EP229: Leveraging the power of AI in digital marketing: A conversation with April Edwards

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, sure. So I have a kind of an interesting story. We specifically cater to deck builders and everybody's always super curious about that. We're a full service digital marketing agency. But what I really like to call a growth partner for this industry, I'm really embedded into the industry to help move it forward. So I have my own podcast. We love deck builders. And then I wrote the book on it, Deck Builder Marketing Playbook. We have a Facebook group that anybody can join. And I speak regularly at different events. I also have a regular column in the Deck Specialist magazine called Market Yourself. So check that out. But yeah, so the background is... Very similar to a lot of contractors where maybe you start in general construction and you're kind of doing everything, you know, interior remodels, roofing, like whatever, you know. And I had a marketing agency that was just that, a very generalist agency. We did everything for everyone. And after a while, I was like, I'm not even practicing what I preach. This isn't scalable. I can't. get like my messages diluted because they're we're trying to reach too many people and um i kind of said hey april what do you want to be when you grow up like somehow i had this business that i I mean, it was very organic how it happened. But I mean, I went to art school. I wanted to be a starving artist, you know. Anyway, long story short, I ended up realizing that I had something really valuable that God blessed me with. And I had the ability to really help a lot of people. And so in terms of figuring out the people that I wanted to help the most, I looked at the clients that we enjoyed working with the most and the ones that we had the most success with. And I realized I ended up building a system that I could repeat for. other deck builders. And so that's kind of where it came. Fast forward four years and I absolutely love my guys. I think that I serve a really good industry.

Deck builder in Ohio, just a connection that I had and ended up, you know, helping their business scale through our digital marketing. Awesome.

So they were kind of the inspiration.

We officially incorporated the, what I call the legacy agency. It used to be called a design co. We just rebranded it to audition. That was in 2012. And then I started deck builder marketers towards the end of 2021.

yeah. Well, I started, I mean, I started in 2004 and I have done everything, like every position you could do. Like if you were to compare it to a restaurant, I've done all of the front of the house jobs and the back of the house jobs.

Well, first, I want to just address that. I think there's too many people that are still stuck in the idea that AI is just chat GPT that will write content for you. I think that when it comes to tools like chat GPT, you really need to be looking at it as an assistant for your life, for your business. If you can be strategic in how you use these tools, it is going to make your life so much more efficient. So it's a lot more than just content. When it comes to marketing, there's a big shift in the way that people purchase and the expectations that they have. We call it, it's like a zero click world. Tools like ChatGPT and Google's generative search. If you search for who's the best deck builder in Cincinnati, Ohio, it's going to come up with a list of you know top deck builders and even if you're using chat gpt like sometimes you're not even clicking through to go to their website like you're just kind of getting an idea and learning some things maybe prompting some more and being like okay great well i see that you know so and so is good like what what's their specialty like people are lazy right they're leveraging these tools to get answers a lot quicker so that's one way but what i really want to focus on is just the shift in the way people purchase. So the beginning of this year, I would say the end of last year and the beginning of this year, we, we felt a shift. I mean, we were feeling it like people were slower to buy, not getting as much traffic to websites as we used to. And then, you know, and we had a lot going. against us too, right? We had the election, we had tariffs and, you know, taxes and interest rates increasing and stuff like that. But at the same time, we have this AI situation happening where people are using that. I think if we just stop talking about AI and we just talk about the world in 2025 and what homeowners are expecting, they want fast, they want all the things that fundamental that some people just don't get right. you know, like get back to them right away. Very simple. The world isn't the way it used to be. It's more competitive and people are using automation tools to automatically reply to people, even like voice chat and people like that. They just don't. They don't have time. You know, they they're very selective with how they use their time. And so, for instance, we have a platform that we give our clients called Sales Jumpstart. If somebody calls you and you're not able to answer, totally fine. They could leave a voicemail, but it'll also shoot them a text message to say, hey, it's so and so. I'll get back to you right away. But in order to speed up getting a consultation, bam, linked to your form. And that's nice. Because now it's not like, okay, I'm the homeowner and I took a bunch of, you know, I finally decided that I was going to call this company. And now I have the peace of mind knowing that like, you know, things are going to move forward. So I would just challenge folks to understand that you have to be leveraging technology to make your business more efficient and to create a better experience for your prospects and your clients too. I saw that JobTread. or they sponsored one of your episodes. Love Job Tread. Eric is amazing. And it's a really good example of like, if you're still using spreadsheets. you're missing out on the opportunity to make things more efficient for you and to create a better experience for your client so those estimates you know like you could upload a whole catalog of uh material pricing and it'll automatically spit that estimate out you can keep your your client up to date on the project things like that are what really separate you from other builders and that is what is really important it's going deeper into uh what sets you apart and in my opinion it's almost like if you think about how things used to be that was it you know but don't sit there and just say quality craftsmanship like explain how you're different you know and and layer it with storytelling too so i'll stop there um there's a lot i can say but um we're just in a paradigm shift right now For sure.

Yeah, I would say just to kind of piggyback off of that, it's really the idea that homeowners are in control, consumers in general, you know, and they they want to establish trust with you as a business before they even decide to pick up the phone. And so you have to do a much better job of getting out there, being visible and then making sure that you are explaining how you're different. But it's so much more than that. What we do as marketers is we're kind of the matchmaker between these. and your business to try and feed them signals and get them to know, like, and trust you before they actually show you to their searchers, right? So I would say like, we're definitely challenging our clients to level up as well. It takes two and we can't just like have the same old projects on your website for a year. Like we need to be updating it regularly and providing more detailed information, taking some time to have some videos of you explaining your business and, you know, your passion and things like that are going to separate you a lot because. They go through a really long process before they even get to your website. And so you better make sure you're converting them once they do get there.

Yeah. And those reviews are so important. And I can give a really good tip for your audience, too, that I think what's really important. I mean, I hate to say it, but I'm going to say the hard things. Like if you haven't been working on your online presence, you are so far behind. And we saw it in covid when there became a lot more competition. People were, you know, switching from general construction and itching down to, you know. deck building and leveraging, you know, understanding the value of having an online presence, you know, and there were people that were relying on referrals and didn't have even a good website. And they were getting out shined by newbies, you know, because they were stepping up. And I mean, if you haven't started now, unfortunately, it's going to take a lot more to get you going, you know? And so, you know, I just want to leave everybody with. you have got to invest in your business and you have to know that it's going to be an investment and your results will compound as you keep doing it like you're building a marketing machine a lead generation machine a brand building machine all of these things that are going to even help you get the right team, you know, the right crews and the right team members and, you know, set your business up for success well beyond you. I think a lot of people don't really think about their retirement plans and things like that, you know, and so your results will compound, meaning that you, you know, you'll pay more to kind of get the ball created and rolling. And then afterward, you'll be, you know, you'll have a much higher return on investment as those results compound.

Exactly. Yeah. I just spoke with a deck builder only making quarter million, you know, was still kind of subcontracting and really wanted to go all in, you know, on his business. And I'm like, normally, you know, like do some Angie leads, like kind of get a good infrastructure and then start investing in, you know, SEO and advertising and things like that. But at the same time, I'm like, well, you could go slow. And hope that works out. Or we could just do this and start from, you know, start right. And so you have to have a budget and you have to make sure that you're getting on the bandwagon and you are being consistent. I want to also say when it comes to reviews, it's so important because these generative AI and search tools are looking at those reviews to validate your credibility. And it's part of their, you know, formula to get to show you as well. You also need to be on in multiple places because, you know, different tools will use different sources. You know, some will use Google, some will use Bing. So it's really important to be everywhere. And those reviews are so, so, so, so, so important more than ever right now.

Yeah.

sure. And what I wanted to just point out with what you said was you have a system. You have a system for collecting those reviews. And that's why I'm saying like, if you're not hopping on and leveraging this technology, there are ways like this that are going to set you apart, you know, with the ability to, you know, the inability to get good reviews because you're too busy and you're manually following up and stuff.

And so he leveraged AI to figure out a way to make the purchasing decision easier for his prospect. Yes.

Yeah. And people don't know what they don't know either. So if you've never been involved in a construction project, you might not know that it could be a nightmare and how it's going to intrude in your life. So making sure that you're the one speaking up about that stuff is what is going to differentiate you as well and help to get you shown in different things. There's a book called They Ask You Answer. Do you know of this book?

Marcus Sharon is great. By the way, I saw him speak last week in my coaching group event. Oh my God. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Wow. So I'm telling you, like all of us agency owners that were at this event, we're going to be, I mean. Things are changing because of those two talks that we had with him. And I felt so bad for one of my colleagues that had to go after him because he was such a good speaker. But I would recommend anybody read that book. And it's really just kind of getting to the fundamentals. And that's what I think is interesting about this shift is like a lot of things with the way Google has changed their algorithm over the years are really just to make sure that you're being authentic and helpful. I mean, that's like, it's really simple. And so they ask you answer is all about like, what are the most common questions that people ask you? People want to know pricing. So we, you know, we, we've been able to get our clients to agree to have project pages where we at least have a price range. So it gives the homeowner an idea of, you know, what they could get.

Because again, they don't know what they don't know. They might think that they could get a luxury outdoor living space for, you know,30 grand and here it's, you know,250. So when they could see that. they're educating themselves. And what I like to say, you're helping to prime them for sales, you know? But pushing that further and, you know, talking about like, you know, how much does a debt cost in your particular area and having content on your website that speaks to that? Trust me, if you don't have something like that. People are asking that information. And if you're not showing up when they're asking that, you are missing out on a lot of opportunity. Doing comparisons. And I think he's got five principles in there, but I would recommend read the book and make sure that you're not making decisions out of fear. Like a lot of people are scared to talk about pricing, you know, and it's like. you got to give the people what they want, you know, and there are different ways you could go about it. But if you're not doing these things, your competition is.

Yeah, I mean, I've written a bunch of content to address sales objections. And so it's easy for me just to send that stuff to a prospect, you know, and educate them about what they don't know. Our system, Sales Jumpstart, it's got the lead scoring. So it's the same thing where people get more points for more website pages that they view or content that they download and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, I think that having automated follow ups. you know is really important too and so i kind of touched on the customer journey a little bit there's a whole journey and you have complete control over that whole thing so you know we have content on our site that talks about it basically gets the prospect ready to work with us like these are people that are not qualified but we're still trying to educate them so that when they are ready who are they going to think of you know and and if you have some sort of content like you know everything you need to know about you know investing in an outdoor living space or something like that you get them on your list and then you could you know make sure that your brand is staying in front of them by sending them um emails regularly uh we also will do uh the buyer's funnel um in their journey and then afterward even uh once they sign up You know, once they sign on for the project, like send them an automated sequence that helps them understand everything that they need to know, you know, introduce your project manager, how to use the software, you know, the project management software, stuff about schedules and delays and enhancements and maintenance and things like this. That's going to make your life really easy is also going to create a better experience for the homeowner, because I tell you what, in my age. I don't want to project manage people that I hire. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to do that. I want it to be really easy. And that's kind of what you're doing. And even when the project is done, you know, for deck builders, there's not a lot of like repeat business because people typically invest in like, you know, they're forever outdoors based, but you still have an opportunity to. continue that great experience by providing helpful content and like just you could leverage text sms automation and email automation to send a message out that just looks like it comes from you personally and just checks in to see how They're enjoying, you know, their project and then giving them maintenance tips and even like hitting them up a year later, you know, and saying happy deckversary and things like that are going to naturally get you more referrals and reviews.

Yeah. You know, what I want to say to that is I think it's really important to, I love being a business owner and like critiquing other businesses now, because I want, I want to know what the experience is like and to learn from it. Even if it's like a completely different business, you know, I really, I really like to find those. little nuances that separate people and, and also know like, okay, this was a terrible experience. Like I don't ever want somebody else to have to go through something like this. How could I apply that to my business? You know, I think, um, I think that's really important, but also, um, you know, we got to level up guys, period. Like I said, we're telling our clients, like you get a lead for a deck repair. We do everything in the world. We have that as a negative keyword and the ads. Um, and you know, we say it on the website. But that's your opportunity to show people what they don't know. And I think that if anything, like let's your sales has that your approach to sales has to change. It's no longer everybody wants a, you know, a deck and they're ready to rock and roll. Like there's a lot more resistance. And I think that you got to get creative with how you approach your sales. I mean, we work with deck builders. They create luxury outdoor living spaces. It's not. a necessity. This isn't plumbing or something, right? So you really have to let them know, you know, how this is going to, you need to make it a necessity in the way that you, you know. sell. I think a good example is a deck builder I talked to a couple of weeks ago. He shared his, we do these masterminds in our Facebook group. And we also do coaching masterminds with our clients every two weeks. So it's really great because I love to hear what everybody's up to. But he shared a really good story about how, you know, somebody wanted to get a deck for their kid's graduation. And, you know, they just kind of wanted to get something small because it was like that one purpose. But he had to explain to them how they're going to enjoy the space for years to come. And what about when their kid comes back from college with like, you know, their significant other or something, you know, and I just thought that was such a great story because he's like really showing them the value in that investment, you know.

Yeah. I would challenge. I would challenge your listeners to just like sit down with a piece of paper and pencil and really try and map out what that journey looks like, you know, like kind of take yourself out of your shoes and put yourself in your customer's shoes and even research, go online and like see who's showing up when you're searching for different things, you know, like somebody might look out, you know, pretend that you're somebody looking out and you're, you know. again, deck builders, but you're looking out the window and you're like, man, we don't spend enough time outside. Should we like, we should, should we, what should we do with this? Should we like pay, should we do like hearts keeping or like, should we get a deck, you know, and start from there and like, start searching for things and see who comes up and what the experience is like from even the snippet in the search engine result page or. you know generative ai and you know how are they positioning themselves and then when you go to their website like what are they saying what's the experience like would you feel compelled to you know call is there a way to join their email list or download something and then go to what the experience is like from a sales perspective you know and then what does it look like when they when you on you know when when they sign up and then go through the project Because you'll find opportunity to create a better experience through communication, content, or I don't know, systems.

Like I said, I love to compare how other like what the experience is like with other businesses, because it puts new perspective into what I do with mine.

See how I nerd out on this stuff.

But I just know that's the difference between ordinary and extraordinary, you know, and that's, you know, I'll always compare it to like. go into a restaurant and I love olive oil. Do they have olive oil with the bread or do they have butter? Do they have those little like square butter things or individually packaged butter? Or do they have like herbed butter? Do they have a pepper mill or do they have like an old shaker? I mean, it makes such a difference. With AI too, it's really about being innovative. And if we go back to that, one thing I wanted to say was we are thinkers. We will always be thinkers. And these tools help speed up that process and help us through that. But like it's your canvas. So anything that you're spending a bunch of time on, just think, how can I leverage AI to help me with this? you can create entire workflows connect software you could do all kinds of things that so one example is um We were doing all hands meetings on a weekly basis now because there's way too many changes going on that we like we were doing it monthly and it's like, no, we need to get together more frequently. And we like to share wins. We run our business off of EOS. If nobody's heard of it, just do it. It's amazing. And I love we love to share wins. So my integrator put together a form where people could go and upload, you know, a win that they want to share in the meeting. And I was like, hmm, I'm like, I don't want to fill a form. You know, I'm like, that takes away the fun of like just quickly sharing a shout out to somebody. We use Slack. My team is virtual. And so I was like, well, how can we just post this in Slack and then leverage different tools to automatically put it in a spreadsheet or something like that that is going to aggregate it all and make it easy for us to go over all the wins on the weekly meeting? And guess what? There's like eight ways you can do that. So it's it's really about. being a pilot with these tools, you know, and navigating them and being creative and how you can utilize them to make your life easier. Yeah.

And again, I mean, I hate to be like, oh, everyone's doing it. But I mean, it is the direction of the world. We have, you know, self-driving cars. It's like, isn't it crazy? Did you ever watch the Jetsons when you were young?

Well, I think we're definitely in that shift, you know, and it's like, yeah, you're just going to grow farther behind. And it's because people are going to get better at what they do and more efficient. And you won't. I have a, I build custom GPTs. I basically, you train it and then you upload documents and you kind of tell it the output that you want. And I created my own virtual board of directors. And each person is based off of a different, you know, famous person for that particular role. And so I'll I'll just go to my virtual board of directors and say, this is the issue. Give me your perspective. Everyone's got a different perspective. And then, you know, I'll kind of go back and forth and and it's helpful. It's really helpful.

Yeah. Yep. We don't live in a manual world anymore.

Another thing that I think is really good, and I love that role-playing idea, and there's software too that does that. they're like people are creating software that just leverages ai to do things like that like like we're um we're putting something together that will automatically review the calls our clients calls and then it'll leave a summary in the their contact record and then for us we need to know if the lead was you know quality or not um and so It'll also help us understand the lead quality so that we can improve on what we're doing. But I also wanted to give a tip, leverage it to QA things and ask it to rate itself. I swear to God, every time I'm like, okay, well, how would you rate this from one to 10? Most of the time it's like a seven or an eight. And I'm like, okay, well, what's it going to take to get it to a 10? You can leverage it in a lot of things. I have chat GPT critique website designs. Oh yeah. Because. yeah it'll it'll end up seeing things that i might not have noticed you know and it's just that outside perspective we do have on our website we have um 99 chat gpt prompts um if anybody is interested in that and it really will give you an idea of you know the different ways that you could leverage it for your business you know even from like an hr perspective and creating contracts and things like that there's so much you can do

Yeah, that's good. And I'll take it one level on top of that. So use the formula crit, C-R-I-T. Have you heard this?

So C is for context. So you give chat GPT or whatever you're using the context. R is the role. Right. So I'll be like. you're the best marketing agency in the whole world or something like that, you know, and like give it really specific, something really specific. It could even be someone famous or whatever. And then I is interview. So just like you said, I have it ask one question at a time. I'm like, ask me up to four questions, one at a time to give deeper context. And then T is the task at hand. Like, what is it that you actually want it to do? And I think that that's a really good formula to, to get more out of it and be goal oriented. Man, some people just miss that and, and what they do, you know, like it's not about doing something. It's about why you're doing it. And if you can, you know, give these tools a rationale as to, you know, the background and why, and you know, you're going to get a better output.

So what I'm working on right now is so our house flooded and we've been having to get reimbursed from the insurance company. And I have a bunch of printed receipts. We had to go to a hotel and they'll pay for the food. And so I have all of these receipts. I just took pictures of all the receipts, uploaded them to chat GPT. I'm like, give me the totals on all of these. Now I could just zip it all up, send it to the insurance company and bam, I have my total so I can track the reimbursements.

For sure.

Yeah. If you go to deckbuildermarketers. com forward slash AI, it's a checklist on how to optimize for. ai we call it generative um engine optimization so deckbuildermarketers. com forward slash ai um it's free um go and get your copy and i have so many other resources on there too if you go to the resources section there's also the 99 chat gpt prompts and Just a bunch of other info. Like I mentioned earlier, I wrote the book, the Deck Builder Marketing Playbook. This book, actually, it's not just for deck builders. It's any local-based business. The strategies in here will work for anybody. We are giving the book away for free. So if you go to our website, deckbuildermarketers. com forward slash book, you could get your copy for free. And if you have any issues with that, reach out on social and we'll make sure that we get it to you.

Well, I did mention that you should read They Ask You Answer. I'm reading an AI book on leadership. I can't remember what it's called right now, but I will give you the link to it. There's just so many books, so that's what I'm reading right now. I think it's called AI leadership.

It's a checklist, just some things to make sure that you do.

course. It was a great time. Thank you.