Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
313: Stop Using AI Wrong: Strategy First, Then Technology
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, to dive deep into the connection between business strategy, marketing execution, and the evolving role of AI.
Sara shares her journey from intern to CEO over her 15 years at Duct Tape Marketing and offers powerful insights on why strategy must always come before tactics and technology. Together, we explore how small businesses can future-proof their marketing and teams in an ever-changing digital world.
The Foundation of Effective Marketing
- Why business strategy must drive marketing strategy
- The “Marketing Strategy Pyramid”: business, marketing, and team strategy layers
- How to align marketing goals with revenue, mission, and values
The Role of AI in Modern Marketing
- Why AI is a tool, not a replacement—and how to introduce it without fear
- Common mistakes businesses make when adopting AI without strategy
- Exercises to help teams identify tasks AI can support vs. areas to develop human strengths
Shaping the Future of Marketing Leadership
- The growing divide in the marketing industry: AI adopters vs. AI skeptics
- Why agencies and consultants must shift from execution to leadership and strategy
- How AI allows more focus on creativity, empathy, and critical thinking
Mapping the Customer Journey
- Introducing the Marketing Hourglass: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, refer
- How businesses can identify gaps and opportunities along the customer journey
- Why great client experiences naturally lead to stronger referral business
Lessons Learned in Marketing
- Why “more” is not always better when it comes to channels and tactics
- The importance of focusing on what works and making it sustainable
- How simplifying your approach reduces burnout and creates consistent results
Key Takeaways for Marketers
- Start with strategy before adding tactics or tools.
- Use AI to support—not replace—human creativity and leadership.
- Focus on where your audience is and what’s sustainable for you.
- Great client experiences lead to natural referrals and long-term growth.
Connect with Sara Nay:
Links to Book: Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models: How Small Businesses Can Finally Take Control of Their Marketing, Lead with Strategy, and Scale with AI: https://unchainedmodel.com/
Amazon: https://a.co/d/6aLtopF
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saranay/
Whether you’re a small business owner overwhelmed by technology or a marketing consultant navigating the rise of AI, this episode will help you rethink your approach and focus on what truly matters.
👉 Ready to align your marketing with your business goals? Tune in and learn how to lead with strategy for long-term success.
Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?
Check and see how I am using it for FREE on YouTube.
From "Holy cow, it can do that?" to "Wait, how does this work again?" – I've got all your AI curiosities covered. It's the perfect after-podcast snack for your tech-hungry brain.
Watch here
Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Corbin, and today I am really excited to be talking about strategy and tactics and technology with Sarah Ney. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you taking the time out to spend some time with me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me and I really appreciate the name of your show. I've been in marketing for about 15 years now and what marketing is ever perfect Like? There's a lot of figuring out and tweaking and learning and evolving and testing. That goes into it.
Speaker 1:So I love the name of the show, thank you so much, so talk to me about a little bit, about what you do in marketing now. And how did you get there?
Speaker 2:So I work for a company called Duct Tape Marketing. I'm the CEO. I've been with the company since December 2010. I started as an intern. I've had pretty much every role within the company I'm from account manager to fractional CMO, to COO, to sales, and now I'm the CEO seat. And so I've really grown and evolved with the company over the last 15 years.
Speaker 2:As a business, we really have two sides of Duct Tape Marketing. So we work directly with small business clients where we come in, we create a marketing strategy based on the business strategy and then we stay in the fractional CMO seat where we essentially oversee all of their marketing from a very strategic perspective. So that's one side of our business. We've been doing that the whole length of Duectate Marketing, so about 30 years. And then the other side of our business. We've been doing for about 15 years and we actually certify marketing coaches, consultants, agencies, fractional CMOs in our approach so they can come in and lead their client engagement strategy and then serve as a fractional CMO. And you guys have a podcast too, right, we do. Our founder, john Jantz, jokes that he's been running it since before. Podcasting was cool, so I think it launched back in 2005. So it's been around for quite some time and I am a follower.
Speaker 1:I'm a subscriber, I get the downloads, I listen to it regularly, so I love it. So I was really excited to have you on the show, partially because of that. I saw that and I was like I'm a fan, okay, yay, which is always good. So awesome, thank you. And that's so great to hear a story about how you moved up through the years in the company, trying all the different hats, because I think the more that you do, the more you learn and then the more you can apply. But the other piece that I really liked that you said is that you build a marketing plan, a marketing strategy based on the business strategy. I have to like highlight that for anybody listening, because I'll ask people so what are your, what are your goals? And they're like my marketing goals and I'm like, no, your business goals, cause you shouldn't have separate ones. Like there should be one thing that you're working towards yeah, you can have some KPIs that fall under marketing, but if it's not building the business goals, like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:And we have something we call our marketing strategy pyramid. But the bottom layer is business strategy Because, as you said, we need to know where the business is currently, what their revenue is, what their profit is, what are their one year, three year goals, what's their mission, vision, value, what do they want to be known for like. We need to know all of that stuff because once we know that stuff, we get to the middle layer of the marketing strategy period mid, which is the marketing strategy. Because now we know your revenue is here and you're trying to go here like and then we can create the marketing strategy to help them actually go on that journey.
Speaker 2:So that's where a lot of marketing agencies, consultants, fract, fractional CMOs miss and companies as they just keep marketing as this separate thing. But it's like those are. They should be so tied together. The business strategy informs the marketing strategy and then the top of our marketing strategy pyramid is the team strategy. So once you understand what the business is trying to accomplish with the marketing strategy and plan is, then you can analyze your marketing team to then identify, you know, do we have the right people in the right roles, based on what we're actually trying to accomplish, versus just like having seats filled in an org chart.
Speaker 1:Yes, it sounds so elementary and so simple, but it gets lost in translation and I think people sometimes get distracted with the shiny objects and don't tie it back to what they're trying to achieve, and that's just so hard. So I totally get that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's getting worse.
Speaker 2:You know, and I don't know what we're going to talk about strategy before technology but it's getting worse right now than it ever has before, in my viewpoint and because I see and there's a lot of stats about this as well it's not just my perspective, but a lot of small businesses are bringing in AI because it's here and they know they should be, but they're bringing in, like, let's say, a chat GPT because that's one of the most common tools, and now everyone on their team is using chat GPT differently to do different things, without proper training or guidelines or processes or systems around it, and so the output is all over the place and a lot of times, those teams are creating inconsistent copy that's not on brand, because the proper strategy then going on the front end, and so it's getting even worse.
Speaker 2:Right now, people are bringing in tools to solve their problems. Maybe it's a capacity issue, but they're not really taking a step back and answering the question of, like, what are we actually trying to accomplish? Because you need to understand that first to then say, okay, if we're going to grow our authority in the space by producing more content, and we're going to do that by producing video and then we're going to repurpose that content into different forms of written content. Okay, now you have something that you're trying to accomplish and then you can say okay, now let's think about what humans do we need, if we're talking team strategy and the top of the pyramid, but also what AI systems and tools can we layer below them to accomplish this specific goal, versus just saying we're going to bring in chat, gpt and just create more content all the time. That's where it gets really messy.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. I find people are just like. They're like, hey, look at this new tool and we're going to start using it. I mean, you started with, hey, they're bringing it in to solve problems. I see some clients and people bringing in AI just to bring in AI, and I'm like why Do you have a problem that you'd like to solve? Then let's see if AI can fix that.
Speaker 1:But I mean just jumping in, going well, we don't even know what it can do, and I'm like we can find that out later. Let's figure out what the problem is and then the best way to solve it, which may or may not be AI, right, and I feel like we sometimes are putting the technology out there because we feel like we have to. And don't get me wrong, I am a huge, huge, huge fan of AI, Huge fan of AI Love. It Saves me 30 to 40 hours a week and keeps me on brand and on point for myself and for all my clients, which I do love. But yeah, I mean, why are we using it? Why are you bringing it in rather than okay, is there a way to make this process more efficient so that we can achieve these goals that we're setting out?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, exactly, and I think there's two ways to think about the why are we bringing it in? And so a lot of what I've talked about so far is like the why behind what you're trying to accomplish. But I've also worked with a lot of businesses where and my team is the same way where, like you start bringing in these AI systems and people on the team are like, wait, am I going to be replaced? Like what's happening here, like I don't know about AI, I'm not that comfortable in it yet, and so you also have to address getting. Once you do start bringing in AI, you have to help all of your team understand the why behind it as well, and if you can tell the story of we're not bringing this in to replace you, we're bringing this in to elevate you, I think that's a really necessary message. So it's the why are we bringing it in as a company? And then getting everyone on the team behind the why as well.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite exercises for that is, you know, having everyone on your team analyze all of the skills or tasks that they're doing on a regular basis and then answer the questions of is this increasing in value, staying stable, or decreasing in value because of AI and if it's staying stable or decreasing, then look at what are the AI systems or tools you can build below them to help with some of that stuff so they can focus on the things that are increasing in value.
Speaker 2:And when you can walk your team through an exercise like that, then you're helping them really future-proof their career moving forward. You're helping them identify where they need to focus, where they need to grow, and then, if you're a good leader, you're providing them with resources and training and education and mentorship to help evolve in those areas. Because I think there's just so much unknown with AI. Right when it is today, it might be completely different and will be completely different in six months or a year from now. So we're all kind of playing the guessing game. But as a business leader, you have to really think about that and the why behind it for yourself and for your team, to help everyone feel more confident and stable, moving forward saying you know people are unsure, right, and I actually didn't believe that that was still happening.
Speaker 1:I thought people had, like, gotten a little bit past. The AI is taking my job, so I don't want to learn it thing, but it's not. I mean, I've had three or four people in the last couple of months at AI trainings or AI presentations that I've done, walk up to me afterward and said thank you so much, I'm going to go try it. I've been putting it off because I was scared it was going to take my job.
Speaker 2:It's common and you can see the people that are really outspoken against AI. I can a lot of cases see that they feel threatened by it, and that's a big piece. Like I talk to so many marketing consultants, agencies, fractional CMOs through our program, through sales calls, through masterminds I'm part of, like I just have a lot of exposure to people in that space and there's a divide I actually posted about this on LinkedIn Like there's the divide going on right now in the marketing space. Either people are all in on AI this is the future, I'm going to lead the change or they're threatened by it and they're not touching it and they're outspoken about the dangers and risks and evil of AI. And so I talk a lot to the marketing agencies, consultants, fractional CMOs in the space, and I'm like, if we don't evolve, we will be replaced Like it is. It's a fact. It's coming Like I am very confident on that.
Speaker 2:I am very confident on that, and so I talk a lot about, though our opportunity is to shift and evolve, to offer things that AI can't and then bring in AI for the things that they are good at.
Speaker 2:So the same kind of thing with going through the exercise like, as a marketing agency, you could keep offering execution for things like SEO, social aid, but tools are being developed very quickly that are going to be capable of handling those things with, you know, a human hopefully overseeing them still, but that gives the opportunity for small businesses to be able to bring execution in-house. But what they'll lack in a lot of cases is that leadership to actually guide the marketing initiatives overall and to up-level humans that are using the AI systems. And so if you're a marketing agency still offering execution, or marketing consultant or fractional CMO, the time is now to shift into leading strategy, leading teams, up-leveling humans and then training people on how to use AI effectively, moving forward, and I think that's the way you're going to continue to compete versus execution, because it's going to be a race to the bottom.
Speaker 1:Well, I talk all the time when I do presentations on AI. I sat into a presentation where the guy had talked about he'd been very big at a lot of tech companies and he talked about how AI is flipping the work pyramid. Right. We got 60% of our day right now is spent on work about work. 10% of our day is spent on doing things that AI can't do, which is, coming up with new ideas, innovating, you know, really thinking of new things, and he's like that pyramid is going to flip flop, right, we're going to be spending 10% of our day on work about work and 60% of our day on that critical thinking and that ideation and those ideas.
Speaker 1:And that next step, which is just so, so important and I think it just gets overlooked so often. You know that we spend so much time on things that aren't adding value in the process right, handling emails and meetings, things like that that we don't always need to be a part of, and you know but I do think you know, again, supervising that process, somebody, a human overlooking that process, right, overseeing it, making sure it's staying on task. Someone was just asking me, like I keep telling ChatGPD to not do this and it keeps doing it? How do I get around it? You know, it's just so, so important to have humans in the process. I even have a writing coach. I talk about her all the time because, yes, ai can do a lot of really great stuff on that first draft, but having a human that really understands the audience and the target and things like that can edit it to take it to a next level where it actually works and converts. And so I love how you're talking about having people in the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just to touch into that a little bit more, you know, just to give an example of what you're talking about, where some of our work is shifting from the work work to being more strategic and creative and big picture thinking. So we've delivered something called Strategy First for clients for as long as I can remember, and it's always been a 30 to 45 day engagement where we're creating marketing strategy for our clients. So we're doing a bunch of research and then we're creating a plan, and before AI, my team would do everything. We would do everything ourselves, and so we're creating a plan. And before AI, my team would do everything. We would do everything ourselves, and so we would create the slide deck. We would do all of the competitive research, we'd interview clients, we'd review all the reviews online and look for things manually, and so we would do all of the work work behind creating the marketing strategy, and it worked for us for a long time.
Speaker 2:But now, with the evolution of AI, we can bring in tools to help with the time consuming stuff, and so we're still spending like the same amount of time in a lot of cases on the strategy for the clients, but we're spending so much more of our time on high level critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, like the things being empathetic, like the things that humans need to do, where we're able to then bring in AI to, let's say, pull a competitive research report, a deep research report, and we get this, you know, 15, 16, 17 page report, you know, within a few minutes within ChatGPT, and so we're able to get the research done a lot faster, to get us a higher volume of information than then put the strategy together. So that's an example of how we've shifted from more of like the grunt work to more of the bigger picture, strategic thinking in our offer.
Speaker 1:Which I think is fantastic, because that's exactly how AI should be used, right? Because, again, you're still driving that strategy, and so we're talking about strategy before tactics and technology. If someone's listening or watching and is thinking about, well, I just need to start using AI, what would you say to them? Stop, no.
Speaker 2:Stop thinking that way. No, I mean honestly I would say I agree, I do think you need to start using AI, but, like anything like, if you don't take the step back and create the actual strategy, you're going to waste a lot of time, energy, money, push people towards burnout, miss opportunities. So there's a lot of negatives in going into that. So traditionally, we've always said strategy before tactics, because in marketing we've always seen small businesses, businesses in general, not just small, but they dive into tactics. So it's like I just need this Facebook, this meta campaign going ultimately, and so they'll launch this campaign and the messaging is all over the place. They don't have target market really identified. They're spending a lot of money. People go to like their website with no like proper landing page or email series or like, so it's just like they spend all this money on advertising where, if they just took a step back and said who are our ideal clients? What message resonates with them, what customer journey are we guiding them on, and then what content do we need to produce based on that, their campaign is going to be so much more successful in the long run. And so the same thing is happening now with technology is people are just bringing in these tools and then it's just they're just spending time and energy in a lot of cases. Not as much money sometimes, but like a lot of. It's just like time and energy.
Speaker 2:And it's like again, if you would just take a step back and say what are our objectives, what are we trying to accomplish, what are our biggest priorities? How does AI tie into that? And then when you decide you're going to bring in, let's say, a chat GPT, then you need to train chat GPT on your business strategy. So then you need to give it all the information you have. So here's our ideal clients and here's our messaging and here's everything we offer. And this is our why and this is our founder's story.
Speaker 2:And the blah, blah, blah, like the more information you can give a tool like that, then you're ready to start thinking about okay, how are we going to actually use this to create output? But then you also need to put processes and systems behind it. So bringing in AI, isn't this like simple thing that you can I mean, you can start dabbling it, but I really encourage you. It's like create the strategy, identify the tools based on that. Train the tools on your strategy. Identify the tools based on that. Train the tools on your strategy. Put systems and processes in place. Train your team, and that's where you'll be successful with AI.
Speaker 1:So a long, long time ago I was interviewing for a job and it was one of those group interviews where they had a bunch of different candidates in and then they gave us activities to do and stuff like that, I don't know. And I did get the job. And but a big part of why I got the job, I still think to this day, is they wanted a strategy, a marketing strategy, and every other group jumped right into tactics. These are marketing professionals with, you know, 10 plus years of experience, and they were jumping right into tactics. I'm like, no, what's the strategy? Right? The strategy is above that. It is not Facebook ads, it is not, you know, posting on social. I mean, at the time it was way before TikTok. You know it's not going viral. It's what is the strategy that we're looking to, you know, to put behind it, and then you match up the tactics to it. And that's so important because it changes what you think might work. You can do a 180 if the strategy is different. Think might work. You can do a 180 if the strategy is different.
Speaker 1:When I started as the marketing director at Kauffman Group, I called all of the managing directors of all the offices around the country. And I was like, hey, so how can marketing help you? And I'll never forget this. Actually it was more than one. But one of them said to me well, kendra, here's the thing, I have all the customers I need. I just want more business from them.
Speaker 1:I was like you don't want any other customers. And they're business to business, insurance wholesale. And they're like no, I have all the customers that I want in the area. Anyone's I don't work with. I've been in this area for like 60 years or something. Anybody I don't work with I don't want to work with. And I was like, okay, and the number one budget item in marketing was trade publications. I'm like why are we advertising in the trade magazines if we want more business from existing customers? So you know we changed to direct mail business from existing customers. So you know we changed to direct mail. It's taking that step back and really thinking about what are you trying to do and then what's the best way to do it? It's so important in that and you know, again, I went from ads and trade publications to direct mail. But that works for technology too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, what are you trying to do? Is the biggest first question you need to answer. But then, absolutely, what are you trying to do? Is the biggest first question you need to answer. But then, like, who do you serve and what message resonates with them and what journey are you trying to guide them on? Like, it's all of those pieces together that you have to get clear on, because that's another area that people miss is, like, okay, who do you serve or who are you targeting? Like, if you skip over that, you don't know what channels to focus on. You don't know if you want to focus on direct mail or Facebook or whatever it might be, because you have no idea who your ideal clients are. Where do they hang out online? How do they make buying decisions? And so it's the all of those pieces together. What are you trying to accomplish? Who do you target, what's the message, what's the journey? Like, you have to have all of that mapped out before you can even start to think about tactics or technology.
Speaker 1:So you're mentioning the customer journey a little bit there. Why don't you talk a little bit about that? So, for those listening and watching, what should they be thinking about when they hear the term journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have our own version of the customer journey. We call it the marketing hourglass and essentially that's mapping out how can people get to know like trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. And so you're really looking at the whole journey that they would have with you and, to your point, with your client that you were mentioning earlier, like they really wanted more repeat clients. It sounded like they wanted to sell more to those people and so when you map out the whole customer journey or the hourglass, it will help you understand where your gaps and where your biggest opportunities.
Speaker 2:Because when you can take care of someone throughout that whole entire journey, the last stage is refer. And the beauty in referral is if someone had an incredible experience, they're just going to like talk about your company in conversations as it comes up at networking events. When friends ask like they're just going to like talk about your company in conversations as it comes up at networking events. When friends ask like they're just going to naturally talk about the experience they had with your company and then they then refer someone and then that person moves through no, like trust, try by really quickly because there's already a level of trust built in and so it's really taking care of your clients throughout the entire experience with you, and that's really through marketing, sales and customer service clients are based a ton on referral business, right.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it ebbs and flows because they're not always top of mind, and you know that's a key part to that process is keeping yourself top of mind so that they're, when they do hear somebody that needs marketing support or HR consulting or something along those lines, that you're the one that they think of, automatically right, and that there's nobody else in that spot.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. It's the great experience throughout, and then it's staying top of mind, where a lot of people, when they're thinking about referrals, they're like, oh, if we just ask for them, it will happen. And it's like you have to ask for them at the right time, but you also have to provide them with wins and good experiences along the way, and so it's really the combination of those two together asking at the right time and providing a great experience and really staying top of mind that's going to lead to more referrals down the road.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's so great. Thank you so much. Okay, this has been a fantastic conversation, and I hope that everybody listening and watching is learning all about the fact that you start with strategy before you go and find the tools that are going to solve all of your problems. I think that's really important, because you don't know what the problems are if you don't have a strategy yet, and so save yourself a lot of time, energy and headaches along the way by starting a strategy, which I think is so important. Before I let you go, sarah, I do have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, and that is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2:We say this to our clients all the time and we actually went through this ourselves as well is what I see a lot in the small business space is people just think they need to be doing more like more marketing, more channels, more platforms, more ways to reach people, and so we always say, like, simpler is better in a lot of cases, like really understand, based on your metrics, what channels or efforts are working and go all in on those, versus feeling like you need to be on every social platform and on every paid account all of the things, because it's really hard to manage and all of a sudden, people get spread way too thin, doing things okay, but nothing well, and so we've also experienced that over the years, where we just try to do too much versus just narrowing in on things that work for us, like webinars or other things that we have in place, and so I think the lesson learned there is more is not always better A lot of times when it comes to marketing.
Speaker 2:It's how can you get great at understanding your numbers and go deeper on what's actually working for you, versus trying to do everything?
Speaker 1:I love that and I mean I'm guilty of it too In my business. I went out on all the things. Right Now, you can find me on LinkedIn and YouTube, and that's you can find everything. You can find me other places, but you're not getting interaction. I'm not really responding.
Speaker 1:All my all in is on LinkedIn and YouTube, because I got to the point where I got burnout and I went dark for three months and like that didn't help anybody, right? So I think that that's really a super strong lesson that all of us most of us have learned the hard way. But you don't have to have that guilt that goes with it, right? Don't feel like you have to do all of the things. I think when I realized that I didn't have to do all the things is I had a guest on the podcast and she was a marketing consultant and she only had LinkedIn Go to her website. She just had a link to LinkedIn. That's where her people were and so that's where she hung out. That was the only platform she had. Now, did she protect and grab her brand name on Facebook and Instagram? Maybe, right, maybe she was proactive on doing that the things, because, oh my gosh, I went to this meeting and so-and-so is having great response from their reels and it's like maybe their people are there right, maybe yours aren't.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it comes down to where are your people, but also, you know, maintaining something that you can sustain for the long term. Because you mentioned burnout there, like, I've been close to burnout over the years a few times. I think most people probably have in their career, and a lot of it is trying from doing too many things at once and trying to, you know, sustain that. And so I think there's two reasons behind it Like, really get good at hanging out with your where your people are online, as you said, but also do what feels right for you as well, because it's important for you to be able to enjoy work and to sustain it and to be here for a long time, because I see a lot of people, marketers especially get burnt out over the years, because there's so many components when it comes to marketing. There's all the different channels and then all the evolution of AI. It's just this overwhelming space, and so don't feel like you have to master all of it. Get good at where your strengths lie.
Speaker 1:I love that, such a strong and powerful message. So get rid of your guilt and focus. Focus and be consistent, right and sustainable. That's so, so important. Thank you again, sarah. So much for your time. I really appreciate it For those of you listening and watching. If you learned something today and I'm pretty sure you did I would love it if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.
