Episode 12: How to Market Smarter with AI Automation featuring Tina Lopez

In this episode of Brewtiful Chaos with Kiki, I'm joined by automation specialist Tina Lopez, to break down AI marketing from the ground up. Whether you're a content creator, small business owner, podcaster, or side hustler, Tina shares practical ways to start using AI to save time, create content, and market your brand more effectively.

We discuss beginner-friendly AI tools, simple automation strategies, common mistakes to avoid, and how AI can help you work smarter without losing your authentic voice. If you've been curious about AI but aren't sure where to start, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited for today's episode because we're talking about something that honestly feels unavoidable right now, and it's AI and marketing. Today I'm joined by a special guest, Tina Lopez. Tina Lopez is a Chicago-based marketing automation consultant, Zapier Solutions partner, and founder of the program Automations Lab. She specializes in helping female founders, coaches, consultants, and small business owners use AI and automation to simplify their marketing so it runs without them having to push forward every day. Her tagline says it all, from invisible to inevitable. Welcome to the show. How are you today? I'm doing so good. I'm so excited to be on the show. Great. So what I especially love about today's conversation is that we're focusing kind of on marketing for millennial moms with side hustles. I know everyone this day and age always has to have a side hustle because of the economy and everything. So I thought it would be amazing to have you on the show to kind of talk about how we can make life easier for ourselves as we juggle work, family, and creativity and trying to grow something in the middle of all the chaos. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed trying to market yourself online, this episode is going to give you actionable tips so that you can literally start using them today. So, Tina, tell me a little bit about how you got started into AI and all of the things that you run. It sounds like you got a lot on your plate. So tell me a little bit about your backstory. Yeah, so I've had this business since 2019. And I think the one thing to mention is that your first business is never gonna be your last business. Um, it always evolves over the years. So I feel like the people that I serve and the clients that I serve are very much so former versions of myself in some capacity, right? So I used to be a coach, a consultant, I still am to some degree. Um and now I'm a server service provider, I used to manage a team, all the things. And so I know that like when it comes to marketing yourself as a business, it can be one of those things that is required, but it can also feel very overwhelming simply because of the amount of platforms that you have to be on and the amount of content that you need to create. And so this really came full circle for me when I was like in my content creator era, I would describe at best as. And I was the person who was like consistently creating content. I used to write blog articles on Medium, and the best thing that I knew is like, okay, if you want to get more traffic to your blog and all the things, you gotta promote it. And I just realized like the repurposing element of having to take your content, repurpose it to a different platform, different formats, all the things was just a little bit too overwhelming for me. So I was like, you know, we're in the 21st century, like there has to be some tool or something out there, and then that's kind of where I really stumbled on automations, Zapier specifically. Um, I always tell people that I was in automations before AI came on the block, and all of a sudden people know what automations are, um, which is really great, makes my life a lot easier. But um I always say, like, I'm an automations person first, and then I actually plug in AI to streamline things, whether it's thinking, reasoning, or creation, um, just because it does a really good job at that. So it's definitely been a journey. That sounds awesome. So, for you know, people who don't aren't really familiar with automation and AI, can you kind of dumb it down a little bit and kind of explain, like, you know, if you were marketing a product or something, like where do you start? What is all of this? Can you explain it a little bit? Yeah, I think I could do this in two parts. One, we're gonna talk maybe a little bit like quickly on the differences of like what is all this terminology, just so it makes sense. And then I think we could talk about like what is like the core things you need in order for your marketing to actually be good and not have it look like AI slop is the best way to describe it, right? And so, like when I think about just like the AI landscape, I actually want you to think of like a pyramid, right? And so there's like three layers to this pyramid. On the bottom layer is chat, right? Everybody's somewhat familiar with chat, and that's why it's taking the largest portion of that pyramid, right? And so chat is basically you having access to a really smart brain that's trained on the internet's data, and you get to connect and conversate with it in natural language. So that's chat. Then we have automations, which is kind of the second layer of that pyramid. Automations, like I said, they were always there before actually AI came on the block. Automations in the simplest form just allows you to have one platform connect to another platform to have them talk to each other, right? Not everything that you need to do has to have AI on it. Majority of the time, it's just an automation of having one platform connect to another. For example, like your Gmail connect to Slack, right? They have automations to send connect and have them speak to each other. Then we go on like the tippy top, which is agents. I feel like this kind of gets, you know, often confused a lot of times, but basically the way that I describe agents is like it's a combination of both automations and chat in one. And so what that means is like you can speak to this really smart brain via a chat interface, and you can have this really smart brain, and you can say to this this chat interface and say, Hey, I want you to send an email on my Gmail and then make sure to send a Slack message as an example, right? And so, what an agent does is it has that brain, that really smart brain access to help determine, oh, what are the steps that I need to take? But it also has that automation capabilities to then decide, oh, I actually need to connect to these platforms and do this and that and things like that. So I feel like agents is just like the top, like the very tippy top where it combines again, both automations and chat in general. Now, once we understand that, I think that's gonna be really helpful for this next layer of like, okay, how does this apply to marketing, right? Well, a lot of times when I see people leverage AI or automations and marketing, really what they're doing, in my opinion, is they're leveraging chat a lot of times. You're having a conversation with chat, you have really access, you have great access to the smart brain. But the reason why content oftentimes look looks like slop or looks like terrible, in my opinion, is because this brain, yes, it has access to the internet's data and everything like that, but it doesn't have access to maybe your brand, your guidelines, your tones, right? And so when we think about you know chat or AI in general, if you don't want it to sound like slop and you want your marketing to actually be good, then you need to have taste. That's the thing that I think AI, in my opinion, is not doing a great job yet, yet, right? But that's where like you can have your unique spin of it and your taste, right? So if you were working with me, I'd directly ask you and say, like, okay, what are the words that you hate using? What are the words that you love using? What are what is your tonality? Are you direct? Are you soft? Are you a little bit more on the fluffy side? Are you a little bit more on like the straightforward side? Those are the things that are really going to help make your unique voice shine when you're leveraging AI and making sure that it actually sounds like you because the way that you create content on social media should not be that different from the way that you actually speak in person, right? And so if you can get AI and train it into that level, and the way you train it truly is just like take all your best posts as an example and then be like, hey, I need you to plug it into chat and be like, I need you to model, you know, the way that I'm writing, analyze it, and help me, you know, train this AI or give me a document um that has like my guidelines as an example. If you're someone who's like brand new and is like, I don't have content, Tina, then I would actually just start talking to AI and just see what it picks up on. But I'd actually take it a step further and I would say, like, oh, okay, like based on the way I'm speaking to you, what are the characters that you see in your favorite shows or in all the things that remind you a lot about me as an example, right? And the good thing about that is when you say that, it will analyze your writing style and then it will pick up like a maybe characters. So for example, I get um when I like write, I get Mindy Calling from the Mindy project, and I think I get like Ben Wyatt from Parks at Rec. Um, that's the way that like I guess AI like describes my my way of writing and my way of speaking as an example. And what's great about that is like once when it assigns characters to the way that you're writing, well, now you actually have again access to the internet's data. You the internet has so much information on Mindy Calling and Ben Wyatt to then be able to help you kind of create some hybrid version of what your voice could look like. I would only apply for that if you actually, again, like don't have those foundational brand pillars in place. The other piece of it is like, okay, if you want, you know, so that's how it applies to like chat, right? And how do I get chat to have really much so like sound sound like you? Automations, kind of going on that pillar, is like this is where like you don't necessarily need to use AI to have automations, but automations is more like, oh, okay, like I have chat, and I let's just say I take the response and I put it into a Google Doc, right? I'm gonna use an automation to see what's in that Google Doc. If anything is added, that would be a trigger to start the automation, right? And say, oh, okay, if there's this content in this Google Doc, I'm gonna send it to LinkedIn. That's what an automation is, right? If we were to apply this with an agent mentality, right, then it would be like, okay, so I'm having chat, but then you have connectors in chat, which is again like the automation, you know, connecting to different tools, right? Then it would be like, oh, like, okay, I'm having this conversation with chat. It's creating a LinkedIn post for me. And then if it's connected and integrated, again, integrated means connected to LinkedIn, then it will actually just automatically post to LinkedIn within that chat, and you can trigger it via the way you're conversating with it. So that's just kind of like the different layers that I would describe with taking that pyramid and applying it to marketing. You just heard like the chat version, the automation version, and then the agent version. Hopefully that makes sense. Yeah. Um, and so like when you're talking about these things, um, like what exactly is the AI? Like, are you using some kind of tool to like create like an avatar or something? You know what I'm saying? Like, because I know there's a lot of like the AI programs where you can take a picture and it'll like make you a person and like do all of that stuff. Are you talking about that type of thing, or are you talking about just like trying to help you create a script for your content? I think the example that I just gave you is more on the copy, like the the text, which is the script piece of it that informs your captions that can inform like maybe the overlay text on like videos as an example. Like these are more text-based, but if you did want to use um avatars, I've actually been playing around with it. Um, you know, the thing that I would say is like, yes, you can create avatars to have it look like yourself and things like that, but you still need like a script to feed right, and so like this is why you need like leveraging those chat automations or agents, however you go about it, right? Like, if you can get your brand voice to sound like you with AI, then you could just basically say, Hey, I need you to create a voice script for my avatar as an example. So at least when the avatar is speaking, it sounds like you. Oh. Interesting. I'm learning a lot today. Let's talk a little bit about um the programs. So you've talked a little bit about, you know, we can put it in Chat GBT or whatever. Um, but like Zapier, for example, like I know that we went to Power Table Live, and that was like my biggest takeaway is because I've always tried to figure out how to automate it because there's, you know, 12 different platforms. There's threads, there's Twitter, there's, you know, there's just well, X now, you know. Um, but all of the different platforms, and it's exhausting to sit there for 45 minutes and be like, okay, I'm gonna post to Facebook, then I'm gonna post Instagram, then I'm gonna post TikTok, and da-da-da-da-da. And so to have that automation is really awesome. So, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of those programs? Yeah. Um, and the one thing I would say is just to because like, you know, I used to have a side hustle as well. And so I would say, like, I'm gonna give you tools, these are paid tools. You should definitely use them because you know, they save those 45 minutes times whatever times amount you're posting per week, right? So when I think about, you know, how do you take your marketing and how do you distribute it everywhere so you can go from invisible to inevitable, right? Like, I think the thing is is like you can leverage these tools. So I'll walk you through like the way that I approach content creation. So for me, I actually use Claude. I personally like Claude when it comes to content and does a better job at sticking to my brand guidelines, making sure that my voice is to the T. And so what I really like about Claude actually is that they have an app. And so whenever I have like an idea that comes up, or if ever I want to like think through something, right? I actually just pull up my Claude app and I will start voice memoing and I would start talking and be like, oh, this is how I'm thinking about this, or I talk about an experience or whatever, right? And so I'd voice memo in a specific project. Project and Claude is the very similar um way that I would describe it to like GPTs in ChatGPT, right? And so this project in Claude is trained on my brand guidelines in the way that I like to crank content, all those things, and I'll have a conversation in my project. And then once when it's done and it's ready, what's cool about Claude, and I believe ChatGPT has this as well, is it has those connectors, so it has that agent-like capability, right? Where it can connect to different platforms. When Claude takes my voice memo and actually, you know, creates the captions, creates the posts or whatever, it actually connects to my database. Just think of a database as like a really nice Google Sheet, right? You I in my opinion, my database is ran on Airtable. Airtable, I think, is only 20 bucks a month, right? Like it is the best thing that I love. I can't live without Airtable, right? And so basically, the reason why I put my content in a database is because your content is stuck in many different chats, right? And that is a little bit unorganized in my opinion, right? And so I like to, whenever I create content, whenever I have a chat, I want to send that caption and those contents to a database so I can actually see everything in one central place, right? Once when that is kind of logged in and it's good to go, I'll just assign a date in this database, or I could have AI do it, but for simplistic purposes, I'm just gonna say I'm gonna assign a date. And basically, I have a couple automations that are triggered based on once when it actually lands in AirTable and the date goes live. So for example, um, let's just say, like, oh, I have a post that goes off, it's coming out today. I probably do, right? I have a post that goes off today. Airtable will say, Hey, your post is going live because it's today's date, and this is the date that you assigned it to schedule. It will send and trigger a Zapier automation. And so basically it takes the data from my database, takes the content in the post, puts it to Zapier, and Zapier will start an automation that says, like, oh, there's a new record that is for today's date that needs to be scheduled. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and make sure to use um send that information to Metrical. Metrical is actually a social media scheduling platform. You can use it like manually and like manually update it, but you also can put it in a Zapier automation where it actually takes the post, puts it into Metrical, and apply like sends it to Facebook, Threads, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, all those things in one step in Zapier. And that's what it does. I actually don't I haven't touched a scheduler in like five years. Um, in terms of like I don't manually schedule everything, I just have an automation do it, right? And so, like, yes, like I could have done it myself and maybe saved $67 a month, but like 45 minutes times like I post three times a day, like that that's a lot, right? And so I'm using these automations to take care of that. Wow. Okay, that's a lot of a lot of information and a lot of different programs. So just use me as an example. So I just finished my rockstar romance novel. So if I am going to want to advertise this um in marketing, what would you say would be like step one to step 10 if I wanted to market this book, like using all of the AI programs and all of that? Like how would you start? Yeah, it's actually funny. I used to um work for a coach that actually helped with self-published, um, self-published writers, actually. So great, great conversation. Um, so I think at the baseline, what I would recommend doing first is like, yes, there's content for marketing, but actually the best thing that you want to do first is make sure you have an email list, right? Because if you best way I can describe it is if you have a ton of followers on social media, but then like you lose all of them, then you have no backup plan, right? So my first step is maybe create um kind of like an email list and maybe a freebie. A freebie that you could do is like this is the lost chapter, maybe that you edited out, right? That you wanted to only give to people who wanted to read it, right? As an example. And I would put that freebie link in the book itself, because if anyone reads the book, they should also be on your newsletter, right? And so you're gonna leverage that freebie as the call to action for all of your content. And so when it comes to leveraging AI and automation, this is more up to you if you want to do it, right? But like if you have the transcripts of the book, right? Um, I or manuscript, sorry, of the book, I would actually probably upload it into AI and say, like, hey, like here, like can you pull out the scenes that are viral, or can you pull out the scenes that grab attention or that can have a great storyline, things like that. And then it could actually probably, you know, analyze the entire manuscript, select those scenes, and then I would say, hey, can you actually probably create um like a post that talks about this? And you could probably write it in such a way of like, you know, this long-lost sister, you know, came across this beautiful gentleman, whatever the case may be, right? Like whatever the hook is, um, you could take those little mini scenes and those storylines and you know, almost create the hooks. And it's almost like, you know, when you think about movies, right? They're creating trailers of the actual movie itself. And so it's like, how do you apply that to the book? How do I create like mini trailers of the book itself? And then once it's it's the same workflow, right? Like I'm having a conversation with chat, I'm sending it to a database so that I can log all the information, all the posts that it created, and then I'm using a distribution automation to distribute it everywhere. And then the call to action in every post needs to be hey, click the link in my bio so that we can actually get the long lost chapter that you've never seen or sneak peek, right? Oh, okay. That's great advice. I haven't never thought about that. Um, so to uh gear bag a little bit, so if you were to collect the emails, what platform do you use for that? I use MailerLite. I recommend MailerLite. It's the best um platform that gives you like the best free plan, in my opinion. It's been a minute since I've looked at the pricing, but from if I'm from what I will recall, um, they have free automations, free landing pages, and free email subscribes until up until a certain subscriber base. Um and I was on the pretty free plan for years until my subscriber base grew a lot and I started into paying for it. So it's also the most cost effective that I've seen across different platforms. Okay. Well, hey, that's great. And I think that's great for anybody else that's out there that you know is starting their side hustle and they need, you know, ground zero. So I think this is great for us millennial moms that are a little getting old now and trying to keep up with all the technology. Um, so I think that's great information. So I know a lot of listeners are trying to build something working full-time or raising kids. So, what encouragement would you give to someone who feels kind of behind in all the technology? Yeah, my best advice for someone who's feeling a little bit behind in the technology is really just buy the $20 a month subscription. I recommend Claude and actually just start playing with it, like tinkering it with it, like see what you could do. If you have a question, right? Maybe instead of going to Google, maybe you go to Claude, right? And see what it comes up with it. Or you could like take it with your personal use cases. What I personally do, I'm a personal use case, is like I like to track my macros on my fitness pal, right? So I'll take a screenshot shot of like, okay, like I've eaten this much macros through the day, but I don't know what's a plan for dinner to make sure I hit my macros, right? So I will take a screenshot and I'll upload it to an AI. And say, like, hey, can you give me some recipe ideas that hit that target that I'm looking for? And then I'll give me a couple recommendations, right? Um, and so it's just like start playing with it. Like $20 a month, like that's maybe like a couple coffees, right? You can afford to spend with this, and like, you know, for $20 a month, this tool has saved me hours a month, right? And you know, your time is worth it. So that's what I would say to get started. Very true. Okay, so what mindset shift do you think creators need right now? If you're not using AI and automation to amplify your voice across every platform, then you will get forgotten. And the reason why I say that is because when we look at like where the trends of AR is going, like it's not leaving, it truly isn't. And so to think that like it's not gonna happen, I think is maybe a little bit delusional, in my opinion. Again, this is a hot take. The other piece of it is if you want to show up on AI search or just show up in like search in general, you have to be multi-platform. Because think about it this way: when Google is trying to identify who you are, if you only show up on one platform, that only is one reference to Google as an example. They're not gonna have that much information to really have a I would say accurate understanding of who you are. But if you're posting on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, threads, all the places, that's multiple references that these AI large language models can reference and say, oh, this is this person, right? And it probably has a higher confidence score with that piece as well. And so that's why I'm saying, like, if you're not using AI and automation, you will be forgotten because respectfully, like, there's only so much you can do as a human. I can realistically like, if I did this all by myself, I can only post on one platform. That's all the energy I have, especially again. This might be a hot take. Hopefully it's okay. You can edit this out, but like, especially like when you're going through your cycles, right? Like, there are moments where like I am high, I have all this energy. And then there are moments where like I'm done, can't do it, right? And so the systems that are in place that allow you to execute when you're in that I'm done. This is not life is not life for me, those are the things that you're gonna fall back on, and you need those systems in place in order for you to show up everywhere. That's amazing. That's kind of like having like 10 assistants. It's awesome because that's what they always say is like in business is what happens to you when you die, you know, like you're gonna have to have someone to take over. So I guess if the automation is there, then you're good to go. For sure, for sure. So, what do you think is one thing that people should stop overthinking when it comes to marketing? Um, I think they should stop overthinking about the post being perfect or like doing it, especially if you're in the beginning, right? Like, you actually don't have that much to lose in the beginning. Because if you have like zero followers, who's gonna remember the posts that you set up, right? Like, so like there's so much perfectionism that comes down to it, and myself included, they're like, Oh, I want to say it this way, I want to say it that way, but like nobody's gonna remember, like five years from later down the line. So just post, it's like putting in reps, right? Like, as you go to the gym, like the more reps you put, the stronger your muscle gets, right? Same thing with content, like and posting on social media. The more reps you put, the better you get. You realize the techniques you need to, you know, implement all those things. That's the time, I think, for you. Actually, being a beginner is the best time for you to start experimenting and seeing what content works and lands for you. Cool. Okay, so now for the fun. So Instagram, TikTok, or podcast, which is your favorite? Ooh, I think I like podcasts more as both a consumer but also like a speaker on it. Okay. Uh, what is the one AI tool that you can't live without? I have two. One is Zapier for sure, and the other one is Airtable. Okay. What is your biggest productivity hack? I actually I actually go old school on this. I guess I have a bunch of AI tools, but I actually can't live with like my pen to paper notebook. Um so like our actually my planner, it's like the productivity planner, productivity planner from uh intelligent change. I get the quarterly edition. And it's actually a practice I do every Sunday just to map out my week by hand, and that helps me. That's awesome. That's a great strategy. So, what is one piece of advice that you wish someone had told you sooner? Invest in the model and the lifestyle you want for your business. I think a lot of, especially in this space, there's a lot of coaches that really use money as the way that is their marketing. And they're only using money as their way of marketing, of like, oh, I made a million dollars a month as an example. Like these statements just get way too big over time, right? Or it seems a little bit not real. Um, and you know, the question that I always ask, I actually don't invest um a ton into coaching anymore or coaching programs. I mostly just do one-off sessions when I need them. But the thing that I really learned quickly from a coaching program is like you have to, when you're investing in a coach and you're investing in a program, you have to understand like what is the model that they're selling you and what is the lifestyle that they're having, right? So, for example, like a lot of coaches, they'll sell, like, they say, like, oh, you need to do sales calls as your way to make money and all these things. I I hate doing sales calls, right? So why would I invest in a program that does sales calls, right? Or like anything that's along those lines. And so it's just thinking about like, okay, does the person who's selling this program do they live the lifestyle that I actually want to live? And if the answer is no, then don't give them your money. True that. True that. All righty. Well, as we uh end our conversation, I really appreciate you being here today. And you've given me a lot of insights on a lot of things. So I really appreciate all of your information and your expertise. Is there anything else that you want to leave us with? Is there anything that was left unsaid? Um, well, I'd loved to have and invite your community to my audience. So if you would love to find me, you can actually join my newsletter. It's creatorsclub.tinalopez.com, or you could just go to tinalopez.com if it's easier, you'll get signed up a different way. Um, but that's just really the place where I have like over 3,000 female founders or just founders in general who are looking to leverage AI and automation in their marketing. And I love to send a weekly newsletter to talk more about that and to really upscale you and make sure that you go from invisible to being inevitable. And we do that with AI and automation. So I'd love to invite your community there. Excellent. Perfect. Well, I really appreciate you being here today, and I guess I'm gonna let you go. Um, but for all my viewers, uh always, you know, feel free to share this if you found this interesting, and uh I will see you next time. Bye.