{"id":145394,"date":"2025-03-20T09:21:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T09:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/marketing\/why-your-smb-needs-a-data-strategy-before-adopting-ai\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T09:21:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T09:21:59","slug":"why-your-smb-needs-a-data-strategy-before-adopting-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=145394","title":{"rendered":"Why Your SMB Needs a Data Strategy Before Adopting AI"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Are you feeling the pressure to jump on the AI bandwagon? You\u2019re not alone. As small and medium-sized businesses race to adopt AI <\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a>, many are overlooking a critical step that could make or break their success. What if I told you that the key to unlocking AI\u2019s true potential for your business isn\u2019t in the latest chatbot or predictive analytics tool, but in something you already have \u2013 your data?<\/p>\n

The problem is, while AI promises to revolutionize how we do business, without a solid data strategy, it\u2019s like trying to build a skyscraper on quicksand. Many SMBs are rushing to implement AI solutions without first understanding and organizing their data, leading to disappointing results and wasted resources.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the good news: with the right approach to your data, you can set your business up for AI success. And that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re diving into today with our expert guest, Tim Hayden.<\/p>\n

Tim is the CEO of Brain+Trust Partners, a strategic consultancy that helps companies navigate digital transformation<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. With over 20 years of experience in building and managing successful companies<\/svg><\/span><\/a>, Tim is a pioneering business leader known for his expertise in data-driven marketing, customer experience, and emerging technologies. He\u2019s worked with major brands like Dell, Bacardi, and AMD, and is a frequent speaker at industry events<\/a>. Tim literally wrote the book on mobile commerce and has been at the forefront of digital marketing innovation<\/svg><\/span><\/a> for decades.<\/p>\n

Today, Tim is going to break down why a data strategy is the essential first step for any SMB looking to harness the power of AI, and he\u2019ll provide practical insights on how to get started. So, whether you\u2019re just beginning to explore AI or you\u2019re looking to optimize your current efforts, this episode is your roadmap to building a solid foundation for AI success.<\/p>\n

AI in Marketing: Unpacked<\/svg><\/span><\/a> host Mike Allton asked Tim Hayden about:<\/p>\n

\u2728 Data First, AI Second<\/strong>: Understanding why a solid data strategy is the foundation for successful AI adoption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2728 Quality Over Quantity<\/strong>: Learning how to focus on collecting and organizing the right data for your specific business needs.<\/p>\n

\u2728 Start Small, Think Big<\/strong>: Practical steps for SMBs to begin building their data strategy with limited resources.<\/p>\n

Learn more about Tim Hayden<\/strong><\/p>\n

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Why\"Why<\/figure>\n

Full Transcript<\/h2>\n

(lightly edited)<\/em><\/p>\n

Why Your SMB Needs a Data Strategy Before Adopting AI with Tim Hayden<\/h3>\n

[00:00:00] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> It\u2019s really a two way race for companies to build a system that is smarter and can think in every different direction faster than humans<\/svg><\/span><\/a> do. And while you can understand how that could be extremely valuable, valuable for research or to help you save time, but at the end of the day, the data that your company has collected that\u2019s in your marketing automation system, your email, that what you\u2019re capturing with social analytics, all of that data, you\u2019ve worked hard, you\u2019ve actually paid for it, right?<\/p>\n

You have a tremendous amount of what I would call intelligence before it\u2019s made artificial and automated. Why wouldn\u2019t you look at where AI Your Way is possible and AI Your Way includes training it on your data, right? And making sure that what a model tells you, it\u2019s telling you something that\u2019s absolutely on brand.<\/p>\n

Or it\u2019s, it\u2019s biased<\/svg><\/span><\/a> just in the right way to be brand centric and customer centric.<\/p>\n

[00:00:56] Mike Allton:<\/strong> Welcome to AI in Marketing: Unpacked, where we simplify AI for impactful marketing. I\u2019m your host, Mike Allton here to guide you through the world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on marketing strategies. Each episode, we\u2019ll break down AI concepts into manageable insights and explore practical applications that can supercharge your marketing efforts.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re an experienced marketer just starting to explore the potential of AI, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. So tune in and let\u2019s unlock the power of AI together.<\/p>\n

Greetings program. Welcome back to AI in Marketing: Unpacked where I selfishly used this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into content, advertising, social media, search, and other areas of digital marketing. And you get to learn to subscribe to be shown how to prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution<\/svg><\/span><\/a> and come out ahead.<\/p>\n

Now, are you feeling the pressure to jump on the AI bandwagon? Well, you\u2019re not alone as small to medium sized businesses race to adopt AI<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. Many are overlooking a critical step that could make or break their success. What if I told you that the key to unlocking AI is true potential for your business isn\u2019t in the latest chat pod or predictive analytics<\/a> tool, but in something you already have, your data.<\/p>\n

Problem is while AI promises to revolutionize how we do business without a solid data strategy. It\u2019s like trying to build a skyscraper on quicksand. Many SMBs are rushing to implement AI solutions without first understanding and organizing their data, leading to disappointing results and wasted resources.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the good news with the right approach to your data. You can set your business up for AI success. And that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re diving into today with our expert guest, Tim Hayden. Tim is the CEO of Brain Trust Partners, a strategic consultancy that helps companies navigate digital transformation with over 20 years of experience in building and managing successful companies.<\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s a pioneering business leader known for his expertise in data driven marketing and digital transformation. Customer experience and emerging technologies. He\u2019s worked with major brands like Dell, Bacardi and AMD, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. And Tim literally wrote the book on mobile commerce and has been at the forefront of digital marketing innovation for decades.<\/p>\n

Hey, Tim, welcome to the show.<\/p>\n

[00:03:15] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Hey, Mike, it\u2019s great to be here. Thanks for having me. And thanks for all that wonderful hyperbole. That\u2019s just pumped me up. I appreciate that. Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:03:23] Mike Allton:<\/strong> It\u2019s my pleasure. Like I always tell folks, you\u2019re the one who did all the good work to get there. I\u2019m just sharing the results of those years of work.<\/p>\n

So I appreciate you coming on here, taking your time. I know you\u2019re at an event in Vegas as we speak, you know, speaking to that point about how you are a speaker indeed, but if you could start by just Explaining why a data strategy is so crucial and why in particular for SMB<\/a> is looking to adopt AI.<\/p>\n

[00:03:49] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> You know, I, I think what a lot of people seem to overlook is how language models, how public language models were built in the first place.<\/p>\n

You know, there, there has been quite a bit made about what Chat GPT was trained on or what Claude was trained on or is trained on you know, and we see this rising tide of specifically for small and medium businesses, the opportunity for you to have AI your way with Llama and Llama 3. 1 most recently.<\/p>\n

And it has to train on data, right? So that\u2019s a, that\u2019s a way of me starting with the end, the model, which everybody sees, right? That\u2019s within their browser. That\u2019s what their prompt engineering<\/svg><\/span><\/a> and they\u2019re looking for that special, unique output coming from it. How did it get there and what makes it happen there?<\/p>\n

Honestly, it\u2019s, it\u2019s the data and there\u2019s about five other things we can talk about when it comes to security and data privacy. The way that when you go and make a media plan or you interact with an ad network or a demand side platform, probably the, the medium of this small and medium businesses certainly are going to have some experience with their agencies who use first party data to be very exact about lookalike audiences and also engaging customers that you\u2019ve already had Data is the key to all those things. So I think you know the at the end of the day what we are going to see and this could tee it up for us to tear apart with some of these other questions that you and I put together but is is really a world ahead where companies large and small will have their own language models.<\/p>\n

They will have their own AI models. They\u2019ll have their own automation made possible through machine learning and AI. It\u2019ll come in small amounts and small packages and small software systems. It\u2019ll come in very large ones. But the future is certainly going to be, I think, an opportunity for more companies to control their destiny rather than just outsourcing it to a third party, the way we did with social media.<\/p>\n

And and I\u2019ll, I\u2019ll hang it up there for you right now. But it\u2019s a, it\u2019s a big opportunity.<\/p>\n

[00:06:04] Mike Allton:<\/strong> It is. We\u2019re doing something like along those lines, I think at Agorapulse, where we\u2019ve set up our own RAG system that is ingested all of our blog content, our, our support content, our stories. And it\u2019s integrated in Slack so that our sales team can go to a Slack channel and say, Hey, this Do we have any resources about this?<\/p>\n

Or what is the capability of Agorapulse? Those kinds of things, right? It\u2019s all internal. And I know already Tim, you and I probably dropped a couple of pieces of jargon that, that some of you listening may not really know what we\u2019re talking about, like when I say RAG or a different large language models or Llama hit pause.<\/p>\n

Go down to the show notes, download my AI Marketing Primer<\/a>. It\u2019ll, it\u2019ll just walk. It\u2019s free to walk you through a lot of that verbiage and then you can resume because Tim\u2019s got a lot more to share and I don\u2019t want you to feel like you\u2019re totally overwhelmed. That doesn\u2019t have to be that way. So if you could start next, by just sharing what you think some of the misconceptions are that SMBs have about their data and its readiness for the kinds of AI applications we\u2019re gonna be talking about.<\/p>\n

[00:07:05] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Well, I think you know, SMBs naturally have been afforded some extremely efficient technologies that, you know, that I put in the category of technologies that do something for everyone.<\/p>\n

And I mean that with love. I do mean that in a positive sense. We\u2019ve all built efficiencies. We\u2019ve all been able to learn to do more with less through Google Workspace. What was, what was, you know, what was something different than that as Google has really moved in to help you build something you can manage and manage your business with?<\/p>\n

Same thing with Microsoft and Outlook and the things that are able to plug into it if you\u2019re a salesforce user or a HubSpot user you also have a cadre of apps a whole cottage industry that\u2019s out there that can help you Integrate things in and out of your CRM. At the core of that You know You may be looking at the way you merchandised it earlier mike when you were talking about some of the tactical things that are in marketing operations. That\u2019s fantastic.<\/p>\n

Absolutely. But if you peel it back, what is driving all of the above? It\u2019s data. And I think SMBs are a little bit lost right now because, very naturally, they have found it doesn\u2019t cost much, you know, 20 bucks a month and you\u2019ve got a, a Chat GPT Pro account, right? It, it, it doesn\u2019t cost much for you to get out there and find something that can help you create content, can help you write recipes, can help you do a rough draft of an email that you want to send out to customers, all these things.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s two sides to this that I just would say is the data that you do have in your CRM that you do have in your email your email system or your email marketing system, marketing automation system. Talking about HubSpot or Marketo some of these others what you have in there, or even, even, even that which was in Agorapulse that you have via the T\u2019s and C\u2019s of Meta and, and X and TikTok and some of these others.<\/p>\n

You know, you do have some ability to use data that you\u2019re capturing with that system and, and to do so to make better decisions. So with that, I think, do we always want to back to Chat GPT, back to public AI models Ethan, Ethan Mollick at, at Wharton that I know a lot of people follow, right. He, he has said it best, I think, is that.<\/p>\n

The thing you have to understand is, and I\u2019m going to paraphrase what he said, but it\u2019s almost, it\u2019s almost funny that by accident, these companies are making millions of dollars with millions of users right now, when in fact they do not care at all about your use cases. They\u2019re not building this for marketing.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT was never built for marketing. Claude was never really built for marketing<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s changing. I can I can talk about that a little bit later. But you know, these public models were are really on one course, right? Especially between Gemini and what we know is ChatGPT between OpenAI and Google and Alphabet behind Google and Microsoft beside OpenAI.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really a two way race for companies to build a system that is smarter and can think in every different direction faster than humans do. And while you can understand how that could be extremely valuable, valuable for research or to help you save time and some of the examples you gave earlier, Mike, I think it\u2019s, that\u2019s fantastic.<\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, the data that your company has collected that\u2019s in your marketing automation<\/a> system, your email that what you\u2019re capturing with social analytics, that what you\u2019re, you may have in another, another system or another marketing op system, all of that data, you\u2019ve worked hard, you\u2019ve actually paid for it, right?<\/p>\n

You paid for it with media and time and marketing ops to get that data. And I think you\u2019ve got a responsibility now to look at how you can do what you just said, right? With AgoraPulse having its own retrieval and augmentation operation, right? Its own RAG with its owned content, right? How do, how do you make sure that the Agorapulse, I think that\u2019s what you\u2019re suggesting, Mike, you can, you can tell me if I\u2019m wrong, is that the, is it the sales team or the customer facing team of Agorapulse has, and you, and you explained that they can access it through Slack.<\/p>\n

They have access to that, which is very brand<\/a> centric content, right? And, and that would be my argument is that if you\u2019re a small and medium sized business and that covers a lot of ground that covers, you know, what the federal government, a lot of folks say is probably 80 percent of businesses in the United States alone are SMBs.<\/p>\n

You have a tremendous amount of data. You have you have a tremendous amount of what I would call intelligence before it\u2019s made artificial and automated. You have a tremendous amount of intelligence on both your brand and your customers. And at the end of the day, it is your brand. That is the reason people buy from you and subscribe from you and read your email newsletters.<\/p>\n

Because they believe in you and they believe in your brand, why wouldn\u2019t you take control of that? Why wouldn\u2019t you? Why wouldn\u2019t you look at where AI your way is possible and AI your way includes training it on your data, right? And making sure that what a model tells you. Just as you said about Agora Pulse doing it right now, it\u2019s telling you something that\u2019s absolutely on brand or it\u2019s, it\u2019s biased just in the right way to be brand centric and customer centric.<\/p>\n

[00:12:53] Mike Allton:<\/strong> And you make it such a great point about the purpose, the direction of the models. We\u2019re recording this in mid October. The founder of Anthropic just dropped was like a 15, 000 word essay for his vision of not just where Anthropic Claude is going, but. A. I. In general, not just A G. I. But I in general over the next few years, I don\u2019t believe he really mentioned marketing much at all.<\/p>\n

That was not the point of that essay. He was talking much broader scopes about all the things that AI was going to do for us right as a society, which is just fascinating.<\/p>\n

[00:13:25] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Well, let\u2019s be honest when we think about that, when you think about how Professor Mollick, you know, Associate Professor Mollick, let\u2019s be clear.<\/p>\n

So that was love, Ethan, I promise. But but at the end of the day, you know, the thing we have to understand is that these systems that PricewaterhouseCoopers is out there now trying to convince large companies to integrate an API from OpenAI with the business, right? I\u2019m not sure where I sit on that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what I really, you know, how much I trust that to come in there for the simple fact that OpenAI has no vested interest. In my business, right? They, they may put a account executive or a customer success manager against me if I subscribe to the, to their API and I\u2019m able to build wrapper technology with apps and things, you know, tools that my team uses that\u2019s powered by that model, but you come to, you become dependent on that third party.<\/p>\n

Right. And we\u2019ve seen where this has happened before. We\u2019ve seen. We we remember the days where Facebook has gone down for many hours in a day and and cause the businesses who set up and manage real estate in Facebook, especially if they were running an e commerce operation there or they were doing customer service through it where you know, they\u2019re handicapped they\u2019re kneecapped for several hours in the day Or they\u2019ll back in the old days the fail whales of twitter, right?<\/p>\n

[00:14:56] Mike Allton:<\/strong> You<\/p>\n

[00:14:56] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> know, it would paralyze It would it would paralyze people and and we have the same situation right now with you know people becoming very dependent on the other side of it, the part we won\u2019t talk really go into, but a company that is just boiling through billions of dollars a bit rudderless because they never meant for people to be using it the way that they are.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard for them to forecast a budget and plan against that because people are doing so many things. Millions of different things with it, which drives up compute power and data storage costs and a bunch of things they can\u2019t forecast now. So, you know, it, it, it just has question marks without me totally throwing them under the bus or, you know is I want to be clear is, is there\u2019s, there\u2019s question marks when all of a sudden you have now Llama 3.<\/p>\n

1, which comes in several different packages. If you want to call it that you could even have it run on your iPhone, right? You could even have it run, talk about the data that\u2019s on your iPhone. Let\u2019s, let\u2019s forget about the the SAS list I went through earlier. And just say, think about the deep, deep meta.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t mean that with is in Facebook, but all the gobbledygook that\u2019s on your phone, that tells a story about where you\u2019ve been and, and what you do with your life and, the correlation between the same person on your Facebook app and your and your email, right? Those kinds of things. Now you got a model that you can just talk to and start to say, Hey, help me understand the last five conversations I had with.<\/p>\n

With Chad Smith, you know, whoever, I just made that up. I don\u2019t know any Chad Smiths, but you know, so, you know, it\u2019s there, but doing so you have it controlled all in your environment, right? That\u2019s the, that\u2019s the thing that I think is Especially interesting is that Facebook, for better or worse, excelled as a company by bleeding over the edge of privacy<\/svg><\/span><\/a>, right?<\/p>\n

They, they did what they could. We\u2019ve heard, we\u2019ve all heard hundreds of stories of people talking about Cancun at a Super Bowl party, and then they wake up the next day and go to Facebook, and there\u2019s a bunch of ads for resorts in Cancun, right? Whatever Facebook has done in the past, they are a knight in shining armor right now, the way that they\u2019re showing up to empower people to build their own models, to build their own language models and to control their compute power and to, and to have uptime and that, and then that, that biased output that we really want.<\/p>\n

You know, that is so specific to our brand and specific to the audience as we want to serve<\/p>\n

[00:17:41] Mike Allton:<\/strong> Really interesting parallels, as you mentioned, I mean, folks like Joe Polizzi and I\u2019ve been railing for years against folks to lean, you know, don\u2019t lean too heavily on social media, particularly not on a particular social network.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got to own your content. And now, basically, we\u2019re coming around circle and saying. You need to own your data, right? And it\u2019s funny that you talk about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Obviously, he felt that walled garden of the Apple iOS system. And now, like you said, he\u2019s our champion. But you know, most of the folks that we\u2019re talking to aren\u2019t working with, with PwC.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re, they\u2019re small to medium businesses, mid market businesses, right? HubSpot, absolutely. Salesforce, like you talked about, they\u2019re using, you know, Constant Contact and other email<\/svg><\/span><\/a> systems. They\u2019re using Google analytics<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. MailChimp.<\/p>\n

[00:18:25] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah.<\/p>\n

[00:18:26] Mike Allton:<\/strong> MailChimp. Yeah. You know, walk us through what you think some of those key components might be for someone in those situations, whether it\u2019s a business owner, the marketer, and they want a solid data strategy as they\u2019re moving into this AI revolution.<\/p>\n

[00:18:40] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> You know I think every data strategy has got to start with security. And when I talk about security, not everyone\u2019s going to be able to afford to have a sock to in place and and do monthly or quarterly penetration testing against their business. But what is possible is that you start to understand password hygiene across all of your employees, for instance and, and I\u2019m, I\u2019m trying to, I\u2019ll go down the low hanging fruit here for you, Mike.<\/p>\n

And and the, and the SMBs out there is looking at, at, at apps like LastPass or Dashlane, for instance, they do two different things. One, they allow you to have a different password for every single app or every single website. Or, or system or portal that you log into including your, your bank accounts, including your suppliers.<\/p>\n

When you, when you go fill out order forms with them when you\u2019re, when you\u2019re doing anything with anybody via e commerce, right, you\u2019ll have to log in with a username and a password. Let\u2019s make sure you\u2019re not using the same password in one of more than one place. There\u2019s, there\u2019s that it\u2019s 2024 and we still have to remind people in companies, large and small, that that has to be done.<\/p>\n

Secondly is think about do you have a screensaver on your computer? Is it the default one that came with it? Can you, if you work in an environment where lots of people could be passing by your desk, right? And you may have sensitive information, which could be just customer information, just an email address.<\/p>\n

A quick reminder for everybody. With an email address and a cell phone number this is why cybersecurity is so delicate right now. The bad actors of the world, they surely would like to get their hands on credit card numbers and social security numbers. But with just an email address and a cell phone number, they can find out anything they want to about you.<\/p>\n

They have ways of being able to bounce that against data brokers that many times operate on the dark web to find whatever they can associated with that combination of an email address and a cell phone number. So if you have that kind of information on your computer, if you\u2019re storing it on your computer, think about the simple fact of making sure that no one else gets their hands on it and not even just walking by your desk.<\/p>\n

So screensavers, password managers. Think about the things that you have in place to monitor other vulnerabilities vulnerabilities such as are your employees Actually updating the operating system on their on their desktops or their notebook computers with regularity because each one of those operating updates operating system updates.<\/p>\n

Pardon me, you know, comes in and it will actually give you the bug fixes in the patches security patches that you need as the world of cybersecurity changes and shapeshifts. So you know, these are these are some table stakes. There\u2019s three ideas right there. There\u2019s three things that I\u2019ve. I like to share with people.<\/p>\n

And then from that is start to think about the reverse motion that people went through with custom audiences. If if everyone can remember the days when it was really simple for us to just download a CSV from our CRM and then go to Facebook and create a custom audience or everybody who liked our page and everybody that\u2019s in our CRM.<\/p>\n

You know, think about think about that motion today. Do we really want to share our all of that data with with Facebook in that situation? Go backwards from that and think about how you can download all of your LinkedIn connections, right? You can download all of that information from linked in. You can download it all from some of the other social media networks that you work with.<\/p>\n

Your follower lists any of that you have your CRM some of the things we mentioned earlier your marketing automation or your email system anything that you\u2019re using it has customer information in it and you have the opportunity to bring it together and build a golden record if you will and salesforce and hubspot both have matured greatly In the past two years if I want to stay in that Smb lane Both of them have really matured in terms of their ability to go through what\u2019s called entity or identity resolution to say that you have the same customer.<\/p>\n

That, you know, follows you on LinkedIn, who has bought something through you from you via e commerce, perhaps through an e commerce system. They say their name is Robert here and Bobby there. They use a credit card that says their name is Bob and that\u2019s in your payment processing system. There\u2019s data in your payment processing system.<\/p>\n

All of that. You can bring that in and HubSpot and Salesforce and then some of their partners will actually be able to help you clean that up and say that\u2019s not five different people. It\u2019s just one person that create that one record for them. What does that do for you? It basically put you in a spot where you\u2019re not sending three catalogs to the same house or four emails to the same person or worse.<\/p>\n

Trying to execute a media by and putting way more display ads and paying for too many clicks around the one individual that you only needed to put two things in front of or maybe two touches within a week in front of you know, cleaning up things that way as well. And what I\u2019m talking about there, too, is, is as I said earlier about things becoming economically feasible or more cost friendly down market into SMBs, this technology has been around for the better part of a decade with enterprises, with customer data platforms and master data management systems, we\u2019re starting to see more and more.<\/p>\n

Systems that you can use that don\u2019t cost you thousands of dollars a month, but may cost you less than 500 a month that will help you bring your data together and manage that data to, to build those records and to do better segmentation with your audiences. And the last thing on that too, is a lot of these systems are actually moving forward with.<\/p>\n

More sophisticated and ways to orchestrate your email campaigns, even SMS campaigns or noble, pardon me, mobile push notifications, which that all falls in the category of what I think you were giving a nod to earlier. Mike, and that is, you know, how do we, how do you go peer to peer with your customers?<\/p>\n

How do you, how do you not operate through an intermediary? How do you, how do you protect data at the same time being able to meet the customer where they are without having to. Pay Facebook to reach them or without having to pay Google to reach them. I mean, these are, these are real, these are real opportunities that people have had, and I would argue they\u2019ve had them since probably 2014 or 15, when 80 percent of people started carrying a smartphone.<\/p>\n

But. Now there\u2019s software that I think will scale down if we want us to call it that for SMBs to be able to manage much more interpersonal and direct relationships<\/svg><\/span><\/a> with customers than they could before.<\/p>\n

[00:25:54] Mike Allton:<\/strong> That\u2019s exactly right. It starts with security and data hygiene. And then we have a whole raft of tools that are available today at much, much lower budgets, so they\u2019re much more accessible to SMBs.<\/p>\n

And I think probably Tim and I will get into those in a moment, but we\u2019re talking with Tim Hayden about the importance of having an actual data strategy, before you start to get into trying to implement AI across your entire organization, and we\u2019ll get into some of those tools and tactics, like I mentioned, but before we do a quick word from my sponsor.<\/p>\n

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So Tim, one of the approaches we take on this show all the time is to talk about specific examples and use cases. Cause we\u2019ve, we\u2019ve often found with AI, since it\u2019s a technology and not a tool, the ways that you can implement it or not are just enumerable. And so in this case, I\u2019d love if you could share an SMB<\/svg><\/span><\/a> that either you\u2019re familiar with, or maybe you worked with directly and how they\u2019ve successfully implemented a data strategy before adopting AI.<\/p>\n

[00:28:01] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean you know, one of the, one of the examples that I love to talk about is my family has a, has a pizza problem or better yet a pizza habit with East Side Pies in Austin, Texas, and You know, one of the things they, they do the ultimate in personalizing your pizza, you know, you have the left half and you have the right half of your pizza.<\/p>\n

And you can just dial up. You can\u2019t change the dough contiguously across a pizza, but everything that goes on top of it can be different on each half, right? There\u2019s, there\u2019s, there\u2019s that, which they do with personalization, but there\u2019s, there\u2019s that on the other side of it, too, that from a telematic standpoint, when you call in to order a pizza, and, you know, The way that it extended that to toast and favor, which allow you the opportunity to do a pickup with, you know, with pickup with toast, you can do either a pickup or a delivery with favor, it\u2019s going to be delivery.<\/p>\n

Right. But with that. Your ability to look at your past orders, right? Those apps are doing that for Eastside Pies in that situation. But what Eastside Pies does is if you call them your customer profile comes up on whatever they have in front of them, a tablet or a POS system that basically says what your last five or six transactions were.<\/p>\n

This is, this is. Early A. I. This is this is machine learning to a certain degree, but this is definitely artificial intelligence<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. That is allowing that business to pull in what you most recently done. And if you work at a small bank or you\u2019re a customer of a small bank, you\u2019ve probably started to see just in the last two or three years that when you call the bank they may ask you to confirm a last couple of transactions, or if if they sense that you\u2019re coming in with an inquiry or a complaint.<\/p>\n

They may have a I that\u2019s already dialing up exactly what the problem situation may be. So I\u2019ve seen a couple of banks start to do this. And you know, and it really think about this is when you call the bank. It\u2019s no longer a situation where I have to give you my mother\u2019s maiden name and tell you exactly what my challenge is.<\/p>\n

I may have to do something else to confirm my identity, but at the end of the day, the people in the contact center have got everything that they need in front of them and they can preempt me and say, Hey, Tim, are you calling about this charge that\u2019s on your account from last Tuesday? Right? Are you, are you calling about it?<\/p>\n

Because it, It\u2019s it\u2019s fairly big, and we\u2019ve never seen it before, right? They may know that just from internally. They sent me an email asking me if I knew about it, right? Because a lot of banks are doing that to say, confirm this or not. But the fact that they\u2019re bringing it all the way back to the other side, it\u2019s a systems integration story.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also an AI story to say, let\u2019s surface to the top based on what we know on, you know, when, when it is, what day it is. Mhm. And how many days since the transaction or those kinds of things to correlate that a regular CRM is not going to do for you, right? And marketing automation<\/svg><\/span><\/a> has not been able to do this for us is allowing a I to be able to take a couple of disparate signals, put them together and put them in front of someone to serve you better or for you to self serve yourself better.<\/p>\n

So, you know, I think You know, I\u2019ve, I\u2019m fascinated but I have question marks around it by the many companies now that have made their own GPTs with Open AI, right? They have no control over the base model and the, and the base model is only trained on, I just, I want to talk about, you know, I think most people want to think of that as AI, and it\u2019s not limited to that, right?<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll go in that direction for those of you who, who luxuriously enjoy your prompt, your prompt engineering<\/svg><\/span><\/a> prowess, right? I\u2019ll, I\u2019ll, I\u2019ll hang, I\u2019ll hang with you a second, but, you know, as you\u2019re making a chat GPT, as you\u2019re making a GPT wrapper or your own jobs, GPT, or one of these other things that I\u2019ve seen people talk a lot about, You have no, you have absolutely no control over that.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been able to put some swim, swim lanes against it, some business rules against it, and create a bit of a user experience<\/svg><\/span><\/a> with it. But at the end of the day, the base model is the same thing. It is not customizable, not trained on your data. And I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re going to see more and more companies that experience great growth in the AI era are going to be the ones who invest in that which can be very bespoke with their data, with their customers, with their employees, their products and their operations. All of these, if you were to look at them separately, are sources of signals and intelligence. Again, data is intelligence. They are, they are sources of it. And they actually, because you might have a way to reconcile that against certain performance metrics, whether that\u2019s clicks and follows and downloads and subscriptions, or if it\u2019s actual purchase data, you\u2019re able to correlate things over time.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m seeing a number of small businesses that are able to. Correlate things like I\u2019ll see in my Facebook memories maybe the way the weather was a year before and just happened to notice that two or three of these local boutiques that, that I\u2019ve bought clothing from before and Austin have just nicely timed you know a message to me about a sweater or something like that, you know?<\/p>\n

So you know, You know, maybe I\u2019m overthinking it. Maybe I\u2019m assuming something there, but you know, this is this is what being really smart about marketing is about. This is about understanding that a language model and a public language model. Will not have all the answers for you and it certainly won\u2019t do it in a custom super hyper relevant or bespoke manner and that\u2019s that\u2019s again where I think the whole market\u2019s going to go and You know I\u2019ve mentioned Llama three or 3.<\/p>\n

1 a few times I would love for smbs to kind of look at it as the Toyota Camry of public models. It is It meaning that you can drive it anywhere and you can easily find people who can support it in terms of You customizing it, configuring it and training it on that data. We listed off a couple of data sources earlier that you have for you to be able to do that to have.<\/p>\n

A very in the right way, biased and relevant chat bot, one that is specific to your brand or your business and to your customers. I mean, I think that\u2019s that\u2019s one way that\u2019s just one Avenue. I think that we\u2019ve got an opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n

[00:35:07] Mike Allton:<\/strong> I actually love the East Side Pizza example. Not, not only because I love pizza in Austin, Texas, but because you know what they\u2019re obviously doing there is they\u2019ve got a Point Of Sale System and or something else that\u2019s riding alongside of it that\u2019s tracking customer orders and tendencies and trends and that sort of thing so that the next time you call, you can either already have your favorite pizza loaded up with one click, being able to put that in your cart, which eases your ordering process. Or if you don\u2019t order it, they can recommend it. Say, Hey, Tim, did you forget? This is what you usually order. Do you also want that pizza? Which ensures not only are you making sure that you\u2019re upselling the orders whenever possible, but when Chad Smith opens his pizza place down the street, you\u2019re going to be less likely to order from Chad.<\/p>\n

Because Eastside\u2019s already got your favorite pizza ready to go with one click. So that\u2019s, that\u2019s, that\u2019s such a boon to small businesses. Now we\u2019ve been talking about, you know, Claude and Llama and that sort of thing. Are there other tools or technologies that you recommend for SMBs that can manage and execute?<\/p>\n

Analyze their data in preparation for bringing in a I or is it really just you\u2019re looking at the large language models themselves,<\/p>\n

[00:36:20] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> you know, and I, I mean, I\u2019ll probably share a few things here that are fairly common and known. But I mean, if you\u2019re if you\u2019re having a lot of remote conversations as we\u2019re using Stream Yard here, but using Zoom or or Microsoft Teams some other tools, Video conferencing tool if you\u2019re doing that If you\u2019re not using read.<\/p>\n

ai or you\u2019re not using otter or one of these other transcription services You\u2019re missing a big opportunity there to be able to transcribe your conversations in real time Allowing you and the person you\u2019re talking to to be able to see notes being written as you as you host the conversation Which I think helps with recall in the moment it certainly does But the thing I love to I personally do, right, is if I\u2019m not discussing anything that\u2019s sensitive or private, or is confidential information with a client or a prospect is I\u2019ll use Read. ai on my Zoom calls and when I\u2019m done, it does a fantastic job of sending me a summary and what the takeaways or next steps are, and then it gives me access to the full transcript. I\u2019ll take the full transcript and then I\u2019ll go to Claude and I\u2019ll ask Claude to, and I\u2019ll say. This is who I was talking to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a, it\u2019s a fairly long prompt, but I\u2019ll say, this is who I was talking about, this is what we were talking about. Here\u2019s what my goal is. Can, can you do me a quick job and a quick favor and draft for me an email to them, you know, that is you know, 80 words or less recap of what we discussed and then the five ideas that we shared and the two things that are next steps.<\/p>\n

And of course, once I do that, and I\u2019ve uploaded that transcript. It\u2019s, it\u2019s a matter of, you know, two to five seconds, the drafts in front of me, I\u2019m able to copy it, paste it into the email client and then wordsmith it and send it sounds like it\u2019s more steps than it needs to be. And it\u2019s more steps than it will probably be a year from now, because we\u2019ll start to see a combination of these tools working with your email client in real time, but for now, Just think about how you, you just can\u2019t miss a beat when you do something like that.<\/p>\n

You, you\u2019re able to cover the high points, the low points, the next steps for you in terms of responsibilities in terms of the actions that you signed up for and committed to delivering. It\u2019s helped me with accountability, but it\u2019s also put me in a position to where I\u2019ve got that recall. I\u2019m able to put back in front of the prospect or the client to move matters forward whether it\u2019s a new statement of work, it\u2019s a new project or the consideration for them to expand the work they do with us.<\/p>\n

So, you know, at, at the, at the end of the day, I think there\u2019s, there\u2019s, there\u2019s low hanging fruit like that. And then there\u2019s. You know, Notebook LM before you actually go talk to a new customer or if you\u2019re in recruiting and before you talk to a candidate, take the LinkedIn profile of that person and, and go to Notebook LM and ask it to whip up a nice podcast for you.<\/p>\n

And then those podcasts laughs anywhere from, from what I\u2019ve seen in my experience and what people have been sharing. 10 to 15 minutes. They\u2019re not very long, but get that as a preamble, some storytelling<\/svg><\/span><\/a> about who you\u2019re about to meet in that recruiting capacity with the candidate. But better yet, if you\u2019re in sales and you\u2019re trying to go meet somebody and trying to understand everything you can about them, if they\u2019ve been great about sharing content on LinkedIn, which is not always the best place, sometimes their website would be another link or a different link that you\u2019d want to, you\u2019d want to provide there.<\/p>\n

But by doing that, you know, you\u2019re actually able to have Notebook Lm very quickly give you an audio file that you can listen to as you\u2019re driving across town or perhaps as you\u2019re picking up your rental car at the airport and driving to. The prospect meeting. So I, I love that, you know, and then, you know, tactically with content, there\u2019s, there\u2019s that where Canva going, you know, and what, what Adobe even announced today, right?<\/p>\n

I mean, just, just they\u2019re going deeper into AI, deeper into generative AI. And and having it come in and, and basically fast, you know, fast track the creative process back to my, you know, my, my text file with Claude and saying, draft an email for me, you, you\u2019ve now got a number of tools that can allow you gamma is another one that I use with old PowerPoints that I know I had content.<\/p>\n

Actually when Joe Polizzi would have me come speak at content marketing world, a lot of what I would talk about with mobile strategy is directly related to what I\u2019m trying to tell people to do with AI now in terms of control and peer to peer you know, controlling your data and not having to operate through intermediaries, a lot of those old decks that I would use, I\u2019ll go to gamma and I\u2019ll say, would you You look at look at this deck that that we made last week and then look at this deck that\u2019s eight years old nine years old and would you would you grab what you want to from it and And you know make make what\u2019s on each slide a little more colorful or just give me some language to work from I do that with gamma i\u2019ve played around with Canva with it, too, but To the point I think you\u2019ve already made is this this deck This takes things that would have taken me hours to do before now, just minutes.<\/p>\n

And, and that\u2019s, that\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about here. It\u2019s not about the content itself. It\u2019s not about the reasoning of the model or the problem solving to your point about the Anthropic executive document that\u2019s floating around right now. You know, Claude or, you know, Anthropic is a company, certainly OpenAI is a company.<\/p>\n

Google with Gemini. They\u2019re out to cure cancer and give us world peace. They\u2019re not out to do anything in the interim. They\u2019re really not. They\u2019re just going to use us to train those models to think differently and get more advanced so they can go solve big world problems<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. So I like some of these smaller little apps and smaller little operational tools that are starting to come up that are just helping us with that.<\/p>\n

Not really cut corners, but you know, be able to shave a few minutes off of a job or an hour off of some task. And and the opportunity to do it that way.<\/p>\n

[00:42:38] Mike Allton:<\/strong> Yeah, those are great examples. I love Notebook LM. I did a whole episode as an example of Notebook LM. I\u2019ll link to that in the show notes below.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m using Read AI probably every day at Agorapulse. I have it tied into my Google Meet system. So every time we\u2019re doing a one on one meeting or a group meeting or a Tiger squad meeting, whatever. I\u2019ve got those automated notes. And to your point, that means I don\u2019t necessarily have to be quite so diligent in my note taking.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need to make sure I capture each and every action item that\u2019s all going to be captured for me by the assistant. It\u2019s just important if you\u2019re not meeting internally, if you\u2019ve got external folks, I think you should ask them and let them know, Hey, are you okay? You know, my artificial assistant and gosh, don\u2019t have the A. I join for you. Have the A. I join with you. Paul Roetzer has railed on that a couple of times already on his show, and I couldn\u2019t agree more. That\u2019s totally agree. That\u2019s totally agree. No, no. Yeah. But I think to your point where we\u2019re moving is having these systems with their agents that are, pervasive and doing all these things for us.<\/p>\n

Like I can\u2019t imagine Google won\u2019t soon have its own AI agent that can sit inside of Google Meet and then it\u2019s already connected to my calendar and my Gmail. So it can automatically send a summary with action items to everybody who participated in the meeting, if that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking for, what else do you see coming on the short term?<\/p>\n

And I know we\u2019re almost out of time. So this is gonna be my last question to you, Tim. You bet. Particularly when it comes to data strategy and AI evolving, what should SMBs be preparing for?<\/p>\n

[00:44:18] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Well, I think it, you know, your, your data is your ticket to the future. Your business is going to change. AI will slowly push some people out of jobs or, or certain operational roles.<\/p>\n

That you have within your organization. The bigger halo effect that\u2019s going to have is that companies themselves are going to find themselves you know, where they have to make a decision on whether or not they keep selling things and building things that they sell the same way that they always have.<\/p>\n

So your data is your key to the future. It is the intelligence that tells you you. What your customers want, how they behave, what their preferences are. You\u2019ll increasingly have tools that will come from many of the vendors that we\u2019ve discussed here, not the public models, but many of the just standard operational tools, software as a service.<\/p>\n

That you\u2019re using more and more of that software as a service is going to not just have a co pilot, but have AI on the back end, which is helping you correlate information and have better, clearer insights on what to do. Think about revenue diversification, right? Think about what else could you do to sell something different to the same audience?<\/p>\n

Your data can tell you that your data has those answers. And then it can, it can be further enriched through surveys and polling and other types of research. But you\u2019re sitting on a gold mine already, right? You\u2019re sitting on what your customers have trusted you to manage and to learn about them.<\/p>\n

And with that, if you want to iterate your you know, iterate your business, if you wanna iterate the, the way that you make revenue through different means, it\u2019ll be the data that it tells you to do it. It\u2019ll be the data that leads you into whatever\u2019s next after that. The big, the big answer to you are your leading first half of that question, Mike, is, is AI agents where pretty soon we will see the ability for SMBs to start to build custom agents that actually perform actions for you as a business owner or as a, as a manager or a leader in an organization to you know, be able to execute certain tasks, be able to go and grab certain data or insights and bring it to you at certain times of day.<\/p>\n

So you know what to say before you walk in a meeting, before you, you know, start to go to the whiteboard and figure out what it is you\u2019re planning to do next week or next month based on what\u2019s going on in the business at that moment. I think you hear me say that, I don\u2019t think anybody out there really has their head wrapped around AI holistically.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think anybody has their mind totally wrapped around where AI agents are going to play a big role in business, but know that they\u2019re coming and it\u2019ll be for you back to my point about customization and custom configuration of what is a very malleable technology form. If we want to call the category of technology, we want to call AI that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s, it\u2019s much more than that, but if you want to think of it that way, you\u2019ve got every opportunity in a malleable way to make it work for you and make it work for exactly what your geography, culture, customer behavior, product, vertical position, market position, all of these things that are unique to you.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got an opportunity to leverage it and you\u2019ll have more opportunity to do it over the coming months.<\/p>\n

[00:47:51] Mike Allton:<\/strong> And I just love how you started that answer because we don\u2019t like to fear monger or trigger people on this show, but the truth is some roles, some jobs, some tasks, lots of tasks are going to be rendered obsolete.<\/p>\n

And we need to just know that we need to be prepared for that. And so I appreciate you laying out many of the next steps for SMBs, but I know folks are going to have even more questions. They\u2019re going to look for more answers. Where can they go to connect with you, Tim, if they want to start to pick your brain and work with your company?<\/p>\n

[00:48:23] Tim Hayden:<\/strong> Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I am I\u2019m one of several Tim Hayden\u2019s that are out there. If you are you familiar with if you\u2019re familiar with Linkedin, we\u2019ll we can probably put it in the show notes, but Linkedin. com forward slack swash in forward slash saddle up. That\u2019s me likewise our website brain trust partners and you know, I tell people if you can\u2019t find what you\u2019re looking for in either of those places, just hit me a message on Linked In and we\u2019re constantly looking at things.<\/p>\n

I mean, our core business is customer data platform and master data management implementations and configurations. We do that. Upscale with what I would say medium to large scale businesses and enterprises. But as we do that, we are basically exposed to tens of thousands of different kinds of software as a service and systems that people are using.<\/p>\n

And with that, I think I\u2019ve learned a lot and certainly my team shares a lot and reports back to me on the things they run into. I\u2019m happy to pass along some of the things we\u2019ve learned or seen. And you know, want to be a resource it\u2019s out there for folks, because it\u2019ll take a village for all of us to get through how AI is going to change what we do and how we operate.<\/p>\n

So for all boats to rise, we got to work together.<\/p>\n

[00:49:40] Mike Allton:<\/strong> That\u2019s awesome. Thank you so much, Tim. We, of course, we\u2019ll have all of Tim\u2019s links in the show notes below and thank you all of you. For tuning in, that\u2019s all the time we\u2019ve got for today. But as I mentioned before, if this is your first foray, this is the first time listening to this podcast or thinking about how you\u2019re going to implement AI in your own business, check out the AI Marketing Primer<\/a> that I have linked below. It will help you get started. It will ease a lot of those concerns and worries and FOMO and everything else that\u2019s going on with AI. That\u2019s all the time we\u2019ve got. Thank you so much. Welcome to the grid.<\/p>\n

Thanks for joining us on AI and marketing unpacked. I hope today\u2019s episode has inspired you and given you actionable insights to integrate AI into your marketing strategies<\/svg><\/span><\/a>. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and consider leaving a review. We\u2019d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you might have.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget to join us next time as we continue to simplify AI and help you make a real impact in your marketing efforts until then keep innovating and see just how far AI can take your marketing. Thank you for listening and have a fantastic day.<\/p>\n

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