209. What's the secret to harnessing AI for effective marketing strategies? (f. Kim Garst)
Can AI transform overwhelm into opportunity for business growth? 📈 In this energetic episode, Phil invites digital marketing expert Kim Garst to delve into the practical side of AI for entrepreneurs. Discover how AI can streamline business processes and deepen human connections. From content creation to lead generation, Kim shares invaluable insights and tools to empower small businesses to harness AI for effective marketing.
Read the full blog post with her AI tools: How to Humanize AI Content for Your Brand
Episode transcription
Phil
Listener! We're back. You're back. We're so happy you're here. Maybe you chose this brand new episode because you're wondering how AI can transform the overwhelm of rapid digital change into opportunity for business growth. Well, today's special guest, Kim Garst, one of the foremost experts on digital marketing and lucky for us, an AI enthusiast.
She is joining me to shed some light on the practical sides of AI for entrepreneurs from battling the constant influx of new tools to understanding how AI can actually enhance human connection, this episode is a good one, so let's get right to it.
Friends, we're back after a little break. Lauren is not here, she is traveling, but don't you worry. We have as our first, I'm going to call it a blockbuster episode back from our little break, Kim Garst, who is my dear wonderful, incredible friend that I have to say, I know how busy you are and you do such an amazing job of staying on my radar.
And I certainly aim to do the same with you and your sister Rhonda. I just love the two of you both so much.
Kim
Well, likewise, my friend, you know, we met at, uh, up in Lima, I always want to say Lima, Ohio, and it was like an instant connection, right?
phil
I told you this at the time, but that moment was so exciting for me because you, to me, are so legendary as a marketer. I mean, you have been at this for a while, but you are OG Kim Garst. You have influenced more people than I think you will ever realize in the marketing for their business, the positioning of their business. You are, OG. I have a handful of close friends, Neil Schafer's another one. There's a handful of these people that are just, I think, are legendary. You're at the very top of my list. And I mean that when I say that. You are just incredible.
kim
Well, thank you. I think I killed somebody the other day. I was like, you know, I've been around for so long. That I, you know, I'm here by attrition, you know, I just refuse to give up.
phil
Okay. Well, but listen, you're also, not only, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, but you also are always at the forefront of what is happening and something I think a lot about.In fact, I've shared this quote and credited you with this. I've shared it on stage. In fact, you said a few months ago to me when we were just catching up as friends, you said, “Phil, I remember feeling how excited I was about social media in the early 2010s, and I've not felt this excited about something, AI, I've not felt this excited about something since then. And I really think that speaks volumes of this exciting moment we're in, exciting but also overwhelming as heck, and I feel that even as a creator, even as someone who's delving into specific areas, I never claim to know everything because I'm not Sam Altman, but And I learn a ton from you and I learn a ton from my other friends that are doing all different kinds of things in AI, but it's overwhelming, isn't it?
Kim
It is. I mean, it is the fastest pace that I've ever seen as it comes to, um, and that's saying something because, you know, social media changes on the day. But I think AI is changing on the minute. I mean, seriously, it is the fastest evolution that I've ever witnessed. And just staying on top of how it impacts our own businesses is one thing, but there, you know, you find a tool that you think is oh my gosh, this is amazing. It's doing, you know, it's doing whatever the outcome that you're trying to affect for your business. And then something else comes along. It's even better. And you're like, oh my gosh, this is better. And it literally is happening so rapidly that it is very difficult for us to stay on top of it. For those of us in the space that are trying to stay on top of it, much less keeping other people educated on everything that's happening, it can be overwhelming for sure.
phil
How do you tackle that then? Cause I feel like you do a very good job of it. I read every line of your emails. I'm always curious about the tools you're trying and recommending. What are the ways that you have battled that overwhelm?
kim
So when I first started, I was spending way too much time trying to consume all the things, you know, I was looking at. You know, 10 to 20 tools a day. I was enthralled. And so when you are so interested in something, you tend to overextend yourself because you're soaking it all up.
But then I got smarter. I was like, okay, I can't continue to spend this kind of time. I have got to work smarter, not harder. So I set up a feedly so that I could monitor things that were important because there's so much news coming out in the AI space, but not all of it is relevant to marketers. So I was like, okay, how can I separate the news to just pull in what's really relevant to us so I don't get overwhelmed by trying to absorb all the chip news and the GPUs and all the techie stuff that makes AI work, I can't keep up with that. That's not my zone of genius anyway. So I need to know how AI is going to affect our businesses and then how I share that knowledge. That has saved me so much time. And then I use tools to synthesize information. So I use, there's a little, um, tool called max, uh, uh, dot AI.
And you can go to any website and it'll summarize the website. So if you're on a blog, for example, you could have it summarized. I mean, it's like saves me so much time because I can streamline info very quickly or inhale, if you will, info very quickly. And then the tool piece, I've started again, using tools like Product Hunt to look at the ones that other people have voted it on.
If they have said this tool is number one or one through 10 or whatever, then I don't spend so much time, like. I hate to say on the bottom feeder tools because I'm sure they may work their way up or they may be awesome tool too, but I just don't spend as much time looking at all of them anymore. I'm mostly interested in ones that have unique features now because now we've got a suite of tools. There is tools like coming out of our ears when it comes to AI. A lot of them are copycat versions of another tool in the, in the framework of they're all built off of the open AI backend, right? So they are all pulling like the same kind of content, the same kind of output.
So I've just been trying to see, okay, what's unique, what is not built on the open AI framework? How could we leverage these tools to save time and money? And, you know, one of the problems with the tools is you go down rabbit holes and you soak up money because, you know, you want to try them and, you know, before you know it, you're, you're subscribed to 25 tools and you're using one and yet you're paying money for 24 of them, you know?
So I've had to really monitor that too. I put a timer on the free time frame that I can use the tool and then I make sure you know that we go in and cancel if I don't think it's awesome. So there's ways to manage it, you know, for the average person, you're not gonna have to do this. Find somebody that is what you are, you want to know and just follow their lead.
But for those of us who are, you know, in the weeds with it and trying to share knowledge and you know, impact other business owners, just giving them what they need to know instead of all the things, I think just find somebody, one or two people that are really in a space that you could trust that, you know, and like, and just follow their lead because nobody has time for this.
Trust me, nobody has time to do all this.
phil
No one has time. I mean, it's so true. And by the way, those two people that you should follow are the ones in this podcast interview right now. I'll be the first to admit though, as I'm working with my team to literally write a book about this. I'm going to hold it up because there's only audio, but Kim can see it.
It's a piece of paper right now, but we're 50 percent of the way done. But I love hearing you talk about this because I felt the overwhelm to the point where I'm so in research land that I'm like not ready to talk quite about it yet. But I feel super inspired by how you've chipped away at finding the tools you like and you've shared that really beautifully in a gradual way. I think it's really, really cool. I love your emails. I love your community. And that's just so you, is just to be at the forefront of it and launch really useful and meaningful products for people to start to make sense of this. And, oh man, I hear you when you have to decide, what's your lane gonna be.
And I happily reject the super techy parts of AI. I'd love to get the high level. Overview and a newsletter side of it, right? I like the creative side and the marketing side. And when someone says, I'm really overwhelmed by this, I go, great, me too. You're my people. I'm figuring out a way to help you.
Kim
Well, one of the things that I find is most important when it comes to AI is all the tools are worthless and at a baseline, if you do not have a framework for approaching it, or you do not have a data set to give it because it's just going to create a sea of sameness, you know, it's going to, which is what we're seeing right now, there's a bunch of content being created that is just all generic. You could put in the same prompt and there would be so much likeness. The content wouldn't be exactly the same, but it would be in base, at a baseline, it would be roughly the same content. So AI is a creative partner in, in your unique value that you bring to the world. It is not the answer.
You have to belly up. You have to bring your own. You have to teach it, it's a training model. Uh, so you could teach it your voice, your business details, and then you are starting to create content that is unique to your voice, your business. And that is what I think we have to understand when it comes to AI. It is the best thing and it can be the worst thing. So to make it the best thing, you have to have frameworks to affect the outcome. So if you're trying to build a landing page for example, there's pieces and parts that go into that landing page. And then you just can't say build me a landing page because you're going to get a generic landing page, just like everybody else's.
So how do you break down the components of the landing page to such a degree that they are unique to you and your product or your service and then it reflects that and it doesn't look like everybody else's stuff. So I think that's the key to, to AI.
phil
AI is not going to run the marathon for you, but it'll help you step by step as you put in a valuable custom input. And I'm loving seeing you create now about AI imagery. That's actually for me where I started. I'm now more in text land, but I started with Adobe Firefly and obviously all kinds of stuff with Adobe, but that's where I started and where I feel comfortable. And with the tech stuff now. There's not a day that goes by where I don't open ChatGPT.
And I even think of canceling ChatGPT Pro to force me to try Gemini and some of the others that I haven't spent as much time in. By the way, you mentioned Max AI, that tool. You told me about that months ago and I absolutely love it. That's one of the tools that has stuck for me.
kim
Yeah. And most of the tools don't stick for me.
There's a handful that I'm still using on the daily. I mean, like, um, Bard, AKA Gemini, cause they just rebranded it this last week, even though it's supposed to be a competitor to the ChatGPT, especially the new version, the Gemini that they just rolled out, I'm not seeing it so much yet. I still feel like ChatGPT is probably still at the top of the pile.
Claude is really good for conversational content. I use it a lot for like follow ups to sales calls, for example, because it can set that up. I just dump in my transcript and it synthesizes all that don't have to take a note notes anymore. And, you know, it really keys in on what the person wants and then when they, you know, what, once they, what they want to affect with their business, and then it keys in on that and, you know, writes a wonderful email in seconds after we'd had gotten off the call. So it makes my follow up process so much easier. So if you think about it through the lens of how can you use it to do things that are a struggle for you, you know, like that's just one instant sales calls, uh, following up. That's a key thing, right? Conversational AI is another, I see a huge future in that. And I think that's going to be a huge opportunity for all of us, whether that's on our websites or outreach programs. It's just a lot of, a lot of, uh, direct sales integration, I think for AI.
But just think about it, even from the creative side, the content piece, you know, streamlining the ability to be able to create content, which is a bear for us. I mean, it's traditionally been hard for us to do all the things, you know, just like, you know, just short form content. You can get short form content scripts in minutes, seconds.
And now you have a, you can have a strategy that you can consistently pump out content using just one simple format of content. So there's just so many ways, honestly, that you can leverage it. It just has to matter to you and save you time and money.
phil
Yeah, it's a really good point. You raise how or make you money or make you money. And how do you then with the increased speed of output and content? What are the ways that you're implementing or the ways that you're suggesting that it still stays human and connected to us and our, our brands, personal brands, in some cases?
Kim
Well, I think even with businesses that are not necessarily a personal brand, one of the very first things that I teach, just the, you know, somebody is coming through and wants to learn how to leverage AI, we do this, also that's the very first thing we do with when I consult with brands that are trying to figure out how AI matters to their business, where is the holes, where can they, you know, start to implement AI in their business. It's still the core, the baseline is if you're going to use AI in any capacity in your business, the very first thing you need to do, in my opinion is build what I call a brand, speak the chat thread. And that is where you educate it on your business and your voice because that's also very important because the output is going to be dependent on you giving the this information. You know, a lot of people will be like, well just write this in a casual readably tone. But that still doesn't, like I say, all kinds of southern sayings all the time that it will not incorporate those things into my content if I don't tell it or I don't give it those examples. Right?
phil
ChatGPT is so bad at conversational. It's the worst.
kim
So, you know, giving it context, you know, taking transcripts where you physically talk like, you know, we're talking right now. Right? So I could take this transcript and I could give it to ChatGPT and it would come up with a more input into how I speak, how I talk in normal day to day conversation. That is very important. It's more important, in my opinion, than giving it transcripts from, you know, or copy pasting your blogs in, or your real voice.
We speak very differently than we write. And so, giving it that context so that it knows how you, uh, interact and how you engage and things that you say consistently, it's going to be invaluable. And then, you know, you need to give it information on your business. You know, what's your products, what's your services, copy and paste your sales pages in so it knows what the value is for those products and services.
But all the things that you can give it to where it has a baseline of your business and your voice. And, you know, we also do, we teach market research because most of us don't do market research where we hang our shingle. We just hang our shingle and we assume we know who our person is at a baseline.
But with AI today, we could do product, we could do real market research, and we can build out a real, not just a real avatar, but we can get down to what keeps them up at night. What do they have to believe to buy from us? These are critical parts of building content that's going to matter to our person and ultimately get them to say yes to a sale. So, this is a game changer.
phil
Kim, what I'm hearing you say aligns with how I feel. Also, I know that you're an optimist, like me, and there are so many doomsday, pessimists, and rightfully so, there's allowed to be because it is a, it's scary and it's new. So, some of the ways that you're describing to me sound like you're excited about AI as a way that it's enabling humans to do the things that humans do best, and that's how I feel as well.
What is your take on the positives? What are the positive things that you're excited about for AI?
kim
Well, I think for most of us, we have our zones of genius, right? And marketing for most people, I mean, it may be yours and I's jam, right? But for most business owners, the marketing is the hard part. The content creation is the hard part. And yet it's such a critical component. There's never been a business in the history of ever that has succeeded without some marketing. You know, whether it's word of mouth marketing or doing the things that you have to do in order to get your business out there. It can be cumbersome and it is not Arizona Genius so guess what, we usually don't do it well. And we don't put the emphasis on it that maybe we should because like all things that we don't enjoy doing. We push it all. And so I think that's a one of the things that is to me fires me up because it gives us the capability to do things that we within frameworks that we not are not necessarily zones of that's not our zone of genius.
You know, most of us, if we need a sales page, we have to hire somebody to write it. We have to hire a copywriter right. Now with a with the right input. You can create your own sales page. Like whoever thought, like, I think I've paid twin. I've paid upwards of. I think my most expensive sales page was $25,000.
No joke. So, like now, I just have a framework for that and I can write, I can help AI help me write my own copy for my, for everything. It can write your emails. It can write all the things that are usually barriers to entry for us, can now be affected through AI.
Let's say you're not a graphic designer. No worries. You can create amazing visual content with AI. So, so many amazing things that you can do that have traditionally been, again, things that have been, have held us back when it comes to marketing our businesses.
phil
And for those copywriters, maybe coders and developers as well, might be worried that they might be replaced by AI, what do you say to those people that are worried that people are going to be using AI instead of those services?
kim
I think anybody that's in a, uh, a field that is worried about their role being replaced by AI, you need to embrace it like it is your best buddy because that gives you the edge, honestly. Now, if, as a coder, you know the time that it takes to manually brainstorm concepts, write the code, test the code, all those things, but the reality is that those roles can now be streamlined and done much faster than you could do them manually. So, guess what, that means you can bring on more clients. You can affect bigger outcomes or transformations for the people you serve.
There's going to be a wide range of people who are going to need your services still. They're not, even though there's places or the ability to use these resources for these roles, most people are not going to know how to do this. So educate yourself, get more involved in AI. Let it be the power tool that allows you to expand your business.
Don't let it hold you back or be fearful, put you in a place of fear. Step up. Step into the opportunity because it's here. It's not going away and somebody else that is using it will replace you. I'm a little passionate about that.
Phil
Yeah, no, I know. That's why I led you there. Knowledge is power, my friend, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this next one, because I have never felt like there's been this importance in time of having a personal brand, even for someone who works for a company. Even if you work somewhere else, you are a person and you have a digital presence online, and I'm so happy with what I do for a living, and helping people build their online presence because now when we think about these, what copywriters and developers that we just used as an example, people are hiring you because they trust you.
And if, to your point, Kim, if you're using AI to get the job done faster and better, people are still going to hire you because you're trustworthy and you're good at your job. So it's like, you know, it's not something to be fearful. It's something to be knowledgeable on, interested in and using it to be that, that really that secret weapon that I think other people won't go to that degree of interest in immersiveness.
kim
Yeah, I think the power of a personal brand, you know, I've had a personal brand for years and I feel like it's been the most impactful thing that I ever did and I did it kind of accidentally. Because I didn't know, you know, at the time, really, the power or where it would take me. But now we know, we know that the power of a personal brand is so powerful. And I think from a website perspective going forward, we do something that is slightly different. Well, I don't know if it's slightly different, we talk about it slightly differently and we call them authority websites. So whether you're a personal brand, we really love working with people with a personal brand because that's kind of my path.
And I always say, anyway, that your best client is somebody that is a previous version of yourself. So I love helping people bring their amazingness to life in a personal brand. But the authority website concept is something that we as a business and my team and I, have spent a lot of time brainstorming the customer journey path, the copy, to make sure that in three seconds or less, the person that is visiting that website understands why this website matters to them.
Do you know how hard it is to get a string of five to seven words that demonstrate that? We would brainstorm for hours trying to come up with the perfect headline for an individual that demonstrated their expertise or their awesomeness. And now with AI, this process can be so much easier than it ever has been before.
So now we are able to take on more clients and make bigger impacts because we can do things faster than we used to.
phil
One hundred percent. Kim, you and I are both like, yes, and yes, and we're like, yes. Yes. And, and this is why I love, love, love just having you on my radar and learning from you. I'll give you credit, actually, when I joined your community, you were the first one that really taught me to teach chat GPT how to write like me in a meaningful way. And it's really worked beautifully. And then I think I shared some tools with you and talked a little bit about Firefly with you. And it's just this beautiful, constant synergy of learning and, hey, check this out, this is something that's actually cool and not a gimmick, you know, that's what we're all kind of like sifting through and, and sharing.
On that note, how I think you're really a leader in this space of digital courses and digital products, how is AI going to make a meaningful impact for entrepreneurs and small businesses that maybe have struggled in the past to find the time to finish those ideas? Any words of advice or wisdom for those people now that can maybe use AI to lean in on that, finishing those ideas?
kim
Well, honestly, AI can help you in so many lanes. So, I always look at my business through lead generation. So, what can you do to generate more leads to your business? Because that's usually one of the very top problems that most business owners have. You know, how can I generate high quality leads? So that can be content generation, but that means consistency. And consistency has usually been a problem for a lot of people. So pick your lane. I recommend short form content because it's the most consumed type of content today. So if you can create quick and easy short form content, you know, and having a strategy, we have a my content to profit is all about that one singular thing and it's one of our programs.
But the other things like, you know, if you have a lead magnet that has been out there forever and you're not getting daily opt ins, then you need to circle back to that. You know, you need a way for people to join your list because that's where the majority of your sales are coming from.
So defining what that looks like, you know, figuring out what's going to resonate with your people, that can be done through AI. Can you say, okay, what is the number of all that and what format would they most like, you know, all of those are things that we no longer have to guess at. You can create something and it's going to be a for sure hit, but it's certainly better than us guessing at all the things or trying to deliver the kitchen sink when that's not what they want.
So these are just things that you can do in a couple of, I mean, even an hour, you can do things that you've, you've spent months spinning your wheels doing. So that is exciting to me, teaching people how to create lead magnets, for example, that are going to get, there are people saying, yes, I want that. And then teaching them how to lead that person to a sale, the followup sequence.
We call it a, a sales sequence instead of a nurture sequence because we want people to have, we want them to be seen when they join our list, but we also want to get them to a place where they know I can trust you when they say yes to their first, spending their first dollar with you. So it's, uh, it's just so many lanes that is going to make your life easier, but you have to get on the road.
phil
You have to get on the road. As a little reward and a treat for our listener that stuck with us until the very end, can you share a handful of those AI tools that you're using on the daily? By the way, people normally ask me this question, so it's quite a treat to be able to ask you this question. What are the AI tools that are not gimmicks that you have built into your workflow in a meaningful way?
kim
Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with like just the top tier, like AI tools. ChatGPT probably is my number one. Claude, definitely my number two. As it relates to, uh, visual content, uh, MidJourney, Adobe Firefly, which I've really just begun to really start to leverage and use, I'm loving it actually. Canva has a lot of really cool AI integrations now, even image creation, so we definitely use that sometimes. And I love the integration of Dolly3 inside of chatGPT because, you know, like if I'm doing my newsletter, I can say, hey, can you give me an image prompt for this news blurb? And then I can turn that image prompt into a visual right there while I'm doing the, the flow, you know, so it's kind of like I don't have to go to another tool in that moment.
Those are like my top, I would say Ideogram is also one of my visual. I go to it sometimes. One of the reasons I like ideogram is a lot of the core tools still have filters or have implemented filters that don't allow you to create likenesses of someone, even yourself, you know, won't create like Gandalf, for example, or Elon Musk, or, you know, pick.
But Ideogram still does. So if you're trying to tell, uh, share news that is specific to Twitter and you want Elon Musk on your image, then I would go to Ideogram. And it's a great text. It's got a text feature as well. Sometimes it's hit or miss, but, you know, that's another one. I'm really liking Taplio. So I would highly recommend that one voice to text or even no face content. There's several really good tools. Like in video is a great tool. It does some incredible things. Uh, repurposing content, Sub Magic is great, Office Clip, um, has evolved pretty nicely. There's just several of those. Uh, like there's a lot of those short form contents. Like they'll take a YouTube video and slice it, dice it, you know, cut it into.
A minute clips or 30 second clips, those are nice to take existing content and, uh, turn them into short form content for, for social.
phil
You're using Fathom for your note taker and I use Firefly. Tell me about that.
kim
Yeah, Fathom is, and it's very similar to Firefly is my understanding. I've been using Fathom and the way I use Fathom is I record my sales calls in particular. We do this for team calls too, so that we don't all have to take notes, which is traditionally what we did. We would all take notes and then we would, you know, which is some, some still do, but the way I do it because I'm, I have a creative brain and so I'm bouncing all over the place all the time and I have to come back and synthesize the information sometimes, but for sales calls in particular, it's been invaluable to me.
I record the sales calls. As soon as I'm done with the sales call, I go to Fathom, I copy the transcript, I put it into Gemini and, you know, I say, you know, I want you to write me a follow up email, focus in on what they really want to accomplish by working with me. Highlight how we can help them. So I wanted to, again, you know, put it back, restate it so that, you know, it's there. Make sure you, you know, if we've done a secondary follow up call, make sure you put the date and time in there for them. And, you know, I have that ability to follow up with people where I do not have to spend the time one writing notes during the time because then you're distracted, you don't have your full attention on people, so I don't have to do that.
And then I don't have to go back over my notes and think, well, did I write that down right or and then take the time that would normally take 30 minutes to 45 minutes to write the darn email, right? So now in five minutes, I am able to write a quality email that I can tweak and send out. And, you know, I feel so much better about the process.
I feel like I've honored the time they spent with me and, you know, I can, I can actually have something quality that I can send as a follow up. And, and then now I do the same thing. Like if I don't hear back from them within a few days, I have a. A follow up sequence that I followed. I can, you know, I, I have a funnel, I mean, a, um, a pipeline.
So I put all those notes in my pipeline and a couple of days later, I follow up with again, with them again. And again, and all those conversations I put into the tool so that it can follow along with the back and forth. And it's amazing. It's probably created more sales for me than I've done ever done for myself.
phil
That is incredible. Just that one little tip. It's incredible. And you also speak with such specificity. You give us an example workflow there. You highlight how AI is actually really enabling us as humans to focus on what makes humans great and the things that AI can't do. And I just love, I love what you're sharing. And we appreciate your time on Brand Therapy. And especially our first amazing guest after a little break. And let people know where they can get more. You've mentioned a few of the communities and products you have, but give us a little summary of where people can go if they want more.
kim
Absolutely. Well, we have a free AI community if you're interested, so you can go to kimgarst.com/community and like I say, no cost, it's totally free. There's a community of people that are interested in, you know, up leveling their business using the power of AI. Here's some free training and resources there. It's a great place to ask questions too, like if you're unsure, like how does this matter to me? That kind of thing. So it's a great place to get your feet wet for sure. So highly recommend that. And then you're welcome to check us out anytime at kimgarts.com. There's a lot of content and resources and tools on my website as well. Thank you, Kim. You're my favorite. You know it. And Rhonda as well.
Sister Rhonda. Um, you both are just the best and the listener appreciates your time. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
kim
Absolutely. It's been my pleasure. I love poking AI. So thanks for giving me an opportunity to chat with you.
