However, the industry has changed over the years, and it’s time for SEMpdx to evolve with marketing. Now that digital has integrated into traditional marketing disciplines, our member and sponsor needs have changed. COVID and AI have further altered consumer behavior and how they use digital channels. The remote workforce has increased the need to reach beyond Greater Portland. MarTech has evolved as have media and advertising with it. Events have changed as well, creating greater challenges for trade organizations to create financially-viable conferences.

To address the changing industry, the SEMpdx board has unanimously voted to merge with NextNW, a creative industry association with an international footprint across the Pacific Northwest into Canada. Our new mission is to further elevate and integrate digital into all aspects of marketing, including creative and advertising. With a membership of over 500 marketing professionals across five States and two Provinces, our resources are considerably greater.

We’re excited to integrate SEMpdx’s members and sponsors into NextNW, effective immediately. All SEMpdx memberships will automatically transfer over to NextNW through December 2025. We plan to migrate our infamous digital marketing blog to NextNW in the coming months as well. Our key sponsors, Forix and Data Speaks will also carry over to NextNW. And most importantly, we will maintain a focus on developing digital marketers with excellent programming, starting with a February webinar with Rand Fishkin. We will also continue sending our monthly email newsletter, although the frequency may change.

Stay tuned for further communications as we merge the two organizations in 2025. We value your membership and support and look forward to bigger and better programming, events and networking opportunities in 2025.

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Please join us on Tuesday, February 25, for SEMpdx’s quarterly webinar as we welcome digital marketing expert Rand Fishkin, who will be providing insights and opinions into Zero Click marketing!

Synopsis

Join SEMPDX and world renowned digital marketing expert Rand Fishkin on February 25th for an insightful webinar into Zero Click marketing!

[EVENT DETAILS TBD]

Speaker Info

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, makers of fine audience research software, and indie game developer Snackbar Studio. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter.

Follow the discussion on Twitter at @SEMpdx and contribute by using hashtag #SEMpdx.

Key Takeaways

• [EVENT DETAILS TBD]
• Anything else you want to ask!
• Skills Level: All Skills Levels

Date and Time

Monday, February 25, 2024
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

Location

Zoom Livestream

Event Cost

Members: FREE

Non-members: $10

Register Here – You will need to use the same email address that you registered for SEMpdx membership to receive your discounted ticket

Sponsors

Thank you to our 2024 Event Sponsor for making our Educational Event Series possible!

The post February 2025 – Webinar: Zero Click Marketing w/ Rand Fishkin appeared first on SEMpdx.

If any of the themes below pique your interest, we hope you’ll consider subscribing as an All-Access member.

Without further ado, here’s our take on the biggest themes of the past 11 months:

Google doubles-down on self-preferencing

Six multinational gatekeepers, including Google, were due to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act as of March 2024. The most relevant provision of this Act for local search marketers is article 6(5) prohibiting self-preferencing.

Google introduced a number of new user interface elements to the local SERP as part of its DMA compliance response, but in our analysis of over 700 European consumers’ search journeys for restaurants, hotels, and home services, these elements received fewer than 2% of all clicks.

Meanwhile, Google’s own Business Profiles continue to eat 50%-80% of all user engagements when users see them. (The lowest engagement we’ve seen occurred in the Hotels vertical, where barely 50% of users scrolled past the ads at the top of the SERP).

At the public compliance workshop hosted by the European Commission in March, Google jaw-droppingly attempted to argue that Google Business Profiles, featuring the company’s own business data and first-party reviews from Google users, which resolve to Google.com URLs, were somehow not subject to the DMA’s provision against self-preferencing.

A European Commission decision on Google’s compliance in Flights, Shopping, and Hotels is due in the first part of 2025.

Google continues to double- and triple-down on displaying more and more modules featuring first-party local, flight, hotel and shopping data. Aside from the financial risk of regulatory penalties in Europe, Google’s product decision to continue to bloat the SERP with these modules (AI-organized or not) is even more bizarre when you compare the cognitive load required for searchers to process them vs. SearchGPT’s minimalist responses.

High-profile hacks & fakes continue to plague Google Business Profiles

Despite Google’s assurances of addressing fraudulent activities, it remains alarmingly simple to alter a business’s phone number on its Google listing, posing significant risks to both businesses and consumers.

Despite being reported in March 2024, the “Map Pin Hack“—where malicious actors manipulate a business’s Google Maps pin to a different location, adversely affecting its visibility and customer directions—remains unresolved, with Google yet to implement a fix.

A meme originating in Tennessee has led to numerous schools worldwide being (humorously?) renamed “Hawk Tuah School” on Google Maps, highlighting ongoing vulnerabilities for massive business harm posed by Google’s “suggest an edit” feature.

While not a hack per se, Google has added unauthorized “Reserve with Google” booking buttons to healthcare providers’ Business Profiles, allowing third-party platforms to manage appointments without the providers’ consent, leading to patient confusion and scheduling issues.

Despite a high-profile lawsuit and subsequent $5 million consent decree against Seattle’s Allure Esthetic for falsifying online reviews and suppressing negative feedback, Google didn’t remove the fraudulent reviews from its platform, continuing to display 4.8 stars and over 900 reviews–not to mention a keyword-stuffed business name–even today.

Google’s decision to allow such rampant malicious activity on Business Profiles, especially while amplifying their visibility, fits FTC Chair Lina Khan’s characterization of a monopoly as “too big to care” to a T.

SearchGPT’s makes a genuinely impressive local search introduction

While I don’t expect SearchGPT to overtake Google anytime soon, it could make a meaningful dent in Google’s market share as soon as 2026. Here’s why:

Content Generation: SearchGPT excels at creating detailed content outlines from simple queries, outperforming many paid SEO tools specializing in this exact task.

Context Retention: It maintains context across multiple searches, enabling natural and refined interactions without the need to restate details.

User Interface: The platform offers concise and relevant local search results with a dramatically cleaner interface compared to Google’s module- and ad-heavy pages.

Personalization: SearchGPT leverages user history to personalize results, enhancing relevance (but posing challenges for tracking visibility and rankings).

Distribution via Chrome extension & Apple Search: Alongside the SearchGPT rollout, OpenAI has aggressively promoted its chrome extension which prompts users to replace their default search engine. While Apple’s Text-to-Siri interface is largely hidden from view in its current beta incarnation, it appears Text-to-Siri (backfilled by ChatGPT search results) could be a pixel-for-pixel replacement of Spotlight Search in the iPhone interface.

The post The biggest local search themes of 2024 appeared first on SEMpdx.

We’re Getting Personal

Consumers are expecting customized, personal experiences and that is a trend that is only growing stronger heading into 2025. As AI advances, consumers have come to expect the same personalized experience they get on their TikTok feed across the internet. To get ahead, marketers will need to go beyond personalized product recommendations and instead look at the bigger picture. We’ll see predictive analytics and behavioral data team up to anticipate the user’s needs at every step of their customer journey.

What does that look like in practice? We’ll be seeing more ads that exist within the context of what the user is viewing and less intrusive ads. A perfect example of how we’re seeing this in action is influencer endorsements. What feels like a friend recommending their favorite product or using a certain brand of makeup is actually a seamlessly marketed digital ad. In the same vein, sponsored content might be overhauled to be more educational or entertaining. Think: a cooking video with product placement and a recipe that you’ve got to save for later.

Sustainability Stands Out

Consumers are increasingly aware of sustainability and the impact their purchasing has on the environment. Brands who have implemented sustainable measures and are transparent about their social responsibility stand out in a crowded market. While we’ve begun to see brands adopting this transparency already, expect customers to demand supply chain transparency, social impact reports, and eco-friendly alternatives in 2025.

Some examples of this could be highlighting your brand’s community impact, showcasing your eco-friendly production practices, or sharing a behind the scenes look at your supply chain and the care taken at every step in the process. As consumers become more values-driven than ever, sharing the story behind your brand’s sustainability is a must to maintain their trust.

What if your brand isn’t a product that you can make more sustainable? Consider the social impact your company has on your community and how you could improve or share the work you do in that realm. Transparency really is the key here, consumers want to see that it’s a priority for their favorite brands to be good to their employees, their consumers, their community, and the earth.

The Next Generation of AI

It’s been a big year for AI. From relatively quiet chatters of ChatPGT grocery lists to every major search engine, software provider, and analytics platform integrating AI features on the market for mass consumption. While we’ve been seeing the first Gen AI get its sea legs, the next generation of AI has already swooped in and will be here to stay in 2025.

Beyond content creation, marketers will leverage AI to ideate, edit, and personalize content to their consumer. With increased data and the ability to extract and analyze in moments— marketers will know their consumer better than ever before. Expect to see campaign optimization, trend prediction, and personalized experiences topping the list of in-demand AI features for marketers in 2025.

Speaking of Predictive Trends…

Data nerds, this is going to be your year. We’ve gotten a taste of predictive analytics and enhanced data reporting in 2024, but next year we can expect a whole lot of new features on the horizon. Honing in on the capability to create predictive models, you’ll be able to dial in campaign performance, audience segmentation, and ad creative success before you launch to a single customer.

The ability to adjust and make proactive decisions on strategy and creative decisions while in the midst of campaign creation will shift workflows and lead to more agile decision-making in the long run. We’re expecting these tools to transform how campaigns are started— using enhanced data analysis to determine if a concept will work from earlier stages and letting analytics be the guide on what direction will reach the most consumers.

It’s a Party on the SERP

As AI integrates into all of the major search engines, expect more consumers to seek out zero-click search results. Products like Google’s featured snippets and answer boxes are becoming the go-to and marketers will need to format with these features in mind. Snippet sized content, answer boxes, and local packs help you to stay visible even when you aren’t driving clicks in directly.

How do you stay competitive in a zero-click search environment? The latest data shows fewer than 60% of searches on Google lead to a click. Sure, a lot of this can be attributed to “How Tall Is Timothée Chalamet?” searches (a google answer box tells us he’s 5’10”), but what about all of those other meaningful leads that you want to click through to your website?

Before you throw out your SEO strategy— consider the bigger picture. Optimizing to be that snippet at the top of the search engine gets you a major edge over the competition even if they don’t click through: Brand Awareness. Ultimately, we must adapt to how consumers are utilizing search engines. Meet them where they’re at and get creative about using the tools you have to influence them from the SERP!

Are You Up For The Challenge?

So as you analyze how you performed in 2024 and look ahead to 2025— keep your eyes on the futuristic tech that is leading the way for digital marketing. Changing, adapting, and growing an audience in new and creative ways is nothing new for digital marketers and we can’t wait to search, scroll, and swipe our way through the next generation of digital ad content in 2025.

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