Adapting Agencies for the AI Era  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Adapting Agencies for the AI Era - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/29856055-d139-47f1-a4dd-5d0b6674cc10 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **AI Raises Agency Performance Expectations** - AI is rapidly changing agency expectations by speeding results and raising the performance bar. - Clients now ask why tasks take days when AI can do similar things in minutes. Transcript: John Jantsch And I know it's evolving rapidly, but I'm curious what you're hearing because you pretty much talk to agencies all day long. Brent Weaver Yeah. I mean, the obvious elephant in the room is artificial intelligence and what that's doing, both in terms of how agencies are run and also how they're deploying services and also what The clients are doing with AI as well. So it's not just like the agency using it, but the clients are using it. So I think some expectations are changing and also speed to results is changing because a client might say, well, hey, if I can just have AI do this in three minutes, right? Like, why is it going to take you three or four days? And just kind of working on how to up level your level, you know, what you're doing for your clients in terms of results. I mean, that bar has certainly been raising very quickly in terms of what expectations are. And so I think a lot of agencies are feeling a little bit of squeeze, but at the same time, they're feeling a lot of excitement. ([Time 0:01:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b1f60282-b172-48ae-8c8c-402118d1ba14)) - **Make AI A Core Company Practice** - Make AI a company priority through structured learning and regular practice sessions. - Offer fractional AI services to help agencies implement AI solutions effectively. Transcript: Brent Weaver We've really like planted a flag that we want to be an AI first agency. And so we are doing lots of internal kind of retooling education. We have a thing called AI for Saturday where our whole company comes in every first Saturday of the month. And some of that time has been dedicated to education, working on projects kind of, you know, within the teams doing demo days, hackathons. And so we're definitely taking AI very seriously. Our team's taking AI very seriously. We're also doing fractional AI services for agencies. So actually going in and helping the agency implement AI solutions. ([Time 0:03:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/70eb8240-bf2e-49ff-a89e-466cf4d9bb1a)) - **Prototype Limits Produce High Failure Rates** - Many AI projects fail because prototypes hit limits of no-code tools or lack business fit. - Successful automations that reach full capability can deliver transformative ROI. Transcript: Brent Weaver Perhaps, you know, I think, John, that the more I've gotten into AI personally and the more like projects and use cases that I've seen, it's like the more you know, the more you realize You don't know. And I certainly think that's true with AI. And we're seeing a lot of people do some, what I would almost consider to be magical things with AI. But then there's also this like, maybe they do something where they don't really have the foundational skillset. They're using a tool like Lovable and they're doing Vibe Coding and they build an application that gets to a certain point. And then the client says, well, hey, we actually need this for a business requirement thing to do this other thing. And then all of a sudden that other thing maybe isn't possible within the vibe coding, you know, interface. And all of a sudden you have this thing that an agency has spent weeks on in terms of vibe coding application build. And then the thing that they needed to do from a business case is not possible within the AI. And so then we're hitting this wall and we have to go, oh my gosh, we're going to have to completely, we have to build this in the ground up without vibe coding in order to make the business Case work. And there was a study that said that something like 40 to 60% of enterprise AI projects, and I should probably have a source on this, I'm going to quote it, but 40 to 60% of AI projects at The enterprise level are being abandoned or never seeing the light of day. And if we all know, like from reading Wall Street, like how much money is being invested in AI, that means like over half of the investment that major corporations are making is basically Being thrown in the trash. And I'm seeing that same level of kind of experimentation happen at the agency level and also at the small business owner level. And so I think there's still, gosh, there's just so much learning that has to be done. And the upside though, is you find an AI automation or agentic workflow that works, that gets to 100%. It can have game changing impact on the business, right? ([Time 0:05:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fbb3a944-2078-4fd3-86e9-02d1e5bf1557)) - **Prioritize Unique Content And AEO** - Stop publishing content that AI easily replicates and focus on unique expertise or proprietary value. - Optimize websites for LLM discovery (AEO) while maintaining investment in Google and local SEO. Transcript: Brent Weaver Model when you think about SEO practices? If there's a piece of content that you could easily just ask, chat, and you would get a great answer for that content. If that's what you're going to be putting on your client's website to help them grow their rank or grow their traffic from the LLMs and things like that. I mean, that's certainly probably not going to be a great strategy. And I think most people got that memo when they saw how much traffic decreased for those kind of common things, right? Like, how do I make great guacamole, right? Is just going to be the user experience to ask that question on chat is going to be far better than on a Google browser. Somebody has some type of proprietary ingredient approach where they can actually build some intellectual property around it and kind of protect that unique recipe, right? In that case, or they have a really great personality around teaching people how to make guacamole or whatever. And they're a great YouTuber. And there's, you know, there's some type of thing that's unique that AI cannot replicate that they can bring to the marketplace. So I do think marketers have to be a little bit more, you know, a little bit more creative. There's kind of a reinvention that's going on. That being said, there's also a ton of people that are now using LLMs to search for business recommendations, to search for services. And certainly there's a whole cottage industry. I mean, the amount of SEO business that we've had has categorically gone up year over year. Right. And that's kind of in the post-AI world. And a big thing on the E2M team is how are we optimizing our clients' websites and search strategy for the LLMs? Right. Kind of the AEO strategies while we're also using, you know, continuing to invest in Google. And I think Google, for instance, I mean, I don't know if search traffic, you know, the Google usage has necessarily gone down. I mean, I think they're still driving a lot of traffic to businesses. Google local, massive, massively important for businesses to be active, right? Especially if they're a service business or they're working locally or regionally, right? And that's something that I think the LLMs aren't doing nearly as well as Google. And so there's certainly still lots of blue oceans, I think, on the SEO side. ([Time 0:09:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb4114b6-bfe2-4303-831c-28a6ca3ce271)) - **Niche Expertise Becomes Competitive Advantage** - AI is increasing competitive noise by democratizing advanced marketing tools. - Agencies need deeper niche expertise and market knowledge to stand out. Transcript: John Jantsch Know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems. Today, I get to share something really special. My daughter, Sarah Nay, who also happens to be the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, just released her first book. It's called Unchained, Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models and How Small Business Can Finally Take Control of Their Marketing, Lead with Strategy, and Scale with AI. I know, a mouthful, right? But it's everything we've learned taken to the next level. In fact, we're even calling it Duct Tape Marketing 3.0. As a dad, I couldn't be prouder, but I want you to check it out at dtm.world slash unchained and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level. Yeah. And I think you're a hundred percent right. I mean, I'm speaking at a conference next month of all remodeling contractors and they're all talking about like, what do we need to be doing to change? And I was like, hey, you know, show up in that map pack, do a better job of your reviews, you know, that, you know, answer, you know, have a lot of FAQs, you know, that answer questions that People would have about remodeling because that the trust, I think, with the map pack, whether it's deserved or not, you know, that the consumer has is going to, I think, give that a life For a long time. And I don't think you're going to see the AI overviews for somebody that's, I mean, you can go there and say, you know, in AI mode, you can say, what's the best remodeling contractor in This town? And it will give you an opinion. But I think people still value the map pack and the proximity and, you know, all the things that come with it. Brent Weaver You know, one thing, I think there's this like undertone of like, is AI going to make agencies like obsolete or something? Yeah. And it's weird because like, I've asked this to a lot of agency groups. I've been like, okay, in the post AI world, like who here is working less? Right. And I asked people to like raise their hands and like, nobody raised their hand. John Jantsch I'm like, okay. They're working more in fact. Right. They're ([Time 0:11:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b8070752-f816-4e61-937c-f415f87a3dcd)) - **Move Teams From Doers To Strategists** - Shift agency roles from doers to strategic leaders who design and optimize AI-driven workflows. - Train staff to manage and integrate AI tools rather than only execute tasks. Transcript: John Jantsch I think a lot of people are wringing their hands around. I mean, every time you see these headlines that Microsoft says they're 40% of all jobs will go away by the next three years. I think you have a lot of people kind of wringing their hands around about like, I'm just going to destroy the world. If people, 40% of people are out of jobs, I'll tell you what we see is I see a lot of people that are working more, as you said, and a lot of it's because the consumer or the business owner behavior Has changed a little bit in that they expect more. So that's part of it. But what I, you know, our mantra has always been strategy before tactics. We actually feel that if you develop a great marketing strategy, you marketing becomes less complicated, but far more effective. You know, what I see is a whole lot of agencies that have always been delivering tactics are now just using AI to deliver a new set of tactics and not still not thinking strategically. I think what businesses are going to need in the future is marketing leadership and not marketing doers. Yeah. Yeah. ([Time 0:14:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53381baa-1aba-475e-9780-50e00a045b14)) - **Agent Buys Event Ticket End-to-End** - An attendee used a ChatGPT agent to research and buy an event ticket entirely hands-free. - This shows how agent-access to personal data can make transactions near frictionless. Transcript: Brent Weaver It's all about AI for agency owners. And I promise this is not just a direct plug for our event, but obviously it's my duty to promote our event right now. But one of our attendees, and he's kind of an AI first person, he registered for our event, right? Went in and purchased a ticket, all using his ChatGPT agent. So he literally just, you know, driving in the car, said, hey, go buy a ticket to Vistara. And his agent, you know, went and it takes screenshots and says, hey, this is what I'm doing along the way. He just kind of had to say, yep. And the agent already has all of his information. And it has all of the information that it needs in order to make that fill out the web forms, actually purchase a product. And it's almost like every business from that perspective, every business's website just became kind of the Amazon one-click shopping experience. If we fast forward two, three years, if we all have these agents that have, you know, secure access to our banking details and to our PII, and they know kind of our preferences, I mean, What could you do if you can line up an experience that you know is going to meet the needs of a specific target audience? You know, you have very few barriers standing between you and them making a transaction, becoming a customer. ([Time 0:15:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a0a6ab0d-d837-4471-a895-36d24b0f8d7b)) - **Schedule Regular AI Learning Time** - Dedicate focused time outside client work for AI learning and experimentation to retool teams. - Lead by example: involve leadership in training and hands-on AI sessions. Transcript: Brent Weaver Like again, we're doing these AI first Saturdays as a team. And at first people are like, I got to come in on Saturday. And we're like, hey, look, this is the reality. Like we're all working an extra day right now to make sure that we can properly retool and learn enough about this tech. Because during the week, we're all very focused on client work. We're focusing on doing the day-to business. And so we've made that as a priority all the way up to our leadership team. ([Time 0:20:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75aff32b-395c-4e16-983b-810c60353b1e))