00:00:11:06 - 00:00:14:29
Michael
Welcome to disambiguation. I'm your host, Michael Fauscette. Each week We interview experts in artificial intelligence. Generative AI, and business automation to help business leaders understand how to use these tools for the biggest business impact.
Our show today is from SEO to AIO Preparing Your Content for AI discovery. I'm joined by Jenna Nelson, founder of HerAgency. Welcome, Jenna.
00:00:43:07 - 00:00:45:26
Jenna
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
00:00:45:28 - 00:00:52:29
Michael
Thanks. So just to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey and and about her agency?
00:00:53:02 - 00:01:22:18
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I come from a long background of digital marketing and brand strategy. And really, you know, about two years ago doubled down on you know, really strategically implementing AI for businesses specifically. I had kind of started making that adaptation a couple of years prior for existing clients, and really just saw how it was really compounding our efforts, in the marketing space.
00:01:22:18 - 00:01:39:16
Jenna
And so, really just kind of went all in on, you know, optimizing and implementing AI for businesses, both on the internal side and then also how to adapt to AI. From a, from a marketing perspective as well.
00:01:39:18 - 00:01:58:09
Michael
Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I know, you know, maybe we should start with your perspective on I kind of overall and AI adoption is I you know, I know you've said that you that it may be okay today to to not have AI in your business, but you're not going to feel okay two years from now. You know, if you don't.
00:01:58:12 - 00:02:04:00
Michael
So what what makes you confident that that's the right timeline and you know, what are you seeing in there?
00:02:04:02 - 00:02:42:03
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I think, you know, to that point, it's you were right in the kind of, I think middle of the adoption phase right now, we've kind of moved past early adoption were right, kind of in that some people are still doing it, some aren't. The beauty of that is that there's a lot of opportunity right now, particularly for smaller businesses, to kind of almost get ahead or catch up to some of these big businesses that, you know, have been throwing tons of, you know, marketing dollars and SEO dollars for years, but may not be entirely making that, you know, kind of move to a OG, stuff like that right
00:02:42:03 - 00:03:06:04
Jenna
now. So there's a kind of a an interesting lane right now of opportunity, for businesses. But, you know, I think right now you can kind of get away without it. At least on the internal tool side, I would say right now, you know, in terms of digital visibility, we are seeing, you know, website traffic is down, click through rates are dropping dramatically.
00:03:06:04 - 00:03:25:07
Jenna
And that's because of zero click and AI snippets and things like that. An LMS search. And so, you know, I think from a visibility standpoint, you know my my reference point is right now is the time to start if you haven't already. Because if you don't, you're going to get so far behind. It's going to be hard to catch up.
00:03:25:07 - 00:03:42:16
Jenna
And so to your point, I say that a lot. I'm like, you know, I get it. I get right now. It's still overwhelming. It's still a little scary for some people and businesses. But I want you to kind of put that fear aside because I'm more scared of what's going to happen to your business two years from now if you don't adapt right now.
00:03:42:18 - 00:04:00:21
Michael
Yeah. I mean, I hear from especially from small and mid-sized businesses that I talk to. I hear that a lot that, oh, here's an opportunity perhaps to, to really gain competitive advantage now if I can understand it. And that's not an easy journey necessarily. But but it does seem like a real opportunity.
00:04:00:24 - 00:04:32:06
Jenna
It is. It absolutely is. This is kind of leveling the playing field right now. It's almost like we're all kind of going back to like starting from scratch in a way. And so I think there is, there's like a whole pathway for, small businesses for, for solo founders to really make, a big splash right now because some of those bigger businesses are, you know, either slow to implement or reluctant or they've got these SEO agencies they've worked with for ten years who aren't adapting.
00:04:32:06 - 00:05:00:12
Jenna
I'm seeing a lot of that. And so, yeah, there's there's a great pathway right now. And to your point, yeah, there's a lot to understand. And that's not necessarily what I want every business owner doing is spending a lot of time trying to understand it. That's why I want them to, you know, work with somebody like you or me that that knows you know, how to implement it and say, structured ways as opposed to, you know, trying to be overwhelmed by it in this moment.
00:05:00:15 - 00:05:23:14
Michael
Yeah. I mean, I can tell you just personally, it has made a huge difference in the way I manage my business. Go to market, build deliverables, everything. Right? I mean, it touches so much. And, you know, one of the things that I, I've always intrigued by and I in a previous life, I used to spend a lot of time doing, you know, software implementations and working with clients for that.
00:05:23:16 - 00:05:45:09
Michael
And it always seemed like it's easy to focus on the technology, and often the problem's not the technology. So how do you you see this? I know you've mentioned change management and the challenge there. What's that like in practice? And, you know, how do you do that with the companies you work with? How do they get stuck around?
00:05:45:11 - 00:05:48:15
Michael
That not the tech, but really the, the people?
00:05:48:18 - 00:06:12:02
Jenna
Absolutely. And, you know, I see that a lot where, you know, AI is maybe considered like, this is going to stop the bleeding. This is going to plug the hole and the reality is, if the back end process isn't right to begin with, AI is just going to probably make it worse. Actually, it's not the magical solution to solve a problem that needs to be fixed on the back end.
00:06:12:09 - 00:06:38:08
Jenna
So that's one place I start with every client is we start in kind of an alignment phase of, let's make sure that we've got the brand strategy buttoned up. Let's make sure the process is, you know, AI is about replicating processes over and over and taking that manual labor off of you. But that process needs to be predefined, and it needs to be a working process before we train the AI tool to do it.
00:06:38:08 - 00:06:55:19
Jenna
Otherwise it's just going to break it even worse. I think. So, yeah. I agree with you. It's not we're not trying to solve problems. We're trying to amplify what we're already doing. That's working. I think that's the best place to put AI into place.
00:06:55:22 - 00:07:00:11
Michael
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, automating a bad process just makes it be bad sooner.
00:07:00:17 - 00:07:09:03
Jenna
But sooner or bad more often or. Yeah. Yeah, it really does. It just amplifies the problem. Absolutely.
00:07:09:06 - 00:07:25:06
Michael
Yeah. Well, so I know one of the things that you've focused on is this shift, you know, in the content world, from traditional content to more query and answer formats. Can you can you explain what that means and why should I care?
00:07:25:08 - 00:07:49:14
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, search has just evolved. You know, years ago we were searching by keyword, you know, maybe one word at a time or we were searching on Google in, you know, kind of a broken sentence structure type of thing. And then we were clicking through, you know, the first page, ten links, trying to come up with that single answer to the question we had.
00:07:49:14 - 00:08:10:13
Jenna
But maybe we weren't specifically asking Google. You weren't often going to Google and asking a question like, truly with a question mark, like a well structured question. That is the way we're searching now and that is based on, voice assistance. That's a big part of that change, right? We're asking Siri. We're asking, every time I say Alexa than my home Alexa, why.
00:08:10:15 - 00:08:12:22
Michael
Am I.
00:08:12:25 - 00:08:36:24
Jenna
Why should I put any, and so that has led that kind of shift. And then, you know, also the LMS now. Right. We are asking questions of ChatGPT, of cloud, of perplexity and getting answers. And so that is the way that shift, search is shifting is we want to ask a question and get an answer. We don't want to get ten pages to read through.
00:08:36:24 - 00:08:55:23
Jenna
We want an answer. And then we want to ask follow up questions to get, you know, even deeper or get a source or, you know, whatever we might be doing. So, you know, there's there's two phases of that on the front end. Anybody using these tools, I encourage people to start getting better at how do you ask the right question?
00:08:55:23 - 00:09:22:27
Jenna
How do you ask a question? Because that's going to get you, you know, a better answer quicker. And then on the content side, you know, my biggest tip right now is structure everything around a question that a human would naturally ask and then present a succinct answer. And that's that's the other key, too, is, you know, these AI tools aren't trying to scan through 6000 word blog posts.
00:09:22:27 - 00:09:46:01
Jenna
They are looking for that answer snippet that easily surfaced answer. So I also want you to think about, you know, there's certainly still a place for long form content and word count matters, you know, in terms of AI, SEO and things like that. But, you know, for AI snippets, that 2 to 3 sentence answer block is probably the most powerful thing in your toolbox.
00:09:46:01 - 00:10:10:09
Jenna
So, you know, one place I start with clients is I was like, tell me the five questions that you get asked by your clients all of the time, and sometimes they can't. And that's that's a brand strategy. Then we go back to the drawing board and we we solve that first. But, you need to be able to tell me what those five questions are that you get asked all of the time and that you're tired of answering, or that you answer all of the time.
00:10:10:12 - 00:10:17:06
Jenna
And that's what we're going to focus our content around, because that is what's driving that. That AI lead visibility right now.
00:10:17:09 - 00:10:33:17
Michael
Yeah, I mean, that was probably my first realization when I started using some of the tools like ChatGPT, Jim and I. Perplexity was that, you know, I used to go to Google and I would find a path to find an answer. And now I go to perplexity and I get an answer.
00:10:33:22 - 00:10:36:06
Jenna
I get an answer and you're done.
00:10:36:09 - 00:10:42:06
Michael
I'm done. Yeah. And it's a and that's a very different process than, than it used to be. So yeah, that that makes sense to me.
00:10:42:11 - 00:11:00:23
Jenna
It's an extremely different process. And on the, the local business side. Right. Like that map pack is it's the same thing. Like nobody is searching through ten listings anymore. If you're not in the top three and you're a local business and that map pack, forget it like nobody's finding you. And that's just that's the way search has changed.
00:11:00:23 - 00:11:13:21
Jenna
We want quick answers. We want to click or not even click. That zero click is really powerful right now. And so you've got to kind of adapt to that. In order to be everywhere that your audience is searching.
00:11:13:24 - 00:11:38:27
Michael
Yeah. I mean, we're kind of a funny time too, because I mean, certainly people still go to Google and yeah, okay, there's there's some answers about that, but there's also still just search and, and so you have to kind of do both. Right? I mean you have to make it machine readable and human readable. Yes. And and I guess that means structured schemas like more important, I mean, if I'm just getting started with this, you know, what does that how do I, how do I do that.
00:11:39:00 - 00:11:39:10
Michael
Yeah.
00:11:39:10 - 00:12:01:27
Jenna
And that's, that's the tricky thing. Right. Like as, as marketers it's like, okay, now we have to write for a human to read, and we have to write for a machine to read it. And they, they see different things. You know, a bot scraping your website doesn't see your colors, your pretty branding, your fancy fonts. Like, it doesn't care about that.
00:12:01:27 - 00:12:23:09
Jenna
It cares about H1, H2, structured schema. You know, proper content formatting. It cares a lot about FAQs. An FAQ section is like the most powerful thing you can have on a page right now. So, you know, for anybody getting started, I would say, you know, find, and I have one I'm happy to share with you for the show notes.
00:12:23:09 - 00:12:47:17
Jenna
I have a template, a landing page template of exactly how to structure specifically for a logo. And so that's a great starting point, like find a template of some kind that, follows like the way a machine is going to read it. And you still want to ensure that your content is being well read by humans?
00:12:47:17 - 00:13:09:05
Jenna
I always say, you know, like take your website, take your landing page and read it out loud, and if it doesn't sound right to you out loud, it's probably not good content. So redo that. But the structure is what the machines are looking for. We're basically giving the bot a roadmap, and, and making it easier for it to digest and resurface that information.
00:13:09:05 - 00:13:13:14
Jenna
So the way you structure the content is really, really key.
00:13:13:16 - 00:13:35:20
Michael
Yeah. I mean, we we've talked about SEO for years and obviously, you know, it was important we, you know, you need to optimize for it, that sort of thing. But now, you know, the conversations about a SEO and Geo and, and I'm curious. So just first of all, like what's the difference in an engine versus generative engine. And why does that matter.
00:13:35:22 - 00:14:04:05
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. So answer engine optimization, AIO is focused on those those answer snippets. Right. Like there's things that, you know, Google is surfacing in terms of like the short answer snippets. The people also ask section things like that. That's what answer engine optimization is doing. Generative engine optimization is things like being found and being cited in ChatGPT and Claude in perplexity in Gemini.
00:14:04:07 - 00:14:21:08
Jenna
So that's that's kind of the difference. One is about your search engine visibility and one is about your LLM visibility, essentially. And so I say all the time, it's like SEO is not dead. I hear a lot of that. They're like, oh, SEO is dead. Forget I'm like, no, it's not. Your technical speed is still really important.
00:14:21:10 - 00:14:44:29
Jenna
Your page renderings are still extremely important, but you need to like invite a SEO and go to the game to be broadly visible. Because it's good chance that your audience. I, I'm one of those, like, I'm hardly using Google at all anymore. I, I go to ChatGPT first, or maybe perplexity. So, yeah, as you know, time goes on.
00:14:44:29 - 00:15:10:03
Jenna
We're seeing more of that shift and particularly, you know, as generations change, you know, those coming out of high school, college right now, they are using LMS search first, not Google. And as that trend as they enter the workforce, as they become, you know, the dominant generation, for search, you've got to adapt to that. Because, you know, Google is it's it's not on its way out.
00:15:10:03 - 00:15:34:12
Jenna
Google is going to remain Google. It is still going to be important. But, you know, ChatGPT in particular, you know, search, you know, usage is just climbing at a astronomical rate that, you know, we've really never seen. So, I, I want everybody to kind of incorporate all of the strategies so that you're not being missed anywhere that your audience might be looking.
00:15:34:15 - 00:15:53:16
Michael
Yeah. I mean, I definitely can say that. I don't remember now the last time I've used Google for something. I mean, even if I did go to Google, I didn't use the search capability. I use the answer part of it. But but I, I would definitely say perplexity. I mean, if you look at my browser, you see the default search engines now, perplexity, you know, complexity.
00:15:53:16 - 00:15:54:27
Jenna
Same thing.
00:15:55:00 - 00:16:05:01
Michael
Yeah. So that's yeah that's definitely a shift. And and yeah, yeah, you still have to do all of those things. Right. Because I don't know where my clients are looking for me right now. So it's.
00:16:05:01 - 00:16:31:24
Jenna
Like. Exactly. And that's something important to track too. Right. And that's a big part of this strategy is, you know, pay attention to those data signals. And where is your attribution source coming from? Are they finding you from ChatGPT or are they finding you from an answer snippet? I think knowing that kind of gives you some clear signals about your audience and how to structure your content better going forward.
00:16:31:24 - 00:16:54:20
Jenna
There's also, I mean, social search, right? Like, Reddit is huge right now, and Reddit contributes a lot to being found in the LMS. That community kind of answer or forum. So there's almost a Reddit strategy that needs to be incorporated for most businesses now. And there's, you know, YouTube is a lot of people, like, I would go to YouTube to look for something first.
00:16:54:20 - 00:17:15:24
Jenna
A lot of times, LinkedIn is extremely, you know, it writes back to the LMS, it gets scraped a lot. And some people will go to LinkedIn to look particularly in the B2B space. So you need to know where your audience is looking. But then ultimately, I would want you to optimize for everywhere because you just never know.
00:17:15:24 - 00:17:20:20
Jenna
But also, you know, focus on your primary channel for sure.
00:17:20:22 - 00:17:38:26
Michael
Yeah. I mean, I know, we use Squarespace for the, for company website and, and they just added not long ago that, you know, used to have this SEO evaluation that you could do in analytics, which was really useful, especially for somebody who maybe I'm not that great at SEO, but I but I understood I needed to be.
00:17:38:29 - 00:18:03:00
Michael
Yeah. Now they have this really cool AIO geo sort of thing where to actually test your brand against those different, you know, engines like be to your cloud and it and then also test you and just queries that would relate to your business like not about your brand but about the thing you do. Right. And that I thought that was really useful.
00:18:03:02 - 00:18:26:18
Jenna
That it's extremely useful. Yeah. Another one, search Atlas is, you know, it's not specifically dependent on, you know, a specific web, builder. But I love Search Atlas feature because you can test queries by platform. And, you know, I think that that's a really cool tool to see, you know, will I come up if somebody asks, where do I find help with Allo?
00:18:26:18 - 00:18:43:18
Jenna
Like, I want my name surfaced on that. And so I think, you know, knowing what topics and queries are getting you found is, is really important. It's, you know, it used to just be a keyword game, right? Like all we cared about was ranking for keywords. Well, now you've got to rank for queries as well.
00:18:43:20 - 00:18:51:13
Michael
Yeah. That's I mean that's definitely a both a physical you have to shift there. But mentally you have to know that that's a different too. Right.
00:18:51:13 - 00:18:54:26
Jenna
That is that's a yes. Yeah. It's a huge difference.
00:18:54:28 - 00:19:07:20
Michael
You know, one of the things I've noticed and I've read and heard from some of my marketing friends that, you know, the old way of doing lead magnets, you know, the static sort of PDF way, it just not really works anymore. Yeah.
00:19:07:20 - 00:19:09:15
Jenna
It's so that. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:09:18 - 00:19:15:05
Michael
What should we do now? I mean, how do we make it, I don't know, interactive or make it work better anyway.
00:19:15:08 - 00:19:36:29
Jenna
Yeah. So I think the shift there right is nobody wants just the information anymore. What we want now are tools that actually help us do things. That's the shift that AI has kind of led because it's becoming more helpful. So your PDFs unfortunately, are just like going to die and email inboxes, right? Like nobody's even opening them.
00:19:36:29 - 00:20:01:19
Jenna
Nobody's coming back to them. There's there's statically magnets are really very dead. So I like integrating, really like user led helpful tools on your front end as your top funnel entry point. And I think it does. It does two things. One, it sets an immediate brand experience for your client. You can, you know, embed coaching tidbits.
00:20:01:19 - 00:20:31:18
Jenna
You can embed, expectation setting for your type of business. So you can provide this like immediate brand touch where, you know, I think we all know, you know, speed to lead, you know, slowness kills deals all the time. Right. And if you can get somebody that brand experience touchpoint really fast right now, you don't risk them finding another provider, picking up the phone and calling the next person that's going to answer or, you know, whatever.
00:20:31:18 - 00:20:52:29
Jenna
So I think the brand experience is really valuable for the client facing side. On the back end side, it does lead filtering and qualification for you, right? Like it can weed out the people that aren't good fit. Let's face it. Like we've all been on a sales call where that person was not the right fit for our business.
00:20:52:29 - 00:21:11:06
Jenna
Or maybe we were the ones on the sales call and we weren't the right fit for what they were selling, and now it's a waste of our time. It's a waste of the salesperson's time. So you can weed out those that are a good fit. And then, you know, if you've got multiple offers or you've got different entry points, maybe you've got a DIY program and you've also got it done for you program.
00:21:11:08 - 00:21:38:14
Jenna
You can run them based on their answers and the way they use the tool and get them, you know, the right, you know, pathway from there. And I think what we all expect at this point in 2026 is really personalized solutions. So I don't want a generic quiz with, you know, radio buttons ABCd and E where it's going to give me like a score, right?
00:21:38:14 - 00:22:05:03
Jenna
Like I want it to give me some sort of like small transformative change. Throughout that process. And I think that transformation on the other end of that tool is what hooks people in or and politely disqualifies them if they're not, you know, really the right fit. So I really like, I produce a lot of kind of intake, qualification thoughts for clients.
00:22:05:03 - 00:22:27:18
Jenna
I love those. I think that those are really effective voice. I, has come a long way, and that can be effective depending on your industry. The conversation chat bots on your website, there's a lot of different methods. But I definitely recommend that being your primary lead magnet as opposed to here's a checklist, here's a PDF, here's a habit.
00:22:27:18 - 00:22:37:27
Jenna
Do something for them. Have it run an audit. Have it give live feedback. Have it produce a brand brief for them. Something like that.
00:22:38:00 - 00:22:54:09
Michael
Yeah, I mean, I just launched not long ago, unless you're one of the books we wrote. One of the books I published was a readiness assessment for into Guy, and I took that and distilled it down into an interview, and I put it on the website that it and it actually runs in a survey tool, Zoho Survey on the back end.
00:22:54:09 - 00:23:10:18
Michael
But but at the end of it, you know, you don't have to leave an email. I set it up so that you could just go give me the quick report, and it tells me, you know, where am I in my journey? But if you want a detailed report, you could leave the email and opt in and get a much more detailed report.
00:23:10:18 - 00:23:18:20
Michael
And I, I mean, again, it's early, but that seems like a better way to do it than some of the kind of static ways we thought about it in the past.
00:23:18:22 - 00:23:43:14
Jenna
Absolutely. Yeah. I have I have something similar on my own website. You know, an ad, you know, I had a lot of people come to me for paid ads, and some people just aren't quite a candidate for paid ads yet. They don't have the right budget. They don't have a proven funnel. So it takes them through all that qualification steps and then, you know, if they, they aren't a fit for paid ads yet, it routes them to, hey, we need to build your funnel first.
00:23:43:14 - 00:24:10:13
Jenna
Let's start here. Or, you know, politely, this budget is not going to be meaningful on Google. Let's maybe consider meta or not consider paid ads. We need to consider organic, so those tools are invaluable. It has saved me a ton of time on sales calls with people who just aren't going to be buyers, and it's saving their time too, which I you know, I don't want to waste anyone's time any more than I want my own time wasted.
00:24:10:13 - 00:24:13:00
Jenna
So, yeah, I think it's really effective.
00:24:13:03 - 00:24:29:22
Michael
I mean, that's interesting because I, I, you know, there's a similar kind of tool, but sounds like, that's had a big impact on your business. I mean, from, you know, just to help people. How has that really changed the way you're getting leads and dealing with them?
00:24:29:24 - 00:24:49:05
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it's a great, for people. It's a great initial qualification tool. And they don't have to get on a call with a live human with me or somebody on my team. And for us to say, you know, what a cool offer. But like $500 a month on Google is not going to move the needle.
00:24:49:07 - 00:25:19:19
Jenna
Which can be awkward and can be, you know, uncomfortable to talk about ad budget and stuff like that. So I like that it gives them, you know, the ability to somewhat privately, you know, pre-qualify themselves. And I think that's really, really great. And if not, if, if they are, if that by the time they actually get to me on a, on a call, we're ready to talk strategy because I already know how the funnels converting where the funnel is, converting what the ad budget is.
00:25:19:19 - 00:25:40:05
Jenna
I don't have to ask my normal, you know, 1020 preliminary questions that I would have asked in a normal consult so I can get them, you know, I can get the ad launched a lot faster now because we've already pre-qualified. I already have the information I need, and by the time I get them on the phone, it's like, all right, let's talk about graphics.
00:25:40:05 - 00:26:04:03
Jenna
Let's talk about the creatives. Let's talk about, you know, the copy. So I think that's really effective too. You know, the number one thing I think that I really does for us from a marketing standpoint right now is it helps us get to market faster and it helps us test things a lot faster. We're no longer wasting six months building a funnel, building a product that flops.
00:26:04:06 - 00:26:28:25
Jenna
We can get that out. You can get that landing page up in a day. Now, not even a day, an hour. And start testing that as opposed to wasting months to find out, you know, that that offer didn't resonate the way I thought it was going to. I need to change the offer. Change the messaging. So that quick ability to go to market and test offers, I think is one of the biggest value points of, of AI right now.
00:26:28:27 - 00:26:44:18
Michael
Yeah. I mean, that's interesting too, because it kind of plays into the shift that people and I mean, I know I'm this way. I'd much rather fill out something on a website or do a chat than I would actually get on a phone call or a zoom call. A phone call especially like, come on, I don't want to get on the phone.
00:26:44:18 - 00:26:56:09
Michael
So so it kind of plays into that and make me give you information, having an interaction before I actually have to do the thing that maybe I'm not as comfortable with or don't want to do.
00:26:56:12 - 00:27:12:10
Jenna
Yeah, absolutely. And if it helps, you know, your your client get to the end goal faster. I think everyone loves that we're all busy. Nobody wants to waste time. And it's great to just get what you need and, and move on to the next thing as quickly as possible.
00:27:12:12 - 00:27:31:00
Michael
And even being able to categorize that need. Right. So that qualification process puts you into certain lanes and helps you as a business, know how to tailor the response to actually be contextual and relevant to me, not to a segment or to to a broader audience.
00:27:31:03 - 00:27:33:17
Jenna
Absolutely, absolutely.
00:27:33:19 - 00:27:54:06
Michael
Well, so a lot of people are just using ChatGPT just straight out of the box, right. Or other tools in the closet or Gemini. But you've really talked about, you know, making it specific to your brand or training on your brand. I mean, what does that look like? And, and what happens, you know, when companies don't do that?
00:27:54:09 - 00:28:20:25
Jenna
Oh my gosh, the difference. I did a webinar on this this week actually, and I live demoed the difference between a trained custom GPT product and, you know, just using straight out of the box chat GPT and the difference, like you cannot ignore it. If if you're using, you know, straight out of the box, ChatGPT, as we call it, you're gonna get very generic.
00:28:20:25 - 00:28:48:14
Jenna
It's it's going to sound like I wrote it. It's going to not have your brand tone in voice. It's not going to know anything about your brand. And so if you're using it that way, I don't think your results are ever going to be as good no matter what you do. But you're going to spend a lot of time prompting and editing and, you know, you all you have to give a ton of context in your prompt to even get a remotely usable first draft.
00:28:48:17 - 00:29:14:17
Jenna
Well, on the flip side of things, if you spend the time to train your AI tool on the front end, if you are giving it your brand, brief your offer information, your coaching, it on your tone, giving it, writing samples, things like that. And there's a there's a whole process for that. But yeah, if you're training it on the front end, then you can take that tool and literally go into it and say, give me five social media prompts for this week.
00:29:14:17 - 00:29:31:25
Jenna
And it that's all you have to say. You don't have to say about this offer or, for my brand, like it's going to spit out exactly what you need most of the time. And and you almost have a publish ready first draft now, always. You know, I always want a human in the loop. I want you to read it.
00:29:31:25 - 00:29:52:07
Jenna
I want you to tweak. I want you to add some color. But, the difference in that is going to be felt both in, in the speed in which you can get something out. And also just your, your frustration level. So, you know, one thing I say is like, if you feel like you're always arguing with ChatGPT, it's it's not necessarily a ChatGPT problem.
00:29:52:07 - 00:30:29:08
Jenna
It's, it's a and it's not a prompting problem. It's a context problem. It's a training problem. And so treat your tools like you would an employee train it in the same way you'd train a new assistant, a new team member, it can learn and it learns. Great. And then that reinforcement learning is also really important. The other big tip I give people a lot is, you know, if if you take something, you know, from ChatGPT or Claude and you're editing it a lot and then, you know, you're putting the finished product out, don't let that finished product stay outside the system.
00:30:29:08 - 00:31:00:10
Jenna
Make sure ideally you edit within within the platform before you take it out. That's my preferred method. But at minimum, if you edit outside the platform, put it back in to that that thread and say, this is what I changed. This is why this was what wasn't right, and it will learn from that. And if you just take it outside of the platform and use it and don't ever go back and explain to it why it wasn't right, it's going to assume it was, and it's going to keep doing it that way.
00:31:00:10 - 00:31:05:24
Jenna
So yeah, that reinforcement learning is just as important as the initial training on the front end.
00:31:05:27 - 00:31:26:11
Michael
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I, I've used I use cloud co-work a lot. And and that was one of the things that I noticed, the fact that it, it both has context and memory. Right. So yeah. So it in fact it sort of funny sometimes I'll ask a question or ask you to do some build something and it'll come back and go, and I did this and this and this and this like you told me you wanted to.
00:31:26:13 - 00:31:29:08
Michael
Yeah. No, I didn't prompt that. But but okay. Cool.
00:31:29:11 - 00:31:49:00
Jenna
Yeah. Yeah. It it does. It gets smarter every time you use it. And that's really, you know the, the that's the other beautiful thing. The more you use it the better it gets. So it's, you know, use it and train it and then keep training it and keep using it because it will just get stronger and stronger over time.
00:31:49:00 - 00:32:02:15
Jenna
My ChatGPT at this point, after three years of such consistent use, I mean, mine can tell you far more about me or my business than I probably even want it to some days. So yeah, yeah, I would say.
00:32:02:15 - 00:32:06:08
Michael
The same thing about cloud, right? It probably knows more about me than it should write.
00:32:06:08 - 00:32:13:08
Jenna
Absolutely. I mean, it knows everything. And and that's what makes it a really valuable tool.
00:32:13:10 - 00:32:40:10
Michael
Yeah. That's great. Well, so if I'm a marketing leader, sales leader, I mean, obviously one of the, the big, it's discussion points that I hear and have actually is, you know, how do I how do I do lead gen today? How do I modernize it? What should I be thinking about? I mean, talk about that some in and help you know what is the sales leader was the marketing leader really need to be thinking about today when they're talking about lead gen and, and building the fun.
00:32:40:13 - 00:33:06:15
Jenna
So you know, that hyper personalized marketing I think is what is most relevant. We are way past just here's one ad, here's one entry point in a funnel. It's for everyone. We are, as a society, as buyers, we are looking for. They understand me. They understand my exact pain point, and they know exactly how to solve it.
00:33:06:18 - 00:33:36:25
Jenna
And even though you know, your offer might fit into a lot of those solution buckets, we all know that hitting the right buyer with the right message at the right time is what turns deals, right? So, personalize in your experience and personalizing that marketing to your ideal buyer is really, really key. So you know, in terms of lead gen, think about the different pathways that somebody might come to.
00:33:36:25 - 00:34:03:06
Jenna
You think about those pain points. You know, and personalize, you know segment, right. That the segmentation is becoming more and more important than it's ever been. I don't just want you to segment anymore for like, this person needs SEO. I want you to segment for this buyer needs SEO because they're they have no content structure. There's no one's on their website.
00:34:03:06 - 00:34:31:18
Jenna
There's no title tags. Find that problem. And directly address it very specifically. Because that's what we're we're going to expect on a whole because everybody's doing it that way. So, that, that really personalized marketing, you know, hyper segmentation is going to be really, really key moving forward. You can't just kind of broadly categorize your buyer anymore.
00:34:31:18 - 00:34:33:29
Jenna
I think is is the biggest change there.
00:34:34:01 - 00:34:40:19
Michael
I mean, it's almost like the segmentation is getting to be individualized and personalized.
00:34:40:22 - 00:35:02:12
Jenna
Yeah. And that's where, you know, these tools we're talking about can be so productive because we can get their very specific input answers of what are you struggling with right now? What you know, what is your pain point? Why why are you here? And it's not just like you know, check from one of these check boxes anymore.
00:35:02:12 - 00:35:25:14
Jenna
It's you're getting it directly in the way they communicate it. And then you can take their exact communication style and the exact way that they phrased it and spit that back out into a proposal or an email. And, you know, your subject line can be, I saw you're struggling with blank or, you know, here's the solution to this.
00:35:25:16 - 00:35:30:26
Jenna
And you can use their words right back to them, which can be a really powerful sales tool.
00:35:30:28 - 00:35:42:13
Michael
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well, if you were advising a small or medium business owner today or leader, I mean, what would you tell them? What do they start? What should they be thinking about today.
00:35:42:16 - 00:36:11:04
Jenna
Yeah. So I think the first gap I want everybody to probably fill is making sure that we are staying visible in this kind of new digital era. So I think that's probably problem number one. So we need to start optimizing for a geo content structure, you know, using platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn, you know, for content as well, if you're not already.
00:36:11:06 - 00:36:48:00
Jenna
So that's probably my, my starter point, because I don't want anybody to get too far behind the eight ball on that. So it's like, let's let's patch that hole right now before it's too late. And then I think the secondary approach is let's find internal tools to use that. We can implement AI to improve our practices, to free up time, to, allow employees to do bigger and better things with their brains versus, you know, maybe the the manual tasks they've been doing over and over that, you know, just waste their time and their brain power.
00:36:48:00 - 00:37:19:15
Jenna
We all know, like the more you know, the more a task just feels monotonous and boring. It drains all your creative energy and that's not good. So then I think I move to the internal tools. And then once we feel good about kind of our internal processes being, you know, a little more freed up and, and operating better, then I start looking at outward facing, you know, client facing tools and lead generation tools and stuff like that.
00:37:19:15 - 00:37:43:07
Jenna
But I really like to get the internal kind of mapped out and handled first. And that, that I training that happens there then applies to the outward facing tools. But I generally don't like to start with like client facing AI tools right out of the gate because that's that's your biggest risk failure point right there. So let's start internally.
00:37:43:07 - 00:37:48:28
Jenna
Make sure it understands the brand and understands what we do. And then let's move you know to to client facing.
00:37:49:00 - 00:38:02:19
Michael
Yeah I mean I guess to your point about change management that that education process really does help your employees understand and internalize how things can be used and what they do and how to make them do the things that you want or expect.
00:38:02:19 - 00:38:23:14
Jenna
Right, exactly. Yeah. And that's an important, you know, leadership point to if you're in that position is it's time to start. If you've got, you know, employees that are resistant to using AI, now is the time to start, you know, coaching them on. Here's why we're using it. Here's how it helps you in your role. There's certainly a lot of fear about being replaced by AI.
00:38:23:15 - 00:38:50:05
Jenna
So, you know, from a leadership standpoint, that's a great opportunity to say this isn't about replacing you. This is about amplifying what what you already do and giving you more opportunity. And some coaching there. So from a leadership perspective, for a business, I think, you know, the AI integration really should come from the top. But I'm seeing a lot of the alternate, you know, reality where employees are saying we want, you know, AI tools, we want to use AI.
00:38:50:05 - 00:39:15:19
Jenna
And, you know, the founder or the, you know, CEO, like, I don't know, yeah, right. And so, so sometimes it's going the opposite way. Right. But truly that that to my point is, if you're not using AI in your business right now, you need to be because your employees are going to start demanding it, particularly, as, you know, these younger generations move into the workforce.
00:39:15:19 - 00:39:38:15
Jenna
You're going to have, you know, college students coming in that aren't going to know how to do anything without AI, right? Without it, you know, in the same way that, you know, we had to adapt to computers and smartphones like they are adapted to that. Now you've got to implement it, or you're going to have a workforce that doesn't want to work for you because you're still doing things, you know, pen and paper.
00:39:38:15 - 00:39:40:17
Jenna
And we're way past that now. Yeah.
00:39:40:17 - 00:39:45:24
Michael
Well, and to be honest, they're probably already using the tools, even if you've said they shouldn't.
00:39:45:27 - 00:40:04:03
Jenna
I really absolutely. And honestly, you know, it's like I wouldn't hire an employee right now that wouldn't use AI or didn't want to. Right? Because I know the value of it. And I think if you've got somebody coming to you saying, you know, I want this job, but I'm not going to use AI, it's like.
00:40:04:06 - 00:40:13:24
Jenna
Is that really what you want, or is that just going too slow? I don't think you really want that. Yeah, yeah. And I know, I know, that's not the way everybody feels about it, but I think it's true.
00:40:13:26 - 00:40:38:21
Michael
Great. Well, really good conversation. Thanks. I appreciate you joining. Yeah. Really. You know, something that I think will help, the, the audience a lot and business leaders a lot. Before I let you go, one of the things I like to do at the end of the show is get a recommendation. Right. Somebody that you think people would find interesting to follow, maybe a thought leader, an author, podcast, or whatever you think would be relevant.
00:40:38:23 - 00:40:41:16
Michael
Just somebody that you think people should check out.
00:40:41:19 - 00:40:44:11
Jenna
Oh, that's a good one. It's a good question.
00:40:44:13 - 00:40:45:17
Michael
A question.
00:40:45:19 - 00:41:23:03
Jenna
Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, this is more platform based, but I would say, like, if you haven't started experimenting with lovable, that has so much potential, the vibe coding thing is it is becoming very mainstream. A year ago, it was kind of like you didn't want to talk about vibe coding, and now we are, and when we talk about these hyper personalized tools, you don't necessarily need to hire a developer and pay $75,000 to have an app created anymore.
00:41:23:03 - 00:41:45:26
Jenna
You can do that yourself in your own business. You know, these small no code apps. So I would say really look into some of these vibe coding tools, you know, like lovable, like cursor, and see if you can implement that in your business. And that's one that I really want people to, to pay attention to because the value is, is huge.
00:41:45:28 - 00:41:53:17
Michael
Great. No, that's a great recommendation. I've been playing around with Cloud Code a lot too, and I love that. It's really fun to do. And I'm definitely not a coder, but you know.
00:41:53:17 - 00:42:01:18
Jenna
No, no. Yeah. Cloud Code is is definitely of the cloud code is is top dog for sure.
00:42:01:20 - 00:42:07:14
Michael
Well, Jenna, thanks so much for joining. I really appreciate it. Like a lot of really good information there. So thank you.
00:42:07:16 - 00:42:11:25
Jenna
Thank you I appreciate it.
00:42:11:28 - 00:42:22:16
Jenna
And that's the show for this week. Thank you all for joining us. Remember to like, share and subscribe to the show. If you enjoy the show, please leave us some review to help others find us. For more research on AI and.
00:42:22:19 - 00:42:23:26
Michael
Other software, check.
00:42:23:26 - 00:42:29:06
Out arionresearch.com. If you're an expert in AI, generative AI, or business automation.
Either as a provider.
00:42:30:16 - 00:42:43:29
Or an end user, email your information to disambiguation at arionresearch.com. Don't forget to join us next week. Disambiguation is an Arion Research production and Michael Fauscette and this is the disambiguation podcast.