E214: Richard Hill

Richard Hill (00:04.94)

Welcome to episode 214. I'm Richard Hill, the host of the eCom@One One podcast, and this week we're doing it a little bit different. It's actually me for the first time in quite some time, and we're gonna change the format up a little bit over the coming months. We've got some very exciting guests still coming through, but I'm gonna jump on every now and then and do a little podcast or two about what's happening in the agency, in the industry of course, and my thoughts on different things. And this week,

talking AI. Now I haven't done this yet in terms of AI episode and it was time. So today I'm gonna lay bare and talk about our journey with AI and the agency, what we've been doing. I hope you enjoy it. If you really really enjoyed this episode please don't forget to subscribe wherever you are listening to this podcast and you're always the first to know when a new episode is released.

Richard Hill (01:00.408)

Okay. So here we are in the studio and it's just me. I'm here on my own. I thought it was time for me to pop back up and do another episode. I think it's quite timely because we've been very, very busy in the agency. We've been very, very busy exploring a lot of new AI within the industry, within the agency space, within e-commerce. So I thought I would drop on the podcast after 213 ish episodes.

and do another episode. It's been, quite a while. So I think I've mentioned quite a lot over the episodes that I go to a lot of expos, a lot of industry expos. spent a lot of time at events. think the last three years, I think the last three months I've been to about 30 different days of events, whether that's three or four days at an event, three or four days at an event and so forth.

And at events, come away with a lot of ideas and meet a lot of people in the industry and different industries go to events in other industries, travel all around the world. It's quite an exciting place when you go to a lot of different events. And some of the people you meet, some of the ideas you get, you know, really spearhead me with ideas and probably circa two and a bit years ago, a lot of AI chatter at events, but not a lot of actionable insight. There's a lot of people talking about it.

which I'm sort of still seeing in wider sort of space now. But a few people mentioned a few tools, know, ChatGPT being one of them, a few of that content tools. So got back, very excited, came to the team and said, right, we're gonna try and test some of these tools. And very, very quickly we could see they were okay. They weren't great, but they were flipping okay. know, and the amount of output we create in our agency for the agency for clients. So.

working with a handful of clients, you we were then testing, testing, testing, and you know, they got, they got a bit better. And I think there was an initial pushback from the team, like, golly, what's going to happen? You know, where are we going to be as an agency in terms of, know, the people, the team. So I was like, guys, you know, we've got to embrace these things. And I sort of got a few of them to go and said, look, you know, over the years, we're in this business, we're in my businesses.

Richard Hill (03:18.095)

You know, when these things come along, we have to test, we have to try. and that's why I believe very much we're still here and we're still thriving. it makes me think of, probably about 20 years ago when there was a massive change in Google shopping. where actually it used to be free if you can believe that. and Google shopping was free, and it was called frugal, but then they changed the game and you just had to pay and everyone abandoned all this new thing. it's, we can't, we can't survive this change.

But actually it was a change for the better because a lot of people abandoned the free platform because they thought can't afford that. But actually that made took the competition from this to this. And for a couple of three years, it was a massive opportunity. Clicks were for pennies, first page of Google for pennies, which is almost a dream. And I sort of see that now very much so with the opportunity of AI. Of course, there's a lot of noise out there, but testing, trying different things.

So yeah, so a couple of years ago we were testing various chat GPT prompts and various other third party content tools. then over the months and months and months, you know, we got some very, very good outputs, but it dawned on me maybe a year ago, do you know what? What else can we really, really do with AI within the agency? And that's where it sort of dawned on me to start auditing the time that each department spent.

various tasks, but firstly, I started with myself. So, um, you know, as, as a busy founder, um, lots going on, thought, do you know what I'm going to absolutely drill into what I'm spending my time on. And I've done that exercise before, you know, from, um, on a manual process, but I actually use a tool called mem time. And that enabled me to basically leave that running on my, on my Mac, on my PC at home, my office machine. Um, and then basically collate that data.

Look at the different areas that I was spending time on. And the idea was, what can I get rid of? Who can I give that to? And I actually hired an executive assistant a few months ago to help with some of that. But really where can I use AI in some of this and some of these areas? And it became quite apparent that I was getting a lot of emails, from, a lot of, a lot of similar emails coming through.

Richard Hill (05:38.349)

And it's like, right. Well, I'm spending time spending like half an hour a day, maybe 40 minutes a day, applying to the same style emails request to come on the podcast. For example, someone coming to me, some go to my colleagues and the team that run the podcast, but simple automations, using then Claude integrations that have been trained in my voice has been trained in the way that I speak, the way I reply to emails that would then basically intercept certain types of emails. And it would then create a response in my tone.

and set it to draft. And so we did that. It was not very advanced now. but, then it was like, actually. Flipping great. I'm looking at my inbox and a lot of bits and bobs there are pre replied to when I have a look in the morning or the drafts are set. So that really got me thinking, you know, I'd ordered some my time. And, but obviously we were a team of 25 plus people here.

And, you know, a hundred plus projects, a hundred plus clients that we work on. What can we do to really help the agency and the team and the clients? So there's a question that I ask a lot of my guests. Um, and it is what keeps you up at night. And I think for me, it is very much this AI piece. You know, there's a lot of chatter, a lot of noise. Obviously that's pretty standard for social social media, but it's a lot wider than that. lot deeper than that.

You know, everywhere, you know, in the traditional news, you know, on the, on the TV and so forth and in print AI AI, you know, so what should we be doing? Where we should be spending our time. So we did this mini audit piece on myself, but then it was like, right, we really need to audit the tasks, the time and the tasks that we spend as a whole business on various tasks for clients. I've always lived by a, sort of a, how can I put it?

a methodology, bit extreme, but a type of methodology that if I go to bed at night and I'm thinking about something, someone, a project, a thing in the business that is really niggling me. Okay. And I wake up the next day, you know, and then I'm maybe thinking about it again, some issue maybe, or some new tech that I want to try out or somebody that I need to speak to, or how am going to do something? And then I go to bed the next night and I'm lying in bed again thinking flipping it.

Richard Hill (08:05.648)

That's it. That is it. We go to bed at night and I can't sleep maybe for a little while thinking about this thing a couple of times. Then I need to sort it out. So AI was the thing that did, and maybe does a little bit still keep me up at night. And that was it. It was like, right, what am I going to do about it? So having watched their, you know, very cool program on Amazon called the something something games. I decided that we would launch what we called.

lovingly in the agency several months ago now, the AI games, now the AI games, the idea behind it was to enable all the team to be able to test, try different AIs, but really to really give them the sort of time. And then they were allowed X amount of time over, over a three month period, a few months ago now, to test different tools in different departments. And what that enabled them to do was obviously go, Ooh.

You maybe they've maybe not had time, you know, from a personal level, maybe as much interest as they could have had. So we allowed them, you know, a good amount of time for them to then spend in different areas of business. Now, you might be looking for an SEO boost, a Downsworth digital PR campaign to share your story or maybe just some straightforward technical help to amp up your performance. Now, that's where Ecom now comes in. A partner that's all about making things easier for your online store.

Our services cover everything from creating professional content for your e-commerce categories to refining your product descriptions. Now, whether you're just starting out or have in it for a while, we're here to deliver real impactful results that add to your bottom line without unnecessary commitments. You can order one-off or multiple projects with a quick turnaround. Simply choose what you need. So we split the team into four. Sales and marketing. Looking at what we could use.

with sales and marketing side of the business in AI to help propel the sales and marketing side of the business. Ads and design. We obviously have an ads side, a big part of our business. 50 % plus of our businesses is running ads and performance marketing for clients. So what can we build and what can that team build to help the ads and the performance marketing side of the business? And we've got SEO, search, content, you know, getting our clients found in sort of non-paid areas.

Richard Hill (10:32.873)

where our clients products may be required to be found. You know, so a lot of content, a lot of technical strategy. And then we looked at operations, you know, in terms of our own operations and some of our clients operations, what can we build? So we got the teams together. We sort of announced we're going to do this. Everyone was very, very excited. And then we announced four captains.

for those teams. And so we had four guys here in the, in the office, for people that, looked after the four separate teams and then had myself and another colleague called Kieran, who's our head of technicals. He's done an episode or two on the podcast, who would then give them so much time to help them build. So when I say help them build, was obviously, all right, coming up with an idea.

But then how do you create something if you've never really used any of the AI tools? That's a little bit of a stumbling block, but myself and Kieran have used quite a lot of the tools. I've had quite a few of others. So they went away, you know, and we, we, and I went into some of the various meetings they had, but it really gave them that sort of time and relaxation to not worry too much that, we're spending three hours on this. And what I wanted the outcome to be is ultimately that they got time to test trial.

and use some of these tools and not be afraid and see how they can help them and how they can help the business and how they can help their departments. And it was brilliant. You know, was very, very competitive. As you, as you might imagine, you've got four departments that work very closely together, a lot of friendships, but ultimately they were all very, very keen to win. So we got the team together in one of the boardrooms, sort of hundred yards this way, and they all presented their ideas and it sort of blew me away. So, the sales and marketing team.

You know, they were looking at ways to help promote our agency from sales and marketing perspective. And they built various tools. not going to go into too much detail using tools such as NAN. As an example, you know, when you think about your business, if you could build out a newsletter that was automated based on industry news. So they did that, you know, and they built a newsletter creator using a tool called N8N.

Richard Hill (12:52.264)

And Claude using the tone of our agency. we've built a project in Claude that had been built by basically analyzing our website, our tone, our socials have been given our tone of voice document had been given our website to crawl. We've been given our site map to understand who we are, what we do. And we've done that for a long while. That, that sort of type of thing for clients and looking at building AI projects for different clients and so forth. But we did it for ourselves.

and then from that, we then told it and gave and pointed it to different resources on the web that has to do with e-commerce and to do with, the industry looking at our events page, what's happening on our socials and then build with our claw prompt, a newsletter that could go out and be pushed to LinkedIn and could go out and be pushed to, our email.

and building in various checks, checking itself, a manual check, of course, know, a massive on the manual checks. But we built this very, very, very, very smart LinkedIn newsletter creator, which is fantastic. And that's quite a basic thing really, but it was great to see the team sort of trying and testing these different things. And then obviously looking at that final output. And then they created an amazing video using a tool called Kling to...

to sort of help them present their idea at the beginning, which is brilliant. And you'll see that on the social before you know it, that will be out there by now maybe, but it was great. Basically it's an AI tool that will create video for you using stills. So that was brilliant. So each department presented their ideas and basically they used NAM, they use Lovable, they use Claw, they use ChatGPT, they used Airtable and so on and so on and so on. It really gave them a breadth of experience between them all.

where they've now embraced AI. I think what might've helped, we actually gave a thousand pounds to the winning team. I think it's the best thousand pound we've ever spent at the agency because it really speared them on. So I was very happy to pay that out to the winning team. But I think one of the things we've been using AI for more and more, and I implore you to look at this, is analyzing data, you know, and looking at data itself.

Richard Hill (15:08.983)

Um, you know, for us, create a lot of reports, looking at data. It's very timely. Um, when we think about reports, go down to clients, when we think about, you know, an e-comm store, looking at reporting, um, on their own success in different areas and analyzing that data using AI. We've had a lot of success with that. think it's quite maybe scary and daunting to business owners, e-comm stores when there's so much going on, but as they'll know, and you know, um, you know, nearly all the platforms, nearly all the tech.

All the SAS are embracing and bringing AI, whether it's your latest, you know, platform change with their AI page builders, um, whether it's the personalization around product selection, product recommendation with some of your SAS that you're using. You're, they're all embracing AI. And I think you have to do that. I think the reality is it is a very, very exciting time right now, no matter what business you're in. But I think, you know, I employ you to sort of audit your day to day tasks, roles.

tasks within those roles departments to see where you might be able to speed things up. Cause I think if you can bring a little bit of automation or a lot of automation and AI into those departments. And I think the thing is, it's just surprising. It blows me away at just how quick things are getting better and better. So for example, you know, we think about chat, GPT more Claude.

You know, we use both, but Claude is our favorite for words. but two years ago, it was not great. It was okay. But now it's flipping incredible. It is incredible. Obviously they're just along with chat GPT five, Claude simile, you know, incredible, you know, in terms of the quality that it can create with the right prompts, et cetera, and the right training. so you, you just don't want to be getting left behind. I think when you think about your business,

I do genuinely believe when I think about my business that AI will not harm my business unless we don't embrace AI. And I think that's the best way to think. think the businesses that embrace AI genuinely are the ones that are going to be, you know, doing well, just like over the last 20 odd years, those that have embraced digital, that have embraced changes that have come along, you know, the ones that have thrived. So I think it's testing, it's trialing.

Richard Hill (17:32.821)

You know, I'm really auditing what you're doing and then seeing where you can maybe bring AI in to help speed things up, help things along. and then really it's then you become more cost effective. I think for me, it started with a, you know, a curiosity and I implore you to be damn a lot more curious than maybe I was a, you know, a couple of years ago. I think spending that hour a day, looking at understanding, reading, listening to podcasts.

I'm looking at the different tools and texts and subscriptions that you have and who's using AI and who's not and where they're maybe moving a little bit quicker. I think, you for us, we use it a lot for making smarter decisions. So it helps us speed up those decisions. So something I now do, which people I think maybe have smirked at me quite a lot over the last few months is I now take my phone and I will speak to Jack GPT.

and ask it, you know, ask him, you know, and discuss. So, you know, Hey, how are we doing today?

Richard Hill (18:44.321)

So I'm thinking of running an event right here in Lincoln. Now last year we ran it at the Everyman Cinema. Great, great space. 150 people. It really was a good event, but I really, really want to improve on last year's event. Have you got any ideas around what we could do? Last year it was to celebrate the 200th episode of the Ecomot1 podcast. This year it's gonna be to celebrate the 222nd episode of the podcast, episode of the podcast.

So the triple two, 222nd episode of the podcast. What could we do to make it one of the best e-commerce events in the UK?

Richard Hill (19:24.567)

That sounds like a lot of fun and I love the triple two theme. Definitely a nice milestone to study for. So let's bring it down into a few ideas you could use to really elevate the event. Creating a unique theme and atmosphere. First off, since it's the 222nd episode, you can lean into that theme and have a little bit of fun with it. Maybe even a triple two motif in the decor or some kind of playful knots, the number two, two, two throughout the event. can make it feel a bit special and memorable. Incorporating interactive elements. Another idea is to add more interactive sessions or workshops.

Last year, if it was more of a straightforward celebration, this year, could have breakout sessions where people can actually engage with some of the topics you've covered on the podcast, maybe live Q and A's or mini workshops laid by some of your past guests, elevating the networking experience. could also up to antsy on networking, think about having some kind of structured networking activity. Stop for now, please. I'm always very polite to him because we've become friends. It's a bit crazy, yeah. And I found it so useful when I've just got maybe an idea that I want to float.

And that wasn't that great. know, some of those things we thought, but some of those things we hadn't thought of, you know? so, know, and then you just back and forth, back and forth. So when I'm off for a walk for maybe 40 minutes, half an hour, you know, it's definitely, I've had a few strange looks where I'm going, Hey, what's this, this, this, and so forth. so just been able to do that and bounce off, the AI. I think, from an e-commerce specific perspective, you know,

what AI is doing to search and the way people are searching is very interesting. So obviously as an e-comm store owner, if you're with us and listening, we talked about a lot of things there, but when we get into the specifics around e-commerce and how people are searching for your products, you know, in terms of what I've just done there, you know, if you were going to chat to EPT now and speak or...

you know, choose your model that you use, Claude, Chachi BT, and so forth. You know, I would implore you to try them all. Um, you know, what does it know about your brand? So ask it. What does it know? What do you know about, you know, and then when we think about the products that you are selling and when you're speaking, find me the perfect five month tent for a day trip or two, two, three days, um, 3000 feet.

Richard Hill (21:47.799)

in the Lake district go what and how is it searching and what is it delivering? You need to be able to understand that. that's something that our SEO team are sort of semi obsessed with and we're obsessed with. But you know, the different models are, are similar, but different, know, and I think, you know, there's been a lot of, you know, is SEO the same as geo generative SEO optimization started out of, yes, it's the same, but it's not quite the same.

maybe 95 % the same, know, and it's still, yet to be, you know, defined and the exact size behind it's still evolving. And that's why we love this stuff because it's moving, changing. And that's where ourselves as an agency can really get a, a headstart and a jump on a lot of agencies that are maybe a little bit steady with the way they react to change. So it's very, very exciting. So I'd really recommend do that exercise.

you know, chat your own chat GPT chap lady and ask it about what it knows about this business, that business, and, know, think about how you can then.

what you're doing on the marketing side. I mean, it's still early days, I think, in terms of search volume coming from LLMs and the likes of ChatGPT, et cetera, and Claude. I think, depending on whose stats you look at, it's sort of circa 1%, less than 1%. So it's still small, but 1%, 2%, 3%, know, let's sit here in 18 months time, and then the way that...

Google's homepage, for example, obviously that Google is not the only place that we're focused on, but ultimately, you know, lot of our listeners rely on that organic and, paid ads from Google. But now we've got the AI overlays, which have been around for quite some time now getting into those are different types of formats and the different types of sites that Google are citing, you know, a lot of it looks like good.

Richard Hill (23:48.499)

link building, good digital PR and absolutely we've been getting a lot of success from sort of listicle posts and strong digital PR. But then AI mode has now jumped in here in the UK. It's debatable, you know, not long ago, a few months ago, and then a few months before in the U S and et cetera. But again, that's going to change how people are searching. There won't be a top 10, that's where it's going, you know, and so forth. It's going to be a ask this.

And then this engine, and then the questions that are getting asked are getting a lot longer rather than five man tent. You wouldn't speak like that. Would you? You would be find me a five man tent that is really good for 3000 feet hike. That's not a free word sentence. That's a, that's a sentence. That's two sentences almost. So how are you adapting your content strategy? You know, and this

blends well into, you know, a lot of the stuff we talk about, you know, over the years around FAQs and content and, and topical authority and building that out. But it's not exactly the same. It's very, very similar, but very, very interesting. So.

Richard Hill (25:02.215)

It's really cool to see you kind of just using on how these changes are evolving. And you're totally right. It's a really exciting time because the way people are searching is getting more conversational. It's not just those short keywords anymore. And it does mean that, yeah, you have to think a little bit differently about content strategy and SEO. And it's weird that you're encouraging folks to just jump in and ask AI what it knows about their brand and play around. That's how you lard it. It is early days, but some be super interesting to see how this shifts over the next world. So, so yeah, it's a fun space to be in and I'm glad you're enjoying that.

I didn't know you were listening, you little bugger.

Richard Hill (25:37.943)

here just quietly tuned in. Don't worry. I'm just sure for the little AI buddy tag along for the ride. I think we'll wrap this one up but a little short and sweet episode this time around the AI and what we've been doing at the agency. I think the key thing is don't get left behind. know, don't put the blinkers on and hope that you'll be okay in your space. I think you know be inquisitive like no doubt as a business owner, as a progressive marketer, you are.

you know, and try things, you know, speak to our team, of course. if you've got any concerns around the marketing side of things, but yeah, go enjoy some AI. Cheers.

Richard Hill (26:24.063)

you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you on the next one.