As a business owner, you inevitably wear many hats, no matter what stage of growth your company is in. All of us have wished many times that we could duplicate ourselves, and advancements in technology, notably AI, offer a way to actually do that. AI is everywhere. Most entrepreneurs are highly aware of it and/or are already using it, and are constantly bombarded with content from AI providers. But how do we harness and utilize this emerging technology without losing the human interactions that our customers require, and without compromising ourselves or our brands? We proceed cautiously!
There are a ton of AI tools out there, and at the end of the day, they are all in BETA. If a provider is telling you that they are NOT, steer clear. This is an emerging technology, and with that comes risks, some which could bury your business if not deployed properly. AI “assistants” are representing you and your brand, and like a new employee, they require training, because as “smart” as they are, like a human employee, they WILL make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t utilize and adapt this technology to get some time back in your day.
We live in a very litigious world, so it’s important to make sure that you have taken all of the steps to protect your business and yourself, personally. As an SMB, you probably have the appropriate insurance coverages for yourself, your company and your employees. Now, with the emergence of AI, you have to start thinking about having those same protections for your “AI Employees”. Cyber Insurance is sometimes overlooked by many SMBs. Take me, for example. As a Digital Media Agency owner, Cyber was a MUST, as soon as it became available. We’re responsible for the growth and success of every client that we take on. Marketing and Sales are the Growth Engine of every business, and it is a responsibility that we take very seriously, as do our fellow agencies. Our everyday operations involve staying at the forefront of the digital technologies that we are deploying for our clients. Many SMBs are navigating without an agency partner or may not have support in marketing or digital advertising, but they still need to market themselves. AI can help tremendously, but if you’re in that boat, make sure that you have an oar. The first thing that is crucial is covering yourself: Invest in a good Cyber insurance policy. It’s not costly, but as this technology emerges, the prices on these policies will probably rise. “Cyber Liability is an industry term that can refer to one or a number of distinct and separate insurance coverages. As an emerging area of business risk, insurance carriers have adopted a number of individually rendered policy forms and coverage plans. While there are hopeful signs of standardization, as of today, coverage varies widely from carrier to carrier.” Cyber Liability and the Work from Home World*
So how do you, as an overworked entrepreneur, utilize AI to streamline your marketing? Think about it this way. What is Internal vs. what is External? This basically means defining internal processes used in the creation of the the finished product, which is your “broadcast”. Internal is anything that doesn’t reach the pavement outside your door. Taylor Swift eulogizes that she “keeps her side of the street clean”, and that analogy works here. I’ll share an example. As a small business, you might be posting on Social Media, sending emails to current and past clients to ask for reviews, and maybe even running a small ad campaign. If you’re like me at that stage in my business, I was faking it till I was making it, working until I was deliriously exhausted, and stressing everyone in my household out. I eventually figured out that I had to work SMARTER, not harder. One of the things that helped me get there was employing not just human bodies, but AI. Not on the street at first, though. I started out, like many of us have, on Chat GPT.
I discovered that using Chat GPT was/IS an excellent way to generate keywords for ad campaigns and SEO optimization. What would have normally taken me and my staff 5+ hours of combined hours, just to do the research on the myriad variations of search terms that an ideal customer would search for, could be DONE with a CLICK! I recent utilization generated over 4k keywords. Yes, we had to go through each one to make sure that they were relevant, but that took MAYBE 45 minutes. It took a day or two to get the approval back from the client, but that was only because they were absorbed with the duties of running their business. The keywords were perfect, and the campaign performed beautifully. Without AI, we’d be adding on another day and lost opportunities due to a slower campaign launch. In this case, AI provided us with a valuable shortcut and saved us and our client time and money. This use of AI was Internal.
Internal vs. External use of AI. What’s the difference?
It’s pretty easy…
Internal use of AI looks like utilizing Otter AI, Fathom Notetaker, or any application that records and stenographs your online meetings. When I started utilizing this technology, it was a GAME-Changer. Not only does my Note-Taker transcribe my meetings, but she summarizes them, provides action items, and sends me friendly nudges when I’m overdue. Priceless.
Lets talk about External use of AI. This can get you in trouble for multiple reasons. Think of “External” as your Public Persona. Your website, your social media channels, your advertisements, etc., are your broadcasts. This is External. Have you ever heard of the saying, “You get one chance to make a first impression”? We all know it’s true, but in the context of your online presence, it can make or break you. There are several reasons for this, outside of the obvious. We all know that Google is “God”, but Why? Because they run the search engine that everyone in the world dials up when they are searching for a product or service, and they were smart enough to capitalize on this. They have monopolized the market on this, so like it or not, we ALL bow down to Google. As a business owner, understanding how Google operates is crucial to our survival.
Google controls how our potential customers are able to see us. Think of Google like a Librarian. When I was a young student “Library” was course. The librarians held the keys to the information our hungry minds were eager to consume. The library was a database, organized by the “card catalog system. “(Melvil)Dewey and others devised a system where books were organized by subject, then alphabetized based on the author’s name. In 1860, Ezra Abbot began designing a card catalog that was easily accessible and secure for keeping the cards in order; he managed this by placing the cards on edge between two wooden blocks. He published his findings in the annual report of the library for 1863 and they were adopted by many American libraries.”[17] Interesting fact, and basically Google’s business model. When we were searching for a topic, the librarian would provide us with a list of books that were the most relevant to the content we were searching for. Google pretty much works the same way. The librarian(like Google) would look through the catalog and narrow down the “search” results based on content, relevancy, Authority(Key) and publish date. The fresher the content, the better.
Your website is a publication, just like a book. If it lacks relevant, trustworthy and fresh content, Google will not suggest it in search results. You might have an amazing product or service that can solve problems for countless people and organizations, but if it’s not organized and “optimized” correctly, it will be nearly impossible for your potential customers to find you. This is why so many SMBs struggle, AND why Google continues to corner the market. They have a “solution” for that. Google ads! Google ads will get you at the top of the search results, no matter what. If you aren’t investing in a good SEO optimization strategy, you will have no choice but to invest in in those ads, which can be increasingly costly. Another problem is that many of your ideal customers, no matter where they are in the buying funnel, are scrolling past those sponsored results because they simply don’t trust them.
To counter this, Google is making it harder for SMBs to survive without using Google ads and they are leveraging their Librarian/God” status to accomplish this feat. Tools like AI threaten the dependence that businesses and consumers have on the Google algorithm* which is AI-driven(they figured this out years ago). Now that AI is accessible to independent businesses of all sizes, they’re on their “high horse” and penalizing businesses that use it, Externally. As a marketer, my job is keep up with this Beast. Not long ago, we onboarded a client who happily stated that she was using AI to generate blog posts. I advised her to take them down immediately, but she didn’t listen. Three weeks later, her site and millions of others were de-indexed by Google after a core update, because of this reason. One of the things I’ve learned is that you have to roll with the punches. For us, that meant being selective in who we work with. This former client’s refusal to take those posts down presented a threat to us, as their marketing agency. We were tied to all of their accounts, and we ultimately could have been found to be culpable if there were issues with stolen content being found in those posts.
As an SMB starting out, you’ll take on every prospect who on who clicked on your ad or maybe even researched you. Sometimes they will not be a good fit. Here’s another saying, and this one is so TRUE. You get what you put in. Don’t invest in an employee, a chamber of commerce or an ad campaign if you’re not willing to follow through. For us, as an outsourced marketing department, we need to have a mutually trusting relationship with our clients. A huge part of our process is to educate and empower our clients in their businesses. We don’t expect them to know what we know, but we do need them to take ownership of their own assets (website, Google Analytics, social profiles, listings, licenses, etc), and invest in protecting them. During the onboarding process, we help our clients establish and optimize those assets (in their name). In other cases, we may have to help them recover their assets from some bad players in our industry who may have full control of those assets, but who never gave access to the owners. Those are what we call “Hostage situations” and they can be very costly. Best practices(or OUR best practices) ARE that everyone that we work with has full ownership access and control over all of their assets. If we help create them, we make sure that our clients are the owners, and we are the delegated agency. They can kick us out at any time. That’s their right. We also educate them on how to use the tools we use, so they are educated and empowered. When we bring on new clients, it’s a mutual investment. We’re not successful unless they are, and we’re in it to Win it. We don’t have Magic Wands, but we do have the knowledge and experience to help our clients find theirs. This is why I founded Acorn To Oak.
Acorn To Oak Media Group is a business incubator. We offer a full suite of free tools available to any Marketer or Entrepreneur who is serious about taking control of their online presence, whether they work with us or not. We are actively working on some webinars and meetups with some of our clients, vendors and “co-commiserators” so that we can come together and exchanges ideas and support each other as we grow. And Grow, we shall, if we invest in ourselves.
Melissa Ambrose
Acorn To Oak Media Group, LLC
*Puharic, A. (2023, July 1). Cyber Liability and the Work from Home World [web log]. Retrieved from https://engineerinsurancepro.com/cyber-liability-and-the-work-from-home-world/
