Marketing, AI & Personal Branding: What Every Business Needs to Know with Jaki Kackert

Allen Kopelman: Welcome to the Biz2Biz podcast, your number one source for all business news. If you're using Stripe Square, PayPal or QuickBooks, there's a good chance you're overpaying every single month. NPS One gives you lower fees. Smart invoicing, ACH payments and real customer support, not chatbots. Make the switch and keep more of your money. Link in Description welcome to the Biz2Biz podcast, your number one source for all business news. Hey everybody. Welcome to Today's episode of B2B Vault. Call at the Biz to Biz podcast. We're doing a special green sheet edition today and talk about payment processing and marketing. And B2B Vault is sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems and our new gateway and smart invoicing tool called NPS1. If you want to see a demo or watch a webinar and learn about our products, go to nationwide paymentsystems.com Today's guest, Jackie Kakart from Kakart M Marketing. And welcome to the show, Jackie.

Jaki Kackert: Thank you, Alan. It's so great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Allen Kopelman: So tell us a little bit about yourself and Kakart Marketing.

Jaki Kackert: Sure. Um, I have been in marketing for um, quite a long time. My experience is um, vast and varied. Um, over the years, um, so, um, worked with large corporations, a lot of Fortune 100, 200 companies, um, from Disney to Fiserv, um, and to Intuit, um, and most recently, um, in the last decade or so took the directive of taking my, um, my experience on the road as a consultant. And so have been working primarily over the past decade or so with small, um, businesses and really focusing um, mostly in the payments industry and in fintech, but also helping small businesses market their products or services, um, out to their clients or prospective clients and really kind of keeping um, the small guy in mind when trying to make robust marketing services with the little guy in mind. So that is, that is where I've been for the past long while.

Allen Kopelman: Okay. So for the last two years I was doing a column in the Green Sheet called Street Smarts and wrote columns. And now just Jackie is taking that over and I think your first couple columns have come out. And you know, I was, I'm going to tell my little Green sheet story and then you can tell how you found the Green sheet.

Jaki Kackert: Great.

Allen Kopelman: So I got into payment processing. I worked for a company in Miami and uh, had to go get some equipment. There was some sitting around the uh, the facility and it's. And the guy who ran that company, Riyadh, who later opened JR's POS depot.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah. Yep.

Allen Kopelman: So I met Riyadh and he handed me two copies of the Green Sheet and he said, you look like a smart guy, you should read this magazines. And it was a thin magazine and today it's electronic online only. But it was a thin magazine on green paper. And I started to educate myself about the business and figured out how to start my own company. And I always tell Riyadh it's all his fault. So shout out to Riyadh. He sold his company but his son is still in the business and his sister worked for the people that took it over. And then later at some point, you know, I remember Paul Green wrote some books about payment processing. I read those and I got to meet him one time and we. He actually was trying to. He coined the uh, terminology mls Merchant level salesperson.

Jaki Kackert: Mhm.

Allen Kopelman: And um, you know today that's still being used the merchant mls. And you know he tried to start naopp which was going to be an educational and sort of a trade group slash organization of agents, you know to kind of say that we all belong to this group of professional payments agents. But that never like panned out to, to do anything and fizzled out. And then later the ETA came along with the CPP program which I'm not a big fan of as they don't really promote it so that business owners know what a CPP is. I wrote an article about that and um, you know my focus when I wrote the if you're enjoying the show, make sure you follow B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. We break down payments, point of sale, business trends, AI and interview leaders from every industry. New episodes, drop weekly hit subscribe and join the community link and description articles was about all different things about marketing, personal branding, what's going on in the business. Where do we see like shifts and like what pe, you know, what merchants are buying and things like that. So what, what's your story about how you found the Green Sheet?

Jaki Kackert: Well, um, as. As working in the business and I really started in this business with Card Service International so came on to Chuck's organization at the time in, in a marketing and my first introduction with Green Sheet was as the marketing. One of the marketing managers is the advertising campaigns that we had and that was obviously the Green sheet was um, one of the highlights and one of the magazines that we, we really did strive to um, have marketing in because the fact that it was so well respected within the industry. Um you know that green, that green magazine that came every two weeks um was well read by um everyone we worked with, the industry, the merchants, Reddit, the ISO, you know MLS's agents, resellers as they were called at the time. Um everybody um, really thought highly of the content in the magazine and it was well respected. So our advertising campaigns um, were prominent in, in that magazine. So got to really learn about the, the newspaper, you know about the publication and the people behind it. And then just as I stayed within the industry, um working for E Processing Network, um, working for as Card Surface morphed into um, you know Fiserv and First Data and then back and forth through those organizations, um just keeping in touch with folks and then working for E Processing Network and Steve Sotis and maintaining their advertising and their awareness to um, the reader. Um just really got to do more writing and ghost writing for uh, particular people for E Processing Network for Mark Beauchamp, um, who's in the industry and other um, other entities. So just built that relationship and when the time was come for me to move on, when E Processing Network got sold, um, and to just maintain my you know a foot um in the industry, um reached out to you know the people at the Green Sheet to see if there was any opportunity to offer articles um, occasionally and that morphed into being given the opportunity to take on the street smart column after you um, after you step down. So it's been a long, it's been a long time with the Green Sheet and again well respected, well respected publication in the industry.

Allen Kopelman: It is the oldest payments magazine. It was the original payments magazine. There's been a few, there was ISO and agent that went, that went away. Uh digital transactions.

Jaki Kackert: Transactions.

Allen Kopelman: Yeah but that's more like very high level kind of stuff. The, the Green Sheet mostly focuses on like the, the ISO and the agent community and things that, that they need to know about that's going on in business. So let's dive into what, what drew you to you know marketing and you know around Payments. Was that ah, just an accident or something?

Jaki Kackert: It, it was a little bit uh, I had, I was in consumer products for the most part prior to financial services and the opportunity to came um, after I was leaving um Disney and their um, and their consumer product sector um to be a part of Digital Insight when it was a first startup. So Digital Insight was um, web based um home banking. Right. At first they offered web services and then home banking. Um DI has then since moved into. They were acquired by Intuit then they will sold off and then they were bought again I think by ncr. So, um, working in a marketing capacity with credit unions and small banks to offer home banking services and products, cash management services and things like that. So getting of uh, my feet wet into the financial services sector, um, and getting to understand more about credit unions and working for Logix after that, um, following and, and being in that industry helped me when an opportunity was given to me to move over to card service. Um, that's when I stepped into the payment sector, um, and have been, have been involved in that since then. So.

Allen Kopelman: Okay, so like when it comes to you know, obviously marketing and advertising.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: Many years of experience.

Jaki Kackert: Right. And I think, and I think the best thing, I mean my, you know, if you look at my resume, it's varied, it's kind of all over the map. But I think the main thing comes to is marketing, you know, helps tell a story and, and you have to, you have to find ways to connect with your, with your clients, with your target audience. Um, and you have to be able to tell the story uniquely and set yourself apart, but also tell it in a way that's easily understandable by the audience. And sometimes that audience isn't technologically, um, motivated. They don't understand the nuances of technology, but they want to understand how it applies to them and how it can help them and provide them with something that they need. And I think being able to tell that story and market to them, um, and market to an audience is the, is kind of the string through, you know, the continuity between all of the different um, um, markets and, and industries that I've been involved with.

Allen Kopelman: So yeah, definitely, like, you know, marketing and advertising has changed Before I was in payments.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: This company, 2001. Prior to that I was in the restaurant business. Yeah. And you know, it's a whole different animal today. When I was in the restaurant business, you know, presence in the yellow pages, newspaper advertising, you know, trying to get PR into the. I uh, had a PR person trying to get PR into the newspapers and into local magazines and things like that. And today it's much different. We're dealing with a digital landscape, we're dealing with social media. I mean this is all like, you know, things that popped in over my 30 plus years of owning businesses.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: And then now we have AI on the scene. Right?

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: And you know, where are people going? Do they go to Google or do they go to AI? Where, where are they finding out about everything? And how can people. You know, I always tell people, you know, you can do so many things with AI to make your life easier and do things really fast. Someone said to me the other day, they go, how do you deal with all that throughout your whole day? And I was just on the phone. Here's an example. I have somebody coming on my podcast in a couple weeks and they wrote a book. I'm like, I don't have time to read this whole book that this person.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: Just. It's a really, really, really great subject. And I, uh, can't wait to interview this person because it's all about AI and how people are creating synthetic identities. And it's going to be a great conversation because I talk about it a lot with people. It's a huge problem in our industry right now. And it's. I just talked to somebody who's in the card issuing side and they have the same issues on their side. And I talked to a person who does loans and they told me it's a problem for them too. So, you know, it's, you know, there's the good and the bad.

Jaki Kackert: There is.

Allen Kopelman: So when it comes to uh, you know, when it comes to like, things that changed in marketing and advertising and ways to get the word out today, you know, I've always, you know, recently, like a lot of algorithms of what's online has shifted away from like the company per per se and to like personal branding. What's your thoughts on that?

Jaki Kackert: Um, you mean personal branding from a company perspective or.

Allen Kopelman: Well, from a perspective of when somebody's, you know, are people going to the. And I can tell you, I did this experiment on LinkedIn. Do more people go visit the nationwide payment systems page and the B2B vault page or do they go to the Alan Copeland page? I can tell you that I did. We posted like crazy on my company pages. I switched it all over onto my page and we, you know, 500x what's going on?

Jaki Kackert: Really? Okay.

Allen Kopelman: Because people want to, they want to connect with the person who's running the company.

Jaki Kackert: I think that's important.

Allen Kopelman: Unless you're like a huge company, like a stripe. Right. And.

Jaki Kackert: Right. But I think, I still think that, you know, it's very. They're there. It's very much woven together. I mean there's still the leaders of those companies, um, drive people's impressions of that company. And so you can't really disconnect when, you know, it's always astounding at how many leaders, you know, still haven't been up to date on, on maybe what not to say or say in the public eye. And, and how that might come back to um, to bite them and, and what kind of damage control a company does past that. So I mean, you know, you look at our, the people that are no longer autonomous, um, you know, are no longer anonymous within those companies. You can't, your impression of, of a company is, is very much. You know, look at Meta, you know, and look at how much people may or may not like Mark Zuckerberg um, and how he is so closely tied with, with the identity and the brand of that company.

Allen Kopelman: Uh, well, you have to kind of interweave.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: What you're doing, you know, because people want to know who's running the show.

Jaki Kackert: I think people are looking to have connections and, and it's not just a, a faceless organization. There are the people behind it. And I think the people behind it, you know, no matter what level you're working with, you know, the customer service reps or the people on the phone, I mean there's, there's a need for connection. And I think, you know, because social media is so intricately involved nowadays, you just, you, you can't just have an anonymous brand. You, there's a. The people behind it are what going to help drive a person's impression of that brand, but also. And get them buy in with. I want to be a part of that brand as well because I identify with those people. So um, that's my take.

Allen Kopelman: Similar to what. Yeah, we have similar outlook on that and both are important and you need to pay and if you're not paying attention to both of them it's mhm. You know, could be making a misstep.

Jaki Kackert: So. Right. I think your brand and your identity has to, has to be in line with the people behind it. So the people behind it have to have the same ideals and, and the same kind of um, you know, just how they live their life as the people that. As the company. So you know, I mean, you know, look at Disney in the old days, you know, Walt Disney was synonymous with the brand of Disney. Um, you know, that is, that has grown over the years. But you know, when you have a really strong leader that the, the ideals of that brand have to be congruent with the ideals of that person. So for sure.

Allen Kopelman: So when I was asked to do street smarts, you know, I wanted to, you know, just impart 25 years of wisdom out to the people working and you know, let them know what I was thinking about, what things I saw we were struggling with in our business. And you know, I wrote a couple of Article. A couple of articles about a bunch of articles that were surrounding the movement away from the credit card machine to software and to fintech and how that we. All that as a biz, as, you know, sales reps, companies, ISOs, everybody needs to, you know, take, you know, get on this journey. Because, you know, when I talk to sales reps and they're like, oh, I lost another client. Okay, what happened? They bought a. They bought software. They bought a point of sale. They bought software. I'm like, why aren't you selling software? And then they, um. It takes too long. I'm like, well, you know, would you rather, you know, you, you're locking in the longevity of your clientele and that's kind of, you know, and then I talked about like marketing and things people need to have, like business. You know, you need a paper business card, you need an electronic business card. You need to be able to communicate with people on M. Multiple ways, whatever that is. Phone, text, email, WhatsApp, M, you know, having Zoom meetings, you know.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: And, and, and being able to run demos for people, you know, not that are just down the street, but they could be in another state and being able to do all these different things and, you know, that's kind of like what I tried to impart on people. Like where my, you know, we started selling software really long time ago. We just saw too many players buying up all the point of sale systems, stealing. I talked about this too. The great residual robbery where these companies came in, bought up all the point of sale, switched all the credit card processing, took money out of our pockets and you know, the only way to fight back is to, to sell software and come, you know, partner with companies who own the software and own the. Own the processing. So it's one unit and.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: You know, that's what we've, we've kind of done. And you know, that was like what I was teaching. So what, what are you, what are you thinking about? Like, what are you gonna impart on the m. The sales. The, the sales and market. The, the MLS, the ISOs.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: Like, what are you gonna impart on your street, uh, smarts journey?

Jaki Kackert: Yeah, well, as I've, as I started to, you know, what are the tools that, you know, one from a marketing perspective. And I would imagine eventually it'll, it'll morph more out of marketing as to, you know, from a sales perspective. Um, but they go hand in hand, obviously. Um, marketing is, you know, what can they use and, and what can I impart in wisdom to them and Remind them of maybe the tools they have, but they don't use consistence consistently. And I think that's the key for a lot of um, a lot of these or you know, the agents and, and organizations is that, you know, what, how do you prioritize marketing? How do you do it when you're wearing so many other hats and you're trying to keep up with, you know, technology that's just going at such a fast pace? Um, how do you implement a marketing strategy and stick to it? And I think that's probably the biggest thing is just sticking to a plan, sticking to a strategy that you've built or had someone built for you. How do you maintain marketing communications? How do you, as you just said, you know, how do you keep your clients informed so that they aren't just, it's not an easy way for them to just move off to a different provider? You know, are you giving them the information that they need? Are you giving, are you letting them know when you have the programs and the software and the solutions to help them run their business effectively and to reach the markets that they're, that they're trying to reach? You know, what, what is your strategy to, to get the word out to those markets that you're um, that you're entrenched in. Um, but it's really just, you know, the consistency and, and does not, you know, you can't just do social media once, once a month. You can't send inconsistent communication and emails and you can't offer a webinar once and then never do it again. Um, it's just that, and I know that, you know the, the urgency of business is always going to be a priority, but there has to be someone on your staff that can take the time to do a consistent, um, messaging and marketing to your clients so that they know what you have and they're not, they don't move off because they, oh, I didn't know you guys had that. Um, and we used to see that all the time. I mean merchants just, you know, I mean if you're dealing with merchants, whatever, whatever industry they're in, they just want their, their product to work right. They, but if you don't talk to them and communicate with them, they won't know what else there is to make their lives easier. And there's a lot of add on programs that can help supplement the business and make it easier for them. And that's really what you're trying to do, is make it successful and easy for them so they can just do their job. Um, but if they don't know and you're not communicating with them, then they're left to, to look for other resources and it's easy to. And you know, if it's too easy to move off onto someone else, you know, they're going to do that. You know, we see that in all aspects of life, right?

Allen Kopelman: I mean, yeah, I mean I tell people all the time. I' told even like sales reps. I'm like, you need to have a newsletter send it out either once a week, once a month, twice, some kind of schedule. And you need to have a presence on social media, you know, for you and your company. And it's you know, Facebook. Maybe it's Facebook, but it has to definitely be like LinkedIn and.

Jaki Kackert: Mhm.

Allen Kopelman: Because when someone goes, you go into a b. If I walk in a business and somebody else walks in a business and we're selling almost the same thing to the person, they're going to go on Google and they're going to put in your name and m. They don't find anything, they're going to be like, man, what is right? You know, should I be doing business with this person? And I also tell people the importance of. Even though like you're an agent for xyz, you're an agent for three, four different companies. Right?

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: You don't need to have three, four different business calls. Your company. Like we named our company Nationwide Payment Systems. We had a, we have, you know, we have a website, Nationwide Payment Systems. And with AI, I mean you can literally spin up a one page website in a day.

Jaki Kackert: Right, Right. And videos. Right.

Allen Kopelman: And have a dot. A real. Because if I go in somewhere and they say oh, Alan at nationwide payment systems.com. right. And then you come in and you're Billy Bob at ah, Gmail. Mhm. They're gonna go, what is this? Why is this guy of a Gmail? Like you gotta have a professional business, you know, right thing for your business, you just have to do it. And people like I was talking, uh, I was interviewing a guy, my podcast the other day and we were talking about, you know, he started a business and you know, hiring your first employee and what are you going to do and how are you going to do things? And you know, these are things that you know, I tell sales reps, I go, you're making money. You have to invest in your business. And a lot of people don't. I don't see them doing that and I don't see them looking at like technology and Going, okay, technology's changing. What do I need to do to keep up with technology? Street?

Jaki Kackert: Mhm. Yeah, I mean I've still seen, you know, agents out on the street and you know, trying to, you know, going into a small business shop during like one o' clock in the afternoon and you know, and ask and hoping to get someone's time, you know, to talk to them about, about, you know, payment processing and it's, I mean, kudos to them for being out on the street. That's hard. Um, but you know, not, not knowing the, you know, not really gauging, you know, your audience at the time, you know, or incorrectly reading the room is just, you know, that will leave a lasting impression longer than you would like. Um, and, and how to do that effectively and, and get to where merchants are. Right, they're inundated. You know, I mean, you know, we've all started our small business, you know, we get our license and then instantly how much, you know, how much information is. Do you get in the mail still and deluged with, you know, emails and calls and mail, you know, with like, oh, cockroach marketing, you know, use us, use us, use us. And so it's, you know, how do you, how do you, you know, how do you have your name float to the top in such a really saturated, you know, industry?

Allen Kopelman: And um, the other thing we battle are companies that uh, just have like, oh, click here, fill this out and get your. Start processing a credit card. Yeah, we can't do that in our industry. Well, we can, we've built something now where we can literally send you a link as long as we know what pricing plan you want.

Jaki Kackert: Right?

Allen Kopelman: Literally. We just get the name of your company, your dba, your email address, your phone number. That's literally all we need. We put it in the system. We know which pricing plan you want.

Jaki Kackert: Mhm.

Allen Kopelman: Click off the equipment or the gateway and send it to you. You fill it all out yourself. You upload, you know, we tell you upload the documents. If you don't, then we call you, hey, we need void a check and, and a, and a driver's license or whatever else we, you know, we need from you, but I think, you know, more people need to just, you know, go, you know, go. We have to get more electronic. We might not be able to approve people as fast as these other companies, but we have to get more electronic and we need to get, we need to get on the program of software because M Software is changing everything. People want software, they want to see information, they Want to get, gather information, they want to get the cus, you know, they want to have a, build a customer database. They need these things in their business.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: I think, you know, that's part of the things I was preaching when I was writing was all of these different, you know, things going on in the business.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah. And I mean, yeah, there is, and it's just fast moving and you know, and again, if you're a small business and it's, it's just, how do you make sense of it all right? You know, how do you get a really good understanding of what, what you need, um, for your business? And it seems, I'm sure it's overwhelming. Um, you know, so how to simplify that, that communication and simplify that process to someone that just wants to accept credit cards, you know, at a, at a, at a competitive rate. And they, they just really want the system to work. It's like, I don't, you know, it's like for me, I don't ever want to have to call you. I just want my system to always work. I want my phone to always work. I want my Internet to always work. Um, so I don't want to have to call you, but if I need to call you, I want that process to be simple. And you know, that's always so, I mean, you know, for a lot of people it's like, how do you distinguish yourself in this game from, you know, someone that's, you know, sign up here now and we'll get you started, um, and you'll be up and running. But then when there's a problem, are they there for you, you know, to help resolve those issues?

Allen Kopelman: Yeah, that's a major problem in the business of, with these bigger companies that don't have telephone numbers. I mean, listen, listen, you have a problem with Facebook, someone steals your account, you can be ripping your hair out, send them emails, right? There's no one to call.

Jaki Kackert: Right. There's no one to call anything. Right. You get, you get those FAQs on how to do it. And then, you know, at the end it's like, was this FAQ helpful? It's like, no. So, you know, thumbs up, thumbs down. Hi. Hm. So, um, yeah, there's a lot of services out there that don't have, you know, an in person customer service. And I think if I, if my, if I was a merchant and, and I'm not getting paid, um, because of that or, you know, I, that's, that's going to be a sore subject for me.

Allen Kopelman: Um, so, so let Let me ask you, I always, I love to ask people about AI, Right?

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: Big. You know, I'm a big. I don't know, my friend. I'm a big nerd when it comes to different things. Like I was, I nerded out on crypto and bitcoin.

Jaki Kackert: Oh yeah, yeah.

Allen Kopelman: And did a bunch of stuff around that. And we actually processed millions of dollars of cryptocurrency before the tax laws were changed. And you know, now there's big talk about stablecoin and.

Jaki Kackert: Mhm.

Allen Kopelman: We won't get into a whole stable coin because. Discussion because you know, it's, it's not going to go anywhere until they change the tax laws and people don't even understand that. So don't run out and buy stablecoin and use it because you'll have a surprise when you get the tax bill from Coinbase. Um, so the, the thing like AI, like there's all the AI marketing, AI leads. But when I start to look at some of these companies because I, I like to call, I like to call them because I want to educate myself, like what is this? What are you guys doing? Or I see a company that was called xyz, now it's the same company but instead of dot com or dot IO, now all of a sudden it's dot AI. Right. Okay. Uh, you guys do something different or you're just taking advantage of the whole AI thing. And is it AI or is it just automation? Right. There's a difference between that's true and an AI. There's a lot of people trying to sell AI, but they're really just selling you automation.

Jaki Kackert: Right. Um, you know, I, I use AI as, as I can, as much as I can. Um, and, and for me as a marketer, I think it just again, it helps simplify, it helps reduce the time, the amount of time that I'm working on a task. So it's not that I'm using it as a repl. I'm using it as a, almost like a partner, you know. And like, you know, you, you put something in the systems that I use. You know, the tools, the, you know, the marketing tools or the design tools that I have. Um, sometimes there's, it's great and sometimes it, it gives you something that's not useful at all. And I think it's, you still have to understand what you want and what to tell it in order to get the results that you need. Um, and it may not always work. I mean, you know, for design, you know, if I'm trying to do um, with an AI tool sometimes the results, they're just not there. And that might be, that might be something that's, you know, a limitation of the tool I'm using at the time. Because the tool, you know, if, if you're looking to use it in an industry that's well known or retail or a com, you know, some kind of consumer product, um, you might get better results. But if you're looking in an industry that is a smaller industry and doesn't have as much information in those um, engines um, for learning, then you're going to get different results. So um, you know, and sometimes you can spend a lot of time trying to fine tune something in AI and it's just not going to work. Um, so you know it's really. And then it's relying back on, on your experience and, and partnerships that you have with real designers or real writers or you know, um, people that have that experience that's just not in the system at the moment and that's, you know, again it's limitations sometimes of the industry and not to say it won't get to that, you know, it won't get to a point of, of you know, real proficiency. Um, but I don't know if it's quite there yet. And you know, especially in some industries and particularly what I'm finding in the payment industry.

Allen Kopelman: Yeah, not a lot of, you know, you have to educate it.

Jaki Kackert: You do.

Allen Kopelman: I've uh, educated like the AI that I use by yeah. Upload, uh, up giving it my website and telling it right things about the company and then what, what am I trying to do and this and that now it knows. So if I ask it to. Okay, I need it, I need help with this blog or whatever it is that we're doing. It works. But that took a lot of time to get to that point.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: And if, when, when you look, you know and like I was telling you, this guy wrote a book. So I said oh, I need, I need a synopsis of the book and some questions, like 10 to 20 questions to ask that person.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: And it basically spit it all out for me. I was like, okay, great. I knew the premise of what that person was talking about or I had the vice president from this big company on and I wanted to know more about him and the company and I just put it in AI hey, what would be some great questions to ask this person about this company? You know, m. And it gave me some good ideas because you know it's third talking for a few minutes and you know you know, it's not like we're, it's a two hour podcast, right? About 30 minutes. So if you're gonna give people to, you know, agents or ISOs or whoever, business people that are listening to the podcast, you know, three to five things about marketing and advertising or just one or the other, what would be those, those tips?

Jaki Kackert: I think, uh, look at the tools that you already have and look at who you have in your organization that can use those tools. If you don't have a marketing person, who in your organization has the best ability to utilize the tools you have? Because there's again, you know, if you have sales, if you're using like a CRM program, there's already AI tools built in it, right? There's already systems. If you're using um, other like, you know, engines for design or engines for, um, you know, to, to average your advertising strategy or you know, a one, you know, a conglomerate, I don't want to give names but you know, like a hood suite, those kind of things. If you're using those types of engines that have those tools built in and can give you the, and have everything on the back end to help you organize it, who can, who can help drive that? Um, you know, do you need a third party person, you know, like a marketer, like a consultant to help you at least build your strategy and then you can manage it from there. Do you even know what your strategy is? Um, it's, it's kind of building, setting the stage of who you are and what are the important parts that you want to market. It's knowing your audience, it's using the tools that you might have from a CRM, your customer database, um, everything that you've already have in place and then, and, and how to use, you know, your meta tools. You know, there'. If you're a business, you have the business suite already in meta. Um, you don't have to go out and buy things. Um, I'm always looking to save money for and maybe that doesn't make me, you know, the richest marketer in the, in the business.

Allen Kopelman: Uh, you got to be crafty and you gotta, you have to, you gotta try to do things. I don't call it on the cheap, but you gotta look at like, okay, you know, what does this tool, what's inside this tool, I'm already paying for, that I can use. And maybe there's new things in it that you haven't looked at yet, right?

Jaki Kackert: Or you can add on. I mean, you know, like HubSpot is such a Robust engine. Um, expensive though it is. But there's a free to, there's a free version and maybe you can add on to that, maybe you can get used to using some of those tools at a low cost. And then if it's, if it's applicable to your business, how do you add on to it? Um, you know, Canvas, inexpensive. Um, those are all tools. Um, Canvas is, I, I'm not, I'm not here to sell Canva. But the cost of Canva is so price effective for what you get out of it. Does it have everything you need? Maybe not. But combined with the, you know, the marketing tools, if you have mailchimp or Clavico or, or any of those engines and constant contact, you know, how can, and you can use those all together, uh, work in cooperation with each other.

Allen Kopelman: Yeah, we use something called Go High Level and it literally can do emails for you, customer database, you can even build websites in there. Although we haven't really, we don't really do that. There's forms in there. So you could have form fillers that go into email sequence.

Jaki Kackert: Right.

Allen Kopelman: That people fill out. You can do a bunch of different things. There's a tool called ManyChat that, and go High Level keeps adding things on. Like now it can post your social media for you, nice things like that. So you can do your social media, put it in, Go High Level and then schedule all the schedule. You don't have to like go, oh I need to post something today, I need to post something tomorrow. You can build out two or three posts for the week and then stick it in there and let it post it out on all your social media.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah, that's, I mean, you know, I use hootsuite for that. I mean there's so many tools and even Google, if you have a business account, you know, you can build templates in even their email function and you can customize templates within that, that system and you know, and they have all of the AI tools to help, you know, to help to really reduce the amount of time they'll give you suggestions. Everybody, everybody has an AI component built into that to help help make you know, writing something or creating something a lot easier and, and time wise, you know, it's a good savings.

Allen Kopelman: So you mentioned Google. One of the things, everybody should have a Google business profile.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: If you're home based you don't have to put your address in, you just can put your city and your phone number. So yeah, everybody should have that. If you're owning any kind of business, whether you're in the credit card processing business or, or any other small, medium sized business. That should be one of the first things that you set up.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's just, there's just so many tools that are out there that are inexpensive. Um, you just have to know, you know, working with a consultant to help identify what you have and how you can make it work for you, how to use everything in conjunction with each other and then to just build a strategy and a calendar so that you really are just. You take a lot of that work off your shoulders from a day to day perspective, like you said. You know, you can go in and use your scheduler. You know, you could schedule out a few weeks and, and it might take you an hour or two a day or a few hours a week, but you can build a strategy. And just maintaining consistency, I think is where most people fall short. It's like, oh, I have an hour this week and then I forgot next week because I don't have time. And then you lose that momentum and you lose that, that, that continuity. Um, and then you're off people's minds and that's probably the worst place to be is out, you know.

Allen Kopelman: So that's today's podcast.

Jaki Kackert: Thank you.

Allen Kopelman: Dove into everything you wanted to know about the Green Sheet and Street Smarts. And if you in, you're in the business or you just want to learn about sales and marketing, you know, pick up, go to greensheet.com and you can click on Street Smarts up on the top navigation. I forget where it's under. And the columns go back for probably more than a decade.

Jaki Kackert: Yeah.

Allen Kopelman: Been lots of people that wrote Street Smarts columns and you can read mine and you can support Jackie with her new column. And I hope everybody enjoyed today's podcast, B2B Vault. Follow us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you want to find the podcast, we're there. And um, thank you to Jackie for coming on the podcast today and a shout out to the Green Sheet and the team over there, Dale, Kate and Laura and the rest of the gang at Green Sheet and we appreciate you guys. Peace out and carpet.

Jaki Kackert: Thanks. Thanks so m much, Alan.

Allen Kopelman: You're welcome.