Executive Insights: Maximizing ROI - The Power of Digital Experience Optimization in Modern Marketing

Marketing teams are under pressure to achieve greater results with fewer resources (and they're all tired of being told to do more with less). 

In this webinar, Elevated Third CEO Jeff Calderone and Acquia Chief Market Officer Jennifer Griffin Smith discuss how the integration of strategic products, combined with a holistic approach, can help streamline the content lifecycle, optimize marketing spend, and improve the ROI of your content. 

We break down how the five core pillars of DXO, when executed effectively, allow businesses to address common challenges such as improving conversion rates, meeting accessibility standards, and tracking content performance to ensure alignment with business goals.

This transcript is included with timestamps below. It is not fully edited and may include transcription errors. This information is also synced to the video as subtitles.

[00:00:04 - 00:00:25] Morgan Callison: Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Morgan. I'm going to be teeing us off for the webinar session. Today. Today's webinar is focused on maximizing roi power of digital experience optimization in modern marketing. We've got 2 fantastic speakers joining us who will be able to offer complimentary perspectives on the topic, and really valuable insight

[00:00:26 - 00:00:30] Morgan Callison: a couple of quick housekeeping notes. Before we begin.

[00:00:30 - 00:00:55] Morgan Callison: We are recording the session. We will be sending a link afterwards with a few other resources. If you are watching from our Linkedin live stream. Welcome! We're very excited to have that integration as well. You are muted by default. But we would like to have some text based questions in the chat. You will see a Q&A panel in zoom, so please be dropping any questions in there at any time. We're going to hold about 10 min at the end of the session to answer as many as we can.

[00:00:55 - 00:01:01] Morgan Callison: And if you have any technical issues, please use the chat, and our team will definitely assist. I think we're ready to get started.

[00:01:02 - 00:01:03] Jeff Calderone: Sounds good. Let's go.

[00:01:03 - 00:01:18] Morgan Callison: Let's meet our speakers 1st up. We've got Jeff Calderoni. He's the chief executive officer at Elevated 3, rd and joining him is Jennifer Griffin Smith, chief marketing officer at Acquia. They're going to kick things off with a short exchange before diving into today's topic, so I will pass it off to Jeff.

[00:01:18 - 00:01:41] Jeff Calderone: Thanks, Morgan. Thanks, Morgan. Great to be here with all of you. Thanks for attending. I'm Jeff Calderoni. I'm the CEO and founder of elevated. 3, rd we're a b 2 b performance agency. We're 6 sense partners, and we're longtime acquia partners. And so this is special for me to get to talk to my friend Jen. Jen and I met at Acquia, engage London about 2 years ago, and have been talking shop ever since.

[00:01:42 - 00:01:55] Jeff Calderone: She actually agreed to join the Elevated 3rd board last year, and has been a great help to me personally, so I'm excited to talk shop some more, although maybe in a more public setting than we normally do over coffee and builders. Tea great to be with you, Jen.

[00:01:55 - 00:01:58] Jennifer Griffin Smith: It's great to be here. I'm glad you mentioned builders tea so.

[00:01:59 - 00:02:09] Jennifer Griffin Smith: but as you recognize, I am a native Brit. I actually have been in the Boston area for 16 years. I've been a practitioning marketer for.

[00:02:09 - 00:02:34] Jennifer Griffin Smith: or dare I say it? 30 years. I've seen all different kinds of marketing in the advent of social and digital marketing. I've been a Cmo. For 13 years, and I consider myself very lucky to be in a position where I get to be the chief market officer for a company, but it's also a company whose products we use me and my team every single day. So we get to

[00:02:35 - 00:02:48] Jennifer Griffin Smith: feed into product development. We get to say what what we'd like to see. We get to talk to customers that are doing exactly the same as we're doing. And so it's while it's a challenging time for marketers. It's very fun. And I'm excited to be here and talk more about it today. Jeff.

[00:02:49 - 00:03:15] Jeff Calderone: Great thanks, Jen. I'm excited as well, and just just quick framing before we dive in. So what we're talking about today is how teams can stop over complicating digital experience. Optimization. Dxo is is the acronym for that digital experience optimization. You'll you'll hear that a lot today. But how can we stop over complicating and get better results with what we already have? So hopefully, we'll leave you with a few things that you can actually go and try

[00:03:16 - 00:03:17] Jeff Calderone: ready. Jen.

[00:03:17 - 00:03:19] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Ready. Let's go.

[00:03:19 - 00:03:28] Jeff Calderone: So when people hear Dxo, it sounds a little buzzwordy. I have to admit that. What are we actually talking about? And how do you define it in real terms.

[00:03:28 - 00:03:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. We have many acronyms in our worlds. Right? So I think about this as the ability to optimize any digital experience that we're creating. So it's about the process of improving user interactions with digital components like websites. So using

[00:03:49 - 00:04:04] Jennifer Griffin Smith: behavioral data and being able to make more personalized targeted approaches so that you can create a more seamless experience. And at the end of the day, you know, it doesn't really matter what industry you're in. We all have a

[00:04:05 - 00:04:25] Jennifer Griffin Smith: we all have a target of conversion, right? Sometimes that conversion is just consumption. Sometimes it might be actually like shopping, cart conversion and payment. But what we're trying to say with Dxo is, there are new ways of optimizing those experiences that are not the heavy lift that we've been used to with tech in the past. And so that's exciting.

[00:04:25 - 00:04:30] Jeff Calderone: Yup. No, I agree. I think that again, like simplification is gonna be the a theme today.

[00:04:30 - 00:04:48] Jeff Calderone: But but with tighter budgets. So we're all, seeing that we see pressure on teams to squeeze more out of less, you know. Get more out of the stack they already have. How can Dxo help marketers prioritize their spending without creating more tech, debt and complexity, and all of those things.

[00:04:50 - 00:05:18] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So I have too much Budget said, no marketing ever right. So I remember I quote this quite often last year's Gartner Cmo. Spend survey from 2024 was just updated 2 weeks at Gartner Marketing Symposium, and it was the same headline which is, we continue in the era of less welcome to marketing in the era of less because budgets aren't growing. So you know that pains us all every day.

[00:05:18 - 00:05:26] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And so we are working either with the same budgets or with reduced budgets and needing to do more. And the digital landscape is very

[00:05:26 - 00:05:28] Jennifer Griffin Smith: competitive and challenging. And so.

[00:05:29 - 00:05:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: you know, we get to talk to customers every day. But we also run quite a lot of research to be able to form what we do from a product development point of view. So we ran some research recently that looked at it was us based professionals across marketing brand and web development to better understand how they're navigating this like giant, complex Martech stack. And there were 2 themes that came up that I just thought

[00:05:49 - 00:06:12] Jennifer Griffin Smith: as I was reading through this in preparation for today were really pertinent to this Dxo conversation, one of which is about integration. 93% of those people we surveyed said that they were finding fragmented martek stacks, offering limited efficiency and scale. Right? So we see that integration is still the thing that we're struggling with every day to integrate all this tech.

[00:06:13 - 00:06:32] Jennifer Griffin Smith: The other thing that we saw was that 70% of those surveyed said that they were prioritizing vendor consolidation. And that's because integration is hard. But it's also because the budgets are getting tighter. Right? So how do you consolidate? So I think in this notion of optimization, what we're going to talk about is ways that you can

[00:06:32 - 00:06:46] Jennifer Griffin Smith: manage integration, consolidate, use the right tools to actually be able to do better personalization at scale and improve these experiences in this current world that we live in.

[00:06:46 - 00:07:02] Jeff Calderone: Yep, yeah. And we we see that, too, with most teams, have the tools they've spent. They've they've written the checks they've spent on the tools. They're just not connected or fully used. And sometimes it's a simplification. Exercise is both a way for them to get a handle on expenses, but also on effectiveness.

[00:07:02 - 00:07:04] Jeff Calderone: They can connect those things.

[00:07:06 - 00:07:18] Jeff Calderone: So we talked about this ahead of time. But there are really 5 big levers inside of Dxo that teams can pull. So I want to just tee them up quickly. So everyone has a roadmap for where we're going. So we're gonna talk about 1st content.

[00:07:18 - 00:07:35] Jeff Calderone: then accessibility, experimentation. 4th is findability. And 5th is measurement. So let's start with start with content, because search has changed fast and it is changing. So SEO aeo AI optimization

[00:07:36 - 00:07:49] Jeff Calderone: GEO, all of those things are different acronyms. For essentially the same thing is, how do we get found? It's not just clicking through search results. And so how do we adjust our content to be found in the AI era?

[00:07:50 - 00:07:53] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yes, my son, says a IEIO like what is going on.

[00:07:54 - 00:07:55] Jeff Calderone: Donald's at a farm.

[00:07:55 - 00:07:58] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, yeah, there's lots of acronyms. So

[00:07:58 - 00:08:15] Jennifer Griffin Smith: for me. So if you think back, we've always talked about, content is king. But but in the past. We've probably prioritized systems and activities over content. Right? We've been very focused on what is the activity execution piece.

[00:08:15 - 00:08:29] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And the content comes second, I think we're definitely in an era. Now where content is king, queen, and all things in between? And now we're thinking about, how do we get content found through all of these different methods. So

[00:08:30 - 00:08:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: as I was thinking about this in preparation for this webinar today, there were a couple of things that came to mind to me in terms of what to do about content. So the 1st thing is trustworthiness. And as brand ambassadors, we're always thinking about how our brand is being perceived. And there's many, many examples of how

[00:08:49 - 00:09:14] Jennifer Griffin Smith: AI can erode brand trust because people are worried about what agents and bots and content creation is going to do. But you have to create that high quality, well sourced fact, based content for the AI models to favor your content. Right? So building reputation, looking at being cited, mentioned, liked outside of your own domain, is really really important to get to build up that trustworthiness, and then it will appear more.

[00:09:14 - 00:09:19] Jennifer Griffin Smith: The other thing is being very structured, clear and direct.

[00:09:19 - 00:09:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: using summaries, bullet points being very concise. And I actually think that there's a lot of AI writing tools out there. Now that actually do this better, I don't know. So there's a couple of tools that I use. We have an AI playground internally. We also use Jasper, and it's just fascinating for me whenever I've written something, or I've taken something that I've written previously and put it in and say, simplify this like it does an amazing job at it.

[00:09:44 - 00:10:02] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So that's easy to do. And remembering those bullets and being very, very direct and succinct, I mentioned 3rd party citations. I think that's really important, and then regularly updating so

[00:10:02 - 00:10:27] Jennifer Griffin Smith: outdated content will get ignored. And it will be. And it will deprioritize your content by these AI systems. So how you think about a model of being able to keep content fresh. And some people might think, Oh, gosh! That means more resource do I have? My, what? We all used to think about the content traffic cop? And how do we think but there are tools out there that help you do that right. And so, having actually a practice and a process

[00:10:27 - 00:10:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: for content, for regular checks and updates is really really important, too.

[00:10:33 - 00:10:38] Jeff Calderone: That makes sense, and we'll talk about testing later. But I think those are. Those are connected things.

[00:10:38 - 00:10:39] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Definitely.

[00:10:39 - 00:10:43] Jeff Calderone: Does. Does Jasper Speed sound like you like? Could Jasper send an email to your son?

[00:10:44 - 00:10:56] Jennifer Griffin Smith: That's that's a really good. I will look at that. There is some very there is some some scary stuff going on with, you know, podcast creation and be able to put the voice over to make it sound.

[00:10:57 - 00:10:59] Jeff Calderone: The conversation with somebody. Yeah, that's are we?

[00:10:59 - 00:11:02] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Real right now, is it really new?

[00:11:02 - 00:11:04] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, it really is. Me pinch. Yeah.

[00:11:05 - 00:11:18] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, no, I think I would. I would second all that. And just maybe a plug for drupal like drupal out of the box does a lot of that structured content, and I think is really well positioned for that findability in the future.

[00:11:19 - 00:11:21] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And writing assistance. The.

[00:11:21 - 00:11:23] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, all those things. Yeah.

[00:11:23 - 00:11:23] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yep. Yep.

[00:11:24 - 00:11:51] Jeff Calderone: Don't don't get me started the accessibility. So let's talk about that. I know this is something that's really important to you personally, just based on our conversations. But it's 1 of those things that sometimes gets treated like a compliance checklist. But we've seen it improve performance, too. Like, how do you see accessibility fitting into Dxo? And you're seeing examples where it's helped. Conversion and business goals, as well as being the right thing to do.

[00:11:51 - 00:12:06] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, yeah, so I could talk like for an entire session on accessibility. Only because I think it came to me as an awareness. Actually later in my career. And so it was probably right after Covid, where

[00:12:06 - 00:12:30] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I felt through the pandemic like we'd got to a point of having some fairness across all teams because of what the pandemic presented. Right? So equality was a big thing for me like this means that people can work from anywhere, and that people can buy things from anywhere, and that suddenly everybody had this equality. And what it did for digital presence is meant. We all had to think about, how do we drive that equality across our websites?

[00:12:30 - 00:12:53] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And we did acquire a accessibility tool which meant that I ended up going deeper into this accessibility realm, and I was just fascinated and honestly a little bit kind of disappointed in myself that it took me that long to even think about it, and was realizing things like we were missing almost 17% of our audience traffic, if our site was not accessible, right? And so

[00:12:53 - 00:13:10] Jennifer Griffin Smith: in this world, where everything should be available to everyone like shame on us as marketers if we, if accessibility is not up there at the top of our and and not just because it's oh, it's going to drive like a 17%, you know, increase in site traffic, but

[00:13:10 - 00:13:34] Jennifer Griffin Smith: because it's the right thing to do. And because now, there are laws that mean you're actually going to be fined by it. Now, there are more in the EU, but it actually is for any organization that is even doing business in the EU. So it's not even just for European. So I feel strongly about it just from an ethical point of view. But I also now with my team, we've done a lot of remediation on our own site

[00:13:34 - 00:13:41] Jennifer Griffin Smith: when it comes to accessibility, wanting to get our scores up above industry average, which I think is around 87%.

[00:13:41 - 00:13:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And and again, we could offer, you know, the top 10 tips of what to do when it comes to accessibility. But that's everything from

[00:13:49 - 00:14:01] Jennifer Griffin Smith: improving like color contrast where you're placing things. Alternative text for screen readers. I never realized that Pdfs couldn't be read by a screen. Reader, you have to remediate those

[00:14:01 - 00:14:25] Jennifer Griffin Smith: well formatted pages, things like captures, and how bad they are for anybody. So there's there's just lots there that it? And it's not just for anybody with a disability. Really, it's for if you think about videos with captions wherever you are, and you want to watch a video, you're not necessarily going to have sound on. And then the ability to actually make that multilingual, too. You know, this technology allows us to do that so much faster now. So

[00:14:25 - 00:14:29] Jennifer Griffin Smith: to like accessibility. If there's nothing you take away from this webinar

[00:14:30 - 00:14:36] Jennifer Griffin Smith: about, that is the importance of your digital because it's it's brand impacting. And it's also digital marketing results impacting.

[00:14:36 - 00:14:45] Jeff Calderone: That makes sense and well, and and we just found out before this call as many conversations as Jen and I have had dozens hundreds. I I never mentioned that my parents were deaf.

[00:14:46 - 00:15:11] Jeff Calderone: and so that this accessibility, like I have personal experience, and what I would say is, you know, you hit it on the head where captions were created for deaf people to enjoy the programs that we all enjoy. But think about airports without captions or restaurants. Or when you see a TV that you want to understand what's happening and you can't, you can't, because it's too loud like that starts as an accessibility thing, and then it becomes a human thing. Afterwards.

[00:15:11 - 00:15:24] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Absolutely. Yeah. We were just talking about my experience at our event in Paris last week, where most of our customer presenters were presenting in French, and thankfully we had translated captions up, so I could actually be in a position of understanding that. I mean, there's just so many use cases for it.

[00:15:24 - 00:15:33] Jeff Calderone: That that technology came from the eighties to be an assistive technology for deaf people. Right? And so it just sort of snowballs from there.

[00:15:33 - 00:15:34] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah.

[00:15:34 - 00:15:36] Jeff Calderone: Anyway, you can't believe I never told you that.

[00:15:38 - 00:15:57] Jeff Calderone: All right, we're going to move on to experimentation. So we've both seen how a small test better. Cta cleaner layout can make a difference. But teams struggle to build a habit and an organizational sort of method to testing. Can you give us an example of tests that you have done, and how organizations can sort of build that habit.

[00:15:57 - 00:16:04] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah. So one thing I think, as leaders we need to do is empower our teams to

[00:16:04 - 00:16:13] Jennifer Griffin Smith: just test like like tests should be in our DNA, right? And I, I mean, I'm so lucky. My, my digital team are amazing. And they are

[00:16:14 - 00:16:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: both specialists in drupal as well as all the other technology that we have, and they're just eager to try things to improve. So we were actually talking yesterday, and they gave me a couple of examples of some tests we've done recently. Within the last week or 2, 1 is around accessibility. We just mentioned that, but actually driving some changes in forms, we saw a 2% increase in conversions when we did testing, of adding accessibility onto certain page forms

[00:16:44 - 00:16:46] Jennifer Griffin Smith: which I think is just fantastic.

[00:16:46 - 00:17:10] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And then a B testing. So we took a specific product page. So if you know, we have a digital asset management solution. So on our Acquia digital asset management page, we started doing some testing on industry, using different copy, different imagery. And now we haven't seen conversion rate improve yet, but what we've seen is leading indicators of time on page and click through rates.

[00:17:10 - 00:17:32] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So we're actually going to take that that test. We did just on one page. And we're going to build that out for that product on multi industry pages and see and see what that does. But it's also just it's fun for the team to do. And it's not a big, heavy lift. When you have the right tools. It's not. It's not like saying, Oh, I've got my day job to do. And now I'm going to do some testing like it's just built into the fundamentals of what they're doing every day.

[00:17:33 - 00:17:36] Jeff Calderone: Did you? Did you have to champion it at first, st or like.

[00:17:36 - 00:17:38] Jennifer Griffin Smith: No, I did not. No, no, the team.

[00:17:38 - 00:17:39] Jeff Calderone: Get out of the way.

[00:17:39 - 00:17:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: No, the tea. It's so great, because, you know, when we've built this kind of ethos of

[00:17:45 - 00:17:59] Jennifer Griffin Smith: try everything plus. We have the tools in house to do it. And if you think about your end results. So my end result is, what is the conversion? Kpi? Right? How are we growing that, how is that resulting in

[00:17:59 - 00:18:18] Jennifer Griffin Smith: customer nps, growth, pipeline growth, all of those things. And if everybody is focused on that end result, then they want to improve that. And so think about ways. Okay, if we're going to improve that, then we're going to have to increase our conversions, how we're going to increase our conversions. Well, let's look at the traffic. We're getting traffic from this industry on this page. Let's do something about it.

[00:18:18 - 00:18:23] Jeff Calderone: It's kind of fun to have that scoreboard right unlocks creativity. If you know what you're looking for.

[00:18:23 - 00:18:24] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah.

[00:18:24 - 00:18:25] Jeff Calderone: Make sense.

[00:18:25 - 00:18:43] Jeff Calderone: So we've already touched on how search is changing. Findability is changing. But a lot of teams are still trying to balance traditional SEO with this newer world? With answer, engine and and AI optimization. What's the right way to think about the balance between those things now.

[00:18:45 - 00:18:52] Jennifer Griffin Smith: That's a great question. Balance I was like, is there any balance in the world like work, life balance? There isn't a balance. There's a blend right? That's what I.

[00:18:52 - 00:18:52] Jeff Calderone: That's.

[00:18:52 - 00:19:08] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Just a blend of everything, and I don't think one is more important than the other. You know, SEO is definitely still foundational, but but the landscape is changing. And so if we think about

[00:19:08 - 00:19:15] Jennifer Griffin Smith: like SEO being that way to improve rankings, right? So like traditional traditional search, page page searches.

[00:19:15 - 00:19:20] Jennifer Griffin Smith: But and I always get that like answer, engine optimization.

[00:19:20 - 00:19:42] Jennifer Griffin Smith: We were talking about this a few weeks ago, and I'm like, answer, engine optimization. It's such a great term. I don't know that it just means about. I feel like it's encompassing everything right, but that's the more concise answers to queries that might not click through to a website, whereas SEO is focused on the click throughs. Right? So both strategies require high quality content. So if you

[00:19:42 - 00:19:59] Jennifer Griffin Smith: start with, I think we talked about this Jeff earlier. If you start with thinking about that answer engine optimization, then you're actually going to do well with SEO, too. Right? Because you have to think about content in terms of context and clarity, and not necessarily click throughs.

[00:19:59 - 00:20:23] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, no, for sure. And I would just say, like, you're optimizing. You know, you structured content schemas. Those things like that's how you get into rich snippets. Then that's how you get into answer engine. And if you want late funnel cred from Openai or Gemini like, that's what they trust as well as that structured content. So you're kind of doing all of those things at the same time. It's not one or the other.

[00:20:23 - 00:20:39] Jennifer Griffin Smith: It's a blend. And so we have a solution called acquia SEO which does allow us to see mentions and citations, which I think that you know right now that is definitely something that we should be tracking as well as search engine ranking so

[00:20:39 - 00:21:08] Jennifer Griffin Smith: mentions where we know AI will talk about our brand specifically. And so that's really important. And then we're also tracking referral tracking, which we can do through that tool, too. So from common Llm systems which allows us to analyze traffic to see. Well, what are people really looking at? Right? So I think it's both of those things it's ranking. It's citations it's mentions. And

[00:21:08 - 00:21:38] Jennifer Griffin Smith: and then and then like what click through or conversion do you see off each of those? So is there a conversion directly from the from the mention, the content mentioned. And we are seeing customers starting to track that and actually seeing. We talked about this, too, Jeff, like a higher conversion rate from that from that engine answering, because it's later in the funnel. Right? So that's something that we want to track more.

[00:21:38 - 00:21:57] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, no makes sense. And and yeah, to add on to Jen's point, like SEO, the way we used to do things. That's a lot of early funnel. What is a type of blog content? Right? And all of that is being absorbed by AI. And so it's late funnel that you really get that. That final push onto your website and try to convert from there

[00:21:58 - 00:22:10] Jeff Calderone: makes sense. So the number 5 is measurement. And so it's 1 of those things where you know our clients and even our internal team. Sometimes it can be overwhelming because you can measure everything.

[00:22:11 - 00:22:24] Jeff Calderone: That's not the problem. All the dashboards, but not much clarity on what to act on. So from your perspective, from aqueous perspective, like what are a few metrics you think matter most when it comes to content performance.

[00:22:26 - 00:22:37] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I actually think the ability to measure content performance is an underserved area, because generally what we measure in marketing is

[00:22:39 - 00:22:56] Jeff Calderone: I want to call it like the vehicle performance. Right? We. It's the medium performance we track and not the content performance. Right? So we look at what's our email click through rate, like, what's what drives to our website? What channel of digital advertising drives to our website?

[00:22:56 - 00:23:06] Jennifer Griffin Smith: But there's such a big piece, I mean, we spend as much on content creation now as we do on those channels. And so we use a tool that allows us to actually look at

[00:23:06 - 00:23:22] Jennifer Griffin Smith: what content is being consumed by different segments where they're coming from, and actually, what is top performing, and it kind of rates what we what we mean by top performing, and actually what is corrosive and corrosive meaning things like.

[00:23:23 - 00:23:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: you're getting a lot of traffic, but not a lot of conversions. So you could be paying for that traffic, but that that might be considered corrosive. Right? So

[00:23:33 - 00:23:48] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I think that's an untapped area, because the more we can improve the content that we create and tailor that content the better return. We're going to get on the spend for the channels, too. Right? So again it comes back to content.

[00:23:48 - 00:24:00] Jeff Calderone: Yup, and and are you doing anything to to measure engagements either by Icp or audience segment? Or is that part of it? Either, you know, manually connecting the dots with the story, or on a.

[00:24:00 - 00:24:04] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Great question, great question. We do so.

[00:24:04 - 00:24:10] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So there's known and unknown visitors. Right? So so that's 1 thing. And then there's

[00:24:10 - 00:24:20] Jennifer Griffin Smith: and then there's how those both break down between targeted Icp and non icp, and what the performance is there because we all have a notion of what our Icp is.

[00:24:21 - 00:24:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: But all of us are getting inbound, too, right, whether we, whether we want it or not, from what might be a non icp. And depending on how much you're spending on that. Conversions can happen there, too. So

[00:24:34 - 00:25:03] Jennifer Griffin Smith: it we when we look at it by campaign, we call them plays, you know, when we look at like a play we've put out there with a certain target audience. We can see between even our plays how that, what content is being consumed and what is working. It's a really really good way of rounding off metrics right? As opposed to just looking at visits and click throughs and time on site and conversions. When you can do that by content, type by audience. It's really powerful.

[00:25:03 - 00:25:15] Jeff Calderone: No, I I think that that makes a lot of sense, because we can do all that stuff. And so how do we focus everybody's time and energy. You know, Bdrs outreach marketers like, how do we focus on the accounts that are really gonna engage.

[00:25:15 - 00:25:16] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yep.

[00:25:16 - 00:25:29] Jeff Calderone: Just a a reminder from from Morgan like, put your questions in chat. You don't have to wait till the very end to put those in. So if something sparks, please put those in chat, we'd love to to answer those as we get to the end.

[00:25:31 - 00:25:33] Jeff Calderone: Let's talk about.

[00:25:34 - 00:25:37] Jeff Calderone: The content lifecycle and just sort of

[00:25:38 - 00:26:03] Jeff Calderone: one of the biggest challenges we hear is teams feeling like they've got all the parts they've got. Cms, they've got damn so content. Management system, digital asset management. Cdp, customer data platform like, none of it's really all connected the way that they want. How do you see Dxo helping to simplify that complexity. Without just all of that fear of a platform overhaul and technical debt, and all of those things.

[00:26:04 - 00:26:07] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah. And we mentioned earlier

[00:26:07 - 00:26:21] Jennifer Griffin Smith: that you know from our research that 77% of these marketers said that vendor consolidation was a core priority. Right? So I think it's. And and then we go back to integration because all of these Cms dam Cdp.

[00:26:22 - 00:26:30] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I'm like intent, whatever it is. Whatever systems you run in right unless they're working together. You're not getting a you're not getting a full view.

[00:26:30 - 00:26:31] Jennifer Griffin Smith: We

[00:26:32 - 00:26:42] Jennifer Griffin Smith: are really lucky, as I said, that we run our own tools. So we recently were able to retire 9 individual optimization tools, which was kind of alarming to me

[00:26:43 - 00:26:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: now.

[00:26:44 - 00:26:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: not all of these tools were big ticket items, right? Some of them are still smaller, but, as my

[00:26:49 - 00:27:19] Jennifer Griffin Smith: web leader will tell me, is all those tools, regardless of the cost of acquiring them is a resource intense to manage them. So the less tools we have the better. It is just from a resource perspective. So with Acquia, digital experience optimization. We actually retired 9 tools down to 3 by putting in the Acquia solution. And I think that's really helped with levels of productivity.

[00:27:19 - 00:27:20] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And

[00:27:20 - 00:27:31] Jennifer Griffin Smith: how, how that can help us run the analysis across the customer journey is just proven much easier. Now I will say, Jeff, like it's not.

[00:27:31 - 00:27:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: It's not all perfect. And we have.

[00:27:34 - 00:27:41] Jennifer Griffin Smith: we have a vision at Acquia in terms of what we're building as we refer to as like next generation Cms

[00:27:41 - 00:28:09] Jennifer Griffin Smith: as the ability to be able to run prompts to execute campaigns very different than the way we're running campaigns right now, which is across multiple systems and takes lots of time. Right? So I would say, we're running optimization right now with this, with a suite of tools that I think has made us more efficient than ever before has made us understand the audience, and it allows us to test

[00:28:09 - 00:28:14] Jennifer Griffin Smith: personalize and drive conversions. But I think there's so much more to go.

[00:28:14 - 00:28:18] Jeff Calderone: Do you think that that a big part of that is that you've simplified.

[00:28:18 - 00:28:19] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yes.

[00:28:19 - 00:28:20] Jeff Calderone: Know what's happening.

[00:28:20 - 00:28:49] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yes, and I think we've actually unified across teams as well. One of the challenge, I mean, in every Cmo role I've had the the biggest challenge is like, you're like the orchestrator. Right? So you have all these groups of you have these groups within marketing that are specialists in their own domain. And actually it only works when all of that ties together, and the tying of all that together isn't just system. It's about process and people right? And so

[00:28:49 - 00:29:00] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I actually have a view, Jeff, that the marketer of the future is going to be very different. You know, back in my day you kind of specialized in one piece of marketing. Right? You were a.

[00:29:00 - 00:29:06] Jennifer Griffin Smith: you were a website expert, or you were a communications expert, or you're you're, you know a social media expert. I actually think

[00:29:06 - 00:29:31] Jennifer Griffin Smith: that is going to become obsolete. And I think that what we're going to see is digital marketing experts, right? Who are going to think about messaging and brand, and then want to activate that like, tell something to go, do it and say, I have an idea for a campaign I need. This is my result. Go, do. And something can execute an email plus a website, landing page plus some sort.

[00:29:31 - 00:29:31] Jeff Calderone: Testing.

[00:29:31 - 00:29:48] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Interaction. And it's and it's all done right there, right. And you can do that when you've got integration with things like digital asset management, because all your assets and brand are in one place, right? And you can do that when you've got integration to your customer data platform, because you can bring in the insights from from your customer. But

[00:29:48 - 00:29:54] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I feel like AI will solve for the integration where we have tried to solve for it in the past.

[00:29:54 - 00:30:14] Jeff Calderone: No, I agree. And and I think simplification may is even more important when AI is running the show, because you need to give it very specific parameters. Not only so, it is clear what it's supposed to do, but then you know what works. If everything is over, if each component is over complicated. Then you kind of have a mess both in execution and in reporting, because.

[00:30:15 - 00:30:17] Jeff Calderone: The variables are infinite, right?

[00:30:19 - 00:30:20] Jeff Calderone: That makes sense.

[00:30:23 - 00:30:33] Jeff Calderone: So maybe along those lines like, how does Acquia's Dxo approach help? Businesses move beyond just that, content to delivery, engagement performance?

[00:30:34 - 00:30:40] Jeff Calderone: all of those things together. How would you sort of talk about those things in in concert.

[00:30:41 - 00:30:47] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Well, I I think what we try and do is instead of thinking about

[00:30:48 - 00:30:56] Jennifer Griffin Smith: content, creation, optimization of that content execution through a campaign alignment and and then analyzing

[00:30:57 - 00:31:23] Jennifer Griffin Smith: those are not siloed areas anymore. And actually, they can all change order at any time. And so how do you run those as one process. So so we think about it as like the content value chain. And there's content creation. There's content, execution, and there's content measurement. And sometimes, you know, then they all feed into each other, and if you can connect that value chain, and you can do that through

[00:31:23 - 00:31:47] Jennifer Griffin Smith: like a curated set of of AI productivity features. That's what we look at. If we think about all of our solutions from drupal to digital experience, optimization to digital asset management, it's about? What is the AI productivity feature in there that's going to allow for the better management of the content value chain across everything. And what do I mean by that. So optimization isn't an afterthought, right? And so

[00:31:47 - 00:32:00] Jennifer Griffin Smith: when you're creating content, if there are AI assistant writing tools, why wouldn't it just optimize for accessibility as you're writing it. That cannot be an afterthought, because

[00:32:00 - 00:32:12] Jennifer Griffin Smith: it you just don't have the time right? And and in the past, what we'd probably do is, we'd have somebody writing that. And then that goes into an optimization team which then goes into a web team which then have to format and then have to publish it, and somebody else is analyzing.

[00:32:12 - 00:32:12] Jeff Calderone: Yeah.

[00:32:12 - 00:32:16] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Like. That's all. One process that needs to happen within like an hour.

[00:32:16 - 00:32:18] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, and then tested, and then.

[00:32:18 - 00:32:21] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Test it, launch it and test it and see? And because you can.

[00:32:23 - 00:32:24] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah.

[00:32:24 - 00:32:31] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, it's it's exciting. It's scary. But it's it's definitely exciting that all of that is happening. And it's happening very fast. It's here.

[00:32:32 - 00:32:36] Jeff Calderone: So one thing we hear is is, we'll optimize after launch.

[00:32:36 - 00:32:43] Jeff Calderone: you know. Let's let's go through the requirements and the features, and we'll optimize after launch. And that mindset kills momentum.

[00:32:43 - 00:32:52] Jeff Calderone: What are some of the biggest misconceptions you've seen that hold teams back from Dxo, and maybe especially thinking about Dxo from the very beginning.

[00:32:55 - 00:32:56] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So

[00:32:56 - 00:33:12] Jennifer Griffin Smith: in my experience of talking to customers, especially large organizations that have large marketing teams, the biggest hold back is how the marketing team is structured who owns the system

[00:33:12 - 00:33:15] Jennifer Griffin Smith: and kind of whether it's their responsibility or not.

[00:33:16 - 00:33:34] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So when this value chain goes across multiple teams, then it becomes hard, and you either have somebody in an organization that's pioneering the whole thing. Or you find in very, very large enterprises that it's it. And it are actually saying.

[00:33:34 - 00:33:41] Jennifer Griffin Smith: this is ridiculous. We have so much tech. We've been told to consolidate, and we have to figure out a better roi. Now.

[00:33:42 - 00:33:54] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Marketing's response to that usually is. Oh, no, we've got to go through it or it. But I would say they're your next best friend, and will help you create that consolidation. And if they're pushing you to do that.

[00:33:55 - 00:34:16] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I've worked in very, very large organizations where it is hard to get all of these teams connected, which is why, sometimes we also see there are digital optimization experts or people responsible for it. Or there are experience building experts that sit across multiple teams looking at how those teams can work together.

[00:34:17 - 00:34:26] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I think, in the era of marketing with less where resources are getting more, where they're getting tighter. What we're also seeing is clients saying.

[00:34:26 - 00:34:51] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I actually don't have one team where content sits anymore. Content is created throughout the entire organization. And how do I control that? So I need a solution that allows people to create it, but also allows us to adhere to brand values and put some kind of approval process in place before execution. And I think that's what companies are looking for is, how can I do that? So

[00:34:51 - 00:35:03] Jennifer Griffin Smith: generally it comes it. You know, I would challenge any team to just think about, where is there a pioneer or somebody that can say, Hey, this goes across multiple multiple teams. And and how do we make that happen?

[00:35:03 - 00:35:20] Jeff Calderone: Yep, and and that that owner of curation like, how do we unleash? You know the same same way your team did in terms of testing right like they get excited about making things better. But you still need somebody who's sort of orchestrating all of that energy into a into a tactic.

[00:35:20 - 00:35:21] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:21 - 00:35:40] Jeff Calderone: One thing that actually has been helpful for us. Whatever you think of private equity in terms of their value to a company, I think they really understand how this type of thing works. And when you're talking to a private equity person, typically, they're looking at all of these tactics and saying, when do I get a return on this thing

[00:35:40 - 00:35:57] Jeff Calderone: which makes the Dxo conversation early much easier, right? Because they don't want to wait till 6 months after launch to start seeing it's like, Well, can you do these things on our existing site in a way that allows us to to get money sooner? And so that return on investment return on

[00:35:57 - 00:36:19] Jeff Calderone: effort is something that if you can talk to the right folks, then you can show it right. I think that's the key. And I'd be interested to hear what you think. But sometimes the web team, or when we're building a large website like that sort of money side, and Cac. Versus Ltv. Ratio and all of those things it's like that's somebody else's problem. But if you can get that in the conversation.

[00:36:19 - 00:36:24] Jeff Calderone: then Dxo becomes an earlier conversation.

[00:36:25 - 00:36:47] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I would just think, I think about the whole thing just as optimization. Right? We're in an area of like marketing, spend optimization. And I also think about it from a people point of view, that's just we have a lot to do every day like it's resource. Optimization doesn't mean I'm trying to reduce headcount. It means I really want to give people the chance to breathe

[00:36:47 - 00:37:14] Jennifer Griffin Smith: and actually work on new stuff and be more creative. And if we can reduce manual effort on things that we have spent too long on as marketers doing manually because we don't trust data or the system doesn't work. Or actually, we just have to go through a spreadsheet and add in a column before we can import it into something like, you know, I'm just like we have to figure out a way AI can solve that. We've done a lot of different testing on that, because

[00:37:14 - 00:37:22] Jennifer Griffin Smith: the joy of marketing needs to come back, and that joy is understanding what you're doing, and then creating new things right.

[00:37:22 - 00:37:25] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, that that spark, right? It's not.

[00:37:25 - 00:37:26] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yes.

[00:37:26 - 00:37:27] Jeff Calderone: And grind.

[00:37:28 - 00:37:29] Jeff Calderone: Now it makes sense.

[00:37:29 - 00:37:43] Jeff Calderone: Let's talk about the future. So if you, if you look ahead 12 to 24 months, how do you see, Dxo evolving is AI personalization. Buyer behavior continue to shift like what should teams start to prepare for it? Now.

[00:37:45 - 00:37:55] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Well, we talked about answer engine optimization. I think that's going to get. I mean, that will take over SEO at some point.

[00:37:55 - 00:38:03] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I think we need to be prepared in the short term for web traffic to go down, and we have to think about

[00:38:04 - 00:38:09] Jennifer Griffin Smith: where we serve up our content to get the interest in our company. In those conversions.

[00:38:10 - 00:38:14] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I actually believe that websites won't exist in the future.

[00:38:15 - 00:38:15] Jeff Calderone: Hmm.

[00:38:15 - 00:38:35] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Is an interesting perspective, coming from a provider of the Content management system to build websites. But you know this notion of Oh, here's like a static site with a wireframe, and everybody gets hung up on the homepage, and you know how many rotating banners can you have on a homepage? And everybody in the company wants all their information on a homepage like nobody who's going to a homepage. If you're serving a proper

[00:38:35 - 00:38:57] Jennifer Griffin Smith: proper content and campaigns, then you're directing people to person, and I don't mean like a landing page that says, Hi, Jennifer, you are from Acquia like that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about serving me up with content that's relevant for either. What you know about me, what products that I have, what you've seen me search on, where I've come in from, like on all the which and that's where

[00:38:57 - 00:39:13] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I would also like us as brands from an optimization perspective, to build a future forward market where people aren't nervous about giving data where people aren't nervous about cookies, because we, as marketeers, have treated their information

[00:39:13 - 00:39:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: so well that what they get back is such a relevant and adaptive experience for them that it's like nobody fears giving information to Netflix because you want, and you even pay for it right, and they serve you up an adaptive experience that to me that should be the same for every one of our business sites.

[00:39:33 - 00:39:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: and it will have a bunch of content curated that then gets served up in various different ways, depending on how your audience wants to engage with that. And I

[00:39:44 - 00:39:56] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I feel like that's the world in which we're heading, and we'll need. We'll have seen new people come into marketing with different skill sets. We'll see a I'm really really excited about AI. I am, and and

[00:39:57 - 00:40:13] Jennifer Griffin Smith: from so many, from so many perspective, because I feel like it's going to allow marketing to step into what it's good at. And actually, you know, my title is chief market officer, because I want to do less of the ing and more of the market like the stuff that is just really.

[00:40:14 - 00:40:14] Jeff Calderone: Mark that!

[00:40:14 - 00:40:15] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah.

[00:40:16 - 00:40:24] Jennifer Griffin Smith: like, how do we get everybody thinking more about market? Think about customer, think about creativity, think about what market needs and have tools?

[00:40:25 - 00:40:27] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Well, I think, yeah.

[00:40:27 - 00:40:29] Jeff Calderone: It's great. It's a great little tagline, Jim.

[00:40:30 - 00:40:31] Jeff Calderone: So.

[00:40:31 - 00:40:36] Jeff Calderone: But you said websites are going away completely like, tell me more about that.

[00:40:36 - 00:41:04] Jennifer Griffin Smith: The websites as we see them. The website of the future will be an adaptive experience that is easily tailored. That takes somebody through a journey in a satisfactory way, which means we'll be able to build brand trust, and people won't be annoyed. We've all got those examples of websites we've been to where you can't actually like. Finish what you've gone to do. That's got to stop.

[00:41:04 - 00:41:11] Jeff Calderone: Yup. No, I agree. Is is there something that marketers can do now to sort of get ready for that future? Or if they're.

[00:41:11 - 00:41:19] Jeff Calderone: you know, tangible, tactical steps, even philosophical like, how do we? How do we change the way we're thinking? If that's the future that we're going towards.

[00:41:19 - 00:41:36] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, that's a good question. understanding, content and content performance by by target personas, I think, is really important, and understanding where your traffic is coming from, and what you're going to need to build for is, it would be the second thing I'd say.

[00:41:36 - 00:41:37] Jeff Calderone: Okay.

[00:41:37 - 00:41:38] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Awesome.

[00:41:40 - 00:42:02] Jeff Calderone: So I'll just maybe I'll give, I guess, my closing thoughts. But I wonder if yeah, if you have some as well. But it feels like to me like, I agree that that the website or the digital consumption of the future is going to be very different. How we get answers, how we solve problems, how we buy things is going to be different. It's exciting, but it's going to be different.

[00:42:02 - 00:42:25] Jeff Calderone: But the tools are in place now for marketers to start to take advantage of those changing behaviors and be ready for that going forward. And again, just maybe a plug for drupal. I think drupal is really well positioned in this world where we don't know what the answer is. So open source adapts much quicker than proprietary technology with a 3 year roadmap

[00:42:25 - 00:42:44] Jeff Calderone: right? And so I'm excited. Just being so involved with aclia and drupal and and other key partners that that, this is this is exciting change and exciting opportunity. But I'd be curious like, maybe what you're most excited about going forward, and maybe a couple of takeaways from today.

[00:42:44 - 00:42:46] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Yeah, I I'm excited about

[00:42:47 - 00:42:56] Jennifer Griffin Smith: all possibilities, right to to improve our lives and the lives of our customers. And and what?

[00:42:56 - 00:43:22] Jennifer Griffin Smith: What technology like AI might bring. I. So, for example, we have a there is a drupal AI initiative that we are Acquia as a founding partner of. It's now kind of a fundamental initiative within drupal. And I think there's going to be some real core advancements that are going to come out of that on top of what is already there. So I'm very excited about that. I'm excited about the ability

[00:43:22 - 00:43:43] Jennifer Griffin Smith: to use these solutions like Dxo to have teams be able to test and repeat the one piece of advice that I have learned over the last 6 months. That I'd say to anybody is, if you can free up anybody in your team or give dedicated time for people to be able to go research and learn

[00:43:43 - 00:44:01] Jennifer Griffin Smith: these tools. It will have a tenfold impact. We've actually made the decision. We have taken one of our developers, one of our drupal developers and from our website. And she is now full time. Our AI initiative lead in marketing, meaning like her entire time, is

[00:44:01 - 00:44:22] Jennifer Griffin Smith: evaluating AI tools. What AI we've got in our current tools and just giving somebody the space and then coming back and sharing. Because I do think that we're all tied up in the day job. And where can we direct our teams to use things that are that. So we do have to give. We have to give time, like, you know what it's like. You get so wrapped up in that you don't even have time to

[00:44:23 - 00:44:39] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So I'm excited, but I want to see it come to fruition. I hear a lot of talk about it, and I see in my everyday how it helps. But I also in other companies that I talk to in Cmos. I see how people are stuck right because they don't know where where to get started.

[00:44:40 - 00:44:43] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, well, and and you and Akley are making this happen

[00:44:43 - 00:44:48] Jeff Calderone: right? Like, you're you see the future. But I think you're making it happen. So. Yeah.

[00:44:48 - 00:44:48] Jennifer Griffin Smith: So.

[00:44:50 - 00:44:53] Jeff Calderone: Awesome well, we have.

[00:44:53 - 00:44:56] Jeff Calderone: Morgan, do you want to come back? And we'll do some questions.

[00:44:57 - 00:45:13] Morgan Callison: Hello! Thank you. All that wonderful insight. We are going to open it up to a couple of questions. Now, if you haven't already, please use the Q&A panel. We're going to start with a few that came in earlier, but we'd love to be able to touch on all of your questions. 1st question.

[00:45:13 - 00:45:30] Morgan Callison: more of a comment right at the beginning, but incredible content so clearly presented. Wonderful job in terms of basic optimization. For AI, wondering if starting with Faqs on a website and continuously updating the Faqs is a basic way to start what are some basic suggestions for optimizing for AI.

[00:45:32 - 00:45:33] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Go ahead, Jeff, you go first.st

[00:45:33 - 00:45:55] Jeff Calderone: All right, hey, Ted? I know. Ted, yeah, I think you hit on on one of the basic things. And so I think I mentioned earlier, like Schema Markup and structured content is a way to start optimizing for AI that everyone should do. And Faqs are one of those ways. And so that blended approach that Jen talked about

[00:45:55 - 00:46:09] Jeff Calderone: where SEO and Aeo and AI optimization are kind of all doing the same thing. So when you structure your content with rich schema Faqs. Being a good example, then you're more likely to

[00:46:10 - 00:46:20] Jeff Calderone: bypass the organic results and get into that. What is a right? What is an X is part. It's going to grab from the FAQ and put you right at the top.

[00:46:20 - 00:46:43] Jeff Calderone: But like we were talking about before Ted like you, that also is giving Openai and Chatgpt more credibility that they know what they're looking at. And they know what your website does and what you're about. So when it comes to that late funnel like, who is the best X, you're more likely to be found there because they have a structured idea of who you are and what you do.

[00:46:43 - 00:47:05] Jeff Calderone: So it's a great way to start, I think. What I would add to that, though, is just how do you take that and turn it into conversion. Right? So thinking about that FAQ, and that content is like, well, do we, as a company, have a really good answer for that? FAQ, and if somebody does click on the source right in the answer, engine like, what are we going to say? That's relevant to that? FAQ

[00:47:06 - 00:47:07] Jeff Calderone: hope that answers it.

[00:47:10 - 00:47:11] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Great question.

[00:47:12 - 00:47:18] Morgan Callison: And then another question we have, how much time do you devote to standard SEO versus answer engine optimization.

[00:47:19 - 00:47:22] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Oh, I wish we had a calculator. That's 1.

[00:47:23 - 00:47:31] Jennifer Griffin Smith: That's what I want, right? We should be able to ask, how much time should we spend on it to get the best conversions. That's what I want to ask.

[00:47:31 - 00:47:33] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, yeah. That's the magic, the magic.

[00:47:33 - 00:47:42] Jennifer Griffin Smith: That's the magic. I don't know, Jeff. I don't know what you feel. I feel like it's equal. And as we said through the chat.

[00:47:42 - 00:47:54] Jennifer Griffin Smith: One helps the other. Right? So it's it's not an either or although I I am really keen to see conversion data

[00:47:55 - 00:48:03] Jennifer Griffin Smith: based on visitors from from different sources, and I think we need more time to see that.

[00:48:03 - 00:48:06] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, well, and and Jen, as you said, like

[00:48:06 - 00:48:31] Jeff Calderone: the answer, engine optimization is more likely to be late. Funnel. Right? So it just late funnel questions are more likely to convert. They're closer to the money, right rather than what is a thing. It's what is the best version of a thing. I'm ready to buy that thing. Those are late funnel questions that are more answer engine. But I would even say, like, I don't. I don't know what the percentage should be. But what we're talking to customers about is almost starting with

[00:48:31 - 00:48:51] Jeff Calderone: AI optimization and working backwards. And so there are a lot of things that are good for, you know, to Ted's point about faqs and and schema, like those, are good, essential, essentially for AI optimization. But they're also good for SEO. And so if you start with the future in mind and kind of future proof, your site and back into that.

[00:48:51 - 00:49:02] Jeff Calderone: then your blog content and all that stuff is going to be still going to be there. But it's going to be structured in a way that's future proof versus just putting all that content on a page without structure the way we used to do it.

[00:49:02 - 00:49:10] Jeff Calderone: So it's not necessarily a percentage. But I think it's blended and maybe starting with the end in mind is is what I would advise.

[00:49:12 - 00:49:16] Morgan Callison: Follow up to that what converts fast, SEO versus aeo.

[00:49:17 - 00:49:19] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Oh, I wish I had the answer to that.

[00:49:19 - 00:49:34] Jeff Calderone: I'll stick with what I just said. I think Aeo is closer to the money, because by the time you're getting to that, if they come to your site with from an Aeo search, it's more likely that they're closer to the money, so.

[00:49:34 - 00:49:41] Jennifer Griffin Smith: I think the challenge right now is that the volume is still higher on SEO. Right? So,

[00:49:42 - 00:49:44] Jennifer Griffin Smith: we need a bit more time to measure that.

[00:49:46 - 00:49:46] Jeff Calderone: Yep.

[00:49:48 - 00:49:58] Morgan Callison: I did have one more question that just popped up when optimizing content for SEO, it's been a longstanding rule that content in accordions, etc, was not crawlable. Is AI

[00:49:58 - 00:50:01] Morgan Callison: able to access this information, or is this still not available.

[00:50:02 - 00:50:30] Jeff Calderone: I, Lisa. I remember that, too, and I'm not. I'm not an expert at that. But what I understand is that with your structured content and rich schema, you can make it crawlable. You just have to take that extra step of telling Google or telling the answer engines and Openai like what this is, but I know it's it was a Javascript problem in the past. I don't. I think somebody solved it. I don't know who did, and I don't know the technical details, but it's it is, it is solved. Yeah.

[00:50:33 - 00:50:33] Jeff Calderone: that helps.

[00:50:34 - 00:50:35] Jennifer Griffin Smith: And I learned something, too.

[00:50:35 - 00:50:37] Jeff Calderone: Yeah, I'll get that.

[00:50:38 - 00:50:48] Morgan Callison: Well, well, that is all we have time for today. Huge. Thank you to Jeff. Thank you to Jennifer. For sharing your valuable insights. Thank you to everybody who joined and definitely keep an eye out for a follow up email with the recording

[00:50:48 - 00:50:52] Morgan Callison: and some resources. So thank you so much have a wonderful.

[00:50:52 - 00:50:53] Jennifer Griffin Smith: Thank you. Thanks for everyone for joining.

[00:50:54 - 00:50:55] Morgan Callison: Bye. Thank you.