The Future of Marketing in the Age of AI: Embracing Personalization

Welcome to Media Minds with your host David Wolf.

And welcome to Media Minds. I'm your host David Wolf. Joining us on this segment is Lance Johnson. He's a dynamic keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of Amplimedia, a video-first digital agency that specializes in customer acquisition. Based in Edmonton, Amplimedia helps businesses in Canada, the the US and the UK create conversion-optimized marketing strategies. And Lance is also, uh, he also hosts his own podcast called Amplify Your Business. It's a great title. Uh, it's a popular web series, uh, where he's interviewed over 300 entrepreneurs uncovering the key lessons behind their success. And, uh, I understand Lance, you've compiled these insights into a handbook called The Secret Sauce to Building a Successful Business. Lance, welcome to the program.

Yeah, thank you so much, David. I really appreciate you taking the time to interview me.

Absolutely. And, you know, we're starting to work together a little bit. And so I thought this would be totally perfect because the space you're in complements so much of the work we do at Autovida in the sense that they've got a podcast, they've got an audiobook, and now what, right? So this is your— as I understand the work you do, it's the sweet spot. I know you've got some insights about one-to-one marketing versus mass marketing, and maybe through the purview of the future. So talk to me a little bit about what you're, what you're saying there.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think this stems from an earlier conversation you and I had and just around what is the future of marketing. And we definitely are moving now, especially with the power of AI, into a space in which we have the ability to have one-on-one conversations versus you know, just really broadcasting a singular message out to our larger, broader target audience. And so, what I mean by that is that marketing in the future is going to be very much focused on personalized messaging. So, we're collecting lots of data all the time in terms of the way that people are interacting with the content that we're pushing out. And then obviously, you've got all of the major companies out there like Google and Facebook and Amazon and so on, they collect all this information about you as an individual. And so you have the ability to start to really formulate messaging that is much more specific to what your needs, your wants, your desires are. And so if we can speak to people in a more one-to-one kind of conversation, we have a much better chance of breaking through the noise and really latching onto the things that matter most to them. And that's—

So Lance, as you work with clients, then you're now starting to do exactly this. How does it work? Is it an AI thing where they identify who is on the other end of the message and then craft the message accordingly? Give us a sense of— maybe I've said it there.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's the essence of it. And so, from a technical standpoint, there's a few tools that you need to leverage in the back end, right? And so, there's been a lot of tools out there historically that we've had to identify you know, who the visitor that is coming over to our website and maybe interacting with some of that information there. And when we're obviously, when we're direct messaging them, whether that's in social media or whether that's in an email marketing campaign, we know and we can track how they're engaging with that content. I think where the evolution is occurring is that we can use AI now to consolidate all those data points, really build a much more personalized profile of the individual, and then using With that information, we can take an approach that customizes each and every thin outreach piece. So for instance, if we wanted to send them a series of emails, well, instead of that email blast that we normally would do to our full database, or if we were somewhat sophisticated in the past, we would segment that audience, our database into a few different specific audiences, and then we'd be trying to speak a little bit more specifically to that segment. Now we can go one step further and customize on the fly the messages directly to the individual based off of exactly what it was that they were interacting with and maybe what they've expressed interest in.

Yeah, it's extremely powerful. Talk to us a little bit about Amplimedia and the channels you operate in. I know there's email. What else are you doing at Amplimedia in terms of deliverable?

Yeah, like you said at the beginning, we are focused on customer acquisition, lead generation, those activities for our clients, 'cause that's really where we think that where the real true value of marketing lies and must lie, right? I want people to think of marketing as a profit center, not as a cost center. And in order for us to do that, we have to demonstrate then the value that marketing can have. And so, it's all about generating new customers, right? That's the lifeline of any business. And so, that's really what we need to be doing. Now, if you are an organization that has a sales team, then oftentimes what we're doing is we're uncovering those hottest leads Sending those to the sales team and so they'll have a hit list, so to speak, every day that if they haven't already initiated a conversation or the customer or the prospect hasn't initiated it themselves with them, then now is the time to give them a shout because they've done enough things where it's looking like they are ready to buy. They're down in the bottom end of the funnel, essentially. Um, and so we do a lot of work, um, that would uncover those leads, um, and then nurture those leads into a position or a place in which they are ready to convert. Now, what does that mean? What are the activities that we do? Well, like most other full-service digital agencies, there's a lot of moving parts there that all have to be working together in order for us to be able to really nurture them, identify them, and nurture them into these customers. And so we do everything from web design, because you have to have a place in which people are landing on to learn more about you, to then all the follow-up sequences, whether that's email or whether that's LinkedIn or other types of social platforms, depending on the type of audience that you're trying to target. Obviously the advertising side of things, we definitely !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The basic elements to every campaign, the tool that you use. So for instance, if we're working with somebody that's more focused on consumers versus other businesses, well then maybe we're spending a little bit more time on TikTok or Instagram or Pinterest or something like that versus say LinkedIn. So the tools we use might change up a little bit, but the overall strategy itself is pretty similar where you have to, you know, identify who your target audience is. You have to figure out a way to get in front of them, how to reach them. And then you have to figure out, okay, so now I know where they're at. How do I break through that noise? Because there's so much noise out there right now. So how do I get my message to resonate with them? How do I get that engagement? And then once I have that, then what do I do? Right? So how do I follow up with them? How do I continue nurturing them to a place where they're ready to convert? Those are all the same basic problems regardless of the product, regardless of the service, regardless of the target audience really that you have. It's just a matter of deploying them in the right way.

Lance, you've talked about SEO and sort of this is all changing now. Search is changing. The way you think about all of this is changing. What's happening with SEO?

Yeah, I think this is something that I'm finally starting to hear some people in the industry starting to talk about a little bit more, but this is something that 2, 3 years ago I was predicting was going to have a huge upheaval in terms of a tactic that is in the quiver of most marketers, and that was search engine optimization, SEO. We were all trying to get our websites to rank so that when people would type in a particular term, that maybe our website would be the first on the list or at least on the first page, not buried in page number 40 or whatever. And then we have a chance of getting that organic traffic from people who are naturally searching for the things that our product or service can, can help them resolve or help them, help them solve. And with AI search, and this is really where I started thinking like, okay, things are going to change and they're going to change really rapidly, is when the platforms are starting to provide an answer to the question now that you query, whether that's in Google with, you know, their smart responses or whether that's now with Perplexity and ChatGPT now has just launched a search engine last month as well. The answers that are being returned are singular. It's not a list, right, of potential answers or potential places that people could go to and learn more about the topic. It just gives you the answer. So the world of SEO was built along this listing of all the potential resources or answers to the question, the query that you had. And Google was motivated very much to give you the best answer at the top. So that's how the rankings worked, right? Because they wanted to make sure that you would continue coming back to Google to get your answers. And so they had to try to surface the best answer possible. And then there was lots of gamesmanship and so on that would go into trying to figure out how to rank your your company, your content to the top of that list. Now that gamesmanship is really down to a singular winner. If you are the answer from, you know, that AI is going to surface, well then you kind of win that game. Now, even if you win though, this is the biggest problem, is if you are the one that is being referenced by AI, there is sure a little bit of a little citation, you know, link there sometimes that if somebody If somebody was wanting to double-check that that information was correct, maybe they would click through to it, but the percentage of people that are actually going to click through to the link or through the link are going to be very, very small. And so now what these search engines that are powered by AI are doing is they're basically taking all of your content and they're just circumventing you and just giving the answer to the individual who's doing the searching. So all of that traffic that one used to get through organic search and all all those people who are investing heavily in it now are starting to see the search volumes really drop right off. And it's going to continue over the few years.

I mean, I can tell you from my experience, I use ChatGPT for almost all of my searches now and my queries. Now tell me the top XYZ companies that do XYZ, fling. And I guess it's just going out, it's scraping, it's very quickly returning a list of companies. If I do wanna check them out, in this instance, I'll copy and paste it into Google or into my browser, really. I'll just find them, you know, like browser, Google, it's the same. And, you know, I find them sort of outside of chat. I did have an incident yesterday where I did that kind of a query and I got a link, which was unusual. And I wondered, is this something new in ChatGPT-4? Maybe, you know, I don't know.

Yeah, well, they are trying to provide citations to encourage people.

Yeah, those little gray boxes at the bottom of the returns, right? That's right. It was like a link in it, you know, the bright blue color. It was interesting. I don't know why that happened.

I haven't seen that yet. So that's good if they are in the sense of like trying to move some of that traffic over. But see, this is the thing about ChatGPT and the same thing with Google and Perplexity and so on. They want you on their platforms as long as possible. And so, so again, they're not really encouraged in any way to try to send you to some sort of external link.

At the end of the day, you're paying a flat fee for the service and it's just going and getting what you want.

So this is the problem that, that we're going to be faced as marketers and as businesses who had a decent amount of search engine organic traffic that was coming through.

You've been listening to Media Minds with your host, David Wolf. MediaMinds is produced by Autovida Studios, a premier production company producing audiobooks and podcasts for clients worldwide. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about the team at Autovida Studios, visit autovida.com.

Now, the reality of it is we work with a ton of different companies. Most small businesses don't really have much going on from an SEO standpoint. They might be getting a little bit of traffic coming in through some of the searches, but unless they invested very, very heavily into search engine optimization, they probably were not really getting the full benefit out of that. So for those companies, then the question for them would be, well, I wasn't really getting a lot of traffic anyway, so it doesn't really have an impact on me and my business. And so my question then back to them always would be, okay, well, where do you think you were getting your traffic from in the past? And so if their answer was, well, I was getting really good traffic from some paid ad platforms. So Google paid, Google Display paid ads, or Facebook, or, you know, Instagram, TikTok, whatever the case might be, YouTube ads, and so on. I was getting good traffic from that, and I'm going to just continue to do that. I think what they're going to find is that the people who were investing heavily in search engine optimization and were were getting good results. Now that the results are down, they have to turn to something else. Where are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to some of these other avenues of traffic generation. And so paid ads is going to be another one. So we're going to see the cost of per click for paid ads start to dramatically increase. And that because there's going to be more competition. It's all based off of competition, right? And so people are going to shift their dollars out of SEO, which is multi, multi-billion dollars of investments that were being made over there, are going to shift it into that. They're going shifted into social media now. So if you are a business out there listening and you're like, you know what, I think I'm okay because my social, my organic social traffic has been pretty good. And so I think I'll just continue doing that. There's going to be more competition for the eyeballs, the attention and everything else there. And so you're going to be competing with more people there as well. And PR, like every other traffic generating tactic is now going to get a little bit more competitive, which means it's going to be more difficult, which means your performance is likely going to suffer unless you're really doubling down and doing some real strategic things in those platforms.

Or is email still a primary and effective way to lead gen from your perspective for most companies?

Yeah, it still is, surprisingly, right? Because I don't know if you're like me, but I get, you know, hundreds of emails a day, and a certain percentage of them— and it seems like it's a large percentage— uh, tend to be cold emails, uh, that are, you know, just reaching out and trying to sell me something. And the thing about cold email is it's a bit of a numbers game, right? So you're going to get a very low percentage of people that are going to interact with it. And so it's that this spray and pray kind of mentality of most, most of the providers out there that are doing cold email outreach services for people. The key And this is where AI comes into play and what we talked about right at the top of the show, which is personalization. The more personalized and the more valuable that email outreach is to me, the more likely it is that I'm going to engage with it. And that's all it's going to take is for them to capture me through talking about what my problem relating to that is. And if they can identify that as, as quickly as possible and really personalize that messaging, they have a better chance. And so I think what we're going to see actually is email marketing effectiveness is actually gonna increase with the use of some AI tools. And we're also going to see that area get flooded again by a little bit more. And so, it's going to be a short-term win. And if you continue doing things right, I think you're gonna have long-term success with it. But with anything, as soon as you start seeing success, everybody starts to flood into that space as well. And so—

Yeah, no, I love your sensitivity to the market dynamics. Obviously you talk about price increases as demand increases. It's all supply and demand as well. Those forces, those market forces are happening. And I guess all of this means that like when you guys design a website or you're called upon to talk about, the investment is not going, it's going to begin to diminish on the SEO side in terms of keywords on a website or not so much. Is there a thought process about that? Are you going to be doing less of that work? I guess so, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So our strategy from an agency perspective is, is taking a look at, okay, so if— so it's all about lead generation. So when you think about, or SEO is about lead generation, about awareness generation, right? And so when you think about the overall journey that a buyer goes down through the sales funnels, so, you know, for those who are just listening right now, I've got my hands up kind of as an open V right now. And so just to represent a funnel, at the top of that funnel, you've got awareness. And then you have consideration below that, and then analysis, and then you have conversion. That's a simplified buyer's journey, right? So they have to have awareness you exist before they'll consider you as being an option that's going to satisfy whatever need that they have. And then they have to have that consideration before they'll move on to the next stage of really analyzing whether or not you are the right fit out of all the other potential options that are going to solve that that problem, right? And then if you can make it to that shortlist of the 1 or 2 or 3 top, well, now you got a pretty good chance of getting selected and the conversion will happen and they'll make that purchase. And this is the same process that everybody goes through, right? Regardless of what it is that they're buying, you know, like they could be buying an iPhone or they could be buying a pencil or a car. You kind of go through it all the same way. It's just you maybe go through it a lot quicker for that less expensive purchase of a of a, of a pencil, but it's going to take you a little bit more analysis. It's going to happen when you're doing something bigger. It's all the same. So when, when we're talking about SEO, SEO is at the top of the funnel. That's the awareness piece. And so as we think through and go, okay, well, if SEO, we're going to get less traffic from SEO, where else are we going to get traffic? And so we start to think about all the other aspects, all the other tactics, all the different strategies within the employ that are going to help us generate awareness. So what we are doing, and most smart marketers, I hope, would be out there doing that analysis going, okay, this is where I'm currently getting all of my awareness traffic, and then going, okay, so this percentage that is in SEO, I know that that's going to start to decrease. So let's now figure out a strategy where we can replace that in these other areas. And then like what we said, Everybody will eventually be making that same assessment and they'll start to then move to these other segments or other tactics that are going to generate that awareness. And that's going to get a little bit more competitive. And so that's going to either be more costly or less effective. And so where are we going to see us being able to make up that? So I think we're going to see in the short term, people really going to a lot more of this direct outreach, because I think with AI, it's going to prove to be a little bit more effective than what it has been. And not super costly. But I think really the, the tactic that's probably going to gain the most in the short term, or sorry, even in the longer term, is going to be social influencers. And so I think we're going to see people really invest heavily into that area. And so I think you're going to see a lot of micro influencers start to be working more and more with brands. And really plugging different kinds of brands in the material, the content that they're creating.

That's really fascinating. And are influencers as effective? This may be too broad a question, but I'll frame it this way. Consumer goods versus B2B. When I think of influencers, I think of the consumer side of the market. But how do you think about this?

Yeah, no, I don't think that there's a line in the sand anymore. It used to be that way, right? And it was a lot more natural, I think, for people to be talking about consumer goods. But yeah, we're starting to see business influencers really starting to take off now. And I think what, you know, it's just natural because we buy or we make a lot of purchase decisions based off of the, you know, the things that other people within our network are saying. You know, historically, that would be the people, you know, in the office, that would be people who are, you know, friends, family, associates, so on. And so, we would get those recommendations where we'd hear people talk about what they like and then you maybe would go out and put your money down on whatever recommendation they had. And it's the same thing. It's just an extension now into that online environment regardless of what it is that you're purchasing. So, me as a business owner, when I'm purchasing something for my business, I have a network of other business professionals, entrepreneurs, and so on that I have conversations with that are part of just my sphere of influence, right?, right? And so I end up hearing what they're using, what they like, and that's what is going to get me taking a look at those potential solutions and product services companies. And, and I'll make purchase decisions based off of that. Just natural.

Brilliant stuff. We're visiting with Lance Johnson. He's the founder and CEO of Amplomedia, the website amplomedia.com, located in Edmonton up in Canada. Amplomedia.com. You have your own podcast, Amplify Your Business. You've interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, businesses, founders, etc. What are you discovering as you've gone through that journey?

Yeah, I think, you know, the broadest discovery I think is that, you know, we all look at others and we think that they've got it all figured out as business owners. And none of us seem to do. Do. None of us have it figured out. Everybody, you know, has, you know, unique businesses and unique problems and so on. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of commonality in the things that really— wow— that we struggle with, the things that really, you know, trip us up on our journey to success. And so, yeah, yeah, it's been really interesting to talk to all these people. Are there any—

are there any particular takeaways that would be interesting to frame for our audience today? Maybe a couple of examples of, that surprised me.

Yeah. That's interesting in terms of the surprise me. I haven't had anybody ask me, was there anything that really surprised me from it? Because I mean, every interview, there's always a little bit of a surprise there because everybody's story is somewhat unique. But I think the commonalities I guess the biggest surprise was just how common some of these things were. And so, when I was looking at the businesses that seem to have, or the business owners who had the greatest success, you know, and we hear this all the time in terms of oftentimes it takes, you know, 2, 3 tries before you really get it figured out and you have a success, right? So, a lot of business, you know, successful people have become successful off the backs of some of the failures of their other businesses. And I think that's pretty common and not a big surprise there. One of the things that really, when I look back on my business and where I've had challenges in the past and really what distinguishes successful businesses from non-successful has been systematization. So systems in your business. So how do you create a system for, you know, just about every aspect of your business? And then probably the bigger surprise was just how much you have to change and evolve your systems as your business grows. So, as you get to certain thresholds in terms of size, whether that's people size or revenue size, and I would say probably skew a little bit more to the people size standpoint. So, when you get, you know, over 20 people, when you get over 50 people, when you get over 100 people, these different plateaus that you reach, it breaks your internal systems oftentimes. And so you have to really, really be intentional about ensuring that you're evolving your systems and don't get caught in this place where you, this false sense of security in which you go, wow, I've got my systems all dialed in. I'm good. Right. But then they start to break as you start to grow and reach these different thresholds. I think that's probably one of the biggest ones that really sits with me every day as I think about, you know, re-engineering my business as I go through the different growth stages of it.

And Lance, I have that as well too, as we're in a growth stage now, you know, there's this entrepreneurial stage that from zero to, let's say, a million in revenue, if you want to put it in revenue terms. Yeah. And then what got you from there to there is a very different animal than what's going to get you from a systematic perspective. Yeah. And you have to be willing to blow stuff up a little bit or blow it up. It's a little destructive sounding, but to be willing to look at re-engineering the systems themselves so that they're designed to work at scale, which, yeah, it's a great insight and I appreciate that. And of course, listeners and viewers can find Amplify Your Business wherever podcasts are sold, as they say. Lance Johnson, great conversation, great insights from you. I'm so happy to be with you today and I appreciate you coming on. The website amplomedia.com, much like it sounds, amplomedia.com. Thanks for joining us on the program. We'll do it again. Appreciate it very much, David.

Take care, everybody. All right. Be well.

You've been listening to Media Minds with your host, David Wolf. Media Minds is produced by Audivita Studios, a premier production company producing audiobooks and podcasts for clients worldwide. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about the team at Audivita Studios, visit audivita.com.