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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Today on episode 35 of the be a marketer podcast, you'll hear why you can't let technology strip humanity out of marketing. And I'm sharing why if you wouldn't do it in person, you shouldn't do it online. This is the be a marketer podcast.
Dave:My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining me for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Question for you.
Dave:Can you imagine if you were out and about with some of your friends and someone came over, interrupted your conversation, and just said, buy my stuff, and then they just disappeared? Weird. Right? Or what if someone came into your store, looked at you, and said, hi. I have a question about your product, and then you just ignored them.
Dave:For some reason, when it comes to online marketing, something strange happens. Or for that matter, when we hear the word marketing, it's like our bodies take on a whole different stance. I've gotta put on my forget that there are people on the other side of that interaction. So the question to ask yourself before you do anything in marketing, online or not, is, would I do this if I was face to face with someone? And if the answer is no, well, don't do it.
Dave:Remember, there are people on the other side of that screen. And if you keep that in mind in all that you do, you're gonna make better choices in marketing. And to quote today's guest, it's the human side of things that leads to incredible understanding, not just in work but in life. And this is important because marketing is so fundamental to the success of a business. Today, we're gonna explore why it's important to remember the human element when it comes to marketing, technology, and really anything that we're doing.
Dave:Because at the end of the day, we're just trying to communicate with people. Well, friend, today's guest is Brian Solis. Brian is the head of global innovation at ServiceNow, an enterprise software company that enables an organization to automate and consolidate a wide number of requests, processes, services, and workflows across different parts of the business. Now in his role, Brian helps companies think about not just reacting to what's happening today, but future proofing, looking at how to be more viable, how to be more agile, and how to be more innovative as times continue to evolve. Now aside from his work at ServiceNow, Brian describes himself as an author, digital anthropologist, and futurist.
Dave:So author, I know what that is. But digital anthropologist and futurist, well, not so much. So let's see if Brian can help us understand what all that means.
Brian:Well, trust me. My mom still has the same question. So it all breaks down into different things. My entire career has been focused on technology. And one of the things that I had learned operating in Silicon Valley is that it's very easy to be charmed by the technology.
Brian:And, certainly, most companies have a technology first story. Obviously, it's Silicon Valley. But what I had learned along the way is that with massive shifts in the consumerization of technology so think ecommerce. Think web 1 dot o and the consumerization of the Internet. Think about social media.
Brian:Think about the iPhone. Think about TikTok. All of these have transformed people in ways that shift behaviors that ultimately play out in things that can help companies, help entrepreneurs, engage people in a more meaningful way using technology rather than just thrusting technology on the people. And so as a digital anthropologist, I understand I study how, say, for example, we change as a result of our relationship with social media, how our behaviors change, how our expectations change, how our preferences change, how we make decisions, how we might go through a customer journey, for example, how we might be able to think more thoughtfully about a customer service process, all for that changing behavior. And that behavior continuously changes whether we realize we're changing or not.
Brian:And then the futurist side of me takes all of those insights, understands the trends that we're going through, the trends that are on the horizon, and start to scenario plan around that. If we believe this to be impactful, like, say, artificial intelligence and and generative AI, you could make a scenario around the future of artistry and what that means for musicians, for example, or if you're a songwriter or like me an author, and you can play out certain scenarios then of which can be the most disruptive, the most optimal. And what you're looking for are ways to prepare for these likely futures so that you're not surprised by it or disrupted by it, but ready for it.
Dave:Gotcha. Gotcha. So what
Brian:do you love most about what you do? It's the human side of things that leads to incredible understanding, not just in work, but life. My last book was on how to balance digital in your own life to actually use it to make yourself more scalable, more creative, more productive rather than distracted. I found myself being distracted by the very technologies that I study, and that was leading to impacts in creativity, critical thinking, flow, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. And so those insights, it weren't just to help me.
Brian:I I published a book to hope hopefully help a lot of other people. But the other thing that I really like about my work is the ability to see the things that most of us are just too busy or maybe distracted or maybe biased to see in order to bring people together for a greater purpose. That's the thing that I love most about my work.
Dave:I love that. So there's a couple of things going on here. Right? Because I I think, you know, to your point about getting distracted. Right?
Dave:I think this is one of the, obviously, the challenges with the technology and the new things coming out. And I and I guess and the other piece of it is just that human element that I think is often just in general, even when you just say the term marketing, it almost sends people into a a different kind of way of thinking where they forget there's people on the other side of that interaction. Right? And so just talk to me about, I guess, that human element. Like, why is that so important when it comes to just marketing technology and and really anything that we're we're doing?
Brian:So a couple of things that you said there, made me smile. So, no, it's, one of the things is that marketing itself, when the word comes up, it oftentimes takes all the air out of the room. Marketing, sales. But they're so fundamental to the success of a business. And the other thing that you said was we tend to use technology which inadvertently, whether by design or intent, takes out the humanity from the equation.
Brian:I'll give you an example. I was having a conversation with a global team of marketers in every single discipline in that marketing can entail. And they wanted to know about AI. They wanted to know about how to think about AI in their work. And I asked them to just kinda take a step back.
Brian:And there's this quote I'll try to bring up while we're talking that I shared with him by Rick Rubin, which was asking them essentially to think before they bring AI into the equation, into maybe looking at ways to automate or augment or generate material, what optimize, whatever word you want to use, that we first have to question the process. Question the who, like who are we actually trying to reach? And then ask why. You know, essentially trying to put people back into the equation so that you give AI a sense of purpose of which then marketing becomes more meaningful. And that Rick Rubin quote is be aware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done it before.
Brian:And that's the marketing trap. It's the trap actually for a lot of a lot of things. But marketing in particular, if you think about it as a discipline, it has relatively gone unchanged for decades through every massive revolution we've been through web 1, web 2, mobile, now in an era of AI. And the more people change and the less a discipline changes, the more you create a gap in between effectiveness and the desired outcomes, which could be relationships, which could be loyalty. And and I mean meaningful outcomes, not just a transaction.
Brian:So it's a long way of answering your question to say this is actually the moment. AI is creating a fissure in our trajectory in a good way to help us understand, are we doing the right things? Are we bringing to the table the right questions, processes, mindsets when we could use a powerful technology like generative artificial intelligence to actually get closer to people? And that that's what makes marketing great. And so what I asked this group of marketers was to say, look, do you ever feel distracted?
Brian:Do you ever feel like your mobile phone takes over your life? Do you ever find yourself scrolling and you can't stop and then you look up at the time and it's 2 or 3 hours later? You know, when you look at your most popular apps on your phone, is TikTok up there with all of the rest of the things? And it's either that or Instagram or Snapchat depending on who you talk to. So I always ask, you know, you know what it feels like when you're not in control of your own attention span.
Brian:And sometimes you feel like you've lost time. Sometimes you feel like it's an incredible escape. But ask yourself this, when you have someone's attention, what do you wanna do with it? Because right now, we don't really think about that question. We think about it more like a transaction.
Brian:I wanna get you to open your email. I wanna get you to click on this link. I want you to convert. Like, that's how we think about things. But you can do all those things still.
Brian:Once you know more about the people you're trying to reach, what they value, and what you want in terms of a relationship than the sales or the nurturing or the conversions. Those things will happen as a result of you actually using technology to be more thoughtful. An AI can actually do the things exponentially that were a grind or impossible or hard to do because of a business owner's limited time and bandwidth. But the gift of attention is the motivator here. You have a distracted, overwhelmed consumer who probably hates dealing with most businesses because the processes suck.
Brian:Nobody likes calling customer service. Nobody likes standing in lines to buy something or return something. But all of those things are a competitive opportunity for you to just be the light in any given moment.
Dave:I love what you're saying here. It's funny how we can kind of obscure our view on some of this stuff. Right? When we start thinking about, yeah, you like, the opens, the clicks, like, doing the conversions and all that. And so we're so focused on that as the number or the thing we're trying to impact.
Dave:But to your point to what you're saying, which I agree with wholeheartedly is if we focus on the relationship and the person and the human and what that relationship means, I think those other things actually take care of themselves. And so the way to impact those things that we end up focusing on is actually not to focus on them at all. Right? And really think about the human and the interaction and the relationship that you're building. Right?
Dave:A 100%. So well, here's one of the things. I mean, I think when I think of, like, our customers at Constant Contact, for example. Right? Like, these are business owners wearing many hats and, you know, not necessarily marketers by trade.
Dave:And I mean, I actually think they have a huge advantage over a lot of the bigger businesses in many ways that are maybe throwing money at things or having lots of resources and maybe don't have as close of a relationship to the people that they impact. Right? And so, I guess, one of the things, you know, I'm I'm thinking specifically of, obviously, the the events of 2020 come along. A lot of businesses don't have that everyday impact, which actually, I think on some levels allowed people to realize, oh, see the value in these digital tools that we now have access to. And where they may not have been using them before, it suddenly became the only way they could communicate with their customers and their communities and and things like that.
Dave:And so, I guess, even to where we are now, like, what are some of the things that you think that people need to consider, business owners, small business marketers, all of that? What do they need to consider when they're kinda delivering those customer experiences online?
Brian:As an entrepreneur, as a business owner in my day starting several businesses, it's really easy to get so caught up in the day to day. It's overwhelming in many ways. You usually start with this idea or this aspiration, this this vision of, like, what you behind the wheel looks like and what it can do, and then you start doing it. You recognize, like, oh my my goodness. I have to do all these other things as well.
Brian:And, you know, it can quickly take the spirit out of what was originally the passion. And technology can become part of the challenge as well. It's stuff that maybe many people have to learn. It takes away from the things you might love doing. But I'm gonna spin it in a different way.
Brian:I actually think technology frees you to do more of the things that you love and you use technology in a way to become contagious, to share that love and that passion with people on the other side of the screens, for example, or or whether it's face to face or what have you. They could bring them in the door. So let's talk about customer experience. Customer experience is something that is considered business vernacular. It's a methodology, it's philosophy, it's tactics and touch points.
Brian:All fine. All fine. But the way I think about it is this. I wrote a book called when business meets design. And I think I told this story in Las Vegas recently.
Brian:I tried to find a story or a definition of the word experience when talking about customer experience. I just thought I would footnote it and, you know, move on. My point was I just wanted to define it so that we could all agree so we can then build upon it. Everything was just so technical. Everything was so business buzzword, bingo ish, and I had to just stop and just think for a moment emotionally, like, intellectually, what is the word experience actually mean?
Brian:You look it up in the dictionary, it's not eve there's not even, like, the way that we infer about it in terms of CX. There's not even a definition in the dictionary that comes close to it. And so I realized after just a bunch of thinking and maybe a couple glasses of wine that the experience is an emotional reaction you have in any given moment, and it's how it touches you that makes it what you feel and remember. And when you talk about an experience that way, it changes the whole game. It's no longer customer experience, it's the customer's experience.
Brian:And adding that simple apostrophe s forces you to think then how does someone feel or react to whatever it is you're doing, your email, your sale, your offer, whatever it is. Someone's gonna have a reaction to it. And here's the thing that I learned as I unlocked this whole wave of definition, which was there are only 2 experiences people will remember. You don't it's a famous quote by Cesar Pavera. I think it's how you say it.
Brian:I could totally mispronouncing it. But his quote is, we don't remember days, we remember moments. And if you think about moments instead of the word touchpoint, then moments are the moments that we share of which we feel and we react to. And there's only 2 moments that human beings will remember. Moments that suck and moments that are absolutely amazing.
Brian:And then the way that you retell those stories is how you measure the experience, how you capture the experience. So when you're telling your friends about the most amazing experience that you had, the narrative that you've told yourself is marketing. So my point about this whole exercise was the customer's experience, the best marketing is when you design the experience you want someone to have, to feel, and to remember. And that when they retell it, you can actually align your marketing with how word-of-mouth comes back. Right?
Brian:There's the science of influence, and that is to me the soul of customer experience, and no one talks about it like that. But you can't unsee it now. Once you start thinking about that, you question, is this the right email to send? What's the right subject line for this? And you're not thinking like a growth marketer or a marketer at all at that point.
Brian:You're now thinking as a human being meaning to compel someone to feel better because you reached out to them. Like, that's a game changer.
Dave:The simplicity in that apostrophe is amazing to me. Right? Like, it's it is that shift that allows you to and I think, ultimately, this is what we mean, right, when we wanna get to and and when we we do add all of these buzzwords and things that kind of take that emotional element out of it. But, like, that's it. Right?
Dave:You want to create something that is for someone else. And I think that often gets clouded in, oh, I have numbers to hit. Oh, I'm trying to do this thing. Again, I think it goes back to this thing we were talking about a little bit earlier, right, where it's you focus on the things that instead of the thing that makes those outcomes happen. Right?
Dave:So I love that. That's a great way to think about it. So we'll talk me through here. Right? I think one of the advantages of, again, of a small business, particularly when you're talking about a brick and mortar, right, where, you know, I can name countless interactions I've had where you go into the store, you have this great time, you talk to the owner.
Dave:Right? You do all these things you enjoy. There's something about that just whole experience that isn't you know, I often talk about this idea of, like, so many businesses, particularly bigger businesses, are trying to take the human element out of the equation, which in some instances is fine. Right? I I think, you know, you could argue some days you're like, you know, I don't wanna deal with people today.
Dave:Right? But in other instances, there are times where I don't wanna go to the store and bag my own groceries. I don't wanna check out my own items. Right? Like, I wanna I'm going there because I I'm going to be serviced, right, on some level.
Dave:Right? And so how does a small business owner, for example, or maybe I'll phrase it this way. Right? Like, what are some I'll use best practices in air quotes. Right?
Dave:Because I think we all have to figure out our own best practices, but what are some of the ways that maybe someone just getting started or starting to think about this or think about it in this way? Like, what are some of the best practices that they can use to really start to think about delivering and transferring that experience to an online endeavor? Right? Like, how can they start thinking
Brian:about that? There's a lot to talk about here, and I'm gonna do my best. I made notes, so we might have to kinda iterate on the answer here. I think about small business owners. I think about brick and mortar companies.
Brian:I think about ones I've started, ones I that I still want to start at some point in the future. I remember what it was like getting caught up in the day to day and having some days where it just felt like, yeah, maybe you go open the shop today. And it just gets so much so fast. I mean, if we used an analogy of a of a chef who wants to open a restaurant to bring their cooking to the community, it gets the noblest of endeavors. And then quickly they realize all of the things that it takes to make a restaurant successful, managing people, payroll, and all all all accounting.
Brian:All the things that you sort of have to learn or figure out as as you go. And so I remember thinking where all of this starts before we can think about marketing or success or best practices is to remember why you started. That is such a profound exercise that I think we could all benefit from in life. So to remember why you started. Why did you start on this path?
Brian:What was it that excited you about it? Because that's your value proposition. That value proposition is then when you go back to the experience part of the conversation, you have to start asking yourself, how does that come through in the things that I do? Not the things that you sell. You already figured that part out.
Brian:But the things you do, that's the part people don't really think about it because we get to the transactional nature of it. And remember, 2 experiences people remember. Ones that suck and ones that are phenomenal. And yet we make everything transactional, which means that they're forgettable. So I'll give you an example because I think is even though it's a big company example, it it's perfectly relatable to any small business.
Brian:I had the chance for many years to work with Tony Hsieh who cofounded Zappos. And we would have the most wonderful conversations about happiness and service and what it meant to empower his team or yourself if you're the small business owner to try to find ways to deliver that, to deliver happiness, and to deliver wow. Like, and he took that seriously, not as a marketing gimmick. But if I had in a moment, you were on the other side of the counter in my store and it was a it was one of my principles was to make sure you left with a wow moment, I would actually try to think about ways to deliver that to you rather than take your money, here's your change, here's your receipt, thank you. That's transactional.
Brian:So once you start thinking about the wow moments, I'm sure a lot of ideas will come to life. It could be a fun note to write on the receipt. It could be some clever bag. It could be a smile. It could be a thank you.
Brian:I really wanna tell you how much this means to me. Whatever it is, it could be all of those things. So now think about that in digital. There is almost never a wow moment in a digital experience. Not at all.
Brian:It's probably why why the bar is so low for some of the funniest memes out there. It's because we're looking for that thing when we're online to touch us. So I want you to think about that. Even think about your favorite brand. Think about whatever online store you go to the most and think about the wow moments cause you're probably not going to find any.
Brian:And the reason for that is because digital, going back to the launch of Amazon in 1994, it just was meant to sort of scale the transaction as inexpensively as possible because it was looked at as a cost center, and it's never really lost that. And so if you look at big brick and mortar chains, they still see the brick and mortar as their bread and butter. And they see digital as a necessary means of which to generate revenue to do the brick and mortar things. It's never been looked at as the brick and mortar online even though we've come up with cute names over the years like click and mortar. So let's take this philosophical conversation and now say, what if we change that?
Brian:I'll give you an example. Anybody who has ever owned a record player will tell you that they have one because listening to vinyl is a much warmer, richer, immersive experience. And when you study the sound waves of a digital compressed file, you and I were having the compression conversation at the beginning of this, they will say it strips out the warmth. And when you look at the waves, it technically does. That's why Apple introduced spatial audio, which was to create a lossless format that reintroduces to the best of its capabilities, the warmth back into the experience.
Brian:Their headphones are built to bring that out of spatial audio into that immersion. There's a track going around TikTok right now. I think it's called 8 d audio, so maybe look that up. And you put on your Apple spatial headphones or your AirPods. And when you play it, in the first five seconds, you were I promise you, you're gonna go, what just happened?
Brian:Everybody has that reaction because I give everybody my headphones, and it's just crazy. That's a wow moment. Right? That track was specifically created to make you do exactly what you just did, and that warmth is completely missing from digital. So now you find ways to deliver that wow, that warmth, that whatever so that you're creating experiences that people will remember.
Brian:Remember that quote. We don't remember days. We remember moments. So it's an intentional act. Right?
Brian:I get an email about a jacket from a place that you'd think something as simple as buying a jacket that the company could then just using digital, he bought a jacket. Therefore, he must like this style of jacket. So we'll note that in the database, and when we have a similar jacket or something that pairs with the jacket like, technology can do these things for you behind the scenes, and we can talk about that later. It's not complicated. It's not expensive.
Brian:Used to be, but now it's not. Not for any small business owner. Every day, I will at least get one dress email and one bikini email, and and not one about a jacket or something that compliments the jacket. So I guess my point of telling that story is the bar is really low.
Dave:Yeah.
Brian:So trying to think about warmth and all of these wonderful experiences, you're already well above the game, And it's just something that people aren't doing. So if you take it back to the beginning of the question, remember why you start because there's your answer to warmth and wow. That's how we can deliver an email that doesn't even ask you to do anything. Just, hey, I just wanna take a minute to say thanks. I appreciate you.
Brian:You helped me keep going. You're why I do what I do every day. That's it. You don't have to send an email to try to just convert or transact or measure. Just remind someone how valuable they are in your life.
Brian:And that goes in our personal life too. Do that more for our friends and family. But that's what we're talking about. It's just the good old fashioned relationship dynamics that make marketing so good Because you when you remember why you started, it is the real reason why people wanna connect with you.
Dave:You know, I was having a conversation with with someone the other day, one of our customers, and we were talking about just she owns a a running sit and fit, like, shoes a running shoe store. I was commenting on her on her emails because they were written in this very personal tone, and she is talking about how much she's which one of the things she discovered as an owner was how much she really does love her customers and having those conversations with people, and that the people that she is trying to serve are not the ultra competitive types. Right? These are your kind of weekend warriors that are walking, running, like, just do it for the camaraderie more than anything else. And I had commented on it because it was one of those things that I was like, wow.
Dave:Like, you can really see this in the way you're communicating with people because she has, like, a regular running group, and she would put in the maps. Like, here's where we're gonna meet. Here's the map for the place in in in case we get separated. Don't worry. Like, at the end, we're all gonna wait there, and then we're all gonna go to dinner to get right.
Dave:It it created this very, like, safe environment. And Sameet, to your point of, like, the bar is low. Right? Like, it it doesn't seem like a lot, but that is a simple thing to do again. And I think does a really great job of adding that apostrophe and thinking about the person on the other end and giving them what they need to feel comfortable and almost empowered to come and participate in this event in just in a different way.
Dave:It just made me think about that as you're as you're talking about that. So I guess what let's talk about this then. Right? So, obviously, we're talking about how do we serve the customer in a way. And so, I guess, what role does customer feedback then play in all of this, and how should a business owner think of that in a way to, I guess, I wanna say synthesize, but that's not really what
Brian:I mean, but just collect and use that. At ServiceNow in the executive briefing center, we start every experience with what we call the voice of the customer. And what we do in that exercise is invite the customer to share with us what's important to them. What's working in the relationship? Where could we be better in the relationship?
Brian:And then also, where are you trying to go? What are your goals and objectives? What are you challenged by or with? Where are those roadblocks? And what we're doing is we're listening, we're looking for opportunities where we can build the relationship together to help them get to where they're trying to go.
Brian:And we're also looking for opportunities to be better. It's amazing what customer feedback does not only to improve your business but to improve the relationship when someone feels heard. So it's not coming back to customer experience, customer feedback also needs an apostrophe s. Right? Because customer feedback is a technical term of which gets sucked up in the numbers, and we think about them like conversions.
Brian:What percentage of customer fee it's like an NPS score. It's it's taking the humanity out of what we're really looking for, which is finding ways to get better. And if you think about any personal relationship, if you and I were in a room and you were sharing feedback with me just think about ways we throw out surveys or, you know, would you recommend or how would you rate this call. If I treated that moment like that and then just got up and left, you'd have some choice word to say that moment. But I I'm certain you would feel a certain way.
Brian:But if I had said, yeah, thank you. You know what you said right there? I've been hearing that a lot actually, and I think we can be better at that. And these are some of the ways I think we could be better. And then imagine a week later you got an email from me that said, I've been thinking a lot about what you said, and here's what we're doing differently.
Brian:You'd be on top of the world. No matter how you might have felt, you could have been the most upset when you were sharing your feedback. Now you feel heard and validated. These aren't complicated things, but somewhere along the way, we stop listening to people, not just as businesses, but just in general. Think about like the how many friends do you know or acquaintances or colleagues as you're talking, you just see at some point they shut off, and they're just starting to think about what they wanna say back at you.
Brian:It's not even a conversation anymore. We all have people in our lives that are toppers. Right? Like, no matter what you say or no matter what you did, they got something that's gonna top that. They're not even gonna acknowledge what what you said.
Brian:And there's just so many things wrong with the way we communicate today that that's probably why we're keeping the the therapy industry in business. There's a famous quote. I can't remember who it's from, but it says, like, the the greatest illusion of communication is that we think it took place. And Yeah. So all of these things, I wanna bring it back into something else, which is think about technology.
Brian:Go back however far back you wanna date yourself. Me, I can geek out on when I used to program basic and punch cards for Fortran programming. But somewhere along the way, we confuse technology with transaction. We just stripped the humanity out of that whole process. And now you think about social media.
Brian:When what do you get out of it? You get a like, Someone clicks a heart button or gives you heart hands as an emoji response? It's it's good that someone responds, but it's not soulful. And so when we think about email or when we think about marketing or digital marketing or digital service or customer service, everything is meant to be efficient. And there's a stark difference between efficiency and effectiveness.
Brian:Right? Effectiveness might air on the side of things like, that was great. I love it. This feels personable. This feels warm.
Brian:But instead, it's designed for scale. These things become a cost center instead of a growth investment. And what ends up happening is we conflate technology or or maybe confuse technology with transaction versus using technology to do all the things we've been talking about because you can just as easily do that with warmth and meaning and soul versus the transaction. In fact, I don't know the right word here if it's ironic or if it's counterintuitive, but it takes about the same amount of effort to write a crappy email as it does to write a great email. And yet will lean on the crappy side of things and get less performance and results and then wonder what's going on.
Brian:Mhmm. And that's because some once I say that we we took the humanity out of technology, it makes sense because then you can't look at your email again. You're not gonna write it the same way. And you think about a prompt. If I was gonna have Chat EBT write a series of emails for my types of customer personas, I'd have to first know my customer personas, and then I could think about ways to cleverly prompt for those personas.
Brian:I could now scale while I've got too many personas. Well, you know, let's say 6, 6 or 7. Have chat gbt, write 5 or 6 different emails for that persona by describing the persona, what it is that you want them to get or feel out of this particular offer or sale, and what it is that you want them to feel afterwards, and maybe what ways can we also remind them of how valuable they are. And just they're prompt is the feelings that you want someone to have on the other side of it. And that that's a good first step because it changes your relationship rather than saying because if you think about the measures we have, I wanna write an email with a subject line that says 25% off this weekend, and the copy then says, look at all this stuff here to do these things to buy and do it before the end of the weekend because the offer ends.
Brian:Because you wanna measure open rates, you wanna measure click throughs, you wanna measure conversions, and that's what you design for when that's what you're measuring.
Dave:I wanna ask you you've mentioned AI a few times, and I mean, I think just particularly at this moment in time, we're at a place where it's very easy to be overwhelmed with a number of things that are kind of hitting us net right now, just in terms of, like, new technologies. And I know oftentimes again, I've always been talking about this idea of sometimes these things end up creating a new problem. Right? Where I look at chat GPT, for example, it's like, okay, in order to use that, now I have to become a prompt engineer. Right?
Dave:Like, I need to figure that out. So I have to take time to figure out how to be able to do that type of thing. And I guess my question here is, I guess, do you have any advice for small business owners that are are feeling overwhelmed by this rapid pace of technological change?
Brian:I feel it too, and I study it for a living. So I get it. I don't think we have to understand every technology. I always come back to remember why you started. And let technology go to work for you.
Brian:Sometimes it makes sense for you to do it yourself. Sometimes it's counterintuitive to spend money on it simply because it's a cost center. But when you spend money on it for the right reasons, so remember why you started, it allows you then to give the right kind of instructions. So prompt engineering, if you think about it, isn't just for AI. It's for life.
Brian:If you were thoughtful about the outcome that you want AI to deliver, if I was thoughtful in the conversation I was having with you as a customer, face to face, based on how I wanted you to feel and react to be a even better customer, I would be so thoughtful about that conversation. So prompt engineering. Investing in whether it's technology or people to help you with technology, delivers exponential results, exponential gains because you care. When you use technology when you invest in technology and or people to go scale all the transactional things we do and measure, you do not get the types of results. That's why you gotta do it even more at scale, even bigger, even more often.
Brian:Right? And so you're perpetrating and you're bringing to life all of the things that make it a bad process in the first place when you could stop, do less, do it more meaningfully, and actually get greater rewards. So for example, when we have research that looks at bigger companies, but it's just all human dynamics, so it it applies to small businesses. But bigger companies that are using AI to actually be more customer centered are outperforming companies that don't. If you think about it, it's like, oh, that's just common sense.
Brian:But it's amazing how uncommon common sense is. We do everything to not be human beings in business. I don't know what it is. But what I would say to small businesses is, look, I get resources and money. I'd spend the definition, the thread throughout my entrepreneur years.
Brian:But that switch, the minute you remember why you started and you think differently about technology as as investing in relationships and meaningful outcomes that are beneficial to both people, which is the actual definition of a relationship, then you're not investing in something that scales crap and then therefore you get diminishing returns. You get exponential returns because it's meaningful and people appreciate it because the bar is low and it stands out to
Dave:people. Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number 1, put people back into the equation. At times, it can seem like technology has made things too transactional. Marketing has become centered around opens, likes, and conversions, important things for sure.
Dave:But by focusing on those things alone, we forget about those people we're actually trying to reach. So how do you use marketing in a more meaningful way? Well, Brian recommends putting people back into the equation so that you give technology a sense of purpose. With the right questions, processes, and mindsets, a powerful technology like artificial intelligence can actually bring you closer to people. And that's what makes marketing great.
Dave:Focus on the people and the metrics work themselves out. Number 2, be the light in any given moment. Let's face it. Many interactions and processes suck. Nobody likes calling customer service.
Dave:Nobody likes standing in lines to buy something or return something, but all of these things can actually be a competitive opportunity for you to be the light at any given moment. You've likely heard me talk about the importance of providing your customers with a wow experience. But how do you do that? Well, when someone gives you the gift of attention, Brian suggests asking yourself,
Brian:what
Dave:do you wanna do with it? Because right now, we don't really think about that question, do we? But once you know more about the people you're trying to reach, what they value, and what they want in terms of that relationship, then the sales or the nurturing or the conversions come as a result of you actually using technology to be more thoughtful. Then tools like AI can actually do the things remember, it's the customer's experience. Remember, it's the customer's experience.
Dave:Adding that simple apostrophe s forces you to think. How is someone going to feel or react to whatever it is that you're doing? Your email, your sale, your offer, whatever it is, someone's going to have a reaction to it. The experience is an emotional reaction people have at any given moment. What emotion do you want your customer to feel?
Dave:How can you remain focused on that goal? Brian reminds us that we don't remember days. We remember moments. And there are only 2 moments people remember, moments that suck and moments that are absolutely amazing. Now the best marketing is when you design the experience you want someone to have, to feel, and to remember.
Dave:Now once you start thinking about that, you question, is this the right email to send? What's the right subject line for this? And you're not thinking like a growth marketer or marketer at all at that point. You're now thinking like a human being, meaning to compel someone to feel better because you reached out to them. That's a game changer.
Dave:So here's your action item for today. Before you do anything related to marketing, ask yourself, what do you want the person on the other side of the interaction to feel? By putting people first, you can stand out in a world of lifeless transactions. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.
Dave:You can email me directly at dave.charest@constantcontact.com If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.