AI Marketing Secrets Revealed by Expert Emmanuel Rose

Emmanuel Rose is a seasoned keynote speaker, bestselling author, digital marketing expert, and a podcast host.

From his humble beginnings selling seed packets at age 5 to founding his own marketing agency, Strategic E Marketing, Emmanuel's journey is packed with inspiring entrepreneurial experiences and valuable insights.

In this episode, we explore Emmanuel's perspective on the evolution of digital marketing, the pivotal role of AI in current and future marketing strategies, and the importance of building a personal brand.

Emmanuel also shares his experience as an author and how writing books has opened doors to further opportunities.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business professional, this conversation is filled with practical advice and forward thinking ideas to help you navigate and throw thrive in the digital landscape. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe. And now here's my conversation with Emmanuel Rose. Enjoy. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.

I am your host, Dave Goulis and this week my guest is keynote speaker, bestselling author, digital marketing expert and podcast host, Emmanuel Rose. Welcome Emmanuel. Thank you so much for having me, David. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate you taking the time to be here. Absolutely. If you could, for everyone, can you just give us a quick, quick backstory of your career and you know, how you got here?

Yeah, well, I was one of those kids that sold the seed packets door to door when I was about 5 years old so I could buy a boomerang. So I started out all the way back in sales back then a long time ago. Since then I've been in the textile industry and the electronics industry and most recently in marketing agency world. And I've always enjoyed sales and marketing and storytelling and solving problems for people. And so the last 15 years, been in the marketing agency.

Okay. Okay. So like sounds like from a very early age you knew that you liked to sell and you had that, that entrepreneurial spirit. Is that right? Yeah, it's, it is. And I came from a very working class family, not really entrepreneurs at all, but they, they pushed me to get, get education and use my brain instead of my body to work. And, and then I just naturally fell into like my very first real business.

I had a mail order catalog and I would go to events and sell hemp products, these music festivals. And that was where I first time I borrowed money from somebody to buy inventory and learn about selling direct consumer. So that was, that was where it all started. Okay. Okay what, so have you always been just like strictly an entrepreneur or did, did you go to, go to school and get a job? Anything like that I've been to, I've. Been to university I think like six times, never have finished.

And I just, I like to do it more than I want to sit around and talk about it. So I have worked, I've had jobs, professional jobs, product manager or sales, sales director, those sorts of things. But really I'm unmanageable and so it's better for me to work for myself. All right, yeah, that's a lot of our audience can relate, I'm sure. Okay, and so now like, like you said, last 15 years you've been in the digital marketing space. What, what brought you there? Yeah, let's see.

I got, and I had, I had two really bad job experiences. One, I had a, a big bonus that got reneged on even though I did the work and produced the outcome. And then immediately after that I got fired from the next job that I had. And, and so I just said maybe, maybe I need to work for myself instead of having, having, being an employee. And it was at that time when social media and websites were really a mandate in marketing for small and mid sized businesses.

And I'm like, well I know more than most of the people do and I can at least get one chapter ahead. And so that's when I started digital marketing agency called Strategic E Marketing. Okay. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Because I've talked to some other guests on the show that kind of have been same path where they were at the, in the digital marketing space right at the advent of social media and right at it was taking, as it was taking off.

And like one common theme I've heard is that like people knew like wow, this is going to be big. I mean did you have that same vision like when, when social media first started being used to market for businesses? Yeah, it was, you know what we always had struggled with before in marketing and sales was getting access to people. Right. Like we used to have to put an ad in the newspaper and try to do a trial offer in order to get, get eyeballs or an email address or something.

And it was clear that this was way more direct and that the advertising was way more stratified and, and there was psychic graphics that you could dial into and you know, it was just, it was, it was a speed to lead was, was amazing compared to pre social. So that, that was what really drew me to it. Okay. And so when you, when you're first starting your agency, was it kind of like freelance type stuff and then you grew it from there?

Yeah, I always position my team as, as like an outsourced marketing department. And that way companies didn't have to hire a marketing team. They could just, they could just push all that work over to us. And then you know, websites used to be way more unusual and more technical and so. But some people would still try to do it themselves and then screw it up and then we'd come in and solve it. But yeah, that's always where we've lived. Is that kind of outsourced marketing department.

Okay. You know, and clearly, right, that whole landscape has changed dramatically over the last 15 years or so. Like what, what's the biggest change that you've seen? Like being active in the space from, from those early days up until now.

That really an entrepreneur or a, a marketing manager in a small company could really be a one person show now way more likely to be able to do that with all the tools that we have with in terms of being able to manage the website, manage pay per click advertising, manage content marketing. You could, a person can do that with the generative tools that we have now that we never could hope to do in the past. Okay, okay. Yeah. And that, that's a great point too because like AI, right.

You've seen the rise of AI particularly the last, you know, year and a half or so. Like how, when, when that first came about and it was really getting some mainstream attention. Right. Did you like, did you jump right on that and say like, kind of like this is the next wave and I've got to be involved?

Yeah. So you know, the obviously AI has been around since the 1950s, but then it was starting to heat up about probably about four years ago and there's an association of AI and marketing, so I started tracking it about, about four years ago. And then I wrote the book Authentic Marketing Age of AI and released it right about the same time CHAT started getting its publicity. So I was able to time, time this one pretty good, you know, as far as seeing it on the horizon. Okay, okay.

Wow. And like where do you see that going in the coming years in terms of, you know, what, what AI can do for, for like businesses with their marketing? Well, I, I think we're probably six months away from having a, an all in one marketing suite that will take a campaign or initiative and say build your ideal client profiles for you and then build the content journey, build all your content and start your initial marketing in the same two hour time block. So we're not that far away from that.

Okay. And so that's interesting. That's interesting. So you see that coming around pretty quick. I, I have a good question too because one, you know, I'm a startup founder so I'm out here publicly on social media and I get pitch to death by all sorts of salespeople. And one thing now, right, like I get a lot of AI generated messages to where it's just so obvious, right?

Where it's kind of tailored and it just, you know, very spammy and just very, you know, I kind of instantly see it and I just delete. But what advice would you give? Like, you know, entrepreneurs that want to do it the right way but also want to use AI to scale in terms of how to use it to craft the right message or to reach, reach out to, you know, ICPs.

I think the biggest thing is, is really right now we gotta get really good at prompt writing and I think what we're doing for prompt writing is going to seem like Ms. Dos to us in another year, right? Like we're not going to have to do it like this for long but we need to understand that it's a, it's a like a 15 step process to write a prompt. You got to be really granular with the LLMs to get a good output. So that's the first thing.

Get it, treat it like an intern and really walk it through the steps so you know, tell it where to look to get information, upload past campaigns that you've created for it to look at and reference, ask it to go and look at competition, ask it what else it needs to know in order to make a very clean, authentic piece of content for you and it'll often tell you exactly what it needs.

So I think a little more time and attention on the front end and then once you've, you've gone through that process that you clean it up, that you edit it, that you personalize, that you change the words that match who you are as the speaker and the brand. Freight shippers. Are you tired of dealing with unreliable freight brokers? Tired of delays, missed delivery appointments and no one to talk to? Tired of unpleasant surprises?

Reclass three ways and the invoice always being higher than the quote. Well, you can enjoy a better freight experience with SPI list. I joined SPI as a freight agent to deliver that better freight experience to our three PL customers. SPI has 30,000 vetted and approved carriers, all modes of transportation so we can tailor the equipment to the shipment and the fully trained and experienced operations team who is always available to help.

And you'll get the same quality customer service that you've come to expect. When you deal with me, if you've got freight to move, go to freightbydave.com that's freightbydave.com. Yeah, I mean, I mean, do you think the people that are just like, like that I referenced just a minute ago are just being lazy with it, where they put in one or two prompts and they think they have something and they just don't even realize how, how bad it sounds?

Yeah, I mean we, you've seen this, I'm sure too, where we've been through these cycles of spray and pray. Right. We just, you know, as soon as pay per click ads came out, everybody was just putting out ads because it was, you could finally do that. And email marketing is the same way where they're not, not getting the selects down enough in demographics and psychographics to be to the right person.

So these tools are so accessible now that with very little financial investment and very little training, you can start being a marketer. So yeah, that's the problem. Yeah. So I'm curious your opinion on this because I heard Gary V. In an interview where, you know, people, you know, there's that doom and gloom about AI, oh, it's going to take all the jobs. And he was saying, no, it's, it's going to evolve.

And he said in, in another five to 10 years it's actually going to be a real position as a prompt engineer. And you know, he's talking about as it evolves, there's going to be so much, you know, need for people like you said, to develop the right kind of prompts and go through that process. I mean, do you see it kind of evolving the same way with, we're only scratching the surface of what it can do in that regard? Yeah, I think it's a very powerful tool, number one.

So, but like every tool, it has to be managed otherwise, you know, I mean, you can have, you know, email marketing put the paper companies out of, out of, out of business. Right. Compared to direct mail. So it just, it's one more tool in the marketing quiver.

People who don't keep learning and scaling with the technology, they're going to have to find something else to do because they're not going to be valuable anymore any more than somebody who made great wagon wheels is not employed anymore or any of those things that have fallen out of favor. So the human creative spark is still necessary in order to create good marketing. So that's what it looks like to me. Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, now switching gears here.

So you've written four books, is that right? A few, yeah. One was about marketing, Gen Z and, and then one's about the social CEO and then the other one's about fundraising for non profits. Yeah. Okay. What, what made you decide to become an offer author? Well, you just kind of reached that spot.

I reached that spot in my career was like, I have these, I see these trends and I want to, I want to dig into it and understand it for myself, my clients and then I want to, I want to have the opportunity to reach out and talk to other people about it also. And so that was really the biggest thing to have a little deeper dive into some of these things and get in front of these trends.

And you know, for entrepreneurs today, let's say, right when the digital age and you know, of course with AI and whatnot, like in someone that's done it several times and used it to promote your businesses, how, how valuable is like writing a physical book and being an author in terms of, like that? You know, because I've talked to numerous entrepreneurs that are. Either that's one of their aspirations or they're in the process and whatnot.

A lot of people talk about it, like from someone that's done it. How important or how valuable would you say that is for someone? You know, I think it's still valuable and I still think it's still important. I think we're going to be entering into a period where we're going to just be inundated with books because of the generative AI. So I think we have a little bit of a window here, I think just as important as writing a book.

I mean, I think you still have to write a book, but then you still have to promote it. Right. Like the conversation that we're having to me is, is more important right now than writing the book. But in order to get invited and have this conversation, you have to have the book.

So you know, it's kind of the chicken and the egg says book first and then we can go and promote and talk and have conversations and, and build that personal brand of thought leader, expert, you know, the kind of somebody who has a stake in the ground and has, has an opinion for other people to follow. Yeah. Okay, so now you mentioned personal brand as well. So clearly you've been doing that for a long time with, with your business and what you've been doing.

Like how important would you say a personal brand and actively being on social media, doing interviews and all that sort of thing. How important is that for an entrepreneur in today's world. I think it's critical a, to own your name. Right. Like if you type Emmanuel Rose into Google, I'm the first thing that comes up.

My website comes up over LinkedIn, over Instagram, so that the personal brand that you have, a professional brand that you are found, like I, I get requests to speak on webinars or do speaking engagements because people are doing searches either on Amazon or on Google about the topics I've written my books about. Right. So it becomes this active process, generates passive leads. And that's the most fundamental.

And that's why every entrepreneur should be a thought leader, a leader in, in that, in that space that they occupy. Okay.

And also you have a podcast. I do, I have a podcast that's about marketing in the age of AI and all kinds of fascinating guests that are either investing in developing, are the developers, or are using all the AI tools that are coming out and flooding the markets right now. So it's a pretty cool. For me, it's really cool. And that's my rule is I have to be interested in what the person's doing in order to have them on the show. So it's really cool to be seeing what's.

How the market is generating itself, essentially. Okay, and how long have you been doing the show? Just since November. Yeah, that was the first episode. Oh, okay. Okay. Sound. Yeah, we started probably around the same time. Yeah. All right. And so with all the AI stuff that's come out in the last couple of years or whatnot, what's been the most impressive for someone that's been doing marketing and whatnot, what's the most impressive thing that you've seen AI do?

Well, I mean, I think, you know, a couple things. One, the, the language models with, you know, chat Claude, those things, the ability to generate content and content calendars and summarize information instantly is phenomenal. It's a, it really is a game changer. Same on the video side. And being able to input this podcast, get it, have it edited, have it shorts cut out of it, have the transcript made.

You know, I mean, things that used to take us six or eight hours as being done in an hour now that's massive time saver. Means, you know, I get to go play golf instead of spend all day in front of the computer. And then even like pay per click ad development, you know, there's some great tools where you, you put in your.

A little bit of information landing page and then, you know, boom, there's 35 potential ads that are created and you get to choose or edit and upload a handful of those ads and get your campaign started in 15 minutes. So those are all really phenomenal changes and time savers from the AI tools. Okay. All right. And so with everything you've done, so you've got the books, you know, you speak frequently, you've got the podcast. Right. You still have your marketing agency.

So what, like what's next for you within your businesses and what you're doing?

I'm working on two things, two books, concepts right now. One is drawing back and saying what no matter what the changes are, these are the fundamentals of marketing. And so I got about a 15 chapter book that is these are the immutable truths that we have to do in marketing. And then the flip side of that is, where are we headed in the next 10 years in marketing and how is the technology going to change and what are we going to be doing different in the next 10 years than we're doing right now?

And any big trends or shifts that you see in terms of things that are going to radically change. I think the biggest thing is virtual worlds. That, that, that will come to play. Even though Facebook tried it and didn't go well, that this virtualization of things so we don't have to drive to go and see the new house or we have to go to the grocery store, we can go shopping with the glasses on those, those sorts of things are the biggest change. I'm not even a fan of that.

I don't, I don't think there's. For me personally, I don't find value in it, but that's the directionality of, of especially retail, for sure. Okay, so you're saying like there's. They're going to bring the shopping experience to you with the virtual glasses to where you can kind of walk through the mall, so to speak, and see everything tried on and even maybe buy it through the virtual app. Yeah, right.

And your avatar will try it on and you know, all those things, it'll be very, very much like you're in your own cartoon at that point. Wow. And how far away do you think we are from something like that? I think it's maybe. I mean, we're going to see it. These things always, we always get titrated with them. Right. We make this slow, slow march to it. I think we're five or six years from that. I think by the end of the century for sure. Okay, okay. Or by the. Yeah, by the end of like 20, 30.

I'm sorry, the decade. I meant next century. Yeah. Okay. Okay, gotcha. All right. And so you've had quite a long entrepreneurial journey. You know, a lot of different successful moments. Like what's, you know, to everyone listening out there, what's the best part for you about, you know, being an entrepreneur?

The best part is being able to look at my 30 day calendar and mark myself out when I want to be out and have that, create those little spaces to do what I love to do, which is to hunt and fish and camp. And so I can, I could take five or six days, block that out. I know my project manager and administrative assistant run the show while I'm, I'm living my best life. Okay. Yeah. And that's another thing too, that, you know, you're, you're very vocal about.

And as part of you is just your love for the outdoors. Right. Because you, you grew up in the, is it the Pacific Northwest? Is that right? Yeah, I grew up in the Central Valley, not that far from Yosemite. And so, yeah, we were a very outdoorsy family. I was lucky for that to camp and fish and hunt in that part of Central California when there was still access to that type of stuff. Okay. And another question too about that.

So, so many people too, when they're, you know, I talked to many that are maybe in a corporate job and they have some aspirations or they want to transition being into an entrepreneur because maybe they're, they're not really living, I guess, fulfilled and they have some other aspirations. But what would you say is the biggest piece of advice that maybe people don't understand about what it's like being an entrepreneur? And kind of, because the freedom and all that is great.

But you know, there's, like you mentioned earlier, you've got the battle scars. Like what's, what's the biggest piece of advice that you'd give to someone that's, that's, you know, going to start the journey that maybe they want, they wouldn't be aware of.

I think you get your, get a business consultant or coach right away and, and build out the best plan that you can possibly so that you have some, so you have a strategic plan, you have a roadmap, and then once you have that done as good as you can get it done, then you just got to take the leap and get the, get the dirt time, the field time. And start falling on your face, right? Well, it's not necessarily falling on your face, but as you know, things rarely go according to plan.

And so you got to be able to move and be dynamic with the situation as it changes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's great advice. Okay. And so if people want to get in touch with you, find out more about what you do, potentially engage you for some of your services, what's the best way people can reach out to you? Yeah, you can find me@emmanuelrose.com or on LinkedIn and love to, love to talk to you, even if you just want to have a conversation about some AI tools.

Okay. All right, Cool. And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone. All right. Well, Emmanuel, thank you so much for taking the time.

Really appreciate you being here. Yeah, Dave, thanks. I appreciate the thoughtful questions. Yeah. All right. And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.