Adapting Agencies for the AI Era

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1:03Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Brent Weaver. He is the CEO of E2M Solutions, the leading provider of white label, WordPress, SEO, content, and AI solutions for digital marketing agencies. So guess what we're going to talk about today? We're going to talk about agencies and we're going to talk about digital marketing. So Brent, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thanks, John. I did get the title, right? Didn't I? You're the CEO currently? Yeah. Yeah. I'm wrapping up my ninth week on duty. So it's been a new adventure for me.

1:44Well, B2M is not new necessarily. So working with hundreds of agencies, just in your time and what you've learned or from the folks there, what do you see as some of the biggest changes in the agency landscape right now? And I know it's evolving rapidly, but I'm curious what you're hearing because you talk, pretty much talk to agencies all day long. Yeah. I mean, the obvious elephant in the room is artificial intelligence and what that's doing, both in terms of how agencies are run and also how they're deploying services and also what the clients are doing with AI as well. So it's not just like agency using it, but the clients are using it.

2:21So I think some expectations are changing and also speed to results is changing because a client might say, well, hey, if I can just have AI do this in three minutes, right? Like, why is it going to take you three or four days? And just kind of working on how to up level your level, you know, what you're doing for your clients in terms of results. I mean, that bar has certainly been raising very quickly in terms of what expectations are. And so I think a lot of agencies are feeling a little bit of squeeze, but at the same time, they're feeling a lot of excitement. And to tag onto that, though, of course, your primary function is to, in most cases, act as a white label support for that agency.

2:55So I'm curious, has the white label mode evolved? I mean, it's affecting agencies. So how is it then in turn affecting what a white label provider like yourself is doing? And we've really like planted a flag that we want to be an AI first agency. And so we are doing lots of internal kind of retooling education. We have a thing called AI for Saturday, where our whole company comes in every first Saturday of the month. And some of that time has been dedicated to education, working on projects kind of, you know, within the teams, doing demo days, hackathons. And so we're definitely taking AI very seriously.

3:30Our team's taking AI very seriously. We're also doing fractional AI services for agencies. So actually going in and helping the agency implement AI solutions. and so I think it's people want better results. They want them faster, right? It's dealing with Amazon, right? Like people used to think, oh, I ordered something on the internet. It's okay that it takes seven to 10 days to show up, right? But in the post Amazon world, you're like, well, like my kids, for example, they're like, why I ordered this 30 minutes ago. Why is it not already at the front door? I think some of that impatience is seeping its way into the business to business service model.

4:07And I also think some of that kind of what people expect in terms of a customer centric centered business, like Amazon will give you refunds on just about anything. And then customers are expecting some of that for some of their agency customers. But, you know, it's certainly having a huge impact on the overall industry. So so since you open the can of worms, I'll go there directly. You know, what I'm seeing a lot of people do is, you know, it's like we're in this Wild West days still where there's 473 tools and people are hacking this$20 a month thing together with this$20 a month thing. They're talking about agents and what they can do.

4:46What I'm seeing on the business side, the small business side, it's like, OK, I get it. I get it. We need to do AI, but this is exhausting. And, you know, is there ever going to be a day you think where a business owner can actually buy the full like marketing operating system that is AI run and installed in their business and not, you know, have to lean on their agency to do this and an SEO person to do that with AI to me? And again, I'm just asking your opinion because it doesn't exist today. But I feel like that's where we're going to go. there's going to be the$5.99 a month solution that's sort of an all-in-one as opposed to custom this and custom that and custom, you know, whatever.

5:30And perhaps, you know, I think, John, that the more I've gotten into AI personally and the more like projects and use cases that I've seen, it's like the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. And I certainly think that's true with AI. And we're seeing a lot of people do some, what I would almost consider to be magical things with AI. But then there's also this like, maybe they do something where they don't really have the foundational skillset. They're using a tool like Lovable and they're doing Vibe Coding and they build an application that gets to a certain point. And then the client says, well, hey, we actually need this for a business requirement thing to do this other thing.

6:07And then all of a sudden that other thing maybe isn't possible within the Vibe Coding interface. And all of a sudden you have this thing that an agency has spent weeks on in terms of Vibe coding application build. And then the thing that they needed to do from a business case is not possible within the AI. And so then we're hitting this wall and we have to go, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to completely, we're gonna have to build this from the ground up without Vibe coding in order to make the business case work. And there was a study that said that something like 40 to 60 % of enterprise AI projects, and I should probably have a source on this so I'm gonna quote it, but 40 to 60 % of AI projects at the enterprise level are being abandoned or never seeing the light of day.

6:49And if we all know like from reading Wall Street, like how much money is being invested in AI, that means like over half of the investment that major corporations are making is basically being thrown in the trash. And I'm seeing that same level of kind of experimentation happen at the agency level and also at the small business owner level. And so I think there's still, gosh, there's just so much learning that has to be done. And the upside, though, is you find an AI automation or agentic workflow that works, that gets to 100%. It can have game-changing impact on the business, right? Like the ROI on it can be infinity.

7:27And so it's certainly worth making these investments, but it doesn't mean that every investment is going to pay off. Yeah, I think one of the challenges in the window that we're in right now is, in some cases, the hype of AI is actually outrunning the reality of it. And I think that a lot of people are like, oh, we can fire everybody and do it all with AI. I mean, you see these people, you know, on Facebook ads, like I have a$16 billion company and I only have two employees. You know, you're like, like screenshot of all their automation. It's like, look at how crazy I've replaced 64 employees.

8:01Right. And like, maybe, I don't know. I mean, usually I find when you kind of double click on those things and you go in, there's usually some smoke and mirrors around those things. But I don't want to 100 percent. And I think that, you know, it's like all things, it's kind of like taking advantage of the craze is actually making the reality a lot worse and a lot harder for that business owner that just needs a couple things, you know, figured out to, you know, to make, not even to replace people, you know, but to actually empower their people in ways to do better and more work. All right. So I'll get off my soapbox on that one and move to, let's talk about SEO, which is a tactic, of course, a channel, if you will, that you guys play in quite a bit.

8:43That's another one of those where there's, you know, like it would take me about two minutes to find somebody who today put on LinkedIn, SEO is dead. By the way, it's not. But how are you advising clients? How are you changing even your routine and working around the reality that a lot of top of funnel types of content that used to generate traffic is certainly gone away. We can debate whether or not it was that valuable anyway. But how are you evolving your model when you think about SEO practices? If there's a piece of content that you could easily just ask, chat, and you would get a great answer for that content, If that's what you're going to be putting on your client's website to help them grow their rank or grow their traffic from the LLMs and things like that.

9:27I mean, that's certainly probably not going to be a great strategy. And I think most people got that memo when they saw how much traffic decreased for those kind of common things, right? Like, how do I make great guacamole, right? Is just going to be the user experience to ask that question on chat is going to be far better than on a Google browser. unless somebody has some type of proprietary ingredient or approach where they can actually build some intellectual property around it and kind of protect that unique recipe, right? In that case. Or they have a really great personality around teaching people how to make guacamole or whatever.

10:03And they're a great YouTuber. And there's some type of thing that's unique that AI cannot replicate that they can bring to the marketplace. So I do think marketers have to be a little bit more, you know, a little bit more creative. There's kind of a reinvention that's going on. That being said, there's also a ton of people that are now using LLMs to search for business recommendations, to search for services. And certainly there's a whole cottage industry. I mean, the amount of SEO business that we've had has categorically gone up year over year, right? And that's kind of in the post-AI world.

10:33And a big thing on the E2M team is how are we optimizing our clients' websites and search strategy for the LLMs, right? kind of the AEO strategies, while we're also using, continuing to invest in Google. And I think Google, for instance, I mean, I don't know if search traffic, the Google usage has necessarily gone down. I mean, I think they're still driving a lot of traffic to businesses. Google local, massively important for businesses to be active, right? Especially if they're a service business or they're working locally or regionally, right? And that's something that I think the LLMs aren't doing nearly as well as Google.

11:12And so there's certainly still lots of blue oceans, I think, on the SEO side. You know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems. Today, I get to share something really special. My daughter, Sarah Nay, who also happens to be the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, just released her first book. It's called Unchained, Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models and How Small Business Can Finally Take Control of Their marketing, lead with strategy, and scale with AI. I know, a mouthful, right? But it's everything we've learned taken to the next level. In fact, we're even calling it Duct Tape Marketing 3.0.

11:47As a dad, I couldn't be prouder, but I want you to check it out at dtm.world slash unchained and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level. Yeah, and I think you're 100 % right. I mean, I'm speaking at a conference next month of all remodeling contractors. And they're all talking about like, what do we need to be doing to change? And I was like, hey, you know, show up in that map pack. Do a better job of your reviews. The answer, have a lot of FAQs that answer questions that people would have about remodeling. Because the trust, I think, with the map pack, whether it's deserved or not, that the consumer has is going to, I think, give that a life for a long time.

12:27And I don't think you're going to see the AI overviews for somebody that's, I mean, you can go there and say, you know, in AI mode, you can say, what's the best remodeling contractor in this town? And it will give you an opinion. But I think people still value the map pack and the proximity and, you know, all the things that come with it. You know, one thing, I think there's this like undertone of like, is AI going to make agencies obsolete or something? Yeah. and it's weird because like i've asked this to a lot of agency groups i've been like okay in the post ai world like who here is working less right and i asked people like raise their hands and like nobody raised their hand i'm like okay they're working more in fact right they're working more they're working way more right it is weird it's a weird paradigm right because you would think hey artificial intelligence the computer is going to do all the work for me you know it's like the logical you know outcome of that would be that we wouldn't have to work as hard and you know even though these tools do magical things i don't think they make finding leads and customers any easier if anything they're just making it even more competitive they're giving you know advanced marketing tools to a lot larger group of people and so it's getting more competitive out there and that means that businesses still need agencies and specialists now more than ever in fact they need specialists that are specialized in specializations instead of specializations and And that was the other thing I was going to kind of bring as a theme is look like knowing who your customer is, having niche expertise, really knowing your market backwards and forwards, knowing your market better than your clients know their industry, I think is now more important than ever.

14:04The idea of just being a general, hey, I'm Brent, I'm the web guy, right? Like, I don't think that's going to fly in in 2026 and beyond if it is even flying right now. So let's talk about the human element. But I think a lot of people are wringing their hands around. I mean, every time you see these headlines that, you know, Microsoft says they're 40 % of all jobs will go away by the next three years. I think you have a lot of people kind of wringing their hands around about like, is this going to destroy the world? You know, if people, 40 % of people are out of jobs. I'll tell you what we see is I see a lot of people that are working more, as you said.

14:43And a lot of it's because the consumer or the business owner behavior has changed a little bit in that they expect more. So that's part of it. But what I, you know, our mantra has always been strategy before tactics. We actually feel that if you develop a great marketing strategy, marketing becomes less complicated, but far more effective. You know, what I see is a whole lot of agencies that have always been delivering tactics are now just using AI to deliver a new set of tactics and still not thinking strategically. I think what businesses are going to need in the future is marketing leadership and not marketing doers.

15:23Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I should have posed that as a question, but it was really more of a statement. We're running this event. It's all about AI for agency owners. and I promise this is not just a direct plug for our event, but obviously it's my duty to promote our event right now. But one of our attendees, and he's kind of an AI first person, he registered for our event, right? Went in and purchased a ticket, all using his ChatGPT agent. So he literally just, you know, driving in the car, said, hey, go buy a ticket to Vistara. And his agent, you know, went and takes screenshots and says, hey, this is what I'm doing along the way.

16:03He just kind of had to say, yep. And the agent already has all of his information and it has all of the information that it needs in order to make that fill out the web forms and actually purchase a product. And it's, it's almost like every business from that perspective, every business's website just became kind of the Amazon one click shopping experience. you know if we fast forward two three years if we all have these agents that have you know secure access to our banking details and to our PII and they know kind of our preferences I mean what could you do if you can line up an experience that you know is going to meet the needs of a specific target audience you know you have very few barriers standing between you and them making a transaction becoming a customer and I think in that way right AI is going to be disrupting some of these workflows, some of these user interfaces, just as web professionals and digital agencies, how we view creating those experiences, right?

17:02And so I think that while AI is certainly going to destroy some number of jobs, whether it's 40%, 20%, I don't know what the number is, right? I trust Microsoft. They're now worth$4 trillion. They must be doing something right. But I think for every job that it destroys, there's going to be new jobs created. Yeah, I'm seeing that already, right? You know, if I lived in a Waymo city, I was just out in California. I rode in my first driverless taxi. Would I still have a car? I don't know. Because I'm like, well, what if I just used Waymo to get everywhere I needed to go? And when I'm in the car, I'm going to work on, you know, I'm going to be productive.

17:37I'm going to do work. I'm going to be calling. I'll call 10 more agencies to see if they can come to my event. Right. So I do think that there's like some things that are not super exciting in terms of jobs in the marketplace right now that likely are going to go away. Right. Like data entry, data harvesting from the internet. Basic research. Content editors. I can get a lot of my content. I can dictate it to chat and it gives me pretty good content. It even gives me some suggestions on how to evolve it and gives me different, hey, here's a version for LinkedIn. Here's a version for Facebook. Here's a version for Instagram.

18:13Here's a script that you can go and take a video and record. Right. So things that I would have relied on three, four or five people before I can get done myself. And a lot of times I don't think I was necessarily hiring those people. I just wasn't doing it. Right. I'd post maybe on one platform instead of four. And I wouldn't hire a social media person to do that. And so I think that some of these things are certainly going to destroy jobs. But, you know, like, what will my kids jobs be in 15, 20 years? I have no idea, but they'll have something to do. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm even seeing that in our organization.

18:45You know, people that really were good doers, good implementers, you know, we're really pushing them to, you know, they have to be more, whether they have employees under them or not, they have to really think more like leaders and think more like managers who are going to optimize, you know, some of these tools as opposed to, you know, writing the, so every bit of social media content, they're going to be, you know, looked more as managers. And I think that from a skill set standpoint, that's that's probably not everybody's sweet spot. I mean, there definitely are people that are just very good at give me an SOP and I'll follow it.

19:23Yeah. But I do think that from a career standpoint, you know, if you're one of those people, you probably need to really start looking at how do I know how do I have my strategic thinking, my EQ skills, you know, over and above, you know, being able to manage a spreadsheet. And sometimes, you know, not to like be like capitalist or whatever, but like, I think at some point, right, if people aren't willing to move towards that opportunity voluntarily, they will, you know, maybe have to earn some learn some hard lessons. and some of those might be expensive lessons. I think certainly as an entrepreneur, I've had to learn some expensive lessons when I didn't pivot hard enough or change my business or change my mindset fast enough.

20:04And then you lose a big chunk of business or you lose your business, right? And you're like, oh, that was a hard lesson. I'm never gonna do that again. So I think people don't evolve right now and they don't invest time. Like again, we're doing these AI First Saturdays as a team. And at first people are like, I gotta come in on Saturday. And we're like, hey, look, this is the reality. Like we're all working an extra day right now to make sure that we can properly retool and learn enough about this tech. Because during the week, we're all very focused on client work. We're focusing on, you know, doing the day-to-day business.

20:34And so, you know, we've made that as a priority all the way up our leadership team, right? I mean, I'm waking up at four o 'clock every Saturday, joining the team and, you know, working on AI stuff. Well, Brent, we've frittered away a perfectly good 20 minutes here trying to help people, talk people off the cliff a little bit. Is there someplace you'd invite people to learn more about E2Ms solutions? Yeah, you can definitely check us out at E2Msolutions.com. You can always email me, Brent, at E2Msolutions.com. We're running an event called Vistara at the end of September, depending on when this episode airs.

21:10Join Vistara.com. So we're doing two full days on artificial intelligence and agency growth. So, I mean, we think this is such an important topic. We're running a full two-day event on this in Denver, Colorado. So if you're interested, certainly reach out. Well, I'm just down the road. I should probably come down and speak at the event. I think so. I think so. We should. Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen. All right. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll see you soon out there on the road. Thanks, John.