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Digital Marketing, AI and SEO
129 Plays1 year ago
" Instead of being afraid of technology, embrace it and figure out a way to use it to accelerate what you are doing "
Brett Lane is a digital marketing expert with many years of experience in digital marketing. He has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, helping them achieve their digital marketing goals and grow their online presence.
In this interview, he discusses his journey in the digital marketing world and shares insights in the latest trends and developments.
Enjoy this conversation and don't forget to like and subscribe.
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Transcript
Embracing Technology for Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
Instead of being afraid of technology, embrace it and figure out a way to use it in a way that accelerates what you're doing. Because there's gonna be a lot of people in a lot of industries that are gonna fall by the wayside because they think that technology is going to take over what they're doing. I tell them, there has to be somebody who feeds the machine with what it needs. So you might as well be that person to create larger economies of scale with your
00:00:25
Speaker
with this technology and your skill set. So do not be afraid of technology. Use it in a way that's going to further every aspect of your life.
Introduction to Entrepreneur Speaks Podcast
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast, where I sit down with successful entrepreneurs and hear their stories from their biggest failures to their greatest successes. You get a behind the scenes look at what it really takes to make it as an entrepreneur. So come along for the ride and let's explore the entrepreneurial journey together.
Meet Brett Lane: Digital Marketing Expert
00:00:57
Speaker
My guest, Brett Lane, is a digital marketing expert with years of experience in the industry. He has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, helping them achieve their digital marketing goals and grow their online presence. In this interview, we'll be discussing his journey in the digital marketing world and his insights into the latest trends and developments.
Brett Lane's Journey in Digital Marketing
00:01:23
Speaker
And of course, he will offer pieces of advice to those looking to improve their digital marketing efforts. So whether you're a business owner, marketer, or just someone interested in the world of digital marketing, you wouldn't want to miss this episode. Let's welcome our guests and get started. Welcome to my show, Brett. Thank you very much for having me.
00:01:47
Speaker
Let's start off our conversation with your name, Dr. Digital. Why that name? So the reason I go with Dr. Digital is I've been in this digital marketing space for 20 years now. And this last February, I was able to get my doctorate in digital marketing where I got to study for the last year, different components of marketing campaigns as it relates to SEO, social media.
00:02:12
Speaker
pay-per-click marketing, email marketing, video marketing, anything that you can think of in terms of digital marketing as a whole. I spent a whole year figuring out how to take all those components and put them all together. So I was able to get my doctorate in February of this year, so that's why people would call me Dr. Digital.
00:02:31
Speaker
Alright, so congratulations on the doctorate.
From Rental Cars to Digital Marketing Agencies
00:02:34
Speaker
Thank you very much. Alright, so let's get to know you some more. Can you share your background and how you got into digital marketing? Absolutely. I got into this industry almost over two decades ago, and I was working for a rental car industry.
00:02:50
Speaker
And i was in their manager training program i wanted to do something different with my career i was looking at different opportunities for marketing and then at that time i had started doing more as it relates to search engines i figured there was an opportunity there from a consultant standpoint.
00:03:07
Speaker
So I started consulting with smaller businesses and doing a lot of testing. This was prior to, you know, before Google was really a big thing when there were meta search engines and so forth. So I continued to do a lot of testing on websites and it intrigued me just learning how to make small changes on websites to be able to get them to rank better within these different search engines.
00:03:28
Speaker
I told my wife that I wanted to look into this opportunity and make some money. She asked me, how are you going to make money doing that? I said, any industry, there's plenty of opportunity to make money. You just got to go figure out how you're going to differentiate yourself in that industry. For me, I love learning and solving puzzles and having answers to different problems.
00:03:50
Speaker
I started studying heavily in looking at different algorithms and at the time my wife was actually working for a bank in San Antonio and she had been robbed while at that bank and it was creating a lot of tension with her going to work. So I really needed to find something different that I could do that would enable me to push my career. So that was the, I would say that was the seed I was planted at the very beginning of my career to get me into
00:04:17
Speaker
digital marketing and since then I've had the opportunity of working as a consultant then working for three major agencies that offered a variety of digital marketing services to then starting my own agency and being able to offer out different services to my customers. It's been a really cool but crazy journey to say the least. Okay, we'll get to hear a lot more about your journey and what indeed are the lessons you've picked up along the line.
00:04:45
Speaker
What are the current trends and challenges in this digital landscape?
The Impact of AI on Digital Marketing
00:04:49
Speaker
I think some of the biggest trends are automation and being able to rapidly do things that would have taken much longer in the past. We're going to be talking about AI here shortly, but I think some of the biggest changes are just being able to take things that used to take you a long time and get them done very quickly. One really quick example of that
00:05:10
Speaker
Just two days ago I was working on a project I was using artificial intelligence to optimize title tags and description tags on a website.
00:05:17
Speaker
And in the past, I had to do this all by hand, so I was working on a project for Nationwide Insurance, and I optimized 400 pages of their site, title tags, description tags. That took me a month to do that, working on that by myself. Crazy thing is, two days ago, when I was working on this other project, I was able to optimize 500 title tags and description tags and get through the first round of content creation in under four hours.
00:05:46
Speaker
So it's still gonna take, I'd say another three, maybe another five or six hours to get the content perfected. But me putting all that time would be less than two days worth of work versus looking at doing something in an entire month. So in terms of being able to get a lot more stuff done with greater efficiency and with less errors, that's where I think technology is going now with all these changes with AI.
00:06:11
Speaker
Very, very interesting. It's making things more easier and more efficient. Wow. So how do you approach creating a digital marketing strategy for a client or brand? So what I do is I have my team and myself look at the brand itself, look at the different kinds of marketing activities that they're conducting. We look for their footprint online to see how big it is.
00:06:34
Speaker
We look at what their goals are what they want to achieve by doing any form of marketing is it to get more traffic to a site to get more brand awareness to get more leads to get more conversions to get more sales and then look at what are their key performance indicators for success and then once we have all this information we're able to create a plan and say hey.
00:06:53
Speaker
What makes the most sense for your particular brand in terms of digital marketing? Is it more of a marathon approach and you're looking at getting traction over online from something like Google? Is it an immediate response where you're looking at advertising platforms within social media or within Google?
00:07:11
Speaker
and then basically being able to tailor whatever their specific needs are and whatever their goals are with the type of marketing that makes the most sense for them because I wouldn't tell a client that's looking for immediate gains to do SEO. I would tell them that they need to use some form of paid advertising with Google, with Facebook, with YouTube, with Twitter, TikTok, all the different platforms that best fit
00:07:32
Speaker
their particular target market. So everything is customized. We need to be able to have that phone call to figure out what the client's needs are, what platform is going to best meet those needs based on where their consumers are. And then at that point, we're able to custom tailor that plan to fit and supersede those needs of that customer. Very impressive.
Success Stories and Challenges in Marketing
00:07:53
Speaker
So you've been on this journey for 20 years, and I'm sure you've had a lot of success stories. You've built a lot of case studies along that line. Can you share some of these success stories and case studies from your experience in the guitar market with us? Absolutely. So back in the day, I had an opportunity of working with Four Seasons Hotel, some resorts. And this was before social media was gaining any kind of popularity. This is when Twitter was brand new.
00:08:22
Speaker
And with that campaign, I was able to work with their team and create a social media strategy that would be more geared towards the brand as a whole, but then also geared towards the 80 locations that they had worldwide. So it was very interesting being able to create a strategy that would teach a brand how to speak as a whole within social media, and then also be able to have micro speak, if you will, to where
00:08:49
Speaker
Each individual location, we were able to train those locations on how they could speak and how they could meet the needs of their customers. It was one of my favorite projects to work on just because social media was at its infancy. It was interesting seeing consumers integrate when they were communicating with Four Seasons, particularly within Twitter to see how quickly Four Seasons was responding to that particular brand.
00:09:14
Speaker
That was a fun project in terms of helping them gain more exposure via social media and it's funny too because there's opportunities where you work with brands and sometimes they take your advice and sometimes they see great successes but then there's other opportunities like me when I had the opportunity of working with Build-A-Bear workshops.
00:09:35
Speaker
I spent a number of months working on their campaign from an SEO standpoint. And in different companies, you have different challenges that exist in terms of bureaucracies between departments. And the reason I point that out is Build-A-Bear Workshops was a good company to work with at the agency that I worked with them. But it was challenging because I spent a lot of time with my team getting a lot of deliverables set up for them.
00:10:00
Speaker
And it was very hard for them to enable those types of recommendations to be taken in and implemented on their website.
00:10:07
Speaker
And the funny thing is I was able to, my team and I found one small change that they needed to make to the way their website was communicating, specifically with Google, through what's called a meta robots tag. And when we had them make that one change, their traffic for the site increased by over 15% in less than 60 days. And that was just by one change. Unfortunately, they didn't take all the other recommendations that we had given them.
00:10:36
Speaker
The reason I point that out is I think their website would have seen much more success at that time if they would have listened, but the unfortunate thing that you deal with from a digital marketing standpoint with other bigger brands is that sometimes they can do the things that you're requesting and sometimes they can. Sometimes they don't even give you a reason as to why they don't do that. Those are both good examples of projects that were fun to work on.
00:11:03
Speaker
And I have tons of other projects just like that where I've had the opportunity, you know, whether it be looking at from a link building standpoint or being able to work with SEO. With link building, it was interesting when Progressive created what they call their eDrive program. You know, I was able to work with their team in Ohio to be able to help them build out backlinks to their websites. It was a fun project and it enabled me to see
00:11:33
Speaker
Just how many links and at what rate you can grow a client's backlink portfolio in a very quick time Just depending on the size of the client and since you know progressive is a massive brand We were able to do some really insane things in a short period of time So those are just three examples of some big brands that I had a tremendous amount of fun working with as a when I was with a couple different agencies in Ohio Okay So like I mentioned earlier you've been on this journey for a very long time and
00:12:01
Speaker
And like any other journey, I'm sure you've gathered a lot of experience.
The Power of Persistence in Achieving Success
00:12:06
Speaker
You've picked up a lot of lessons. Can you share some of the lessons you've picked up on this journey with us? The key thing is, once you figure out what you want to do, then it's almost like the next struggle becomes getting to the point where you want to go.
00:12:23
Speaker
And there's a lot of different kinds of challenges that are going to be presented. Could be for getting clients, what marketing tactics to utilize, keeping your eye on the ball. There's a lot of things that you're going to be able to deal with that are going to be struggles. And then most of the time people are afraid of failure. Then you get to a point where after a number of years of
00:12:45
Speaker
doing the right kinds of marketing, getting the right kinds of exposure, background, things of that nature, then you start having this fear that starts to take over of success. Because now you're thinking, I'm already successful, but can I get to the next level of success and then am I going to be afraid of losing everything that's taken me years to build?
00:13:05
Speaker
So the biggest lesson that I've learned is to constantly just remain persistent in your pursuit for success and to achieve the goals that you want to achieve. You have to continue to push, push, push because there are going to be tons of time where you feel like there's this failure that could be there or you could lose it all and it's easy to let those negative thoughts get into your brain. I mean, here I am now doing this 20 years and I'm now looking at, okay,
00:13:34
Speaker
I've done a lot of different things in the space. What do I want to do now that's so different and that's why I'm starting to do a lot more podcast and video interviews because I want to be able to tell people in my space whether it's with digital marketing or with health or business or entrepreneurship that there's a lot of things that you're going to need to push through from from a success standpoint and to not let yourself stop
00:13:58
Speaker
before you're about to succeed. So I would say the biggest lesson that I've learned is the idea that the best things in your life are going to happen and they're going to happen just before you allow yourself to stop pushing and dreaming. So a lot of people will push to that 80% mark or 90% mark and then they'll stop because they think failure is imminent. But the unfortunate thing is if they push past that 10%
00:14:26
Speaker
where they thought they needed to quit, nine out of 10 times they're gonna see success. But most people get afraid and they stop right before they're three feet from gold, as they say. Three feet from success. It's probably the biggest lesson I've learned in the last 20 years.
00:14:45
Speaker
Wow, thank you. Thank you so much Brett for sharing these with us. The whole world is now talking about artificial intelligence, AI. So I would like us to really break artificial intelligence down for my audience.
00:15:01
Speaker
to really appreciate what it is and also how it is shaping the future of digital marketing. So let's start with what really is artificial intelligence? So with AI I mean there's different types I mean when you look at artificial intelligence you are you know you're looking at processing of data
00:15:19
Speaker
You're looking at learning different kinds of languages and processing the way humans do different types of things. There's deep learning that takes it even further. When I look at artificial intelligence, I'm just looking at the type of technology that is out there that can help compile tons and tons and tons of data and be able to process it very quickly and be able to learn from the data that you have and then be able to learn even at a greater rate by being able to be told certain things to do with that data.
00:15:49
Speaker
Artificial intelligence, in my opinion, there's a lot of room for growth in terms of having it operate more autonomously. And it has grown. Even for this conversation, we can look at AI just from the standpoint of content generation. Because there's AI that you can use from a chat standpoint. There's AI you can use from an image standpoint to create images.
00:16:13
Speaker
You can do the same thing for content, AI for driving. So like for this conversation, I think it makes sense looking at AI from a content generation standpoint. So the way that I'm using AI now is being able to look at creating new content for customers, whether it be for their website, press releases, their blogs, their emails, their social media posts, and being able to do things at a very, very quick rate. But there's this old adge that's out there about what's called garbage in, garbage out.
00:16:41
Speaker
If you're not able to tell the AI what to do efficiently and correctly, what you're going to get from the AI is garbage. So I look at AI from that standpoint of being able to have it process, you know, like you're looking at open AI.
00:16:58
Speaker
And you have Google that has its own AI now that they're integrating into everything. So AI is making its way into, it's already made its way into Microsoft's, you know, their search engine with Bing. You can now ask it a variety of questions. Google's doing the same exact thing. Microsoft is now adding AI into all of its different platforms for, you know, you're looking at like its office, you know, you're looking at
00:17:25
Speaker
Microsoft Word, Excel, it's making its way into everything. So artificial intelligence is going to change the way we do a lot of things. And I tell people, when you look at AI, don't be afraid of it. Look at AI from the standpoint of how can you use this technology to fuel every single thing that you're doing to make you be able to do things 10 times faster with a lot less headaches. Okay. So how is AI really shaping the future of digital marketing?
AI's Role in Content Creation and Research
00:17:53
Speaker
So what AI is enabling us to do now is it's enabling us to create content much faster to be able to do things way differently. Like even if you look at it from a content creation standpoint, I have people who write content for my clients on a monthly basis and a lot of these content creators were asking like, hey, is this going to put me out of business? And I was telling them in your particular case, why don't you use artificial intelligence to rapidly accelerate your output?
00:18:21
Speaker
Or if you want to look at how something is changing, in terms of conducting research, when a writer goes to write content, they used to have to go out and conduct search queries on different search engines to see what kind of content existed. They need to see how it was being written, who was writing it, and what tones, how many words were they supposed to write. So there was a tremendous amount of research that took place.
00:18:43
Speaker
Well now with AI, you can go in in a matter of like a minute or two minutes. You can figure out everything I just described to you. What you should write about. What are some different topics you should write about? How do you create an outline for writing that topic?
00:18:56
Speaker
And instead of taking a lot of time to do it, you're now able to do it really, really quickly. I mean, I can also, like, if you look at keyword research, when I start a project to optimize a person's website, we have to know who's searching for what. I now can train AI to go out and I could put a keyword into Google and say, okay, here's my biggest keyword. I go to Google, figure out who the number one
00:19:16
Speaker
ranking site is for that keyword. I can go and have the AI visit their website and say, hey, visit the site and tell me what the keywords that they are focusing on that website based on all the content that exists on the site. That tool is going to come back with a list of 10 to 20 phrases, maybe 10 primary phrases of what the content is about with 10 secondary phrases that are related to the initial keywords that are on that site. So that one tool
00:19:45
Speaker
is enabling us to conduct research way faster, get a much better understanding of the clients, their content, their keywords. And then if I want, I can also take and train AI and say, hey, here's all the content for this client's website and put it into the engine. And then I can tell the engine, hey, I need you to come back with the sentiment, figure out how this was written, was it friendly in tone? Was it witty? Was it informational? Was it educational? Was it conversion friendly?
00:20:15
Speaker
And then once it gets an understanding of that content, then I can tell the AI, hey, I need you to create a new piece of content based on everything that you just read that is in relation to X, Y, and Z using the same tones and write in the same writer's style. Can you write me a piece of content? That's a thousand words based on this data. The AI is going to say, yes, I can. And in a matter of 60 seconds, you're going to get what you just asked for. Very, very impressive. And it's really,
00:20:45
Speaker
making everything we do more efficient. But like you pointed out, we all have to be careful how we feed it with information because like you pointed out, if you feed it with garbage, of course the output and all the return would also not be that good.
00:21:00
Speaker
My guest once again is Brett Lane and he's been sharing his experience in digital markets and with us. He's been operating in this field for 20 years, 20 years. Now Brett, tell me, what advice would you give to a business or an individual just starting out in digital market?
Advice for Newcomers in Digital Marketing
00:21:23
Speaker
So I think the best piece of advice I would give them is take a look at what your biggest competitors are doing.
00:21:28
Speaker
and figure out a way to emulate them with your time. So if you go out and you notice that your biggest competitors are doing podcast interviews or they are doing long form content or they're taking, and by long form, I mean they may go out and do a...
00:21:45
Speaker
a study where they're going to figure out what questions are being asked or what can they teach to a user and then take all that content and basically do an interview for themselves and create a long form video then cut up to push out to their YouTube channels. And so the key really is figuring out what your competitors are doing, what they're doing very well, what differentiates them from everybody else.
00:22:07
Speaker
And then saying, how do I emulate what they're doing? And then figure out a way to scale your time. So if you notice that your competitors doing podcasts, then yeah, if you have time to go out and conduct a massive amount of research to figure out who they've interviewed with and then doing the messaging and then figure out a way to get those same people to interview you. Awesome.
00:22:27
Speaker
You're going to be able to do that at a lower budget, meaning your time. Now you can also say, hey, well, they're also doing that, but they're doing two or three other things. And I would say, well, how can you scale your time? Because we only get, you know, most people work 160 hours each month. So you only have 160 tokens, if you will, to be able to be used there on a monthly basis. So you can either use every one of those tokens from your own time, or you can figure out a way of scaling your time.
00:22:57
Speaker
One good example is you might find a virtual assistant or an assistant that can help you with the outreach efforts for the podcast. So let's say you're wanting to do podcast interviews and you're wanting to do video marketing or video training courses. Well, if you hire a virtual assistant, that person is going to give you an additional 160 hours a month to then go out and find opportunities for you to do podcast interviews as you are working on
00:23:24
Speaker
Creating that long-form content in terms of creating those videos and you can use AI I mean when you look at things like GPT for it's $20 a month but that that program gives you access to AI that is better than the non-paid versions of their same technology and you could literally use the AI test to find out what the questions are being asked in relation to your particular industry and
00:23:48
Speaker
and then take those questions and have a question and answer session with yourself on video. And then you can take those videos and you can cut those up. Now, if you don't have video editing experience, then you can have your VA do all those activities. They can go out and take the videos and cut them up, add in custom image thumbnails. You can have that person go and do all the submission work for you to all your social media accounts. Now you have a way of scaling out your time and your talents.
00:24:17
Speaker
and you're able to scale yourself because one of the things i found that most people run into is they say they want to do a lot of different things they really don't help their business hit that critical mass in terms of growth because they're not willing to scale themselves they want to do everything themselves they think they have to have control of the whole process when in fact
00:24:38
Speaker
It might make more sense to hiring a virtual assistant where you can say, hey, I want you to do this one thing. Now, even if they cut up those videos on your behalf and saved you that time, just doing that could save you a lot of headaches, which would enable you to do more training. So I would say start scaling yourself and be able to scale the types of things that are going to get you the most success and then also
00:25:02
Speaker
focus on what's going to give you what what are those those opportunities everybody's heard of the 80-20 Pareto principle where you know people are gonna have they're gonna get eight you know 20% of what they do gives them 80% of the success for what they're looking to achieve so I would say find that 20%
00:25:18
Speaker
You focus on those 20% of things that's going to help you generate money and new customers and give your team, slowly over time as you're building a team, whether it be employees, VAs or whatnot, give them the activities of the things that have to get done, but aren't making you as much money.
00:25:35
Speaker
and then you scale based on those activities. So Brett, you've been engaged in a lot of digital marketing campaigns.
Tailoring Success Metrics to Client Goals
00:25:44
Speaker
How do you measure and track the success of a digital marketing campaign? So success is going to be based on every customer.
00:25:51
Speaker
Some clients, let's say you're doing something with social media and you want more brand awareness. For them, their success metrics might be related to the amount of brand awareness they're getting online. When you start looking within social media sites, it's how many times is our brand being mentioned? Is the sentiment positive, negative, neutral? If you're looking at from an SEO standpoint, it could be
00:26:12
Speaker
My site only has X amount of exposure within Google search results in terms of top 10 keyword rankings, visitors to the site, conversions. Let's say you're working with an e-commerce client and you're doing
00:26:25
Speaker
content creation and SEO, well for them, obviously they're gonna want to sell a lot more products. And if you're a business that offers services, you're gonna want somebody to, you know, for you, success is gonna be based on how many people are filling out that form or picking up the phone to get in contact with you to use their services. So when it comes to success metrics for each person, it's gonna be very different. Really depends on what you're looking to achieve.
00:26:51
Speaker
what industry you're in, what you're doing, and then defining what those are. So anytime I work or my team works with any customer, we have to be able to figure out what are those things that are success to that customer.
00:27:06
Speaker
So it could be any number of things, but the goal really is being able to figure out what a customer wants you to achieve in each type of platform, and then being able to identify those, and then be able to hit those metrics for those customers. So it could be something as simple as, hey, I wanna get more online traffic, I wanna increase my traffic from Google by 10%, 20% for these particular keywords. How attainable is that, Brett, and how long is it gonna take to get to that point?
00:27:34
Speaker
So you have to be very granular with every platform and you have to be able to make sure that you're meeting and exceeding the needs of your customers. Okay, thank you so much. So you've talked about a number of things in your submission, you've talked about SEO, you've talked about content creation and marketing. As you know, there are so many different digital channels. So how do you approach integrating all these different
00:27:59
Speaker
digital marketing channels such as social media, SEO, link building and content marketing to an adhesive strategy. How do you go about doing this? Tell each person don't get overwhelmed because there's so many things you can do. So when I did my dissertation, I created that on being able to utilize multiple forms of marketing in a way that's going to drive hyper targeted traffic to a website.
00:28:25
Speaker
And what I meant by that was how do you test multiple forms of marketing to figure out what forms of marketing are going to give you what you need at the lowest cost while generating the greatest type of users. And by that what I'm saying is being able to go out and look at doing micro tests. So rather than get crazy and say hey we're going to test social media and we're going to test out all the different platforms I would say you know what figure out where your target market is interacting. Let's say you're selling products to women. So you know we know that a lot of women will interact on
00:28:56
Speaker
Pinterest, they'll be on Instagram, TikTok, and it depends on the age. So maybe you have younger women who are interacting within Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. So what I would suggest to them is let's create micro campaigns for each one of those platforms and create similar content because you know you're targeting the same type of user. And we know that people on TikTok, yeah, they're going to need something different than YouTube and Instagram.
00:29:22
Speaker
You're going to want to take content and create it in a way that's tailored to each one of those platforms. Next, you're going to look at running either ad campaigns for those platforms or creating content for those platforms and seeing how users are responding to those types of platforms.
00:29:39
Speaker
organic type of content and you're noticing that people are interacting more with it. They're commenting, they're liking, they're sharing, they're reposting. They're doing all those things that shows you engagement that I'd say do more of those things. If you're looking at creating marketing campaigns from those platforms, you don't have to go crazy and spend a tremendous amount of money on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or channels of that nature. You could run micro campaigns where you're doing $5 a day, $10 a day. Do it for a month.
00:30:09
Speaker
Now you're able to figure out which campaigns generated the most amount of engagement and interaction in those platforms. What I would tell people then is take all the wins, the gains, the micro gains, if you will, and then
00:30:23
Speaker
put those into a bucket in terms of those activities and take all the other things from within those three marketing campaigns and no longer do them. So now you have the victories, maybe you notice that you had more interaction from users on TikTok, you had more interactions and more people visiting and watching your videos on YouTube for campaign A might have worked well on TikTok, campaign B worked well on YouTube, and then campaign C works really well on Instagram.
00:30:52
Speaker
Well, you want to take those micro victories from each campaigns and accelerate what you did for just those singular things on each platform. So now you got the best of the best from Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. And now you're able to figure out, okay, how can I scale each one of these activities? And maybe it's just scaling the activities within YouTube because your conversion rates or your growth on YouTube happened the fastest. So now you start to scale that. And then as you make momentum there, then you may look to, okay,
00:31:22
Speaker
The second performing platform might've been TikTok. Okay, how do you scale what you're doing there? Then you start scaling that over time. And then you find a way to start scaling Instagram. And then you just start, you start growing over time. But the big thing is, is a lot of times people get that shiny object syndrome where they see so many things that they could do that they try them all and they do them all poorly. I tell people, try one platform. If you know that the majority of your users are on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube,
00:31:52
Speaker
or Facebook, try that platform out first. Do everything that you can within that platform. And then once you get success there, then emulate that on the next platform.
00:32:04
Speaker
and go to the next one. And everything that I'm telling you, it's very hard to do these things if you're trying to do them by yourself. So find a way to scale, whether you're working with another team or whether you're looking at hiring out VAs that are very good at what they do in singular activities. Maybe you hire a VA that's really good at social media posting or one that's good with content.
00:32:26
Speaker
or one that's good with AI or one that's good with project management. You have to slowly build your time and utilize the skill set of people who are very specific to a few things. So I'm painting a picture for you that just showed you growth over time by scaling micro activities because at the end of the day,
00:32:44
Speaker
When you scale those micro activities, what you're going to get is a much bigger strategy that is working consistently versus trying to do a lot of different things half-heartedly. Thank you so much, Brett Lane, for sharing your experience with us.
Staying Current in the Digital Marketing World
00:33:01
Speaker
Just as you've been telling us, it is so clear that this
00:33:05
Speaker
space, this digital marketing space keeps on evolving. New things come up every time. So as an expert in this field, how do you stay up to date with a constantly evolving digital marketing industry? A big thing is listening to podcasts, listening to videos, trying different tools.
00:33:25
Speaker
I have access to a lot of different tools and I'm constantly learning. So you have to stay up to date in terms of the news in your particular space. So for me I'm always learning new things about tech.
00:33:39
Speaker
and in relation to artificial intelligence and SEO and content. So I'm always listening and watching YouTube videos. I'm figuring out where's the content coming out the quickest. For whatever reason, AI right now is a lot of the notions and the tools are coming out and there's a lot more awareness within YouTube. So I watch a tremendous amount of YouTube with new tools and tips and tricks and things of that nature. So a lot of it really depends on what your industry is and what your
00:34:08
Speaker
wanting to learn. If you're learning more about AI, hey, it makes sense to do more research on YouTube, because you're going to get a lot of really good data there. If you're looking at things that are very, very specific, you may want to look at specific news types of websites specific to your industry. For me, there's a lot of different sites out there related to SEO and social media and things of that nature. That's where I would go, but it's always keeping your head in
00:34:34
Speaker
the news or it could be something as simple as going out and interacting with people at different conferences. I travel all over the place just to learn new things. I'm in five different masterminds where I go out and I get to interact with people at different masterminds where all we're doing is networking and figuring out what's working for our businesses and then we're sharing ideas.
00:34:58
Speaker
So those are a few of the ways that I'm able to stay on top of my industry. All right, thank you. Brett, can you share any predictions or insights on where you see this whole digital marketing industry, this whole digital marketing space heading the next five to ten
The Future of Digital Marketing and AI
00:35:17
Speaker
years? I would say in the next five years, what we're going to start seeing is a lot more tools that are aiding with the creation of different kinds of content. Because I'm seeing things right now where
00:35:27
Speaker
There's more movement being made with videos, with audio, with text. I'm seeing things where there's tools where you can literally take your face and you can record yourself doing a video to where you can use your own recordings to put in text to create new videos based on just text that you're typing into a screen. So they're called humidors. And you can either take your own yourself or you could take other actors
00:35:55
Speaker
So I'm seeing just a tremendous amount of movement as it relates to content creation. And that's where in terms for digital marketing, I see a lot of opportunity because we're able to scale things at a much quicker rate. But where I see the biggest amount of opportunity is for content creators who are staying true to the game, who are using AI to get things done faster, but they're putting in the time and the effort. So a good example of that is
00:36:21
Speaker
If I go to AI and have it come up with the top 30 questions that consumers would ask in relation to social media or SEO, how do you find the right kind of person that you should work with? If I take that AI and come up with 30 questions and then have it come up with 30 different YouTube transcripts that I could use to talk with,
00:36:41
Speaker
And then I take that transcript and I do a video of myself recording where I'm not reading but I'm going through and giving my own version of what I'm talking about. Now I'm able to create original content. It took a lot of my own time and then I take that video and I cut it up into 30 videos and I have 30 pieces of content that can go out to social media.
00:36:59
Speaker
where people can see that I put in a tremendous amount of effort to give them content. That is very different than me going out and using AI to create the 30 questions, the 30 scripts, giving those 30 scripts to a software that would then use a humidar to read everything. And it looks pretty professional. And then they're able to take those 30 videos and chop them up. And now you've got 30 videos that were created through AI that look pretty good.
00:37:28
Speaker
But it was done at scale now when you present those 30 videos from one one You know you present the videos my videos versus the videos created with AI People can tell that I put mine together and they can tell that I put in the time to get that content so I think it's going to create a much greater area of opportunity for authenticity for people who are looking to grow within the social space because if you know that
00:37:56
Speaker
You have the opportunity to create 30 pieces of content and it's all done in an automated fashion. You're going to see the airwaves via YouTube are going to get cluttered with new content that consumers aren't going to have much trust with. So I do see a tremendous amount of opportunity with creating more of an authentic brand.
00:38:15
Speaker
online by people who are willing to put in the extra work. We're just about wrapping up. What would be your pieces of advice to my listeners regarding succeeding in the digital marketing space?
Final Thoughts on Technology and Success
00:38:28
Speaker
I would say whether it's digital marketing or whether it's just business or entrepreneurship in and of itself, the key thing you have to look at is keeping yourself grounded and being driven and staying focused. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I've been in the space for 20 years
00:38:43
Speaker
I'm coming to a point where I'm seeing all these changes in technology and it's getting harder to stay focused on those aspects that are going to give success. I'm having to retrain myself with having two decades of experience to say, hey, go back to how you did this old school. Look at those activities that give you the most amount of success for sales, for marketing, where you spend
00:39:08
Speaker
the least amount of time that get the most amount of success and success could be the most amount of interviews if you're a podcaster or exposure or sales or things of that nature. Just being able to make sure that you are staying focused on those things and not allowing all the naysayers, the people who tell you that you're not going to succeed or you're not going to get to be as big as you want. You have to push all that out
00:39:34
Speaker
of your own head, get out of your own headspace and make sure that you're only putting things in where, like, you want to talk about, you know, technology, your brain.
00:39:43
Speaker
being able to program your brain at a subconscious level that in a way that you're showing yourself I only accept success even when I fail those failures are success because they're teaching me new ways of doing things to get closer to my goals so as long as you keep those things in mind I truly believe any person in business
00:40:04
Speaker
It doesn't matter if it's digital marketing or any other form of business. You're going to be successful if you stay the course. Stay the course. Stay the course. There will certainly be ups and downs, but stay the course. Brett, I'm just about wrapping up any last words for my listeners before we wrap up. I think the last thing really is just
00:40:24
Speaker
Instead of being afraid of technology, embrace it and figure out a way to use it in a way that accelerates what you're doing. There's going to be a lot of people in a lot of industries that are going to fall by the wayside because they think that technology is going to take over what they're doing. I tell them there has to be somebody who feeds the machine with what it needs, so you might as well be that person.
00:40:46
Speaker
to create larger economies of scale with this technology and your skill set. So do not be afraid of technology. Use it in a way that's going to further every aspect of your life.
00:40:58
Speaker
Do not be afraid of technology. Embrace technology and use it for your use. So these are the last words of my guest Brett Lane. Thank you so much Brett for sharing your rich experience with us today on the Entrepreneur Speaks Podcast. We wish you the very best.
00:41:17
Speaker
Thank you so much, it was a pleasure. So this has been another exciting episode of the entrepreneur speaks podcast. I'll come your way next time with another exciting episode. I mean, your host Kofi Annime do
00:41:31
Speaker
As always, do take good care of yourself and let's continue to keep up our life. Cheers.