Why has AI not given you any time back?

Transcript

Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of e commerce marketing chats with myself Charles and Jimmy. Jimmy, how’s it going, mate? What’s what’s been happening your side?

Jimmy Dalgleish: Mate, it’s good to be back. Sorry. Sorry about last week. Sometimes when you’ve got three kids and life’s happening, unfortunately, sometimes I can’t make these calls. So yeah, good to be back in the swing of things, talking all things e-commerce. fresh off, as you know, the Nooser event that I attended for e-commerce two or three weeks ago. I think we had a chat about that on our last call. So yeah, this week it’s it’s a lot of AI conversations again. That that just seems to be the topic on everyone’s mind. And really because we’re getting to a level now where you can implement some pretty amazing things and it’s just requiring kind of you still overseeing it. And I think the the community that I’m a part of in there too, it’s very much, hey, let AI do eighty percent of the grant work, but you still need like twenty percent human touch on here. even building rebuilding my own website at the moment, I probably could have got 80% of the way there in probably two, three hours. It’s the it’s the cleaning up the last 20% that’s taken me like two, three weeks. So I think you can you can get the 80% done pretty quickly with anything. It’s it’s the fine tuning and getting exactly how you want or how you need it to be. And that’s the that’s the little the nuances, but yeah this This week in AI, I’ve seen like a lot of SEO audits for sites. people asking, you know, different ways they can integrate AI into to Google Ads and like it’s it’s not coming anymore. It’s here. It’s here. And the people that people that aren’t using it, they’re not gonna get they’re not gonna get left behind. they’ll still have a business, but they’re gonna be at a severe disadvantage when they’re trying to compete with people that are using it. saw in I saw a really interesting poll a couple of weeks ago. It was on it was on LinkedIn and and and the question was, hey, who’s actually got more time now that they’re using AI? And I thought it was really interesting because most of the responses were like, no, I’m just as busy as ever. So and I think one of my mentors said to me, ’cause I said the same thing. I’m like, I’m doing what I would do in two months, in two weeks. But I’m not freeing up my time. I’m just doing a lot more in that time. So and my mentor said to me, it’s like, Jimmy, because you’re not you’re not safeguarding your time. It’s like you’re able to do a lot more. So you’re just filling the time that you would have saved with doing more work. and it’s it’s completely true. I think and I think it’s something that a lot of people should be aware of. We’re on the we’re on this mission to, you know, save ourselves time with with AI and and improve our lifestyles, spend more time with our family and friends and and do what we want to do. But in reality, what I’m actually seeing is everyone’s just doing more and they’re just more busy than ever. So it’s it’s it’s having the opposite. So people that are going down this rabbit hole, I would just say, you know, be aware of be aware of that and what’s happening and make sure you do safeguard your time. so you’re not just doing more and more and more with these amazing advancements that’s coming. And when the initial goal was, hey, I want to implement AI into my business so I can get my time back. I don’t know how you feel about chal that Charles and that that kind of poll, whether you’re finding the same thing with with AI, you’re not actually you’re not actually getting your time back. You’re just doing a hell of a lot more with the time that you do have.

Charles Travers: Yeah, a little bit of that. I I must admit, I’m I’m actually recently I’ve been a little bit more conscious of, you know, when I am, for example, doing client work. Typically I’ll do client work from kind of Tuesdays to Thursdays and then Monday and Friday. is more for kind of working on the business rather than in the business. but yeah, I’ve s certainly I think Problem is we have this worry that like everyone else is doing that much more, so we need to do that, especially you know, for example, with kind of SEO or ranking or or showing up for AI searches. It’s it’s player versus player, you are competing with other brands, and if they’re doing and putting out more output, then naturally you’re gonna be like, Okay, we need to do more as well. so Yeah. You’re a hundred percent right though. The whole point of AI is to kind of help build systems to bring back your time, if you want to do that. but it seems like a lot of marketers in particular and probably business owners, you know, we’re we’re we’re using that time up. We’re just still we’re just with more stuff. We’ve so w one thing I would say, Jimmy, you talked about like how AI can get you eighty percent there and then the last twenty percent takes, you know, the longest time to refine. one thing I’ve noticed recently is just I’ll give you a couple of examples where the the output is really impacting the quality. So one example is from our podcast whereby we’re getting at the moment a fair few requests come in for to be a guest on this podcast, right? And I’m looking through the the content of these emails and they’re almost verbatim word for word the same with slight changes in terms of the person’s name or the industry. And often they don’t even relate to like obviously we run an e commerce marketing podcast. So we’re not going to even look at bringing on someone who is, you know, a specialist working for B to B companies. So there’s just complete you know non alignment in the fact that one, the content is just is is AI, is AI s you know, is exactly the same. It’s like I can read five different emails and th they’ve basically used the same copy. It’s like, okay, we’re using the same, you know, AI platform to write the copy, which is giving them pretty much the same type of copy. And that’s you know inevitably that just goes straight in you know They either get a response from me which says, No, we’re not, you know, we’re not interested or they c it goes straight into my junk folder. and another

Jimmy Dalgleish: I’m glad you handle all that stuff.

Charles Travers: Yeah. Well and then another example is from actually a recent client of mine who I’m kind of helping them oversee some of the blog strategy but they are responsible for kind of writing the content, uploading the content and they want to do more volume which I think is absolutely fine as long as the quality’s there and it has been. The where the the downfall is where they’re they’re skipping on the the the final design and UX of the blog. So they’re putting the blogs out there, you know, I they’re missing they’re taking you know I saw the other day they’re taking the copy from a Google Doc, uploading it and not checking that there’s certain things in that Google Doc that shouldn’t be on the actual live blog. So just you know, it’s it’s i it it’s It’s minor details but it can it makes a big difference. You know, if it’s just like the th copy dumped onto a page to try and get it live and the format of the blog doesn’t look good, you know, we can get these things fixed and I obviously have mentioned to them when we’ve got this you know, we’re getting these things resolved, but you know, I just think of the amount of brands that are probably doing the same without the guidance of someone like myself. to say, look, we need to get this fixed because this makes a difference. and I think yeah, there’s a danger that people are gonna get lazy in this kind of AI world that we’re we’re now in. it’s the ones that that use AI and then they put the refinement on at the end and they do the the the the quality checks to make sure that, you know, this is this strategy is gonna work. It’s not just okay, I can write an email using AI. But great, is it actually gonna convert into any sales at the end of the day? So

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Yeah. I think I I wanna one of the other conversations I’ve been having a little bit recently too, it’s it’s business owners looking at other businesses and like the grass always seems greener in someone else’s e-commerce store. and I’ll I’ll give you I’ll give you a really good example. So one person that I was having this conversation with has probably about 3,000 products in their store. And, you know, after chatting with some other e-commerce owners that were doing quite well, those e-commerce owners were in kind of the drop shipping world and had like maybe two or three products. And they’re like, the person with all these skews is like, I’m spending so much time on all these SKUs. I maybe I should just be doing what these guys are doing and finding one product and focusing on that. and they’re looking at it from that very they’re looking at it from the grass is always greener lens. What they’re not looking at it from is, hey, they’ve built a moat around their business because they’ve got so many products and variations. Whereas they don’t realize when they go into that That drop shipping world, those businesses of those businesses are very fragile and they they don’t have a moat around them, a lot of them. once a product starts doing really well, it gets picked up very quickly, especially if it’s in a drop shipping network. and all of a sudden you’ve got 20 competitors selling the exact same product as you, and it’s a race to the bottom on price. And then all of a sudden you’ve almost got your exact product on Amazon for. basically just a tiny bit more than what you can actually source it for. And that’s where kind of businesses can go to die on margins very quickly because they don’t have anything unique. They don’t have that unique selling point. It’s literally the product from a drop shipping kind of service. but then you have other business owners looking at those drop shippers, think, it’s so easy for them. They only got like one or two products that they have to focus on. But then the dropshippers are like, I really just want to build a business that has a motor around it that I can continue to grow without having to constantly worry that, you know, someone’s gonna take my products and, you know, just duplicate my whole store and it’s quite easy to find the suppliers. Like the the barrier to entry is quite low. So I for the e-commerce business owners listening listening to this, I would say like don’t compare yourself to other people because every and I’ve coached a lot of e-commerce stores now. They’ve all got their own individual problems. and sometimes when you’re looking at the upside of things in people’s businesses, once you see the whole picture, you realise actually that’s a lot more risk than I’m willing to take on. Or hey, I I didn’t I didn’t even consider that. I prefer to stay in the model that I have because, you know, that’s what’s been working. I think it gets to the point sometimes where where growth starts getting hard for people. And that’s when they start second guessing themselves. Cause it’s it’s not It’s not easy anymore. You have to put in a lot of work and there’s a lot of different channels and a lot of things that you can do. Sometimes it gets overwhelming and then people’s minds start going to, hey, maybe it would just be easier if I just did this person’s business model. And then but then they they get stuck into the same thing. There’s hard parts of other people’s business models too. And you’ve got to you’ve got to train your brain when it starts to get hard that, hey, I know this is hard, but I need to work it out because this is the part where people get to and they give up. or that you know, they they get distracted. So yeah, it’s been a conversation I’ve had with a f kind of a few business owners lately about the grass being greener on the other side and constantly comparing to how other businesses are run and yeah, it’s I I’d just say it it’s sounds cliche, but Just focus on one thing at a time. Like what’s the what’s the primary thing that you can move right now that’s going to have a a big impact in your business? Because I think AI is a shiny object for a lot of people, but there’s a handful of people that I could say have have taken the shiny object of AI and actually made like pretty sizable impacts on their business. because people are just People are just using it in in the wrong way. For for example, on on the blog post, the blog post is a good one. So I taught someone my whole blog system, my whole blog process, and they went out and built a a skill in Claude that basically now automates a blog post a week for them. They’re really good blogs, they’re formatted really well. I think that’s a fantastic way to use AI. He’s checking over them too. I’ve had a look at them too. I’m like, these blogs are great. I need you to teach me your system because I need to integrate this into some of my clients. Like that’s a if you were never gonna write a blog anyway and all of a sudden you’ve got a system where you can write one a week and it’s high quality and it’s formatted well and it looks good and it’s adding to the brand, that’s like a perfect example of where you should be using AI. Like it’s it’s producing you content every week that is like through the system that you built has Done the keyword keyword research, built an article that’s actually has chan a chance to actually rank in Google and and and drive you some more traffic. So it’s a it’s kind of a good example of where AI can be beneficial and once you’ve set it up, you’ve got it running on the background and a new blog every week. Because I think we scussed it a couple of weeks ago, Charles. I mean, how many e-commerce stores have you been to? And you scroll down to the blog, and the bl last blog was written in 2023. Like,

Charles Travers: Yeah yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: three or four years ago. So it just makes the brand look stale. So just little things, little things like that to use AI for can can be really beneficial.

Charles Travers: Yeah, absolutely. And I think when it comes to blogs as well, we’re talking about blogs. Yeah, really the the the aim shouldn’t necessarily just be about driving traffic to those blogs but it’s a it’s an internal linking opportunity to link to your collection and products within those blogs, which helps those pages you know, those money pages rank higher as well. That’s really the the main advantage is, you know, yes it it can drive kind of top of the funnel traffic to your site or visibility now because actually, you know, in some cases now you know the click-through rates to blogs have reduced if they’re being shown on you know AI overviews etc but yeah it’s that it’s that internal linking opportunity the more links it’s not just about backlinks to your site but it’s also internal linking as well which can make a big difference and get those pages that you know aren’t seeing as much authority to them ranking higher as well

Jimmy Dalgleish: Absolutely. I’ve noticed it’s funny ’cause I’ve noticed AI doing that naturally while I’m building my own website. For example, I I built out a service page for open AI ads and down the bottom it’s like not ready for open AI ads, start get started here with your Google ads instead and like links back to like the Google service page. But I find it like AI is it’s wild. Like the website that I’m building at the moment, like if I had a paid someone else to build it before AI was around, it’s probably like a five to ten K build. which you can yeah, now you can now you can sit down and and do it yourself. I I was speaking to someone about this today actually. So for Google Ads, one of one of the biggest reasons that I moved away from service business, Google Ads, and into e commerce is

Charles Travers: It’s it’s crazy in that.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Because I didn’t e commerce relied a lot less on the landing page. Whereas service business, when you’re generating leads, it like the the landing page would make or break a campaign. And the landing pages was something that I I absolutely hated doing. Like I I wasn’t a I wasn’t a web designer, I wasn’t a developer. And then I would see one get developed and I just I was like, this and th I knew what needed to change, but I just I couldn’t build it myself. That’s changed now. and I’ve actually had actually had a couple like my service clients that I do still have actually been able to like generate some really good landing pages for them now. And it’s kind of not that I want to take on service again, but it it just shows that the part that I hated and was not good at, it wasn’t that I wasn’t good at it or knew what needed to happen. It’s that I couldn’t I couldn’t implement it. AI I can take my knowledge and have it implement it and just talk to it about what needs to happen and it it it it can change it completely. So I think yeah the way the way that you use it is so important, but you also need to know the levers to pull. Like e e-commerce, the levers that you need to pull are especially in in paid, so the paid side, the levers that you need to pull are are high quality traffic. So the things that people are typing into Google, you need to make sure when your ad is showing that it’s actually relevant to what people have searched. The next is the the product page. So the conversion, basically the conversion rate of your website and the checkout process, that is a much, much bigger kind of element than people realize. And I talk about the supplement company that I deal with a lot, but what a good example is like before we got the website redone, it was conver the conversion rate was like 3%. around ish. So it it wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great. when we got the website redone, that went from 5.5 to around six and a half percent. So in that range. So most business owners would look at it like how hey, how do I need to grow to double my revenue? So if let’s say they were spending 10 K a month on ads and they’re like, okay, I wanna I want to double the revenue. So I’m gonna spend twenty K and see what comes back. Whereas what what it really took is you could still just spend the ten K and take the conversion rate from three to six percent. And then all of a sudden you’ve spent the exact same amount, but the r the revenue’s doubled. So there’s a there’s a few levers that you can pull that aren’t just raising your budget. I think s especially for e-commerce stores, I would almost focus on raising the budget as the last thing to pull. Because if you can double your conversion rate. It’s just it’s not just your paid traffic that’s going to convert higher. If if you’ve got a better converting website, it’s like the traffic from organic, the traffic from emails, like the traffic from everywhere is going to convert better. when you when you double your budget, you’re still working off the same kind of conversion rate a lot of the time. And a lot of the time the conversion rate will drop when you significantly increase a budget because it’s not going after and converting the low hanging fruit that’s well it is converting that but that low hanging fruit runs out so it has to go a little bit broader to kind of look for new conversions. So yeah, there are a there are a lot of different aspects that you or and levers you can pull in e-commerce. I think one of the things I notice for dropshippers that a lot of other businesses aren’t aware of is their whole business is like completely reliant on ads like you turn off the meta and the google that the business stops whereas when you’ve got a brand I’ve seen good brands still generate a lot of sales and traffic organically dro a lot of drop shipping businesses don’t have that at the moment that I’ve seen anyway I’m sure if they’ve been in the market for a long time it’s a little bit different but yeah it’s having those levers

Charles Travers: Yeah, I actually work with I I work with one you could class them as a drop shipping company. They sell yeah, multiple different brands, from different suppliers, but they’ve been in the market for a long time. You know, ten plus years, they built up a big you know, presence on social media. But they were, you know, before I came on board to do their organic, they were quite reliant on on paid as well. but you’re right. I think we I think we we talked about it in last episode. I think it’s like I think the title of our last podcast was if if you turned off your ads, would you have a business still? and I think some e commerce owners wouldn’t like to admit it, but if they did, they would be in trouble. and for me that’s not a sustainable business model. You do need to build on

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, yeah, it’s just a

Charles Travers: you know, social media presence, organic search, you know, whether that’s SEO and now moving into AI search as well. but yeah, relying on these ad platforms long term. Yes, it’s important. I think as part of a marketing mix it’s essential. I think it’s certainly, you know, it it it’s it’s definitely worth doing if you can afford to do it. but relying on that as the sole way to grow your business long term, I think, yeah, it’s is a risky, risky strategy.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Do you know what I wouldn’t mind seeing some people try at the moment? Because it it’s so hot in China and I don’t think it’s been heavily adopted in Australia at the moment, but like that that social selling, you know, where they get on live feeds and they kind of just sell directly to their customer. I would I would love to see like some of the clients that I work with just jump on a live and engage with their audience and and try to sell sell over a live video. I especially the products that where they’re quite visual and yeah, you can have a conversation with your audience. I think yeah, like what are the companies trying at there? There’s one Woop I think it’s Whoop, or or WhatNot. I think whatnot is it? some of them are doing a lot of social selling at the moment. TikTok’s obviously moving in that trend as well. another thing I see really well w working really well on TikTok is if you can If you can get a a good influencer and you just give them a link with an affiliate code, they’ll drive a a lot of traffic to your to your site. And the the good thing for them is they just they get a cut. I think to make that work on TikTok, you need to you either need to have an influencer that’s local to your area or if they are quite a a bigger one, you need to be able to ship globally. Like for example, you would want to get an influencer that promoting this product everywhere and then but it only ships in Australia and the Australian portion of their audience is tiny. So I think that’s where Amazon do really well with TikTok because you can do one link and it kind of opens the Amazon portal in whatever country they’re from so you don’t have as that much that much restriction to kind of like global shipping but Yeah, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of interesting trends coming at the moment, but I’m I think that social the social selling is going to be I don’t think like businesses are gonna wait, I think, until it’s heavily proven. I think it’s it’s proven already in China. Like the money that they do on those things are insane. But I’d like to see some more businesses give it a shot.

Charles Travers: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s actually across a lot of Asia. Whether it’s you know, a cultural thing, interestingly enough, I just just thinking about it, I went to a while back I went to my kind of local butchers and they were they were basically I think doing live, you know, social selling there. So they they had these yeah, cup couple of couple of ladies that were like basically on on camera just like selling their products and stuff. well

Jimmy Dalgleish: What a great example. That’s awesome. Yeah, exactly. If you sometimes it just takes one person getting creative that can change a whole business.

Charles Travers: Yeah, so but no, I think it’s it’s certainly a bigger trend in Yahweh China was where it kinda started, but I think across across kind of Southeast Asia, but it hasn’t quite I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s quite kind of gone mainstream, certainly across the Western countries. I I assume probably America, UK, I don’t know. but I do know there was a lot of talk about. I mean you you heard I remember hearing Gary Vaynerchuk talk about that quite a lot a while back about how this was kind of social selling’s kinda the next major trend. but I don’t I I I haven’t really delved into the data.

Jimmy Dalgleish: It’s ma it’s actually it’s massive in the it’s massive in the Pokemon community of all communities. Like or or trade tra trading cards in general. Trading cards are massive on social selling and like live breakers and buying breaks and and things like that. That industry is like heavily, heavily driven on on that. So yeah, if you’ve got a collectible or

Charles Travers: interesting. Interesting.

Jimmy Dalgleish: some kind of engaging aspect for your business. Obviously, the engaging aspect when you’re collecting cards is opening the pack and seeing if you’ve got a you know a hit. but yeah, people are buying into those breaks and yeah, it’s a whole industry in itself. It’s absolutely it’s really fascinating. So if you can think about ways to introduce these type of things into your own business, you should definitely experiment with it. I think. I I like the businesses that are built on organic social. the one because the customers are so loyal. Like if they’re buying from you from organic social socially, they trust you, you’re building a relationship with your customers. and yeah, if I was to start an e-commerce brand, like I would everyone thinks, the Google Ads guy, you pick a product that you could sell on Google Ads, which yes would be great, but I would want one that

Charles Travers: Mm.

Jimmy Dalgleish: had a chance to what I call like a moonshot. Like you create one viral bit of content and it just shoots your brand into kind of the stratosphere. or gets you a lot of attention and a lot of traffic and build from there. Google ads is quite hard to do that. Well it’s it’s very hard to have a moonshot on Google Ads. Social organic social. You know, the you have the opportunity to be seen by millions of people with one one good video. So yeah, very, very different kind of landscape, I’d say.

Charles Travers: Yeah, no, I th I I completely agree. I think organic so social is a great way. Certainly a you know, a cost effective way to to get started. You know, a lot of e commerce stores are kind of bootstrapping when they’re starting out. it makes total sense. And you could tie that alongside an SEO strategy if it you know, yes, you’re not gonna see immediate results with a kind of brand new domain, but I think organic social tied in with organic search, they feed in nicely because if you go viral on social media people are gonna start searching your brand on whether it’s on Google, Chat GPT. So these things feed into each other.

Jimmy Dalgleish: I just I even even my own I look I look at my own buying habits when I look at e commerce and I think every I think the last like couple of purchases that I made have been all from people that I’ve followed on social and wanted to support from their organic content. I’m just looking at you might not be able to see this in the camera, but visionary. It’s kind of a supplement for for eye health, for long screen time and it’s got some caffeine, makes you more aw alert during the work day. Like the product’s great and the the guy that runs it is just like building his whole business in public on social media. It’s like, this is great. I’m gonna get behind it. And obviously I have a lot of screen time with what I do. So it just made sense to try it out. Product taste it sounds like this is a this is a pitch for visionary, but it’s not. But the product product is great, but the the message is like I I bought that product because of organic social. if he hadn’t created content, I never would have bought it from an ad. so yeah.

Charles Travers: Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Dalgleish: But yeah, if you can if you want a moonshot, be thinking about those creative ways for organic social. But yeah, I think I think the kind of the main messages for our call today, Charles, is have a look at the levers that you can control. Don’t get too s distracted by other people’s businesses with the grass always being greener. And find ways that you can leverage AI that’s actually gonna have an impact on your business, drive you more traffic or help you kind of continue to grow and yeah if and yeah if you need if you need support on that too you can always drop in our Facebook group which hasn’t been posted in in a little while but it is Shopify Marketing Secrets on Facebook but well yeah feel free to continue to follow us on all podcasting platforms at e commerce marketing chats and e commerce marketing chats on YouTube as well. You can find us too. So I’m always happy to take recommendations. If there’s a topic that you guys want us to cover, let us know. And these these podcasts are me and Charles just chatting every week about what’s happening in our own lives in e commerce. So we’re more than happy to explore some other some different topics that interest you guys too and that you can get value from. And yeah. think we’re we’ve hit the thirty minute mark, so we’ll wrap it up there, Char unless there’s anything additional you wanted to add, Charles.

Charles Travers: No, I think we’re all good, Jimmy.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Perfect. We’ll catch you guys next week. All the best guys. Take care.