Personal Branding Consistency For AI Search With Karen Tiber Leland

This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started Howdy welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the unknown secrets of internet marketing I am your host Matthew Bertram or Matt Bertram And I know i've mentioned that before and how there's been kind of name collision out there and how important it is to Understand your brand personally As well as your business online and someone that i've been circling for a while That we finally connected and i've got her on the show. She's worked with some major brands She's a personal brand consultant a rebranding expert for some of the biggest businesses in the space She's been doing this a long time. Karen timber leland. Welcome to the show Thank you. It's tiber by the way Tiber sorry No worries We were just talking about that too and and what we were actually talking about previously About uh, how important in the age of ai It is to make sure that there is consistency Uh in your name and uh, i've been talking about i've gone by matt bertram for a long time I own the domain matthew bertram. I'm going by matthew bertram. I had books titled that i've been Listed as different things different titles as time progresses And you know trying to help ai understand that as well as I have actually a number of other people Out there with my name and one person is actually in The same space as me. So i'm dealing with a lot of like brand challenges and I know You know, you you've kind of seen this and dealt with this yourself It's not it's crazy because it's not unusual because It's amazing how many people have the same name. I mean even there are other karen lelands out there That's one reason I went to karen tiber leland was to start distinguishing So I mean one thing I will say is you do the

bigger point here is you do have to teach Google and ai who you are by consistency across the internet because that's how it knows you Not just by your name by what you do by what your expertise is It's like one mistake people make and i'm sorry. I think you've made it Is you really want to pick one canonical form of your name and don't vary it So do you if you have a middle name do you have a middle name? I I do you know robert like so people not that's not my middle name But like people that go by robert or rob or doug Right people that have all these different names have issues One of the things that I did do at the beginning because I couldn't buy my domain I was actually able to recently buy it a couple years ago, but I I added matt bertram live Okay, and so all a lot of my hand right on social media But yeah, but you know also you could do matthew r bertram matt r bertram The chances are somebody probably doesn't have that And so yeah, it's actually an s. Sorry. I was so confused. I confused you it it my middle my middle name for just uh, the ais and Uh, is steven so matthews, okay, but but yeah, I I agree with you I should have done that Before I got you can still you can still do it But it took so really doing a middle ish name or a middle a minute middle initial is kind of the cheapest way to differentiate And it only works if you do it everywhere your byline your linkedin your speakers bureau your book jacket your email Like you've got to be Consistent which is why when I got divorced instead of I because I couldn't let leland go because my all my books and stuff were leland So now i've been transitioning it to karen tyber leland. That's the way I've been starting to distinguish it So that's my

that's my little bit of advice for if your name is a name a million other people have And I would encourage everybody to go out there and buy their domain if you don't have a hundred percent. Yep And I again, I cannot believe how many people that there are that have this same name as me And true and it's it's really shocking out there and if you go search your name You'll kind of see where you stand and some people have such a unique name That the knowledge graph picks it up. It's no problem Like it's very clear but like if you've changed titles if you've changed companies All that information is scattered out there online and there's kind of a data hygiene issue That companies as well as individuals really should start to consider and and really clean it up And the more common your name is the more kind of challenges you're going to have with collision Right and and because now what happens is a when it was just seo SEO would give you a thing you would click through and you could make your assessment as the customer right now It's AI is between you and that customer and AI is in a way giving the customer the answers So the customer isn't going to these locations online and finding the answer AI is giving them the answer So if you haven't trained AI about what the answer is for you You're you're really gonna have a problem being findable and being findable is the very first thing you have to do When you're branding today So I would love to hear from you like with kind of all the things that have changed To to build a brand a day from scratch and then the difference between like a rebranding Maybe like there's a there's there's a lot more considerations if you're a company say and you're rebranding because I I i'm seeing a lot of roll-ups happen and you know people are changing the website and then there's you

know Link that or equity issues based on the the brand strength Authority trust and then people that are starting from zero and sometimes it's kind of like building a house Like do you do you demo the house and start over? Do you tear down? Do you tear down or just remodel the kitchen? Well, here's the thing and you know, i've been in the business of rebrand personal branding and then rebranding with companies For more than 20 years and here's what I found in the old days a company would look every five to seven years Let's say 10 years and they'd go. Ha does our brand still fit. Do we need to change it? What do we need to do and by brand? I don't just mean their look I mean the whole thing right the messaging the marketing the look the logo The problem is we live in an environment now where there's lots and lots of what I would call micro changes in the market Right and those micro changes can happen from month to month. They're not even necessarily a year-to-year thing, right? There's all these micro changes in the market a rebrand is when you're really starting over you're going You know what either we made a mistake and we need to just tell the truth and totally rebrand or We didn't make a mistake, but the brand we had just doesn't fit anymore in total and we need to really start over That's what a rebrand is a re-up, which is you know That's the next book that i'm that's coming out. Hopefully next year, but we'll see Uh, but you know the book i'm working on now about re-upping your brand Re-upping is more like it's not so much that you're starting over. It's that you've you've what you've done has worked And now you've outgrown it, you know, there's some places in which what I call this is your brand has drifted You know, there's a whole chapter in the book about seven ways your brand has drifted because

brands drift in very different ways Some brands drift visually like they just don't look good anymore Like the way the logo and the colors and the style is is old, right? It isn't up to market Other brands drift in their messaging the way they talk about themselves other brands quite frankly drift in their product Their product is behind and isn't what it used to be other brands drift in the way that they're marketing other brands drift in How they're communicating to their audience? So a re-up is more About it's not a seismic change. It's more about looking at where are we? What are those micro changes in the markets and then what do we need to adjust in our brand? To keep on track with the market and where we want to be That's the difference between a rebrand and a re-up So for everybody listening i'm just nodding my head. So everything that karen's saying is is i'm in in full agreement I I can even tell you personally We've started to evolve our messaging and and who we target and who we offer And and that's happening on different channels at different times. So we've started to evolve our our branding and also like i've There's been big changes like i've i've bought now my partners at ewr digital So now i've taken over the company and i'm planning on taking a new direction We we've changed the name a few times, but we're going through a website rebrand We've already started the social media the website like we got to get the new website launched like and it's got to catch up And ai's in indexing right it's indexing linkedin twitter google, you know, uh other other platforms as well and There's a drift Right in in in the messaging. Um, and you you have to have continuity or that actually affects your ranking and what you Uh show up for and how you're getting distributed So there's a lot of these like considerations that I think companies are are looking at

things two dimensionally And now it's it's full three 360 view Of what's happening and what's going to happen based on where you are and where you're trying to go Yeah, and that's a really important point because even those of us that are in the business like you and I right like for me I just read did I just re-upped my website. I didn't start over I it's my website's mine But there were too many messages on there and it was confusing ai and it was confusing google and it wasn't giving me the Strongest points For what I do which is personal branding and rebranding right so those two things So I reorganized my website to be much more about those two things and there are there other things I do that are tangential to that You know, yes, i'm a color consultant companies as part of branding off me bring in to do colors But I don't have that stuff on my website anymore in that way because it was confusing the ai And that's not what I want to do I want to be found for personal branding and rebranding because those are essentially The two things that i'm really an expert in and so It really requires being on top of it and you know, it's it's not that it's hard. It just takes vigilance Well, you know, so When when what you're talking about is again something i'm going through as well and You got like i'm i'm taking a lot of analytics on what's happening with these changes and some of this data There's nothing historical like like there was nothing to reference what was happening So it's been through through trial and error and it's like if you start to evolve outside of a category That that ai has Designated you will start to like lose visibility and ranking. Correct. So you have to match What you're showing up for and how you're showing up and like the the thing that I even said last podcast I think is relevant

here is you got to focus on that signal and get rid of that noise So ai has a better job. Correct That's a great that is a great analogy because it is like a signal and it's like if the signal is not clear and there's fuzz and there's Interference and it's it is really hard for ai to pick up on that you have to be very clear This is who I am. This is what I offer. This is my expertise You know whether it's that you've got the best black summer dresses on the planet or whether it's you're the best You know marketing person. It doesn't matter You have to be really clear on what that messaging is and get rid of all the noises you just said But here's the trick you have to do it across the board. So your linkedin your podcast your books Your website every piece of content you put out you got to hit that same Branding and messaging every time so that it knows what you are So so two two points about that really quick that that i've found personally that I think are valuable to everyone listening is Is first if you're too if you drift too far with your messages ai won't know if it's the exact same company and won't have confidence so it won't show it and so Correct there there's an issue with your your own brand Like fighting with each other because it doesn't know what to show so it's not going to really go Okay, this is the right answer. Let me show it because there's there's a trust barometer and won't go into all the details there One of the things that i've found this is something I haven't shared I probably should put it together in a study But essentially like if you're trying to get that message out there and you're talking about okay What is the doorway in of how I want people to find us? If you keep your headers and your meta descriptions In

the proper categories you can then evolve the messaging on the page And how kind of the chunking happens with the llms and also the historical reference If it can grab that and read that it can help you kind of evolve That messaging for you without losing like what you've done I agree and the trick is you've got to have Those major messages on the website and the subheadings really be in the right category And what's hard about that one is that people have to make a choice but two People don't want to be limited in what they say. It's like that thing about who's your client? It's everybody. Well, it's not everybody people and me too. By the way, I go through this As well people don't want to be limited because then they felt well Then i'm going to miss out on this section of the business or then i'm going to miss out on that customer But the truth is is that we're really going back to an error with all of this ai of specialization I think I think we're going back to it won't just be oh that person's a good branding person It's no that person's a branding strategist and their expertise is personal branding or their expertise is rebranding Or their expertise is retail branding. I think we're going in heading in that direction Uh, so so I was at a agency conference that was there was like a questionnaire that went out And that that was a trend that they were seeing as well And it and it really makes sense, right? Like you're trying to say i'm an expert in everything Nobody's the next you like you can't be right like there there's going to be things you're better at Force rank versus other things and you might do everything and you might be good at more than one thing But that's no way it's evaluating the authority expertise trust and experience you have to to kind of weight those things Exactly. Yeah, so yeah And it

and it and in a way it's limiting But in a way it opens all the doors for you because by limiting the options More of the doors open for the right customers who want exactly what you do to find you and realize oh That person has exactly what I want That's what i've been telling my sales team. I'm like look This is the deal. You know, you want that we're really good at here's here's where we can really shine and help And yeah, we can do those other things but you're getting distracted to build like a very customized bespoke deal That's going to drain a lot of time. That's not the really right fit for what we do Correct. Let's get the messaging the outreach like everything that we're doing to align with that because that is Our our bread and butter and and the right customer that we're expert at So why don't we make ourself more known and get more of those deals and then everybody wins? Yeah, and that's and that is and that's I think where this is going and I think that's what people have to start to Really recognize and then do the hard work of figuring out. Well, what is our brand? What is the entry to the door? What is our messaging? How are we doing at having consistency with that messaging across the board? Where do we need to re-up it? Where do we need to fine-tune it? Where do we need to shift it based on those mark or those micro changes in the market? And you know, that's that's work And every what I find is because I ceos say this to me all the time They like bring me in to help them do a big like rebrand or a re-up or you know And then they go I don't have the time and i'm like look you can't have both You can't get it done and not take the time to do it. I got a client who I love they're they're

fantastic Um, and they asked me to do a big pr thing for them to get them out there more right Not just for seo not just for ai but also just for like being able to have more marketing out there for them And so I did a really good job on the pr as I always do and I would call the ceo and go Okay, this person wants to interview. I don't have time. This person wants an article. I don't have time This guy wants you on his podcast. I don't have time and finalized the day and look The pr is not any good if when it comes in a reporter isn't going to go. Okay, well i'll wait a week and a half till he's not busy I go I you have to get these people move on super fast Like I get that email about they want to interview you I call you You got to say yes or no within an hour and I got to get back to them Like we've got to be on it and to his credit He finally got it and has started getting on top of it not because by the way he's a bad person or not caring He's just like everybody's so busy That he doesn't really understand and people don't understand It's a big commitment to really do this now the rewards once you've got it rolling are fantastic But on the front end it is a lot of work I mean even for myself, you know, like I just because i've always been an artist just on the side I mean i've done art shows and been an artist and sold work It's not how I make my living. It's not how I want to make my living But I realized okay, it's time for me to have an art website, you know Now i'm an expert not in the programming, but in the branding and the designing Matthew it took me months months of working on planes getting a little in

here getting in miller to finally get my art website up Right, so it's like all the upfront work was there But now that it's up when I want to apply for like an art thing It's so easy to do because I did all the upfront work But the upfront work took months and I think that's the part people either don't understand don't like or feel a conflict about Well, it's it's funny because the the thing that makes you unique or your business unique You have to define that that can't be like a prepackaged off the shelf No, and so that takes a lot of time to distill that what and one of the things you were saying about um, you know the the pr work what i've seen is like the follow-on after a big pr piece It is really beneficial, but you've got to be ready. There's the 24-hour news cycle Like if you don't jump on that stuff It's over so you you got it You've got to have the bandwidth to to be able to have it um, where I would love to take this conversation is is you talked about executive branding and then company branding and I would like to talk like enterprise branding I would love for you to kind of paint uh, like a a framework or or a roadmap for how executives need to think about personal branding as well as like how it interacts with their company so like six seven years ago, I wrote a book about how I kind of think that a small business owner Can attract new business through social media their personal brand their personal brand but but like fast forward six years Like there's been a there's like bigger companies executives at you know fortune 500s Like I would love to evolve that conversation to start talking about enterprise and how that might be different than the small business owner And and you've had that experience. So I love to kind of hear your frameworks Yeah, you know the interesting

thing is if you look at the research It is so clear that like like a lot of the edelman trust surveys if you look at the edelman trust surveys they really clearly show a link between people potential customers and customers clients Understanding the ceo's brand and how that impacts their feeling about the enterprise brand. There is a no question an unbelievably clear connection at this point in time Between those two things so one thing is I think ceo's and executives of of of enterprise companies have started to realize okay, there's a real connection here that has real impact on Three groups invest or four groups investors potential investors Current clients potential clients and employees and future employees Yeah, right? So your your brand as a ceo or as an executive in an enterprise is hugely important towards impacting those those groups those audiences Right, so that's one thing. I think people have gotten hip to that and realize that But I think the other thing that's happened is is executives realize they may not be with that company for 20 years Right, it's not like the old days that company might get bought by somebody else that company may go out of business Who knows that if their brand their personal brand isn't on the forefront? They're gonna find themselves going. Oh, I need to get a new gig and I have no brand and now they got to start from zero and you know run it up It's much better to have a longer runway Runway of that personal brand if you ever need it personally So I think it's I think it's a dual function. I think it's that it helps them in their own career and business life But I also think they're starting to see it's really impactful on the enterprise and so both of those roads Are what lead to rome now both of those roads are why a personal brand is really critical for an executive or a ceo I I agree. I agree 100% I I see it

and and we're seeing a lot of the big tech right like ceos build that personal brand Write that book and I mean it moves markets. I agree employee retention Uh as well as client retention like you're you're doing the whole job like from from kind of a pr standpoint Man, I I also feel like it's a big double-edged sword too Because if someone missteps, it's so public and that's like I mean like elon musk for example I mean, I I think he's brilliant but man his his stock price of his companies go up and down He's had a he's had a few missteps You know That that's a very interesting point because every once in a while i'll get a ceo who will call me and go I'm really concerned Uh, we need to address x y or z I need to personally say something about it on social but i'm worried that there's going to be Some people are going to take it the wrong way and I said do here's always my response Don't spend any time worrying that someone's going to take it the wrong way I guarantee you someone's going to take it the wrong way Like there is no such thing in the world we live in as the safety of putting something out no matter how Innocuous you think it is that someone somewhere won't get offended by it or take it the wrong way I have a client right CEO of a non-profit you have net she's an angel I mean you have never met a kinder more considerate more non-judgmental Loving kind human being in your entire life and I don't know She did some post on something that was completely Loving supportive whatever and she got a few people that got offended by it Right and she was like this makes no sense to me and I said no because it makes no sense Because if you put something out today, I guarantee you someone will take it the wrong way Misunderstand it. There's just no

way around that, you know If you if you're going to worry about that I'm not saying you shouldn't be conscientious and careful you should you should be thoughtful as a ceo or an executive About what you put out there But if you're gonna be like I don't ever want anything negative for anybody to interpret anything forget it Just don't even just don't even plan on being public because it just won't happen I guarantee you there are people listening to this conversation that you and I are having That will be offended by something we've said right and think it's just horrible Everybody has different perspectives the algorithm what's interesting with the data the algorithm is is Trying to put you in a echo chamber and it's trying to sift people out which causes A lot of people that that do have disagreement one of the things that you were saying was interesting There was a it was a couple years ago domino's pizza I don't know if you remember when the ceo went on tv Oh, yes read read the reviews publicly I mean that was like everybody told him brilliant like I mean No, don't do that and he owned it and he's like This is what people are saying pizza tastes like cardboard We're gonna redo the whole thing and even like burger king the you know The the king versus you're the king that right they had I mean People and compare that compare that to the way taylor farms has handled this whole lettuce Snafu, right? So, you know, there's and and that isn't to say by the way crises happen Despite everyone's best intentions or not crises has happened So you have to be able to know how to handle things in a crisis and recover, right? But there's a difference between a crisis and people just some people getting upset about something that they didn't like or thought it was the wrong thing So, you know, there's a there's a continuum and on the low end of the continuum is

you misspoke or somebody misunderstood And on this end of the continuum is you've really handled you've really stepped in it You know, it's like cracker barrel. They're a good example of really stepping in it and then having to walk it back Yeah, this conversation we're gonna not go further down this path because then people will definitely get offended Because I got a couple ideas of brands that that misstepped in in some certain areas That fair enough that were the very public but uh, maybe a offline conversation or guys green room I was gonna launch like a green room like the conversation. I like that. I like that idea Yeah, like I have after the camera goes off or before are always like the best conversations, right? And they're like you don't get that love it But um, I would love to hear um I feel like today a lot of businesses are thinking about doing like a brand refresher re-up Um or full-on brands launching I'm seeing a lot of online brands launch on social media like from zero to to to nothing like and uh I've seen it in in the consumer space. I i'm just curious Like when you're in the room in those conversations, what are the things that they're thinking about? And what are the things that you've seen that like they need to be thinking about that they might not be? You know that that depends if they are a brand that's been existing for a while And they're doing fine, but they realize there are these micro changes in the markets and sometimes macro changes in the markets and they need to address them Versus if they're starting Right from from nothing and they're building up Versus if they realize man We are just either made a huge mistake and really need to rebrand or We've we've written this wave for 30 years and we're it's done and we need to really create a new focus of our company, right? So the conversation shift a little bit and one

of the things that shifts is the pressure point So if you're a new company and you're starting out, you don't really feel a lot of pressure because nothing exists You're creating it from new right? But if you are on the other end of that spectrum, you've been in business like I have a client right now They've been in business for 30 years and their brand is really old the whole thing the messages the look the website It's all old right? Yeah, and so they feel more pressure because there's all these people nipping at their heels coming up And they're like wow, we better we better get caught up quick. So they feel a lot of pressure Okay, then you have people in the middle where they go. You know what? We just need to re-up. We don't want to rebrand We just need to re-up. We need to refresh They feel some pressure to do it But they don't feel that same pressure that people who are like really really behind do and the problem when you're really one of the conversations in the room When you're at that far end of the spectrum where you're really really behind and you have to do a total rebrand Is they want to do it quickly? So they have they really tend to want to make decisions fast Like we got to get this done. We got to write the book. We've got to redo the website And of course, let me just tell you that always ends up with them making a mistake that then they have to redo again So it's like that thing about it's you know measure twice cut once So it's like I always one of the conversations I always have in the room is I know you feel this pressure But don't allow you this pressure to have you make a mistake that you're just going to have to redo down the line again Like let's do it right the first time So I think that's one of the big conversations

that I end up in with in the room with So wait when you're in the room like who are the different stakeholders and where where does the pressure come from? Because like I would think like cfos kind of like we don't do we really need to do that and then it is like, uh, you know It depends on the company, but most of who hires me are the ceos The chief marketing officer or the ceo because they have realized they have to do this and they're driving the project So they've said to the chief financial officer. We are going to budget x amount of dollars for this, right? We are going to budget this amount of time for this we are going to do this and everybody's going to get with it So it's usually the ceo is in the room. Usually the cmo is in the room uh, usually if there's a head of um Like a head of product development or something. They're usually in the room Um, it's funny the cfos often are not in the room till after they've hired me and now i'm presenting the plan Yeah, no, I I you know, it it I guess it depends on the size of the company Yes, it does if you have if you have partners, right? Like it's at a company. Yeah It has partners like different people have different opinions Yes, I have a client right now who has partners and my work started with all the partners and all like the initial Assessment was with all the partners. The off-site was with all the partners. I presented the plan to all the partners All the partners had to buy in, you know, so the ceos there But I had to really do it with the ceo and all the partners a hundred percent Yeah I would I would love to hear kind of what industries do you see? Having like the most need to change maybe with everything with the ai like there's a lot of businesses I feel

like like you just said that have been the market leader, right? They've been the market leader for a long time And now there's all these line extensions. There's other people kind of taking parts of of the value chain And and these big business businesses that had this big mode of trust in their name And and like some of these platforms online and websites like I can name names that of businesses I deal with them like Your financial trading platform Needs to get updated It needs to get updated and And yeah, so my honest answer to that question is given the world we live in We First of all given the world we live in Everyone needs to be thinking about what are the re-ups they need to do on their brand every year? You know, what are those tweaks that people need to do and maybe it's just a tweak to your messaging? Maybe it's tweaked to your social maybe it's a tweak to how it looks like everyone needs to be asked I mean to be honest, that's why I wrote this next book, you know re-up your brand which isn't out yet But is is written and we're you know, it's in the process It's because it got clear to me that everybody regardless of if they're a one-person business or a fortune 500 enterprise company Needs to and everything in between needs to be asking that self that question because that's the world we live in, right? So that's kind of one answer But the other answer is there are some industries that are really hit pretty hard and I will say that one of them I think is Is retail? I think retail has changed so dramatically that if you are not on top of What is going on and where you need to rebrand and re-up and retail you're just you just get behind I mean, you know sears filing for bankruptcy. I mean, there's so many examples, right? So I think that's that's one place the other place that

I think is really interesting is legal tax accounting and consulting like my field of consulting I feel like majorly because structurally we're the worst positioned because efficiency with ai directly cannibalizes revenue, you know ai makes work faster it threatens revenue Especially if pricing is dependent on hours build and you know Like 78 of clients today or corporate clients are saying ai's enabled like quality improvements So, you know providers as a provider like those marketing agencies as service agencies You know, we have got to really come to grips with that. There's things that we used to do that ai can do There's things it can't do and there's places where we still need to work in partnership with ai But I think legal services businesses right legal tax accounting consulting marketing agencies I think we're big industries that are ripe for these kind of reinventions Yeah, and and one of the thing that uh, i've seen in the data is that they don't necessarily want Stuff for less. They just want more for the same cost. Correct. They want more efficiency They want more efficiency, you know, and it's interesting because I I use ai in my work, but I always tell my clients here's exactly how i'm using ai You know I'm using it like this. I'm not using like this like it's interesting because my for my my artist website that I just put up right I didn't want to spend ten thousand dollars with a web designer It's not a business business that I make a lot. You know what i'm saying? It's more like a hobby It's like a side gig. So I want to spend that kind of money Now i'm not a programmer either. So I knew I need my guy to program. So here's what I did Because i'm a brand strategist because i'm a color strategist because i'm a writer, right? Because I already have my logo and all of that I worked with ai to design all the landing pages for my website You know, it's like

I art directed ai instead of art directing a person and i'd give it what I wanted It would come back and i'd go no do this move that here Make this like that till I got every single landing page. I wanted which I wrote it used all my design work Then I said put it in an html Then I gave it to my programmer and I said great. Can you go build me a website? So it it he still got work. It was fast for him He made good money on the short amount of time it took him But that's the way that like I used ai so it's not that we don't use ai in those businesses It's that what's the way we're using them being disclosing a hundred percent to the client the way we're using I think that's so important like my clients have asked me straight out Are you using ai to write any of this and i'll say Yes, but I don't just give it to ai and ask it to write it. I interview you I edit it I do my own writing on it. Then I give it to ai and say what did I miss? How could it be improved? Is there you know what I give it to that and then it gives it back to me and then I re-edit it So when I explain my process to people they're like, okay great cool fine So it's I think that's a really critical part of this is that we have to learn how to use ai in every business As a partner not a replacement but as a partner to great greater efficiencies Yeah, I mean you got to remember these are coding agents that became like kind of chatbots like there So there's totally there's there's different routes but also if you don't know how to use it or you don't have that expertise driving it like kind of navigating it You're you're you're going to make even greater mistakes. I've seen ai make

so many strikes. So you got to have Human in the loop there. There's a lot to to to definitely um consider when You're you're leveraging ai. I um I thought of one thing that I don't I want to for I don't want to forget to Ask that I wrote down you were talking about earlier the micro changes Yeah, that and you got to be managing your brand and making decisions every year and i'm you know in my head i'm starting to go Okay, what what is like the checklist? What is the monitoring? What are what are the analytics behind that? Like when when you say maybe it's personal, maybe it's business I don't know how you break the buckets or you can say b2b versus uh retail or or direct to consumer Um, and then even professional might be even categorized differently, but What are the kpis that people need to be monitoring? I mean for example, there are there are micro changes in pricing and packaging You know, there there are micro changes in in what things cost i'll give you a perfect example It's a silly example, but I think it'll make the point There is a small boutique business that I have shopped at for 20 or 25 years, right? And whenever i'm in town in the bay area, I go to this boutique one. I like supporting small businesses, right? To their they have great clothes. They buy beautifully and you know If i'm not buying on sale, it's always it's full price, right? They're not cheap, but they're you know It's a choice, but they're the same as like if I go to a department store to buy that particular brand, right? Nordstrom rack went out of business. I don't know if you saw that. I think did they go out of business? No, I didn't say are they are there no more Nordstrom? They just filed for bankruptcy Someone mentioned that to me and passed Wow Interesting. Okay, so and I went there the other day and I bought

a pair of jeans and I brought them home and coincidentally one of my my girlfriends Said to me she said, oh, I just bought those jeans and she bought them at Nordstrom And she looked at the tag and she said wow these are like Forty dollars more than they are at Nordstrom and I said were they on sale? She said no So we just did a little googling on the internet and sure enough Every other boutique every other place They were forty dollars or thirty dollars less forty dollars less now is thirty or forty dollars a big deal Not really, but it's it's the principle of the thing and it's still thirty or forty dollars, right? Okay, I mean these days it's a can of soup and a banana at the grocery store So so I I emailed the woman who I've known for 20 years and I said hey I was in there I love that everything's great, but by the way, this is what happened How would you feel about refunding the the difference you know the thirty forty dollars And she did refund it, but I had a conversation on the phone with her and she was She was less than gracious about it She was like well i'm a small business and da da da da da da da And at one point I said to her listen you shouldn't do anything. You don't want to do I i'm not going to press you But do you feel like all the business i've given you all over the years makes a difference in that? She said yes, but if we buy less so then we get this and I thought she's not paying attention To the micro change in pricing that's gone on In the war in the in the world of this kind of clothing, right? Now she's a good person. I like her i'll still go to the store But my point is is that that's an example of where there's a micro change in pricing And there's a

micro change in pricing because what can you do you can pick up your phone And you can put in the name of the item and you will get 50 places and you can see what those 50 places are charging So on the retail side, it's super interesting like yeah, you can you can get comparisons And I for the first time Started and you know, everybody does high low pricing or whatever But I I I got like a target app right and like yeah use stuff on the walmart app because Amazon or whatever I was buying with It was way higher like way higher Yep. Yeah, and so it it people are becoming more savvy shoppers and so Having exactly experience or like really like we talked about at the beginning. What is the specialization? Why are you different? Maybe it's because you come in and they they they help consult what looks good on your body or This or that like and then and then and all of that's legitimate, right? But it's like it's like I think she's a little irritated because she doesn't understand the micro change that's happened in the market around pricing, right? No, absolutely You know, it's like another micro changes around discoverability. We talked about this earlier, you know The the way discoverability has changed and when you ask and ai is going to give like I cannot tell you How many calls I get now where people call me who I don't know and I say well, how did you find me? Did you get referred and they go? No, I asked claude who's an expert in rebranding and your name came up or who's an expert in personal branding and your name came up Right, that's a micro change in mark in what's happened in the market So so circle up on that and kind of we'll wrap close to that And and I want to give you a time to kind of talk about what you're doing and for people to follow you um is um

We saw that change. We saw that market change. We jumped on that Three years plus ago, whatever. I don't know the exact time, but There was a lot of pushback in the industry and going like It's just seo It's it's really no different. Uh, the the traffic is just nothing And google's traffic keeps growing. Well, I mean the traffic keeps growing because it's bots Looking at right sites That's why it keeps growing and there was this huge lag Uh, and and it's funny. We we get consistently the same thing people calling us like we started uh working with companies Uh in english-speaking countries around the world that they were finding us through through ai and i'm talking Yeah, not small companies either and the data Like I was looking at the trends or the micro changes of where it was going And I was looking at like my mom was one of the first employees at microsoft Like I saw what the internet did where it was going online on demand videos Like i'm like this is not like just something that's going to happen and go away This is a huge trend and and we need to become experts in it Now and yeah, it was it was a big commitment to shift And it's starting to pay quite a bit of dividends and I think people are starting to catch up Because they're looking at snapshots of the current market of of where it's at going Oh, this segment is growing Pretty significantly now. I think it's over 40%. It was like under 10% when we went all in on this, you know Yeah, and and that and that ability and and that's my point when people are actually paying attention to the micro changes They will often see things Before they've hit, you know that that big wave and that's that's what's key about it So so karen we're we're close to time here I wanted to uh, give you an opportunity to to to share your company and how people can

follow you But I also wanted to hear from you You know the the title of the the podcast is the unknown secret of internet marketing unknown secrets of internet marketing And so I would love to hear from you What are some unknown secrets you feel like or things that people? Just tend to miss consistently Maybe on the personal side and on the rebranded company side just so Uh, we have that for the audience and it gives them something actionable to look Okay, well what she want me to do first the the kind of okay, so i'll i'll get the logistics out of way So people can always reach me at karenleeland.com or sterlingmarketinggroup.com either one and if they google me They always come up and we're gonna put those links in the show notes everybody great great the book isn't out yet But uh, but please look for it, you know It's going to be re-up your brand and we don't know who the publishers yet. We're working on it We're working on getting the publisher we want Um, the current book is the brand mapping strategy which you can get on amazon And you know people can always just reach out to me via my website if they have questions if they want to talk about You know how to rebrand either a personal rebrand or a company re-up or rebrand um, here's one secret This is now a lot of people disagree with this. You don't need to do 10 channels for promotion and marketing If you do eat just one even really really well That can that can work Like if if your customers are on linkedin and you just do linkedin to the hilt and you focus on that And you make that great and you're like one of the best people in your industry on linkedin You could just do that. I don't mean you you don't have to do other kinds of marketing But I mean you don't have to be on 8 million social media sites You don't

have to be on facebook and instagram and dis it you have to do one Really really deep and consistently and well and I think most people don't know that They think they have to be on everything and you don't You don't and is that would you say that that's the same for businesses as well? Or how that's that's a hundred percent for businesses? I I can't how many tell many businesses I have seen that just go you know what we're just going to focus on this one Because that's the where most of our clients are and we're not going to worry about all those other socials and made incredible strides Awesome guys, you you heard it here with uh, karen timber leland tyber tyber tyber tyber tyber tyber everybody tyber uh, remember that. Um, and Thank you all so much for listening. Ewr digital does sponsor this podcast make it all happen Uh, and make it free for everyone. So please go leave a review. Please go check us out Uh, if you want to grow your business with the largest most powerful tool on the planet the internet uh, keep listening to this podcast and Uh, stay tuned for the next show until the next time. My name is matt bertram. Bye. Bye for now You