Traditional Online Marketing vs AI

Traditional Marketing vs AI

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 to the show. I have a special guest today by the name of Jeremy Yang. He's the founder of Digital Global Goliath Marketing, and he's currently the most recommended paid ad specialist in Sydney, Australia. And he's worked about 17,000 hours for his clients now, so I think he's learned a thing or two by that point. And he's generally interested in helping people. That's kinda like where I come from. I'm more interested in helping people than the money I make doing it. Although the money's nice, but I get more satisfaction out of seeing somebody else successful more than me, I think that's kind of a rarity nowadays, so I congratulate you on that. 

Jeremy Yang: Thank you. Thank you, Roger 

Roger: Now, the type of marketing that you do, I understand, is online marketing. And why did you decide to go to online marketing? 

Jeremy Yang: I decided to go online marketing. So first of all, great to be on the show, Roger. Thanks for having me here. I decided to be online marketing 'cause I was too impatient for all the other channels, to watch the other channels slowly succeed. And I think that me coming from small business for 12 years, and I was, you know, going through the whole thing about career change and getting into the game of marketing. 

I think when I was watching how slow marketing was for other businesses, I was like, imagine I was in that business, it's gonna take too long. My business is gonna die by the time this thing works. So I was kept on going to my boss at the time, I said, "What's... You know, this can't be the only way." And he sensed how impatient I was, and he said, "Jeremy, you know what you should do? You should go into media buying." I didn't know what media buying was at the time, but it's actually media buying is just managing ad spend. So online ads. He said, "That's the only place that's gonna-- you're gonna get instant results." And I-- that's what I went into, and I've been, in love with ever since.

Roger: You know, and I've tried that. The Google ads and,

Jeremy Yang: yeah. 

Roger: you've got facebook ads and all of that. 

Jeremy Yang: That's exactly what I do, yeah, yeah 

Roger: And I wasn't very successful, but then I probably didn't know what I was doing either. I didn't know how to track things and all the things that you probably do. So if somebody were to come to you and say, "Okay, I wanna do digital advertising," how would you start out that conversation with them? 

Jeremy Yang: You start by looking at the, at the current business and to see whether they have something that can be broadcasted or not. Because I know that I've watched a few of your episodes already, and I kind of watched your solo episodes as well, talking about your history coming up with the, restaurants and hospitality turnaround game and all that. 

I think if you came to me then to talk about a restaurant, yes, definitely. It's suitable for online advertising. But if you were to come and tell me about the, like, say, the accountant stuff, right? Super difficult to win with online advertising because of who it's marketed to, right? So one of them is B2B, one of them B2C, right? 

One of them is impulse buy, so females, et cetera, right? Much easier to sell to. One of them takes longer sales cycle consideration. So maybe if we do your accounting business for the first few months, you know, you get these nibbles, you get these conversations, but they don't seem to go anywhere. 

Eventually, like nine months later, because they're considering, they're watching your ecosystem, eventually they convert. Whereas getting people into restaurant, super easy with online advertising. Does that make sense? So there's certain factors that I would look for and ask before I decide if online advertising is the right channel for them 

Roger: Right. I can understand why restaurants would be. I mean, that's instant gratification type stuff. 

Jeremy Yang: Exactly right. Yeah. 

Roger: You don't have to think too hard, you just have to say, "What am I hungry for?" 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: So that's great. You were talking about ecosystem, and you have to get them into your ecosystem, and it's my understanding that still email is probably one of the best And you know, a lot of people thought, when the internet came out and everything that it was the end of email, and it's actually turned out, I think, like the entire opposite of that. Email is now more important than ever. 

Jeremy Yang: Personal? Yeah. Yeah. 

Roger: You gotta have your email list. That's a difference. So how do you take that, and you take your online marketing, and you have to merge the two, because I assume you take your online marketing to help create your email list, 

Jeremy Yang: Yep, that's one way.

Roger: That's probably one of the major things that you look at when you do ad buys for people. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, sure. Definitely. I can definitely speak on that. So what we're talking about here is having a second bite of the apple, right? So just say again, with your, with your accounting business, for example, what you might offer them as a, like a opening little, you know, freebie or kind of like a product, like a $1 product or whatever, is to-- so you can capture the email list. 

So you have a way of-- So someone will purchase from you, they're very likely to purchase from you again, right? So the email list is gonna give you a free way to stay in touch with them, whereas the advertising, it's pay to play, so you're always gonna pay to play. So with something like a, a restaurant or food or eatery, it's not as important to, to be in touch with them 'cause there's, the loyalty is a lot lower. 

Whereas for accounting business, for a B2B business, you have to continue building up the trust. So how do you do that? You have to increase your touch points, as they call it. So as you know, what you do with the email is you do your weekly emails, let people know what you're up to, like you released a podcast, who you interviewed. 

Um, you let them know your case studies. So people whose, the big accounts that you've won, the way you finished, you might add a bit of value to their accounting. Say, "Look, this is some, a law that's about to pass, so you should probably be careful of that." So you have these pillars, so they continue hearing from you on different occasions. 

Eventually, when it's time to switch, the trust is already built there. So that's, that's, uh, quite, quite valuable. Definitely quite valuable. Yeah. 

Roger: It's just a matter of getting them to make that first touch with you, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: That would probably be the hardest thing. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: And you have to do some advertising to get to that point also. It can't all be referrals. You just can't grow on just referrals. I mean, referrals are great. They're the greatest in the world. 

Jeremy Yang: The best. The best. Yeah. Yeah 

Roger: And I suppose that, part of an advertising, overall advertising plan would probably include the referral part of it too, wouldn't it? 

Jeremy Yang: Wait, could you clarify that? So I'm listening, yeah, yeah 

Roger: Well, I don't know quite how to say that, but how do you use marketing to create referral business? 

Jeremy Yang: Oh, okay. I understand what you're saying. So it's, it's reinforcement. You can use that as well as reinforcement. So just say like different size of businesses will use, online advertising for different purposes. Let's just say a small business doing between, say, $300,000 in revenue to $2 million in revenue, right? 

So their marketing or their marketing budget can be whatever, but the advertising portion of it will be tied to results. You're gonna have to produce ROI for your call, for your, you know, your meetings, your boss meetings, your marketing team meetings. That has to come. So just say you're an insurance company, right? 

So a lot of times the, advertising is to even... There's a portion of advertising money spent on reinforcing the existing people who's already signed up that they're with the right company. So that's a different play. So there'll be-- they might talk about the goodness they do in the world. They might talk about how, you know, you, you're on the right boat basically. 

So there's a bit of that as well. 

Roger: So Having worked for many years in this sphere, what would you say the biggest mistakes are that you've seen? 

Jeremy Yang: The biggest mistake is that advertising often reveals bigger problems in the business. So what happens is that people usually can't sell, right? They think they can sell because they have referrals all the time. Because referrals come with a credit card out, so you can do anything, and you pretty much have the deal. 

But if somebody came through a cold channel like advertising, right, a billboard or whatever, just like... I'm just trying to think beyond my own niche of online advertising. Just, just a cold lead, okay? Very skeptical people. So it takes more trust building through the core. It's gotta give more signals. So people lack sales skills, and advertising is not gonna help that because we're gonna bring the lead to your door. 

It's still the person has to, or the owner or the business has to close that deal. So that's one thing. That's first thing I would say. That's, uh, one of the bigger things there are. Other thing is capacity to deliver. People, I think they, overestimate their capacity to deliver. 

So when it's a small business and they get into the game of advertising, they realize very quickly, even in e-commerce or in, you know, in services, they get overwhelmed very easily. They run out of staff. Their pipeline breaks down. So their supplier, like they, they run out of stock too quickly. It's... 

There's a part of business that they didn't think they have a problem. Advertising amplifies and accelerates everything. 

Roger: It shows your weak spots real fast. 

Jeremy Yang: Shows your weak spots very fast. And the thing is, it takes all the delusional stuff out of it. So you might be with your business partner thinking, "Oh, you know, when we get to this number, you know, we'll do this, we'll do that." 

If you put some money in advertising, you can get to that spot tomorrow. You don't have to wait for nine months. We'll get you there now, right? We'll get you the hundred leads or whatever it is now, okay? You don't have to, you know, build towards or anything like that. We'll accelerate it now. It costs money, obviously. 

You're gonna have to, you know, get some funds ready. But that pipe dream, you can just wipe it out. You can get there right now. If it happens tomorrow, is your business ready to handle it? I mean, that's very powerful. But it's also, there's no crutch to lean on if that makes sense. 

Like, you don't, you're not having ongoing conversations about, "Oh, you know, that's all right. After Christmas, you know, we've got this thing coming," or whatever. Don't worry about all that. Now, tomorrow, what we're gonna do? So that kind- that's very powerful, and it's also very scary, I think, because, you know, 'cause it- it's make or break time. 

You know? With some money spent on advertising, you can pull everything forward, which is quite, which is quite scary, I think. But yeah.

Roger: It is in some respects. I remember back when I was, uh... I spent a decade in the restaurant business, and I take over this, it's a fast food place, Mexican fast food place. I decided to do something crazy. I went on a radio show and did a radio advertising. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, nice 

Roger: And for the next week, I was amazed. I mean, I wasn't prepared for it because it drummed up so mu- And so many people listened to that, 'cause it was a, a smaller town in the Midwest, and, decided to try it out because of that. 

I was totally not prepared for that. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: it just, it went crazy. So that's the things you have to take into consideration. I learned real fast, so I can understand somewhere what you're talking about there. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, for sure I think there is other, -- So I think there are other mistakes, around that. I think that one of it is that they don't really have an offer to give to the cold audience, right? So they're just a for example, like accounting firm, and you might go, "All right, so that's just what I do. 

I do accounting. I help business restructure or whatever." But that, it does, it's too big of a commitment for advertising. You can't advertise, say, "Come and we'll restructure your business." Doesn't make sense. So you have to give them some- a smaller, something smaller for people to get used to talking to you or working with you on a small level, and that is really difficult to come up with something unique. 

So that's a difficult part too, because you feel like you are, you know, you... "I'm unique. I'm me. I'm here. I'm unique. What I do is unique." Well, not really, 'cause everybody's trying to attack the same way .

Roger: Oh, that's true. There's, so you've competition 

Jeremy Yang: Big time. Yeah. 

Roger: no matter what field you're in, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: even if you're a nuclear physicist, I'm sure 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: you have competition. Uh, and I can certainly understand that, and how do you stand out from the crowd? 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Yeah 

Roger: yeah, but that's interesting. 

Jeremy Yang: And based on your 50 years of business as well, you've had like the landscaping stuff, the, you know, all of that stuff. So each interior decorator, I think, what was... Interior designer, was it? 

Roger: Oh yeah, I've, I've tried all kinds of things. I found out,  I spent most of my life figuring out what I don't like to do. 

Jeremy Yang: So you have seen all types of, the different markets and the type of different levels of competition too. Some are more cutthroat than others, et cetera. Yeah. For sure. 

Roger: When you get into, and I think one of the things that, small businesses have to look at when they get into is the math underneath the advertising, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, big time. 

Roger: And that's something you help them with, isn't it? 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, I, I help them a lot with the math behind the, um... I have built a few calculators because I think most, most people they treat their service like it's mysterious. It's like, you know that TV show, the Mad Men days, where people in suits, long lunches, you kind of come to one idea or one breakthrough kind of, uh, a line, a slogan or angle that breaks through everything and just gonna make or will break, uh, a make or break, which is not true. 

Behind online advertising, especially online advertising, there's a lot of ongoing testing involved. So you're always trying to work towards a cost per lead or cost per sale that makes sense for the business. So for something that's recurring, maybe like just say, makeup or, nutrition products, you're probably going to the red for that first sale just so that the recurring will make up for it, if that makes sense. 

So whereas a one-off thing like landscaping or fencing, well, some of that is ongoing, but you're gonna have to be very careful of your margins, and you can reverse engineer the math to work out, how much you can actually pay for a click or for an impression or a view, something like that. 

Roger: You can fit that type of business into a P&L a lot easier. Big time. Especially, the trades versus the digital. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: Totally, totally different worlds. It absolutely is.

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Big time. But I think that, you know, if we take the mystery side out, out of it and just look at the, the math you can very easily tell before they even spend money on advertising, you can help 'em decide whether advertising is the right channel for them. Because if they've been getting referrals all the time, they're expecting to pay very little for a lead. 

It makes no sense. But the chasm between free referral lead and a paid from advertising, it's, it's night and day. Sometimes, you know, well, a lot of times if they've never done advertising before, like their jaws drop on the floor when they look at the math behind it. 

Roger: I looked at the math on online advertising and it just, it was, it was a chain. I mean, it was just, ROI just wasn't there. I said that, "No, that's not for me."

Jeremy Yang: Very, difficult. 

Roger: I couldn't justify it. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: So I've been there. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Yeah, very difficult. Yeah. 

Roger: One of the things that I've been getting into lately, I've been getting into using AI, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, yeah 

Roger: And I just redid all of my websites and I built tax calculators and all kinds of fun stuff for my clients. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: How is that playing out in the advertising game? 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, change, changed advertising a lot. So we are already on the forefront of these technology stuff, right? And the thing with advertising is I have a degree in marketing from university, but you don't need one, which is really strange 'cause imagine you can put on a lab coat and call yourself a doctor tomorrow, right? 

You can't. But in advertising you can. You kind of watch some YouTube tutorials and so the, the market's flooded with people already. So everybody has to come up with a new shiny object to stand out, right? And there's-- it's a shameless industry. You can just make up acronym and can do whatever you want. 

So that was already difficult to stand out. So with the power of AI, everybody, can kind of pretend to know what they're talking about. They kind of wing it a little bit more, and there's no qualifications. There's, there's no, you know, barrier to stop that. So, what ends up happening is a lot of the reputation is difficult to build. 

It's difficult to stand out. So that's what AI has, has done for the industry. I would say based on task-wise, uh, AI's really good at analyzing stuff. So a lot of the groundwork has been taken out, which is a positive because you don't wanna be stuck doing the groundwork. 

Roger: I did in a week's time what usually when it's, when doing a website in a week's time what it would normally take me three months.

Jeremy Yang: Big time. 

Roger: Five years ago, it would've taken me three months to do. I know I did it five years ago. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: it's just, it was fascinating sitting there and watching it. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: I haven't got into trying using it for any kind of marketing program or anything like that yet, and I'm not quite sure what direction I would even go in before I, got into that. I'm sure that eventually all of these big companies and everything and small companies are gonna have to do it also to keep up and learn how to use it.   The most important thing I think I learned in the last couple of months doing this is that you have to train them. 

Jeremy Yang: Big time. 

Roger: And most people, you know, when they think of AI, and this was me before that,  Is just simply alexa or Siri or whatever and what's the weather gonna be tomorrow.  I hadn't really gotten any… You know it's just like talking encyclopedia or whatever the case may be. 

Jeremy Yang: I'll, say this though as well, like, 'cause I, I talk to people who's been using it a long time, and there's a lot of creative ways people are coming up with their own apps to help small businesses. I tell you that it, it'll get you to... it has raised the bar of average, and I'm taking a quote from someone. 

It's raised the bar of average and it's, it can help you get to average very fast. That's what it's gonna say. If you were doing below average job about your social media marketing and your emails, like me, I'm not a great writer. I've never been a great writer. I know what I wanna say, but AI has completely turned that on its head. 

So now AI's gonna help me at least get to average in my writing, right? So if you've never had social media advertising or, so if you've never had social media management, social media advertising, you don't even post that much, AI is gonna give you the pillars and ideas at least to get started, right? 

So that's gonna, that's gonna help you. At least you look professional now, you know? Like, I'm not saying you, I'm just saying as an example, at least you, you're somewhere. You're doing something. You're doing something weekly. Now, then you should soon realize that all your peers are doing the exact same thing. 

But at least you guys kind of a high tide rise all boats, right? Now you gotta work out, okay, so now I'm gonna spend the 80% more time to work out what the last 20 is. Like the 80/20 rule. Like, now I have to go above them. Yeah. 

Roger: Right 

Jeremy Yang: Which AI probably can't help right now. Yeah 

Roger: I got this weird letter in the mail saying that, Hey I'll use ChatGPT to go out and analyze your website to see how I can make it better. And I said Well I've been spending the last month with Chat GPT and it went off and it went and analyzed the entire marketplace So it says..

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: And I said No that's not the marketplace I want to go to anymore 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: And I explained where I was taking the vision 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Nice. 

Roger: of the company 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: and it said Oh well that's totally different 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: and it took me on a different trail and the website I just finished we went on a totally different trail and changed a lot of the text in there  

Jeremy Yang: yep 

Roger: to make it consistent throughout 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: had made new pages and new workflows. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: It was am it's amazing. So 

Jeremy Yang: It's brilliant. 

Roger: it really helps you. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: I think that's gonna happen in the marketing part of it too 

Jeremy Yang: Oh, big time. 

Roger: I don't think most people would know how to approach that or how to program the AI with the way they want it to do it.  But I'm sure those type of programs.. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: I saw them starting to be advertised now. 

Jeremy Yang: Oh, so many. Yeah. And the more you click on them, the more they're gonna-- you're gonna keep seeing different ones. So yeah. So be careful which ones you click 'cause algorithm knows. Yeah. 

Roger: You really do. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: To know whether it's good or not you have to have some experience of having used it before in a different capacity maybe. 

Jeremy Yang: I think it's overwhelming. Uh, but I'll tell you, that what I'm noticing on the ground, a lot of people with very good hearts as well, they want to come and help people like that to improve. I don't know if it's gonna work. There's too many. It's imbalanced right now, I think, and I don't think there's money in it, but that's just my hot take. 

Roger: No I mean AI like anything else is just a tool. You know it's not gonna make you money. It could help you not lose money. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah could do that. I'm just saying like there's a lot of AI consultants on the ground trying to help other businesses adopt AI. 

Roger: Right 

Jeremy Yang: There's so many of them. There's like so many. Like every day I run into so many of them. I Like the business themselves, there's no... There's like... the things you're describing, like people like to figure out themselves, you know? They don't want, you know, somebody coming in, you know, go, "Oh, just use this, use that, and it's all gonna be solved." They like to explore and try to learn a few things themselves. So I think it's lopsided in the demand and supply. 

That's just my hot take in, in people wanting to do it. Yeah. 

Roger: I love the learning part of it 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: I love teaching 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: and help other people succeed I've been doing taxes for a quarter century now and the amount of money I've seen people lose just from not having the knowledge. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah 

Roger: So my mission is to to help stop that and educate people. But it's not easy. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Yeah 

Roger: I suppose you run into that also where you've got clients and they just sometimes don't wanna listen 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, it's just, uh, like there's too much information out there. So sometimes, you know, something they, they're getting impatient with something and they kind of wanna chop and change very quickly. You probably get that same too with-- 'cause there's information everywhere. 'Cause they probably, you know, type whatever your recommendation is into their ChatGPT and say, you know, "Tell me the things that Roger is, uh, didn't get right here," you know? 

Which is, which is frustrating. Um, but yeah, that's, that's part of the game now, I guess. Yeah.  

Roger: So if you did wanna get into the internet advertising, the paid advertising, where should people start with that do you think? 

Jeremy Yang: People should make sure that-- People should start with building a war chest and building a runway. Let's say they build, say save about three thousand dollars a month, right? So just save it. Don't do anything yet. Just save it, and save it to about eighteen, twenty thousand as a fund, right? And then work out a unique angle that you're gonna go to market with because it's gotta give that little bit of a intrigue wow factor. 

So first build up your war chest, and then when you're building up your war chest, have a really good think about, like, how I'm gonna go to market. What's gonna be so special about what I do? And you're gonna have to be a little bit more drastic than you would, because if something like lukewarm, it's not gonna get the attention 'cause you gotta get the attention. 

So don't do anything right now because Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber Monday's coming up, and then the whole Christmas break's coming up. So you're not gonna get the consistency that you're looking for, right? So, so think about it now, but start about February if they're gonna start. And then try to measure the things that matter. 

So you gotta set up the tracking correctly. If anything that I keep seeing people doing wrong, is that they don't set up the tracking correctly. So they gotta be able to track the results as best as they could. They can't track hundred percent everything because privacy laws and, you know, cookies, blockers and everything. 

But they have to have enough, like, enough data that comes in. So even if your marketing fails this ti- like advertising efforts fail this time around, you still have the data to learn. "Okay, I tried this and it didn't work. So next time I'm gonna..." You know, there'll be certain spots of your big campaign that worked. 

So you just have to go take that and amplify that again. That's what I would say to people who's thinking about it. 

Roger: Other than the things that we've covered today, I always like to ask people, is there anything else you think the audience should know about your field? 

Jeremy Yang: Now I think get the math right. I think I built a few calculators. They, they-- It's not gated. They don't need an email or anything. They can just go to the website and try it out. So there's instructions there for them, and I made a video. Yeah, they can, they can work out, you know, how if, if they ever wanted to go into advertising, what that would look like, how much it would cost, and what would be the cost per sale or cost per lead look like. 

I really wanted to get to that before people engage with anything. 

Roger: Well, that makes sense, you know?  

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. No surprises later 

Roger: You get the people that say "$20,000? That's insane. I don't have $20,000." And then, and, um, So you have kind of a gateway there, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, for sure. I have to make one. Yeah. 

Roger: You have one, otherwise everybody just wants something for nothing, 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. 

Roger: And that's the way it is in this world. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah. So, so there's a, there's a gateway there, and they can play around with it to work out, you know, whether they, they can self-qualify kind of thing. Yeah. 

Roger: And what is your website? 

Jeremy Yang: Digital Goliath. So D-I-G-I-T-A-L G-O-L-I-A-T-H, digitalgoliath.com.au. So I'm in Australia, 80% of my clients in Australia, 20% is in US and, you know, around the world. Yeah 

Roger: Okay, awesome. 

Jeremy Yang: Nice 

Roger: if people want a, education in digital marketing, that's a good place to start then. 

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, for sure 

Roger: Because if you're a small businessman, the more education you have about all aspects of your business, the more chances of success you have, and this is definitely one you have to have nowadays in the digital age we live in. Absolutely. Well, I thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Jeremy Yang: Thank you for having me, Roger. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great 

Roger: I really enjoyed the conversation, and good luck with all your endeavors in the future. 

Jeremy Yang: Thank you. 

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