AI Won’t Fix a Broken Business: Build the Systems That Make Growth Possible | Elias Curtis

So much of digital marketing has really, a lot of it, to a certain degree, has stayed the same since I've been in it.

A lot of the same principles continue to apply that applied back when I was starting this in 1986, only it was harder.

There was no website builders.

You had to learn to code.

You had to learn HTML.

You had to learn email marketing from scratch and all kinds of things.

But at the same time, digital marketing has changed dramatically during that time as well.

But what strategies or business principles have remained consistent in your mind, despite all the changes in technology?

Brand messaging, right? You've got to be able to come across to your audience in a way where they know who you are, what you do, and what you offer, right? And so you have to be able to not just sell yourself as a company, but you've got to be able to bring value to them, the customer and the client, to give them something that they need to benefit them somehow.

So whether it's on the business side of things, of course, is revenue, right? So we're always focused on ways on how to not only set up the brand infrastructure and foundation, but also position them in a way where we do marketing that we can start sending ads out and building traffic around the right clientele or customer base so that they can get higher revenue or ROI and also leads to even lead generation and conversion as well.

You know, one thing, when I go back to the beginning of marketing for me online, it was banners, it was email, it was affiliate marketers that were starting to be big, it was pay-per-click, but everything was designed to generate a phone call.

Back in those days, Back in those days, nobody trusted the internet.

Nobody trusted the internet to put their credit card online.

So they wanted to call and speak to a human being.

So all of the offers, all the call to actions were driving to phone number and One of the cool parts of that was you could track your calls to action, which campaign was working by using a bunch of different phone numbers and every, you know, this one's getting the calls, this one's not getting the calls.

And boom, it was tracking, you know, it was delivering phone calls.

Tracking today seems to be, although there's all this more technology, it also seems to be harder and harder to track anything effectively.

Facebook ads are hard to track.

LinkedIn ads are harder.

Everything somehow, what is your experience with tracking results, which is supposed to be better than ever, but I find it's not true.

It's very hard to actually track.

Well, you tell me, for you and your clients, what works today for tracking conversions from traffic, from paid ads, organic, et cetera? How do you typically suggest your clients do it effectively?

Sure.

Well, it's building that system that works, right? So this is where we introduce AI integration and technology.

And to your point, you know, nobody trusted the internet.