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This episode, your host and EAG’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Randolph has the first of what he promises to be several conversations with Erin Dechman, EAG’s director of campaign strategy. Hear how AI will change Google Search for users and advertisers, plus Erin’s optimistic take on the world of the unknown until the robots take over. Then, Sam Kulikov, partner at Social Apex and Kansas City Pioneers’ CMO joins in. If you don’t know about Pioneers, this is a chance to learn about this esports org with one of the best teams in the world.
Transcript
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. My name is Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising & Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice business owners can use to keep moving forward. Plus a featured interview you’re not going to want to miss. I’m excited to get to that interview. But first…
Hey, we’re going to have the first of what I imagine is going to be several conversations here with Erin Dechman. Erin Dechman is the director of campaign strategy here at EAG. Erin, welcome. Welcome to the podcast.
Erin Dechman:
Thank you. Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
This is going to be one of several times you’re here, so just get comfortable in the chair and we’ll go from here. Why we’re talking today is because of course AI is a thing. AI is starting to really take over and it’s taking over Google search. And with Google having, let’s just call it all of the market for search, this is important.
Erin Dechman:
It’s rather, yeah. I mean 99% of the market for search?
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Erin Dechman:
It’s going to make a big difference.
Jeff Randolph:
We need to pay attention to it, and we need to know what’s going on. There is a lot we don’t know right now-
Erin Dechman:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
About what’s going on with AI takeover of Google search. If we just kind of talk about what’s happening. What is going to be a Google search? What is it going to look like once AI happens? What do we know about that?
Erin Dechman:
Right. So I mean, like you said, in the very early stages, and Google has only launched a few previews of what that search would look like. But what you can envision is you go to Google and you ask a very specific question, “What are the best speakers that I can buy for the pool?” So, normally you’d see all of your links and you’d have to scroll through and read each description and you would find out for yourself, where do I want to click?
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Erin Dechman:
Well, Google AI is now giving you a short brief comparison at the very top of the search. So you’ll see it expand, and you’ll see different types of speakers that you can purchase. You’ll see benefits of… This one’s waterproof, this one plays loud, this one is easy and mobile. And so it does all of that research for you in a matter of seconds. Impressive.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s so impressive.
Erin Dechman:
Scary.
Jeff Randolph:
Thank you. Thank you Google for doing everything for us now.
Erin Dechman:
So we no longer have to think.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, and we’re going to talk about this because there’s a lot with the announcement of this that we don’t know yet. And so this will change over time. So take a look at the date that this was recorded and when it was published. And that’s going to tell us a little bit more. So we will continue this conversation because this is a conversation that will have impact in search engine optimization.
Erin Dechman:
Yup.
Jeff Randolph:
But today, let’s talk about paid search and just kind of what we know already about paid search, and especially what we don’t know. Because, from a paid search standpoint, this is going to get people to a set of search results that you may not ever click on. If it’s an informational piece, you have web links below that you could click on and go to that website. But you may also just decide, “Hey, the answer that the AI gave me is all I need.” Just like if it were a featured snippet and you got your answer right there-
Erin Dechman:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
And you never had to leave Google to go to a website. So thank you for the featured snippet, but now I don’t need to go anywhere. So we know that in shopping situations, a shopping set of search results may come back to you. But what does that mean for paid search?
Erin Dechman:
So right now, for paid search, it looks like those search results are going to be pushed down even further on the page and maybe even minimized. So where we used to have three to four placements, it could become one to two.
Jeff Randolph:
When you say that, the way you say that, that makes it sound more expensive. For those one to two places.
Erin Dechman:
It is most likely going to get more expensive. And costs have already been rising over the past year, right? You’ve seen the CPC go up, or cost per click go up.
Jeff Randolph:
Thank you. I was going to stop you. I was going to stop you.
Erin Dechman:
Okay, thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
And I was going to say, for our listeners who don’t do this every single day-
Erin Dechman:
Cost per click…
Jeff Randolph:
Cost per click, CPC.
Erin Dechman:
We have seen that increasing just over the past year. And so imagine losing two placements, and you still have the same amount of competitors. That cost is just going to go up even more, especially for highly needed service-based businesses that are costing around 60 to 100 dollars per click. I mean, it could be-
Jeff Randolph:
It could be even more than that.
Erin Dechman:
Twice as much.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. And again, let’s put an asterisk on it and say, we don’t know yet.
Erin Dechman:
Yes, we don’t.
Jeff Randolph:
We don’t know what their plans are. We don’t know how the paid search side will integrate with AI, but-
Erin Dechman:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
What we do know is that Google wants to make it, ultimately, they want to make everything better for the user so that the user is definitely having a better experience. They get their answer faster, they get to the result faster.
Erin Dechman:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s their whole thing.
Erin Dechman:
That is their main goal.
Jeff Randolph:
But, they also tend to make money real well. So we know there’s going to be some kind of integration there. We just don’t know what that is yet.
Erin Dechman:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
So this will evolve over time. But if we’re looking at it right now, there’s a lot that we’re not sure about what is going to happen.
Erin Dechman:
The world of unknown until robots take over.
Jeff Randolph:
Hey, if we’re talking AI, are we obligated to just say, “Well, obviously this is what we know now, until the robots take over.” This is real close.
Definitely more to come here. We’re going to continue these conversations. This just kind of setting up the issue at this point. And we’re going to stay on top of it so that whether we’re talking about it from SEO or whether we’re talking about it from paid search, we’re going to be where we need to be for all of the clients and then all of the people who we’re giving some information to. So any other thoughts on AI, what you noticed right away on any of those searches? If there’s something that makes you go, “Ooh, I’m going to keep an eye on it, I’m going to make sure I-”
Erin Dechman:
Pay attention.
Jeff Randolph:
“Follow this one very closely.”
Erin Dechman:
I would say that it is showing up more for question-based searches. Like, “How do I…? How can I…? What can I…?” We don’t know what that’s going to do for single-word searches or even business-to-business type searches-
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Erin Dechman:
If AI is going to be able to deliver those results. But I would say if you don’t have SEO in place, now would be the time. Because if you don’t do it now, then you’re just going to set yourself back even further.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Erin Dechman:
But if you start building that foundation, you’ll have a little bit more.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. And we know from other Google products-
Erin Dechman:
Yep.
Jeff Randolph:
The interplay between SEO and paid search, that the better a job you do at the SEO piece on either a product or a webpage or whatever it is we’re trying to be found for… The better job we do for SEO, the higher we’ll perform in the algorithm, even if that algorithm is a paid search. Right? So, great advice. That is exactly what people should do is… Let’s get, in fact, very specific, I think, on SEO.
Erin Dechman:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Because now if your search is, “I want an e-bike that will go up a hill of whatever size at whatever speed, and it needs to be red.” And it’s an iterative search where you’re continuing to ask the AI questions to filter your results down-
Erin Dechman:
Yes. Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s going to become a very specific search. So the more your products, the more your pages do a good job of getting specific, I think that may be the advice we can give today.
Erin Dechman:
Yeah. Right now? Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Erin Dechman, director of campaign strategy at EAG. Thanks for being here.
Erin Dechman:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
All right, we’ve got our next guest here. We’re happy to have with us, Sam Kulikov. Sam, tell us a little bit about what you’ve got going on. Tell us about you.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, absolutely. So I am a graduate of Bloch School at UMKC with an entrepreneurial degree. So I kind of starting out of college, got together with a group of friends and started a marketing agency named Social Apex. And I was really passionate about creating content, connecting to the modern consumer through brand and new media. So we do a lot of work with a lot of different brands here in Kansas City. Some notable ones are Charlie Hustle, American Jazz Museum, Sporting Kansas City-
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Sam Kulikov:
And many others that are doing great work here in the city. And we do have a nice focus on philanthropy as well, and social activism. It’s something that was really important to us as a diverse team. We want to represent the community in which we serve and do really great work. And over the years we started to venture into new mediums and recognizing some of the new industries.
And after a couple of years we had an idea to create our own brand and organization inside of esports and gaming. So we started the Pioneers, the Kansas City Pioneers. We like to say that we are Kansas City founded, but globally driven. So when we kicked off, we wanted to focus on how do we leverage our marketing capacity and the ecosystem we built at Social Apex to invigorate this brand in this new space. So when we started Pioneers, it was very modest beginnings. Just kind of scrapping, finding our way. There was not really any esports, really any in the Kansas City area. There were some different communities, different amateur events, some different brands that are some great people. But we noticed that there was no real professional organization. So we recognized that esports in Midwest, it was an underserved market, but we knew there was plenty of gamers here, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, plenty. Plenty.
Sam Kulikov:
So we were like, how do we represent them? How do we get out there? How do we do it in a real way? How do we not just try and emulate the people already in the space, but how do we come in and do something fresh? How do we come in with a unique business mentality? How do we come in and drive real revenues? And then how do we take Kansas City with us, right? Because if we’re going to build something that’s going to change the world, we want to take our home with us to the forefront.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. And if we back up just for a second, and for the people who may not understand that esports is a thing, how do you define esports for somebody?
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, a lot of folks look at gaming and they see 9-10 hours a day as a waste. But then when you tell them that there’s kids out there and young adults making upwards of 10, 12, 15 thousand dollars a year on salary. Getting their space paid for, coaching staff, mental health coaching. It’s a legitimate career path. And we’re just seeing the beginnings of it. So the way that I like to explain it is, we see traditional sports and we recognize that. Where if your kid’s out on the basketball court shooting for four hours, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s totally fine.” But when you see your kid playing video games for four hours, you’re like, “Hmm, what is that?” Well, we want to show folks that there’s legitimate path to careers not only as a pro player, but as designers, creatives, coding, technology, Steam. I mean, the potential inside of gaming and esports is so immense, and that’s why we want to bring more of it, and the educational side, to Kansas City. Because I mean, we’re talking in 10 years, we’re talking multi, multi-billion dollar marketplace.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, for sure.
Sam Kulikov:
And it’s an opportunity for Kansas City to get ahead of some of the other metros.
Jeff Randolph:
It is huge. And you don’t really realize how big it is until you start to dive into it just a little bit. We were talking before we started, before we hit the record button, about somebody we both know at Mizzou-
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Crimz, who is playing Rocket League on scholarship.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
And I don’t know that everybody gets it, that you’re a college athlete in all of this.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s huge for the community. It’s a great thing. So…
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for our Rocket League team, we’re top 16 in the entire world. We were just at the World Championships as one of the youngest teams to ever go to a world championship. And we picked up our roster just a little over a year ago, I think. And when we picked them up, we helped them get access to coaching staff, mental health assistance. We gave them resources like training, high-end equipment, promotion, brand material content in our marketing agency to back up everything. And so from there, we’ve helped them build brand, we’ve helped them get better. And now we’ve, in the last two months, we went back to back to back in regional championships in Australia. So we’re number one in Australia right now.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh man.
Sam Kulikov:
And as we continue to win, we’re going to lock ourselves in for the World Championship again. But for context, the World Championship was held at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. There was over seven, I think it was like 10,000 people in the arena, and then there was like 350,000 people watching worldwide.
Jeff Randolph:
Watching. Oh, yeah. Right.
Sam Kulikov:
I mean, we’re talking immense viewership. And then one of our newer games that we entered into, Apex Legends, is a first person shooter that’s starting to grow. We picked up the number one team in Europe. They’re fifth in the world, and their World Championship, which was in North Carolina, Raleigh in July, rendered out 700,000 concurrent views.
Jeff Randolph:
Wow.
Sam Kulikov:
At the same time. And we’re not talking about total viewership, we’re talking about concurrent.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, that’s concurrent. Yeah.
Sam Kulikov:
I mean, we’re talking like 10 Kaufmans, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Cool.
Sam Kulikov:
And so the potential is so huge because we know that it just started.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Sam Kulikov:
It just came to North America really in the last decade. And so we’re seeing that as Kansas Citians, we have a unique opportunity here to take advantage and to get ahead.
Jeff Randolph:
What is the path to that? How do you get ahead? How will you know that you’ve made it?
Sam Kulikov:
Well, I think for us, to some extent, I think we already have, but we have a lot more to do. So in the last three years, we’ve won multiple world championships and multiple titles. We’re seeing 500-600% year over year revenue growth.
We’re seeing sponsorship kind of just continue to explode with some of our sponsors like Price Chopper, Guy’s Snacks, Logitech. Previously with DoorDash as well. We’re seeing brands that are endemic, and then non-endemic, to gaming coming in and trying to find a way to get activated. And so with our experience in marketing, we’re able to take these brands, work with the Pioneers and create authentic content, connect them to a community, and help them drive real results. And so I think to get ahead, what we need to help people realize is that gaming isn’t just this siloed gamer in the room, drinking Mountain Dew eating Cheetos.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Sam Kulikov:
That’s not what we’re talking about anymore. We’re talking about the new frontier of entertainment and media, and that is gaming. Because no other medium of entertainment has this intersectionality of pop culture where you have music, movies, TV shows. All these things combine themselves inside the gaming atmosphere. So we’re going to continue to see that continue to advance, right? I mean, even with traditional athletes, for example, we have four cheese players, three cheese players now, excuse me, that are on staff with us: Mecole Hardman, Trey Smith, Andrew Wylie. And Armani Watts actually moved to the Colts, but he’s also a Pioneer as well. And so this is an opportunity for traditional athletes to work outside of their skillset on the field, to connect to consumers, to build brand, to get advertising contracts, you know what I mean? The potential is so wide.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, huge. Is there a marketing or business issue that keeps you up at night?
Sam Kulikov:
Inside of gaming, you mean or-
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Sam Kulikov:
The marketing issue that I would say keeps me up at night is that we’re noticing that it’s so so fresh, and I think it’s because two things. I think it’s very new, but then I also think that it’s not as traditional as an advertising platform. Copyright, billboard, traditional advertising. Which still has its place now and today, but it’s difficult. You can’t just throw money and see a result because you have to know the space.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Sam Kulikov:
You have to know the consumer. When we’re talking about Gen Z and even Gen A, we’re talking about a consumer group that is pretty much not watching TV at all.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Sam Kulikov:
They don’t really watch any traditional sports. I mean, we’re seeing that people under 18 are watching more esports than all traditional sports combined across the board, and we’re going to see that continue to grow.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a huge shift.
Sam Kulikov:
Right?
Jeff Randolph:
That has massive impact across the board in every advertising media.
Sam Kulikov:
Hundred percent.
Jeff Randolph:
That is huge. Let me do this. Let’s switch over and hit the lightning round.
Sam Kulikov:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
Here are the rules for the lightning round. Shorter answers, soundbite type answers.
Sam Kulikov:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
One word, three words, a sentence, whatever you got going on. There’s no wrong answer. So whatever you say is okay, as long as you can support it. No, we will dive in and ask more questions if we need to.
Sam Kulikov:
I’ll have them all in citations.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. Have a citation, AP style.
Sam Kulikov:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
Let’s see. All right, so what is your favorite social media platform?
Sam Kulikov:
Ooh. So favorite social media platform is definitely Twitter.
Jeff Randolph:
Twitter. It’s tough to be noticed and seen there. Are you very active all the time?
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, it’s tough to be noticed and active on there. But for gaming, that’s where it lives and breathes. Gaming and esports is inside. I mean that Twitter is the medium, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Any shift in the future with new ownership at Twitter?
Sam Kulikov:
I don’t really know. Obviously it’s been unique the last couple of days with some of the news leaks, but I mean, we’ll see. I don’t really know. I mean, I’m ready for it.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re all just kind of waiting to see.
Sam Kulikov:
See. Yeah, we’ll see what they end up doing.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re all just waiting to see what happens.
Sam Kulikov:
It could tank it, it could go great. Who knows?
Jeff Randolph:
We’re talking about inspiration in this next question. What businesses or brands inspire you?
Sam Kulikov:
Oh, wow. That’s a great question. Wow. Okay. Well, I’ll say, when I started my agency with our team back five years ago, one of the brands that really, really inspired me was Signal Theory. Back then, it was Sullivan Higdon & Sink.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Sam Kulikov:
I looked at them when I was trying to build our team and recognize how they intertwined social philanthropy into revenue-driving capacity. Or recognizing that you don’t have to just make money or just donate, right? You can do them at the same time. You can make an impact. You can do great things, but also drive revenue for your business and grow your impact as well.
Jeff Randolph:
Corporate social philanthropy is inspirational across the board.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Good answer. Yeah. Let’s imagine you’ve had some big success. One of your teams wins a major championship or a project, you meet a goal. How do you celebrate that success? What do you do to celebrate those successes?
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, we like to say, actually yesterday we were talking about this, that we have fun through success. So we work hard, and when we find those wins, we get the validation through those wins because we’ve built this from nothing. We built this with our bare hands, from the dirt, from the mud, working together with diverse groups of people from different backgrounds and with no assistance other than just our grit and tenacity. And I think that speaks volumes of Kansas Citians in general. We have to scrap really hard to get noticed and get that recognition we deserve. And so I think that’s our success measure is getting people to recognize we are dope. Kansas City is awesome.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re the coolest.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, we are.
Jeff Randolph:
Think about your marketing technology stack for a minute.
Sam Kulikov:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
Is there any part of that you wish you could just throw away and change?
Sam Kulikov:
I definitely think that there’s a lot of talk right now about short attention span for young consumers, and I think that that’s a little bit misguided. I think that we have platforms that kind of propagate that. But I do believe that looking through gaming and esports, we’re recognizing that they do have long attention spans for things that they enjoy. And so I think that I’m excited for esports and gaming to continue to grow, because we’re going to continue to see a longer attention span capability to connect to consumers over long periods of time. Which, as marketers, gives us a lot more leverage to connect to them and ask them questions about who they want to be and what they want to engage with.
Jeff Randolph:
Got it. And we’ll wrap it up with this. All the people who are listening, what’s one thing they should know about your company and take away?
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah. I think that the one thing that we want people to recognize about Kansas City Pioneers is we said, again, Kansas City founded, but globally driven. We want to take our home with us and every measure of success that we find as the Pioneers is success for Kansas City. The more we can win together, the more money, the more revenues, the more jobs that we can bring here to Kansas City, whether it’s through the Pioneers or through other extraneous gaming activities.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. Well, Sam Kulikov from Kansas City Pioneers, thank you so much for stopping by. We appreciate having you. Thanks for inspiring us with your wisdom.
Sam Kulikov:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
That was our show. Sam, thanks for being here. That guy. We’re happy to talk to Sam anytime.
Thanks for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’d like to thank Sam for being here. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at EAGADV.com if you have some thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.