This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Dustin Clark [00:00:00]:
Some executive is going to look at us and say how much money did you spend? How much money did you make? And in that environment, the lead, the sale, the deal, conversion rate or metrics that we like watch like hawks. But we’ve done that to the detriment of watching impressions and engagements and where is our visibility in the world. So I would say in the zero click environment, we can’t ignore our visibility in the world.

Dustin Clark [00:00:26]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:00:27]:
We have to be vigilant that we are showing up in those search engine result pages, in social media articles, on.

Joe Mills [00:00:34]:
Websites like Public Space.

Dustin Clark [00:00:35]:
Public Space.

Joe Mills [00:00:36]:
You have to like rewin public Space.

Dustin Clark [00:00:37]:
You have to win the public space.

Joe Mills [00:00:41]:
Welcome to the Inventory, the show designed to give OEMs and dealers like you actionable insight on channel marketing. From co op programs to product portfolio design. We’ll arm you with the information you need to excel today, to enter new markets successfully, to build lasting OEM dealer relationships and ultimately to move more inventory. Let’s get started on today’s episode of the Inventory we are sitting back down with Dustin Clark, VP of Digital at element3 and we are discussing how AI is changing the way that consumers behave and interact with your brand online. We talk about a zero click environment and how OEMs and dealers need to adapt to the way that they think about, measure and actually do their marketing in order to win in this new environment. Hope you enjoy. Dustin, thanks for joining us, man. I’m excited for today’s conversation.

Joe Mills [00:01:29]:
Before we just dive in and start giving all the detail on zero click, can you start by defining it for the audience? Like what, what do we mean when we’re talking about a zero click environment?

Dustin Clark [00:01:41]:
Yeah. So really when I say zero click environment or when you hear it in the marketplace, it’s not my term, it’s, it’s been out Search Engine Journal, other resources been talking about for a while. It really means two things when we are saying it back to our clients as a consultancy. When we say zero click environment, what we mean is our natural human tendency to pick up our phone and turn on the microphone and speak to it.

Dustin Clark [00:02:04]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:02:05]:
We are saying what we want and then it’s delivering us results back. Also because our technology has advanced so much now the results that we get are giving us lots and lots more information in our search engines without having to click. So the zero click is really driven by how we search for information these days and how that information is then served to us. So we’ve had the ability to talk to our phones for years, but we still had to click to go get the information. Well, now Gemini and the other search engine AI assistant tools are giving you these, like, rich snippets. They’re giving you lots of information and there’s a link there, but they’re giving you more information than they ever have before. At the top of the search engine result page, the SERPs. So.

Dustin Clark [00:02:49]:
So zero click environment. It’s a search thing, it’s an AI thing. But really what we mean is human beings can get answers from their devices without having to click to your website. And as marketers, we better be prepared for that environment or else we’re going to lose.

Joe Mills [00:03:04]:
Yeah. It makes me think about a lot of the conversations I’ve had lately with prospects, and I believe we’ve had with our clients as well. Is something along the lines of AI is going to kill search, Right? Can you expand on that? Like, is it true? How is it going to kill search without going too esoteric on it? What does it mean?

Dustin Clark [00:03:22]:
I mean, SEO has been dead like 19 times before. Coming from like a journalism background, my experience in marketing is that SEO will never die. But it’s because when we say SEO, we talk about. Some people mean it to say we are trying to trick or game the system to win in search, and other people are. We’re trying to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. And that second version of it is, is based on language.

Dustin Clark [00:03:49]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:03:50]:
And we talk about natural language processing and all this great stuff that we’re hearing from AI. Our search engines, Google, Bing, like all the other search engines, they’re getting smarter and smarter and smarter people are using ChatGPT and Claude for search engines, other AI tools. So the fact that you still have to type a query or say a query, you have to give information and you do that through language. That’s never going to change.

Dustin Clark [00:04:17]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:04:17]:
Until we get a microchip that does the thinking for us, we’re still going.

Joe Mills [00:04:21]:
To tell, please, no, yeah, no, I.

Dustin Clark [00:04:23]:
Don’T want that yet. I’m not ready for the singularity. But as long as language is a part of this, then we’ve got the keys to be able to deliver value. Now the difference is even going back a year or two, those rich snippets that AI ability to deliver the answer to, basically like Google Gemini is going to read your website, summarize it, and then serve it up in a search result that has, has really started to take flight.

Dustin Clark [00:04:49]:
Right?

Dustin Clark [00:04:49]:
It’s, it’s been out there for a while, but it’s getting better and better. And better. And we are even hearing from clients from, from the marketplace that like we had a client the other day was literally like I don’t even go to my website anymore. I just rely on what the search engine tells me about that thing that I used to go find on my website.

Joe Mills [00:05:05]:
That’s wild, right?

Dustin Clark [00:05:07]:
But is that really that wild? Because when you look for best Chinese restaurant near me or you know, what’s the best guitar for a 14 year old, you, you probably are doing the same thing like oh well it tells me that, you know, Fender Squire, blah blah blah blah blah is that’s the right one. That’s pretty reliable. It’s coming from Sweetwater. Sweetwater is one of the best e commerce musician websites in the world. I can rely on that. I don’t have to click the sweetwater.com if I’m just looking for the information. If it’s just educational in nature, sweetwater1 I’m going to see it when I go and search for it later when I’m ready to buy. It’s still going to be at the top of the page.

Dustin Clark [00:05:44]:
But they had to change the experience, right? You have to deliver the experience in such a way that gives that helpful educational resource in the moment when someone’s doing that educational search. I mean I think what 75, 80% of searches nowadays are considered educational in nature. So if we’re not building our websites, if we’re not building our marketing experiences to win in a zero click environment, basically what we mean is like when without the consumer having to visit your website. So that means your content has to be readily available, it has to be readable off your website, it has to be scannable, it has to be summarizable. It’s not gaming the system in the old school SEO way. It’s the, you know, when SEO went from to content is king. Right now they’re saying context is king. If you’re delivering great context and your website and other experiences are built in such a way to allow tools like AI to be able to read and summarize, then you’ve got a good chance to win.

Dustin Clark [00:06:46]:
In this environment, if all of your rich content is behind a gate, it’s a PDF that somebody has to give their information to get, then the search engine can’t get it either. And if the search engine can’t get it, it can’t deliver that rich snippet where. Which means eventually it’s probably going to devalue your ranking in such a way that people can still find you, but you’re not, you’re not that first result that’s given them that good content.

Joe Mills [00:07:11]:
How does a marketer know they’re winning when you’re operating inside of a zero? We’re talking about you got to win without them even coming to your website. And where my mind immediately went was if they didn’t come to my website, how do I even know they saw me? How do I know that we’re making progress as a marketing team? How do I know that I’m positively impacting my business in this world?

Dustin Clark [00:07:33]:
Yeah, some of these off site signals, right? What do we see as far as search engine rankings? What do we see as far as like media impressions or keyword impressions? I mean it’s a very specific question, but I think it’s like starting to value our visibility as much as we value our clickability or our engagement.

Dustin Clark [00:07:51]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:07:52]:
And visibility matters. Yeah, the old school marketer. I mean even today, man, it’s not even old school game. At the end of the day, some executive is going to look at us and say how much money did you spend? How much money did you make? And in that environment, the lead, the sale, the deal, conversion rate or metrics that we like watch like hawks. But we’ve done that to the detriment of watching impressions and engagements and where is our visibility in the world? So I would say in the zero click environment we can’t ignore our visibility in the world.

Dustin Clark [00:08:26]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:08:27]:
We have to be vigilant that we are showing up in those search engine result pages, in social media, in pr, like in articles on websites like public space.

Joe Mills [00:08:37]:
Public space. You have to like rewind public space.

Dustin Clark [00:08:39]:
You have to win the public space.

Joe Mills [00:08:40]:
Would you say that’s a change from maybe the recent passport was about winning on your website, winning in paid search, winning in areas that really brought somebody back into your fold and getting like third party data and then utilizing it well to retarget like does it feel like a shift to you or not?

Dustin Clark [00:08:59]:
It doesn’t to me it feels like a yes. And we in a marketing agency world have always valued brand. We know what it does. But before it’s sometimes some organizations that don’t have the same faith in it feel like I’m just going to put all my dollars in the roas thing and it’s like okay, yeah, return on ad spend matters, ROI matters. It’s hard to track brand roi. But as privacy and security settings get more and more stringent, as information availability gets better and better, better and we deliver more results outside of the website, then if you’re only optimizing for now. What is a dwindling window of people coming to your website? You’re gonna see that eventually in your sales numbers starting to dwindle as well. Right.

Dustin Clark [00:09:46]:
The assumption that I’m willing to make the safe bet that I think exists is you’ve got to invest in that visibility as well and have faith that by doing so you’ll see your numbers, sales numbers, revenue numbers continue to stay steady and hopefully grow. Especially if you’re doing it in a space like we see with a lot of manufacturers, they’re a little bit slower to like take up the baton and run the race with these new technologies. If you’re first here, that means you’re going to be winning more. In this zero click environment. That means your website is giving the information. You’re starting to create that brand impression, you’re starting to create that value. You’re at the top of the page instead of in the middle of the page. So you are winning.

Dustin Clark [00:10:32]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:10:32]:
And that’s, that’s seeding that brand value so that when someone is in market and they are ready to click, they’re going to click you first because not only are you at the top, but they’ve already seen you before because you won the educational moment. So now that you’re in the consideration moment or the decision moment, the transactional moment, you’re going to win there too, because you’ve already won the brand game.

Joe Mills [00:10:53]:
Yeah. One of the things you said very early on when you were talking about the guitar for a 14 year old.

Dustin Clark [00:10:58]:
Yeah.

Joe Mills [00:10:58]:
And you meant, oh yeah, Sweetwater.

Dustin Clark [00:11:00]:
That’s where all our recording equipment comes from.

Joe Mills [00:11:03]:
You’re like, I already trust them, so they won the brand game already. And so now when I am as a consumer ready to actually take action, which is the only time I’m really ready to give you my information is to start, either start my buying process or literally make a purchase. They’re in my 1 to 2 to 3 selection set.

Dustin Clark [00:11:21]:
Yep.

Joe Mills [00:11:21]:
And I’ll go to their website and I’ll click around and I’ll start showing my face. What happens in that moment. Because all right, now I’ve clicked and what’s my goal as a brand in that moment is I’ve got them on my site. Obviously we’re trying to make sales, but in a more complex situation where there’s a lot of decision making and there’s consideration and I’m going to be educating through the process and like, I guess to use a marketing term, nurturing this lead, what am I trying to do now.

Dustin Clark [00:11:43]:
Yeah. So I think a lot of that is part of, part of the answer to that is couched in what we’ve been talking about. And a lot of that is give away the information for free. And in the manufacturing space, especially with dealers, we know that we’re, we’re trying to. The OEM is gathering leads so they can pass them to the dealers so they can ensure sales. And zero click is talking about not gating information, it’s talking about giving away more for free. And so the question you’re asking is like, well when I do get them to my website, if I gave all the information away for free, what’s going to give? Why? When are they going to tell me that they’re ready to buy? When are they going to tell me? Some of it is to have faith that you can track them. Other ways they’re going to have foot traffic going to your dealers.

Dustin Clark [00:12:24]:
Especially if you’re making it really, really easy for them to find out where to buy your product. You’re going to have to look and have faith in those things. But also the thing that you can do on your website is provide them with value that they can’t get anywhere else. And one of the things that you can do because you know your product better than anybody else, you can help them create customized profiles where they can save their information. You got a product configurator on your website, let them use it for free but then say, hey, if you would like to, you can start a profile on.com today, save all your information and we’ll customize the experience for you. One of the things that we see a lot in McKinsey studies and other, you know, research studies is how often buyers expect a personalized experience. Well, it’s a quid pro quo, right? I can’t give you a personalized experience if you don’t tell me about who you are and what you want. So the value that I will give you on my dot com on my website is if you’re willing to give me, I give you all the information for free.

Dustin Clark [00:13:21]:
You can get it all for free. But if you’ll give me your information, I’ll save what you tell me and I’ll give you customized experiences. So back to Sweetwater, right? When I’m looking at an amp for my 10 year old daughter or a package for my 10 year old daughter because she wants to be a musician, I’m like great, this is awesome. If Sweetwater tells me, hey, you know, let us know and it’s their E Commerce. So they’re not really going to incentivize us, but let’s pretend like they would if they were Fender.

Dustin Clark [00:13:48]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:13:48]:
And Fender’s like tell us more about you while I’m shopping for a 10 year old girl. They’re like, oh, you might like the seafoam green or the pink or whatever because she wants to be Taylor Swift, she grows up, all that wonderful stuff. So if I’m telling them that and the promise back to me is that they’re going to say this package is the one that fits your needs of what you’re looking for. 10 year old daughter. Okay. Don’t buy a full scale guitar, buy a half scale guitar or a three quarter scale guitar so that it’s easier to play. If it’s an RV and we know that you’re boondocking instead of going to a luxury resort, you need this version rather than this version. If it’s a motorbike, are you on the roads or are you off road? Right, like if we know because a lot of these manufacturers, they offer a wide variety of products, give away the product information for free.

Dustin Clark [00:14:37]:
Incentivize the user interacting with you by saying we’re going to personalize the experience, we’re going to help you in your journey when you’re ready. There’s other things that you can do with, you know, E commerce sales with benefits, with customer profiles, with gamification of those systems. All of that stuff really starts to have a lot of value here because you’re giving the value back to the customer that they’re not going to get anywhere else.

Joe Mills [00:15:00]:
Well, I think just to make it a really clear picture on the, the like customized experience. I was in the market late last year to buy a new car and I would go on manufacturer’s website and build the unit.

Dustin Clark [00:15:11]:
Yep.

Joe Mills [00:15:11]:
All they asked for was like name and email and then I’d come back on and they’d be like, hey, do you want to pick up where you left off?

Dustin Clark [00:15:17]:
Yeah.

Joe Mills [00:15:18]:
And now instead of scrolling through, you know, pages of product to try to find the like right trim level and wait, was I looking at the TRD Pro or was I looking at the TRD Sport or which one done like you were looking at this one. Do you want to keep looking at it? And there were even times that I found, if I’m remembering correctly, that when I got on the homepage the experience changed. So now I was seeing trucks because I had shown I’m interested in trucks. I don’t want to see your Camry. I’M not interested in your Camry. Great car, whatever. I’m looking for your truck. One of the questions I had as you were explaining this is you mentioned the dealer environment and the currency with dealers for an OEM is leads.

Joe Mills [00:15:57]:
That’s the currency most of the time at least. This feels longer tail but significantly higher quality when they get one. Correct me where I’m wrong here, but what we hear a lot inside of this marketplace is dealers saying when we interact with them, yeah, OEM send me leads. A lot of them are crap. I don’t really care for them anyway. And so there’s this like interesting degradation of trust almost or like value between the two of them where they’re like, yeah, they say they send me leads, but I get like 40 a week and one’s okay. But when you don’t send them leads, they turn around and say, where are my leads? How do you manage this? Or how do you think about managing this as a. Imagine you’re a marketer inside of an OEM and you’re now existing in this world, by the way.

Joe Mills [00:16:39]:
You don’t get to choose it. This is the world. How do you balance that? How do you communicate to your dealers? What do you do with them to show progress and leads and keep the relationship going?

Dustin Clark [00:16:48]:
Yeah, the thing that I think, think through that was really top of mind when you were saying that our data with manufacturing clients shows that a portion, usually a significant portion of their sales happens whether we have the information or not.

Dustin Clark [00:17:04]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:17:04]:
We talk about like digital warranty, registration or some type of like closed loop. Did I know this lead before I received the signal from sales that the deal was done, digital warranty, whatever that might be. And sometimes it’s 40% of the time. We knew the client, the customer before, sometimes 60%, but it’s never 100%. Right. People are going to go to the dealer to buy regardless if you are winning. The visibility thing, you have a higher likelihood of them picking your product or a dealer that’s exclusive to you, then you don’t. If you weren’t visible, like that’s pretty glaringly obvious.

Dustin Clark [00:17:38]:
So we’re going to win by being visible. This argument of I want all the leads, but I want all the leads to be quality leads is an argument as old as time.

Dustin Clark [00:17:47]:
Right.

Dustin Clark [00:17:47]:
Sales once more and once best. And I customize what I would deliver based on who that sales organization really is. Manufacturers, their dealers are not all created equal. Some are like super high powered. Some have their own marketing organizations. Some have like their CRM is A shoebox, right? And we laugh but like we’ve actually heard people say, yeah, they’ve got index cards in a shoebox. Okay, great. For the ones that have index cards with a shoebox, I’m going to send them only the very best, the very qualified leads and those are going to be the ones that I ship to them.

Dustin Clark [00:18:22]:
The dealers that have like high powered marketing agencies that are going to do their own drip campaigns, that are probably building websites that win in the zero click environment, that, that probably are buying advertisements in dealer market spaces, they’re already winning. I’m gonna give them that person. They’re like, give me all the leads and let me market to them. I’m gonna say back to them. If you’re asking me to open up the floodgates, then I’m expecting you to manage this lead. I’m expecting you to market to them and you better make em a sale. Because if you’re asking me for the keys to the Camaro, you gotta bring it back safe, right? So bring back the deal. But if they’ve got the ability to market to them, let them.

Dustin Clark [00:18:58]:
That’s where they’re going to buy it. Unless you sell it on your website. If you only sell through a distributed model, why would you not let the distributor take over some of the ownership of the sales process? You have to, it’s going to happen anyway. Where I think if a marketer, where they should be spending their energy is working on co branded opportunities, how can we own this together? How can I keep the hearth fires burning? How can I keep them dreaming? Do all this again, this visibility stuff, the brand, the lifestyle and the things that you can’t do. I’ll do the product comparisons, I’ll bite the bullet and do the thing that’s going to get us in trouble, going hard at our competitors. You be the good guy, you give them the great sales experience. I’m going to allay all their fears. I’ll do all the fear based stuff.

Dustin Clark [00:19:49]:
Let’s take away the fear from them. You get to own the winning moment.

Joe Mills [00:19:53]:
The fear point is a good one I think to end on because I think a lot of what stops manufacturers from doing what you’re talking about is actually the fear of not controlling lead longer. I think what you’re talking about is in the same way that in the zero click environment you have to meet a buyer where they’re at as an individual instead of having like swaths of oh, I’ve captured 500,000 impressions on my paid media campaign, go talk to all of them like this. Now you’ve got each individual activity that’s showing where a buyer is differently inside of their path. And a lot of that activity is blind to you. Now, in the same way that each buyer is sort of individualized higher in a zero click, you need to go think about your, your sales team, your distributed salesforce being your dealers on an individual environment to the one that has a shoebox for a CRM versus one that’s got national footprint. And a centralized marketing team that is actually larger than yours as a manufacturer cannot be treated the same way. And so you have to be willing to give up and take more control differently. And I think it’s just hard for people, but it’s just the reality we live in.

Joe Mills [00:20:55]:
We have to do it.

Dustin Clark [00:20:56]:
And so you’re making custom decisions for the individual customer that’s going to be searching offline. You want to win offline, so you’re giving them as much as you can. And on the other side, the flow of data, you’re just changing based on who the audience is. Sophisticated dealer versus unsophisticated. The value should still be the same. We’re giving you the type of leads that you need to go work.

Joe Mills [00:21:16]:
Great. Anything else you’d add?

Dustin Clark [00:21:18]:
I love talking zero click. Like, I think this is a brave new world. It’s maybe not as new as we’d like to think it is, but again, you know, we keep hearing more and more about how AI and chat, you know, GPT, things like that are, they’re getting more and more sophisticated. I want to be present in that world. I want our clients, our manufacturers to win in that world. And that means we have to wear our visibility hat. We have to be willing to win the visibility just like we’ve been willing to win the lead collection. It’s not one or the other, it’s yes and awesome.

Joe Mills [00:21:51]:
Thanks, Dustin.

Dustin Clark [00:21:51]:
Yeah.

Joe Mills [00:21:52]:
Element three is a full service marketing agency that bridges the gap between OEMs and their dealers. For more insights on how to go to market well in the dealer model, head to element3.com.