SEO Podcast The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing

Building Strong Connections with AI-Powered Email Marketing Strategies with Danielle Cevallos

• bestseopodcast.com • Episode 634

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Building a personal brand in today’s digital landscape hinges on authenticity and trust. The episode discusses the importance of combining personal interactions with strategic marketing efforts, addressing the role of AI in copywriting, and emphasizing the critical need for effective email strategies and sales funnels. 

• Personal branding as a unique identifier in a crowded market 
• Trust as a cornerstone of effective marketing 
• Balancing automation with genuine human connection 
• The necessity of starting an email list early 
• Developing a clear brand voice and messaging 
• Effective sales funnels combining nurturing and conversion 
• The importance of ongoing testing and adaptation in marketing strategies 
• Strategies for content creation across multiple platforms 
• Maintaining authenticity in the face of increasing AI use 
• The complexity of marketing demands persistent effort and strategy

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Guest Contact Information: 

Website: https://convictionmarketingagency.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-cevallos/

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

Find more great episodes here: https://www.internetmarketingsecretspodcast.com/  

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Speaker 1:

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing.

Speaker 2:

Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

Speaker 1:

All right, and we're here. We're live. I am your host, matt Bertram, of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. We are continuing our series of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. We are continuing our series of the movers and shakers in the industry that are experts in all different types of areas. You know I'm well known as an expert for SEO and as far as branding and email marketing and all that other stuff, I want to bring in some of the top experts for the audience to hear more about. And, danielle, I am so excited to have you on. I want to get into this. I think that personal branding. I actually did write some books about it years ago. I saw kind of the emergence of PR and personal branding with SEO, like digital PR, many years ago and I wanted to bring on somebody that does that every day, and we were talking previously about email marketing and AI and I just really thought it'd be good to bring you on. Could you please credentialize yourself real quick and then we'll just jump into the conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll give you the really short list of highlights. I actually had a whole other career in education that's what my master's is in and I was like an old school blogger. So SEO is I started a little bit there, had like a viral blog, learned all the marketing stuff as it came out social media and email and all that like as it was happening, and I actually was a copywriter while I was teaching on the side, because teachers make no money. And I ended up working for some very, very, very big name internet people training their copywriters, writing their copy for companies, you know, doing $100 million in revenue, and ultimately decided to come in house with one of my mentors and helped her build her company to eight figures, largely managing the marketing department, and then we have since started.

Speaker 2:

It started with one company, Now there's six. I am the president of three of those companies and oversee the marketing for all of those companies. So one of the companies is a marketing agency where I help medical practitioners and coaches, consultants, doctors, work on their email marketing, their personal brand strategy, some social media strategy, messaging, positioning, all of the fun stuff. So I've had my personal experience of doing it myself and now I get to kind of see behind the scenes of marketing for businesses doing, you know, anywhere from 2 million to $50 million in revenue.

Speaker 1:

So Super, super impressive, super impressive and and I think that building a personal brand strategy to cut through the noise today is is really really key to you. Know, start out, if you're a one person practice or you're growing you, being the brand is what is the lightning rod that attracts people to you. And if you can do content marketing through podcasts and books and speaking one to one to many kind of broadcasting and people know who you are and what your brand is. People, when they see you or understand you, they know what you do and they'll be attracted to you. I think that it's really really important in today's age. Copywriting, like Dan Kennedy read all his books, all the different niches, you know really really powerful. Let's let's talk about AI, because I think everybody's freaking out Right About AI, and I rightfully so. I think AI agents are coming and it's going to be pretty wild. I'm excited.

Speaker 1:

We live in this time, you know, but right now people are just getting a taste of it with, like, maybe the chat, gbts, the rocks, that sort of thing. You know, when AI writes titles, they seem to be a little repetitive currently. You know, now you can train. You can train your large language model right, like you can load in a bunch of stuff. You can improve it with the right prompts, but if you're just out of the gate utilizing it for stuff while you do get a title, it's not great, right? I mean, what has been your experience? I know, being deep in the email marketing and copywriting space like you're bumping up against it, and you're probably bumping up against clients of, like why should I pay you? Uh, you know I can use chat for free, right? Like. So what's the? What's the argument for that, right?

Speaker 2:

Um, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and this is something I've actually had to kind of work through. Um, because obviously it's, it's like the internet. You can't act like, oh, this isn't happening, it's not real, it's just a phase. This is not just a phase. This is going to do what the internet did to everything. It's going to do the same, and so to not pay attention is naive.

Speaker 2:

On the flip side, people who have gone all in basically removing all the human touch, all the things that are uniquely human, that a robot, a machine, cannot do, they're really not doing well, because we're living in a world where there's just a significant lack of trust everywhere, and there are a million reasons, and so one of the ways that you build trust is by building relationships, and we know this because old school used to network right Like you would go to events and you would meet people in person and you'd build relationships and they'd refer people and you'd refer people back and it was just an understood thing. You were building your personal brand back then. You were doing that then. So, while I will not bury my head in the sand and act like AI isn't a thing, I also I refuse to allow it to replace people-centric marketing, because everything we know about what has always worked is people and, living in the times that we live in, where literally nobody trusts anybody, we've seen clients with thousands of real testimonials thousands, not hundreds, not dozens thousands of real testimonials. So you would think, gosh, this is so much proof that they can get results, and people are still hesitant because there's something in us that says don't trust people, don't trust people. And so when you build your personal brand, you're building trust.

Speaker 2:

Now we do use AI, and so I have a few parameters and this is something, something, just some general rules that I think. So I run an art agency. I have a large full-time W2M employees. You know, in our agency we don't do contractors. These are real people. I mentor them. They fly to me once a month, like we do training in-house. They are not allowed to use AI. They have to learn all of the skills. They are not allowed to use AI. They have to learn all of the skills. And now there will be a point where they can, but until you know the psychology of marketing, until you understand the ideal buyer and the personas and what that actually means in a tangible way, until you can take a piece of copy and make it nuanced and personable and real. Ai is cheating you from developing those skills.

Speaker 2:

Now there's myself and a couple of other people on our team who are very, very seasoned. I can use AI. I have written hundreds of sales pages that convert highly. I know exactly what works, almost intuitively, not all the time. So when I sit down, number one I have programmed my AI with my own frameworks, with my own work, and I've said, hey, I have a body, 10 years of thousands of hours of copywriting. I'm going to give it to you and then I'm going to ask you very specifically to prompt it in a certain way, and then I know how to go back and edit it Because, again, I have years and years of reps that this new team doesn't have. They have to build the muscles first and know what looks good, what's right, what's wrong, why it's right, why it's wrong, and then they can start using this to, you know, be more efficient, to get more outcome in less time. But I think the mistake is people think it's going to do the thinking work for them and it's not. So you have to. I say this all the time.

Speaker 2:

Every marketing strategy, and obviously you know this in SEO, every marketing strategy will rise and fall on positioning and messaging, and you cannot shortcut that. There's nothing to do that will shortcut the need to effectively position your company, your brand yourself, and to get clear on messaging. That's not something a machine can do for you because it's nuanced. Once you have that, all the other pillars can be kind of built up under that. You can build a content strategy, you can build your SEO strategy, you can build your podcast, youtube strategy, but you cannot do anything without that, and so, without a deep understanding of what makes those two things effective, you can get chat to write a bunch of random posts. For you it's not going to matter, because you don't have the overarching strategy in place and you don't know what good looks like, and so you're just letting it create a generic brand. That's ultimately going to do the opposite of what you need to do. It's not going to build trust, it's going to undermine your trust.

Speaker 1:

So no, I agree with that. I think that it's all about the operator, right? So if you don't know what good looks like, you're just going to trust what it does and it might not be correct. Now you know, on basic things, it's pretty good, right. It's pretty accurate at right it's. It's it's pretty accurate at at information recall, right Like it. It knows a lot of stuff but doesn't understand the nuances.

Speaker 1:

I think that there's a component also of genuineness, right Of like who you are, are you who you say? You are right and like. People want to connect with people, they want to know like people do business with people and people do business with people. They know, like and trust. And if you present one way online or your copy presents one way and it's not reflective of your brand, when they get on the phone with you, like have you, have you done that? Like, have you like got on the phone with somebody after you've been like emailing back and forth or you've like read all their stuff, and they act completely different and it becomes like such a turn off.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, oh yeah. I thought it happened more more off. Often with clients they're like this is who we are and you get back by the business and you're like, oh no, not really, you're not doing what you say yeah and so.

Speaker 1:

so it's about making that connection and and and and wanting to work with that person and and, and we can, we can through through this hyperspace. I don't know what what this is like. We're. We're in virtual reality right now, right Like you're looking at avatar of me, I'm looking at Avatar of you. We're across the country, you know, but it makes the world a lot smaller in virtual reality, but we still want to connect with people. We still, you know, want to know who we're dealing with and can you count on this person and do you have my best interest at heart? And like those are, I think, the number one thing that I've seen. I've seen it in data and I've also seen it when clients feel like they're a number Right Versus a person, like the apathy component is is why clients leave Right. That's just as specific to two agencies. We got a lot of agency listeners out there and you know you can grow and you can scale and you can do all that, but it, but it's that personal touch.

Speaker 1:

Now here's the thing automation, ai, you can build at personal experience, like that's what. That's what I, that's what drew me in to actually digital marketing in the first place, I was doing cold call selling you know 60, 80 calls a day, okay, and I started to learn with the internet. I could create a personalized experience for every person I was talking to as far as, like, email drips, follow-ups, stuff like that, and I could connect with them and create that experience for them that I wanted them to have. And then I could scale it Right and, you know, you can use things to send out a birthday cards. Hey, I care about this person.

Speaker 1:

I, I, I did the work, I set it up. You know, I want to remind them like hey, I know there's, there's a lot of things that we can utilize this for and it can help build your network. But if you're just going to AI, just do it for me, you're going to get let's talk about that for a minute, like you know. So email, email, email automation, right, email automation with the brand voice in the message Like, how would you frame that up? Because I think that that's really important that when you're emailing out to people, you're trying to communicate a certain message. Like how do you, how do you look at that when you start start a campaign or a project for somebody?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I have some probably unpopular opinions here, but I think ultimately, most people don't have a brand voice. They have no real clarity on who they are and their messaging and they're like I just want my email to convert people. But you have to understand the inbox is one of the most competitive places to be. It's highly effective, right, so you're much more likely to make a sale from your emails than you are from your Instagram posts, but it is extremely competitive. You're not just competing to get in the right tab, but people are drowning in emails all day long from everyone requesting things from them for work, for whatever they're doing, their kid's school it's everywhere. It's all in the email, and so your email strategy has to be like an actual strategy, and nobody ever wants to take the time or pay the money to build a strategy. They want emails written for them quickly. Wants to take the time or pay the money to build a strategy. They want emails written for them quickly. And emails written for them quickly. You can have it. Chat to you to do it. It's going to be like a, b minus, so you'll be all right, but you're really not going to get the traction you want and over time.

Speaker 2:

What happens is you train people to tune you out. If you don't provide value for long enough, they will open a few times. Right, you get some good subject lines in there, they'll open it. If it's not good, if it's not something they want, you're actually training them to not pay attention to you because now they're going to see that name in the inbox and be like that's always stupid, I always fall for it, I always open it and then stupid and they're not going to unsubscribe. Sometimes they will unsubscribe, but sometimes you just stay there and kill your open rates and kill your click-through rates because they're not going to take the time to unsubscribe, but they really don't care about what you have to say. So the first thing I think is so critical is number one. Going back to positioning and messaging, what are you trying to position yourself as? Does that translate down into an actual email strategy? Does that translate down into an actual email strategy? Do you even have a brand voice that's documented, that's real and that is across platforms? And then, as you're implementing the email strategy, are you paying attention to the data to see what people are taking action on, what's driving results, so that you can do more of that.

Speaker 2:

Most people don't look at any of that. They're like are open rates low? So let's change the subject line. Like which open rates don't even matter anymore because they're not even that accurate. So they do matter, but they're not. They're not accurate, you know, in terms of what is actually going to drive results. So they're like oh, my click through rates low, make the button bigger or make it a different color, like things that have nothing to do with actually creating content. That like See, there's probably about two people I can think of two people where I like see their name in my inbox. I'm like oh, I like their stuff. I actually want to open this. And everybody else. I'm like eh, if it's a good subject line, I might Like maybe on a good day, you know.

Speaker 1:

I think it's about creating value, right, and if someone's going to open the email, I mean we're long away from the day that you got an email and everybody would read every word of every meme on there, just super impressed by, like I remember, like you know, emails were so cool, right, um. And and now, like I have to use ai to filter out my emails because, also, I think you know I read this book I I can't remember who wrote it. It was called Permission Marketing. Like anybody I talk to just automatically puts me on an email list.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's a new way to interact with just puts me on an email list, and so I have to have like a ritual process to like filter out these emails. Now, you know, I think the best idea is probably put like create a separate email for newsletters, drive into that, put it in folders. You know, if you're really organized, do that. But I have so many people that are sending me emails to my work email and I don't get to see client stuff, you know, sometimes because I'm buried in all this other stuff. So then I have to like purge it and I've used a couple different ai tools to filter it out, to kind of rise it to the top. Hey, these are the things I actually need to respond to. I think that you know people go look for a problem or a solution when they need it. Okay, now, unless you make that connection with them right and you know I I mean, I've seen daily work Great, right, people use, say, monthly, I think biweekly, you know, or every other week, or even weekly. You know, if you can do daily if you want, if you want to have that kind of relationship with somebody, um, you know that that's what works best, but you can't put out junk, Right. So, um, I think it's hard. I think the reason that people don't do emails and and here here's something I do want to say to, to kind of strengthen what, what you're doing I, I went to a seo conference not long ago and, um, they listed all the different channels that drive conversions and still today, emails number one conversion is emails. Okay, and people keep saying emails are dead, but people keep the same email on average for eight years, to your point. I think, if your open rates are getting killed, you might want to unsubscribe people, like you want to have this big list, but like it's almost like youtube shorts, like the reason they do so well is because the algorithm is made, because people are watching the whole thing, like you know, and so if you're sending emails to people and people are not opening them, it does hurt your open rates. It does. It does hurt your deliverability, um, and it's not super helpful, but you've got a big email list.

Speaker 1:

Um, I think it's about segmenting out the list, you know, and sending the right information to the right person. But you gotta, you gotta set it up like, like having triggers on different pages, right, like, hey, you're interested in this. Would you like to subscribe this newsletter. You know, I love those newsletters where you can check the box of the things you actually want to hear about versus not right, and it's usually actually for a certain time period. You're trying to solve something, you're trying to get answers to something, it's relevant and it's relevant and then it changes. It just depends, right. I mean, how do you, when you're approaching clients and you're looking at their marketing and you know where do you decide in that mix that, hey, I think we need to implement emails? And then, on the far end of it because I know I want to talk about personal branding, some more like, what like are you? Are you doing?

Speaker 1:

let's establish the personal brand, the voice, um the look and then are you moving into emails or how are you approaching new, new clients like the doctor or something like that? That's probably just doing a bunch of random stuff. That's what I see a lot of people doing. They're just doing a bunch of random stuff. They don't really know what they're doing. They're not tracking anything. They think they're doing stuff. They're spending a bunch on AdWords.

Speaker 2:

It's just stealing their money. They're spending a bunch on everything random tech, people, I mean all these things, 25 agencies that aren't talking to each other yeah, yeah, all this stuff, um, I always go back to. It's so boring it feels like a broken record but like a vip day strategy. Like what is the strategy? Because Because your local practice maybe you have 10 people who are totally down to like, do Instagram reels every day and you're gonna have this massive social media presence where you might have people. I have a client who said her practice like nobody's gonna do social media. She's like none of those doctors are gonna do it. If she's not gonna do it, they're not gonna do it. So we need a different strategy.

Speaker 2:

But I do always want people to consider the full funnel and understand one marketing and sales are not the same. We used to live in a world where your B minus marketing could make some sales. We do not live in that world anymore. You need marketing and you need sales and you need them to work together and to just expect your social media or even your email to drive enough revenue for your company is outrageous in today's market. So, like you have to just be at peace, you're going to need to learn sales, you're going to need a sales process, you're going to need a pipeline, you're going to need to talk to people like. This is the reality we live in, but then, when you look at your marketing, you need a funnel. So what is the way that you're getting in front of new audiences? Is it ads? Is it podcast guesting? Is it speaking? Is it all of those things? It could be all of those things. That's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Does part of your social media strategy have ways that you're getting out in front of the new audience? Because you do create content differently. If you want to attract new people versus nurture people, and typically people do one or the other. They're just nurturing the same people over and over again, or they're chasing new clients, new followers, so much on social that they're not actually establishing themselves as an expert. They're just sort of like that person you watch on Instagram all the time, but I'm never going to pay for anything from you. So you need to have a strategy that gets you in front of new audiences, that nurtures current followers. It shows them that you are legit, that you are trustworthy, that you can get results and that they like you, like that, they want to work with you that if they have 25 agencies to choose from, you're the cool one that they want to be with because they like you better Like. You have to do all of that in your content, which is a different strategy than just getting in front of new audiences. So you have to account for both of those things in your strategy. You have to have a way to get in front of new people. You also have to have a way to nurture current people, and then you have to have a way to convert people.

Speaker 2:

So where I look at email, there's twofold right. So I see them there. Number one get your email list started the day you start anything. I have seen too many people's accounts gone, like gone, you own nothing. People say this all the time about social media. I have seen so many accounts shut down for no reason. Like no reason. It's because there's AI bots who are like oh, you said a word that we think maybe might be wrong and they'll shut you down, and some people get them back and some people don't, so you don't own it and you could have 2 million followers that are gone tomorrow. So email list to me is like priority number one, because at least you have an avenue to get to those people. So I never tell people to wait.

Speaker 2:

But your email strategy should do two things. It should nurture people who've already raised their hand. They've already said there's something you offered that I like, even if it's just a free lead magnet. It's not like we're, it's not like we're getting married yet. Maybe you just like winked at me in a bar but whatever, like it's enough to say like Hmm, sort of interested, and so we've got to nurture them into more of a relationship with us.

Speaker 2:

And then I do think you can use it for sales. There's this, you know especially if you sell something low ticket, it's definitely something you can use to drive low ticket sales. I do that all the time. Once a month I do something in my email strategy to sell something that's under $500. But if you sell high ticket you have an agency or you have a home services business or something like that you just get it to book calls, right, like the whole goal is, hey, I need to get more sales calls, because we know marketing and sales are different and I need both. So I'm going to use it to assist my sales process and say, hey, book a call with my team if you want to talk about solving XYZ problem and we will get you set up on a good plan that makes sense for what you need.

Speaker 2:

So email to me is both of those things. It's both nurturing and selling. Social media should be getting in front of new people and then nurturing those people into a deeper commitment of like getting on your email list or attending a workshop or getting on a sales call with folks, like for your business and how you sell, um, so I think they go hand in hand. Uh, start your email list immediately, because tomorrow morning you wake up and your instagram's gone. Your tiktok we all saw. Everybody woke up one day and was like, oh, tiktok is going away. All of it can be gone. I've seen people's websites wiped out their whole website wiped out. So, like you don't own, you do technically on your website, but stuff goes wrong. So build your email list and then make sure that you have a strategy for getting in front of new people, nurturing people and then getting people into sales conversations. All of that sits on the foundation of your positioning and your messaging.

Speaker 2:

Do not do any of those things If you are not clear on your positioning and your messaging, because otherwise you are throwing spaghetti at a wall and again like. That used to be fine. Three years ago you could have done that and it was fine. Now people don't trust you. Even when you are super legit, they still don't trust you. You have to have consistency in your message, you have to have a real plan and you need to be able to build trust. And every time you create content that doesn't provide value, that wastes someone's time, that looks viral and cool but undermines your expertise, you're actually telling them not to trust you. You're telling them you're not for real. It's working against your brand. So you actually want to be really intentional about what you create.

Speaker 1:

I can tell you, learning to sell and then moving into marketing gave me a huge advantage, because I feel like marketing is selling online, right, and you're like kind of selling, selling through that, that messaging component. I am curious from you, and I actually have another podcast that's focused on heavy industrial and oil and gas, and it's actually a 30-year veteran in sales and marketing. So we talk about how marketing and sales really work together and I think it's really critical for businesses today to say, ok, a marketing-qualified lead, a sales-qualified lead, should be very similar. They should be the same thing, they should work together. They shouldn't be siloed, especially when you get into the bigger organizations. My question for you is okay, I hear it.

Speaker 1:

You need to have an email. You need to be sending out emails. So anybody listening to this if you're not sending out emails, let it put a fire under you. You need to be sending emails. Get started with that. You also need to have a strategy. Right, you need to have a strategy. You need to know what your voice is. So let's talk about that for a minute.

Speaker 1:

If you're meeting with a client and you you said earlier a lot of people, you know they just have a message, but they don't have a voice. Right, they have a message, they have a call to action. You know they're trying to get someone to do something, but they don't have a voice. What's the framework that you use to help them? Like, I don't know if it's a workshop, like whatever, but like, what is the methodology you use to help them build who they are? Because I think a lot of people have a really hard time figuring out themselves, like they can look at other people, right, that that dress doesn't look good on you, or you know whatever, you need to do this or you need to do that, but when you, when you, you look at yourself, it's very difficult to to figure that component out. So, you know, is there a framework that people can use?

Speaker 1:

to try to assess this, If they're listening to this podcast and they could go. Hey, I need to ask these questions to myself or I need to do these things to start moving in that direction.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we have specific like there's not a framework that I think people are good at doing themselves. So if I were taking on a new client, I would look at. You know I'm looking at are they more formal or informal? Are they like your best friend, or are they like the go-to authority? Are they like direct and in your face or are they sort of like that, hey girl, like what's the vibe? Because they're going to naturally create something. I always look at content that they've naturally created and written themselves. So maybe they're going to naturally create something. I always look at content that they've naturally created and written themselves. So maybe they're coming to me with emails they've written, maybe it's social media posts, maybe they've got a podcast or YouTube channel, but they have their own style for speaking.

Speaker 2:

Typically, people don't self-identify well, though you kind of mentioned that. So when you're doing it for yourself, it's kind of hard because you're going to think, oh, like I communicate really directly and like an expert and I'm like, actually you're like very soft and kind of beating around the bush a little bit and using too many words, and it's like, you know, people don't really see themselves very clearly, especially because everybody kind of has their own weird stuff around writing. A lot of people think they're not good writers and so they look at their writing through this very different lens. They might be very casual and informal in how they speak and how they present. And then you look at their emails and their like textbook. You know, like some teachers grading it somewhere. So I like to kind of get people to you know, can I look at your videos? Can I listen to your podcast? Can I like have conversations with? Get people to you know, can I look at your videos? Can I listen to your podcast? Can I like have conversations with you to get a vibe for it?

Speaker 2:

But then the test that you can do whether you're writing it yourself or getting writing from someone else, or even chat GPT is, once you've done your edits, give it to two or three people who really know you well your spouse, your best friend, your sister, your brother and say your best friend, your sister, your brother and say, does this sound like me? Because typically they're going to be better at that than you are. They're going to be like you would never say this, because you write in ways you don't always talk and you think, oh, I'm doing business and so I have to talk really businessy and so I'm going to write really businessy, whereas they know you and they're like you would never say that. Like that's so weird, why would you say it that way? So it's got to kind of pass, like I say, like the husband test or the best friend test, where they wouldn't call you out on sounding fake. If your closest people in your inner circle would say, like that's not, this is not like you, that's fake, then it's no good.

Speaker 2:

And I the the thing I always go back to when I was first starting copywriting. Or for someone now who runs like a it's, it's like a hundred million dollar fitness company, and she said she gave the email to her husband and he was looking at them for some reason. He had no clue. It wasn't her that was writing it. So I was like, okay, then we hit the nail on the head. That means I did a good job. If your husband couldn't tell, then we hit the nail on the head. That means I did a good job. If your husband couldn't tell it wasn't you, then we're good to go. So it really needs to be passed through like somebody who's got like a good BS radar so that they can say yes or no. This sounds like you.

Speaker 2:

You can ask yourself all kinds of questions Am I formal or informal? Am I more friendly or am I more authority? But, like I said, typically you're not going to like self-identify well, because you have an idea in your head of what you think you should be versus what you really are. And you should really just be what you really are and stop trying to be something else because people will like that. So some people, some people won't like it, and that's okay, cause you're not for everybody. That's what. That's why personal brands are so powerful. They deter people, but they also attract people. And you know, look at everything. You could look at everything Entertainment, world, politics. Like people repel and attract so strongly based on personalities, people who won't like you. They would be terrible clients for you. So if they don't like you, they're not going to be a good client for you. But there'll be people who just love you and they're like oh my gosh, that's my person that I want to do this with. So, um, don't try to be something you're not.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if that really answered the question but yeah, yeah, no, no, I would love to go back to you talked about a sales funnel, okay, and sales funnel was a really hot buzzword many years ago and you know I can go so many different directions with sales funnel, but everybody kind of has a different definition of what a sales funnel is. So I wanted to hear from you, over the years of experience that you developed what is a sales funnel to you and what does that framework look like? Right, so we talked about social media. You got your website, you got emails, like you know, that's a sales funnel. Boom, that's a sales funnel.

Speaker 1:

If you were to give me, like the abridged I don't know if that's the long version is that right? Abridged, the long version? Yeah, unabridged, I don't know if that's the long version, is that right? Abridged? Yeah, Unabridged, I don't know. But, like, give me the long definition of what a complex, fully built sales funnel is. And and, okay, you start with the email or you start with the strategy and the personal brand. You have the email. What? What would be the layers that you would add to it in your opinion?

Speaker 2:

In best case scenario, you have all the money and all the time in the world so you can spend as much. You can dedicate your whole life to building this. To me, a sales funnel is like old. I don't think it's a software, it's not a ClickFunnels, nothing like that. It is prospecting, nurturing, converting. That's a sales funnel. You're finding people who want what you sell. You are nurturing them via relationship, you are selling to them and then it kind of circles back around where they refer you, and so there's kind of like a reverse sales funnel right on the back end.

Speaker 2:

If I had to say, hey, if you gave me like unlimited budget, unlimited time, how would I build it? I would have you running ads. So ads that when we do layers of ads, brand building, ads, where we're just informational videos, inspiring videos we are literally just running ads so people see your face repeatedly talking about stuff so that they're like, oh, I like that person and they might follow or they might watch your next video, and then there's a sense of familiarity you're reading so just brand building. Then I would run ads that are list building, where they're opting in to get on your email. Then I would have you on every social media platform, all of them. Ideally, you have at least one post a day on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram. If you still have the TikTok app and you can still post on it, I'd put you there. I'd put you on X, I'd put you everywhere. So you have your ads, you have your social. We already talked about getting your emails out. I like two emails a week, Ideally. This gives you room to nurture and provide value at least once with no ask, and then you can make an ask on the other day if you want to. So I like two. I like one to be like a good meaty, like I can't wait to open this. I can't get this content anywhere else. It's so good, I love it. So that's happening there.

Speaker 2:

I would also have if I got a dream dream world I can do everything. I would have YouTube. I would have podcasts, because that builds connection with people in a in a deeper way. Google did a study that it takes people seven hours of consuming your content 11 different times and in four different locations. So when you think about how do I get someone to consume my content for seven hours, podcasts and YouTube is a great way to do that. So I love having those happening in the background.

Speaker 2:

Those are brand builders. People think they're going to immediately make money from their podcasts. They're building your brand Eventually, over time it will convert, but it's a long game. I would have you write books, if I have the dream, because that also gets you on stages and then ultimately have some sort of dialed in sales mechanism. So this is really dependent on what you do.

Speaker 2:

So in our world, a lot of people are doing online launches where they are doing like live streams for a week and selling something online. If you're in like a home services or local business type of deal, it's probably just booking visits or calls or getting people in your gym, like you're getting people to come walk in the door, so you're doing like a free trial, that type of thing. And then, of course, sales takes over. They fill their pipeline with qualified leads and then they follow up with those leads until they say absolutely not or they die, and then you can move on. You can't move on until then. And then, once you get the sale, you ask for the referrals To me. If you're saying how do I build a sales funnel? That's a sales funnel to me.

Speaker 1:

No, I love it. I love it. I think that there's a lot of agency owners out there. There's a lot of business owners out there that are now stressed out and they're like I need to do all this stuff. I already kind of knew that.

Speaker 1:

Like. Okay, how do I do that? I think the one thing that I think I would like for you to answer, because I think it would benefit everybody, is they're probably thinking how do I post once a day on social media, right Like and on all these different channels? Now there's tools that you can syndicate stuff out, but then there's different kind of tweaks that you need to make on different platforms because of the experience that people are having. But a post on a different platform every single day, people are gonna be like I don't even know what to talk about. Like, what would be your answer to that?

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay. First I wanna say that I understand that's overwhelming. This is why agencies charge so much money. I think people really underestimate what marketing requires. I think they look at people like Gary Vee or they look at Alex Hermosy and they say I want to do that. Gary Vee spends $3 million a year on his team $3 million a year on his team. Alex Hermosy just did a video about how he spent 4 million. So you want to build those brands.

Speaker 2:

It takes a lot of moving parts, I think when you look at how do you create content consistently. I wish I had some magic easy button. I wish I was like I would be a bajillionaire if I had a magic easy button. And everyone's telling you a magic easy button and they're lying because I can tell you there's no way to get around it. You can use AI. There's lots of video editing tools. You can hire some teenager who probably knows social media better than you and can come and film all this stuff, but at the end of the day, it's still your personal brand and your IP. There's no escaping that.

Speaker 2:

I've had so many people come to me and I've said, hey, we're going to build a strategy, we're going to write the emails or the social media posts. We're going to do it all. I'm giving you a topic. I'm giving you a topic, I'm giving you a hook, but guess what? I still need you to film the video. We're going to edit it, we're going to write the caption. I still, we don't even need videos. Sometimes we're like, hey, just send us a voice memo on your ideas, your thoughts on these topics, and you'd be surprised when people push back and say, can't you just write it? Sure, well then, that's my intellectual property, that's not yours, and so there isn't a way to get around that. Um, which yeah yeah.

Speaker 1:

So here I'll tell you something that it's scary, okay, but it's common. Okay, you can use like 11 labs there's, there's other tools that you can use where you can talk for three hours, okay, and you use different conviction in your voice, right, and then you know, you can even create an avatar right of yourself and you can give it to it, and that's where I think it's going. Like, I think it's it's coming quick and you're going to be able that the people that don't want to talk or get on camera or whatever, like that's going to be an option to be able to, okay, read this thing for an hour. We'll use your voice, we'll create it, we'll do it. Um, you know, I, I don't know that's. That's where I think it's going to go at some point.

Speaker 1:

Now, I, I don't know how people are going to respond to that.

Speaker 1:

I think early on it's going to be very novel, but when everybody's doing that, I think that the pendulum might swing the other way, um, but but I mean it it's all coming and like you're not even going to know what's real, um, and and I think that even people think that, with the news today is like what is real, and and they find a trusted source and they're like all right, you know, whoever you listen to the news. I'm not going to say any news things to to, to spin anybody one way or another but but, but pick your person and you listen to them and whatever they say is gospel right, like whatever they say is fact, and and that's where I think people are going right. Um, and then you got to get. Then you got to go okay, like there's also on youtube's getting crazy with, like you know, faceless videos and people are taking other people's stuff, and then it's being changed and you're like OK, I got to find, I got to find the source to make sure that this is actually what's being said. Like this is the world that we're living in. It's, it's going to be insane.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, though, that's where your personal convictions come in. I can tell you that there's no video platform that's creating human videos that looks human, yet Do I think it will get there? I do. The rate at which things are moving, it's like very rapidly going to happen. I do agree with you on that, but that's like where your personal convictions come in, like I believe, like we are uniquely created by God and that can't be replaced, and so, for me, I will never be okay with any sort of representation of me. That's not me I want.

Speaker 2:

If I'm talking to you, I'm going to be talking to you If, if I'm in my, if you're getting a message from me, it will be me. Now, that does not mean that I will use chat GPT for things. Again, I have enough skill where I can make chat GPT work, and I can make it work effectively, but it's still my ideas, right? So at the end, I could go and type in some random thing, right? Like write a post about you know three ways to improve your email marketing, but I have my own thoughts, like I have my own experience, and how I talk about email marketing might be different, how that you would teach it, and then we could both be right. But I'm going to say it this way because this is my experience and that's where the nuance comes that as the world shifts into that, when you can maintain your humanity amidst all that, I think you'll win at levels that it's going to be new and exciting and sexy at first and it has been, we see that but then people, like, still crave people.

Speaker 2:

This is why y'all this is why people pay. Nike pays millions of dollars to athletes who become on the face of their brand. They don't do that because it doesn't work. These companies don't spend billions of dollars on spokespeople because they don't work. They know that they have to connect a person, a face, to the brand. It's also why you see these micro influencers killing it. They are crushing like. You are so much better off getting five micro influencers than you are Kardashian by far, because they trust the little mom who's got five kids, who's showing the Amazon outfit, 10 times more than they trust their Kardashian. So I think it's it's learning to use the tools to support humanity instead of replace it, and if you can use it to support it, you're going to win. If you use it for shortcuts, you might win initially, but then people will start to lose trust.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I love that. I think that that's why Google actually added to, like their, their eat framework, the experience component. Right, Because they saw the rise of AI and they're like, okay, we want the genuine experiences for SEO. Like, hey, I got to hold the product, I got to. Okay, if I'm talking about travel, you got to be in the location. There's things to provide that real proof. So we're getting close to time here. We've covered a lot. I'm super excited about the conversation and where we've gone and what we've talked about. I would like to know from you what is one unknown, maybe underused internet marketing secret that maybe we didn't cover? Or, if you want to repackage something that we talked about, I would love to hear what is one unknown internet marketing secret.

Speaker 2:

I think the secret is that there's no easy button. Marketing has 1 million layers and as much as you want it to be cut and dry, straightforward, hit it out of the park every time. That's not how it is, and anyone who tells you that is lying. That's the secret. Anyone who tells you there's one thing that works and everything else is dead, or this one trick works all the time, that's all a lie. It's a series of understanding the buyer, communicating how you can provide the solution the buyer actually wants, and then testing, testing that message over and over and over again. As soon as something starts working, it's going to work for a few months and then you're going to have to change it again. So there is no secret, there's no magic, there's no, there's nothing you're missing. If it feels hard and complicated, it is kind of hard and complicated, and the secret is that the people telling you that it's not are probably lying.

Speaker 1:

I love that, thank you. Thank you very much. So, danielle, how do people get in touch with you if they want to hear more? They want to hear more, they want to get on your newsletter.

Speaker 2:

They want to engage you for services. Where's the best space for them to find you? Yeah, so where I spend the most time is LinkedIn, and you can find me, danielle Savalius, on LinkedIn. I hate all the other social media platforms, so you can find me there. But I'll also give you a link to sign up for my newsletter, for every Saturday, I send a newsletter that is like a deep dive on personal branding email, linkedin, copywriting. It is a full, like tutorial style. I'm going to teach you something in that email. So definitely get on that list. It's free and I'll I'll put the link. I'll send you the link so you can put it in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Well, it was great to have you on, and until the next time, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet the internet, you can reach out to EWR Digital for more revenue in your business and also check out, danielle. And until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.

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