Why Your AI Marketing Is Failing Before It Even Starts

Jab Siwela (00:00)
to use customer journey and

an empathy map point out, okay, at the beginning of the journey, this is how they're feeling.

how do we want the person to feel? What's the value that you want to walk away with this is the way I see people going wrong, they're not thinking emotion at the beginning. They're not thinking about what the emotion will be in the middle. The emotion at the end. If you look at the best storytellers, they take you on an emotional journey

This is where it gets tricky because when you get AI, can prompt it, but you don't actually know the frameworks behind good storytelling You're just creating, a collage of varied imagery.

May (00:36)
Welcome everyone to May Contained Jab, So today, today I'm here with Jab and we're here to talk to you about marketing, specifically what can go wrong in your marketing.

This is just one example to get your head in the game. I was recently on LinkedIn. I've been seeing a lot more LinkedIn bands on content recently on popular content creators who have a decent following. I think LinkedIn is striking down on some.

activities that not very happy with. Although sometimes their does get it wrong. I someone on my feed say that posted post that said they had a blast with network recently.

Apparently the use of the word blast was considered terrorism activity and she got banned for two days. while we all know that a lot of things can go wrong in marketing, this is just one example. Today we're going to talk more about other things that can go wrong, things that are outdated in marketing and how we can address that and how we can turn that around in today's AI driven world.

Jab Siwela (01:34)
Wow, what an opening May. That is some hot news. I am now even terrified to open up my LinkedIn account now and I am not going to have a blast, but we will have a blast in this podcast though. thank you for that. So listeners, you're probably wondering, okay, why should we listen to these two? Who's Jab, who's May? Let me give you the lowdown. Right here.

We've got lovely Mae. Mae, do you want to tell the new listeners and viewers who you are a little bit something about yourself for the first time viewers and I will give them an insight about myself straight after.

May (02:08)
Yeah, sure, I may. I'm your resident automation specialist. My background is very varied, but I've worked across finance, strategy, operations and marketing over a course of 10 plus years. And recently focusing on AI and automations, I primarily use a tool called NAN. Over to

Jab Siwela (02:25)
And

May (02:25)
you, Jab.

Jab Siwela (02:26)
ladies and gentlemen, this lady is a genius. If we could make a bot of her, I'm telling you, Claude, AI, GPTs, Gemini, they'll all be our business. she is your person to go to for automation. My name is Jab.

I am the marketing person who puts the customer first, And one of the biggest things that we all forget about marketing is marketing's core function is being the representative of the customer within an organization. That is marketing's role 101. And that is who I am. I've worked in consulting for the last seven years.

ex marketing director for number of businesses etc worked at eBay etc so been around the block and I am here to help small businesses throughout this entire transition we're going through in the world where we have technology changing every second with the help of the lovely May.

May (03:21)
Fantastic. So tell me, Jab what are we seeing on the ground these days? What is outdated marketing actually look like in twenty twenty six?

Jab Siwela (03:29)
May, I am telling you, in a world where we've got AI, we still have people getting things wrong with AI, without AI. People are getting the fundamentals wrong. People are taking tactics.

from 1998 where we had TV and radio ads and they're blasting it on the social platforms expecting conversions. I don't know about you When I go on the social media I'm not there to be advertised to. I'm an advertiser but I'm not going there to be advertised to.

But when I go on and I see my favorite brands on there putting a TV ad on my social media feed, I am like YouTube. will subscribe to membership now because these ads are killing me right now. They are so interruptive. are so...

unrelated to what I want and they don't even connect with me. So this is what we're going to be discussing. couple of the issues is that we still use the old broadcast media style of what we'd see on billboards, what we'd see at a bus stop and we just place it out there. But we've got to remember the fundamentals customer first.

customer journey. Where is the customer's mind at in the moment when we're advertising?

If you put yourself in the shoes of customers and you think of yourself, right? had a long day. I'm tired. When I go on my phone, what am I looking to do at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day? I'm just looking to calm my nerves, prepare myself for either shutting down or starting my day. And if I see an ad that says come join 70 % off, you're killing me. You are killing me. I am shutting that down. I am flushing that phone down, down the loo

May (05:04)
So what are people still doing? Give me some examples what you see people doing that you think is no longer working.

Jab Siwela (05:11)
Okay, so quite a useful example out there is big brand, David Lloyd your facilities, loves the gym. I went onto the backend of their Facebook ads, I was disappointed to see the exact same TV advert that they've had of them. That's Polish production.

like it's designed for Sky TV and the problem you have with that is it doesn't look native to the platform.

when I say native to the platform, on whether it's Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, needs to look like the content that's from existing users, whether it's like a mobile vertical style phone video versus

a polished production video. Because what I found is whenever we run our engagements, if we run tests on this, when you polished content versus phone created content that's human, most importantly, with connection, the ad spend more reach, lower cost for the lead.

and you get better conversions as in more people interested because if you see content that looks like an ad what are you going to do you're going to swipe

And seeing on the ground. it's one of the biggest challenges I have at the moment when talking to brands is trying to move them away from what we've been exposed to for like the better part of maybe 30, 40 years of just seeing broadcast ads that are bottom of the funnel, as in designed specifically for people who are ready to buy. Let's be honest people. you go online, you go on social, et cetera.

there's a stat that says 3 to 10 % of people are only in market to buy. But if you look at the adverts online, you'd think every brand assumes every person on there is ready to buy, but they're not. And the biggest issue, this is actually a big, problem. People are using one piece of creative.

Right, one piece of creative that says 20 % off, 50 % off, 30 % off, the same as your neighbor down the road, come by. No one's given you a reason why to buy, no one's told you,

here's a brand founder, here are some real people who've actually purchased product and here is the reason why you should buy from us. We are a sustainable brand. people love our product and having real people talking rather than actually the brand itself saying, come buy from us. if someone said to you, from me.

Trust me, my stuff is good. You wouldn't believe them. But if someone else spoke on their behalf and talked about the experience, that would change everything. But everyone out there is putting 20 30 percent off because they've got to include the competitor and now they're annoying every person that's out there and people are swiping.

People have ruined it so much so for advertisers with this that Mark Zuckerberg's offering subscribers fee for Facebook just so you don't see the ad which goes to show you that people hate as that much that Zuckerberg's like, you know what? want to capitalize on this pain point and create a new solution, which means for all us advertisers that finally could catch up with the big brands with advertising, we're going to lose access to all that market because everyone's been advertising

so badly.

May (08:04)
So in today's world, you think it makes sense to use less polished videos, maybe more user generated content and to use word of mouth or to try to get people talking about your brand rather than just you as the brand sharing information, right? how do you implement some of these strategies? How do you really make them come alive?

but the other question I have related to that is how does AI play a role in this?

Jab Siwela (08:27)
Getting real people, user generated content like you said, is one of the most powerful ways to create content. for example, I see brands go get their stuff in uniform to create adverts when I look at that, I'm like, actually, I'll ask you a question, I have a health and nutrition brand and we

May (08:44)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (08:45)
sell,

the new innovative electrolytes and I'm wearing uniform and I'm saying, my God, try this. This is amazing. Would you trust it from me if I'm wearing my uniform and everything? how would that come across to you if you're on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn?

May (08:58)
Yeah, it depends on, I guess it depends on if you're an employee or not, but I guess since you're wearing the brand and everything, maybe I think you were a hardcore fan and maybe I discount what you say a little bit compared to someone else.

Jab Siwela (09:14)
I've seen brands use stuff and it's in in the health and fitness industry. get their staff in their uniform and they get them to do all their marketing content. the problem is if we see someone who's trying to sell us something and they're in uniform, we have this cognitive bias that's in our head that's like, person's trying to sell from us. So how do you solve this? Right.

If I'm trying to sell something and I know I've got a handful of 10 customers that absolutely love the brand, I would get them to create the videos, right? I'll get them to create the video, get them involved in the process or get them to feature in the videos, but also not make it look scripted because everyone can tell we have this BS detector that's out there

what I'm saying is fascinating because it's not science. It's just being human. Just need to look at own behavior. We always forget about what it's like to be human when it comes to promoting our stuff. So the other alternative is you get a thought leader to talk about it. This is where I think Nike absolutely smashed it with Jordan involved.

the Jordan brand. The reason why that shoe went off the charts is because people people brought in their associations winning and with your

May (10:19)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (10:20)
favorite athlete and the brand. And that changes the game completely. Because if you even look at nice advertising recently, they've been using women from the WNBA, the most powerful campaigns running out of there. And A, the empowering women sort of aligns with the values.

right and Nike's not saying anything about Nike players are saying that and guess what people who aspire to be that player now associate becoming that person with that brand especially the younger consumers I remember when I was young whenever I'd see my favorite athlete wearing them like if I wear that shoe I will be as good as that I bought the shoe I wasn't as good as that but the shoe was great so I didn't complain

And that's what people should be doing. your experts in there. For example, heck, if Claude or Anthropic, I'm not trying to advertise. I'm getting May to talk about it because May knows the stuff about AI and automations. And I'm buying from May because I trust May. Claude and Anthropic, they're cool, but I trust human that's not wearing a branded logo. That's how I approach it.

May (11:16)
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I agree. think there's something more authentic about a user, whether it's a famous celebrity or endorsement or even just an average person using a product that has some sort of expertise in that area, right? It could be...

and aspiring athletes wearing a certain brand. And then I would trust that brand more because I see and I associate them with that sport or with that activity. I agree with you generally. And yeah, would trust someone who has expertise in AI or automations for their AI recommendations. And so I think it depends on

what person's brand is known for, Even if they're just my friend, if I know that they're really into athleticism and physical fitness, then I would trust their recommendations in that area more than someone else's. I think that personal reputation really comes into play for brands today, nowadays, to really spread influence beyond just the traditional marketing channels.

Jab Siwela (12:19)
That's powerful and you know what's actually so interesting you say

that. We ran a campaign recently and it blew my mind. It actually worked a hundred times better than I ever imagined. We used the same endorsement strategy approach but we actually went and worked with the fitness facility and we got to the heroes within the community.

to feature talking about their journey and because they were microscopic influences because they're in small town but they're also well known because they're nice positive people when we run the advert with their faces on there versus what the brand had I'm telling you

The engagement was out of this world. Everyone's like cheering on this girl. Let's go Gemma. Inspiring story. she's like super athletic. think she's like mid 40s. Super athletic.

her, daughter's got a tracheostomy. So she goes to the gym to switch off. So she was talking about the empowering story behind that versus, come try my gym for free for 14 days, like everyone else, he actually had a real human being talking about a real story. And guess what? They're talking about a real struggle that everyone can relate to. So guess what? Heroic woman.

who goes through a struggle of having a child who has difficulty. So she has to work, she has to be like a full-time mom and she still manages to get exercise in. And guess what? They're like, wow, super strong woman. And the campaign was Mother's Day is every day because mother's job is super hard. They're like, wow, emotional. Guess what? They're like, we want to be like her. guess what? You can become like her through this place. Blew it out the park. And it's something.

I'm so passionate about is like use real people and you don't you don't need to go get an influencer that's got like that's Kim Kardashian even a hundred thousand followers heck if you get someone with a thousand followers as long as long as they are real and human and they're relatable that's what an influence is forget going for these big massive influencers get real people doesn't just come through having a massive audience it comes through you communicating about who you are and you being

human.

May (14:09)
Absolutely, speaking about being human, does AI fit into picture with AI avatars, AI videos, AI this, AI that. How does AI play a role in marketing nowadays?

Jab Siwela (14:19)
fascinating topic this fascinating AI is a blessing and a curse at the same time been improving speed of delivery speed of planning ideation brainstorming however there's been also some really bad execution of it because we've got new tools that can create imagery through us talking to it's like a genie

It's like, this is the weirdest world we live in now. I swear it feels like Saladin, right? And you've got the genie and he comes out and you don't get three wishes, mate. You get like unlimited. You can be there all night. I don't know about you, when AI came out, was on there all night, putting all my wishes and just putting all my content wishes and my content wishes were given, I wasn't specific enough and it didn't look quite great. So what we are seeing now is companies trying to reduce the cost because the technology is there.

And you're trying to use a technology to shift costs, which I can understand. But the problem is, like I said, humans like human. Right? This is what marketing is. have to be... Remember, marketing is meant to represent humans. And the fundamental thing about selling anything is you've got to know the person. It's like dating. You've got to the person. You've got to like the person. You've got to trust the person. And what I would say...

Like from seeing this Coca-Cola campaign that came out recently where

They to create a remix. And remixing has been used in music all the time, but they remixed 100 Days of Coming. What was your thought about 100 Days of Coming? Did you ever have an emotional resonance with that? Because that was like, it's been like one of the most iconic Christmas adverts.

May (15:56)
connect to the human emotions around the holidays, right? that's...

Jab Siwela (16:01)
Yeah,

so Coca-Cola went and tried to remix this and they brought in the got when in remix are using AI to bring in different features in there and I'm telling you the backlash was horrific you just need to type in Coca-Cola AI my gosh

May (16:17)
Hmm.

Jab Siwela (16:19)
I think they even put something at the end of the video that's mentioned it being authentic and

The backlash was bad and Coca Cola is massive brand and they're known, if anyone knows Coca Cola's advertising, is. That truck with the reindeers, I don't even drink fizzy drinks, but I watched that advert because that has so much nostalgia.

There is a thing about let's not break what's not working and humans buy from humans, no like and trust. And the issue we have at the moment with AI, AI generated content by people who aren't VFX people, Or visual effects or specializing in that. Because cartoons and 3D objects and all that, that's all has been there. But only specialist housed agencies have been the ones that have gone and done this within cartoons, movies, etc. Made emotional.

But when people go and create it without thinking about the human thing behind it.

if you lose emotional connection. And I was actually in a call with Stephen Bartlett, head of innovations. He's like one of the few people I know who knows how to use AI for advertising. And one of the things he said, which changed my whole view of everything is that before I make a video using artificial intelligence,

I spend all my time first on finding the right song to make sure that the emotion drives. If the music doesn't drive

May (17:36)
Mmm.

Jab Siwela (17:37)
the emotion, you're wasting your time. Cause actually it's

May (17:39)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (17:40)
the music that actually drives emotion and then the visual does the rest. And what we're finding is that people are using,

A, they're using the AI to create the visuals but they're not thinking about the emotion element and emotion is such an important thing when it comes

May (17:53)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (17:53)
to it. I would even say with what we're doing artificial intelligence and everything else, think we need to think of Tinder. Tinder is the best example. Tinder, Tinder.

May (18:01)
Tender, okay?

Jab Siwela (18:03)
know, actually almost rebranded into the Tinder marketing agency and I thought there might be some complexities here.

I've been on some Tinder dates, some have gone well, some have gone wrong. But what's the first thing we do on Tinder? We look at the person, we read their bio. And if you're a guy, you just carry on swiping right, just praying that someone's gonna

May (18:20)
Hehehehehe

Jab Siwela (18:22)
swipe the other way. And if you're a girl...

completely different perspective because I've got lot of girl mates and I've asked them and I've witnessed their behaviour, they actually go through it, read the profile and figure out does this person look honest enough for me to even open a conversation? And then maybe from there they swipe.

Right, if they swipe right, but swiping right, which I learned the hard way, doesn't mean that someone's ready to over their time to come spend a day with me to have a coffee or have a meal.

May (18:48)
Hehehehe

Jab Siwela (18:49)
It's only stage one, and this is what I'm saying, like, when you go online and you put like 70 % off, 70 % oh, guys, haven't even matched first. We have to match. We both have to swipe right and agree that, okay, cool, we're ready to take it further to have the first conversation.

And once you have next conversation, have to take it off onto another platform, right? Because on Tinder, you're on a very competitive platform the whole time, conversing, so you want to take them to WhatsApp so you can have your own personal space where you can build the relationship. So

May (19:18)
Mm.

Jab Siwela (19:18)
the person can make sure that A, you're not catfish, and B, you're someone worth trust with, and C, worth someone's time.

then we go meet in person. So we have all this happens where whole process of trying to get to know someone, getting to like them, then getting to trust them. And maybe if we trust them, we might meet them in person. When we bring in AI and hope that it's going to do all of that for us without actually thinking of each stage of the journey, if you think of this Tinder line.

things go wrong. And this is why we also saw a situation with, I think it was McDonald's where they, were running a Christmas campaign and things went a bit wrong because they were trying to highlight the pain points during Christmas that Christmas is busy, the weather's not great, et cetera, but McDonald's is a the place to go to. However.

When you pain point and you forget that majority of people actually love Christmas and

you're now starting to devalue their norms, something that's a significant cultural moment, and paint it out to be a negative, you are spending a lot of time on rebuilding your reputation and that is what McDonald's had to go through.

It was catastrophic. a link to a doc maybe that's got images of some of these example campaigns.

May (20:25)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (20:26)
that campaign, what were your thoughts about it?

May (20:27)
think speaking to your point earlier about needing to choose when using AI tools the right music for the right emotion. I think the McDonald's campaign didn't strike the right tone on the emotion. I felt like the AI video was a bit.

chaotic. There was a lot happening in there. There were a lot of things that were not realistic. so I think it was difficult for people to relate to. And even though they tried to make it relatable, I think that's where some of the disconnect was, it wasn't as relatable as what it needed to be. And so I think that's part of where they failed on that campaign.

Jab Siwela (21:02)
it such an unfortunate thing because kids love McDonald's especially around that time of year but the backlash this is why you have to be human. it's crazy because you wouldn't go insult a Muslim and devalue eat or whatever religious holiday they have, right?

May (21:18)
Right.

Jab Siwela (21:19)
You don't go to anyone's faith group and devalue because it's someone's belief, right? People, know, whether they believe in Santa, whether they believe in actual the story of Jesus rising, whatever, it's just it's a cultural holiday. And that's that's an area that you got to be very careful of tiptoeing around, my personal opinion, and creating content, using AI for the sake of content. Not great. Can it be done? Yes, I think.

we can use it for brainstorming. I think we can use it as a strategic partner. You could probably use it content, but you have to be so careful the way the world works at the moment, people are terrified of this revolution. I'm not sure about you, mate, but when I speak to people, people are terrified about whether they're going to have jobs. And now when you start showing AI content and it starts like AI is replacing people's jobs,

Whereas where before we had real people that would have been in these adverts, there's going to be a bit of backlash about it. It's also, you have to read the room. I almost think that what McDonald's should probably have done in that situation is have tested it with a small sample. Cause I like to think of taking scientific experiments of test with a small sample of people, see what happens. What are your thoughts?

May (22:24)
think the other challenge for larger brands is that AIs can be perceived as lower costs, lower production effort, even if that may or may not be the case. the challenge is also that

for a company like McDonald's, assume they have the budget to employ real people, use real people to convey the emotion do the production rather than just using an AI solution, right? And so whether that's fair or not, it's a perception.

Jab Siwela (22:51)
Yeah, it really is. do is about AI content production et cetera, in terms of what you've seen, seeing it being used, or what you think people should be considering.

May (23:01)
think the biggest challenge I see with AI and content in today's world is that

there needs to still be a human element to it, you lose touch with that human element, with that with the emotional connection, then the content ultimately fails because it lacks that relatable element to it, what draws us as humans to that content. so, can use automations in content creation. You can speed up the content creation process with AI, of course, but there needs

to be some level of human connection behind the content. whether you can engineer that completely automated is debatable. think where content is most successful is where you're able to take your human experiences, take your human emotions, and you're able to embed that into the content in some way, shape, or form.

Jab Siwela (23:50)
That is on the money. Avinash Krushek has a framework that he likes to use, which is a see. Think of what the person can see, thinks,

May (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (23:59)
and wants to do. I like to use customer journey and an empathy map and point out, at the beginning of the journey, this is how they're feeling.

you and I always discuss how do we want the person to feel? What's the value that you want to walk away with when people are the marketing, this is the way I see people going not thinking someone's emotion at the beginning. They're not thinking about what the emotion will be in the middle. The emotion will be at the end. If you look at the best storytellers, they take you on an emotional journey and...

May (24:27)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (24:28)
This is where it gets tricky because when you get AI, can prompt it, but you don't actually know the frameworks behind good storytelling or visual storytelling. You're just creating, a collage of just varied imagery.

May (24:40)
Yeah, and that's where we get into AI slop, right? And that's where we get into this influx of content that doesn't connect, people can't relate to, that isn't good. so how do you balance that, right? Like how do you use AI effectively? What are some tools that you've used that you think are good in this marketplace?

Jab Siwela (24:58)
I see content in different formats and therefore AI different use cases. So we've got written formats, we've got imagery, still imagery, we've got moving imagery, which is video, then we've got audio.

Right, so most of the tools already come with a bass layer. So for example, you've got the tools like you've got your Canva, you've got your Adobe Cloud. I actually use a mix. So I use a combination of Canva.

because A, it's user friendly. I used to be terrified of video editing. So I started on Canva six years ago. I learned Photoshop studying IT I was in school. it's like the whole thing when someone explains it, had a bad teacher talking about layers. what do you mean layers?

May (25:38)
You

Jab Siwela (25:39)
I'm like.

laser like a sandwich what do mean this is where Kanva i think absolutely nailed it because they thought customer first and that the pain that they're experiencing and the story behind them is something that everyone should model because they thought what's the pain point people are having how can we make them happy throughout the experience and they simplified it so we Kanva and we also use CapCut as well

May (26:01)
Mmm, yep.

Jab Siwela (26:01)
And we also use

as much as I love Canva and CapCut, Adobe does have some advanced features in there for, color correction, etc. that we still do play around with, especially. I remember we run an SMS campaign, we

created ad of people having a conversation and an Adobe template, which was great

they had these advanced features and I could really control it. Because the problem with some

of these lightweight options like Canva and Capcut is that if you know what you're doing and you're really trying to manipulate the content in the way you want, can't bend it, it's like sandbox a bit. So use that and then that's for our visual side. When we come to our writing,

we use a combination of Chat-GPT and the strategy and thinking paired up with Claude.

May (26:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (26:46)
They will also write as well. I've got templates of like power words I bring in because sometimes the models don't bring it in all the time. And then that's for like the strategy and the writing side. Meanwhile, whilst using tools like ProWritingAid, underrated tool.

underrated tool for ensuring your copy reads right because the problem we have again with AI you and I were discussing earlier there-was is university that copied and pasted what was written in AI when someone passed away and unless you know how to use the frameworks to get the structure right

What ends up happening is that you end up having a situation where your copy doesn't resonate. So you have to think of how to put emotion into your language, just like how you'd have high tone and a calm tone. So yes, so that's what we use

for our writing process. So that covers, I think, visual side, strategy side. Also AI for creating in-house applications as managing our process in a workflow. Whereas back in the day, it's really expensive tools. building in-house at the moment throughout the 360 life cycle of the process. Because like we're saying, rather than having a solution that's sandboxed, that stops you from doing things, we can make our own.

and Claude has been incredible for that. Claude and Gemma, I'm telling you, incredible for creating in-house applications, whether it's for intake forms or creating invoices and SOPs, et cetera. it's been Super cool that. How about you?

May (28:08)
I use Claude the most nowadays for the writing. it's adapted to my style pretty well it's a very flexible tool. Before this I was using ChatGPT. And there are benefits to both. I feel like the latest models on GPT have fallen a little bit behind and Claude kind of come out the winner for me.

Besides that, think the tool I use the most often for visuals right now is NanoBanana. NanoBanana Gemini's model phenomenal for image generation. Obviously, if you need to edit specific pieces of visuals, then Canva would probably be better for that you want to add an overlay or...

a certain element specifically from an image. I'd go to Canva if it's something very specific because with AI, sometimes the image gets changed completely when you ask for changing one piece of it. it's not quite perfect yet. But NanoBanana has made a lot of great strides and I think it's...

pretty far along in terms of being realistic and now it gets all the text right. it's come a long way. speaking of all these AI tools for a small business owner that might not be familiar with AI tools and, there's new tools coming out every week. How do you filter through all the noise and figure out what's really worth investing in versus not?

Jab Siwela (29:21)
What I would do if I was new business owner, I click on subscribe to MaycontainedJab.com, the owner's edge, and you'll get your answers right there. seriously, ask What is the problem I'm trying to solve?

am I trying to get better ideas? Am I trying to create visuals? Am I trying to create an application? Or am I trying to, write a blog? Because these tools a better specific things, eventually they will be good at everything. Some say,

May (29:48)
Mm.

Jab Siwela (29:49)
apparently, might even take our jobs, some say,

Still not quite convinced on it myself. if I'm trying to solve writing, definitely Claude or ChatGPT. If I'm trying to solve 100 % like what he said, Gemini. I'm trying to solve research. I might look at perplexity or deep research in ChatGPT. I haven't used Claude that much for deep research.

I would start with one tool, get used to one tool, try to learn all of them. It won't become me overnight. It takes time.

May (30:12)
for some business owners, do you think they're actually making things worse when they adopt AI tools they don't understand?

Jab Siwela (30:19)
yes, I think so. So when I say that, because you've just now incurred an expense, I've had situations where some of our clients will hear about technology and because the technology...

is quality input in and it gives you quality input out but if you don't give it quality you get a bad quality output and i've seen clients literally say heck let's drop a quick email campaign blast it out and you read the email lacks tone looks generated emojis all over the place not human

May (30:49)
You

Jab Siwela (30:51)
So what I would say to a business owner who's thinking about using the new technology, a tool, play with it, ask an expert to review the content or ask a customer to review the content before you go

May (31:02)
Mm.

Jab Siwela (31:02)
public with it. It's like, imagine you're building a house and you're trying to put it the biggest showroom in the world.

You'd invite your friends and your family to have a look at it first and say, hey, what do you think? And they're like,

May (31:13)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (31:14)
oh, no, that paint, yeah, get a painter in, mate. Get a painter in. Like that luminous purple, not going to work with mass audience, OK? that's how I would do. Because I think the problem is we have tools that are out there and we don't have quality control procedures in place. You have to think governance as well, right, with these things. Because what happens is

People forget that AI is like an employee and with an employee you have governance, right? You'd have policies, procedures, know, standards, you know, your processes, right? You'd have your process maps and figure out where that employee fits in the process and what their role is in the process and the instructions, et cetera.

And then from there, you would use it. But if you bring it in, and you tell them, do the job and you don't give them instructions or policies, process, handbooks, etc. They're going to guess.

May (32:01)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (32:01)
That's what's happening

with people are just putting out there because it gets to it it's easy. And you know why that is? People don't want to go through the friction of thinking, which is what some people argue the issue with AI is. thinking the issue with AI is an issue with us human beings that we like an easy route out.

May (32:16)
Speaking of this poor use of AI tools, I guess, if we start thinking about business owners and their business practices, you think are some practices that they should stop before they start using AI what are some processes do they need to put in place to be successful using AI tools?

Jab Siwela (32:34)
a before even creating a piece of content or even using a tool, have a one-page strategy. And I say one page strategy is ask who am I serving? Who's my persona? What is the pain point they're going through? What is their fear? Where are they in the journey of their pain?

Do they have a bleeding neck problem and where are they from that point to the point of purchase and where does this tool serve? Because once you have clarity on that, you can actually define your messaging based on the pain point that person is having because you can just relay the pain point back to them. For example.

a pain in the neck issue you might have at the moment, May?

May (33:11)
think a common pain in the neck problem for lot of businesses is finding clients, prospecting, marketing, sales process in general.

Jab Siwela (33:20)
What does she fear? She fears not having a healthy pipeline. So she fears having a healthy pipeline She doesn't spend time sifting through unqualified leads. So I would have messaging that says,

give you, example, this a generic AI one that we see everyone is like, are you fed up of prospecting? I'd actually use the pain agitate solve method. saying, prospecting is a hard when you're a business owner.

May (33:43)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (33:45)
You have

multiple things to do from delivery, customer support, finance management and living life. If this is something that relates to you, we get it. Life is hard, life is busy, but it doesn't have to be. Here is a useful guide or a tool.

May (34:02)
you

Jab Siwela (34:03)
that you can use to overcome this. And offer value first, rather than

May (34:08)
Yep.

Jab Siwela (34:09)
advertise first. So the tip here, all around is value first, resonate first, and then have value. Don't go for the art straight away. That's what I would do.

May (34:19)
Hot take, most small businesses don't need AI tools. They need to fix their fundamentals first. Do you agree or disagree?

Jab Siwela (34:26)
Definitely agree with that. 100%. Because most businesses don't even have a written marketing strategy anyway. Or a written AI strategy. Or change management strategy.

May (34:39)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (34:40)
people hear the word strategy and I think like a 30 page doc, what you do in an MBA or if you're doing your final year, your master's in business and marketing. It can just be one page just saying, OK, here is a problem. This is how we're trying to solve it. These are the metrics we are measuring on efficiency. And this is how we're going to get from A to Z.

So we need to start with the fundamental, actually like having just a little roadmap. Even what I call like a one page GPS that highlights the problem, what we're trying to solve and how we're trying to solve it and where the solution is. Cause ultimately AI is a tool.

just buy a Hoover for the sake of buying a Hoover in your house, would you? you're like, Right, my Hoover's broken, so I need a Hoover. And plan is I need it to be able to be automated if it is, so that I've got more time. So that's how you pick your spec. But if you just say, I need AI for the sake of it, it's not just gonna end up having loads of Hoovers and just not doing anything. Or just even, they're actually creating a problem because they're actually just taking up space.

May (35:34)
Yeah,

I agree.

a fundamental problem is that a lot of not just small business owners, just people in general are not maybe as well trained or as well educated across all aspects of their job, right? Especially if you're a small business owner, you're wearing many hats.

Jab Siwela (35:51)
Hmm.

May (35:52)
You're taking care of the bookkeeping, you're taking care of the marketing, you're taking care of the sales, you're taking care of the delivery of the business itself, right? You're taking care of everything. And so when you're taking care of everything, a single business owner, you're not going to be

expert and everything. And there's going to be areas that you haven't had education in, you haven't been trained properly in. But you don't always have the resources to outsource. And so that's where some of the problem is. And so sometimes plugging in an AI tool can speed up the process for marketing, for example, speeding up the process of creating content, but you can also lose some of the human elements to it. if the AI is not trained correctly and you have it run your bookkeeping, maybe it adds up the numbers wrong or something.

There's risks when you're working with AI, but there's also potential rewards if you set up everything correctly.

Jab Siwela (36:36)
group nor I would actually go in there and actually add something.

Even before getting sliding up to AI, it's actually probably worth even jumping on a court with someone who actually knows. Cause it's like... I wouldn't change my boiler if I'm on my own.

May (36:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jab Siwela (36:52)
It's like... I've tried DIYing a lot of things and I'll give you an example. I did it with the wardrobe. I tell you what, two years later the cup is like this, clothes are sliding down.

May (37:02)
you

Jab Siwela (37:03)
like, oh man,

I should have asked someone who knows this stuff. I think also consult a just to get the

May (37:10)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (37:11)
heads up. Even athletes have coaches. Think of it. There are some athletes that have been fighting for 20 years and they still have a coach who told them this is how you throw a punch.

I was actually thinking about this, this is crazy that you have an athlete who's still being told this is you throw a jab. And they've won like four Olympic medals, like, surely they can figure it out now themselves. But it's interesting because you can't see the back of your own head.

because sometimes it's so far in it, you can't see the problem. And sometimes you just need that third person. perspective who might just say, actually, you don't need AI. You actually just need to know what your process is from A to Z, because you actually have no process. That could be the actual issue.

May (37:47)
Yeah, yeah, precisely, precisely. I think that's so valid. It's important to know what you don't know and to admit that you don't know and find the right people to help you.

Jab Siwela (37:57)
100 % 100 % for the first like small business owners thinking about using AI is there anything else you would add to that?

May (38:05)
it's definitely helpful to find the right people to tell you about the tools, right? Find an automation expert, find an AI advisor.

There are a lot of people that are working in this space now, right? So there are people that are learning about these tools. There's webinars for non-AI for non-techies, for example. There's all sorts of resources that are available. And so I think not always about paying for a resource. It's about finding the right resource for you, right? Whether it's finding a tool that you pay for, finding an expert that you pay for,

or doing your own homework, doing your own research and using that as the stepping stone to figuring out the next step.

Jab Siwela (38:46)
Yeah, totally agree. And are there any incidents that you can think of where you've seen people either

using the technology blindly or...

actually needed specific advice that actually helped give them class because sometimes I'm not gonna lie there's a lot that's out here there's a lot and it's confusing and it's overwhelming sometimes and there's news breaking up all the time about AI marketing AI AI process AI my partner sends me at least four videos to do with AI every day I even sometimes get anxiety

I need to speak to Mason because otherwise I'm gonna get stressed out about what I should be prioritizing at the moment.

May (39:26)
always going to be a lot of new tools coming out, the AI world. There's constantly new things coming out. think it's understanding what's important to you and what is just noise for you as a business, right? For example, if your business focuses on marketing on Instagram,

and you do videos and visuals and reels, then you don't need to pay attention to, necessarily, to new tools that aren't related to that. You don't have to pay attention to the new LinkedIn plugin. So it really depends on your business and what you're trying to achieve.

Jab Siwela (40:03)
because the thing is the reason why you need to speak to people because you might end up installing Clawbot and if it asks me, me will tell you you might want to think three times before you start installing Clawbot to your computer that's got finances that's got access to finances in your passwords and ends up deleting all of your data apparently

Cause I came very close, I was gonna install Clover. Then when I spoke to

May (40:23)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (40:23)
May, May was like, oh, security. I'm like, ooh, I'm like, hey, this is why. I do the marketing thing and may keep us safe out here. Safe and efficient,

May (40:32)
haha

Jab Siwela (40:33)
I'm telling you. Telling you.

May (40:35)
Yeah, so actually since our last conversation, I have actually installed Cloudbot, but on a private, independent instance of a server. So it only accesses the one thing I give it access to. I'm using it as a CRM tool and

Jab Siwela (40:49)
Nice.

May (40:50)
nothing else. So it cannot access my email, it cannot access my computer, it cannot access my backend, none of that. So trying it in a very tested, isolated environment.

Jab Siwela (41:01)
And this is why you need an expert, because what she just explained there, creating another environment as a business owner, I don't know how far I've got time to learn that. But if you've got someone like May who just lives and breathes automation, like I'll speak to her first before even trying, because sometimes learning these things take forever. Like telling you, like when I learned video editing, it took me years to get it good. this is actually one of the last things before we go to the last part.

May (41:27)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (41:27)
Canva is a mega powerful tool know what you're doing.

May (41:31)
Yes, I agree. I agree.

Jab Siwela (41:33)
It is like

incredibly powerful. I used to make the craziest videos after I played with it for two, three years of just slowly learning and just like going layer after layer after layer from there. But you'll also find some people who are teachers who use it and it just looks really looks like kids art. But again, this is why it's so important to know it. And I thought I was good and then when I worked with the videographer I work with, he takes it like seven layers even deeper.

May (41:57)
Mm-hmm.

Jab Siwela (41:58)
But again, he's got 20 years of experience. And this is why I think this is the same thing with the technology and the marketing thing you might think you know, but sometimes people who live and breathe and spend all your time doing this might actually know that you might not know. You don't know the unknown unknowns, but that's me ending with that.

May (42:16)
Fantastic. let's jump into the dead or alive quick fire. Let's just do it real quick round. So I'm gonna run through with a couple of marketing tactics, and we're both gonna say dead or alive. And if we feel like we need an explanation, we can do one sentence, but that's it. All right, let's do it. Email newsletters.

Jab Siwela (42:33)
Yay. Dead. No, alive, alive. No, why did I say yay? Alive. Go.

May (42:38)
Facebook business pages.

Jab Siwela (42:40)
alive.

May (42:41)
I think this might be dead for me. Hashtags on

Jab Siwela (42:44)
Oh,

May (42:46)
Instagram. Now you think that's controversial?

Jab Siwela (42:48)
get that at the end. Hashtag to Instagram. Dead.

May (42:51)
Dead.

Jab Siwela (42:51)
Instagram is dead. It's not dead, it's not.

May (42:53)
Hehehehe

DMs.

Jab Siwela (42:54)
live.

May (42:55)
I'd say dead on LinkedIn. QR codes.

Jab Siwela (42:58)
alive.

May (42:58)
alive. Blogging for SEO.

Jab Siwela (43:01)
I see alive, but just hanging.

May (43:03)
Yeah, I agree with you. It's on the life

support.

Jab Siwela (43:09)
That's like intensive care

units at the moment. We're in a zero-click world.

May (43:13)
Yeah. Influencer partnerships.

Jab Siwela (43:17)
so alive.

May (43:18)
alive.

Jab Siwela (43:18)
So alive.

May (43:19)
Print Business Cards.

Jab Siwela (43:20)
Business card, dead. Dead, dead, dead.

May (43:22)
Dead,

And-webinars webinars?

Jab Siwela (43:24)
alive.

May (43:25)
alive and posting daily on social media.

Jab Siwela (43:28)
Or women as what would you say?

May (43:29)
Alive alive

Jab Siwela (43:30)
the next one's posting

social media daily. Live.

May (43:32)
Posting daily on social media.

Alive. Alright.

Jab Siwela (43:36)
So, two things, on touch there. Blogging, love it, love reading articles, but I don't know if it's got a long lifeline. We're in a zero-click world and the problem is traffic going from the search model across there. But, there are still some older users who haven't adopted some laggards that still using traditional search, still there. You actually have

May (43:57)
Yeah.

Jab Siwela (43:58)
a bit of luck with using short form video because...

short form videos actually massive in search at the moment because of the new algorithm. Cause if you click on this, on the video function on Google, you have, it's actually indexing all the short form platforms, which means guess what guys, we all got to be tick tocking.

May (44:14)
Yeah, yeah. It's important.

Jab Siwela (44:16)
So that's my hot take. Mei, thank you so much.

May (44:20)
Yeah, thank you so much. with that, we'll wrap it up for today and see you next week.

Jab Siwela (44:25)
Yes, thank you very much guys. One quick favor we ask. To grow this thing, please follow, subscribe, etc. Get in touch with either me or myself. We will happily advise. Don't worry, no plug in here. Don't worry. It's not gated guys. Don't worry. There's no 497 upsell out here. We're out here trying to help small businesses just to navigate all the changes.

And with that, we're out.