The other competitor launched and beat them out in 18 months.

Beat them in 18 months,

one said hey we're gonna focus on this, like we all do to much.

We're gonna focus on ranking for vacation rentals.

Boom! Number one bitches!

VRBO, got you!

We got number one!

Did my job.

I don't need to go to MozCon this year.

I know all that shit.

I got number one for vacation rentals.

Yeah, but then the other company decided to focus on this.

Can you imagine being on that beach right now in Nicaragua?

I can.

That's awesome.

That's where I want to be, when I think about my vacation.

I don't want to think about the letter V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, Enter.

They focused on how it feels to be relaxed, or to go on an adventure or

try something new.

And you know what they're getting for all that?

All that focusing on user wants and needs?

They're ranked number nine, for vacation rentals.

And the good part is they don't give a shit.

Because what they realize is that at some point, winning those hearts and

minds is gonna win the SERP.

But if they keep focusing on the SERP first, it may not work.

I'm gonna show you by going back through two examples of those two companies, so

by now you know I'm talking about Airbnb.

This page, tons of social shares and links.

How?

Look at it?

Go ahead and drop it into BuzzSumo, you'll see.

I didn't even know Water Cooler, WaterColor, where is that?

I don't even know.

That doesn't look like

a page that typically gets thousands of shares, does it?

Okay.

But what if a company told you that you could stay in Maracanã Stadium for

a night with all your friends?

That also got a bunch of social shares.

Seems plausible right?

Stay in a stadium, go to Brazil, we'll put you up in a room inside the stadium.

That seems like something that might get some social shares and some links.

But what's more interesting is even when they decide to do content,

people are voting with their searches.

God I have said this so many times.

Look at your branded search.

I don't care how much content you write.

If nobody ever searches for content for

direct keywords with your brand, you ain't doing something right.

I don't care how much time you put into content marketing.

What I care about is how many people it helps.

Because you know what?

When you find something that's great, don't you sometimes go,

I don't want just any neighborhood guide to London.

I want Airbnb's.

Well why would you put Airbnb on the side of that?

Maybe it's because you believe that their stuff's gonna be better.

Surely don't see VRBO there.

How long is that number one ranking gonna win hearts and minds?

I'm not sure.

Let me show you something that an SEO put together for Airbnb.

Video.

There we go, >> To be honest,

when I first heard about this story, I didn't quite believe it.

Because it was such a profound story of human connection, and

human transformation.

>> When I first heard the story, it was actually in an internal meeting,

where I instantly got goosebumps all over my arms.

>> I sent in the story, to every me.

>> I'm a little short on time.

>> [LAUGH] >> You see Dennis G.?

That guy is an SEO.

He talked about getting goosebumps by a story he heard from a customer.

Most of us get goosebumps when we're number one.

Now, how did his boss, John Mendenhall, ask him to hey well,

you wanna do this story from this person and build all this content?

How are you gonna go about proving that it was worth it?

These were the three goals in priority order which he was given.

He got 200 media hits.

Their piece of content on the Berlin Wall

was 2.2% of all conversations across the web on the Berlin Wall?

And obviously let's just assume that SEO did well, but

obviously he doesn't work there anymore, so we can't share those numbers.

I want him to come back to MozCon and present this next year if you

guys will have him, because let me show you what he put together.

Berlin 1987.

My father was a guard on the West side of the Berlin wall.

While another man guarded the East.

Eventually the wall came down.

But even after moving away, my father carried a piece of it with him.

While I grew up [CROSSTALK] >> Oh sorry, I gotta stop it.

Gotta keep going.

>> [LAUGH] >> First time I put video in.

Watch it yourselves, you can Google that.

You can't see me in like five minutes, when I've gotta get off stage.

It cost them over $2 million.

The head of Global SEO pitched something to his boss that

cost $2.2 million dollars for one campaign.

That guy's gotta get up on stage and tell us how he did that, doesn't he?

>> [LAUGH] >> So please MOZ try to bring him back,

cuz he's pitching content that costs more than a Bugatti.

So the interesting thing to me is that once algorithms understand what we love,

which they're working on, what's gonna happen to VRBO's number one ranking?

But the time they realize that, oh, the algorithm has shifted, and

now we need to write content that people care about with our brand.

Oh, shit, Airbnb's all over it.

Too late.

>> The most interesting is, if you're number one for a keyword, and

you're high fiving.

But the brand that you're going up against is smoking you.

It's interesting to watch that the word Airbnb is searched for

more than vacation rentals.

You're winning the wrong battle, home skillet.

>> [LAUGH] >> We laugh,

but we don't check this, do we?

We go, number one, still got it!

Pop your collar.

No actually, you're getting your ass kicked.

Because Airbnb is about to become a synonym for the word that you love.

And then, what are you gonna do?

Nothing.

Again, the choice is yours.

You have the choice to produce great content, but you have to fight for it.

Fight for the right,

to produce content that makes somebody happy when they get it.

Not to just shovel that shit off your plate, so

you can write the next piece of content.

Let me give you an example of two different companies,

that have chosen to produce content to solve this same problem.

>> For flying with us today.

We make it our priority to get you to your destination safely.

With great service along the way,

all thanks to more than 80,000 coworkers [INAUDIBLE].

>> Yeah, it feels great to be on a United flight, doesn't it?

>> [LAUGH] >> Here,

from Jeff Smisek, on behalf of my 80,000 slaves, I mean coworkers.

>> [LAUGH] >> The guy kinda looks a little bit like,

Mr. Burns.

Anyway.

>> [LAUGH] >> Another company had to also

produce a safety video, and it looked a little more like this.

[MUSIC]

You can watch that later.

>> [LAUGH] >> Before we move into the stratosphere.

See, I watch that video, you can ask my team,

I watch that video once a month-ish, no more than I go once a quarter.

Cuz it's my inspiration to remind me to not settle for what I'm asked for but

to aspire to something greater.

Because both of those companies could've shown up and done the easy thing.

United did and we all know how we feel about United.

The reality is that travel kind of feels more like this, and

when I get on a United plane, Jeff Smisek's thinking that.

And Branson's thinking this.

>> [LAUGH] >> Nobody clap for Jeff.

And that's why even on a platform where people do nothing but complain,

people say great things about Virgin.

But the brands that we admire they're willing to go the extra mile for

their customers.

You are not going the extra mile for

your customer when you write shit content that ranks well.

You are misleading them.

How does that feel?

I've done it for a long time and I'm sick of doing it.

And you will eventually get disrupted.

Another industry that I think is making a major comeback is TV.

TV?

TV. I think TV is rising,

and I'm going to show you why.

First thing is I'm paranoid about everything killing market share for

search.

Winston Churchill said it best, the dangers of life are infinite, and

among them is safety.

Feel safe to be in search right now, content marketing, it's growing.

The smart people are paranoid.

Airbnb got to do amazing commercials, but

they started off by having their audience produce a bunch of Vine videos for them.

That's how they're eventually getting budgets.

But if I ask your audience to go out and report a bunch of Vine videos,

do you think you'd get 1000 entries for your company?

If you're not winning hearts and minds, all you've got left is what's in that box.

And now AirBnB is producing amazing commercials.

Now, I'm not gonna do the whole Dollar Shave Club check them out

they're awesome thing.

What I am going to tell you is that they're doing TV commercials,

TV commercials that are like this.

>> Excuse me, do you have the keys for the razor case?

>> No. >> Could anybody help me get some razors?

>> No. [NOISE]

Now, I show you

that example,

for one reason.

Dollar Shave Club understands needs and frustrations.

See what you can produce when you understand think of needs and

frustrations?

Has anybody in here ever traveled to another city, went to go get a razor and

you're like are you freaking serious,

they're locked behind this freaking wall like as if you've got Fort Knox or

some gold or some weed or something behind there.

Isn't it interesting where your mind might go if you think about frustrations and

customer needs and wants.

You're never going to see that in a search box by not hitting enter on Google.

And of course what I love about Dollar Shave Club is they reinforce this stuff on

their brand at every touch point that they can.

That's why they outrank Gillette.

Mailchimp is doing billboards.

Bill freaking boards.

And there's no call to action on them.

There's no attribution.

There's no GA.

There's none of that other cool shit we've been hearing about all day.

It's just a billboard.

And they do it over and over again,

and they don't even put their freaking URL on it.

How the freak do they get to do that?

Man, you're probably friends with the whole Internet.

Get them to show up too.

I'd love to hear how they convince marketing to do a billboard.

What's really cool is that after they're done with the billboard,

they pull them down, they turn all the stuff into bags.

And give it out to their customers.

This was made just to make customers smile, that's it.

You know what kind of marketing you get to do when

people invest in making people smile?

Old media sure as hell ain't getting it.

I was up with my son one night and I was fast forwarding through something

horrible and I realized I couldn't even fast forward on on-demand.

Huh? What?

Can't fast forward, what are you talking about?

Why may it not be available, don't get it.

But new media, we're not getting it either.

We already went through this.

In 2002, we all had pop-up blockers.

And today, we still have the same shit.

It's funny how people like to do overlays and talk about conversion rates and

shit, when in 2002 if you thought about what people needed and

wanted they would have told you they didn't want that shit.

We got software to block that crap, and now today it's common

knowledge to pop shit up over people, so they can sign up for your newsletter

before you've even read one piece of news to know if you would even want to.

God, I wish everybody would get rid of those.

But they work, but they piss off a lot of people too.

You just don't know it, cuz they leave your freaking sight.

So, let me give you an example.

[MUSIC]

[LAUGH] These popups won't go away.

Might as well scroll sideways.

For my Citizen Cope fans in the house.

The craziest thing is that I tried to edit that out of the video cuz

I didn't realize what song I was playing while I was doing my screen grab, and

it ended up being Citizen Cope Sideways.

How awesome is that?

Seren-fucking-dipity.

>> [LAUGH] >> It's like, but

now I can't even leave your site unless I'm going to scroll left to right.

Cuz God forbid I want to leave.

You're just going to pop shit up on me until I die, or my finger goes through

enough fatigue that I eventually sign up for your shitty newsletter.

>> [LAUGH] >> Keep going.

The reason why I think these companies are turning to TV, if you watch C NBC's

late night reality shows, like The Profit and The Consumed,

you're watching a lot of digital companies turn into people doing TV.

W.E.B Du Bois Said it best, I like to go old school.

Remember, I'm talking about going way back.

Be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.

What a powerful statement.

Just because you are something today doesn't mean you have to be that tomorrow,

but you gotta be ready to give up that old shit we've been doing.

And it's crazy because I can't believe the stuff that we get asked to do still.

So, I went back to 1900.

Karen Flanagan, Karen Bass, sorry.

If you know him he gave me this example.

So, it's the year 1900 and

the Michelin Company hires you to sell more tires with content.

What do you do?

You've got none of this.

So, you produce this guide.

1900, they were producing content.

If I take your Google and Pinterest away, and

I told you to use some great content, what would you do?

Cuz rankings aren't gonna be the value.

You're going to produce this guide, and how is that gonna make money for anybody?

Well, it's for chauffeurs and

people who are driving along the French countryside with guys that look like this.

And I want this guy to know where to take people.

Because as he wears his tires down with my brand all over them and

drives more miles, I make more money.

That's content marketing and it doesn't matter if it ranks or not, now does it?

Cuz you're understanding needs.

People wanna explore the new restaurant.

It's funny how whenever a new restaurant opens up, people just want to go to it.

Like it could be crap.

I'm like hey, hun, why don't we go to that restaurant we

always know is great and amazing.

No, let's sit in line for three hours and go to this other restaurant that's crap.

They understood the need.

And they're still doing it today.

They can pivot into apps if they want to because they built a brand.

I took two pictures at presentation once in Brazil, and it's funny that as I was

looking at pictures to use in the slide deck These two came up.

And I felt like my whole career has been, I've been looking down at the link

building mistakes and talking about link building.

And I failed to just look up and fix the aperture and

realize that I was talking to people, faces.

I was thinking about links and I was looking at the links that I was building.

And I forgot that those links need to be clicked on by people.

Who are hoping that when they click on it, they can actually scroll up and down,

instead of left to right.

Look at this.

It ranks. If

anybody here has ever moved from Dallas, Texas to Chicago,

the last thing you need to know is that Chicago is also known as the Second City.

What the freak does that have to do with me knowing how to move?

Ranks?

Yep. The problem is,

I think it does brand damage.

We say Matt Brown talk about this earlier.

We all laughed at Wiki, ha, ha, ha.

Yeah. Well, that's a lot of us too,

in this room.

When we do crap work, and it ranks well, people click on it.

And after awhile they stop clicking on it.

But, that trust is hard to disrupt.

You know how you know trust is hard to disrupt?

Let me show you two brands and tell you if they both went into the pacemaker industry

which one would you let crack open your chest and put a heart in?

>> [LAUGH] >> Right.

Brand, trust, this shit matters.

On a smaller scale, it's a shame that people right crap like this back to Seer.

Oh my God, thank you for not requiring an e-mail to download.

Why should I?

I'm gonna win hearts and minds by sharing everything I know.

I'll get your e-mail later, you're gonna want to give me your e-mail later.

But I can't expect that to happen if I don't give you something first.

I hate being up here with no time.

All right.

So, I always show a sample of RevZilla cuz they're in Philly and do great marketing.

This is what happens when you type in your brand into YouTube and

you don't make any product.

They don't make product.

So how are so many people searching for their gloves if they don't make gloves?

Their reviews are that good.

Anybody here who rides a motorcycle knows, the reviews are so

good, that they're searching not just for glove reviews.

They're looking for Revzillas, because the brand means something.

The brand means quality review, not we got it ranked well.

Our journey today and how we got here.

How many of us did, obviously I'm here.

Kanye, fire on the sides.

Great shot last year.

Thank you, Moz.

Nobody typed this in to get here, did they?

Anybody type in SEO conference to show up here today?

Stand up.

I bet you also own a Nook.

Okay.

Did anyone type in Internet marketing conference?

Anyone, don't be embarrassed.

I got a bunch of stuff I'm going to give out later,

down right here at the corner of the stage, I'll give you two.

Didn't think so.

Anybody rub a genie and have a bunch of smoke come out and so

you should go see Rand and the Moz team?

No.

So how the freak did we end up here?

Because this company has beliefs.

And whether you like them or not,

you know where they plant their freaking flag, don't you.

Gender-neutral bathrooms.

We're planting our flag here at Moz and if you don't like it,

you can go pee somewhere else.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Love that, love that.

[APPLAUSE] >> And that's reputation,

and that is trust.

And that is why no matter what I Google, if I see Moz anywhere in my scroll,

I'm skipping over all the high ranking motherfuckers who likely put some kind of

pop-up to get my email,

cuz these guys have always believed in just giving us everything.

And they know that we'll just stay subscribed forever, and ever, and ever.

Smart.

All right, so I think it's time for

us to take a blank piece of paper and a beer and a pen to what SEO's gonna be.

When I talked to Rand a while back at the church at our last event at our office.

I don't know if this is still true, but when we did CEO swap,

I found that like 20% of Moz's budget for marketing isn't tied to a specific ROI.

Is that still true?

If you take anything away from today,

let's start making that two percent at your company.

I know you probably work for some hard driving asshole, it's okay.

But try to get two percent that is not tied to ROI.

You'll never create serendipity if you don't.

And also, for me, I like to stay paranoid.

So as I wrap up, this is a client's data, it's $1 million from Pinterest and

$1.52 million assisted from Pinterest.

And I thought as a search company, if my client is making this much from Pinterest,

why the freak are they gonna need search in three or four years?

Because they want it to be the database of people's aspirations.

And they figured it out, and we want to help them.

So we built a guide to Pinterest.

But I don't just want to talk about the guide that we built.

I want to talk about how we took a whole team of people to figure this out.

So we got a dev on board with Steven,

and then we got a couple of designers with Kirsten and Kristen.

Kristen's dad's name is Randy Bigniss.

Isn't that awesome.

His name's Randy Bigness.

It's like it's such a porn star name.

Anyway. [LAUGH] Then we got Ally and

Audrey on PPC, and then we got our content team, and then we got a video guy.

Kevin's the dude that did hey Rand, take a look at my site a couple years ago.

He now works at seer, who the fuck knew?

And then Teresa, and Andrew and Hannah, and we got all these different people in

a room and said let's produce something that people will really want.

It's got no links.

We've done no outreach.

It ranks really welll and it helps people everyday.

And it's gonna keep doing it, forever ever, forever ever.

Because we poured our hearts and souls into this thing.

and it actually helps people when we look at how far they scroll, and

what they engage with.

So, as I'm wrapping up,

because I'm not gonna finish the rest of this, there's a lesson here.

It's that the best marketing is rarely created by one discipline.

The stuff that was showing earlier.

We gotta get better at working with people in these other divisions.

Because, do you think that Dennis G produced that cartoon himself?

No, he paid somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it.

I'm gonna show you an example of what happens with a company that places hearts

and minds at the top, and then I'll leave you alone.

>> Dogs follow their noses, and sometimes that can lead them astray.

Introducing Pedigree Found, the real time lost dog app.

For the first time ever you can register your dog so that if he or

she goes missing you can send out an instant online alert to

everyone in the area by Google's digital ed network for free.

With the lost dog alert moving faster than your dog,

you should be reunited with your best friend in next to no time.

>> All right >> Has anyone ever lost their dog?

How does it feel?

It feels like shit, you're worried, you're concerned.

Your dog is out there in the world, in a dangerous world.

In Pedigree, basically, when your dog gets lost and you post that through this app.

Buys ads, with a picture of your dog, on the GDN in your zip code.

So people can see that it's your dog.

I've had three clients over the last few years in the dog space.

We have pitched shit like this and failed.

And it kills me, cuz I think they're gonna get fucking destroyed,

because that's a company that cares about people losing their dogs.

>> If you lose your dog, I want to attach to that,

because you're gonna be nervous and scared, and as a marketer, I want to show

you that I care about something more than just you buying more Kibbles and Bits.

But the problem is, on none of those three clients we worked with,

did thy have the faith or the belief.

Or maybe we didn't convince them well enough.

But that's what they should have done.

Instead we got asked questions like,

why does this other company have the word in their URL two times?

Should we so that to all our URLs and just make everything forward for three days?

No, we should build something that's gonna win over hearts and minds.

So the last thing I'm gonna leave you with,

cuz now I am running out, is what it looks like when the old and new combine.

Watch this magic that is about to happen on your screen.

And then I'll take whatever questions we have left?

Wayfair.com is the online site for home shopping.

Just Google Wayfair my sofa to update and refresh your living room.

Or Google Wayfair my area rug to browse any style from our huge selection,

including the rug that's just right for you.

Or Google Way. >> Good luck beating them out for

area rugs.

They're doing TV to get branded search on words associated with rooms.

What are you doing if you compete with them?

You got that?

Cuz that, I'm about to have a client in that space,

we're gonna get frigging destroyed if we don't hustle.

Don't do this.

When we moved out of the church somebody built us flyers,

I don't even know who this person is.

They built us flyers that actually matched our brand, and our tone, and our images,

and everything else.

And now we use them.

It took them some time, we know it's relevant for them.

And it looked good.

So as I wrap up, I just wanna remind you all, come up here take a tile from me,

I've got hundreds of them.

I want you to clip it to your freaking key chain and

I want you to see it as a reminder of what it feels like to find something when

you've lost it.

That's what people on the Internet are doing when they're searching,

they're looking for an answer.

And you can either be Jeff Smisek or Richard Branson every time you put your

fingers to those keys and produce great content.

I think Google's gonna disrupt one of those two groups, and hopefully your on my

side and at that little tile reminds you everyday to do that over this.

Thank you so much, I appreciate your time.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you dude.

>> Thank you sir.

Okay, unfortunately we do have to get people out of here, so

we don't really have the time for the Q and A.

I did have one really interesting question though.

You love reading.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Any good book recommendations for people right now?

>> It's the ones I gave away years ago.

I actually re-read Switch, so Switch.

>> I read Switch and then I downloaded the audio book of Switch, so when I go running

once a quarter, I re-listen to Switch cuz it gets me in the right mind set.

Switch is the book.

Check me out in Goodread.

You'll see what I am reading, but Switch is the one.

>> That's awesome.

We do have to get out of here.

Any chance you can make yourself available for just a few minutes?

>> No I got like 200 freakin things to give away.

>> So come on up and Will questions.

[CROSSTALK] That's gonna do it for us tonight at MozCon.

>> Thank you everybody.

>> We'll see ya. Goodnight everybody.