Main Street Meets Machine: How Local Businesses Can Harness AI & Automation to Grow Smarter

And with that, we're going to turn it over to Jeff Harrison. Jeff.

Thank you. All right, I'd like to start with something. I heard there was some nostalgia in the room next door, so I thought I'd start with something nostalgic.

This is what it is, okay?

I said empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put in the teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

You love that. When I think about artificial intelligence, this is what comes to my mind. It's like water. You've heard a lot of stories this morning and speakers, and they talk about how many things they use it for, but they're talking about really one platform, and that's artificial intelligence. It could be your best friend, it could be your writer, you name it. It can create videos, it creates movies. Today I want to talk about how we're going to use it from a business standpoint to help do two things. Save you time and be more efficient. Anybody interested in that? Three people. Oh, no, no. Okay, okay, Good, good. So, as I say here, AI is way beyond what we think it is.

Our goal is to accomplish. In 15 minutes, we're going to create a week's worth of content for social media on four different platforms. We're going to do that with one of my clients. I own a company called Swing Point Media. My name is Jeff Harrison, and. And we're going to use Fraser Pest Control. Anybody know Fraser Pest Control? There we go. Anybody here? Here they come. There they go. There we go. It's working. All right, so let's. So let's get into this. So the first thing we need to do is, where do we even begin when we're talking about social media? Anyone with a prompt. With a prompt.

A question.

Who you're trying to reach, who you're trying to reach. Audience perspective. It was. It was spoken about this morning.

It's called deep research.

Deep research. Now, this is something that as little as six months ago, you guys, as a digital market agency, we couldn't even afford to do that. The average client couldn't afford to do that because it would take anywhere from two to three weeks to do deep research on your company, and it would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now we can do deep research and we can find out everything about your company, not only your company, that says, hey, what age, what gender and what their income is, but we can Go way, way beyond that. And it'll help with how we communicate. Because let me ask you, anyone here ever gone any. What do they call it? Doom. Scrolling? And you're. No, you. You don't have to raise your hand. I get it. And you know, we're looking for the type that will stop you from scrolling. Yes or. Yes, absolutely. So we're going to talk about that. So we're going to find that with deep research. Then we're going to talk about messaging, because once you have everything you need, then you can create messages. Now let me give you an example. There's a thing called noise and signal. Has anybody heard that before? There's a lot of noise on the Internet. A few years ago, I had to go to New York City. I was actually going through a conference again, just about like this, and I was on the front of a bus and somebody asked me, where am I from? And I said, from California. And I swear 15 rows back and said, hey, I'm from California. What part? Come on, really? How many people live in California? Right. There's no chance we know one another. But that's the difference between signal and noise. Because there was a lot of noise, a lot of people talking. But as soon as I said California, somebody in the back. We want to make sure our messaging cuts through the noise. And then of course, we're going to create it. So we're ready. Here we go. So the first thing is to know thy customer. And this is what we talk about. Creating the ideal avatar. Who said that earlier? I know somebody did. It's okay, you don't have to raise your hand. I know who you are. So we're going to talk about demographics, psychographics, fears and concerns. Now, typically, like I said, when you're doing normal research, we talk about age, gender and income. Psychographics are values and interests. Then we talk about fears and concerns. When we made this shift, all of a sudden things really started to happen. Because all of a sudden our social media posts for our clients started going way up. Our interaction started going way up. Their phones began to ring differently. So this is a prompt. If we can all read this together. No, I'm just kidding. Basically, as you might have heard, we want to start out by saying who we are, who we want it to be. In this case, you're a data research analyst. And then you tell it what you want it to do. You tell it where you want it to go, and then just hit the button.

Here's the simple stuff. This is using that level where most Marketing companies. Yes, even myself. Fifteen years in, we would do this location, household income and property type where these people live. Remember, we're talking about a pest control company. Here's where it changes the psychographic and motivations. We start talking about the health and eco consciousness of their ideal customers. That's what we found in these research. They want to know that if somebody's coming in to spray chemicals in their home, it's not going to affect their pets or their children. Changes the messages, right? Value and reliability. This is a company that they prize decades of local family owned business. We'd rather work with a family owned business than a nameless like a, you know, we'd rather use somebody other than Amazon if they're local. No offense to any. Amazon's a private package we're talking about right now. They want peace of mind. They want to set it and forget it. They know that every time they come out, it's once a month, it's taken care of and they're not, they're not calling saying, oh my gosh, then my wife wakes up and says, we have ants in the pantry. We don't want that. We want to be able to say, hey, every month they're going to come out and take care of us. This is how their customers are thinking. Because back in our prompt I said, don't just tell me about the company, tell me about the customers. Go look on Reddit, go look on all the social media platforms and find out what their customers are thinking and feeling. And that's how we get this. Also the community involvement, if you know Fraser, pest control, they're involved in the community. They're big in Big Brothers and Big or, excuse me, Boys and Girls clubs. They're really supportive in Cathedral City. Then we talk about their pain points. Now remember, these are the pain points of your ideal customer. Let's face it, you don't want to wake up and hear that scratching in the wall. Especially if it's 2am and your wife or your, your spouse or your partner saying, hey, what's that noise? And you're like, I can't get to it anyway. Right? And you were sleeping real soundly. They want to protect who? Laughing because I know they, they must have. Yeah, yeah, okay. All right. So protecting the loved ones you're concerned about, your children, your pets. And also preventive maintenance orientation. We talked about that a little bit. So this starts talking about the fears that they're, they're dealing with. When, when you start putting your messages together, guys, what's going to happen is this is cutting through the noise and it's becoming the signal that somebody says, oh, that's who I want to be. That's who I want to connect with. You can use it in your own business exactly the same way. Does that make sense? Okay.

Marketing message and strategy. We want to highlight the longevity and the trust of this company. Now, Joe and Julie have been doing pest control for 37 years and they've had family run since 2007. We can trust them. They've been around a while, right? They're invested in the community. They promote safety and eco friendliness. All their chemicals are safe. You can have your cat. My cat, yeah, but even my cat lick it after they spray on it. And they're not going to get hurt. There's not enough chemicals in there. There's nothing wrong for that. They offer flexible, no contract type of service. Sign up to say, well, to get this price I've got to pay. I've got to sign up for two years. I don't have to do that. They show local participation. We talked about that. They're involved in other communities, but they're also. They also deal with hoas and they're involved in the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce. So this is telling us a lot more than we were before. Typically, like I said, this would probably take it about two to three weeks to get all this information. We did it. Now, it wasn't real time, but it's pretty darn close. It probably took less than five minutes. Anybody interested in saving weeks? Oh, by the way, it didn't cost $15,000 either, right? But now what we can do as small business owners, which I am one, is we can compete against the very largest. And I'm going to keep that idea in mind. Compete against the very largest and win. Because I've got a cool story about the Fraser pest control here.

Okay?

It even tells us what channels to target. Now remember, this came from just that first prompt, man. We've got like, we're loaded, right? This is like going on a European vacation. We got it all covered. Local Google Ads, sponsorship and hoas partnership and articles. Collaborative marketing is so powerful. If you're not doing it, find somebody who has your ideal customer and join with them. Right. That you don't compete against. So this is kind of a summary. Now it says Cathedral City, Palm springs, homeowner, age 35 to 65, with middle to upper income. They're family and pet oriented. Do you think with that one line we'd probably put some pets in your Ads. I know I would. Right. Do you think he would show family? Absolutely. Because those are the things that are on their mind subconsciously or consciously. And it says values, environmental safety and peace of mind. Do you think you talk about the way they decide on using their chemicals and all their staff when they go out, before they go out, they're trained and they do tremendous recertifications over and over. And I'm not trying to sell you on. Okay, I am. I'd like you to go to Fraser Pest Control, but I'm not trying to sell you on Fraser Pest Control, but what I'm putting out here is understanding how powerful now that you have all this information, you can make your messages. Would that make a difference? How am I doing? Is this okay? Okay. Thank you. She's my check in. Sorry. All right, so.

Now let's make content. Because that took all of what I say about 10 minutes. So now let's make some content. So now what I did is I took all that information and I fed it right back into AI and I said, now let's go make the content. You know, everything you need to know to do that. So then I said, I'm going to put it on four different platforms. I want to do it five days a week. I want to make sure it's customized for each one. Now, I don't want to. I don't want you to raise your hand, but you can if you want to. How many of you actually take a piece of content that was on Facebook, copy and paste it over to you, or over to LinkedIn or vice versa, versus you make custom content for each platform? Right. Because they. Each platform wants you to be their only friend. Right. They want you to only post on there. We can't do that. We have. We have business to run. Yes or yes, we're busy. So we're going to customize each one of those pieces of content for that platform. And we're going to make sure to put the hashtags on there, make a great title, is engaging, and then write the copy, and all of a sudden, guess what happens? Oh, my gosh. Now this is just one day because I didn't want to put so much up there to be microscopic and you couldn't read it. But this is from one day and you can see each one of these are different for each one platform. Facebook, it's a little bit lengthier. Right. Instagram short and right to the point, because you don't get to see very much. And then when it goes to Google Business, Pest Control seasons here. I wanted to point out, because it says, across Cathedral City for 37 years. What is that emphasizing again, the 37 years?

Yeah. Longevity. They're invested in the community. It. It jumps out at them. And then look at this. For LinkedIn property managers, if you remember, it said something about the H. Yeah, you saw it, didn't you? It said something about hoas being involved in that. And it brings it up right there again. These are the things about saying, I'm from California. Oh, I'm from California. Right. HOI matters. I need to pay attention to this. Is this making sense?

Should be writing this down. It's really important. Oh, she is. Okay, good. Here we go. So now, what about images? You gotta have images. So what I did is I went right back in. I said, hey, do me a favor. Look at each one of the days, each one of the posts, and I want you to write the ideal, perfect prompt to support that message. I didn't do anything except just put that in there. This is what it came up with.

Tell me, what do we see in the image that was in our research? The family. What else? The desert. The desert, yeah.

They have a pet cockroach. That's exactly, because that's the big one. It's got a collar on it. Right. So this is what sells it. Because that's what can help you stop. Because the last thing you want to do. I've had this happen before. I'll come home, my wife will say, there's a centipede in the hallway. I'm like, it's a centipede. Kill it. Get rid of it. It's only this big. No, she waited for me. I'd rather I don't, but it appears like the size of that. I'm going to soup. Is that a cockroach on there? Yeah, it appears that big. So what this does, from that one prompt we started out with, it creates all that content. This took less than five minutes, gang, for a week's worth of content. Now, here's what I want to share with you. If you are competing, if you.