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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:01.58)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Levi Lindsay. He is the VP of Marketing at Hona. Levi, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions.
Levi (00:14.287)
I am Levi. My job is to just be really loud on company's behalf and get attention wherever I can. VP of Marketing at Hona, big proponent of mental health and I love geeking out over content so I was excited Brent when you asked me to do this.
Brent Peterson (00:31.69)
Awesome. And do you have a passion outside of geeking out on content?
Levi (00:37.199)
I have two little girls and a third little girl on the way, so my life is just Barbies and nail salons and princess dresses. I wouldn't have it any other way though.
Brent Peterson (00:49.33)
That's great. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, well, my kids are a little bit older than your kids, but I have a new grandson. not new, but 18 months ago. Anyways, we won't get into that. So Levi, before we do get started, we're going to talk about content. I'm excited about I'm always I'm always up for content. Before we get started, though, you have a volunteer to be part of the free joke project. I'm going to tell you a joke. You just give me a rating eight through 13. So here we go.
Levi (01:14.957)
I'm ready.
Brent Peterson (01:16.302)
A friend said she did not understand cloning. I told her that makes two of us.
Levi (01:27.087)
Oh my gosh, it's so bad, it's good. I got to give that, I got to give that a 12.5.
Brent Peterson (01:35.926)
All right, I love that. All right. So tell us, just give us a little bit of, give us the 10,000 foot view of Hona and how it fits in with content.
Levi (01:48.227)
Yeah, so HONA, if you're going through a legal case, it allows you to track, as the client of the law firm, allows you to track where you're at with your legal case. So it's like, now I'm in the demand phase. You're a consumer of, you're on the client side, you're not a lawyer, so you don't know what the demand phase means. So it would show you, okay, next is this phase, you were at this phase before, now you're at this phase. Here's a little video from your lawyer explaining what that means and what we need from you.
It'll communicate with the law firm and the client, getting documents, signatures, frequently asked questions. Just kind of guides you along as the consumer of a law firm, the case process.
Brent Peterson (02:31.886)
So this is, and you're directing it specifically for attorneys, right?
Levi (02:37.645)
Yep, so we're selling B2B to two attorneys and it's a big win for them because their clients are happier because they're communicated with, but also the lawyers we work with work on contingency or flat rate, not hourly. And so the more they spend with a client, the less they're spending working on scaling their firm or they're not able to bring on as many cases. So it's a win-win.
Brent Peterson (03:06.126)
Yeah, so I guess this helps both sides. It helps the client to understand better what's happening in the process and keeps them updated. What other things do you solve for?
Levi (03:23.695)
We do have a an AI receptionist and an AI intake tool So just kind of helping close the loop on the entire client journey and helping automate as much of it as we can Case management software is like Clio and Filevine and 8 a.m. Those are kind of like the back end of the firm We're trying to kind of help automate the front end of the firm
Brent Peterson (03:48.62)
Yeah, so my background's in development and having developers and then clients on the other side. And I suppose it's a good parallel for where you are in your project and things like that. And you did mention that you both do video and text. Give us some ideas about how you would help in terms of communicating via text, communicating via video, things like that.
Levi (04:15.01)
Yeah, mean, know, Brent, it's the necessary digital footprint to be a marketer is just getting bigger and bigger. And now with AI and the ability for folks to make content very quickly and to make a lot of it quickly, it's like. All that does is add more to marketing's plate to to keep up with the digital footprint. So we we do newsletters, we do blogs, we do podcast, we do.
well-produced hero videos, we do static ads, we do carousels, we do organic content, we do paid content, we do user-generated content, and paid ads is a large part of our acquisition strategy, so a lot of that entails video. And so we're all over the place producing as much as we can, as good as we can, as targeted as we can.
Brent Peterson (05:10.84)
So it sounds like you're doing both the some of the marketing is for yourself to bring attorneys on to Hona, but it's also there's also is there an aspect that helps the her attorney client relationship or are you also helping the attorneys to onboard new clients via marketing? For all the above.
Levi (05:30.957)
Yeah, that's a good question. lot, yeah, all of the above. Marketing hasn't been so much involved in that portion because it's typically post onboarding once they've bought Hona. Also, when I came on and joined Hona, a lot of that kind of, a lot of that groundwork had been laid. Or a lot of the lawyers will film the videos themselves.
And so I haven't had a ton to do with that, but there's a big portion of our team in our customer success arm of the business helping lawyers create the content that they need for themselves to make Hona within their firm successful. But luckily, I've been able to just focus on what content will get a lawyer's attention to either engage or reengage in our sales pipeline.
Brent Peterson (06:22.722)
In the e-commerce space, we're finding that lot of people are recognizing content that is strictly created by chat GPT or AI. Are you finding the same thing or are you having to put some human massaging onto content to make sure that it sounds authentic?
Levi (06:41.494)
Yeah, so especially in our written content, we've really had to make sure that it has our brand voice. One thing that has been very helpful is creating a custom GPT that has our brand guidelines, both visual and the tonality of our brand, uploaded into the custom GPT so that no matter who in our marketing department is creating content, that it kind of
touches base with a, I don't know, I almost want to say data center is that custom GPT. Because we have kind of a quirky brand voice, we're a little bit snarky. And then there's also just a lot of context that we've fed into that custom GPT that's very helpful so that we don't have to every time when we go in to create a new project or a new chat with chat GPT to create us content, we're not constantly having to retrain.
anything we can just go back and it kind of has all that context.
Brent Peterson (07:45.55)
Yeah, and how about like video? I mean, I think people experimented with avatars and creating things like that. But are you seeing some authenticity in that as well with human beings creating it?
Levi (07:53.634)
Yeah.
Levi (08:00.748)
Yeah, I've toyed with... Man.
I've toyed with like Veo, Veo3 or whatever, Gemini's video creator and it's good. I've actually been able to get, so the other day I made a good video hook with one of our, one of the ads I made was get rid of your call center. And so I had Veo3 create a steamroller busting through the walls of a call center and running over a bunch of desks or cubicles.
And then I led into just like a user generated video of me explaining how the product works and what the offer was. But yeah, I've seen people make some actually pretty good, I think it was Fixer, fixer.ai, they like go in and clean up your email inbox. I think they've actually made some pretty good like VO3 type videos. One I saw was,
It was a guy in an airplane and he was like, my wife just messaged me. I'm getting, she's going to divorce me if I don't have my inbox to zero by the, by the end of the day. And then he like jumps out of the plane and he's like using fixer AI to cut down his email inbox. That one got me. That was like, that was actually probably one of the first AI videos where I was like, okay, that was actually pretty clever. And it was pretty well done.
But for the most part, just have not seen it fully replace the content mix or the content funnel that is demanded of startups these days.
Brent Peterson (09:43.628)
Yeah, think, I mean, I do feel like there's two sides to the story. And then also there's a side of where you are so creative in when you're, you're so creative in what you're doing in terms of prompting and making that AI video that it does really resonate with the end user.
Levi (10:01.731)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (10:02.778)
What are you doing then for your own marketing to kind of leverage some of the AI tools for video and then also just your own? Are you mixing them together? Tell us a little bit about that.
Levi (10:15.926)
Yeah, mean the most, like one of the most helpful things, I like to create a lot of user generated content. I've actually taken a lot of the principles I learned. My boss at Kizzic was the CMO at Purple, Alex McArthur, and he's like a master at the whole content mix and content funnel. I learned a lot of that while I was working with him and other really great marketers at Kizzic about how to run a D to C funnel.
And because meta is where our ICP lives I was able to take a lot of those that same content strategy and apply it to What we're doing even though it's b2b. We're getting most of our customers from meta ads and so it's Like one of the biggest things I knew that we had to do was create a hero video that explained very well What what our main product was?
So we started out, I just made user generated content to kind of learn what messages resonate. Then I went to Film Lab as a production house here in Utah and we made some really well produced hero videos. I put some money into them and we immediately saw like a 300 % increase in our ability to scale our meta ads from there once we added those hero videos in. But then,
Those are kind of those evergreen staples that live in our content strategy that you run those for 12 months, 24 months even. But then you're always constantly having to refresh the middle and bottom funnel with a lot of user generated content. So that's kind of been the D2C strategy that I've copied and pasted over to B2B. But to answer your question, which I really got off track of, is how am I using AI in video production?
Honestly, it's mostly just like the AI tools within CapCut when I'm making a lot of user generated content in like auto captions and I've toyed with some of the features. I don't know. I'd be curious if you've done this or if any of the listeners have done this, but like those auto editors where you just say like you text prompt, here's the kind of video I want. You feed it the raw footage and you try to get something good out of it.
Levi (12:39.043)
I haven't had a lot of success with those types of AI tools. I've heard Descript is a little better than CapCut and I want to try it out, but it's still just not as good as like me who has all the context going in and editing it myself.
Levi (12:59.832)
I think you're muted, Brent.
Brent Peterson (13:03.854)
I was an early user of Descript and I quickly found that Riverside, I mean, they do a great job of what you've just said, where they'll come up with 30 and 60 seconds clips based on your total conversation. And they've just been adding so many great tools that it just, I'm kind of riding the Riverside wave. I do use CapCut as well, but I think you're right that I would love to have that tool that kind of takes your
raw video and then it intuitively goes and composes it in a way that you would like via prompt. And one would think that Adobe would already be there, right? One would think that Adobe's already cracked that puzzle, but yeah, I don't think they have.
Levi (13:44.842)
Yeah, seems like Adobe's just kind of like at maturity where they're like, they're kind of like letting others do the innovation and then they'll scoop it up if it's like starting to gain traction. But I do hear like Premiere, there's what's that one you can kind of do on the go that's like CapCut by Adobe.
Brent Peterson (14:06.924)
Adobe Express.
Levi (14:08.527)
Yes, that's the one. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't really toyed with that one much. But I'd be curious because for the listeners, just so you know, this, we're filming this on Riverside. So it's kind of meta that we're talking about Riverside's editing abilities. And we'll see if this makes it into Riverside's editing cut that Riverside puts together, us talking about its editing capabilities. Let's see how good you are, Riverside.
Brent Peterson (14:10.071)
Mm-hmm.
Levi (14:37.455)
you're on mute again, Brent.
Brent Peterson (14:41.322)
Sorry about that, I must keep hitting it by default. yeah, I think we just have to keep, we have to say Riverside like seven or eight more times to make sure that it gets into the Riverside algorithm. And then, you know, if you're in Riverside, California, it probably works even better, You know, I've...
Levi (14:52.409)
Yeah.
Levi (14:56.975)
Yeah, the more. And then if you're actually by a river, if you're at the side of a river, it's just the ultimate.
Brent Peterson (15:03.962)
Yeah. In a white van. You know, I want to kind of jump back. You mentioned that Meta has been a great place for you, and I'm assuming that is for your B2B. So is like the idea is that lawyers are on the weekends or at night or actually probably during the day just going on to Facebook.
Levi (15:08.239)
yeah.
Levi (15:18.307)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (15:27.63)
You don't want to say that they're billing their clients, but they're probably on Facebook checking and whatever, right?
Levi (15:27.907)
Yeah, well I think it.
Levi (15:34.584)
Yeah, yeah, mean, we did some early on interviews to just ask, like, where do you guys hang out? Where do you consume your information? And nobody was on LinkedIn. None of these personal injury lawyers, especially, which is one of our main target audiences, we have a lot of, you know, tangential ones. But or I should say, like, we have a lot of secondary practice areas that we
market too, but the main one, like personal injury lawyers, because they're D2C, they go on Facebook and Instagram all the time to create content for themselves. And, you know, I don't know if you've seen, but there's just that rise in popularity of like, if you're a restaurant owner or a dentist or a lawyer, like if you own a practice and you need to acquire customers.
Like you can do a really good job with your organic strategy and build a good following and get people there. Like I don't know if you've seen some of those behind the scenes of a law firm or it's like an older lawyer who's in his 50s doing a TikTok dance and that's hilarious. And then that brings in some personalization and brand affinity and then they choose them as their personal injury attorney because they're like, oh, this guy's down to earth or this girl's down to earth.
So anyway, lawyers are on Meta now and we haven't really done too much with TikTok from the paid standpoint, but we've had a lot of success with Meta.
Brent Peterson (17:08.31)
Yeah, that's really interesting. Maybe Cinnabon would be another good place to advertise for lawyers, right? Or at least lawyers that are hiding and working at a Cinnabon.
Levi (17:18.347)
100%. That's our next big strategy. think our main acquisition channel will be Meta, and then the second one will be Cinnabon.
Brent Peterson (17:26.412)
Yeah, that's a very, very obscure reference to Better Call Saul. And actually, I was thinking he was in Salt Lake City, but no, he was in like Nebraska. He was in Lincoln or some off a town like that.
Levi (17:32.343)
the
Levi (17:38.553)
Yeah.
Fun fact, Brent, I saw this the other day. Bob Odenkirk, who is Saul, he wrote the Van Down By the River sketch.
Brent Peterson (17:50.637)
did he? Okay. Yeah, that's awesome.
Levi (17:51.938)
Yeah, which that was another obscure reference, which I was glad you said, because that's one of my favorite old SNL skits. But Bob Odenkirk wrote the Living in a Van Down by the River sketch for SNL.
Brent Peterson (18:02.54)
Yeah, awesome. So what do you see now? mean, I think meta, what do you see? What's another great place? how do you see this next quarter and half a year rolling out for your business?
Levi (18:19.555)
Yeah, I mean, I do think we kind of committed one of the cardinal sins, which is we hit a lot of audience frequency. One of the tricks about B2B with Meta is it's more of a tight knit, niched audience. And when you go and you try to collect data around lawyers, most of the data that's available for lawyers is business email or business oriented. So it's like, it's their law firm email.
Well, when they go and sign up for Meta, they don't sign up with their law firm email, they sign up with their personal email. So building the audiences outside of Meta and then trying to identify them within Meta has been tricky. Like we had a list of like probably 400,000 attorneys and then we fed that data into Meta and it was like we got a match rate of like 60,000 of the 400,000 where Meta was like, we're confident that this 60,000 is from that list.
We've found some tricks lately. There's some new cool softwares where you can get better match rates and we've unlocked some new audiences. But that's kind of been one of our tricks that we need to solve for right now is that our content has now been seen on average by that group of 60,000. It's been seen an average of 20 times by each one of them. And so we're reaching just...
some audience fatigue, I think, and we've kind of scooped up the low-hanging fruit. And one, we need to step back and create some more engaging and exciting content or some more interesting things to talk about to re-engage them so they're not sick of seeing the same stuff like they've seen the 20 times previous. And then the other thing is just trying to unlock new audiences that we can then go market the content to as well.
Brent Peterson (20:13.336)
Yeah, I would think that new audience one would be the kind of the hardest, but the best, right? Where you're always trying to find where those people are and what they're doing. So Levi, we have a few minutes left as we close up the podcast. I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today?
Levi (20:22.541)
Yeah.
Levi (20:33.199)
Shameless plug has just hit me up on LinkedIn. I love networking, love getting to know people. If you're in Utah, I'd love to snag lunch and geek out over content. I just would love to learn from you, so please connect with me, Levi Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y on LinkedIn.
Brent Peterson (20:54.092)
That's awesome. And I'll make sure we get those into the snow. The snow, the show notes and it's snowing probably in Salt Lake and the snow notes, right. Levi, it's been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for being here.
Levi (20:59.116)
And the snow, yeah.
Yeah.
Levi (21:06.797)
Yeah, thanks so much, Brent.