104 - Leveraging AI & Adapting Your Marketing Strategy with Dan Vance, Founder & CEO of Shop Dog Marketing

104 - Leveraging AI & Adapting Your Marketing Strategy with Dan Vance, Founder & CEO of Shop Dog Marketing

September 4th, 2024 - 00:56:17

 

Show Summary:

In this podcast, we'll explore the transformative impact of AI on digital marketing with Dan Vance, Founder and CEO of Shop Dog Marketing. AI is here to stay and is revolutionizing how we approach everything from content creation to customer engagement. In a world where AI can act as a personal assistant—virtually an expert on any topic—how can you ensure your business stays ahead?

Dan will also discuss the latest industry trends, including navigating the ongoing changes in social media and SEO, especially with Google's recent updates downranking AI-generated content. With shifts in the automotive industry, it's crucial to stay prepared.

This is your opportunity to gain actionable insights and ensure your marketing strategy is ready to meet the challenges and opportunities.

What You’ll Learn:

1. Maximizing AI for Your Auto Shop: Discover how AI can revolutionize your marketing, from crafting compelling content to engaging your customers, helping your shop stay ahead in the competitive automotive industry.
2. Adapting to SEO and Social Media Shifts: Learn the latest strategies to keep your shop visible online, including how to respond to Google's updates and navigate potential changes in social media, such as a TikTok ban.
3. Strengthening Your Shop's Marketing for the Remainder of the Year: Get actionable insights to refine your marketing strategy, ensuring your shop is prepared to tackle challenges and capitalize on opportunities as the year progresses.

At The Institute, we help shop owners build thriving businesses that supports both their team and long-term goals. Regardless of where you are in your automotive journey, whether you're just starting your first shop or you're a MSO, we have something for your shop! Please reach out!

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Dan Vance, Founder and CEO of Shop Dog Marketing

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:41] - Your website should tell your shop’s full story- community involvement, partnerships, and personality.

[00:04:00] - Google is your website’s biggest visitor and evaluates your authority through content.

[00:05:41] - Understand and apply Google’s E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

[00:07:03] - Shop owners must stay involved to build trust and improve website engagement.

[00:10:36] - Use AI to analyze your reviews and uncover hidden emotional trends and weaknesses.

[00:13:30] - Even with a high review score, negative sentiment like “rude” can hurt your ranking.

[00:21:02] - Images are becoming increasingly important—humans process visuals faster than text.

[00:31:34] - Take intentional, high-quality photos of your actual shop to support transactional search queries.

[00:42:17] - Use AI for seasonal marketing planning by analyzing customer data and trends by zip code.

[00:48:49] - Reviews are more than stars—they’re powerful tools for social proof and keyword relevance.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?

Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0YEpFYXDCk

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

 

Links & Resources: 

• Want to learn more? Click Here
• Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
• See The Institute's events list: Click Here
• Want access to our online classes? Click Here

 

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Jimmy Lea: Jimmy Lea here with the Institute. Super excited for it to see you, my friends, as we are starting another day in the life of you as a shop owner and the things that you can should and must be doing in your shop to be the best that you can possibly be. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. I'm super excited to be here with you today as we talk about leveraging artificial intelligence, or maybe it's advanced information or assisted information.

Jimmy Lea: Super excited for the conversation that we're going to have today. And if you don't recognize me on camera, then maybe you recognize the picture. My name is Jimmy Lee. Super excited to be here with you as we talk with my very good friend, Mr. Dan Vance, founder Owner CEO of shop dog marketing. Dan is here with us today.

Jimmy Lea: Dan. Good morning. How are you? 

Dan Vance: Doing great. Glad to be here. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Thank you and I'm excited for us to talk about websites, to talk about AI, to talk about marketing in the shops because there's so much that can be done. And you and I both know that a lot of shops, they have a website, but they treat it like a tick mark on a, Chart or on a list that has to be checkmarked off almost like in the old days they did with yellow pages.

Jimmy Lea: Yep. I've got a yellow page ad. I've got a yellow page ad, but the website is so much more dynamic than that. Was wondering Dan, if you could talk about the life of a website and what shop owners really should be paying attention to or looking at in their websites. 

Dan Vance: Yeah, well, I think the best place to start is just to remind you that your website is going to be the one place where people can learn more about your business than any other source.

Dan Vance: So, it's a good place for you to really build it out in a way that kind of illustrates all the aspects of your business, why it's unique, the community that you serve as partnerships that you might have, foundations that you participate in, and really just Letting people know, hey, this is this is who we are as a small business and we serve this local area on a more broader sense.

Dan Vance: Do you have a thought? 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: I have an idea. So, those questions or comments or concerns that shop owners get on a daily basis about, you know, who are you and what are you and what do you do? What do you stand for? That is all that information that could go on this. Let's call this your employee that works on the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, never takes a day off, never has any sick leave.

Jimmy Lea: They're constantly out there working for you. All of those things that you just talked about the charities, the community involvement that can all be put on the website. So those that are searching and wanting to discover more about you, that's a go to place for them. 

Dan Vance: Absolutely. And we have social media channels, which support that, but it's a well known fact that the website is the place that people are going to rely on as the main source, they recognize that it comes from you and whatever's there is by you.

Dan Vance: So. I think it's really kind of a missed opportunity by most auto repair shops. And I would love to see, I would love to see more shops really kind of dig into like, let's tell our story, let's be more visible about who we are, what our personalities are, what makes us laugh, those kinds of things. On a more broader spectrum, the website has a function too, to help Google understand the services that you provide in your community, and they're probably going to be your number one customer in terms of like looking at your website, reading all of the content on your website and making assessments about whether you really speak with authority related to your industry.

Dan Vance: Sometimes we miss those two top tier things. We forget about we're part of the community. We should express that. We miss the fact that Google's our number 1 reader of our website, all the content on our website. And then we also forget that our website's a transactional place. People come there to take some kind of action and while there are some that will come to your website looking for information, like, how do I how does a break system work?

Dan Vance: Most are going to come there and look for like, how can I get and get my breaks fixed? Transactional. So, your website really needs to address those transactional things and just know that people are like looking, they don't want to put a lot of time or energy into it. They're just looking for certain things like where do I schedule?

Dan Vance: How do I call? What kind of value things do you offer like a loaner vehicle or warranty or some of those things and all that should be first and foremost on your website. So then you get into design aspects really to help consumers. make transactional decisions when they do get to your website. So who we are.

Jimmy Lea: I have a question. 

Jimmy Lea: Um, and this goes, you struck on something here that it's absolutely Like struck lightning in my brain that Google is our biggest customer. That's looking at our website. And I know that Google has an acronym, the E A T that, and that everybody needs to write that down. If you're listening to this webinar, write down E A T, which stands for.

Jimmy Lea: E is expertise. 

Dan Vance: Experience. There's two E's actually. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Experience and expertise. What's the A? 

Dan Vance: Authority. 

Jimmy Lea: Authority. That you are the authority, that your shop is the place to go to, that you are the one that can solve the problems. And then T, what's the T? 

Dan Vance: Trust. 

Jimmy Lea: Trust. Does the public have trust in you? So when you look at a website, Dan of anybody out in the industry, when you look at a website, do you view it from a Google point of view or do you view it from a consumer point of view?

Jimmy Lea: Who, what, how do you analyze? A website. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. The biggest value I can add to shop owners is really to look at it through the eyes of Google. 

Jimmy Lea: Because that's 

Jimmy Lea: the biggest consumer. 

Dan Vance: Yes. Yeah. But auto shop owners, you know, they will, they'll, like you had mentioned earlier, they like check it off and they'll be like, Oh, I handed this off to my agency.

Dan Vance: Um, and then they stopped working it. And, but the ones that don't do that, the ones that are much more proactive about it. So. Adding new pictures and making sure they're telling their story. They have higher engagement rates, which is just another way to say, Google notices that people are taking interest in your website and they'll rank you higher.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Dan Vance: So, That's something that you can do that's really hard for an agency to do, but that's hard for us to do for you. But I can definitely, I have tools, like you have tools in your shop that help me understand what the words on your website say. I have tools that help me understand whether you meet that criteria, that EEAT.

Dan Vance: I have tools to help me understand whether, you know, it meets other compliance rules that Google is looking for. And we can modify and adjust it and resubmit it. and get you to rank higher. And so that's really like, because we're in this industry and we use the toolbox, like you just have to know an agency is this tool and they can do this for me better than anybody else, but it's not the only tool.

Dan Vance: Like I have to know, like I have a role in this. So I think that's a big takeaway for people. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. So as an agency can definitely set up the shop to be the EE, the expert. The go to the expertise, the experience and the authority. But when it comes to the trust, I think that's really where the shop owner has to step up and reply to all the reviews, request the reviews, get the Google reviews.

Dan Vance: That's where the gold is. They've got to help set themselves up as the trusted source. So you, as an agency help with the EA. And then the shop owner can definitely help influence the T, the trust. Yeah. 

Dan Vance: So I'll just share a quick example with you. Like you may notice that sometimes you go to a page on Google's website where it's a policy guideline or something where they're describing like how it works.

Dan Vance: And at the bottom of the article, they have a little button that says, was this helpful? 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. 

Dan Vance: And maybe you've thought about why they do that or why they don't do that. But the reality is that the algorithm or Google's search engine ability to read content on your website and make lots of decisions about what that content is.

Dan Vance: At the end of the day, like this is a roadblock for them. They don't know if it's actually helpful. So I might speak to expertise and authority and trust, but am I really helping a consumer 

Dan Vance: make 

Dan Vance: a decision that's going to benefit them? That's why I'm in business. And so that's a huge takeaway, as I said the trust factor is they're looking for trust factors.

Dan Vance: And the easiest place to find trust factors is in reviews. And we're going to talk more about AI today, but AI is a great place to. Cram your reviews in there and ask AI to help you understand them better from a search engine's perspective, because it'll tell you, this is the way the search engine sees this.

Dan Vance: They understand the emotion, the sentiment, and the attributes like great pricing, great warranty they did the break job right away, they took me right in, so those kind of things, and those are all trust. Those are trust factors and they're all kind of related to this idea of engagement. And yes, I was helpful.

Dan Vance: My website was helpful. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. 

Dan Vance: Google loves that. 

Jimmy Lea: Now, wait a second. So what I heard you just say is that I can take all of my reviews, 200, 300, 2000, 3000. I can take all my reviews, put it into a a chat GPT or an AI. And I'm going to ask what question? 

Dan Vance: Yeah. So just, I'll give you the process. This is how you do it.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Dan Vance: You can copy and paste, um, and then put it into an Excel spreadsheet and then go in there and take out your business name. And take out the client's name, the reviewer's 

Dan Vance: name. 

Dan Vance: You can easily do that. You just have to go to Rome and just remove them. It's not important to, because ChatGPT is an open source.

Dan Vance: So, and it's a learning mechanism, so it will take that. It'll give you information back, but then it kind of puts it in their bank. And they'll refer to it. So at this point, we don't know whether it's actually kind of prudent or good idea to like give them that kind of content. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So we're going to remove the personal name, personal information.

Dan Vance: Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: But if it's in the review, leave it in the review. 

Dan Vance: Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So now we've got.

Dan Vance: Like a service writer or something else, I would leave those. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Dan Vance: I would leave those. Okay. Because all of this is going to, you can dump this, I just dump it in a spreadsheet, like a Google Sheets or you can use Excel and then save it as a file.

Dan Vance: And then you go into ChatGPT and you open it up and you attach the file. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. I follow up. And then you're tracking everything. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. And then you say to AI and prompt engineering is a big deal. So then you give the AI an assignment. So you say something along the lines of, you are, so I'm gonna give it a, I'm gonna give it a persona.

Dan Vance: I'm gonna say to ai, you are, um, a search engine algorithm, and you are going to read these reviews and you're gonna write down the top 10 emotional comments that are made in this reviews as a bulk. And I hit enter and it'll spill out top the top 10 and I'm going to promise you that you better be holding on your hat and your seat because it's going to surprise you because what you see in your reviews and what an algorithm sees in there are not the same.

Dan Vance: So, um, you're going to see some stuff and then from there, you can just go further. Like it, the, that chat process knows in that moment that it's acting as a search engine and it's giving you feedback as a search engine. And so then you can ask it more questions like, what's the top complaint?

Dan Vance: What's the top service related to the top complaints. And I'll give you an example. Like we've tested this and one shop. Um, had good review score. I think it was 4. 7, but he had a bunch of negative reviews and we found out that 25 percent of his reviews had negative sentiment. There weren't negative reviews.

Dan Vance: There were negative sentiment. People were mad. They weren't happy with the experience there, and they were, and as we went through this and we asked questions, the most common emotional statement that was in this bulk of reviews was the word rude. Imagine that's your shop. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay, I'm imagining that's my shop now.

Jimmy Lea: Who is rude? I mean, what do I do with this information now that I know that rude is the word associated with my shop? 

Dan Vance: Yeah. So then you can go through and you can ask, you know, who's mentioned like a service writer or this or that, how did that happen? And it will dig that information out for you. It will tell you what jobs are tied to the emotional statement.

Dan Vance: And in this one that we did in particular, it was brake repair and oil service, which is kind of sad because those are your highest conversion. Those are new opportunities that ran away with a negative experience. And of course, this shop owner had no idea. Like he was as shocked as, you know, anybody would be because he's got a nice review score.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 4. 

Dan Vance: 7. But the search engine sees it completely different. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 4. 7. That's solid. That's a good score. That's right in the middle where you want to be. But if 25 percent of all your reviews has a negative sentiment. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. Good score, but a negative review and a negative, a very specific negative, like, you know, around a service or you know, interaction with people in the business.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Interesting. So again, 

Dan Vance: we talked about trust. Yes. And I think this is a good place to roll back to that and just say, trust is evaluated by Google through reviews. And so Google would look at that and just say, okay, there, we're going to bring them up for break repair because they're doing all this other stuff, right?

Dan Vance: But they're not going to be dominant because we know this shop isn't really providing the best kind of experience. And for us as a search engine to stay in business. We've got to give them the very best shop, which might be the guy down the road that has You know, two people and they're just working away and they don't really have a they have a terrible website like all this stuff That frustrates us about other people, but they've got good review sentiment.

Dan Vance: And so they get more ranking love from google 

Jimmy Lea: Fascinating. Fascinating. Um, for those of you who are listening and watching, what is your Google rate rating right now? Are you a 4. 7, 4. 8, 4. 9? Is anybody brave enough to take their reviews and put it into chat, GBT and share with us. But what I'd love for you to share is what is your ranking right now?

Jimmy Lea: Put that into the chat, into Q and a. I'd love to see where we're ranking here across the country. If you can, if you, and as we go 

Dan Vance: through this, because we're in partnership with the Institute, if the Institute wants to send us people that are interested in having us do that for them, I would run that for them.

Dan Vance: I would do that process for you. Complimentary, because I think it's important that you Start seeing the power of AI in marketing, especially because it's become more complicated in terms of ranking and competing a local business. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Jason is a 4. 6. Jason's in North Carolina. Jason, are you going to ASTA here at the end of the month?

Jimmy Lea: Because we're going to be there. Dan, are you going to ASTA? 

Dan Vance: I am, and I'm doing a class on this very thing. So come to my class. 

Jimmy Lea: Jason, you got to be there 

Dan Vance: Saturday morning. Okay, 

Jimmy Lea: cool. So 4. 6, what, where is, where does the shop want to be with their ranking? According to algorithm, not according to Jimmy Lee, not according to Dan, not according to, Hey, I have to have a 5.

Jimmy Lea: 0. What where do we want to Oh. And here's a couple more here. Janice is a 4. 6. Brian is a 4. 6. Wow. We got a lot of 4. 6s. So Dan, where. The number's good, but I think the sentiment goes a little bit further. But is there a number that shops would want to be at? 

Dan Vance: Well, I went to a conference and there was Google people there and they said.

Dan Vance: They said at the conference that the optimal review score is 4. 3. Now I would add that. I think that's not correct for auto repair. I think auto repair is 4. 7. I think that's your optimal score. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So they're saying 4. 3 because it's across all. Websites, if we look at automotive 

Dan Vance: restaurants, laundry, bookstores like everybody, but for auto repair, people are looking for something higher.

Jimmy Lea: And I think 4. 

Dan Vance: 7 is a place that's kind of a sweet spot. And especially if you have 300 reviews, you're 4. 7, that's a great place. That's very solid. 

Jimmy Lea: That's very solid. So these couple of shops, these three that have responded with their 4. 6, not bad, that's good. That's good. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: We'd love to get you up to a 4.

Jimmy Lea: 7. Now you can go to 

Dan Vance: AI and you can say, Hey, I've given you this list and help me discover some ways that I can improve my score based on the reviews that I'm currently getting. Yeah. And guess what? It will give you good feedback on how to do that and it'll even help you draft a new review request that has more key information in it.

Dan Vance: That will help you improve your score. Now we're an agency and like we could do that, but on an individual basis, that's something like if you empower yourself to really kind of manage that piece, you're going to have better results. And you're going to have a better pulse on really what customers are experiencing in your business.

Dan Vance: Yeah. So, use AI to move yourself forward so you don't have to think real hard about it. Like, it'll help you do the right thing. 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Alan has a 4. 9723 automotive and diesel reviews on Google. That's 

Dan Vance: superior. 

Jimmy Lea: Solid. You're not telling Alan to go screw things up so he goes to a 4. 7, correct? 

Dan Vance: Correct. 

Jimmy Lea: No, I'm not saying 

Dan Vance: that at all.

Dan Vance: And I knew you weren't. Now if he had, if he was just a straight five, whether it was ten reviews or a hundred reviews or more, that's actually problematic because people don't believe that. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and here's one from Rudy and this falls right in line with what you're saying, Dan 4. 7 over 1400 reviews for Rudy.

Jimmy Lea: That's solid. 

Dan Vance: That's solid. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I would be interested, Rudy, for you to run the AI. From an algorithm point of view. 

Dan Vance: I was thinking the same thing. I was like, that's a beautiful data set, man. Think of what we could find there. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. What's the sentiment according to an, a search engine algorithm.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's just a whole nother level Dan, that you've brought into this. Phenomenal. I love it. Okay. Keep going. Keep going. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. So we started with websites and you can see like, there's just a layer of the trust aspect. There's a whole review thing, which we talked about, but there's more.

Dan Vance: And I'm going to tell you that the more piece that we're definitely seeing is we're going to see a lot more images. In terms of search engine responses. So I do a search for something and I'm going to see more images as a response. And the reason for that is because images, we actually communicate better through images.

Dan Vance: We can see a lot more information faster. I think the number is something like We can? Are you saying we or are you saying algorithms? Human beings. So human beings can read a picture like 400, 000 times faster than text. And because we don't really like to read, like we want a little bullet points, give me the facts, got to make it short, we skim images are going to be more of an engagement.

Dan Vance: Okay. So we like images, they tell us more, there's a bigger story behind those. 

Jimmy Lea: Totally agree. 

Dan Vance: AI is another place that can really help us discover like how to leverage images on our website to express experience. Authority, like why we're authorities in respect to repairing your vehicle, your brand vehicle and trust and the image can do all of that.

Jimmy Lea: So, and I, we have to pause this image because I do have an image question because I need to circle for Jordan. Jordan has a really great question. How do I, Retrieve all of my Google reviews. Is it just simply going through and copy and paste? Or is there a button that I can tap and I get a, an Excel spreadsheet of all my reviews?

Jimmy Lea: You're nodding your head at the copy paste. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. So I have a tool, a right tool to make a big difference. So I can open a tool and it gives me all your reviews from all the sources and I just download it from there. So yeah, easy peasy. Um, why don't you just let me do that for you, or you can go into your Google business listing and just start copying and pasting.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So the simple way, the DIY do it for yourself, Jordan copy and paste it yourself, phase two. And I think as Jordan says, thank you. I think as shop owners, we know this better than anybody. The tools make all the difference. 

Dan Vance: Dan 

Jimmy Lea: has the tool. Let's talk to Dan here at the end. We're going to give out his contact information so you can reach out.

Jimmy Lea: Dan Jordan says, thank you very much. Um, all right. Too much to image questions, website. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years and years. Shop owners. You need pictures of your shop. You need live pictures of your people. You need live pictures of your shop. Don't put up stock images of some mechanic from the Netherlands and blue coveralls.

Jimmy Lea: Great picture. Not your shop, 

Dan Vance: you know, the one, right? I know exactly what you're saying. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, as a placeholder, it's okay. And a placeholder is a week, two weeks, maybe a month, maybe two months. But if you go three or four and Google has now crawled your website multiple times, thou shalt not, don't put it out there.

Jimmy Lea: Okay, 

Dan Vance: now there is some ins and outs of that we should kind of address. So everybody is at common ground, right? So I would tell you that Google prefers stock images on the level of they know that it's licensed. And licensing with images can be problematic. So where did you get that picture? Did you have that person's permission to publicly profile them on your website?

Dan Vance: You know, those kind of things. So licensing is a factor in stock images that kind of like offset the discoloring of the fact that it's not a great representation. It's the guy in overalls, like I get that. Stock images are really well done, so they're exceptional in lighting, good color tones, the colors are rich.

Dan Vance: And so no matter what kind of device I'm using, I have a great image experience. So, there is kind of like this, um, making sure that the images that you use meets those kind of standards, right? Like I have the right kind of permission, that it is licensed, that I have a written agreement from this employee that he knows, like, this image belongs to the company and we use this on everything and so on and so forth.

Dan Vance: And that you take good pictures with good coloring, good lighting, because it makes a difference in that experience on the website. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Dan Vance: So, go ahead, I know I, I bet I can see a question. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, oh boy, can you see the question? I mean, the gears are just grinding here. Okay, so, stock images are okay. It has to be licensed.

Jimmy Lea: But it's not the best. 

Dan Vance: Correct. 

Jimmy Lea: The next level up from that is taking pictures in your shop, hire a photographer, this is what I'm hearing. Get good lighting, get good imagery, get good quality photographs at a high resolution, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to put a 4k image on your Website because that would just heal your ranking that would kill your page.

Jimmy Lea: Make it 

Dan Vance: really heavy. Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: okay So they're gonna hire a photographer Um, and here's a little side note wedding photographers are great to hire because they can come in on a wednesday morning They don't shoot anything except for the weekends Yeah, so to have a morning gig during the week. They would love to do it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and they have all the tools They have the tools. They have the equipment and just 

Dan Vance: show up and do it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And same for videographers to videographers that are doing weddings are great for us in the automotive to hire during the week. They can come in. They've got all the equipment. They can handle it.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Talk about the images that they take, the pictures that they take or that you take. Cause you taking them on your iPhone or your Android, you've got a good high quality camera in your phone. How do I convince Google that's. My picture. I took it. I own it. 

Dan Vance: Yeah, so there's a place on the image where you can put the licensing.

Dan Vance: So you can put like this property of and, um, license and agreement in place for all aspects of the image. Okay. 

Jimmy Lea: Is that something that I do as a shop owner or I have my website people do because they're my expert? 

Dan Vance: It's not hard to do, but I would have them do it for you. It's easy for them. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Dan Vance: Easy for them.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Is there more to talk about here with taking pictures? Yeah, I think 

Dan Vance: there's probably another aspect with AI. That's where I was 

Jimmy Lea: going to go! Yeah. Okay, go. 

Dan Vance: So, um, a few years ago when Google announced that they could read images, which was a huge leap forward because 10 years ago, they couldn't read pictures.

Jimmy Lea: That's right. 

Dan Vance: Now they could read pictures and they had a tool where you could test the picture and it was amazing because it didn't matter what the picture was, but you could put it in there and then it would give you all of these spectrums. So it would tell you like, it's a male. with a beard and he's smiling.

Dan Vance: So it gave you the emotion, how they looked, sex, right? It told you all of that. If they were standing in front of a car, it would tell you the brand of the car, the brand of the tires. If there was a logo in the back, it would identify a business logo. So it picks up all of that and that's just one little picture, right?

Dan Vance: It's got all the information in there. Well, now with AI, um, you can ask yourself, like, I want a picture, just ask yourself, like, if my website on my homepage is transactional, like I want to help people make a decision quickly. 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. 

Dan Vance: What kind of image really helps people do that? And now you can take and take an image either off your phone or you can copy and paste one into AI.

Dan Vance: And you can ask AI, tell me about this picture. What are aspects about this picture? And it'll give you all of that breakdown for you. And then you can start tying it off. You can say, okay, I'm thinking about adding this to my website. My goal is to make it transactional. I want people to make quicker decisions.

Dan Vance: I want them to understand the value of a loaner vehicle. As an example, and it will help you make decisions about that. You can change the pictures till you find the right picture. And then when you put it on your website, the search engine will read that image and know exactly what it is and what its purpose is.

Dan Vance: Because you did the pre work using AI. Now this is something we couldn't do five years ago. 

Jimmy Lea: Right. Probably even two years ago, Dan, this wasn't a 

Dan Vance: thing. Because AI is not even two years old yet. 

Jimmy Lea: Right. 

Dan Vance: So, this is, we're definitely moving to a place where search engines, we're already seeing that. Now, you do a search for whatever, and you're going to see more images on that search results than we've ever seen.

Dan Vance: And this is why, is because Google understands what's in that image, and what the story is telling them. And they know. That image matches up with the query that we put in there for local service. Okay, I um We did a test yesterday. We had a shop that's got a bunch of pictures on their google business profile And then I went over to did a search in images for their zip code And none of the images in their Google business profile actually shows up in the search engine results.

Dan Vance: Why is that? Well, because then they're they're not, um, they don't speak to authority or trust or experience or relevance, right? There's no relevance there. So if I do a search for auto repair in your zip code and I look at the pictures and I don't see your pictures there, that means you don't have pictures on your website or in your Google business listing that represent a tie in to that key search.

Dan Vance: So if I want to rank higher, And I understand that Google's moving to more image related technology. That's a place where I can play around with AI and find images that work better and stick those suckers on my Google business profile and start testing it and seeing if they show up in search, and they do pretty quickly.

Jimmy Lea: But okay wait. Now, so if I'm searching for images and I grab these images, These are images that I don't own. I don't have the licensing for. No, I'm just 

Dan Vance: saying, like, for you to discover and learn, like, Okay, this is how it sees it. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So I see what Google wants to see and then I recreate that in my shop and I take that picture.

Dan Vance: Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: And I put that on my Google business profile. Yes. And okay. I follow you now. I follow you now. And 

Dan Vance: I'm glad you asked me to clarify that because this is so amazing and it moves so quickly and sometimes our minds are racing to trying to like figure out like, how do I put all those pieces together?

Jimmy Lea: Yes. 

Dan Vance: And 

Jimmy Lea: so on my Google business profile, how many pictures should I have? 

Dan Vance: Well, I think the better question is like, what do I really want people to know about me and my business? That's going to help them with transactional decisions, like call me or schedule an appointment. So I'm going to have images around oil service and brake repair and engine and check engine light.

Dan Vance: I'm going to have my signage and my storefront so people know what it looks like when they drive up or when they walk into my office. Is there, I don't know if people have sitters or not, but just, I want all of that experience there. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, waiters sitting in the lobby. Okay. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and I've always said, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe we need to ask AI this question.

Jimmy Lea: I've always said, don't ever put any pictures up of your shop where the parking lot is empty because it shows you have no business. You have, you're nobody, you're not working on cars. Nobody's visiting you. So always, if you have to stage it with cars, have everybody come on a Saturday and you just park their cars there.

Jimmy Lea: But I also have seen, and I have seen this, I used to tell shops, Post up those things that are funny, unique, interesting. Well, then the shop gets flooded with all this unique, one off, crazy, Oh my gosh, I've got to do this Roadrunner repair on this car. But that's not what the, that's not the bread and butter.

Jimmy Lea: So now I'm telling shops, Okay, find out your most profitable vehicle. Yes. If it's the Ford F 150, all of your pictures need to have a Ford F 150 in the picture on your Google business profile. Yes. 

Dan Vance: And your instincts are right. And it's definitely supported by AI giving us feedback about what the search engines are really looking for.

Dan Vance: Okay. But you can also hammer out searches and see what the search engines are providing as a result that reinforces that as well. And we are, I know Jimmy and you've seen this too, like I will look at Google business profile and I'll see images where there's an engine on the floor. And I think that's the worst kind of picture to have in there.

Jimmy Lea: And me personally, I agree with you as well. I think as a technician, you would kind of geek out about that. Yes. Because you could look at it and identify and say, Oh, that's a 5. 0 V8. Yes. Coyote Ford engine right out of that F one 50. I can, I know exactly. In fact, I know what's wrong with that engine.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Yeah. Technicians do and shop owners do. They do all the time. And it blows my mind that they're able to look and say, Oh, I could tell you exactly what's wrong as a consumer, as the public. I don't want to see the guts of my car all over. Yeah. That doesn't mean 

Dan Vance: they have to take my engine out to fix it.

Dan Vance: That's a question they'll ask. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, so it doesn't breathe confidence. I want to see cars that are running well, that are in good condition and people are smiling and happy about it. Okay, I can, you can take tires off and show me things that way. I'm good with that. But man, when it looks like the guts have been spilt.

Dan Vance: Yes. And people that are having, that are in this call, maybe they're doubting whether this is true or not. Take your image. 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. 

Dan Vance: Put it into AI and prompt the AI and just say, this is an image about my business where we do auto repair. Tell me what people would see by looking at this image. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Alan, Rudy, Jordan, Brian, Janice, Emily.

Jimmy Lea: Who's brave enough? Will you take one of your pictures, post it into a chat, and see what the algorithm would return to you as an idea? Now, I have another question for you about AI and using, what about using AI images on your website? 

Dan Vance: So, Good, 

Jimmy Lea: bad, ugly, what? 

Dan Vance: I think you have to do two things. One is you have to have a, some kind of like disclose your statement that this image was produced by AI technology 

Jimmy Lea: and 

Dan Vance: on the website for the user to see that.

Dan Vance: Um, I, um, the other thing I would say is that the images that I'm producing with AI are fun and they're great for my class presentations, but I'm not sure I want to use any of those on my website or in my Google business profile. 

Jimmy Lea: Right. Yet. The dog with six toes and three elbows is kind of hilarious.

Dan Vance: Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And Jason says he doesn't recommend using AI images. 

Dan Vance: I don't think it's going to be like that forever because they're getting much, much better. 

Jimmy Lea: Because that AI image is custom. It's unique. Nobody else has that image. Now, I don't know what a shop owner could show about their shop that would use AI to create that image to make it unique.

Jimmy Lea: I really don't see that being a thing. 

Dan Vance: Not right now. But because we're going to images, it's going to be a bigger piece. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 

Dan Vance: and, um, but I think in anything we have to keep in mind, at least for the moment, because as things change, then we'll probably change this to kind of adjust with that. But right now you want images that help search engine understand better why you're different and how you meet that criteria, but you also want to provide a great experience for the user who's got some kind of a transactional intent.

Dan Vance: So how do I help them make a decision quicker? Yeah. By communicating to them. Oh, they do oil. They're close by. They got great reviews. I'm calling. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Those reviews are the word of mouth marketing. That is your best whispered secret. If you've got Wasn't 

Dan Vance: helpful. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just like who, who was it said 1, 400 reviews.

Jimmy Lea: Rudy has 1, 400 reviews, 4. 7. So there's probably over a thousand people saying this is a five star shop. Dan, you should go there. 

Dan Vance: Yes. And that social proof is a big motivator in terms of how we make decisions. Yeah. Because we don't like to make decisions isolated and the social proof and psychology and all that, but.

Dan Vance: How many of you go to dinner and you always ask the waiter, like, what gets ordered the most? 

Jimmy Lea: That's the only way. I don't even read menus anymore, Dan. I don't! I don't read menus. I ask them, I say, what do you like? What's good here? 

Dan Vance: Yeah. What's your favorite? 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and I do that because I know that they know what's good.

Jimmy Lea: I know that they know what's popular. I know that they know, they're not going to steer me wrong. 

Dan Vance: And you're describing the power of what a review does. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Dan Vance: Right? That guy has no interest whether I do business there or not. He's just telling me from his perspective of this is what my experience was like.

Dan Vance: It's exactly like you're describing. Oh yeah. It's so powerful. 

Jimmy Lea: I was in a sushi restaurant and I asked the waiter, I said what's good here? I love sushi. 

Dan Vance: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: What's good? What do you like? Oh I don't like sushi. I don't like raw fish. Okay. Can you have the chef come out please? Cause I don't want to talk to you.

Jimmy Lea: And they did it and we had phenomenal dinner, phenomenal sushi. It was amazing. So, getting those recommendations goes a long way. And that's exactly what you're talking about with this EAT is making sure that you have that trust, 

Dan Vance: that 

Jimmy Lea: you are the authority, that you have the expertise. Oh, I love it.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. Okay. What else? 

Dan Vance: Well, I think another thing is like when I roll into Q3 and Q4, like we know we're pushing the end of the year. We want to make sales. We want to reach our numbers. Like, how do we keep summer momentum going? And there's always. There's always a natural incline and search for certain types of things, like in Utah winters, we're going to see more searches for tires and coolant, my heater's not working right windshield wipers, you know, just stuff along those lines.

Dan Vance: Yeah. In other places, they're still doing AC all the time. 

Jimmy Lea: St. George. We're 106. 106 

Dan Vance: degrees.

Dan Vance: That's hot. That's hot. Way hot. So I think you can say, look, this is, and you could do this with AI. You could go into AI and you could say, you're a marketer and I'm looking for some marketing ideas for Q3 and Q4 in this zip code and hit enter. Can you 

Jimmy Lea: hit a couple of zip codes at the same time, Dan?

Jimmy Lea: Totally. Okay. So if I'm in St. George, I've got 8, 9, 8, 4, 8, 0. I could hit all three of those at the same time. Okay. I 

Dan Vance: would definitely do that. And then we'll come back and it'll give you ideas like these are trends we see in Q3. And some of them you're going to be like, Oh, that's obvious. That's obvious.

Dan Vance: And then you're going to, Whoa, hit the brakes. I got something here and it's probably going to be something that other people are doing. And then you can go to the next level and you can say to AI, help me write some kind of promotional thing to put on my website that tells people we're doing this service and it'll describe to you how to do that.

Dan Vance: It'll give you all the pieces. Some of that you can do, or some of that you can be asking your agency. Are you doing this for us? That's something you're looking at, right? 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. 

Dan Vance: Yes. I 

Jimmy Lea: love that. 

Dan Vance: I can, I know as an agency, like the more I use AI, the more I'm just like, I cannot believe how powerful this thing is and the ideas that you get from it and when your mind gets growing and you're brainstorming essentially with something like this, you start thinking about things more creatively and you get other ideas.

Dan Vance: And that little edge is what you need to be competitive in Q3 and Q4. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, and we're in the middle of Q3. Yeah. Well, no, we're at the end of Q3. 

Dan Vance: No, we're just starting Q3. 

Jimmy Lea: Three, three started in July. 

Dan Vance: No, June, our first quarter is January through March. Second quarter is through July. Oh, yeah. So August, man, we're marketers.

Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Welcome to the end of Q3, Dan. Glad to have you with us. So here we are at the end of Q3. So the question is for us to ask Everybody's laughing, by the way. I don't know if you saw those. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. Emotions are coming through. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay, so here we are. Oh, this is so much fun.

Jimmy Lea: This is too much fun. Gather yourself. Okay, so here we are at the end of Q3. We should be asking questions now for Q4 for my zip codes. And that's where the marketing wants to go. Cause we got to plan ahead. If you're slow today, what you do today is not going to help you tomorrow, even this week, or you might possibly next week, but really the marketing you're doing today is going to help you next month.

Jimmy Lea: So what you're doing today is preparing yourself for Q4, which starts. October 1st. 

Dan Vance: Yes, 

Jimmy Lea: Dan. October 1st. 

Dan Vance: So I would also, and that's a heartbeat away buddy. . Oh man. I'm not gonna look at October 31st. First. First. Okay. First. Okay, so why don't I do something for Q1 along the same lines, right? So repair. Now I can take information outta my CRM and I can scrape the data out so it's clean and safe.

Dan Vance: And then I can put that into AI and I can say, what type of typical orders do I get in January through March? And you can start drafting marketing around those because you know, people are coming in for those services. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. That's phenomenal. Um, question for you, Dan, is there any difference between the free chat GPT and the paid chat GPT?

Jimmy Lea: Do you notice any differences? 

Dan Vance: Yes. Yeah. Um, 

Jimmy Lea: so do you highly recommend the paid? 

Dan Vance: Yes, I use the paid and I don't know what you get with the free, 'cause I use the paid. So when I'm describing like, yeah, I dropped this thing in there, or I do this or I do that, it's all that experience through the paid version.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. So here's the difference I've seen Dan and I, maybe I can articulate this to help you, that the free one gives you free. Basically free advice and it won't do the heavy analysis, the paid. And what's the paid? Was it like 20 bucks, 25, 25 a month. 

Dan Vance: It's 

Jimmy Lea: really not that heavy of a lift. And, but it does do some really good heavy analysis, data analysis, market research, website research, internet search.

Jimmy Lea: So when we're doing this type of stuff that we're talking about, Dan, it's, we're definitely recommending the paid chat GPT. Because it gives, You know that movie, 

Dan Vance: The, I think it's called the right stuff. It's where they go out to the moon and they're coming back and they have problems if their oxygen thing isn't working.

Dan Vance: What's that movie called? 

Jimmy Lea: Well, it's Apollo 13. 

Dan Vance: Yes. Okay, so, right in the movie where they have all the engineers that come into the room and they pour all the stuff out on the table and they say, this is everything that's in the spaceship and we need it to fit this. But here's what we have. And so then they all dig in and they start taking that and they come up with something.

Dan Vance: And that's the way AI works. 

Jimmy Lea: It's 

Dan Vance: like, this is what I need. And then you rely on the power of that machine learning to crush all of that data into some meaningful insights. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Dan Vance: And it gives you the thing that works. It'll fit. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. 

Dan Vance: 20 a month or 250 a year to me like is a pennies for the value you get out of that computing power.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. This is a great comment. This has come in from Jordan. I've trained ChatGPT to reply to Google reviews as well. It's a huge time saver. Love it. Hate it. 

Dan Vance: I love that idea. Recommendations. And kudos to you for digging in and doing some stuff with it. Yeah. Now, I will tell you that as far as we know, Google doesn't really use review responses of ranking signals, but they do look at it as a way of you engaging with your customers.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Okay, keep going. 

Dan Vance: So, you definitely want to do it, and it's okay to use AI, you're not going to get penalized from the search engine, because it's a little touchy when I take AI generated content and I plug it into search engines. They are really touchy. That's why we have this whole eat thing is because they're very sensitive to kind of like human real communicated.

Dan Vance: Experiences that you can put out there. So I would not, um, I just would, I would just say to you like that's a really good thing to do and to continue to do that, but don't have an expectation that's going to change your ranking. 

Jimmy Lea: Correct, because there's what Google says and then there's what Google does, because they even say that the reviews don't have any, that they don't, the reviews aren't searchable, those keywords, they say that they're not, but then when I do a search for BMW expert, Google might throw up a review that says, here's somebody that had a good experience at this shop, you might want to check them out.

Dan Vance: Totally. Yeah. And they, there's no question. They look at a review from me about a shop and they'll pull information out of that. And they call those attributes or they call them sentiment, which is where we started. Yeah. And they're definitely doing that. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So the 

Dan Vance: companies, I'm sorry, there's some review companies that you can use that if I come to your website from search engine, I did a search for brake repair and I land on your homepage.

Dan Vance: It will automatically display a review about break repair, because it can identify the source of the search query. It's a real thing, and it happens. Birdseye does it. There's a couple other places. Now, our industry, our review companies that build these tools, they're This is something I'm sure they're working on behind the curtains because this is a big deal like if I'm doing a search for BMW repair, don't I want to see BMW review the first thing I see when I land on that website?

Dan Vance: Totally do. Because it's transactional, it helps me make a decision faster. 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. That's all 

Dan Vance: AI generated stuff. That's the power 

Jimmy Lea: of AI. Okay, so you have seen Geppetto, you have seen the Wizard of Oz, you know where the strings are, and you're helping us to be able to pull those strings as well. Yeah. I love that.

Dan Vance: Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: this is taking this. I hope everybody 

Dan Vance: realizes to like, from my perspective, like I give you stuff that maybe the others don't. But I do that because I see this as a team effort. Like if you understand what I can do, you can understand better what you can do. And together we do amazing things. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true.

Jimmy Lea: It has 

Dan Vance: to be that way. 

Jimmy Lea: It has to be. I think I'm going to give dad credit for this one. My dad would say. I don't know what you don't, I don't know what you know, and I don't know what you know, but I know together we know more collectively than I do individually. So as a team, let's come together. Let's elevate the industry.

Jimmy Lea: And I love that you're giving this information freely to those of us who are listening. Some will do something with the information. Some won't, some will, some won't. So what? Who's next? Those that are going to do stuff with this. There is even more that Dan could help you to do with your shop and your website.

Jimmy Lea: If you were interested, and some aren't. 

Dan Vance: Well, we want to help you grow as much as anybody else does, but I want you to know, like, there's stuff that we're doing that is just really changing the whole landscape about how we have insights, how we use this data, how we understand the search engines do things differently.

Dan Vance: Um, and a lot of things have changed over time. Like, it used to be, and you would know this, Jimmy, like, you want backlinks, you want right blogs, so you get backlinks to your website. But somebody released a bunch of information from Google. And what we found out in that private data was is that Google will measure engagement.

Dan Vance: Did I come through that backlink and did I do something? Was it helpful? 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Dan Vance: And I don't care if that backlink was from the New York Times. If I did not do anything, they will downgrade that backlink. In other words, they'll take the value out of it. It's not the same value. So I can have a backlink from.

Dan Vance: the Chamber of Commerce that's not as strong as the New York Times, but it creates engagement on my website and it helps me write better. 

Jimmy Lea: Better than New York Times does. 

Dan Vance: So there's stuff that we know that we didn't know before, and AI is helping us write better stuff to compete on that. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, man. I love it.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. 

Dan Vance: It's exciting. I think this is about the best time ever to be in digital marketing. The ground feels like it's finally stabilized a little bit because so long. It's just been like what the search engine knows and what the rest of us are guessing. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 

Dan Vance: they know. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Dan Vance: But now with AI. The mystery is coming out a little bit, like where the curtains being pulled back and we're going to say like, oh, okay, we see how this works.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And be careful, Dan. Cause as soon as you think, you know, what's going on, the rules are going to change, of course, you already know that. Oh, that's awesome. So how do people get in touch with you, Dan? How can we send our shops and our shop owners and those who are interested in learning more about their websites and their local search and their.

Jimmy Lea: algorithms. How can we get people in touch with you? 

Dan Vance: Well, you definitely can reach me through the institute. They know how to reach me, but you can also reach out to me directly. My email is dan and the, and it's the advanced local. com is my preferred email still. So that's what you want to send it to.

Dan Vance: We operate in the auto industry as shopdog marketing, but my email to reach me is dan at advanced. local. com and send me an email. There's no expectations other than how can I help you? I'd love to help you. I want to be a helper in the industry. My role is to give back to the industry and let's see if we can give you a little lift.

Jimmy Lea: Come to 

Dan Vance: my classes. I'm going to be at AST and I'm doing a class on AI and I've just given you like a little glimpse of some of the amazing things we're going to talk about in there. Um, and also we're going to be at Apex in Las Vegas. So come by and see us there. Are you down by Joe's garage? Yeah.

Dan Vance: Joe's garage. Yeah. So, we'd love to meet you if we haven't already. 

Jimmy Lea: Definitely come by. We will see you at the A STA Expo. Yes. We'll see you at Apex in Las Vegas. Yes. And more Good 

Dan Vance: times 

Jimmy Lea: and more. Thank you very much. Thank you to everybody who is online, who's here with us. There's so much more we could still unpack.

Jimmy Lea: Dan, we've definitely gotta get on the books here for our next webinar. Yeah. Everyone is shouting out the thank yous and they'll see you at a STA Expo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Emily. Jason Jordan. Thanks guys. 

Dan Vance: Thank you, 

Jimmy Lea: Dan. Thank you very much. All right. We'll see you guys. See you again soon.

Dan Vance: Bye.