AI, Branding & The Shark Bite

Guy: [: 00:00:00

And I'm also the author of an upcoming book called which I'm calling the AI Marketing Machine. And if you'd like more information, please go to marketing machine.pro relevant.com. Today I'm interviewing Nick Krause of Krause marketing. So let me tell you a little bit about him. He is an accomplished entrepreneur and business leader, serving as the founder and CEO of Krause Marketing.

. Nick is also an author and [: 00:01:00

It sounds like you've got an interesting pass. So tell us a little bit about your backstory on AI and marketing. How did you get involved in this in this mess?

Nick: Yeah. I think if you don't get involved in it as a marketing leader you're gonna be left behind. And that's how we felt all along with marketing.

We've been in the mix since the early two thousands, of course, that had the whole entire.com boom. When I started building brands and websites. They were just for that. It was, a website online that people could go and look at. Of course, now we know it's one of the leading marketing tools, and digital is by far the most important advertising tactic and tool and marketing tool.

s of social media marketing. [: 00:02:00

And when AI came on the scene just like everything else that comes on the scene, we immediately di dive in. One of the, one of the funny ones that we actually dove into a couple years ago was the metaverse. We went real deep into that. That was actually pretty short lived. Most of these don't tend to be trends, though most of these tend to live on.

AI is definitely one of those, I would bet my house and my company on that. And we have a team of nearly 50 and to make sure that we're on top of everything is important. AI creates efficiencies. It creates efficiencies for KRA marketing, but also for clients. And and I told my team last year very early on, I want everyone to have a subscription to chat GPT.

e actually created a process [: 00:03:00

And that's a live document that it gets updated, get people get trained on. So for me it was early on because obviously as a business owner it's a great opportunity to create efficiencies as well.

Guy: Yeah, absolutely. You bring up the metaverse and I think it's still out there, but it certainly did not deliver on on its promises, which is interesting.

And I do agree with you that AI in marketing is gonna last a long time. And I think because it's so valuable, it's it's gonna be here with us. And actually marketers now that, that don't use ai. I think they're they're gonna be at a loss and certainly a strong competitive disadvantage if they don't use that.

Nick: Agreed. It's, it is changed the way that we've done business. It's it's taken the stage coast coach that's pulled by a horse to, a gasoline engine to a petroleum engine. If you're still, there's no delivery companies that are using, horses anymore, so I would assume that.

In the near future, [: 00:04:00

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And there are some governance issues and some concerns that way. Yes. And holding back some companies, generally they're con they're holding back though the whole.

The whole category. And from a competitive perspective, it may not be so bad, but from an overall perspective, if you're not into AI today, man, oh man, you're definitely behind. Agreed. Now you wrote a book called The Shark Bite Method. Tell us about that.

Nick: Yeah. The Shark Bite Method is a book that helps, any CMO or marketing director really understand how to utilize the several digital marketing tactics out there to create a digital strategy, doing it in an efficient way and doing it in a way that utilizes an in-house team or an outside agency to get it done. What I found is when I'm working with, whether it's enterprise level companies middle market, or even.

ome of the small companies a [: 00:05:00

I actually found that the larger the company, the less they knew about digital marketing, smaller companies, the CEOs, the entrepreneurs, and even the. Know, marketing directors of the smaller companies actually understand digital marketing a lot more than a lot of these CMOs of these billion dollar, a hundred million dollar corporations.

So it, it actually was written for the larger customer, more

Guy: than the smaller, to tell you the truth. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, you're right. You would think that the CMOs of the larger companies understand digital marketing better, but I guess it's the bobbing and weaving and the entrepreneurial nature of the smaller companies that I.

Forces the owner or forces the CMO or the VP of marketing to really understand how every dollar and every penny are being spent so that they can, squeeze everything they can out of it.

Nick: Yes. And

Guy: CMOs

Nick: of these [: 00:06:00

There is a little bit. Different of priorities set forth on them. And then when it comes to the marketing and advertising strategy, especially when it relates to digital, typically they hire someone in-house that handles that, that utilizes an outside agency to focus on it, but they don't understand it a whole lot.

So a lot of time educating. And I said why don't we put together a book? And then every time I reference something I could go to, I just could sit, send 'em that chapter. Like as simple as, creating your content calendar or your, your annual strategy, or your creative brief, some of these things documents, most of my clients when we start working with them, don't have in-house, and we could help them create those documents and the best practices around them.

how do I grow the brand and [: 00:07:00

As opposed to being more tactical for smaller companies. So I could see where that, is definitely a concern. And maybe that's the flip side of the the shark bite method is how do you get the smaller companies then to do more than just worry about digital marketing and focus a little bit more on their brand.

Nick: It's a really good point, guy, because I couldn't agree more that a lot of them wanna spend money on the digital marketing and advertising portion of things before they actually have a brand that's worth putting out there. So it, it is, that is a pretty

Guy: good observation. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

You know what, you've been in marketing for quite a while, you know Me too. And so what were your initial thoughts as you saw AI just exploding and surging into the marketing sphere and and now really almost taking it over? Yeah. The first one was like,

Nick: oh, no. And every time I every once in a while I'd say, oh, no, where is this gonna go?

Every time, a new [: 00:08:00

You're worried that someone's gonna take your job or the computer's gonna take your job. But I. As time has gone on, I look at it as a calculator that as soon as the calculator came out, no one did long form math anymore. I believe that AI is gonna help us do things with much more efficiently.

But there still needs to be the idea guy, which is the person that prompts it. And it's not just idea guy. I think that's puts. Lightly. You need a professional with the understanding of brand, with the understanding of strategy and the understanding on how to prompt the tool in order to create the the content and the creative that you're looking for.

that helps me sleep at night [: 00:09:00

And then I realized quickly just because they have the tool doesn't mean that they're good at using the tool. I think that should help every marketer. Sleep at night as well.

Guy: Yeah, absolutely. And it's it is interesting. You came outta the graphic design side of things and and now the ai and even in generating graphics and even videos it's pretty, it's gotten pretty advanced.

And so what do you use for your AI in generating content, both on the graphic side and I guess the video and also the copy side. So with the video, we haven't,

Nick: While we've played with a lot of tools. We haven't replaced anything that we're doing as far as a creative aspect of it.

ard on your behalf. But from [: 00:10:00

Chat, GPT, that's more from a sales and admin side. From the copywriter side, from our actual creatives, it's Jasper. Have you heard of Jasper before? Yeah. Yep. So it's Jasper. And then from a research side, it's perplexity. So perplexity so those first two help you write the content.

Perplexity is really good at research and and citing items and very niche. The way that they're crawling and scraping the web for content that's related to specific industries is. We find much higher level than the first two mentioned. And so those are the three that we're utilizing with within our processes.

Guy: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, a lot of folks are I think using perplexity just like you're talking about, and makes a lot of sense because you do want to it's, it is funny, you go to the web. For research and and just knowledge generation or, or retrieval of what, what you need to know out there as you're building whatever it is for your clients.

[: 00:11:00

And yeah, unfortunate

Nick: It's the zero click results that are leading to decreases in organic, search traffic. Yeah. A lot of our clients are, have been so highly focused on, but. The valuable traffic, I still believe comes there, when people are looking to purchase or get a quote or look at an actual service.

But the educational piece we are losing and that educational piece associates. Someone at the top of the funnel with, right? They're at the top of the funnel just getting awareness of the topic that we lose that association with our brand, right? So while they're getting educated, they're learning about your company while they're looking at blogs on your page.

at the top of Google there. [: 00:12:00

And it's, it's and then we're not getting all the, we're not garnishing any results from it. But it's what it's become for sure.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it's interesting as well how the sourcing of the content, you just, like you said I wrote this blog and I had, I thought some good ideas in it, and then, chat GPT or or Gemini summarizes it and then presents it to you without any real attribution.

yalty almost to the original [: 00:13:00

You'd like

Nick: to think, and I know there was a lawsuit by the New York Times and also by Getty Images last year because there was watermarked images showing up Yeah. In the right. And the image generated, and then also New York Times was able to prove that some of the content showing up was theirs as well.

So you would think that would happen. But I'm not sure it ever will. And then on the other side of things from the law that I've read is that you can't trademark. I. Anything or copyright? Copyright might be a different term. But you cannot it is not your proprietary data or invention.

If it was generated by ai, now who's gonna tell you whether it was or not? It's hard. It's hard for someone to prove that it was AI created, although we do have those tools now as well. But that is the current copyright rule in many states, is that if it AI creates it, then you can't, you can't.

and say, chat, GPT, improve [: 00:14:00

All three of those? Or do I just own, two of that or do I just own, the sentences that I changed? Exactly. I think it'll be interesting now with these with this dinner that I was at last night all of the companies are. Most worried about the the ownership of the images.

And so what's going on is companies like Getty, they're actually and I don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, but these larger brands are, are being forced to go to Getty or some of the other image. Houses and have them create the images because then they know that what gets created from in by Getty is based on a licensed image.

And then you're paying something that makes sense, that then you have the license to, or the royalty or not, the license to use it. Very cool. That makes a lot of sense.

Nick: And then, and they have the libraries to help with data that we were talking about and the issues that we were talking about earlier about how.

Without [: 00:15:00

Yeah.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's there's gonna be some interesting legal challenges and, that's certainly one issue and I don't want to belabor that too much. I think it'll get resolved here in in a little bit. But what are some of the other big issues that you've seen as you've been using AI in, in marketing?

Nick: I think one of the biggest, issues and challenges is really training people on it. I see stuff come across my desk and across social media. That's very obvious AI to me. And I always say to a client, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, if it's not on brand, then it's not gonna do.

ogether three paragraphs. So [: 00:16:00

So I think that's one of the big challenges is teaching people how to use it and then teaching people how to keep it on brand. I also have seen people then just trust anything that comes out of it. We know that AI has hallucinations and those hallucinations are the requirement that it gives an answer, even if it doesn't know the answer, and therefore sometimes gives the wrong answer.

The curation I think is one of the biggest challenges. People just trust that, the LLM gave it to the them, and for that reason that they should they should trust it. And I think that's a junior mindset or an untaught mindset. But people need to know to be skeptical of what.

Is produced and what is created to you and make sure that it's good. And I think those are the two biggest challenges is the garbage in garbage out scenario. I guess for lack of a better phrase that goes along with it. And then another cha challenge with AI in general is just displacement of work and jobs.

That's more of a societal [: 00:17:00

Guy: Yeah, I I go back and forth. There's certainly a lot to be said that, certain types of jobs are gonna be not eliminated, but certainly reduced.

I think though, on the other hand, you're gonna have other jobs that are gonna pop out of it. It's I don't know when it was 20 years ago that you had this office automation. Thing going on where you'd have the word processors and you wouldn't need all these typists and stuff like that.

And yet the product productivity of office workers went up. But it also, there's more office workers and so they're doing many different things, I think, and I'm. For the sake of society. I'm hoping that'll be the case as well, is that it'll just be a shift.

ing copy is now not gonna be [: 00:18:00

But how can I get better copy supported by AI and maybe get 10 different versions of it, or a hundred different versions of it, which then leads to more personalization, which leads to, better marketing output, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah,

Nick: I agree. I think what happens next is we deliver more value with the SA in the same amount of time and.

For that reason, marketing in a way becomes less expensive to a lot of organizations. And I also would agree, especially from the marketing aspect I don't think this is blanking across the board, but I don't know enough about all the different industries and niches in the world as far as jobs go.

But for the marketing aspect AI will not replace your job. It's a person that knows how to use AI who will replace you. Yeah. And I think that's the most important thing for people to understand, embrace it, and know, be the guy that knows how to use it. You'll be just fine.

Guy: Yeah, I agree with that.

asts. So what kind of common [: 00:19:00

People

Nick: wanna understand where their data is going, how it's gonna be utilized, right? So the bigger corporations that we talk to, so we do training for larger corporations about the different AI tools that are could be utilized as is there fear of it going into this, box that is that is open and allows everyone else to see. So that's, that would be one of them. The, there, there's questions around the quality and the data of it, the uses of it. And and then just like. Where it's going and how quickly it will be adopted. And I think until we see these larger corporations that we see it in a way larger corporations using it in an innovative way.

IOs, will not allow them to, [: 00:20:00

And then it'll be more affordable for companies on a smaller side to utilize. But also we a lot of times follow suit of what are the bigger guys are doing. So those are the challenges of, it's a lot about data protection and fear right now, and not knowing how to institute it and how do we make it a process and, how does it become part of our day-to-day life?

And there's a lot of hurdles to get through change management. It doesn't always come. Down to cost of software change management is a huge cost in itself. So that creating those processes are very costly as well. So I think that's a challenge that a lot of these companies are facing too.

nto more regulated and more. [: 00:21:00

And it's changing. I think they're getting a little more comfortable with it. They need to make sure that it's that the data is protected and, behind some kind of a firewall in some respect. But it, it's, which is becoming

Nick: more achievable and easier for a companies.

Yeah.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. One thing you mentioned before, and I meant to ask we were talking about the brand and, and making sure your outputs are, following your brand and your brand guidelines. How have you been able to do that? And so where, instead of taking the output from from chat GPT and and publishing it, you're, how do you match that with the brand guidelines?

Have you been working through things like that?

nd ask it to sound that way. [: 00:22:00

So it creates content more like it, and you can create profiles for your different brands. So for content for copy is really the only thing that we're using it for. And I wouldn't say final draft, first draft use as far as a creative aspect goes for. Anything from logo des, like from a design or image output aspect, we're really only using it for ideation.

I wouldn't even call it a first draft. Like it, it is nice to pop in some different ideas and see what it generates as far as logos go. But for the most part it's just more directional and composition related. Sometimes it's color related, but I feel like those are pretty far off. And then I.

, if you type in the URL and [: 00:23:00

It sounds more like your content. It's actually it. It's a pretty easy cheat code.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Just curious what do you have as like a really good case study where you've used AI and got the whole process down and really made some, that made some, great results for your clients?

That of course that you can speak of.

Nick: Yeah. I can only speak from a, in a general perspective, I think that it's our, so we do a ton of content creation. And we, so we've revised our, how we create copy from a social and long form kind for blogs or, service related pages and, that starts with a content calendar. And that content calendar could even be generated utilizing ai. So at Krause Marketing, we're very process oriented and, everything we do has a template to the process. It's literally a step to step guide of how we go about doing all of our marketing strategy.

tion. To the finalization of [: 00:24:00

There's, a lot of the content is a final as far as it goes, as far as long form copy for sure. And then SEO, when you're optimizing for keywords, we find that a lot of them are really bad at that. The keywords just. Are very generic and the understanding is just not there of what a keyword actually is.

That's another part that, is a little bit more human. But as a case study, I would say that's something that we've become really efficient at. Now in small parts again, creation of storyboards. We've been using it in video production. I think that is a huge help research for pitch decks.

So from the sales side, perplexity has been amazing. You know what? Used to take two or three hours to find different industry standards and cost money sometimes, right? To get data that you need it on to different industries from revenues to sales, to, penetration rates, et cetera.

Those used to [: 00:25:00

Does this resonate? And we always used to do that with even the purchase data because we know that it wasn't always perfect, but definitely when you're utilizing AI to generate something, I always say, does it resonate? Does that make sense to you? And then they're always like, oh yeah, this definitely has increased this year.

And yeah, we see the penetration rate of that about being on point, and oh, that's an interesting one. I would have to look into that more. But that has taken hours worth of work and turned it into Yeah. Into minutes. So yeah. Those are some of the different use cases that, that cross market has been using it on.

Yeah. Yeah. What we have been training some of our clients on how to use it as well to build it into their processes too.

ent and being able to get it [: 00:26:00

And perpe, perplexity definitely has a, has that capability. Let me change gears here a minute. And if you were to give advice to a new up and coming marketer what would be the. The advice you'd give them so that they could be, very successful as they get into the marketing environment.

So it's

Nick: pretty funny because everyone's always, what I find is everyone always looks to the young guy the young person to know the new technology, right? So for decades it was, the last decade it's been social media. They feel like they can hire a junior. And they're gonna know how to do social media.

It turns out, most part, they know how to use social media, but they don't how to use social media as a marketing tool. Although now universities are actually teaching it it's still, they're still juniors, right? But with that being said, the ability to speak to AI and know the different tools that are out there and to utilize them.

ols and how you utilize them [: 00:27:00

Like no people out there. Go to, there's networking groups more Amer, a MA, American Marketing Association. There's entrepreneur groups that you can go to and you could get to know people within the business world. It's amazing how far that goes. And the young person in the room always garners the most attention.

A 22 year old guy or girl in a, or, man or woman in a. In a group full of, 40 and 50 and 60 somethings, they always get attention 'cause they bring energy. They're young, they're interesting they have great questions. And if you are up and coming or newly outta college and you wanna break in, I would say network yourself.

And then I would do one last [: 00:28:00

If it's two or three. Even better if you're on the design side, make sure your portfolio is beautiful. I could tell you that. Yeah. Every time we put a graphic design, post out for a job, we'll get a hundred or 200 portfolios in. We don't look at resumes. We look at portfolios first. So make sure your portfolios on point.

You could have a great portfolio, but if it's not digital and doesn't have a simple website, it could be a portfolio website or it should be something easy to use that everyone goes on, upload it and make sure your stuff looks really good. 'cause no one's looking at your resume until they look at your portfolio.

And same from the content side as well. So whether you're on the strategy. Or on the creative side, having a portfolio and some type of case study or work to show is a foot in the door. And I would say if you're not hitting those three, you're not getting a job for the most part at a good place.

people, you need to know the [: 00:29:00

It doesn't have to be a real life study. It could be classwork. It's still just relevant, right?

Guy: Yeah, I like that. That's very good. I, and I especially like your mention of the a MA, it sounds like you're in the a MA in yep. In New Jersey and I'm on the board here in Atlanta yeah, go a MA. Yeah, definitely.

And what

Nick: a great spot for anyone to get to know other people, but this is where people are meeting and hiring people. All the time. And learning by

Guy: the way, as well as, and the discussions and the panels and the speakers. They're talking about the challenges that they have today, which are the most recent challenges.

They're not taught, looking at something that's 2, 3, 4 years old. It's today, so it's the most current stuff, so fantastic. Yeah. Nick thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It's been great to have you participating in our podcast. Where can people reach you and where can people find your book?

The Shark Bite Method, I. Yep. Kraus

k: Spark kraus marketing.com [: 00:30:00

Guy: this year. Wow. Fantastic. Yeah, it's congratulations on having a top selling book and marketing. It's not an easy thing to do, that's for sure.

So it's at kraus marketing.com, K-R-A-U-S marketing.com. And then the book is the shark Bite method on on Amazon.

Nick: Yep. That's right. Thank you guy.

Guy: Yeah, thank you. And for the audience, please stay tuned for many other videos in this series of the backstory on marketing and ai. And please visit marketing machine.pro relevant.com and download some excerpts from my book and also find out some more about my upcoming book, the ai.

k you again, guy. Appreciate [: 00:31:00