What The Hell Is AEO, And Why Is Everyone Talking About It?

Transcript is auto-generated from the episode recording and lightly formatted. It may contain transcription errors.

Chris Keene (00:00): In this week's episode, we find out what made Chris say this. Don't let nobody leave. You got 100% T.O. Hey folks, welcome back to Lot Talk powered by Lot Pop. I'm Chris Keene, one of the co-hosts, joined by the great curmudgeon, Mr. John Anderson, and the esteemed Mr. Ronaldo Leonard. Now, we got a surprise for you guys, okay? We have had so much great feedback of everybody loving Lot Talk. We've been doing this for over 18 months now. I'm going to give the credit where credit's deserved. Mr. John Anderson said, "Hey, let's put a podcast together and let's give back to this community that's been so great to us." So, we did it. So, over 18 months ago, we did this and it has just been doing nothing but exponentially growing. So, instead of just airing this one time a week, we're going to give you guys twice. Every Tuesday at 4:30 a.m. Central Time, the audio version of this is going to release. And then at 4:30 again Central Time every Wednesday, another audio version of this is going to release. So, you're going to get two audio versions released at 4:30 a.m. Central Time. So, you folks that are still hammering your New Year's resolution, you're still on that treadmill, God bless you. You're 60 days in. Great job. Or if you're just hammered at 4:30 in the morning, or rolling into the driveway. Whatever floats your boat. At 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, it's going to get released. At 4:30 a.m. all Wednesday, you're going to get another round of it. But, there's a lot of you that jump on the YouTube. There's a lot of you that like the Spotify and you like to watch the video, okay? You're going to get that 1-hour segment of Lot Talk powered by Lot Pop. So, you know, three times. You got three opportunities in the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Wednesday again. Three different opportunities. 4:30 a.m., 4:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m., all Central Time. So, make sure to tune in. Make sure to save it. Make sure to subscribe to it. Make sure to share it. Much love to everybody that dropped a review on the Apple. Continue, please. We love the reviews. We thank you for them. Continue to keep dropping those reviews. We greatly appreciate it. It helps us reach more. It helps us find more opportunities to bring in more experts, because we ain't experts, but we know a lot about a little and a little about nothing. But, we'll figure it out. So, keep sharing, keep subscribing, keep liking. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And keep giving us those reviews on Apple. They're so appreciated. But, as always, we invite any feedback from you of maybe a better day and time for us to release this to better suit you guys' schedule. So, definitely, let those come in. Let it hit the mailbag, and we will definitely do what we can to accommodate everybody. Now, we ain't going to be able to accommodate everybody. So, I mean, this ain't Burger King. This ain't your way right away. But, we will try. Now, last couple weeks we've also asked for some reviews. Huge, huge, huge shout-out to y'all that gave some reviews. Thank you so, so much. That is so helpful for us. It is so much appreciated. Thank you for showing some love. We greatly needed that. And we need more of them to come. So, for you folks that haven't dropped a review in Apple, that haven't liked or shared through Spotify or YouTube, please, please, please. You know, drop a review under the Apple podcast. Please make sure to share and subscribe through all the platforms and drop some reviews on the Apple podcast. We greatly appreciate that.

Chris Keene (03:53): So, you know, the phone waves blew up, the interweb, you know, the text messages, the social media. A lot of these things blew up since we started talking about answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization. You know, we were having some conversation because as you guys know, John was in field, he was on site, you know, doing some dealer care and some training, so he wasn't able to join us last week. And he asked the question, you know, and with so much respect and with so much love I say, you know, he asked the question because he is the curmudgeon. He's the old guy. Okay. But, he was like, okay, generative engine optimization, what the hell is that? So, we used Chat GPT, we used Google Gemini to explain it to him. And the most simplistic way we found was the GEO or generative engine optimization, Rinaldo, that's the engine to drive toward the answers for the questions that people are asking these AI platforms like Chat GPT and generative AI. Right. Or generative engine optimization. So, using those different tools out there, what drives it is the GEO. That's what provides all the gears, if you will, to get the right answers back. I don't know about you, Rinaldo, but this has been a really interesting topic.

Chris Keene (05:28): Have you caught yourself using it in the last week?

Renaldo Leonard (05:31): Boy, let's see. There's one particular dealer, an independent, that we work with in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex who has experienced some issues with getting the lead responses that they'd like to see on some of the vehicles. So, when we were working together last week, we just sat down and we workshopped. We just threw it in and asked it to provide us with a description for a particular vehicle that was going to be focused on driving SEO and GEO. And the first thing that it came out with was answering all of the questions that somebody would ask for if they were in the market for a Porsche 911. You know, and one of the things that amazed me about it was the fact that it created inside of the description that this was one of only four Porsche 911 GTs with a manual transmission available in the country.

Chris Keene (06:34): One of four. One of four.

Renaldo Leonard (06:36): Which we saw when we went into their pricing tool to pull up a competitive set, but it didn't dawn on him that that might be important to add into your description. And so, it's just taking back, when I first started in sales, I had somebody tell me, "Hey, if you want to be successful, you have two ears, one mouth for a reason. You should listen twice as much as you talk, but if you ask somebody what you need to do in order to earn their business, shut up and listen. They'll tell you. They'll give you the answer." Okay? And so, this is just taking that same premise and ratcheting it up, you know, 200% to involve the technology that a lot of dealers are relying on to handle that interaction with their customers when it first comes in. If we've heard it one time, we've heard it a million times, "Well, I'm turning over my follow-up process to AI." Okay? Good luck with that. But, we are getting a little more forward-thinking in the process of lead generation and positioning the dealership in the community by instituting and implementing AI technology into our open 24/7, 365 days a year digital dealership, to find where our customers want to be met and then filling that need. Now, who would have thought about creating a situation with your website that took away that whole concept that this should be my digital pamphlet for these vehicles or for my dealership, right? Hell, I think it's been 10 years since manufacturers were producing those. You remember, everybody come by and grab a brochure? Can I see a brochure on your heavy duty trucks and your SUVs? And hey man, we don't do that. And a Ford Probe, too. Let me get one on a Ford Probe. Yeah, we don't do that anymore. So, we stepped away from that printed version to making sure that we created the digital version, and that's our website. That's what consumers see when they go to our website. That's our experience to the world. The world's view. And when we researched it and came upon it, the first thing it said was that you got to be answer-first content structure, right? Those frequently asked questions, get to them right out of the gate. To set yourself up as an authority, right? And so, it's just so simple when you think about it. But it's scary. And I know that the technology is going to intimidate a lot of people. However, you're going to the source. When people are going to these engines to ask questions and get recommendations, why not step ahead of it, ahead of the curve, and be a part of that answer that they're being driven from these engines.

Chris Keene (09:22): But you know, you bring up a good point about the brochures, okay? And you know, this is leading into the answer engine optimization. A lot of people didn't realize this, and neither did I until we opened this new adventure. I was going to say can of worms, but Pandora's Box. Yeah, until we open the new Pandora's Box. But, what I found extremely interesting, Naldo, because you bring up the brochures, okay? The Google spiders don't read factory descriptions, i.e. that brochure. So, which means also that those engines, that answer engine optimization, that generative engine optimization, if you're just blowing out there VIN explosions and factory descriptions, you're not answering those questions.

Renaldo Leonard (10:16): Oh, yeah. Google and the spiders are saying, "Miss me with that bullshit."

Chris Keene (10:18): That's exactly what they're saying. I love you, man. See, that wasn't me. That was Naldo. That was Steve. Okay?

Chris Keene (10:28): Listen, brother. You brought up something when we were backstage before we came up. Forget the auto dealerships for a minute. You know, the third-party companies out there for a minute. But, you kind of threw it in our faces. You, Naldo, Jasen, and everybody with Lotpop. So, why don't we use more AI to help us? Because we're so inundated with so many different businesses or so many different things within our business. And for lack of better terms, a little people poor. I mean, expand on that a little bit, John. I mean, how that AI and that answer engine optimization, for what little you've learned about it and the crash course that you got.

John Anderson (11:16): You know when I started learning about it? So, I learned about it this morning. I mean, yeah, 25 minutes ago. Yeah, I want to be transparent because, you know, you guys are wanting to dive into this again, and you know, I understand now for good reason. And you know, I watched last week's podcast cuz I was in store training and didn't get a chance to participate. Um, but you know, I started diving into it this morning and I just started plugging questions into Gemini for my old curmudgeon ass, right? I ask, you know, having been on the automotive side for 40 years, uh, you know, how can Gemini help auto dealerships better serve their customers? And I got just an array of things. And yeah, it just led me to think, well hell, we're sitting here talking about this to our dealer partners and bringing it out on this podcast, but I mean, are we using it? Are we using it to the best advantage ourselves? And the answer to that is no, right? And then I start thinking, you know, it hit me that, you know, we're probably like a lot of dealerships, right? Where our bandwidth is limited, right? A lot of our dealer partners have a similar situation, right? I would submit to you that the majority of dealers out there listening and watching, you know, how many different hats are you wearing during the day, right? Your management team, right? So, you know, we've got to appraise trades. We've got a salesperson that called in this morning that is having an issue.

Chris Keene (12:57): How about the green pea? How about the green pea that you talked about in your Google Gemini thing?

John Anderson (13:02): Yeah. I mean, what do we do? We typically hand them some brochures and uh, give them a

Renaldo Leonard (13:11): Give them a VHS.

John Anderson (13:13): A VHS and say go up there and watch this tape and go through these brochures, and then they come downstairs and we hand them a worksheet and say now you're a salesperson, right?

Chris Keene (13:31): And don't you let nobody leave. You better 100% T.O.

John Anderson (13:36): Yeah, you let somebody walk out, you better leave with them.

Chris Keene (13:39): Exactly. Yeah, you go right on with them.

John Anderson (13:42): And then the ongoing training, right? Ongoing training for our staff, right? And look at how fast, I mean seriously, I even said that this morning, right? My goodness, how fast things move, right? Now here we are talking about this subject, right? And so, literally what I pulled when I asked how it can better serve our clients, one of the things that it pulled up about how dealerships can better serve their customer base, one of the things it said from a coaching strategy for dealerships is to use AI to train your green peas, right?

John Anderson (14:18): Yes. Because you can literally generate it to basically tell them everything about your store, give them information about your customer base, and then it will train them on your used cars and inventory and your new cars and inventory, right? So if I'm a store that, much like we are, I don't have a huge bandwidth and I don't have the time, which that's a whole another subject in itself, saying you don't have time to take care of your people that are taking care of your customers, but right? But let's say that, you know, I'm telling myself I don't have the time, then now I have a tool that I can set that up for them, allow them to be trained, and now the time that I can spend is inspecting what I expect, right? So that changes that whole process. So yeah, I mean literally a whole new world was opened up to me this morning. And I want to dig into it deeper because of just what we talked about. How much more can it help us at Lot Pop? You know, our number one core value is what, fellas? Dealers first. Dealers first. So, how much more can what we're talking about today help us put our dealers even higher up on the dealers first scale, right? And the same thing I would submit to you dealers out there is, man, if you adapt this now, you're going to be so far ahead of your competition, it won't even be funny. You want to get a competitive edge? Holy crap. We've talked for years about how we get a competitive edge on our competition. Now, you've got it right in front of you. You just got to tell yourself, I ain't scared. I ain't scared. I'll educate myself. Right? Man, I'm blown away. I'm a little scared to talk about it cuz I don't know enough about it, but I think it's something that we need to educate ourselves on so we can educate our dealer partners.

Renaldo Leonard (16:17): Definitely. Absolutely. It kind of goes back to what Brian Benstock was telling us about AI and how it may not replace your job, but those people that use AI and begin to master and implement it in the things that they do,

Renaldo Leonard (16:36): it's going to elevate their status, you know, and outperform those who don't use it exponentially.

Chris Keene (16:42): He broke it down like this. Think about the power tools. Thank you, Benstock, cuz I've been using this analogy, okay? But, think about a power tool. We've had carpenters for years and years and years, and they've built things long before you had an electric saw, an electric drill, and now lithium-powered DeWalt drills and saws and everything else, okay? Did it replace the carpenter? No. Did it make them more efficient? Did it make them more accurate? Did it make them more efficient with their time so they can do more? Yes. AI is nothing more than that, guys. It's not going to replace the human, but the humans using AI will replace humans. That is a paraphrased quote from the professor over at the Harvard Business School. There's a professor over there. Business Insider quoted it. I've been re-quoting it. It's the same thing. Listen up, folks. What you need to understand is this, and I just used Chat GPT to simplify this. Here's what I simply said, and it doesn't matter, I could use Google Gemini or Perplexity or Chat GPT. I said, "Explain in simple terms what generative engine optimization is." It's the practice of making your content easy for AI tools like Chat GPT, Gemini, Perplexity to understand, trust, and use when they generate answers, which is the answer engine optimization. So, GEO is nothing but the practice of making that content easy for the AI. I don't want you to miss one keyword in here: to understand, trust, and use when they generate answers. The million-dollar question is, how many of you guys are going to jump on this bandwagon that is not the future, it is the now. Because 71%, if my memory serves me right, we looked it up last week, Naldo. 71% of millennials use answer engine optimization daily, or Chat GPT or Gemini. Naldo, you sat there and Googled something very quickly, or Gemini did or Chat GPT did or whatever, and it fed you back all the best places and financing options for an F-150 in your neighborhood.

Renaldo Leonard (19:20): Oh yeah, absolutely. And it blew me away. Just a simple question. Who would be the best dealer to talk to about F-150 financing options? And it started throwing, inside of its definitions, questions that I would ask and who would be able to have that conversation with me. It's layering in an advertisement for one of my local dealers. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I'm just asking the Google a question and boom, here comes, as an authoritative source to answer the question that I'm asking, one of my local dealers. And I think about the other dealers in my area who are funneling so many marketing and advertising dollars into SEO and SEM. That opportunity, they weren't even a thought. They didn't even show up. So, yeah. I mean, being a first adopter on this front is really going to give you an unfair competitive advantage and position you to kind of differentiate yourself from other dealers in the area with a key demographic that is going to be pushing the industry moving forward. So, if you're sitting there on your hands going, well, we're just going to see how this AI stuff works out, you're going to get left in the dust.

Chris Keene (20:46): I'll tell you now, Naldo. I'll tell you now. We've talked to three very reputable advertising people, three of them. And not one of them is leveraging answer engine optimization or working that GEO for their clients. One of them was using it for their company. Themselves, yeah. But here's a takeaway that I want you guys to take from this first segment. Do you have a group of questions that are generalized questions that you hear inside your dealership every day? And if you hear those generalized questions that you get from your consumers, to your BDC, to your sales people, to your sales managers, to your service department, do you have those indexed out as a question with a human answer to follow it, to help feed GEO and AEO? Listen, if we have dealerships that are using these ad companies that are not promoting that for you, you need to start advocating for your dealership yourself and forcing the hand of everybody that you're spending money with to get your name and your inventory and your services out there to the consumer public. You need to advocate for yourself and find out how involved your dollars are into things like Chat GPT. And I'm not talking about using them. I'm talking about how it feeds answers back to consumers. So, your takeaway from this segment today, understand that. Understand how involved you are with GEO and AEO. And I'd be curious to know that. Fill the mailbag up, but also tune in for part two that'll be coming up tomorrow, because we're going to unpack the 800 lb gorilla in the room, i.e. CarMax, and what they're doing to leverage AI in today's landscape with the John Doe consumer public that is using these answer engine optimization platforms like Chat GPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. So, on behalf of Mr. John Anderson, Mr. Ronaldo Leonard, we thank you for tuning in to part one around this AEO and GEO. Catch us tomorrow for the next portion.

John Anderson (23:06): Right here, Chris. Yeah. Sorry, brother. I just want to leave something with everyone, specifically dealers, before we jump off here. Because I did the same thing this morning and it gave me a little bit different thing, and I wanted to read this real quick. Pro tip. Pro tip for dealers. The most successful dealers in 2026 are using AI to handle tasks while their staff focuses on relationships. It's about being high-tech so you can remain high-touch.

Chris Keene (23:36): So, there we go. Let's unpack that in the second part of this, guys. So, tune in tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel. We'll catch you right here on Lot Talk powered by Lot Pop. See you guys soon.