Is AI Ruining Your Analytics?

Is AI Ruining Your Analytics?

Roger: One of the things that everybody's heard in the news lately is the subject of artificial intelligence, or AI, as we all know it as. But, what a lot of small business people don't realize is how that is affecting their marketing, and the statistics and analytics they get from marketing is probably gonna be skewed because of it. 

We have a special guest today, and we're gonna touch on that subject and a lot more. So let's get started  

Announcer: You are listening to the Mastering Business Basics Podcast, where we discuss how to build a solid foundation under your small business to improve your chances of success. And now, here is your host, Roger Pearson.  

Roger: Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a special guest, Wes Towers, who's going to talk to us about some of mistakes he's made and how he helps small businesses in their marketing, and that can be quite challenging nowadays. So welcome. 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Fantastic to be here, Roger. It's an honor to speak with you directly. I listen to a number of your shows now and always saying with your guests, so well done on that.  

Roger: Thank you. Thank you. So you're in marketing for small business. I understand that you kinda specialize in the construction business. Is that correct? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: It wasn't always that way and, so niching in, I always knew the value of it. Working in marketing, you kind of understand the, various strategies and being specific is always a good idea for marketing no matter what it is. But being specific in terms of your target market, your ideal clients. 

We, as that is a generalist agency, serving anybody and everybody, But as as we often do starting out a business. You just need whatever anybody that comes your way and serve them as best you can. 

But over the course of time, realize the majority of our better clients were in were in certain fields, and so that was that was construction related, industrial brands, those sorts of things. So I thought to just really focusing on that, and it was-- it felt scary even though I knew the the concept behind it, I knew it worked, but it still felt scary to do because it feels as though your're cutting off so many opportunities, but realistically you're just amplifying the better opportunities. So, that's what, we that's what, it's been working very well. 

Roger: So, when you figured all of this out finally into the field and really specializing in this, what are the common mistakes that people make?  

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: There's lots of... Well, marketing's evolving and changing and I, I think for the better. So sometimes we try to apply old, old strategies, tricks, and, tips to uh, to produce an outcome. But a lot of those old school tricks sort of fall away and they are right now. I believe it's becoming a, a better time for time for marketers who are authentic and trustworthy and reliable and actually providing a great outcome as a business. Those things are being amplified, where upon a time you could sort of cheat your way.. Um, for example, search engine optimization. So for those that for those that don't know that was an attempt to show up on Google as highly has you possibly could. And would wanna search, you would wanna show gonna show up your for business, product or your service, and your location. So, it might be plumber, Melborne, for us for us here, Australia. 

So, it was a keyword that you want to show up for, but now we now we understand google, google, but also large language models, their language language models, they understand full context of sentences and not a lot of they always get it right, but they attempt to get right. um, and so by the tools understanding context of of language, we can we can market to that and, provide the content, in the right manner, yet we're fueling, um, the information out there online to, to hopefully have the that the brand showing the right up places. So it's i changing dynamically, but I think the, the temptation... oftentimes is you try to do these things yourself. You jump on, you maybe jump on YouTube and try and get some tutorials and, usually the strategies will be will be somewhat outdated. They might work to a degree um, but, it can lead, to horrible outcomes. More so, a waste of time, waste of time just trying to do things when, you know, it moves so fast, They move daily, so, um, you know, an getting an old YouTube tutorial may not help you. 

Roger: Not the least in YouTube is YouTube analytics is probably the most confusing thing that you could probably get into. 

And, and I doubt if most small businesses really would take the time to get into how to delve into analytics and whether the marketing they're doing is any good, you know.  

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah.  

Roger: So things that worked two years ago don't really work anymore because they've changed the analytics and how they measure things. 

And, You know, especially with people that have websites and things. They put up the website, but they don't know how people are interacting with the website and that's something that most people, I think if they're smart, they're gonna find somebody that does know how to do that and add them to their team, hire them for their business to do that. 

Or they're, they're just gonna be wasting their time and wasting their money and getting no reward for it. 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah.  

And it's becoming more challenging as well to, to get the data that was really quite helpful back in the day, simply because the privacy rules are dialing up. Obviously everyone's concerned about privacy these days, and, and rightly so. but as a marketer, some, some of that juicy information we once would be able to glean, is not necessarily available. 

The other thing too is, you know, if you were think-thinking about having your website perform, to its greatest capacity, you could previously track everything with what's of been happening so you track where you were ranking, you would track the clicks, how much how much traffic you're getting, you would track the conversion rate, or you could improve that optimization.  

So, the conversion optimization you could you could improve and. you could see that the final outcome, the return on investment. It was clear and it was linear, and it was precise. But these days, we don't even know necessarily when our brand mentioned. 

On ChatGPT, for example, because you know, there's less for reason for people to click through to your website when they're just researching a field. So we had an example of this, a month or two ago where a client, he won a really significant customer, and he said to the said to the customer, "Hey, how did you find out about us?" 

And he said, "well, and the person said, " I was just chatting to my chat GPT for a consultant, he was a consultant. A specific sort of consultant?" Um, looking, we had, we just had the conversation with chat GPT to find out who delivers on this kind of kind of consulting. And then we said, "He's the very best in Australia." And he said, and chat GPT said he was the best in Australia for various reasons. And that's due to the content that we publish on his behalf, with his content strategy to attract chat GPT with language models for Google as well. 

Um, and it's unfortunately not measurable like we once would be able to track the click because no one clicked on anything. It was just the information that was putting into the tool. He had to have a conversation to find out that valuable piece of information is, hey, is where you showed up. and this is a metric that a lot of people might miss. So people probably don't have such great visibility of where the actual customers are coming from these days. So it creates challenges, but opportunities as well. So yeah, I love data. It's unfortunate that it's not at our fingertips like it once was, you've so you've got to dig a little deeper to make meaning and sense of what information you can grasp. 

Roger: So just to change course here a little bit, -- to where you're at now, you've probably had a lot of roadblocks along the way. 

So what are... I always ask everybody this, what are the some of the mistakes that you've made to get to where you're at now? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Roger, we could be here all, all day talking about my mistakes. It just feels like, in some ways it feels like one mistake to the next, fumbling my way forward. Um, it's not really that case, but certainly the, any mistakes you do make in business and in life, they certainly are front of mind in, in your awareness, because there's such great learning, opportunities as well, which is the best way to look at it. 

But even just starting out in business, I was completely naive how to do business. didn't know how to do bookkeeping or accounts, and didn't know how to do client meetings, proposals. I didn't know anything to do with the business side of things because I'd never done it before. I had a skill set. I had a great skill set. I'd been to a couple of, couple of client meetings just to observe and some, take some notes. 

I'd never spoken in a. So all of this stuff was foreign to me. So, I made so many mistakes. In how to do-- I think I was undercharging significantly simply because I didn't know how to , how to quite charge properly Initially. 

But joining groups with other business people was probably the best think I did to learn from observation learn, make people mentors and figure out how to do basic things, even though they were in different fields and industries.  We kind of learned, not to make those mistakes again. How to do how to do proposals correctly or way, you know, even so many mistakes as the, I said, but another one was, not really sticking to my niche.

It was early on in business but I had a lead developer with me who'd been with me a number of years and, I could sense he was getting bored with the web, because there is quite a bit of repetition in it and, because we follow standard operating procedures and everything's always consistently produced in the same way each every time. So that become mundane and boring. 

Potentially that's the downside. So I could sense he was getting he was getting bored and an opportunity to do a website, which was what we not what we normally do, it's an 18 website. Really sophisticated and complex scope of works. And so i said to him, "I don't know how to do this project. I don't know how it even came across my desk," But I said, "Do you know how to do it?", and he said, “Ya sure." I said, "Well, can you do the proposal? I've got no idea."  

He did that. I presented it. We won the project, in a couple of weeks in, he quit the job anyway, and I was left with this massive job, which was meant to take months, and it did, with no one who knew how to do it in my team, so I had to figure it out. And, that was a massive lesson to not take on projects for all the wrong reasons, and the wrong reason being to try and keep a, a team member engaged in the company. It didn't work, and it caused me a lot of turmoil, but I realized stick to what we're good at, stick to our lane, be niched, be specific, and don't deviate from our path.  

Roger: That's probably one of the best advices out there. I know I'm guilty of the same thing, getting into things I said, that sounds interesting," and then finding out later on it's not. 

I've probably had 20 different occupations in the last 50 years, and it's just because, I say let's go mow some yards and start a landscaping company, And I found out that I was very good at it. I made money at it, but I hated it. 

I tried a custodial business once that I really hated because it's the first time I had to hire employees who never-- who would, just not show up in the middle of the night and, off I'd go and have to replace them.  And I said , "No, I don't want a business with employees, That's just not for me." So I think a lot of the problem in the business world is just people finding-- having to find out what they like and what they don't like, 'cause I don't think very few people do. I'm always amazed, when I meet teenagers that wanna know what they wanna do for the rest of their lives. 

That just amazes me to no end. but that's the rarity. That is the rarity nowadays.  So, I think one of the things that I teach in my books and everything is that you need to assess your skill sets. Because unless you know what your skill sets are, you're not gonna be very successful.  Because  to run a business, you have to have a lot of skill sets. you have to wear a lot of hats, and you have to know whether you can do that or not. Like in your case of developing a website, you needed a lot of hats there. And, and I think that's one of the biggest problems why we have as many business failures as we have. 

What do you think about that? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah, absolutely. I think, changing, chasing shiny objects is, is the way to look at it. So sometimes there's always a temptation to change paths and move direction, and that keeps things exciting and, um... But what I like to always think about is how do I leverage what I've done into the next thing?   So by doing so, you, know, you're, you're building on that, what you've already established, rather than starting afresh each and every and every time, because you don't wanna start at ground zero each and every time. 

I've always try to think about it in terms of, you okay, okay, what's been my experience and skill set right now, and how do I leverage that into the next thing? So for us, you know, transforming the business to a degree through into AI. Every business is evolving to some degree with the technology available to us. And certainly any desk bound work, like what like as is, is the first to be shaken up.  So, thinking about how do we leverage those tools into what to what we've already done, so we're not starting afresh. I mean I see businesses all the time that purport to be AI specialists. 

Whenever I see that, I think, what did you do before hand? Because what have to around for the last, few years because it wasn't really available to all of us until recent times. So, It's surprising how many how many AI specialists there are out there when, what were they doing beforehand? it's, somewhat concerning. Uh, soI always like to think about, okay, what have I got at my at my disposal in terms of experience, skill sets and understanding? And how does that apply to the next thing, so you're building on, some substance each and each and every time. So, it's not always stay stagnant, it's that we don't leave behind what we've already developed for the new thing, you know? 

So, and that that happens all the time, just take every aspect of business particularly marketing, what we do.  

People, if they're to, if they change their path of how they want to market too frequently, it never resonates with the audience to the same degree in which it would if just had micro adjustments and changes over the years. Yes. because, you know, you're busy marketing and you're getting your message out there, if you change the direction completely, well, people just won't connect with it. Or maybe they partially already connected with the brand, but they weren't quite ready yet, and next time experience your brand, if it's something completely different, then you've lost those opportunities. So, I think, uh, it's, uh, there's always balancing these all these things. 

Roger: Absolutely. Since you're in the business of marketing with AI, where do you think the future of that's going? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah, so the tech piece, the value in the tech piece that we've always brought, so developing and coding websites and so on, so that's massively eroding at, at... you know, you can do so much without technical know how knowledge, That's clear. And I think that's only going to become easier and easier the tech piece.  So the of piece of the puzzle that's becoming more and more important is that expert knowledge and guidance and advice, almost like a consulting coaching approach sometimes. 

Sometimes we're guiding clients, particularly those who have a marketing department, so they have resources to do a lot of the heavy lifting internally. So it's, it's consulting and and coaching them to make-- so they, so can they can make great decisions because in a world where there's a a multitude of really good opportunities and options, how do you how do you possibly find the best option of all of them, the greatest option? And what do even do when there's a suite of options today that tomorrow there's something even better? You know, so I think there's a hunger and desire for expert guidance and advice in a consultive way to help people navigate through these times so they can make the best decisions at any given time. 

A confused mind can't make a decision, and just because there's an overwhelm with AI in terms in what tools do we use, what ways do we market. So many opportunities that a confused mind will typically make no decision at all or remain stagnant and do nothing. So so that's the worst thing you can do is do nothing. You're better off making a quick decision with, that it may not even be the best solution, when there is a better solution than what you've got right now than just to just to do nothing. You may be left  behind. 

Roger: When you go into a marketing group, how do you help them? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah, so it depends on the nature of the company that we're working with, so, and the scale and size of their marketing team. Sometimes we'll start with when it's a small business, there's no marketing person, so we're doing all the heavy lifting. We're doing everything for them, the websites and everything, and their marketing message, and their content writing and, imagery, everything that they possibly need. We'll take care of it, you know, getting people involved, say they need video work, we'll get people involved. 

But for a slightly bigger company, they might have a marketing person or a team. In those instances, it's about supporting their lack of skill set. So oftentimes with those types of companies, they'll be really comfortable doing social media or really comfortable posting their own newsletters through their... once we've designed an email template, they're really comfortable using the tools to do their day-to-day. 

So it's just about supporting wherever they're at. And in those scenarios, when working with a founder it's a different scenario than when you're working with an employee, a team member. Because when you're working for an employee, typically someone responsible for marketing for us, it's about making them look awesome to their boss, So it's about supporting them to the greatest capacity we have so to relaying that information to their boss and they look awesome.  

So, that's kind of how that works but when your working directly with the founder, the boss, it's a different scenario. We're obviously trying to free up their time, so they haven't got to waste time getting in the weeds themselves because they're typically gonna be busy people with lots of responsibilities. 

It's about streamlining things to get the job done in a manner in which is taking too much time away from the founder from their day-to-day and getting the results. So different, different scenarios for different sized businesses and  I enjoy it. I love the people aspect of business, talking to people. AI worries me to some degree because we're sort of away from that human connections and relationships.  

And that's why I love podcasting and so on. Talking to actual people around the world, I that a find that a really fun experience. So I'm trying to leverage that to my best ability to grow my brand and business as well.  

I think use the your natural um, skills and talents in what you enjoy doing to the greatest capacity to grow your own personal brand. And your business brand. 

Roger: I like the way that you start with going in and analyzing what people are already doing. I know there's a lot of advertising out there. they've got, "This is the way they do it, and that's the way they do it. And if you wanna plug into their system, that's fine." Where you go out and you actually analyze and plug yourself into their system instead, which makes a whole lot more sense to me.   Because most of what I see out there is just, "Hey, this is what we've got. It's the best in the world. Plug into us, and we'll take care of it for you." But I really like your approach much better. 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Ah, thanks.  

Yeah, I suppose for the most part, because we're working with established businesses typically, and so they've already got things in place, and it would be foolish to throw away what's already working. Um, but Iif you're starting out afresh and you've got nothing, well, maybe out-of-the-box scenario would be a good choice in those circumstances. 

But typically, businesses have got some things already in place. Maybe they've already got a great email marketing list and a, a database and a platform to, to engage with those people, a CRM. Um, So it would be foolish to think that we need to reinvent the wheel in those scenarios. 

Roger: Absolutely. Absolutely. This is interesting. So if people want to get a hold of you, how can they do that? 

Wes Towers - Uplift 360: Yeah, uplift360.com.au is the business website. The AU because we're an Australian business, but we do serve clients all around the world. You'll see that even if you visit the website, you'll see global brands that we've worked with And people can book a strategy call with me directly there, big button on the page. So happy to, happy to chat through. Maybe we chat through some of the things we've touched on today or people's marketing efforts. Happy to, happy to talk. As I said, I'm a people person, so I'd love to talk to you. 

I'd like to thank Wes for coming on the show today and providing us with information on AI and the other various things that we need to think about if we're gonna run a business. So whether you're just a small single-person business or whether you have a marketing department, I invite you to have a conversation with him and see what you can learn about what's coming in the future. 

I'll put a link to his website in the show notes, and so until next time. 

Announcer: You have been listening to the Mastering Business Basics podcast with your host, Roger Pearson. For more information about all of the business education options that are available, we invite you to visit seagulltechnologies.com and continue your journey.