Three ways I’m using AI to grow my business

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Are you using AI to really move the needle in your business? Or just creating more “stuff” you’ll never get to?

A pattern I’m seeing right now is people hoarding prompts and having long running chat sessions that output a lot of “stuff” like plans, lists, ideas, even content, that then still needs to be implemented.

Others get distracted by new models and apps (which pop up hourly at this point).

To really move the needle in your business though, the focus for AI needs to be on improving one or more of three key areas: marketing, sales, and delivery.

Within those, the next questions are: what are you doing that you can improve, what new things should you do, and what things should you stop doing.

This is the “figure it out” step in my three-part automation framework. Next are “write it out” then finally “automate or delegate it out”

Here’s is a quick example in each (marketing, sales, delivery) that I’m doing right now.

Using AI in Marketing

Marketing is all about the ATTRACT stage in our buyer’s journey (ATTRACT → CONVERT → ASCEND → RETAIN). In other words, getting eyes on your offers.

We want to use AI and automation to expand our reach and effectiveness in attracting people to our brand and business.

To expand reach, we’re increasing the volume of content we put out across all channels. I wrote about that a few issues ago (10 posts every day???).

We’re taking our Content Engine (where each video we create gets turned into ~20 assets and 100 posts) and aiming to 10x that.

The key is not using AI to create a lot of crappy posts. Instead, its about using AI to help me (or our clients) create new ORIGINAL content as easily as possible and THEN get the maximum reach for those ideas by turning them into a large number of assets and posts.

Examples include taking the finished YouTube script and before recording, also creating 10 – 15 Shorts scripts to record at the same time. For an extra 10 minutes of recording time, we get 15 additional pieces of content we can publish across 5 socials networks for another 75 posts going out each week.

If this sounds crazy, I’d encourage you to look not just at the huge names in online business like Gary V or Alex Hormozi but the second and third tier folks as well: all are increasing content volume to reach their customers.

A part-time content team is not nearly as expensive as you might think. This week I created a 5-question, 60-second survey that will show you how little a part-time content team can cost and the volume you can expect: https://go.expertbusiness.com/content-marketing-survey-questions

More content going out means more chances for people to see your brand and expertise. That is the ATTRACT phase. The top of the funnel. The more qualified folks coming into the audience, the more the needle moves in our business.

Next, we need to CONVERT the audience members into leads and sales.

Using AI in Sales

The first phase of the sales process is to convert and audience member into a lead. Until recently, the classic lead magnet was the best way to do this. Some PDF or checklist that is useful to your audience and they opt in to receive it via email and you add them to your email list for marketing.

The effectiveness of old school lead magnets has gone down as everyone knows the drill now and has gigabytes of unused PDFs…

Instead, we can use AI to create new tools, planners, or personalized lead magnets that are actually useful to the lead while also opening the loop to needing our programs or services.

In my case, the above link goes to an estimator that helps someone determine the price of a part-time content team and how much volume they can expect given their unique situation.

We’re going to pair that with our AI content planner as well so that with just 60 second and 6 – 7 questions answered, you’ll get a full content plan as well.

With a draft content plan and price estimate in hand, what does that open the loop for?

Needing a part-time content team to implement the plan, which is one of our core services.

The lesson: I could have done dozens of different AI projects but we’re focusing on moving the needle and more leads for our content engine service is a key drive in my business.

What are the key drivers in yours?

Leads are good, but sales are even better.

In this area for us it’s all about efficiency in our sales calls. They used to be an hour, then half and hour, and I’m trying to get them down to 15 minutes by preparing our leads better for the sales call.

This means short videos showing how the team works, having an AI chatbot to answer questions, having AI do research on their business and content before I get on the call, etc. Then of course automated, personalized follow ups as needed.

With more leads coming in from the ATTRACT stage, the more efficient the CONVERT Stage is the more you move the needle in your business.

Using AI in Delivery

Once you’ve earned a new customer, they key is ASCENDING them to your flagship program and/or RETAINING them.

In our case, most of our sales are directly into our flagship programs so our focus is on great onboarding and retention.

If you have entry level offers first, then you also want to deliver a great first experience but try to ascend folks to your flagship or higher ticket offers.

For onboarding we have AI and automation to help collect all the data we need to get folks started in our programs, to have AI start generating initial assets like logo ideas, branding, templates, etc.

We start up an AI project and ingest all of their existing content to train and AI on their voice and knowledge.

Within our content engine service itself, we use AI to help with editing, repurposing, writing, and posting.

We’ve been able to reduce the labor in delivering that program by about 50% with AI (and are rolling some of that into create more content per video as mentioned)

Increasing the profit margin (and/or value) of our services delivered also moves the needle in our business.

Take Action

Hopefully these examples show how take a strategic approach to implementing AI instead of a haphazard one.

1. We first focused ATTRACTING more people at the top of our funnel
2. We then focused on CONVERTING more people from audience to leads and customers
3. We finally focused on ASCENDING/RETAINING customers with good service delivery at higher margins

During this process dozens of new tools came out, we had many other ideas we could have focused on, and there were plenty of other distractions but when any of those was weighed against increasing traffic, leads, sales, and retention, they all fell away as lower priority.

So I encourage you to look for the biggest bottlenecks or opportunities to increase speed/quality across the ATTRACT, CONVERT, ASCEND/RETAIN stages of YOUR buyer’s journey and think about how to use AI to accelerate it.

IMPORTANT: If increasing your content volume is one of those, definitely hit the link below to see what a part-time content team costs and to book a call with me to discuss your content strategy! https://go.expertbusiness.com/s/content-marketing-survey