AI Marketing Strategy: Why 88% of Marketers Are Doing It Backwards (with Sara Nay)

If tax season taught you anything, it's that doing more isn't the same as doing it right. The same is true for marketing in the age of AI.

On this episode of The KeyHire Small Business Podcast, Corey Harlock sits down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models, to talk about why so many business owners are jumping straight to AI tools without a strategy to guide them.

The numbers set the stage: 88% of marketers now use AI in their day-to-day roles, but most are leading with tools instead of a plan. Sara explains why that approach is exactly backwards. AI can be incredible for repurposing, drafting, and finalizing content, but only after you've done the harder work first: defining where your business is trying to go, understanding your ideal clients, and building the messaging that sets you apart. Skip that, and you end up with generic, over-polished “slop” that anyone could produce and that no one actually connects with.

One of the most valuable threads in this conversation is authenticity. Sara shares how her most polished, perfectly structured LinkedIn posts consistently underperform, while her off-the-cuff rants take off. The lesson for small business owners is clear: in a noisy, AI-saturated market, being human, messy, and real is a competitive advantage. She also breaks down how to train AI properly using ideal client interviews, leadership input, and competitive research, so the content it creates genuinely sounds like you.

The discussion moves naturally into hiring, where Corey and Sara find striking common ground. Sara explains why bringing in a single junior marketer and expecting them to be strategic, run every channel, and understand metrics is one of the most common and costly mistakes she sees. Corey connects it to a familiar hiring trap: hiring for today's revenue instead of tomorrow's, and hiring on potential without the systems to support it. As Sara puts it, “Don't throw good people at bad systems.” They also unpack why defining the role clearly and setting honest expectations matters just as much in marketing as it does in hiring.

For business owners feeling overwhelmed, Sara offers a practical roadmap. She walks through the Duct Tape Marketing strategy process: auditing what's actually working, mapping the customer journey, building pillar and hub pages that rank in both Google and AI platforms, and running 90-day marketing sprints with real tracking in place. One client saved $40,000 in wasted spend in just three months simply by learning what was working and what wasn't. Her top advice: set up metrics you understand, know your ideal clients on a deep level, and don't overlook the back half of the funnel, including retention, repeat business, and referrals.

This episode is especially valuable for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and fractional CMOs who want to use AI without losing their voice, stop wasting money on scattered marketing, and make smarter hiring decisions. If you're ready to put strategy before tactics and stop grinding to start growing, this conversation is a must-listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Strategy comes before tools: 88% of marketers use AI, but leading with tools instead of a plan produces generic content anyone could make; define where the business is going, understand your ideal clients, and build differentiated messaging first.

Authenticity outperforms polish: Sara's most perfectly structured LinkedIn posts consistently underperform, while her off-the-cuff rants take off, because in an AI-saturated market people connect with content that feels human and real.

Train AI on you before you let it write: feed it ideal client interviews, leadership input, and competitive research, then hand it your own recorded thinking so the output actually sounds like you instead of generic slop.

One junior marketer can't be the whole department: expecting a single early-career hire to set strategy, run every channel, and own the metrics is one of the most common and costly mistakes; a fractional lead plus specialists in each lane works far better.

Don't throw good people at bad systems: undefined roles and hiring for today's revenue instead of tomorrow's set marketers up to fail, so define the role clearly and set honest expectations before anyone starts.

Know what's actually working: one client saved $40,000 in wasted spend in three months just by tracking channels properly; set up metrics you understand, know your ideal clients deeply, and don't neglect retention, repeat business, and referrals.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Connect with Sara Nay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saranay/

Get Sara's book, Unchained: https://unchainedmodel.com

Learn more about Duct Tape Marketing: https://ducttapemarketing.com

Connect with Corey Harlock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyharlock/

Learn more about KeyHire Solutions: https://www.keyhire.solutions

Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-keyhire-small-business-podcast/id1643962763

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FT9oqXSek3jMfiKrZPLQs

EPISODE CHAPTERS

0:00 - Introduction: 88% of marketers use AI, but most skip the strategy

1:02 - Housekeeping: a listener comment on AI polish and hiring

3:19 - Meet Sara Nay and Duct Tape Marketing

4:33 - Is AI replacing marketers? Why strategy still comes first

6:15 - Why polished posts flop and off-the-cuff rants take off

7:58 - Training AI properly so the content sounds like you

11:49 - What “strategy before tactics” actually looks like

14:49 - The real cost of doing marketing without knowing what works

17:56 - Zone of genius: starting small with fractional help

20:22 - The junior-marketer mistake: one hire can't do it all

23:52 - The two biggest hiring mistakes owners make

26:46 - Hiring for your stage: builders vs. process-followers

30:25 - Tactical mistakes: doing everything, tracking nothing

32:34 - Content that ranks: hub pages and pillar topics

35:15 - Top advice: metrics, ideal clients, and the back half of the funnel

37:31 - Where to find Sara, plus Corey's closing thoughts on hiring

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

88% of marketers now use AI in their day-to-day roles. But most are jumping straight to the tools without any strategy to guide them. Today's guest wrote a book on why that's exactly backwards.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Key Hire Small Business Podcast, hosted by Corey Harlock, creator of Key Hire Solutions, where small business owners learn how to build stronger teams, simplify growth, and scale confidently. Got feedback or topic ideas? Send us a text. If you're listening on a handheld device, tap the link in the show notes to message the show. Subscribe or follow on your favorite platform. And follow Key Hire Solutions on social media for more insights and updates between episodes. To learn more about how KeyHire can help scale your business, visit KeyHire.solutions. Connect with Corey on LinkedIn through the link in the show notes. Mention you're a listener, and he'll accept your request. And now, on with the show. Here's your host, Corey Harlock.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Before we jump in the show, always like to take care of a little housekeeping. Uh had and shout out people that leave comments. We love comments. So I did a show on what AI gets completely wrong way back on June 1st, and DPACK wrote a very lengthy uh comment, which we really appreciate. It goes something like this: When everyone uses AI to look polished, nobody actually gains an edge. The baseline just shifts. AI acts like a universal coat of paint. It easily hides disorganization behind clean templates and perfect phrasing. You can read the rest of the comments on the rest of that comment online, but it's it's spot on. Uh in that in that episode, and if you haven't listened, go back and listen to it, talked about how there's lots of tools out there that are going to help you generate candidates, whether you post a job, whether you use a bot. And people are going to start using AI. They're going to take your job description, it's already happening, and they're going to take their resume and they're going to say, make my resume keyword rich for this job. So when they put it into your ATS, they're all going to ping. Everyone's going to look amazing. And your AI, that's screening the AI written resume, is going to give you actually even more people to screen. And you're going to be even more disappointed because they have great looking resumes. And then when you talk to them, you're still going to find out they don't have the skills I need. This is a real thing. So be aware of it. And if you haven't go back and listen to the episode on what AI gets completely wrong about hiring. All right, let's get on to today's show. Very happy and fortunate to have Sarah Nay. She's the chief executive officer of Duct Tape Marketing. She's passionate about helping marketing professionals and small business owners scale strategically, sustainably, and without burnout. We like that. As a CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, she leads the mission to transform marketing by putting strategy before tactics, ensuring businesses achieve genuine growth rather than just temporary spikes. She also authored a book called Unchained Break Free From Broken Marketing Models. Matt, let's bring on Sarah. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Thanks for having me on the show, Corey.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

It is my pleasure. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 3:22

I am doing well. I can't help but notice our blue backgrounds were on themes for the podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

We're twinning. I have much more aggressive artwork in the back though than you.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

So yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

What do you do? Um give us the 30-second overview of Duct Tape Marketing.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Duct tape marketing, we've been in business for about 30 years now. Um we've always focused on strategy before tactics, as you highlighted in our intro. Um, but we essentially work directly with small business clients. Those have always been our people where we'll come in and we'll create a marketing strategy and then we'll oversee the execution from there. So that's one side of our business. And then we also certify and train marketing consultants, fractional CMOs, advisors in our approach as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Very cool. Well, you're right in our niche with the small business. Uh, we'll get into the book and we'll we'll give people a reason to hang on here. We'll we'll talk about the book a little later as we go. But today we're talking about exactly that, right? How to not put all the shiny penny fun tools first. You got to build out a strategy when it comes to marketing before you start utilizing all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah, exactly. It's been interesting, you know, because I know we're focusing on a lot talking about AI and tools and technology. It's been interesting being in the marketing space for the last few years because there's just been shifts of excitement. Like when AI was first coming along, everyone's like, everyone's gonna be out of a marketing job and we're gonna be able to do everything in-house with AI and blah, blah, blah. All that was kind of like happening early on. And I think there's people still maybe holding on to that hope. But I think at the same time, people are realizing how hard it is to actually make an impact with AI as it stands today. And so they're coming back to okay, maybe we actually do still need humans to move the needle for our business. And so we talk a lot about you know, AI is a tool in the toolball toolbox right now. It's not the solution, it's not replacing people at this point. Um, but in order to be effective at all, strategy has to come first. And I know we're gonna dive into that a lot more in this episode.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Let me ask you this. Yeah. I my fear is, and kind of what I'm starting to see, is AI is making it so easy to do everything. And in turn, and if we talk about business right now, like to apply for jobs, to advertise jobs, to crawl out and find candidates proactively, to put stuff online, to create content, it's getting really my fear is it's gonna get really noisy and it will start meaning less. It will start to have much less impact. So, what's that next wave? How do you transition to be the thing people see on there with all the noise happening around it?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, it's a good question, and it's everywhere online because as you said, just creating content is so much easier than it ever has been. But the problem is people are creating overly polished, as you were kind of getting at in your intro, overly polished, generic content that's not unique and authentic to them. And so I'll give you an example. I actually posted about this on my LinkedIn profile today. Um, I post a lot on LinkedIn, a few times a week, usually. Um, and I do use AI sometimes to help, you know, with like crafting my thoughts and getting a full final, like polished output there. And so it's all my original thinking, but I help AI to get across the finish line. Whenever I post something that is like almost like perfectly structured and really well written, it gets less traffic or less um interaction versus like if I literally just go on there and post a rant. Like last week I posted a rant about how people shouldn't bring in junior marketers and put them in their full marketing department to like run everything. And it was just like off the cuff after a conversation I had with a client, it was pretty sloppy. Um, but like it took off in terms of traction because the thing is, what people want to see online or in job postings or wherever it is, they want to see that you're authentic, they want to see that you're a human, they want to see that you're not overly polished, and they want to understand that they can connect with you. Um, and so the post that I wrote today on LinkedIn was more about, you know, we have a bit of a permission right now to be a bit messy, to be authentic, to stumble over our words on a podcast because people, you know, ultimately will say, you know, these are authentic people that I want to do business with versus this like perfect, overly polished thing that I can't even connect with.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, like perfectly manicured.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's really important to keep in mind is a lot of what where AI goes is you can just see it's like templates and formatting and sentence structure. You start to see themes over time. So if you can get away from that, I think that's really important. But where a lot of people also struggle with like content creation on AI is it needs to originally come from you as a human to then use AI to help maybe refinalize or repurpose stuff. And so that's the whole idea of strategy before technology or tools. It's you know, let's say you're gonna bring in a platform like Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini or whichever tool LLM you are leaning towards these days. You know, a lot of people will bring it into a business and they'll just start creating on it versus taking the time to train it properly. And I think more people are coming around to the idea of like, we actually have to train it properly in order to make content that sounds like us. And so when we're getting started with clients, is everything from like ideal client interviews to leadership interviews to competitive research to understanding the brand and the business on a deep level, you have to feed AI all of that information to get an understanding of your brand and your business and your tone of voice and your style. But then moving forward, I think some of the best content you can create with AI is if you come in and you again, you come in with a strategy and a plan. You're like, I want to be known for these specific topics. These are my pillar topics or my most important topics, and then record video of yourself naturally talking or audio of yourself naturally talking on that topic because you're the thought leader and that's what you want to be known for. And then AI is incredible at taking that content and turning it into a LinkedIn post or an email or whatever it might be that you're working on moving forward, but that content is still coming from you. And the AI platform is already trained on you and your business. And so when you can give it your original thinking based on the training you trained on and originally, it's gonna actually create content that stands out, that resonates, that speaks to your target audience versus someone else going in there and saying, write me a blog post on hiring tips for small businesses or whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, and then you get the generic slop, as they call it, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Yeah, that anyone could do. And so I think that's a that's a really important part when we talk about like strategy before technology. But I mean, I would take it even one step further from that is where a lot of people also struggle in the age of AI, is they'll just start bringing in these different tools and think it's gonna solve their problems, uh, where then it just creates more noise, it creates more frustration, it creates team members all doing their own thing with no consistency. And so when we say strategy before technology, it's first taking a step back and saying, what the heck is the business trying to accomplish? Like, where are we trying to go? Where's our revenue today? Where do we want to be in one year and three years? What do we want our profitability to look like? What do we want to be known for? Like answering those qu what do we want to stop doing? Like answering those questions is really important from a starting standpoint. And then you can say, okay, let's build a marketing strategy that will help get the business from where it is today to where it's trying to go. And then you can say, okay, what humans do we have in place that will help um do these priorities? And then you can say, okay, now we're finally going to talk about uh, well, we're first we're gonna talk about systems and processes. So what systems and processes need to be built in order to be consistent in our results moving forward? And then you can say, okay, what AI platforms should we bring in based on what we're actually trying to accomplish? Because AI platforms and workflows and automations are incredible when um they're done thoughtfully and following processes that um work and then are overseen by humans. And so that's where a lot of people are getting into trouble with AI. It's like, let's just bring in this tool and figure the rest out. It's you have to go through all of those other steps to say even what tools you should be bringing in and then how you should ultimately be using them.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Right. Well, you alluded to strategy. So let's go all the way, let's go all the way back to the beginning. Yeah. So if a small business owner, when they're looking at developing strategy, it it can be very simple. And we've talked about this before. What what social platform do you use? If you're gonna use one, there's so many now. How often should you post? But that's just an element of strategy. So at um duct tape, what do you guys consider the strategy?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah. And that's where a lot of people go when they think like marketing strategy, it's like we want to be on these channels and with these topics, and this is our list of priorities. That's like the second part of strategy in our minds. And so, first you need to take a step back and just get a feel for an audit of where you are today. There's so many small businesses out there that just don't understand what's working and what's not working from a marketing perspective. So they just keep doing all of the things. And so it's yeah, it's really important to take a step back and say, okay, what are we doing today? How are we tracking if they're successful or not? And what does our marketing and branding look like? And that's step one. Then from there, um, we typically do a bunch of research. So competitive research, um, ideal client interviews to then craft ideal client personas or profiles and then core messaging, because that's honestly step one and two of marketing. You can't think channels or anything else until you know who you're targeting with what message that resonates to them specifically, and a message that differentiates you so you're not competing on price. And so then once you map out those two pieces, we then typically look at the customer journey. And so we have our own version. It's how can people get to know, like, trust, try by repeat, and refer the business. And so what you want to do there is map out, you know, where are you strong? Where do you have gaps? Where could you be doing more? Because when you can move someone through that customer journey, they turn into referral sources for you, which is huge, and repeat and refer sources, which is huge because anyone they refer moving forward can move through your customer journey a lot faster because there's already trust built in. After you map out the customer journey, then you want to look at okay, where are gaps? Um, what should we be doing from a content perspective to help nurture people and guide them? And then we're gonna think about channels and tactics from there. Um, and then all of our strategy engagements end with a 90-day execution calendar where it's essentially mapping out priority projects and recurring tasks and then metrics that is important to track. And then basically what we advise on for all clients, whether they're with us or not, is to plan out 90-day sprints for your marketing, put proper tracking in place, pay attention to the metrics on a weekly, quarterly, or weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis, and then continue to adjust your marketing focus based on what the actual data is telling you.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

That feels like a lot.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yes, it is. And I will get that sometimes when talking to a small business owner, and I understand it's a lot. And my response is it's a lot just doing marketing and not knowing if it's working or not. Essentially, what you're doing there is you're wasting money, I can guarantee you're wasting time. Um, it's very frustrating. Probably as a small business owner, you are getting pulled into like the CMO type of role, and you probably didn't get into business to be a marketer. Um so, yes, it's a lot of work over a 30 to 45 day period, but it's gonna set you up for long-term success. And I would argue in most cases, um, help you stop wasting money on marketing.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Right. And you're gonna do most of the heavy lifting anyway.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yes. If if you were working with us as a client, if you're working with an agency, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

But yeah, it so you said a lot of things that that we say at Key Hire. It's time is the commodity for a business owner. It's the battle cry of every small business owner is I don't have the time and I don't have the money. Yep. And how do you couch that? But the other, the other thing I'm coming to realize is it's deprior deprioritization as well. So I think marketing, marketing and you know, hiring share some similarities. And you said what I always say is business owners didn't start their business because they love to market, unless it's a marketing agency. Yeah, but they have a passion and then they realize oh, we gotta get our message in there. Just like they go, uh, I gotta hire people like and manage them. Yeah. And it's not what they signed up to do, but they're they're thrust into these uh we'll call them disciplines, because both of them are disciplines that you need a degree of expertise to be effective at. You can get lucky, you can try something and it works, you can hire someone and they work, but they have any level of consistency. You you need experience, you need reps, you need someone to teach you how to do it. Just like someone you went to school if you're an engineer to learn how to make the product you're selling. Yeah, there's there's a discipline to it, and oftentimes it becomes priority B, C, D, E, whatever. Um, I don't have time for that. I have to take a have an opportunity to make a sale. I can't do that. We've something blew up in the operation. I can't do that. I have to go deal with a staffing issue, and all these things get deprioritized. And that's really a challenge and why you know someone like you or the people that are out there that kind of work, you know, we'll call it fractionally, um, are such a value to these individuals because they can just do the heavy lift, give them all that time back and say, look, it you're gonna not do any of hardly any of this, and it's gonna get done way better than it would have, and you'll get the ROI out of it.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah. Yeah, the ROI is a huge part because you're bringing in a marketing leader that knows the space and knows what works and knows what to focus on and has the experience. If you're bringing in a fractional, they should have experience in marketing, versus if you as the business owner are having to learn marketing and it's sucking a lot of your time and it's draining you, because again, that's not why you got into business. I think take a step back and say, is this the best use of my time? Is this the zone of genius that I should be focusing on? I think we all have to, yeah, we all have to learn that as we as we grow. I mean, especially if you're just getting started in your small business in the very beginning, maybe you're a solopreneur. We work with a lot of fractional CMOs and small agencies that join our certification program. In the beginning, a solopreneur has all of the hats. They're in finance, they're in hiring if they're trying to hire, they're in sales, they're in operations, like they're in marketing, they're the CEO, they're the visionary. So everything is on their plate. And so I think when you're thinking about who do we hire next or how do we scale up, it's really thinking through how can you make the most impact to the business, and then how can you replace yourself in the roles that drain you, that take a lot of your time that you don't have the experience or expertise in. And that's why I think, you know, for small businesses that are starting to grow up and scale, and and I don't know how you approach hiring specifically, but we talk a lot about with ours, it's you can start small, like you can start by bringing on a part-time contractor five to 10 hours a week, get some of the stuff off your plate, get comfortable, build some systems and processes with that person, and you can grow into full-time if that's somewhere that you want to go as a business. And there's so there's there's all different um opportunities out there, or maybe you end up just partnering with other companies that have full staff in place and you stay small yourself. So I think people think of hiring and scaling up as this huge commitment off the start. And so I always tell people to start a little bit smaller and get comfortable with it and learn and grow and evolve to more capacity over time.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

It's funny, our last episode we had a woman named Kelly Lorenzen on, and she talked about her coda method, which is keep it, outsource it, delegate it, and oh, what was the A? Yeah, Matt, maybe Matt can help me out here. Maybe he remembers, he'll send it in the accountability, but I don't know if that would make sense.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

It is okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

I don't know if it was accountability.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Automate, he said. What did he say? He said automate, it looks like.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Automate, there you go. I knew he'd helped me. Yeah, so it's funny though, that same thing. Um so it's a great transition into some of the mistakes. And you alluded to one I want to dive into a little bit about your rant about hiring a new grad as a uh marketing coordinator to build out your entire marketing program. Yeah. Um, part-time because they might have other duties too, I'm sure, because small business, we got to wear a lot of hats, right? Um that and I understand exactly where you're coming through coming from on that. So walk us through why you felt so strongly about that position.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I hear stories like this all the time. And so either small businesses want to completely outsource their marketing to an agency and then they don't have a great experience because they have no idea what that agency is actually doing, is a mistake that I see all the time when they just like dictate all of control and ownership over to the agency. But my rant was more about bringing in junior marketers because I come across this all the time. I actually I spoke to this came from one of the stories it came from was I spoke to a prospect over a year ago. We talked about bringing us in as a fractional CMO to create marketing strategy and then help them hire someone internally to be able to help run their marketing, and we would oversee them and we would train them up and we would teach them the systems and processes and get them all up to speed. And they push back and they're like, we actually want to bring someone in first, and then maybe we'll be ready for your services. And my argument was you don't know what you're bringing them in for. You don't have a role to find, you don't have anyone to manage them, you don't have KPIs for them, you don't Have like and so you know, I expressed my concerns and I said, But I respect your decision, and um, we're here for you if you need us. And then I spoke to them a couple days ago, and they're like, So that didn't work out. Um, can we continue our conversation? And I was like, Yes, we're still here because you know, I I knew that was gonna happen. Um, unfortunately, I didn't want it to, I wanted it to work out for them. But I hear those types of stories all the time where people bring in one marketer that's junior because they're trying to save some money, and then they expect that one marketer to be strategic and to create a plan and to be an expert at all the channels, so paid and content and SEO, because maybe they're good at social media so they can learn these other things.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

They're young.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

They're young, they're on they're on TikTok.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

They must be on the donor.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

And then they also have to be like financial based because they have to understand metrics and ROI and all of that stuff as well. So it's just it's way too much to ask one person to do all of those things. And that is one of the most common challenges that I see all the time in small businesses. Like they are bringing in one person and asking them to do all those things. And so I encourage you, obviously, you have to have the budget in place from a marketing perspective, but I encourage you, if you're listening to this, think about the fractional route as an option. Think about part-time as an option because you can bring in a fractional CMO or a fractional advisor or a fractional consultant, whatever you want to call them, that can be charged with creating the plan and the strategy. And then that person can help you bring in contractors or part-timers that specialize in certain lanes. And so people that specialize in paid, and that's all they do. So they're going to be really good at it. Think about it, like they're deep on the skill versus like wide at doing all the things. And so that's the way to think about a marketing department. I think right now in the age of AI is bringing in people that are skilled in certain areas and then again, layering in those AI solutions below them to help them make more of an impact.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah, you touched on a few things. It's it's like uh we've we've worked in the same office for a long time because you keep hinting on touching on you, so the role role wasn't well defined. That's the number one mistake business owners make when they hire. They don't clearly define the role, and they high, and the second biggest mistake they make is they hire for today's revenues versus future revenues. Yeah. And I think to relate it back to hiring, if they're hiring this person, they get a new grad. And what may have happened in the past is they hired someone on potential, not experience. They hired someone who had just out of school, they look sharp, they look like they had some initiative. Way back in the day, they did it, and that person turned out to be a rock star. So they kind of informally adopt that as their hiring strategy. But what they forget is the 20 people that crashed and burned because they had no experience and weren't just that perfect fit, that one in a hundred hires that that just worked out. And so they continue with that and they think, well, we'll just get someone out of school, it's less expensive. These kids all know what's going on with marketing these days, and they make the hire and they think it's going to be great, but then they start saying, Hey, can you do this? Because it's small business, stuff's happening, new things are coming up. And they're like, Well, they know what they they they're really good with social media and give it to them. They're good at it. Oh, automation, maybe they probably figure that out too. And now marketing is 80% of what they're doing. Yeah, the other 20% has nothing to do with marketing, what they were hired for. And so both jobs suffer a bit, plus, they're already overwhelmed and underqualified to be in the role. And then they wonder, like, well, we hired this person to do marketing, and we didn't, it didn't do anything for us. We are now we're suspicious of marketing in general.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Marketing doesn't work, is what I hear. And and I something that also comes to mind as you're talking through that. Uh, someone recently said, I can't remember who, but don't throw good people at bad systems. Um, and I think that's just really important to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Great thing, actually. That that is amazing. I love that. It's a good saying because most of my days.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, people are like, oh, yeah as you said, they have potential, but then if you bring them in and you don't have anything marked mapped out from a marketing perspective in terms of like, this is what we're trying to do, and here's our ideal clients, and all the things that I talked through earlier, and you expect them just to come in and not be overwhelmed and figure all of that stuff out if they are really good, like they might be able to, or they might just leave for a business that will pay them the same, if not more, but also have some of the stuff figured out so they can actually excel and grow in their career versus just feeling overwhelmed and swamped and trying to put pieces together.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Now, Sarah, would you say the caveat to that is unless you hire them and make that crystal clear in the beginning? Yeah, it's a mess. You're gonna have to come in and create everything. Then that person at least has a chance to say, okay, let's temper expectation. Yeah. If you're expecting your marketing program to take off in the next 90 days and I'm gonna have to unwind some things and do all that work, that's a pretty tight turn here. Um and I find sometimes people in general, when they hire, they talk in the terms of what they want it to be versus where it is. So they'll say, Oh, we got lots of systems in place for marketing. You're just gonna walk in here and you know it's it's all pretty much set up. What they want to say is, we've been struggling with this for a while, it's not working. We don't know if it's the right system. So we need you to kind of have a look at it and tear it down if it needs to be tear down, or maybe some of them you can use, but some things you're gonna have to rebuild. You you let us know because you're the expert.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Yep. Yeah. And I think as long as you're clear, that's what you're looking for in the job posting or however you're communicating, it's really important. But it also changed your perspective of who you're looking for. Because if you're looking for someone to come in and uh be a problem solver and be able to be strategic to think big picture, but also be able to think in systems and processes and to be okay with fast pace and change. Like if you're looking for someone to do all that, like those are the types of characteristics that you're looking for, versus if you have your good systems and processes in place, maybe you're looking for someone that likes structure and that can follow a process and that's detail-oriented. So it really changes the scope of the person that you're looking to bring in based on the state of your marketing currently.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

100%. And it's a very specific skill.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Talk about it all the time. You're generally a small business owner is looking for a builder, someone who is is energized by the thought of building out a department or or procedures or processes, whatever they are, strategies. Yeah. Um and that's that's a big you're right. The the person that likes to work within the systems and and kind of make those one or two degree changes to fine-tune things is a very different person than the person who really gets excited about building it from the ground up.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah. And that's where when we're going through our hiring process for us and for our clients, like we always start with like a cultural values type of interview first, just to make sure they're aligned with what we're trying to do as a business, who we're passionate about serving, what's important for us in terms of like team and collaboration. And the second part of the interview, that first interview, we then get into like traits of that person that we're looking for and asking some specific questions about that. So our whole first interview is very values, traits, skills, like collaborative-based conversation. And then our second interview, if they get past that first one, is then okay, let's talk about your specific experience. And we get into the weeds and details and more of your like traditional interview format. And so I think it's and that's how we lead with our job postings, and that's how we lead with our conversations. It's like we need to make sure we're aligned on these things first, and then we'll talk specifics on the role. Um, because if people aren't aligned on like your values and the traits that you're looking for, like that's people you can't teach people those things. Like they're either aligned or they're not.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

And so your environment's perfect for someone, you just have to find the right person for your environment.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, a lot of what we talked about so far is marketing strategy, but I approach hiring the same way. It's like, do are they aligned with our business strategy first? Um, and if so, then we can talk next steps.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

But it's really important. Um but let's okay, and you just brought up a good point. We're talking a lot about kind of the people and stuff around. So, what other kind of more tactical mistakes do you see people make when they're trying to launch or or reestablish or uh just do their day-to-day marketing? What are some of the other mistakes you see, maybe, like I said, on the tactical side?

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Yeah, I mean, one of the other most common ones I see is just doing everything and not understanding what's working. Like that is so common when I, you know, start talking to business owners. I'm like, okay, what are you doing from a marketing perspective? And they list off, you know, I'm doing paid and SEO and email marketing and social organic, and I'm sending direct mailers and all the things. I'm like, okay, well, what of those are working? And they're like, I don't really know. Um, our agency sends us a report and I have no idea what the information means. So I just keep paying it. And so I think it's really important, like if you're gonna be doing all those things, have specific tracking in place for every single one of those things that I just rattled off and then set specific goals for each of those channels. So if you're gonna be spending, you know, a certain money on like SEO or paid or email marketing, what are you hoping to get in return? And so I think it's really important to set those metrics in place, but then look at your metrics and reporting again on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis to help drive your decisions moving forward. Uh, we had a client that came to us a couple of years ago now and they were literally doing everything. And when we're like, what's working? They're they're like, we have no idea. In the first um three months of working with us as a fractional CMO, we saved them like $40,000 in spend because we helped them like actually understand what was working and what wasn't working, and we cut back a lot of the stuff that wasn't working so they could get better at the things that were working. And so oftentimes when it comes to marketing, I feel like people just try to do everything versus what's driving business and how can we get better at those fewer channels and get really boring and good at those things? Um, and then maybe you can look at diversifying from there versus trying to do everything from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

That makes sense. Now, what about even more tactical stuff? We I think we talked about right at the beginning about like what you're posting. Yeah, if if you're a business, um is there is there good posting, is there bad posting, is there don't post that categories?

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah, I mean the biggest waste of time is just posting random stuff that's not working towards a goal ultimately. And so what you want to do when it comes to content is understanding what topics do you want to be known for? What do you want to be an authority on? Um, what are your customers searching for? What types of information are they looking for? And identifying, let's say, three to five of your most important topics that then you potentially have a bunch of subtopics under. But that gives a lot of more focus to your content production moving forward. Um, gone are the days of just like posting a blog and people going to that section of your website. And, you know, so what we do for our clients is we organize what are called hub pages or pillar pages where we identify the core topic, um, we identify the sub themes on the topic, and then we write a bunch of blog posts on the topic that all link back to that hub page because then Google or AI identifies um that page as a really important post or page on the specific topic. And so it will give you authority on that thing. And so that's really important is to think about again, it all comes down to your customers. So, like what types of information are they looking for? How do you solve their problems? What type of transformation journey do you take them on? And then crafting content that speaks to what they're out there searching for. So they then see you as an authority on that topic that can help solve their problems.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Right. That's very cool. I remember that whole hub page um concept. That came out a while ago. Yeah. It's again, though, if you don't know what you're doing, it it feels like, oh, that feels like a lot of work, but it it's not once it's set up and you're you're working within that framework.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Yep, exactly. And it you're right. I mean, we've been doing it, I don't know, 10 or so years. I feel like with clients now, we've been building hub pages, but they've actually just become even more impactful with AI because they're they rank really well in AI platforms. So they're they're making a comeback and they never left, but they're they're stronger now more than ever.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Awesome. Well, look, I think that though those that's a good stopping point for the bat for the mistakes. Let's help some people out and see if we can give them some tips to get uh if they haven't started their marketing journey or if they're thinking, oh man, we're doing all this stuff, how do we get back on track? What are your top three to five pieces of advice you would give them to to help them get started or help them get back on track?

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Yeah, I mean they relate to the mistakes, but opposite. So step number one is set up metrics or hire someone that can help you so you can understand like what's happening with all the channels you're focusing on, and then either learn or use AI to help train you, to teach you to understand, but understand what the metrics are actually telling you, because you really can't make decisions unless you understand that information first. So, like that's step one. If you're spending money on marketing, if you're doing things, take the time to understand the metrics, um, would be my advice. And then the next piece there is if you can't describe your ideal clients on deep level, so deeper than just demographics, but like what are their pain points, what keeps them up at night, how do they make decisions, why do they decide to buy, why do they stay with companies like yours? Take some time actually talking to your clients and understanding your best clients and understanding those things about them. So then you can understand how to craft messaging that speaks to more people like them would be an area that I would really focus on. So the metrics, the understanding your ideal clients and messaging is another piece. And then one of the things that people forget about a lot in marketing is the back half of our hourglass. And so they think of marketing of just like we need more people to know us or be aware of us, so they just keep doing tactics and channels. But where often a lot of small businesses miss is what happens after someone buys? How do you nurture them to become repeat clients? How do you stay top of mind? How do you continue to add value? How do you onboard them in a way that blows them away so they stick around for a long time? And then how do you encourage them to become referral sources? And so oftentimes in marketing, if you're like, I just I don't know how to grow our business right now. We've kind of hit a sticking point. It's look at your current clients, look at people that already trust you, that are already buying from you, and see can you increase revenue from them by selling more and adding more value? Um, or can you add to retention in some way, or can you encourage them to refer you? And so I often like to start there because that's often faster versus like going and trying to get awareness for more people. So hopefully that's that's helpful. That's where I would focus on is repeat and referrals, setting up metrics, and then really deeply understanding your ideal clients and messaging that speaks to them.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

That's awesome. Thank you. That was great. Uh if people are listening to this and they're thinking, I need to learn more about Sarah, uh, her book, uh Unchained, or uh the mark uh duct tape marketing, how can we reach you or get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, so my book website's unchainedmodel.com. It does go into a lot of what we talked about in more detail. Um, so if this resonates with you, that's a really great starting point. Our website's ductemarketing.com. We have a podcast we've been running for about 25, 30 years now at this point. So quite some time. Um, and so we have podcasts there, a bunch of free resources and information. So a good uh good avenue there. And then my name is Sarah Nay, and on LinkedIn, I'm very active there as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Very cool. Well, thanks so much. It's been a great conversation. I've enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on, Corey. All right, there you go. Sarah Nay from Duct Tape Marketing. It's funny, we did talk a bit about hiring, and uh a few weeks back I did a cap cut video where I um talked over a video of Gary Vane or Chuck, Gary Vee talking about uh hire slow, fire fast, and um, don't get caught up in your ego. If you hire the wrong person, it's okay, just fire them. You have to be okay with it, and don't worry that if you suck at hiring, everyone sucks at hiring. And my point was I disagree. Um, that's a symptom of a broken process. And when it comes to hiring people, we owe it to uh the people we hire and our business to be better than that. It's we're dealing with humans here. And if your philosophy is if it does he was saying, I hire I hired this guy for hundreds of thousands, and on his first day I fired him. That's not a candidate problem, that's a process problem. And here's the real shitty part about that. That person went home and told their family, I got this new job, I'm really excited, it's gonna put us in a better situation. I got a mortgage to pay, I got food to put on the table, I got maybe a kid put through cottage uh college, and then you fire them after the first day. We got to do better than that. Hiring has to become it's not commodities. We're not trading pork belly here. We are dealing with individuals and humans who have lives and responsibilities. And if you saw that Cap Cut video, I hope you did. You can go back and find it in my LinkedIn or YouTube or wherever. But that that was the whole point. That's not the right way to approach hiring. Just get really good at firing people. Why don't you get really good at hiring people? Uh, and maybe then you won't have to fire them on day one. But that is my rant. I sound like Sarah now on uh LinkedIn, uh, going after people hiring uh people out of school to do their marketing. So, anyway, that's enough for me. My name's Corey Harlock. Uh, I've been your host today, and until next time, stop grinding, start growing.