The Impact of AI on Agency Owners

Are marketers going to be replaced by AI? Do agencies need to embrace AI to survive and thrive? How can data optimization maximize AI results? Our guest today discusses the impact of AI on the agency world and shares his insights on how AI is outperforming marketers and the opportunities it presents for agencies. With the rise of AI, many agencies may not survive but those that adapt and embrace AI will thrive. In this episode, you'll learn more about the future of AI in the agency industry and how data will make all the difference in the results you get using AI for your agency clients.

Bryan Trilli is the owner of Optimized Marketing, an agency specializing in lead gen for franchises. He describes himself as a serial entrepreneur with businesses in five different industries, including one that trains AI to understand images and video. Bryan is a big believer in the power of AI and will discuss some tools agencies should already be using and talk about how some of these systems can get results faster than marketers would’ve dreamed of years ago.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• How AI is doing a better job than most marketers.
• AI applications for your digital agency.
• Using AI to interpret agency data.

 

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

An Accidental Agency Owner Who Got Pulled into the Agency World

More than being an accidental agency owner, Bryan recalls it as being forced into the business. Back in 2008, he owned a brick-and-mortar business and had to meet with agencies to work on advertising. However, he got the sense the agencies didn’t quite know what they were doing when it came to digital marketing. He didn’t want them to just “figure it out as it goes” and decided to handle his company’s digital marketing himself.

A few years later, he sold that business and suddenly found himself helping some friends with their digital marketing. This is where his agency journey officially began.

How is AI Doing Better than Most Marketers

Are most people aware of the many applications of AI for agencies? Sam Woods, writer of a newsletter called the Bionic Marketer, an incredible AI resource, developed software that can build an entire marketing campaign with just a few prompts. Unfortunately, this tool is not available to the public but it may give you an idea of what you should all be doing with AI. It provides copy, landing pages, ads, and more, all ready to use. It may sound too good to be true and it gets better. Sam has been using this tool for years for a bunch of companies and assures that it beats the control in 100% of cases. Even at 70% it would be amazing, but 100% is truly mindblowing, considering it’s just ten minutes of work.

Developments like this cause a lot of talk and spread fears that AI is here to replace us all. In truth, we’re not at a point where AI will replace you, but people who know how to use AI will. How can agency owners get ahead of this? For Bryan, as long as you’re staying informed and know what’s coming, you’ll stay ahead of the people not paying attention.

AI Applications You Should Be Using Right Now

One of the most widely known AI tools is ChatGPT. With ChatGPT, you can significantly enhance email and marketing copy by providing specific advice based on data. Effective use of AI for marketing campaigns will require a specific target audience in mind when developing email or marketing copy, rather than relying solely on average data. By inputting the data into ChatGPT and asking targeted questions, the tool can provide valuable insights and recommendations for improving the copy.

There are so many pieces that can be automated with AI. Some tools can transcribe videos and meetings, enabling easy reference and information searching. You can also use AI to convert spoken content into text. The transcriptions can then be fed into the tool, which can efficiently search and summarize the information. This can ensure efficient retrieval of information whenever needed. These transcripts and search capabilities have wide-ranging applications across all aspects of a business.

How Marketers Have Gotten Better in Their Use of AI

Until a few months ago, most people were using AI as an idea generator. Little by little, people have been getting better at using AI and training it to best serve their interests. To get the best input out of a tool like ChatGPT, you’ll need to ask clear and specific questions. By providing context about the data and its purpose, such as for an email campaign, the tool can effectively enhance the copy. Additionally, you can establish a direct connection and feed with ChatGPT to automate the feedback process and continuously update the copy based on new data.

When it comes to internal use, Bryan and his team fed their internal data on standard operating procedures into an AI tool. With this, they can ask questions like “What’s the value we assign to a call?" And it will go through all that data to find the answer. This is just an example of how using AI can be much more efficient for an agency than going through all their data to find an answer. Overall, it goes beyond helping you create better ads, every aspect of your business could be improved by the use of AI.

Staying Ahead of the Curve by Using AI to Interpret Agency Data

As much as you can, stay aware of the world of AI and how it is continually changing. Becoming an average AI user will help you be aware of the things that no longer work. Bryan recommends seeing it as a continuous thought experiment. He is currently looking at the type of data agencies keep based on the questions they ask in each client meeting and how that data could be used to create an interface that can interpret the data. It's all about how you're using all this data you have from each client. How can it help you improve your ads and targeting? Can it also help you give more detailed reports? Clients don't only want to know about the number of leads generated and the cost per lead. They want to know what to do with that information. How does it compare with last year's data? With last month's data? If Facebook is working better, what parts of the Facebook ads are working better?

Ultimately, Bryan believes that agencies that use AI to its full potential will develop their own tech stack. Essentially, don't only use off-the-shelf stuff. Connect all these AIs in a way that's unique to your agency and feed it first-party data. Your data is a huge asset and if you're asking the right questions it'll be very specific to your business. Understanding how to use this value will make all the difference in the type of output you'll get from AI.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.