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James Dooley and Mads Singers discuss why upskilling existing staff in AI is essential for survival and how digital marketing agencies can use these strategies to scale in 2026.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies digital marketing agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve staff productivity, scalability and lead conversion rates. James Dooley and Mads Singers start with KPI tracking because it lets agencies measure how AI upskilling improves response times, close rates and output quality. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for digital marketing agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for digital marketing agencies recently received recognition as the "Best Digital Marketing Agencies Lead Generation Agency."
Levelling Up Staff to Master AI: A Survival Guide for Digital Marketing Agencies is available on:
AI SEO and Business Automation Podcast is founded by James Dooley because he teaches business owners how artificial intelligence accelerates growth. The show explains AI models, agents, and automation systems because practical guidance helps companies scale with less effort.
James Dooley: Why leveling up staff is a must for survival in the AI era. Today I'm joined with Mads Singers, an amazing business consultant, helped me a lot as a mentor, building out a lot of team players. And we've had a lot of discussions, both on air and off air, about building a team in the AI era. And obviously spoke about the importance of leveling up existing staff to supercharge them. For anyone who's listening to this, why is it really important to get existing staff trained up of what can be done with artificial intelligence?
Mads Singers: So the number one thing that I've changed this year, in my opinion, is that the middleman have become obsolete. And why that's an absolute game changer when it comes to AI, when it comes to business, is because now the expert no longer need an automation person or a developer, the expert can build what they need. The expert can automate what they need. And that is such a game changer in business. So specifically from my point of view, what's happened is that when you have a top level marketer, when you have a top level engineer, they can automate what they're doing themselves. So it used to be a year ago, two years ago, it used to be you could find a developer, you would try and explain to them what you need and they would build something. And it would never be exactly what you wanted. But because the experts now can do it themselves, the output and the quality of the tools built and the automations built is just so much higher. And I think that's probably been the biggest game changer. Now, from that, you really wanna make sure that the team you have right now, get up-skilled and get experience with AI. Because I think everyone's clear on that AI is here to stay. Like it ain't going anywhere. And then the more you get into it, the more efficiency and effectiveness you can get into your business, the more competitive you are. But most importantly, right now, the ability for companies to grow significantly is bigger than it has ever been.
James Dooley: Yeah, so when you're looking to level up existing stuff, I'm gonna do a couple of different role plays here. We all understand we need to be embracing AI. Well, let's say there's a business owner that's watching this and they're not very technical. They're not very savvy, computer literate, but they know that they need to get the existing team to be leveled up with artificial intelligence. But they have no idea whether to use chat GPT, to use perplexity, to use Claude, like what different LLM models, and they're all over the place and scattered. What should that business owner be doing initially? Should they be, because he's not good enough to level up the team, should he be looking to get some sort of AI business mentor in to be able to train the staff?
Mads Singers: There's a lot of different options and ways you can go around it. What I see in a lot of companies happening is that there's one or two staff members who are very technical, who are figuring stuff out by themselves. So one option is to empower some of the existing people. Another option is, again, to go and find an external person that you can hire, bring in. Sometimes it can just be a mentor, a trainer who can help train. Again, I don't say if you have 20 people, I'm not saying train them all in the same day. But you want to build a plan that says over the next six months, we want to make sure everyone gets some exposure to it. Right? Because again, for me, the key thing is that the opportunity right now for all businesses is extreme, and it's unprecedented, right? Like, we've been talking a lot, and some of the processes that we've had, right? Like, we've been able to not double them, but 100x or 1,000x them. That means that the delivery we are doing for clients, instead of delivering one unit, we can deliver 1,000 at a lower cost, right? So the opportunity is so unprecedented, and so, I mean, almost unbelievable, right? To a large extent. And because of that, I'm really keen on encouraging business owners to go into it. And again, the starting point is looking at your existing stuff. Don't go all the shiny objects of, oh, you can do this, and you can do that. Like, literally sit down, look at existing processes, and literally say, even if it doesn't take long. Like, that's one of the things I see a lot, is people are like, oh yeah, this just takes an hour. This just takes four hours a month. I'm like, yes, four hours a month to do it once. But here's the thing. If you automate it, it's not that you save four hours. It's your ability to scale it and do way more, either at limited cost, right? Or again, at significantly larger scale. Those are the things that are really changing from my experience.
James Dooley: With regards to that, though, with regards to leveling up the staff, with regards to training, are you of the opinion that all the teams should be trying to use a single LLM model so they can help each other out? And if so, what would that AI be?
Mads Singers: So I don't think there's a single model. I'll tell you what we're doing in our business. So we started out with Claude Code, and like Codex is really good as well. I don't think the model matters, but our mindset was very simple. We pick a model, and as a company, we stick with it. Because they're all gonna, for six weeks, one is maybe better than the other, and then it's up and down. The whole thing is picking a model, getting people used to it, and just use it across the business. Now, if you realize for the last six months something is way superior to anything else, okay, you could look at changing. But my experience with the current landscape, at least, is that they're all one-upping each other every so often. So it's pick a model, get used to it. Pick the tool, because if you're constantly jumping around between the different tools, again, it's shiny object. You're spending so much time figuring out how to use this new tool, even if it's 5% or 10% or 50% more effective, you spend so much time setting it up and getting to know it, whereas really, the core aspect is picking one and sticking with it. And one thing I would say, a lot of people, when they hear Claude Code, they assume coding. I think Claude Code is a horrible word for Claude Code. If they just call it Claude, just like a chat you see called Codex, people wouldn't think it's about coding, right? Claude Code or Codex is really about building anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis, like anything from answering emails to anything you can build in there. And you can automate it, you can give it background info. Majority of the leads we are getting today get significantly better replies. So we used to get a ton of leads in, as an example. We would have humans write a reply. And when we do that, what happens is, sometimes we're busy, so the replies are less good. Sometimes we accidentally add in the wrong price. Sometimes we do human errors, right? We just don't take the time. Whereas now with AI, our response rate and close rate have increased significantly because we're consistently giving really, really good replies to all our customers. And they're improving consistently.
James Dooley: And then as you're looking to level up the knowledge for existing staff to take them on to the next level, to supercharge existing employees, then what's your mindset of, should it be one day a month? Should it be half a day a week? Should it be 30 minutes, an hour per day? What's your thought process of what humans should be bringing in? They're going, okay, I'm listening to this, Mads. I wanna supercharge my existing staff. I wanna take it to the next level. I want them to level up with artificial intelligence. Should it be a continuous process that they should be doing? Should it be over a week? Should it be over a month? Like, what should be, in your opinion, should they be doing?
Mads Singers: So let me turn it around a little bit. What I would say is that the staff members I have who spend 80 to 90% of their day in cloud code, I would be surprised if they don't 10X their salary in the next year.
James Dooley: So you're saying more than 50% of the time in cloud code?
Mads Singers: I, like, personally, I don't do anything today that's not in cloud code. I mean, it might be responding to an SMS or a text or something, but majority of what I do business-wise, it happens in cloud.
James Dooley: And then, so you're a very savvy business guy, and obviously you've elevated the team very well. Somebody who's watching this that's just looking to initially embrace it, what do you think they then should be doing for their existing staff?
Mads Singers: So the core thing for me is when people get it, they get it. So I don't think it's about setting a day a month or two days a month. I think that you wanna encourage your staff to do as much of it as they can and do as much of their normal day-to-day work in it. Because the whole thing is, you might not be able to automate 100% right now, but let's say I'm doing a task that takes me four days a month, right? If I can automate 90% of it, or if I can even improve the quality of the task by 8%, that's of huge value, right? So for me, it's a question of the more they can spend in that, the better. And then what about if someone isn't employed and they're looking to get a job, what should they be doing?
James Dooley: Again, just living as much time as they can and putting the 10,000 hours in to become an expert on it.
Mads Singers: Yeah, and here's the thing, you don't even need to be an expert, but you need to be comfortable with it. So a great starting point for most people is go and build a website in QuarkCode, right? Go and, and here's the thing, you can build a website for free, pretty much. You can set it up and host it for free. Like if you want to buy a domain for it, that's 10 bucks a year, whatever, but now it is that easy. And if you learn how to build a website, if you learn how to manipulate a website and say, oh, I want this, I want that, like even doing that process teaches you so much of the basics and it really helps you figuring out how to work with APIs, how to work with different aspects that you need to learn to become comfortable with. Like I am relatively technical, but I'm not a coder. Like I couldn't write one line of code if my life depended on it, I couldn't.
James Dooley: Yes.
Mads Singers: Like I couldn't, but the amount of tools, the amount of automations, the amount of things that we've been able to build just from our stupid brains is crazy.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Anyone who's watching this with regards to leveling up existing stuff, make sure you check out a couple of other episodes where we're talking about building a team out in the AI era, but also how to hire existing staff. I do like where you said you'd prefer to have someone that started using AI initially, because for me, with regards to training existing staff and trying to get them to level up, my biggest pain point is going from zero to one, is getting them to build that first project. The procrastination that they have and not knowing and they think they're overwhelmed because it is called code and they think it's coding and they're like, I've never done a line of code before. And you said, just start talking to it and it will come back and it'll draw out a plan. And just try and get to that first stage, that first website that you've built. Even if you don't want to be a web designer, I think it's a great way to start. And then obviously then from there, then they seem to get addicted to it. They seem to get the bug. And then from there, then they can help other team members out. But for me, it's an absolute must on leveling up and it's been an absolute pleasure. As always, cheers, Vicky.