by Are you thinking of integrating AI into your business? Wondering if you should cut headcount or increase expected output of your staff?
In this article, we’ll explore how to adopt AI inside your business.
Why Should Businesses Consider Taking Advantage of AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the capabilities of businesses across industries, especially marketing. For many small business leaders, AI presents both enormous opportunities and potential threats.
Initially, Ron Callis, founder and CEO of One Firefly, an agency that specializes in helping small businesses with AI adoption and marketing, was afraid AI technology would make his business irrelevant.
In 2007, Ron launched an engineering firm serving small custom integrator businesses. By 2015, he recognized marketing was the most profitable, scalable part of his business, so he divested non-marketing units to focus exclusively on serving small business marketing needs. Since 2015, One Firefly has grown over 20–30% annually. It now has 80 employees and has been recognized in the Inc 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.
Fast forward to late 2022, when the release of ChatGPT sent shockwaves through industries dependent on text generation. Ron ran toward the fire and immediately immersed himself in the AI revolution, consuming information on implications for marketing and engaging fellow agency owners to understand the risks and opportunities.
Recognizing the severity of AI's impact, Ron worked to educate his leadership team. At One Firefly's mid-2023 all-staff event, he presented his vision for AI adoption. Ron explained AI is both a threat that could undermine One Firefly's relevance and an opportunity to deliver vastly enhanced value to their clients. He rallied his team around an all-hands-on-deck approach to AI integration.
For business leaders who are unsure about adopting AI inside their business, it's important to understand that it can enable you to deliver far superior products for the same or lower cost than simply with human capabilities alone. AI systems have astounding information processing abilities, and these tools can massively expand marketers' capabilities. These superhuman technologies are at our fingertips, and it's intimidating—a fire hose of AI tools has been released in the last year alone.
However, resistance can be futile—ignoring AI risks and ceding market share to early adopters. Companies that build expertise applying AI will achieve competitive advantages. They can win business through superior deliverables and efficiency.
AI adoption is also being driven by customer expectations. One Firefly has lost deals to competitors using AI for content creation and social media. To paraphrase Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, today's AI capabilities are the worst they will ever be—the technology is improving exponentially fast. Companies need to start building skills around AI integration amidst constant change.
#1: Embrace an AI Mindset
Successfully embracing AI requires businesses to evolve their thinking. Some leaders and staff may be hesitant about disruptive change. For example, Ron initially expected his leadership team at One Firefly to be as enthusiastic about AI integration as he was—he pleaded for alignment, frequently talking to team members about every new AI tool.
However, he learned that this way of approaching the conversation around AI was actually disruptive to his team because his company was already a pretty well-oiled machine. It wasn't as simple as pointing out new, rapidly evolving tools to his team members and expecting them to know how to operate, especially because One Firefly is a data-driven company. His team needed space to adjust their mindsets and build understanding. So, he worked to find particular challenges within his company that AI could solve and then showed his team what these methodologies make possible for them.
For example, Ron developed buyer personas using ChatGPT, which created a list of blog topics he could use to better target content to his ideal customers. Then, he'd record himself in a 3–5 minute loom, explaining the process. He gave this to the head of his writing team and asked them to watch it so they could brainstorm strategies. Ron didn't dictate this idea to his team; rather, he showed them the process and asked them to consider the idea, thereby gathering input.
Taking inspiration from author Patrick Lencioni and his team management practices, Ron now focuses on creating psychological safety through trust-building with his team. He has regular one-on-one mindful conversations fostering mutual understanding around AI. He welcomes disagreements from his team because he believes in a meritocracy where only the good ideas win—not Ron's idea, not Taylor's ideas, not Deborah's ideas, for example. Only the best ideas move forward and become policy.
Curious About How to Use AI?
We recently launched a new show that help marketers, creators, and entrepreneurs understand the business applications of AI.
It's hosted by Michael Stelzner and explores this exciting new frontier in easy-to-understand terms.
Pull up your favorite podcast app and search for AI Explored. (Look for the cover art shown to the right.)
Or click the button below for more information.
Additionally, Ron advocates always tying AI to your clear business objectives. Ask your team how AI could enhance your business's specific products or processes. This pragmatic focus helped One Firefly evaluate tools and gain traction with some of its AI changes. For example, Ron is using AI to automate his podcast, Automation Unplugged. The AI tools carve out hours of post-production, allowing him to put out more, higher-quality content.
One Firefly's expertise, both around marketing the industry it serves, coupled with the effective use of AI and its tools, allows the business to deliver a higher quality product than if their customers simply tried to do it themselves. It's important to challenge your leadership team to be the experts for your clients—to find new ways to deliver a higher quality product using AI technologies.
Ready to Supercharge Your Marketing Strategy?
Get expert training and an unbeatable conference experience when you attend Social Media Marketing World—from your friends at Social Media Examiner.
Broaden your reach, skyrocket your engagement, and grow your sales. Become the marketing hero your company or clients need!
🔥 As a valued reader, you can save $1,000 on an All-Access ticket if you act now. Sale Ends Friday! 🔥
GET THE DETAILS#2: Consider Your Hiring Practices
A major concern around AI is whether businesses should reduce their headcount needs.
One Firefly prioritizes a growth mindset. Any successful business has to know its numbers to make informed decisions about staffing or other related costs. One Firefly is a service-oriented business, so most of its costs are in labor. Ron is mindful of making sure his business is maintaining profitability across its segments. While 2023 is a down year for many North American businesses, including some of One Firefly's product categories, the company built out different revenue sources to offset what is down with other categories that are up.
As of late 2023, One Firefly has not laid anyone off due to AI integration. Even though AI allows his business to do more with fewer people, Ron believes AI elevates his company's capabilities rather than replaces roles. Sure, businesses can significantly cut labor costs by reducing the numbers on their teams, especially if they are struggling to make a profit, and replacing them with AI to survive. The flip side is that agencies are also struggling because of AI. A lot of companies are taking marketing in-house and utilizing AI and their own staff instead of utilizing outside companies.
It boils down to efficiency. For example, One Firefly is retraining current staff to utilize AI and help efficiently deliver more diversified products and services to its customers. AI has increased efficiency for certain tasks, so headcount increases are slowing in those areas.
Philosophically, the employer-employee relationship is bidirectional. Employees should proactively boost productivity through AI to remain a valued part of their company. For struggling businesses overstaffed relative to their revenue, AI may enable their survival.
#3: Experiment With Guidelines and Safeguard Your Intellectual Property
Experimenting with AI requires structure, so you know how to assess it. It's important to develop a rubric of guidelines for experimenting with AI inside your company.
For example, for every existing product One Firefly has, four stakeholders oversee it. For any changes to be made to that product, it has to pass through the sales team, the CFO, the product producers, and the customer. Every existing product also has a product manager, even if it's a fractional role. An account manager or a writer might also be in charge of a particular product, for example. Product managers also have guidelines for change—they have to solicit input from the stakeholders.
And so, it's important to understand the threats and opportunities of change within your business. You can apply this to AI integration, asking yourself and your team how a particular change could affect your revenue or how these new capabilities could present an opportunity for market growth, for example. There has to be support and guidance for experimentation within your business.
One Firefly created an AI Council of critical stakeholders from different departments within the company that develops policies and procedures to guide teams in all things AI. These senior advisors to the company give the team a place to come for answers when they have questions. Team members have a safe forum—a sandbox for experimentation—to share learnings and shape the business's AI best practices.
Additionally, One Firefly worked with legal counsel to develop formal policies around AI use.
Many AI systems ingest user data to enhance responses. When you put your private, confidential information into these AI systems, you are essentially feeding the large language model. And that data is no longer your data—it's part of the model. This presents intellectual property risks for your company's and your client's sensitive information.
Externally, One Firefly is transparent with clients about if/how AI is applied. Internally, rules guide teams on appropriate data practices. For example, the company's writers understand not to provide large excerpts from client collateral to ChatGPT.
The company's policies aim to increase mindfulness around securing intellectual property (IP) while allowing AI use, whether it's with proprietary AI like Jasper or an open-source model like ChatGPT. While IP policies are evolving at One Firefly, departments are establishing AI norms aligned to their workflow. Ongoing training reinforces smart data practices as new tools emerge.
Ron Callis is the founder and CEO of One Firefly, an agency that specializes in helping small businesses with AI adoption and marketing. His podcast is called Automation Unplugged. You can find him on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Check out more resources here.
Other Notes From This Episode
- Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on Twitter.
- Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.
Listen to the Podcast Now
This article is sourced from the Social Media Marketing Podcast, a top marketing podcast. Listen or subscribe below.
Where to subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube Music | YouTube | Amazon Music | RSS
✋🏽 If you enjoyed this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.
Stay Up-to-Date: Get New Marketing Articles Delivered to You!
Don't miss out on upcoming social media marketing insights and strategies! Sign up to receive notifications when we publish new articles on Social Media Examiner. Our expertly crafted content will help you stay ahead of the curve and drive results for your business. Click the link below to sign up now and receive our annual report!
Discover Proven Marketing Strategies and Tips
Want to go even deeper with your marketing? Check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast! Publishing weekly since 2012, the Social Media Marketing Podcast helps you navigate the constantly changing marketing jungle, with expert interviews from marketing pros.
But don’t let the name fool you. This show is about a lot more than just social media marketing. With over 600 episodes and millions of downloads each year, this show has been a trusted source for marketers for well over a decade.
