Building a Resilient Small Business: AI, Authenticity, and Smart Digital Tactics

In the age of AI, people are looking for an authentic relationship and an authentic contact with their business owners and with their products or services.

And you'll be surprised how engaging that is if you just have video of your entrepreneurial business owner talking to someone in a way that's authentic.

We had a friend that has an SEO company and all he does is 15 to 20 minute videos of him walking his dog every day during tips and tricks on SEO on how to leverage AI and SEO to your business.

His followership has exploded.

That video of you just talking in the car, talking in your kitchen, having a walk around your blocks as the day is ending, sharing your day, that is very engaging content.

And you'll soon realize you'll find your tribe break through the noise by being authentic.

Don't follow that script, that trite script that it's just you see it right away.

You're not in competition with AI.

You're in competition with businesses who are leveraging AI.

Mmm, that's good.

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Deister.

If you ever wanted to do effective digital marketing strategies but just can't get the results you're looking for, are you struggling small business to up with AI and the new digital marketing trends this week is for you.

And once you're done, you will have the tips and tricks to run effective digital marketing strategies.

Just comment below on what you're looking forward to in this episode.

With me is Roberto Martinez and he is an advocate for business equipping owners with the latest digital tech and AI to help them thrive in new digital landscape.

He worked with Amazon, Google, TikTok, Meta for the past nine years, scaling business to seven figure growth.

Welcome to the show.

Audio.

Oh, hello.

Good afternoon, good morning, good night, good evening.

My name is Roberto.

Great being here.

And just a quick correction.

I'm still working with Amazon, still working with Google, I'm still working with TikTok.

So yes, very excited to chat with y'.

All.

And Brett, thank you for having me.

You're welcome.

No worries.

And first question is all my guest is, are you coffee or tea drinker?

I'm both.

You love them both.

One over the other.

I think it just depends on the day of the week.

I love coffee but find a place for mate if you guys ever had mate before just because some really powerful stuff there and it helps you burn a lot of fat.

So just depends on the day.

That's fair.

Sometimes you need more coffee than tea and sometimes you just need more Tea than coffee.

That's right.

And I gave a brief summary of your expertise.

Can you give your listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Yeah, happy to.

A little context of who I am and what I do.

I've been running a marketing agency for the past 15 years.

I started with a big agency, realized, hey, the small to medium sized businesses need a little bit more care, love and attention than the bigger Fortune 500 companies.

So I created this agency really focused on helping small to medium sized businesses grow and scale.

I partner with some great tech companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, most recently Tech Talk to bring those tools to our small business community leaders, our startups, so they could be able to scale and grow.

And I'm what's considered a California Google coach.

I've been doing that for Google for the past nine years.

I've been a mentor for the BBA for the Amazon Black Business Accelerator for the past two and a half years.

I've worked with TikTok for the past year and a half to bring the TikTok shop tools, tips and tricks to rural communities across the United States.

So my whole mission is to help small businesses understand how to leverage these technologies for growth and scale.

Latest being AI and generative AI.

Gotcha.

And you've helped a wide range of small businesses level up their digital presence.

So what are the three most essential digital marketing strategies you you believe every small business should prioritize in 2025?

Know your message, know who you are as a company and what your value proposition is.

Once you know your fit and your niche and who you are, everything else becomes secondary.

It becomes easier to do.

And so the one tool that obviously everyone would want to talk about is leveraging video content across from mediums.

You're doing this now with this podcast, but if you're a small business, if you're a startup, you have to get your message out there and you have to do it in a way that's easy to digest.

There's no better than generative AI leveraging that tool, video content tool, to really scale your business, scale your messaging.

Once you know that truth, that one thing my former boss would call your basic truth, your basic reality as a business owner of why you exist.

Got you.

And speaking of AI, because we could never get away from this one, AI tools or platforms, which ones do you recommend?

Because there is a plethora of them, there are a ton of them popping up every single day and it gets overwhelming, especially for small businesses.

So which one do you like?

Recommend for them to actually utilize because they're not all the same and all of them do something better than the other one.

No, I completely understand that.

So I think it's the right tool for the right job.

So understanding what you're trying to accomplish is really important.

So if you're doing social, there's no better platform, there's no better tool than Cap Cut, especially for digestible, consumable, very engaging video content.

So for me, Capcot is the way to go.

The second one obviously is either one of those generative AI tools like Gemini or GPT.

Those two tools are fantastic.

To really help you have an assistant there that you can communicate with, you can share content with, you can communicate what you're trying to accomplish and have a second thought leader in your business to help you grow and scale.

And then for just general video content, Nvidia does a great job as well.

So it just depends what you're trying to accomplish.

But nothing beats capcut when it comes to social media content.

Nothing beats generative AI tools like Gemini and GPT.

And then if you're just trying to get content out there, longer form content in video is really good as well.

And so what are some of the most exciting or unappreciated trends in digital marketing you think small business should watch or experiment with this year?

This year's almost over, so I think we're thinking about next year.

It's just amazing how fast this year has gone.

But the trend that I see is the founder becoming more focused on communicating the message directly to the consumer.

Doesn't matter if you're B2B or B2C, really getting the entrepreneur to be the face of the company is something that I've seen work very well.

I think in the age of AI, people are looking for an authentic relationship and an authentication contact with their business owners and with their products or services.

And you'll be surprised how engaging that is if you just have video of your entrepreneurial business owner talking to someone in a way that's authentic.

We had a friend that has an SEO company and all he does is 15 to 20 minute videos of him walking his dog every day, sharing tips and tricks on SEO on how to leverage AI and SEO to grow your business.

His followership has exploded.

So getting comfortable with sharing yourself, sharing your journey, your struggle has really paid dividends.

At least this year got you.

And when you talk about AI video as well, people kind of get this frazzled look because video is another beast.

And people just don't understand that your phone is probably the best video tool you actually have.

So should it be just using your actual phone camera to actually just shoot video?

Because I think people get a little too hung up on the actual gear and tech and don't really understand how simple it is just to do something.

Yeah, I think you know that on the head with folks are using any and every excuse not to get started.

And so they're like, what kind of microphone should I use, what kind of camera, what kind of team should I put around me?

And the truth is now when your phone is a amazing tool to get you in front of as many followers as possible, I would say start slow, start comfortable.

Even those 15 to 30 second videos introducing yourself, I think joining organizations that allow you to interface with directly to consumers and create content for you in video format allows you to repurpose that content and then promote it out so you could see the value.

And then once you understand the value of those videos that are driving engagement for your customer, are driving loyalty for your customer, then you be a little bit more.

Well, first to invest into talent and invest into the tools.

But that video of you just talking in the car, talking in your kitchen, having a walk around your block as the day is ending, sharing your day, that is very engaging content.

And you'll soon realize you'll find your drive got you.

And so marketing success can feel a little abstract.

Basically.

Category from B2C to B2B.

So what key metrics or indicators do you believe really matter for small or resourceful constraint teams?

And how do you help clients measure meaningful progress?

Brett, you nails on the head.

What gets a measure gets done.

And nowadays we have zero excuse to not know what our actions and what our energy and what our investment is paying out.

What is the dividend for our investment?

So you can jump into unit economics and understand what's their customer acquisition cost.

How many impressions do I need to get before I get warmly to an actual sale?

So now the guessing game has gone the way of the dinosaur in most parts because of, because of being able to communicate your value across multiple channels, across multiple mediums and track that success.

And so I always tell everyone it's important for you to be on, but not every channel is the right channel for you as a business owner.

So identifying that and there's very easy if you're doing paid ads, video, paid ads, the return on investment is very clear.

You already have a ton of benchmarking done for you by using the generative AI tools like Gemini bt and they'll tell you, here's your benchmark here's how many people should be clicking on your video.

Here's the average cost per acquisition, here's your convergency rate.

And so you'll have a pretty good understanding of what you should be shooting for.

But even before that, I think it's number one rule is know why.

Like, why are we doing this?

Start with the why.

And are you trying to drive brand awareness?

Are you trying to drive leads?

Are you trying to drive brand loyalty?

And once you understand your why of why you're running these social media content campaigns or paid ad video campaigns or creating this video content, you'll very easily be able to back up to those KPIs and make sure that your team is hitting those KPIs.

But there's nowhere to hide anymore.

You know exactly what you should be hitting.

You should know exactly how much sales should be coming in through your funnel.

And if it's not, then we need to get in there and identify where the leaks are.

And you said that AI isn't a magic bullet, it's the plumbing.

So what does that mean for someone trying to build a simple, effective and resilient system today for marketing?

Yeah, it's just like any other tool.

It's how you use.

The tool, I think from my standpoint is making an assessment.

I always audit every single channel we're using to identify where our leads are coming from.

And so if you're just starting off, there's nothing better than using the multimodal generative AI tools like JBT and Gemini to do an assessment of your business.

Just say, hey, you're a business consultant that really is focused on helping businesses like mine, industry, sector, grow and scale.

Here's some data that I have from Google Analytics.

Here's some data that I have for Meta.

Here's some data that I have from my revenue for the past quarter.

What am I doing right?

What am I doing wrong?

How can I improve?

That simple starting point is going to help you understand how you can improve, or at least where the leak is.

And so understanding that as a starting point is really helpful.

And then once you have that information, you can start identifying what the best channel is for you to communicate.

There's nothing worse than having good money go after bad money.

In other words, just marketing for the sake of marketing, not understanding what channel you should be in, not understanding who your ideal customer base is.

And so taking a step back, doing a quick assessment.

Nowadays, one of the tools that we launched is called Smart.

That tool allows us to assess your business within five minutes.

It's very powerful because your data is online and your competitors data is online.

And now we have generative AI that allows us to pull that information and provide you a very quick assessment of what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and where your opportunities lie.

And so it's SWOT analysis by any other name.

But now we're on steroids because of the AI tools that are available to us.

And it seems like, at least through LinkedIn that I've looked through that SEO is having a confusion state right now.

There's SEO, there's GEO, there's AEO.

So for small businesses just trying to figure out how to do all this and not get complicated with all the other acronyms that even to me I'm like, I don't even know what these mean half the time.

So what is your best assessment on not freaking out about all the new stuff?

Yeah, no, I think not that they should be freaking out.

Never.

That's never the answer.

It's understanding.

Okay, have we started an SEO campaign?

Do we know what that means?

I think a founder needs to have a deep understanding of the basics.

So you should be a deep understanding on your finances and your operation.

That's where everything starts.

Once you have those, everything else is know enough to be dangerous.

And SEO is one of those things that you have to know enough to be dangerous.

What does search engine optimization mean?

Am I having a high search authority within my website?

Have I connected my search engine search console for Google?

Have I connected my Google Analytics?

Do I understand what keywords and key phrases are ranked for?

Do I want to rank for other keywords and key phrases?

Because I want to own this specific space, this specific industry, this specific product.

And then once you understand that, then you can put energy behind content creation.

But for me, it's very simple.

It comes down to what does my customer care about?

And once you know what your customer cares about, okay, I know he cares about these subject matters, these products or services, I'm just going to talk about those products and services in an authentic manner.

Create content around that and the SEO should take care of itself.

Now, when it comes to AI and making sure you pop up on AI overview on the Google Search or pop up in jbt, that's a little bit more nuanced.

And I think most small businesses revenueing A million to 10 million aren't in that space just yet where they need to be worried about that.

I think you should just keep worrying about, am I reaching my customer?

Am I informing my customer with the information they care about.

Am I creating content that really speaks to their needs in an authentic way, that speaks to what value I'm providing them.

And so digital marketing can feel like it's crowded and very competitive.

But what are some of your most effective tactics for helping a business stand out and authentically connect with its audience online?

Yeah, break the script.

We keep talking about this.

Right now we're living through a very unique.

I've never seen anything like this.

It's just there's so much junk out there right now in the marketplace and it's just, it's amazing.

Some folks are using the AI tools to just create a ton of content.

And from my standpoint, the business owner who is able to communicate in an authentic, real manner that's ever to understand the pain point of the customer and talk through that pain point of how their product or service is going to benefit them, it's going to win out and it's just own your space, own your voice, break through the noise by being authentic.

Don't follow that script, that trite script that it's just, you see right away with some of these business owners, you're just like, they don't really care about the customer, they're just putting out content as opposed to.

We call it play.

But we just had a whole workshop on this in this national conference where now because of AI, you're allowed to play a little bit more.

You can create AI songs for your business.

You can make some amazing high quality videos that really speak to your value and in your own voice, in your own way that really galvanizes your base and inspires your perspectives and break through that noise by breaking into the authentic.

No one's going to respond to you if you're like, hey, how's it going?

Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

You got to get away from that.

You got to get away from everything that's been scripted, that's been tried and true, and speaking your own voice.

And I think that is going to pay dividends regardless.

If you're a marketing agency or a B2B company, it won't matter.

You have to speak with authenticity.

Now AI is forcing us all to come out of our shelves and really show up in a way that connects and reconnects to that human experience.

And so from a brand storytelling to customer reviews, how do you recommend small businesses leverage user generated content?

Because that is part of the mix.

And it also helps you not create as much content because you're using your customers to help facilitate more of your marketing.

Strategy.

So how would you utilize that so you free up more time for your other side of your business, which is growing your business.

Yeah, you bring up a good point with ugc.

So there's low hanging fruit, right?

You have your Google business profile, you have your Facebook business profile, you might have your IG business profile.

You have all this content available to you and reviews are coming in.

Leverage those reviews, create content around those reviews.

And then if you have champions, which we highly suggest when we talk about champions, it's folks that love your brand, love your product or your service, and empowering them to speak on your behalf.

The true measure of your brand is what people say when you leave the room, not when you're actually in the room.

And so giving them the tools and capability to do that is phenomenal.

Especially on the TikTok side, there's some amazing campaigns you could do and programs and elements within the TikTok shop where you can literally hire micro influencers to speak on your behalf, to speak on your product's behalf.

And that creates brand loyalty because you're not the one pushing the product.

It's actually people who love your product speaking about the product in a way that's authentic and real.

It goes back to just like all businesses, all politics is local, all business is local.

Nowadays we see some great success with restaurants, and you see this happening now more than ever.

Local restaurants hiring local influencers that really understand their market, speak about the market.

And the price point is very competitive.

You're not going to break the bank hiring someone that has 10, 15, 20,000 followers, but those followers are based in your hometown, in your home city, so it will drive traffic to your restaurant.

Now, the challenge you have is to follow up on that success and create memorable experiences when they do experience your brand.

And it also could be utilizing podcasts too, because again, you don't have to be a guest and know what you're talking about, but you don't have to actually create the content as much.

And you could utilize that for helping the podcaster grow, but also helping you establish your experience or your niche within the small business.

Well, to.

In our perspective, when we set up podcasts for campaigns and clients, that's because we want to position them as thought leaders within the marketing space.

So we see that right now with I'm based out of Los Angeles, Olympics are coming, FIFA's coming, and certain international corporations want to be seen as thought leaders within their specific industry.

So what does that mean?

That means getting them in front of the right people with the Right audience.

And podcast is the perfect way of doing that.

But it's also sometimes you need to go to those city meetings and just show face.

And so understanding who your target audience, it comes back to, who's my target audience and what's the goal?

Is it brand building?

Is it brand reputation, brand equity?

If that's the case, then something like a medium like podcast will really do a good job amplifying and scaling your voice, but it's not going to drive sales.

It's one of those things that, hey, I want to be seen as a thought leader.

Here's my credentials and I'm not the one saying it.

All these other channels are saying that I am a thought leader.

So there's definitely a place for podcasting.

And the more you do it, the more you realize the value that this ecosystem plays in the growth of brand reputation.

And so, looking ahead, how do you see the role of AI and automation evolving in the day to day realities of small business marketing?

Value add, it's all about value add.

So it's going to get you 90% of the way you provide that added value.

And most businesses think it's a magic bullet.

They're going to do everything.

I have countless businesses come up to me and say I wanted to do five different things all at the same time without me having any input.

And that's just not the reality.

Where we're at, maybe in five years we'll be there.

But at this moment, I would tell you, work on your operations.

Whatever hiccups or constraints you have, bring in the AI tool to help you.

So it's workflow by any other name.

What is my workflow?

How do I improve my workflow?

How do I streamline my workflow?

And then is there a tool out there that can help me streamline this workflow?

Most of the time, AI is one of those tools that allows you to run more efficiently and effectively, lowering your overhead, lowering your operational costs, and identifying 2 or 3 or 5 or 10, depending on the market size.

Entrepreneurs or employers that can give you that extra 10%.

Either you outsource it or you bring it in house.

And so what we're seeing is the businesses who are really doing a great job with understanding how to leverage AI are those businesses that get 90% of the way there with AI and then keep a small and agile workforce that is able to add that 10% added value to the business owner.

A very clear example would be in the space of brand development, if you're creating a brand logo and a style Guide and all that simple stuff.

You get AI to create concepts for you, present it out to the customer and then bring in your hotshot designer to take those concepts and take the feedback of the customer and create some amazing logos and brands for that customer.

So it gets you 80 to 90% there and then you bring in the expert to add that additional value.

Yeah, just don't do what Cracker Barrel did and just decide that was the logo.

But you know what?

I think it was more of a stunt.

I think know your audience is another one.

And so not that good.

Odd publicity is good publicity, but it sure looked like a stunt to me.

And if you just take a step back and this is a whole other conversation, Brett, that we can talk about in the future time, which I would love to dive into.

Private equity is wrecking house.

It really is.

And so why are they doing this?

Because commercial real estate, right, you want everything to look the same in case that business goes under.

You could still sell the property back in 1980s, like 70s, 80s, 90s, to some extent, 2000s.

You have very unique looking buildings.

So that used to be a Taco Bell or McDonald's or adult taco and now they want it all to look the same in case that specific property goes under.

You could bring in a new tenant.

And so we lose some of that authenticity as I was mentioning it, because private equity is just trying to make a quick dollar and there's definitely a place for private equity, but it really hurts brands and it really hurts the consumer, especially when that brand has so much equity in it and you're just going to throw it away because a consultant from Goldman Sachs told you to do.

I don't understand it, but maybe it's because I didn't go to the schools that they went to and it's all about making that 2%, 3% margin above what they're already making.

So I think that's a big challenge that a lot of corporations are facing and it's affecting smaller businesses because now you're having corporate private equity come in and buy out mom and pop shops, electricians, plumbers even.

It's just I'm somewhat nervous for that type of future on what's going to happen when we all become cookie cutters.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

But for right now, we'll be watchful about what's going on.

So finally, is there any personal aha moment or business pivot in your journey that changed the way you think about digital marketing for small businesses?

Oh yeah.

I Think, especially when you're touching your customer consistently and continuously and when your frontline staffers is touching that customer continuously, that feedback loop, that flywheel is extremely important.

And if you're an entrepreneur, you're always getting aha moments but it's really understanding what is the pain point that they're seeing.

And matching that pain point with the current market trend is extremely important.

So from our side, what we're seeing right now because of the Olympics and FIFA is there's a need to upscale subcontractors and match them with primes.

And so how do you do that at scale?

How do you create great powerful capability, build for those subcontractors so they could reach and get, you know, even the contract for a subcontractor of 5 million, 3 million is life altering.

And so those realizations come from understanding the pain points of those small business owners.

And you have to listen to your customer, you have to read the negative reviews and positive reviews to see what you're doing wrong and what opportunity there is in the marketplace.

And I think every downturn the market provides a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and you see it time and again.

You cut the fat and you identify who are real players in the marketplace.

And that allows for a lot of upside, especially if you have liquidity on hand.

People this episode, they're wondering where can they find you online to learn more?

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn.

I do a post a month on thought leadership subjects that we just talked about.

My agency is called Braven Agency.

We have that AI assessment that's free for most businesses at this moment.

It's called Smarts Co we literally got AI and we matched them with marketing and operational specialists, the human in the loop.

And it provides an assessment within five minutes for you to identify where your pain points are and what your growth opportunities are.

Amazing success there.

We've seen revenue on average of 15% bump within two quarters.

Some businesses take those assessments and really run with it and we've seen some impressive growth in the triple digit.

So yeah, find me on LinkedIn.

Go directly to our website.

You can email me at robertavenagency as well.

Happy to work with you guys.

If you guys are LA or southwestern United States, there's a lot of free programs that I manage for the city, the state, the county and turn banking foundation.

So happy to help in any way I can.

Any final thoughts for listeners?

First and foremost, Brad, like to thank you for creating a space where we are going to communicate and talk to our entrepreneurs to help them to grow.

So I appreciate you creating this space for us.

No worries and thank you for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brewing sharing your knowledge on AI digital marketing for small businesses.

Yeah happy to be here and keep adopting, keep playing with the tools.

You're not in competition with AI, you're in competition with businesses who are leveraging AI.

And thank you for listening as always just comment below what you've learned and what was so great about this episode.

But also thank you for listening and please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps.

Leave A five star review would just help with the rankings.

Let me know how I'm doing and join me next week as I talk to another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry.

All right guys, stay safe.

Get to understanding how AI can help automate your workflow and make it better and how your digital marketing can be better for small businesses and see you next week Later.