New Rules of Marketing with David Meerman Scott Transcript

Greg Wilkes (00:01):

The construction industry can be a tough business to crack, from cash flow problems, struggling to find skilled labour, and not making enough money for your efforts, leaves many business owners feeling frustrated and burnt out. But when you get the business strategy right, it’s an industry that can be highly satisfying and financially rewarding. I’m here to give you the resources to be able to create a construction business that gives you more time, more freedom, and more money. This is the Develop Your Construction Business podcast, and I’m your host, Greg Wilkes.

Greg Wilkes (00:42):

I’m really excited to welcome on my show today, David Meerman Scott. If you haven’t heard of David before, he’s an absolute expert in marketing, so it’s really going to help you with your construction business. David has spoken on stage in front of thousands of people. He regularly gets on stage with Tony Robbins, so this is the caliber of quality that David is speaking at. It’s really exciting to get him on the show because he’s written thirteen books and three of them are international bestsellers. The book we’re going to be focusing on mainly today, is his book about ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR’ and it talks about the changes that marketing has taken over the years. We’re going to look at some of the up-to-date marketing methods that David recommends. I know you’re going to enjoy this show. Let’s jump in.

 

Greg Wilkes (01:30):

David, it’s absolutely great to have you on the show today. Really appreciate you making the time to be here.

 

David Meerman Scott (01:35):

Thanks Greg. Happy to be here. Looking forward to it.

 

Greg Wilkes (01:39):

Awesome. I want to start off by being a little bit selfish if I can, because I’ve got a special event coming up, my first live in person event in London, June the 30th. I’m a little bit nervous because it’s my first one. Only got a hundred people in the room. But I know you’ve spoken on stage in front of thousands of people, you do Tony Robbins events and speak on stage with him. How did you find that, how did you transition from speaking from small events to then doing thousands? Is it quite nerve-wracking? Do you still get nervous?

 

David Meerman Scott (02:12):

You know, I think what I would recommend is that you practice, practice, practice and then practice again. If you’re going to be delivering a speech, you (no one does this and I don’t expect you will do it, but you should) practice one hour for every minute of your talk. That means if you’re going to be delivering a 60 minute talk, you should be doing 60 hours of practice. Literally stand on, make a makeshift stage in your house, talk to a camera like we’re doing right now, and see how you come across. Get to the point that you know your content so well, that you don’t even have to think about it and you can focus on things like where your hands are, where your feet are, where you’re standing on the stage. It’s all really, really important because most people don’t do that. Then they find that when they’re on the stage, they don’t feel comfortable and they start to get nervous and then it all breaks down. I’m sure you will do a good job no matter what, but I think you want to do a great job. Those would be a couple of of my recommendations.

 

Greg Wilkes (03:40):

That’s absolutely fantastic. I wanted to pick the brains of an expert there, so it was my selfish five minutes getting something out of you there, David! <laugh> I really appreciate it.

 

David Meerman Scott (03:50):

Good luck with it, because what happens in my case is you do a good job and then someone else is in the audience, they hear you, they want to have you speak and all of a sudden you’re doing 20 or 30 or 40 a year.

 

Greg Wilkes (04:03):

Yes, wow. Well David, it’s great to have you on because as you know, I work with construction business owners, anyone listening to this podcast, they’re generally trying to grow their businesses over a million pounds. We know the importance of marketing. Is it the eighth edition now of ‘The New Rules for Marketing and PR?’

 

David Meerman Scott (04:23):

Yes, now the eighth edition of ‘The New Rules of Marketing in PR’ originally came out in 2007. That was the first edition. The time it came out was a super interesting time in the history of marketing, because that’s the year the first iPhone came out. That’s the year that Twitter came out in a big way. That’s the year that Facebook transitioned to being for anybody, not just students. So a really important time in marketing. Then over the years, pretty much every other year roughly, I’ve been updating the book. Now we’re on the eighth edition.

 

Greg Wilkes (05:03):

Yes, things are changing so rapidly, aren’t they? I’m sure you’re going to be doing many, many more editions as time goes on.

 

David Meerman Scott (05:09):

That’s a big part of it is, first of all, the fundamentals of great marketing have not changed. When I wrote the book, ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR’ people say, “well, what are the old rules?” The old rules were, to generate attention for your business. If you’re running a construction business to generate interest in your construction business, you generally had only three options in the old days. One option was to hire salespeople or a salesperson, depending on what kind of business you’re running, knock on doors, call people on the phone, but you’re basically trying to sell new clients directly. The second option you had was to advertise, to spend money on advertising, magazines, radio, television, newspapers, billboards by the side of the road, that kind of thing. The third option you had to generate attention for your business, was through trying to get the media to write stories about you or broadcast about you. So if you’re doing construction in a town, getting the local newspaper, the local television station to pay attention to you. All of that required money. The way I look at the new rules, are that you can generate attention yourself. You can do what you’re doing right now, start a podcast. You can have a great website, you can be active on social media, you can have wonderful photographs of the kind of construction you do. You can educate people about how to go about doing a construction project. There’s all kinds of different things you can do, but the point is, that generating attention by creating your own content, which is free, is a new way to do marketing and public relations. That’s why I call it ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR’ and those rules have not changed over eight editions since 2007. That’s what? 16 years. Those rules have not changed. But what has changed are the tools. We’ve always got new tools available to us. And so that’s why I have to continually update the book because there’s new ways to do marketing and PR.

 

Greg Wilkes (07:36):

Sure. That’s fantastic. I know through reading through your book, one thing you are very passionate about is really understanding your customer, understanding who your audience actually is. Obviously we can put a lot of content out there, but if we’re not connecting with the right sort of people, we’re wasting our time, aren’t we? What suggestions and tips would you give for, specifically construction companies, on how they do this? How do they start to understand who their customer is and build this buyer persona?

 

David Meerman Scott (08:05):

One of the biggest problems I see with the ways that people do their marketing is, they tend to talk too much about their own products and services. I see that again and again and again. It’s like, “look at me, here’s what we do. Here’s our product, here’s our service.” I’m not saying don’t talk about your product or service on your website, of course you should, but it’s better to be thinking about when you’re doing your marketing, about who are the people that you’re trying to reach? Who are the types of people that you provide service for? Then with that information create the kind of information, the kind of content that would attract them. Let me give you an example. Right now, I’m talking to you from my home studio. This was a bedroom in my my home that I converted into my video studio. This particular room is one of the many rooms in this house. I think it was about six years ago, my wife and I finished our very long refurbishing project to this house. This is a 1958 mid-century modern house in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. I did a very big, very expensive upgrade in renovations. I wanted to take my historic 1958 mid-century modern house that was designed by an architect from MIT, and double the size of the house, as well as renovate the existing house in a way that was complimentary to the original architecture. Now that was a big project and not every builder could do it. I needed to find someone who was available. I needed to find somebody who’s going to do the job well. Almost nobody in the construction business in Boston, was talking to me as a buyer persona. So who am I as a buyer persona? I’m somebody who has the money to do the job, right? I’m not looking to cut corners. I’m somebody who cares about trying to create as ecologically friendly a home as possible. We went with really big windows to get lots of passive solar in this house. I cared a lot about the materials, lots of natural wood and so on. I wanted to make sure the original house was kept in a way that the original design was intact. Lots of things that many builders don’t know how to do, especially when it comes to mid-century modern design. Most builders in this part of the country are good at building traditional, what are called ‘American Colonial Houses’. The typical kind of American house that has been built in similar style since the 1700’s /1800’s /1900s and now into the two thousands. The houses all look the same. Now, that’s me as a buyer and there’s probably a couple of thousand buyers like me in the area that I live in, but there’s millions of buyers of other types of homes in the area I live with. I was looking for a builder, someone in the construction business who understood me as a buyer persona, yet there was almost nobody. I had to dig, I had to ask people for recommendations. Ultimately, an architect friend turned me on to the builder that we ended up choosing. This particular builder, they’re called ‘Patriot Custom Homes’ in Boston, had a great website and had great content about how they focus on modern houses. They focus on what they call green design and green building techniques. They were creating content for people like me, the buyer persona of people who want to have a construction project like I was looking for. Again, what most people do (of all different kinds of companies) is talk about their product. But what you need to do differently is think about who’s the person you’re trying to reach, the buyer persona you’re trying to reach, and then create the content that will be great to attract them and then convince them that you are the person that they should do business with.

 

Greg Wilkes (13:15):

Yes, that makes complete sense. I guess many might worry about being too niche and and missing the entire market, but that’s such a mistake, isn’t it?

 

David Meerman Scott (13:27):

Well, I think when you’re broad like everybody else, you don’t stand out at all. However, keep in mind that you don’t need to just be one niche. Many companies have multiple buyer personas. I’ll talk about an example; multiple buyer personas in the hotel business. Imagine you’re in the hotel business, most hotel websites just talk about, “Hey, here’s what our hotel room looks like. Here’s the online widget you can use to reserve a room.” But imagine the difference of a hotel website that targets five different buyer personas. The first buyer persona, they target independent business travelers who are traveling to this particular city and make the decision themselves about a hotel to stay in. Then you’ve got corporate travel managers of a company located in that city who have multiple people coming through. They’re making the decisions. For many people, that’s a very different buyer persona. Or how about a company that wants to have a big event like the one you’re speaking at Greg, right? A an event for a hundred people at the hotel and they need a room to hold that event. That’s a different buyer persona. A family going on vacation. Maybe they need 2 hotel rooms, interconnecting door, 1 for the parents, 1 for the kids. Different buyer persona. Or how about a couple that wants to get married and thy want to have their wedding reception in a hotel, and have sleeping rooms for family and friends. Very different buyer persona. So that’s one hotel, but their website could have content for 5 different buyer personas.

 

(15:20):

So,  don’t think of it necessarily as niche. In my case, when I was talking about my builder, that I was looking for someone who was very skilled in modern design and modern renovation techniques in here in Boston where that’s rare, but rather think of it as multiple buyer personas. “We do this, but we also do this”. Then your website can have multiple content sets for multiple buyer personas.

 

Greg Wilkes (15:54):

Yes, that’s really interesting. Thanks for clarifying, that that makes complete sense. What do you think at the moment, obviously we know that the rules of marketing haven’t changed, but the way we connect with people has changed slightly, hasn’t it? Where would you say, when I think back when I first started it was Yellow Pages and all different ways of getting into people. But now we’ve got blogs, vlogging, videos, TikTok, things like that. What do you think for construction business owners, where should they be focusing on their efforts? We only have so much time, don’t we, to try and do our marketing? So does it need to be a bit everywhere or?

 

David Meerman Scott (16:31):

That’s true. You’ve certainly you’ve got an opportunities all over the place. I would look at two different criteria for how you can think about where to focus your efforts. The first criteria would be, where are the buyer personas that you’re trying to reach, looking for a company like yours? Maybe those people are active on Facebook, maybe those people search on Google and look for a company to do business with. That would be the first thing I would look at is, is who are you trying to reach? Who are the buyer personas you’re trying to reach and what is the best kind of content to reach them?

 

(17:20):

The second thing I would look at is, what kind of content are you comfortable creating? You’re doing this podcast now, Greg, right? You’re comfortable with this medium, with an audio interview format, as a way to create content for you. I don’t have my own podcast. I’m a guest on people’s podcasts like we’re doing right now, but I don’t have my own podcast. However, I do have a blog. I am active on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. I don’t have a podcast. I do have a video channel, but I don’t update it very frequently. That’s because I prefer to write, I’m a writer. Think about what you would like to do. Maybe do video, maybe do audio like Greg does, maybe write content like I do. Just think about what you’re comfortable with. Those are the two things I’d look at. Where are the people you’re trying to reach? How can you reach them? And number two, what might you be good at?

 

(18:24):

Now I want to share a little story about my friend Matt Wright. Matt is a builder in Austin, Texas. He does high-end custom home construction in Texas. I think it was about 10 or 12 years ago, he went to an event where he saw me speak and I was talking about all of these ideas for the construction industry, just like we’re talking about right now. I was saying, just like I said right now, you might want to think about what you might be good at. Maybe it’s video, maybe it’s audio in the form of a podcast. Maybe you like to write, you can write a blog, maybe you’re into photographs. You can put photographs onto Instagram, just like we’re talking about right now. Matt said, “Oh, I should do a YouTube channel. I’m listening to David talk in this conference. Maybe I should do a YouTube channel.” So he did, he started his YouTube channel somewhere between 10 and 12 years ago. I forgot exactly when. It did a great job to promote his business because he started with once a week and then he went to twice a week, short videos, only a minute or a couple of minutes each. Films them on the job site, so it’s nothing special. On the job site, one of his crew members takes out a camera and films him and it’s just Matt talking to the camera. He told me a couple of years after that, (I mean it was four-six years after that) that the YouTube channel was going great and that it was generating a ton of attention for his business. He went from almost no revenue, because he had just started when I met him 10 or 12 years ago. He had about a million dollars in revenue. He went from a million dollars in revenue to twenty million in revenue, all because of the YouTube channel, because the YouTube channel started to take off and generate new business for him. Then something remarkable happened, is that, he started to get interest in advertisers to sponsor his YouTube channel as well as advertise on his YouTube channel. These are people in the construction companies, in the construction business, so tool manufacturers for example, or window and door manufacturers or paint companies, anybody who wants to reach builders started to advertise on Matt’s YouTube channel. I spoke with him a couple of months ago and he told me he now generates 2 million per year in YouTube advertising revenue and 2 million per year in YouTube’s sponsorship revenue. Now that all goes into his pocket, there’s no expenses related to four million dollars in revenue from his YouTube channel. He’s still got the construction business, which he’s generating attention through that YouTube channel. You never know what might happen if you create the kind of content that you’re excited about. In the case of Matt Reisinger and Google his name, Matt R-I-S-I-N-G-E-R, Matt Reisinger (you can find his channel). He’s doing great.

 

Greg Wilkes (21:52):

That’s such a good story. That’s amazing. And what I love about that is that he’s started off so simply, isn’t it, just doing what you’re doing, filming behind the scenes on the job. Then he takes off from there, doesn’t it?

 

David Meerman Scott (22:04):

In the beginning (he is got a better camera now) but in beginning it was just his phone. He had one of his guys, one of the people on the crew film him and Matt talks directly to camera. He still does that, still talks directly to camera, but it’s a little more highly produced now. He’s got the revenue, he’s got 4 million a year in revenue to spend a little bit of that on higher production value for his videos.

 

Greg Wilkes (22:29):

That’s fantastic. Some really great trips there. Go where people are and do content that you’re comfortable with. I think that’s two big takeouts from that.

 

Greg Wilkes (22:38):

I want to shift gears a little bit on the conversation and something you touch on also in your book, is the importance of responding to some negative content that might come out. Now, we know in the construction industry, unfortunately not every job goes as it should. Something can happen and you might upset someone. Rather than bury our heads in the sand, in your book, you talk about how you need to tackle that head on. Do you want to give us some flesh around that, why we need to tackle negative content?

 

David Meerman Scott (23:09):

Yes, sure. First of all, most people overestimate how much negative content they’re going to get. For most businesses, most people, it’s going to be a very small amount. Unless you do something terrible, but let’s assume you don’t do something terrible, you go about normal business, you’re a good business, you care for people, you do good work, it’s going to be minimal. So don’t get worried about the whole world is going to start exploding if you start creating content. Second thing is, if a negative comment or post does appear, take a look at it and it’s usually going to be in one of two categories. One category is constructive criticism. Somebody who’s taken the time to point out something that caused them a problem or that was done wrong or whatever it might be. In that case that deserves a response. If somebody took the time to point out an error of flaw, something that went wrong, that deserves a response. I always recommend that you definitely go in and reply in whatever medium that they made that comment. So for example, if they made that comment on Facebook, you should reply right there in Facebook. If they made that comment on your blog, if you have one, reply on the blog. If they said something on Twitter, reply on Twitter, if you happen to be on those networks.

(24:47):

The second category is somebody who’s being a bully. If they’re simply out there being a bully and saying negative things for the sake of saying negative things, they are not actually a customer that does not deserve a response, you do not have to respond to someone who’s simply being a bully and saying something that is not constructive. So don’t even worry about that. Other people will recognise the nature of that comment as just being negative for the sake of being negative and you can ignore it. That would be my advice. But again, as I said at the beginning of the answer, it’s pretty rare to have that kind of negativity. Don’t think it’s gonna happen all the time.

 

Greg Wilkes (25:41):

No, that’s useful to know. Appreciate that. When we are posting out on social media, we see clips that go absolutely viral and that’s everyone’s big aim, isn’t it? We think, “Right. Let me, let me get this post out and I want this to go gangbusters and go all over the internet”. Any tips around that about or is it just not possible? Is it more likely once in a blue moon that someone would go viral? What do you think?

 

David Meerman Scott (26:07):

It’s difficult because there’s so many people online, but it is definitely possible, and especially for a business like construction that’s a local business, it’s very much possible to generate attention locally. When people think about viral, they often think about, the whole world or the entire country or whatever. But if you’re running a construction business, which by definition is local, you don’t need to have your content go viral all over the world. I mean, sure, that would be nice! But think about local though. Now first of all, a lot of people don’t think local. I mean, if you think hyper-local, what’s going on in the town that I want to do construction projects in? What’s happening in the school system, what’s happening in the local political environment? Is there anything going on in the police department, the fire department? What’s happening that I need to know about? If you can be on top of the whole goings on about the town, and you can post content maybe in the form of a blog or podcast and be on top of what’s going on, that can be super interesting. We were talking about content earlier and what kind of content you should create. I suggested that whatever content makes sense for your type of business and what you like to do. But imagine, just for a moment, imagine that you wanted to do a YouTube channel like Matt Reisinger did. Imagine you focused on interviewing interesting people in your town. You interviewed the chief of police, the head of the fire department, the principal of the school, all of these sort of interesting people, teachers, real estate agents, people who are tangential to the construction business, maybe some of the suppliers you work with. That’s one way to generate attention in an interesting way locally.

(28:24):

Think of something, I call it ‘Newsjacking’. ‘Newsjacking’ is something I invented. It’s the idea of following breaking news. Then when a news story is breaking, you then create content very quickly to generate attention because you’re one of the first people to talk about that particular news. Imagine again, our local business construction is local and you’ve created a channel, maybe it’s video, maybe it’s audio, maybe it’s a blog, talking about your local community, and then there’s a piece of news that breaks. Let’s say the mayor of the town resigns. That’s interesting. That’s something if you write about it, people will pay attention to. Or for example, let’s say a report comes out that real estate prices jumped by 20% last year. That’s interesting. If you’re the first person to comment on that, maybe you’re going to generate interest among other people in the community. Maybe the local newspaper will write about it. Or maybe you could even calculate real estate values in in your community or provide some other kind of data that you collect and you publish in your community, which has the power to then in your community at least, go viral. I know in some of the communities that I pay attention to (I’ve got a couple different houses, I’ve got the house, I’m talking to you now in the Boston suburbs, which is my primary residence. I’ve also got a vacation property on Nantucket Island, which is a summer community in Massachusetts) and there’s one of the real estate agents in the island of Nantucket, created the Nantucket Real Estate Index, and it’s a graph and an index of real estate prices over time. They’ve become locally famous because of that real estate graph. Maybe you can create something similar in your town and being in a construction business, maybe that’s going to be super popular if you’re in commercial construction, maybe you can do something that’s appropriate for commercial construction.

 

Greg Wilkes (30:47):

Yea that’s really interesting. Just to clarify that about the ‘Newsjacking’, because that’s a completely new concept to me, and I I think that’s just worth exploring a little bit. Some of your tips on that were, when something comes out like a news article, it’s getting in and being one of the first ones to comment on the post, is it?

 

David Meerman Scott (31:03):

Yes.

 

Greg Wilkes (31:04):

Then what else is it, creating more content around that links to the links to the story?

 

David Meerman Scott (31:10):

Yes, basically when there’s a news a breaking news story, people are always looking for the context, both consumers as well as members of the news media. The news media is always looking for people to quote, experts to quote, when there’s a story that breaks and the members of the public want to find out more about what this story is when that news breaks. If you have expertise in that marketplace and you’re able to comment right away, that becomes super interesting. Let’s say (I’m just making something up) for argument’s sake, the UK government decides that they’re going to tax real estate in a different way. Oh wow. That’s interesting. If you’re the first person in your community to comment about what that means for the location you live in, maybe the local television station, the local newspaper will then want to interview you because you’re an expert, you’re in the construction industry talking about real estate and how real estate is taxed. You come out quickly, I’m talking very quickly, like half an hour/an hour after the news breaks, you come out with a statement on your blog, your podcast etc that becomes super interesting. People are looking to quote experts, why not you? Why not you as the expert?

 

Greg Wilkes (32:34):

Yes, I love that. That’s a really interesting concept. Thanks for that, David. I think there’s a lot that people take away from that.

(32:39):

I know you’ve got multiple books, approx. ten?

 

David Meerman Scott (32:46):

It’s up to thirteen now.

 

Greg Wilkes (32:49):

<laugh>

 

David Meerman Scott (32:50):

A few books out there!

 

Greg Wilkes (32:52):

One of your books is about creating fans and getting your customers into fans. So just tell me the title of that book again, so everyone knows.

 

David Meerman Scott (32:59):

That’s called ‘Fanogracy’.

 

Greg Wilkes (33:02):

Yes, fantastic. This is the concept of creating fans and then turning that fan into a customer.

 

David Meerman Scott (33:10):

Correct.

 

Greg Wilkes (33:11):

Can you just give us a bit more depth and context around that on why that’s so important for a construction business to actually create fans from their following?

 

David Meerman Scott (33:21):

Yes, sure. My daughter and I wrote that book. My daughter, she’s now 30, but when we first started writing she was 24 years old, and we really dug into the idea of fandom and I’m a fan of the ‘Grateful Dead’. This is a ‘Grateful Dead’ logo over this shoulder. I’m a fan of surfing and this is a surfboard I built. I have that over here. I’m a of the Apollo Lunar Program and there’s a model of a Saturn Five Rocket. I’ve got the things I’m a fan of here in my studio. My daughter Reko is a fan of Harry Potter. She’s a fan of Korean pop music, K-pop. We looked at how and why people become fans, and we looked at how organisations can build fandom. What we learned is that, basically we humans are hardwired, to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people. When we’re a part of a tribe of like-minded people, we feel safe and comfortable and secure. If you cheer for a certain football team, let’s say your a Chelsea United fan, right? You cheer for that team, you are part of a tribe of like-minded people. I love the ‘Grateful Dead’, an American Rock Band. I’m a tribe of the ‘Grateful Dead’ and I have many friends who are also fans of the ‘Grateful Dead.’ Think about your own business. How can you create a tribe of like-minded fans of people who are fans of what you do? There’s a number of different ways you can do that. But basically what you’re trying to do is get them to feel as if they love what you do and they’re a fan of your work. It’s totally possible for any kind of business to build fans. We looked at all kinds of different organisations and found all kinds of different companies that have developed this kind of fandom. It’s a lot of different things put together. It’s treating people with respect, it’s providing incredible value, it’s meeting people one-on-one and actually having interactions and conversations with them. All of those things help to create fans of your work.

 

Greg Wilkes (35:52):

That’s interesting. To understand that concept a little bit more, we’re talking about obviously you need to create fans from your initial customers, so you have to have done work for people for them to then become a fan. But we are potentially saying it’s possible to then have fans that aren’t customers that you want to turn into customers.

 

David Meerman Scott (36:10):

I mean, not necessarily. Let’s go back to the Matt Reisinger example. He’s the guy told you about who has a YouTube channel and he was able to grow his residential high-end residential real estate construction business from about a million dollars a year to twenty million a year just through You Tube. He’s got over 1 million YouTube subscribers. He’s got way more fans of his YouTube channel than he has clients of his construction business. What Matt did was he built a huge tribe of fans who were fans of his YouTube channel. Some of them then said, “Oh, I live in Austin, Texas, I’m thinking about building a new house. I should ask Matt to come and maybe he’ll build my house.” But that’s a very, very small percentage of the fans that he’s built over the last 10 years on his YouTube channel. The vast majority of them will never, ever buy anything from Matt. All they’re doing is watching his YouTube channel. So there’s all kinds of different ways that it’s possible to build fans, even with people who are not necessarily going to be your customers. Now, in my case, the same thing is true. I have a blog, I have something like 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. I have 125,000 followers on Twitter. I think there’s 20,000 or so people who follow my blog. There’s a million people who have read one of my books. My books are in 30 languages. But very few of those people will have ever hired me to speak in a speaking gig. A tiny percentage of those people. But all of those people have potential to be my fans and all of those fans potentially might either hire me or recommend to their company that they hire me. That becomes really valuable. The more fans you have, the easier it is to add clients. I know in my case, and I think this is also true of Matt (the builder in Texas) I’ve never made a sales call in my life for my business. My business all comes to me, it comes to me because I’ve built the fans ahead of time and those fans of my book and my social media feeds and so on, then say, “Oh, well I need someone to speak at my event. Maybe I’ll have this guy come and do it.”

 

Greg Wilkes (38:58):

Brilliant. That’s fantastic. One last subject I jwanted to talk to you about David, because I know you’ve got a busy schedule today. We’ve just got a couple of minutes left. A.I (Artificial Intelligence) is the buzzword now, isn’t it? Chat GPT and what’s going on with A.I. That’s potentially going to change marketing again, or is it. What are your thoughts on this, should construction business owners be jumping to get on the A.I bandwagon or what’s your thoughts on where that’s going to take marketing?

 

David Meerman Scott (39:25):

There’s lots and lots and lots of different ways that A.I or artificial intelligence can help marketing and I’m a big believer in it. I’m actually an investor in several different A.I companies in the marketing space and I think it can be super powerful. One company that I invested in (and I’m also a client of) is a company called ‘Lately’. What ‘Lately’ does, is it takes long form content and then breaks it into short form content that’s ready to be used on social media. in my case, as I mentioned earlier, I have a blog that’s text-based content. AN Average blog post for me might be 750 words. I take those 750 words, drop them into the ‘Lately’ artificial intelligence engine, and then it generates between 10 and 20 tweets from my blog post and then automatically cues those tweets up to be sent on my Twitter feed. it saves me a ton of time because if I were to manually create those tweets, it would take a really long time. This also works by the way, Greg, for audio content. You could take the entire episode, this entire episode when it’s complete, upload it to ‘Lately’ can then slice it into one minute audio clips, which then are ready to be shared on social media, on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram, whatever social media you use. That’s just one A.I tool. Then there’s chat. GPT, as you mentioned, is a free tool that’s out there. Great way to summarise content, create questions from content. I use it to help me to create great subject lines for my blog posts. Lots of these tools are super helpful. What I would not recommend that they’re used for though, is to create an original blog post You can’t copyright content that comes out of these A.I engines that are using content from the public database, in other words from the web. Which is why I think that what’s a lot more interesting to me, are the A.I tools that can enhance your own content (like I talked about with ‘Lately’) rather than A.I tools that are used to create content from the public internet-based content. While interesting, I’m not sure that that ultimately has value to marketers.

 

Greg Wilkes (42:12):

Yes, that’s a really interesting take on that. I think what a lot are starting to do, which we worry about. is just being a little bit lazy on things like chat GTP and saying “Right, write me a 500 word blog how to build a roof” or similar. It’s going to be bland vanilla content, isn’t it, that’s not really going to serve any purposes.

 

David Meerman Scott (42:32):

There’s a couple things. It can be wrong, number one. Number two, you’re right, it’s typically going to be just like everybody else’s content and number three, you technically cannot copyright that. I always think of artificial intelligence as data and math and whose math are you using? Is it chat GPT’s math or Lately’s Math or whoever, what math are you using? Then what content are you using? Are you using the public internet content? If yes, then that’s just content that these A.I engines scrape and create something. There’s value in that. Sure, there’s value in that, but there’s already millions and millions of people who are taking content and creating, as you say, this bland kind of generic content, throwing it up there. I’m not sure that’s going to be helpful to companies in the long run to do that.

 

Greg Wilkes (43:35):

No, sure. David, I really appreciate your time today on the podcast. There’s some real gems that have come out of that, that’s going be really useful for the construction business listeners there. Thank you for taking the time to come on the show.

 

David Meerman Scott (43:47):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on and good luck everybody!

 

Greg Wilkes (44:00):

If you’d like to work with me to fast track your construction business growth, then reach out on www.developcoaching.co.uk