May 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Ever wondered how the digital marketing landscape is transforming with the rise of AI? Or how video content is reshaping client engagement? In episode 154 of Carlsbad: People, Purpose, and Impact, I sit down with Gwen Beren, the brilliant mind behind Illuminus Marketing. This episode is a treasure trove of insights as Gwen shares her fascinating journey from corporate burnout to entrepreneurial success.
Gwen, a Rancho Penasquitos native, takes us through her educational journey at the Savannah College of Art and Design and her early career in web design and SEO. She reveals how her experiences at United Webworks and Internet Matrix paved the way for the creation of Illuminus Marketing in 2013.
We dive deep into the evolving world of SEO, exploring how AI tools like Perplexity are revolutionizing user search behaviors. Gwen’s passion for video marketing shines through as she discusses its power in building trust and engagement. Plus, she shares an impressive case study where her agency achieved a whopping 927% ROI for a client!
Join us as Gwen also highlights the importance of curiosity and creative problem-solving in crafting tailored marketing strategies.
Gwen Beren Bio
Gwen Beren is CEO & Founder of Illuminous Marketing, Inc, a digital marketing firm in Carlsbad, CA focused on helping purpose-driven businesses shine online with data-backed and results-driven marketing strategies. Gwen founded the company in 2012 with a strong focus on SEO which continues to be a core offering of the agency. She is a knowledgeable and engaging speaker and has spoken at Surge 2020, several Hera Hub locations & many other marketing events around Southern California. Gwen holds a certification in AI for Business Applications from MIT and has been Google Analytics and Adwords certified.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gwen Beren (00:02):
Carlsbad, people, purpose, and impact, an
essential podcast for those wholive, work, visit, and play in
Carlsbad.
Bret Schanzenbach (00:14):
Good afternoon, and welcome,
everyone. My name is BrettSchonsenbach. I am the president
and CEO of the Carlsbad Chamberof Commerce, and I am once again
privileged to be your host. Andtoday, I'm excited to have with
me Gwen Barron. Gwen is the CEOand founder of Illuminus
Marketing.
Good afternoon, Gwen.
Gwen Beren (00:33):
Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.
Bret Schanzenbach (00:34):
It's great to have you. You and I go back a
little ways. We go back to my BCdays. That's before Carl's bad
days. Just to clarify.
So it's it's great to have youso we could sit down and have
this chat. And as I was lookingand preparing for today, I saw
that you went to PalomarCollege. So did you grow up
(00:59):
locally here?
Gwen Beren (00:59):
I sure did. I grew up in Rancho Penasquitos.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:02):
Okay. So you're local, but then I did see
you went off to Georgia for abit, it looks like. Savannah
College of Art and Design?
Gwen Beren (01:10):
Yes. Also known as SCAD.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:13):
SCAD. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Gwen Beren (01:14):
My family has well, I grew up here, but we end up
going somewhere for a couple ofyears, and then coming back, we
always end up back here in SanDiego because it's home.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:25):
Go and come. Go and not not for military
reasons or things like that.
Gwen Beren (01:28):
No. Actually, for school mostly. My mom decided to
go to UNC when I was in highschool, and so we moved to North
Carolina while she got hermaster's degree, and then then I
decided to go to college inSavannah at SCAD.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:43):
Wow. You know, when your mom got her
master's degree, I'm assuming atthat time there wasn't as many,
like, online options foradvanced degrees, like, these
yeah. Right. Like
Gwen Beren (01:54):
Was the Internet even a thing in '92? I don't
think so.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:57):
No. It was not. Yeah. Funny that you should
mention that we were just thisweek, we were doing a program
with middle school studentscalled Future CEO on
entrepreneurship.
Gwen Beren (02:11):
Oh, cool.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:12):
And one of the entrepreneurs that we were
really highlighting and and welistened to a a very short
interview from was Jeff Bezosfrom Amazon. Mhmm. And he was
talking about he was trying toraise in 1994 and 1995, he was
trying to raise a milliondollars for Amazon. And he got
(02:34):
60 individual investor meetings,and the number one question from
every single one of them was,what's the Internet?
Gwen Beren (02:44):
Oh my gosh. That's such a trip.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:46):
Even though he was
Gwen Beren (02:47):
just trying to raise that amount of money and that
they didn't know what theInternet is. Yeah.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:52):
Yeah. And out of the 60 people he met with,
only basically 20 said yes. Theythey made $50,000 investments
that can you imagine the peoplewho said no?
Gwen Beren (03:02):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Kicking themselves.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:04):
Kicking themselves now. Yeah. And he had
to tell them what the Internetwas. Now, I mean, it seems
absurd now, but in '94, yeah,then that was the thing. Yep.
So your mom was committed enoughto her advanced degree that you
guys picked up and moved.
Gwen Beren (03:17):
Yep. We sure did.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:18):
And it
Gwen Beren (03:19):
was a really great experience. It gave us a lot of
great perspective on how peoplein the rest of the country live
and different cultures, and wewere talking about barbecue
before we started to record. Ifyou say barbecue in North
Carolina, they expect you tohave a pig and a smoker Yeah.
Not hamburgers and hot dogs orsomething like that.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:38):
Not a not a gas grill in our patio?
Gwen Beren (03:40):
No. No. It's real barbecue.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:43):
It's a little different. And it looks like,
you know, through yourexperience at SCAD and and
possibly beyond. But you gotinto web design things pretty
pretty quickly. That was itlooks like early on was your
jam, web design.
Gwen Beren (03:58):
Yeah. So at SCAD, I was a photography major. And for
whatever reason, wasn't gettingthe kind of photography career
advice that I really felt Iwanted for that direction. And
one of our classes was to buildour own website. So I learned
(04:18):
Dreamweaver.
I started to learn about searchengine optimization. And then
when I left school, a local webdevelopment agency had a
position for a project developeror a project manager. And so I
was able to take that and reallythat really launched the
trajectory that I'm on now.
Bret Schanzenbach (04:38):
Yeah. Wow. Fascinating. Right out the gate.
And and so you spent before youstarted what you currently have,
which we'll talk about, I saw acouple of different companies,
United Webworks, Internet,Matrix.
So tell us about some of yourexperiences you had there before
(04:58):
you launched out on your own.
Gwen Beren (05:00):
Yeah. So United Webworks was the company I just
mentioned that I was the I thinkit was director of projects, was
the it was project manager.
Bret Schanzenbach (05:08):
Sure.
Gwen Beren (05:09):
And I was only there for a short time before I was
able to come back here to SanDiego, and that was actually
during the two thousand eight,two thousand nine Brutal.
Crisis. So but it really thatgave me a good platform to come
here. I started off as a parttime customer service person at
(05:30):
Internet Matrix, and I wasrelieving people over their
lunch breaks and answeringphones and doing tech support
for websites. But as I continuedon my path there, I started to
teach myself more about searchengine optimization, and that
was really the beginning of thatwhole industry of Yes.
SEO with websites. And so as Istarted to teach myself, I
(05:53):
started to talk to my managersabout we should really develop
some SEO programs here, for ourclients. So that was the
beginning of me establishing theprofessional services department
at iMatrix, and that also thenled into other services, like
(06:14):
social media marketing Yeah.Video marketing, paid
advertising. So we reallydeveloped a whole suite of
services for that company.
And then, there was anopportunity to, develop the
marketing department. They hadhad some trial and error. They
had had some failed starts atthe marketing department, and
(06:37):
knowing the company as I didfrom having to really work
myself from the the bottom allthe way up. I knew a lot of the
ins and outs. I knew the thewhat we needed to market, and so
I developed the marketingdepartment there Nice.
And really took them from a coldcalling sales model to and more
(06:58):
of an inbound marketing, contentmarketing model. And then at
some point, I just got burnedout on corporate life and said,
I am done with this. So so itwas at that point that I went
out on my own, and I had acouple of people that I knew
from that job and previous jobs.They were like, oh, we need
(07:21):
marketing. We help over at mycompany or we need SEO help.
And so that is really thefoundation of what happened for
Illuminus Marketing.
Bret Schanzenbach (07:29):
Interesting. So I wanna I wanna kinda focus
in a little more on the theburnout part. So you're so
you're burnt out at your currentjob and you're like, I'm I need
a break. I just need to take astep back or whatever. And so
you do that and and so you'renot not working anywhere at all
(07:51):
at that point?
Gwen Beren (07:52):
Mm-mm.
Bret Schanzenbach (07:52):
So you're just okay. Mental health Yes.
Time out, and then people startapproaching you. Is that is that
pretty much what happened?
Gwen Beren (08:01):
Essentially, yes. I think I had one freelance client
while I was still working there,crazily, because I was working,
like, sixty to eighty hour weeksat in corporate. And but it was
actually a a friend of my mentorand my boss at the time. That's
who I was doing freelance workfor. So I was able to expand
(08:22):
that contract, so that kinda gotme over the hump.
But then Just like over the timeagain. Organically started to
come in from other people that Ihad worked with.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:32):
Wow. So at least on LinkedIn, what I saw is
that Illuminus Marketing fromwhat it says started in 2013.
Gwen Beren (08:44):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:45):
So is that about right? Okay.
Gwen Beren (08:46):
That was when I left corporate.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:47):
That's when you left corporate and took a
step out on your own.
Gwen Beren (08:51):
Yes.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:51):
And then so it starts humbly, but Yes. But
you got a few clients. And nowtoday, why don't we go ahead and
just tell people in general whatyou do at Illuminus Marketing?
Gwen Beren (09:05):
So Illuminus Marketing is a full service
digital marketing company. Wedevelop websites. We do search
engine optimization. That's ourcore. That's my biggest passion
and what makes my heart gopitter pat.
So but we also do social mediamanagement and video
optimization, content creation.So we're able to really offer a
(09:28):
full suite of services for ourclients.
Bret Schanzenbach (09:31):
Okay. We're gonna take a brief pause, and
we're gonna start to unpack someof this a little more in-depth
after the break, so stick withus. We're talking to Gwen
Barron, the CEO and founder ofIlluminus Marketing, and we'll
be right back. So, Gwen, beforewe took a break, we were just
(10:47):
kinda going through your storythat got you up to the point of
launching Illuminus Marketing,and now you you were explaining
some of the things that you do.Let's pretend that there's at
least a few people out therethat still don't know what the
heck SEO means and what that,you know, is all about or how it
works.
And tell people what do youactually do to maximize their
(11:10):
SEO.
Gwen Beren (11:11):
So search engine optimization, SEO, is optimizing
your website presence forsearches. And so my definition
of SEO has really evolved overtime, especially right now with
AI and AI overviews and a lot ofpeople changing their user
behavior to turn to AI forsearches or for information.
(11:35):
It's really about making surethat your business is
represented online everywherethat you might have a profile.
So for the chamber, for example,you have your Google My Business
location, but then you also haveyour podcast. So you have to
make sure that your podcast isoptimized Sure.
For searches on the podcastplatform, and that your
website's optimized fordifferent Carlsbad events and
(11:57):
different Chamber events. Somaking sure that you're taking
stock of all of those differentthings and optimizing them for
the most traffic that youpossibly can so that you can
bring people into your business.So that's really how I define
search engine optimization. Ithink a lot of people think of
it as just, I need to optimizemy website so that I can get
(12:20):
leads. And while that is a partof it, I think that's a smaller
and smaller part of it with allof the other with the way user
behavior has changed intechnology.
Bret Schanzenbach (12:30):
And I like that you brought up the AI point
because I was at a chamberconference, gosh, earlier this
month, think it was. Time goesby. And, of course, you know, a
lot of buzz about AI. And I hadnot been paying attention to
some of the AI search tools.Mhmm.
(12:52):
But I learned there aboutPerplexity? Yes. Perplexity Yep.
AI. And so I started to use it.
Gwen Beren (12:58):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (12:59):
And I have to honestly say I really like it.
And some of you listening areway ahead of me, but if if you
haven't heard of Perplexity,instead of going to Google and
doing a search where I feel likethe first five or 10 things on
Google or somebody paid to bethere Yep. Based on what I typed
in. But in perplexity, it's notlike that. And I can I can ask a
(13:23):
question, and it'll give me ananswer, and then I can refine my
question, and it'll hone it ineven better?
And I really like it.
Gwen Beren (13:31):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (13:31):
And so I'm hearing though that are you are
you seeing that that kind oftrend of people moving off of
the traditional Google thing isis a thing?
Gwen Beren (13:39):
Definitely. And I think that's it's been a trend
for probably, I'm gonna say thelast, like, eight years even
before AI, because Google wastrying to provide even more
context in their searches. Sohow we like to separate our SEO
(14:00):
efforts for people is intocategories of intent. So if
you're doing an educationalsearch, like something you might
do on Perplexity, so if you'researching for, you know, best
chamber in North County orsomething like that.
Bret Schanzenbach (14:14):
Oh, I gotta try that one. I never thought I
was searching for that.
Gwen Beren (14:18):
So if you're searching for something like
that, if you're searching for orbest chiropractor, let's just
Bret Schanzenbach (14:24):
say. Sure.
Gwen Beren (14:25):
You're probably gonna get a bunch of map results
in a Google search. But in aperplexity search, you might get
more contextual results. Sotalking about what would what
would define the bestchiropractor. So it's gonna give
you more informational andcontextual things when you're
(14:46):
using a platform likePerplexity. Now, on the other
hand, Google has really evolvedto with their AI overviews that
you'll see now a lot of times atthe top of a search result, they
are starting to pull contextinto the search.
So there's a difference betweenan educational search, which
(15:07):
might be you're obviously tryingto educate yourself versus an
intent to buy, a transactionalsearch, versus a brand search.
If someone searching for Carl'sbedchamber, then you, you know,
you guys come up very well forthat.
Bret Schanzenbach (15:20):
Sure.
Gwen Beren (15:20):
So so there's different kinds of searches,
search intent, and people usedifferent platforms for those
different things. So that'sreally where the strategy comes
into building kind of a reallygood content plan and SEO plan.
So over the last year, I've kindof said, oh, we're an SEO first
(15:42):
agency, and then that reallykind of freaks people out
because they have no idea whatI'm talking about. Yeah. So now,
it's more of, like, we are auser first agency.
We're we're looking at howpeople are searching for your
business and also topics relatedto your business. Are they using
AI? Are they using, you know,Google My Business searches? Are
(16:05):
they using Yelp? Or how what arethey doing to Right.
Find your business? And thenwhen they get to your website,
what are they doing on yourwebsite? And all of those things
kinda can come together to makea better user experience and
then ultimately generate moremoney for the business.
Bret Schanzenbach (16:19):
Right. Yeah. Fascinating. I noticed on your
website Mhmm. Also focus onsomething we haven't talked
about yet, but video marketing.
Yeah. Talk about, you know,where that's at because it seems
to be pretty hot topic, maybenot quite as cutting edge as the
AI discussions, but it's prettymuch pretty high up there. So
(16:40):
Yeah. What's going on withvideo? How do you guys see it,
and how do you use it, etcetera?
Gwen Beren (16:44):
I think video has been the biggest game changer
for our business and for ourclients in the last three years,
other than AI, of course. Butthey're they're a little bit
related. But with video, it's soimportant, I think, that people
can see who you are when they'retrying when they're deciding
whether or not they wanna workwith you. You know, I have a
(17:07):
couple of clients who arecoaches or profitability coaches
or they're, leadership executivedevelopment coaches. And so
those types of people are it'sreally important to be able to
see who you're talking to, andto see who you might be working
with, and to hear what theirphilosophy is.
And video makes that so mucheasier than someone reading
paragraphs and paragraphs oftext on your website.
Bret Schanzenbach (17:29):
Yeah.
Gwen Beren (17:29):
So so it's really important. Plus, it it allows
you to have a little bit morefun. And honestly, I find it way
easier than writing content.Because you could if you're a
domain expert and you a subjectmatter expert, and you could
just talk and talk and talkabout your area of expertise,
it's so much easier to do thatthan to sit down with the cursor
blinking and and try to write ityourself. So from from the
(17:53):
client perspective, video isgreat.
And then from the, you know,customer perspective, you get
just to know the person thatyou'll be working with. And and
it's also really great forsearch engine optimization,
because YouTube is the secondlargest search engine, also
owned by Google. But Right. Ifyou're putting videos onto
YouTube, you have the ability toshow up and search over there as
(18:17):
well.
Bret Schanzenbach (18:17):
Yeah. It's wonderful. And, I mean,
sometimes when I feel like someof our members or small
businesses or whatever hear, oh,I gotta do more video, they
think big expense and bigproduction and hassle, but it
seems like we've all gottenpretty comfortable with just
somebody popping out thesmartphone and taking, you know,
(18:40):
videos that way that the qualityhas gone way up on the
capabilities So
Gwen Beren (18:45):
good.
Bret Schanzenbach (18:45):
Yeah. Talk about that.
Gwen Beren (18:46):
Yeah. So I mentioned I went to school for
photography, and I was telling aclient this the other day. When
I was in school for photographyat the beginning of the
February, I purchased a camerathat it was a top of the line
camera for, like, $5,000, and itwas 12 meg pixels. Megapixels?
Yeah.
Megapixels. Oh my goodness.Yeah. And that was like, oh my
god. This is such great quality.
(19:07):
And now no. That's that'slaughable. That's like probably
what comes in a kid's toy Yeah.For them to take pictures on
their watch or something likethat. So
Bret Schanzenbach (19:17):
Crazy.
Gwen Beren (19:18):
Phones have increased so much in the quality
that they're able to produce.And then also, the technology
around editing your videos andputting them together and
getting them published hasreally they've made the user
experience so much easier to beable to actually edit video,
that it's it's really they'vethe bar to entry has really been
(19:42):
lowered Yeah. So so much. Andyou can make a great quality
video without having to spendtens of thousands of dollars on
a huge production.
Bret Schanzenbach (19:51):
Nice. Yeah. That's that's good news.
Gwen Beren (19:53):
Yeah. It's great news.
Bret Schanzenbach (19:56):
And then so, you know, we were talking about
SEO and, you know, optimizingyour website for the different
purposes, like you mentioned. Ireally like that. But there was
an interesting statistic on yourwebsite that I would love for
you to kinda explain.
Gwen Beren (20:11):
Okay.
Bret Schanzenbach (20:11):
It says you guys have a 927% ROI on organic
revenue generated. I thinkthat's what it said.
Gwen Beren (20:23):
Yes. So What does that mean? That was for one of
our clients who was in theindustrial they were in
manufacturing shelving space.
Bret Schanzenbach (20:34):
Okay.
Gwen Beren (20:35):
So that was a very niche space. But when they came
to us, their website wasn'tconverting very well. And so
this is really where the userexperience part comes in. And so
we were able to put trackingsoftware on their website that
showed us how people werestruggling to purchase the right
(20:56):
to find the right thing thatthey wanted to purchase on the
website. And so through trackingthe, conversion rate
optimization or conversion rateon the website, we were able to
determine, okay, we need to movethese things around on the
website to make it easier forpeople to find them.
And so we were able to makethose website changes, and
(21:17):
between that and the searchengine optimization that we put
into the website, Inrelationship to the spend that
they were paying us, theyachieved a 900% ROI on on the
investment that they made tomake those changes. That's
amazing. They had originallycome to us and said we dropped
(21:38):
off the the first page ofGoogle, and we're bleeding 40 to
$50,000 a month because we'renot getting that traffic
anymore. So we're we were ableto get them back to where they
were, and then increase it muchmore from there.
Bret Schanzenbach (21:51):
Amazing. Amazing. And thing you talk
about, and you've mentioned it alittle bit in passing as we've
been talking, but this termcontent marketing.
Gwen Beren (22:01):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (22:02):
Yeah. Talk to us about what does that actually
mean to the layperson?
Gwen Beren (22:06):
Content marketing, how I simplify it for everyone
is this is just all of thecontent that you're creating.
You're whether you're creating ablog post or an ebook or even
videos. I also I now put videosinto your content strategy
because you have to think aboutwhat's gonna work better on a
video versus in a blog post.Like I mentioned, you know,
(22:28):
instead of reading paragraphs oftext Mhmm. Somebody might wanna
watch a two minute video to beable to understand exactly what
they're looking for.
People's attention spans, as weall know, are not very long, so
the easier that you can make itfor people, the the better
you're gonna be in that respect.So for content marketing, what
(22:48):
we like to do is we like to whenwe're doing your research, your
initial research for yourproject, we're not only
bucketing those keywords thatare transactional, like I
mentioned, where we're talkingabout, you know, best chamber in
North County, but then we'llalso do we'll also look for
terms that other people aresearching that are those
educational things, like, whatdo I look for in a chamber of
(23:10):
commerce Sure. To know that it'sgonna be the right fit for me or
something along those lines. Soso your content strategy should
definitely pull in your or orkinda work with your SEO
strategy, and it can include alot of different things. Your
web pages, your blog posts, yourebooks, all of those things,
because you want people tosearch for them.
(23:32):
You don't wanna just create themand have nobody see them. You're
not building a billboard in adesert.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:36):
Building a billboard in a desert. I'm
remember that. One of the thingsI saw on your website spoke
about how you guys employcuriosity.
Gwen Beren (23:50):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:51):
Creative problem solving.
Gwen Beren (23:53):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:53):
I thought that was really interesting
because, like, you just gave usan example of a a shelving
manufacturer or something likethat. I mean, that super niche,
but
Gwen Beren (24:03):
Yes.
Bret Schanzenbach (24:04):
But everybody's got their thing
that's kinda unique to them. Andso everything I'm hearing from
you speaks to this where youguys are willing to really take
the time to learn about thembefore you delve in with
strategies.
Gwen Beren (24:19):
100%. Yeah. Most of our projects start with an audit
of the brand, which alsoincludes competitive research.
What is everyone else doing?What's working for them?
What's not working for them? Andso, yes, we really start from a
place of curiosity of what's outthere, what can we do. But we
also employ that with ourcurrent clients too, because you
(24:41):
don't want your marketing forsome we've had clients that have
been with us for ten years. Soyou don't want that to get
stale, you wanna continue tostay up with market trends. And
so the curiosity part and thecreative problem solving really
come into play when we'rethinking about how can we
refresh this?
How can we make sure that thisis relevant to new audiences and
(25:04):
to current trends? So, you know,when Instagram started becoming
a big thing in 2015, everybody,all of our clients were on
Facebook, and then, oh,everybody's gotta now we've
gotta go to Instagram. We'vegotta come up with a new
Instagram strategy. So that'sreally part of what makes our
job fun is that we're constantlyable to learn. We're able to
(25:27):
learn from our clients.
We're able to learn about newdigital marketing techniques.
And it doesn't hurt that, youknow, I have an art degree, and
then I'm very left brain, rightbrain, so I'm able to take both
of those approaches and kindameld them together for a path
forward.
Bret Schanzenbach (25:42):
That's great. The other thing that I noticed
and it's clear from listening tois you you mentioned on, again,
on your website about how youemploy measurement. You're gonna
measure everything which, youknow, if somebody's investing,
they wanna know the results.Right? So talk about that.
Gwen Beren (26:04):
I think that a lot of strides have been made in the
ability to report on differentthings lately, which is great
through whether it's GoogleAnalytics or other analytics
platforms. I think that itbecomes really overwhelming for
people to pull information fromall of these different places
(26:25):
and try to make sense of it. Sowe have incorporated a new
reporting style that allows usto see all of these things in
one dashboard. Nice. So we don'thave to go through three or four
different things, and also sothat people don't have to look
at a spreadsheet, you know.
Spreadsheets aren't fun for mostpeople.
Bret Schanzenbach (26:43):
Right.
Gwen Beren (26:44):
So True. And on that same token, we do wanna make
sure we're trying to makedecisions based off of real
world data. So that's why we dothe research upfront. We find
out where are these people, whatare they searching for, how are
they behaving. And then we alsoafter we do those things, we go
(27:05):
back and say, okay, what wasworking?
What didn't work? What performedthe best? What hasn't performed?
And so we're really trying toinstead of making decisions
based on how I feel, we'retrying to make decisions based
you know, what is the datashowing us that we need to
follow so that we can getresults for our clients.
Bret Schanzenbach (27:26):
That's great. I love that. We talked about AI
earlier, but I also saw you yougot an AI certificate from MIT.
Gwen Beren (27:35):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (27:36):
That's pretty cool.
Gwen Beren (27:37):
Yeah. It was this was in 2018. Yeah. So I actually
went to a conference, think, in2015 where one of the speakers
totally blew my mind. His name'sChristopher Penn, and he's a AI
thought leader these days, AIand marketing thought leader.
And he told he's told theaudience that the singularity
(27:59):
could be achieved within ten totwelve years, and that's
basically now. Yeah. And and Ididn't even know what the
singularity was. I'm not reallya sci fi person. But at that
time, it really intrigued me,all the things he was saying
where if you can put a processto it now, AI will be able to do
it in the future.
(28:20):
So that really got me thinking alot about AI, and when I saw
this opportunity to do this MITcertificate program for AI for
business applications, I wasreally trying to future proof my
business by thinking how isthere something that I could
develop that would help us bemore productive and help us have
an edge on the competition? Andthe answer, of course, was yes.
(28:42):
It was yes, and you'll needmillions of dollars to do it.
Bret Schanzenbach (28:46):
Oh, my.
Gwen Beren (28:47):
If anybody is up to date on, like, you know, the
amount of money that ChatGPT israising for all of their, you
know, developments, it takesquite a bit of money and quite a
bit of resources. So that reallygave me a good basis though for
understanding how AI works andhow it impacts our world, and
also some of the, you know,downsides of AI, you know, it's
(29:08):
unless you train it properly, itcan give you really terrible
results of a for a lot ofdifferent reasons, for a lot of
different things. So so it wasreally interesting to learn
about that in 2018 way beforechat GPT or any of these other
things. And now that we have allof these wonderful tools, it's
(29:28):
given me a good basis for how wecan ethically use AI to enhance
what we're doing without takingaway that human creativity.
Bret Schanzenbach (29:40):
Yeah. Fascinating. And it's evolving
ever ever. I can imagine havinga certificate in AI feels like
you gotta get another one andanother one and another one
because it just keeps changing.But no.
That's awesome. And I'm surethat's a huge value to the
clients that you work with aswell. Well, if somebody's
(30:01):
listening in and they're like,oh, this is very interesting.
These guys they're exactly whatI'm looking for. Best place to
start with you guys might beyour website?
Gwen Beren (30:11):
Yeah. You can definitely go to
illuminousmarketing.com, and youcan connect with me on LinkedIn,
Gwen Baron on LinkedIn. I'm morethan happy to, you know, make
connections and talk about whatthe needs are for the business,
what the business goals are.That's really where we strive to
create strategies around whatyou wanna achieve in your
(30:32):
business.
Bret Schanzenbach (30:33):
So that's illuminousmarketing.com or Gwen
Beren, b e r e n, on LinkedIn.That's great. Well, thank you so
much for taking the time to comedown and share about all your
expertise and your company andall the great stuff that you do.
We really appreciate you being apart of our chamber and our
chamber family.
Gwen Beren (30:52):
Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Bret Schanzenbach (30:54):
It was my pleasure. Thanks for joining us
today on our Carlsbad People,Purpose, and Impact podcast. If
you got value out of our episodetoday, please hit the follow
button on your favorite podcastapp, and please tell a friend.
Can't wait to see you next timeon Carlsbad people, purpose, and
impact.
Carlsbad, people, purpose, and impact, an
essential podcast for those wholive, work, visit, and play in
Carlsbad.
Bret Schanzenbach (00:14):
Good afternoon, and welcome,
everyone. My name is BrettSchonsenbach. I am the president
and CEO of the Carlsbad Chamberof Commerce, and I am once again
privileged to be your host. Andtoday, I'm excited to have with
me Gwen Barron. Gwen is the CEOand founder of Illuminus
Marketing.
Good afternoon, Gwen.
Gwen Beren (00:33):
Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.
Bret Schanzenbach (00:34):
It's great to have you. You and I go back a
little ways. We go back to my BCdays. That's before Carl's bad
days. Just to clarify.
So it's it's great to have youso we could sit down and have
this chat. And as I was lookingand preparing for today, I saw
that you went to PalomarCollege. So did you grow up
(00:59):
locally here?
Gwen Beren (00:59):
I sure did. I grew up in Rancho Penasquitos.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:02):
Okay. So you're local, but then I did see
you went off to Georgia for abit, it looks like. Savannah
College of Art and Design?
Gwen Beren (01:10):
Yes. Also known as SCAD.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:13):
SCAD. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Gwen Beren (01:14):
My family has well, I grew up here, but we end up
going somewhere for a couple ofyears, and then coming back, we
always end up back here in SanDiego because it's home.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:25):
Go and come. Go and not not for military
reasons or things like that.
Gwen Beren (01:28):
No. Actually, for school mostly. My mom decided to
go to UNC when I was in highschool, and so we moved to North
Carolina while she got hermaster's degree, and then then I
decided to go to college inSavannah at SCAD.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:43):
Wow. You know, when your mom got her
master's degree, I'm assuming atthat time there wasn't as many,
like, online options foradvanced degrees, like, these
yeah. Right. Like
Gwen Beren (01:54):
Was the Internet even a thing in '92? I don't
think so.
Bret Schanzenbach (01:57):
No. It was not. Yeah. Funny that you should
mention that we were just thisweek, we were doing a program
with middle school studentscalled Future CEO on
entrepreneurship.
Gwen Beren (02:11):
Oh, cool.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:12):
And one of the entrepreneurs that we were
really highlighting and and welistened to a a very short
interview from was Jeff Bezosfrom Amazon. Mhmm. And he was
talking about he was trying toraise in 1994 and 1995, he was
trying to raise a milliondollars for Amazon. And he got
(02:34):
60 individual investor meetings,and the number one question from
every single one of them was,what's the Internet?
Gwen Beren (02:44):
Oh my gosh. That's such a trip.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:46):
Even though he was
Gwen Beren (02:47):
just trying to raise that amount of money and that
they didn't know what theInternet is. Yeah.
Bret Schanzenbach (02:52):
Yeah. And out of the 60 people he met with,
only basically 20 said yes. Theythey made $50,000 investments
that can you imagine the peoplewho said no?
Gwen Beren (03:02):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Kicking themselves.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:04):
Kicking themselves now. Yeah. And he had
to tell them what the Internetwas. Now, I mean, it seems
absurd now, but in '94, yeah,then that was the thing. Yep.
So your mom was committed enoughto her advanced degree that you
guys picked up and moved.
Gwen Beren (03:17):
Yep. We sure did.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:18):
And it
Gwen Beren (03:19):
was a really great experience. It gave us a lot of
great perspective on how peoplein the rest of the country live
and different cultures, and wewere talking about barbecue
before we started to record. Ifyou say barbecue in North
Carolina, they expect you tohave a pig and a smoker Yeah.
Not hamburgers and hot dogs orsomething like that.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:38):
Not a not a gas grill in our patio?
Gwen Beren (03:40):
No. No. It's real barbecue.
Bret Schanzenbach (03:43):
It's a little different. And it looks like,
you know, through yourexperience at SCAD and and
possibly beyond. But you gotinto web design things pretty
pretty quickly. That was itlooks like early on was your
jam, web design.
Gwen Beren (03:58):
Yeah. So at SCAD, I was a photography major. And for
whatever reason, wasn't gettingthe kind of photography career
advice that I really felt Iwanted for that direction. And
one of our classes was to buildour own website. So I learned
(04:18):
Dreamweaver.
I started to learn about searchengine optimization. And then
when I left school, a local webdevelopment agency had a
position for a project developeror a project manager. And so I
was able to take that and reallythat really launched the
trajectory that I'm on now.
Bret Schanzenbach (04:38):
Yeah. Wow. Fascinating. Right out the gate.
And and so you spent before youstarted what you currently have,
which we'll talk about, I saw acouple of different companies,
United Webworks, Internet,Matrix.
So tell us about some of yourexperiences you had there before
(04:58):
you launched out on your own.
Gwen Beren (05:00):
Yeah. So United Webworks was the company I just
mentioned that I was the I thinkit was director of projects, was
the it was project manager.
Bret Schanzenbach (05:08):
Sure.
Gwen Beren (05:09):
And I was only there for a short time before I was
able to come back here to SanDiego, and that was actually
during the two thousand eight,two thousand nine Brutal.
Crisis. So but it really thatgave me a good platform to come
here. I started off as a parttime customer service person at
(05:30):
Internet Matrix, and I wasrelieving people over their
lunch breaks and answeringphones and doing tech support
for websites. But as I continuedon my path there, I started to
teach myself more about searchengine optimization, and that
was really the beginning of thatwhole industry of Yes.
SEO with websites. And so as Istarted to teach myself, I
(05:53):
started to talk to my managersabout we should really develop
some SEO programs here, for ourclients. So that was the
beginning of me establishing theprofessional services department
at iMatrix, and that also thenled into other services, like
(06:14):
social media marketing Yeah.Video marketing, paid
advertising. So we reallydeveloped a whole suite of
services for that company.
And then, there was anopportunity to, develop the
marketing department. They hadhad some trial and error. They
had had some failed starts atthe marketing department, and
(06:37):
knowing the company as I didfrom having to really work
myself from the the bottom allthe way up. I knew a lot of the
ins and outs. I knew the thewhat we needed to market, and so
I developed the marketingdepartment there Nice.
And really took them from a coldcalling sales model to and more
(06:58):
of an inbound marketing, contentmarketing model. And then at
some point, I just got burnedout on corporate life and said,
I am done with this. So so itwas at that point that I went
out on my own, and I had acouple of people that I knew
from that job and previous jobs.They were like, oh, we need
(07:21):
marketing. We help over at mycompany or we need SEO help.
And so that is really thefoundation of what happened for
Illuminus Marketing.
Bret Schanzenbach (07:29):
Interesting. So I wanna I wanna kinda focus
in a little more on the theburnout part. So you're so
you're burnt out at your currentjob and you're like, I'm I need
a break. I just need to take astep back or whatever. And so
you do that and and so you'renot not working anywhere at all
(07:51):
at that point?
Gwen Beren (07:52):
Mm-mm.
Bret Schanzenbach (07:52):
So you're just okay. Mental health Yes.
Time out, and then people startapproaching you. Is that is that
pretty much what happened?
Gwen Beren (08:01):
Essentially, yes. I think I had one freelance client
while I was still working there,crazily, because I was working,
like, sixty to eighty hour weeksat in corporate. And but it was
actually a a friend of my mentorand my boss at the time. That's
who I was doing freelance workfor. So I was able to expand
(08:22):
that contract, so that kinda gotme over the hump.
But then Just like over the timeagain. Organically started to
come in from other people that Ihad worked with.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:32):
Wow. So at least on LinkedIn, what I saw is
that Illuminus Marketing fromwhat it says started in 2013.
Gwen Beren (08:44):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:45):
So is that about right? Okay.
Gwen Beren (08:46):
That was when I left corporate.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:47):
That's when you left corporate and took a
step out on your own.
Gwen Beren (08:51):
Yes.
Bret Schanzenbach (08:51):
And then so it starts humbly, but Yes. But
you got a few clients. And nowtoday, why don't we go ahead and
just tell people in general whatyou do at Illuminus Marketing?
Gwen Beren (09:05):
So Illuminus Marketing is a full service
digital marketing company. Wedevelop websites. We do search
engine optimization. That's ourcore. That's my biggest passion
and what makes my heart gopitter pat.
So but we also do social mediamanagement and video
optimization, content creation.So we're able to really offer a
(09:28):
full suite of services for ourclients.
Bret Schanzenbach (09:31):
Okay. We're gonna take a brief pause, and
we're gonna start to unpack someof this a little more in-depth
after the break, so stick withus. We're talking to Gwen
Barron, the CEO and founder ofIlluminus Marketing, and we'll
be right back. So, Gwen, beforewe took a break, we were just
(10:47):
kinda going through your storythat got you up to the point of
launching Illuminus Marketing,and now you you were explaining
some of the things that you do.Let's pretend that there's at
least a few people out therethat still don't know what the
heck SEO means and what that,you know, is all about or how it
works.
And tell people what do youactually do to maximize their
(11:10):
SEO.
Gwen Beren (11:11):
So search engine optimization, SEO, is optimizing
your website presence forsearches. And so my definition
of SEO has really evolved overtime, especially right now with
AI and AI overviews and a lot ofpeople changing their user
behavior to turn to AI forsearches or for information.
(11:35):
It's really about making surethat your business is
represented online everywherethat you might have a profile.
So for the chamber, for example,you have your Google My Business
location, but then you also haveyour podcast. So you have to
make sure that your podcast isoptimized Sure.
For searches on the podcastplatform, and that your
website's optimized fordifferent Carlsbad events and
(11:57):
different Chamber events. Somaking sure that you're taking
stock of all of those differentthings and optimizing them for
the most traffic that youpossibly can so that you can
bring people into your business.So that's really how I define
search engine optimization. Ithink a lot of people think of
it as just, I need to optimizemy website so that I can get
(12:20):
leads. And while that is a partof it, I think that's a smaller
and smaller part of it with allof the other with the way user
behavior has changed intechnology.
Bret Schanzenbach (12:30):
And I like that you brought up the AI point
because I was at a chamberconference, gosh, earlier this
month, think it was. Time goesby. And, of course, you know, a
lot of buzz about AI. And I hadnot been paying attention to
some of the AI search tools.Mhmm.
(12:52):
But I learned there aboutPerplexity? Yes. Perplexity Yep.
AI. And so I started to use it.
Gwen Beren (12:58):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (12:59):
And I have to honestly say I really like it.
And some of you listening areway ahead of me, but if if you
haven't heard of Perplexity,instead of going to Google and
doing a search where I feel likethe first five or 10 things on
Google or somebody paid to bethere Yep. Based on what I typed
in. But in perplexity, it's notlike that. And I can I can ask a
(13:23):
question, and it'll give me ananswer, and then I can refine my
question, and it'll hone it ineven better?
And I really like it.
Gwen Beren (13:31):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (13:31):
And so I'm hearing though that are you are
you seeing that that kind oftrend of people moving off of
the traditional Google thing isis a thing?
Gwen Beren (13:39):
Definitely. And I think that's it's been a trend
for probably, I'm gonna say thelast, like, eight years even
before AI, because Google wastrying to provide even more
context in their searches. Sohow we like to separate our SEO
(14:00):
efforts for people is intocategories of intent. So if
you're doing an educationalsearch, like something you might
do on Perplexity, so if you'researching for, you know, best
chamber in North County orsomething like that.
Bret Schanzenbach (14:14):
Oh, I gotta try that one. I never thought I
was searching for that.
Gwen Beren (14:18):
So if you're searching for something like
that, if you're searching for orbest chiropractor, let's just
Bret Schanzenbach (14:24):
say. Sure.
Gwen Beren (14:25):
You're probably gonna get a bunch of map results
in a Google search. But in aperplexity search, you might get
more contextual results. Sotalking about what would what
would define the bestchiropractor. So it's gonna give
you more informational andcontextual things when you're
(14:46):
using a platform likePerplexity. Now, on the other
hand, Google has really evolvedto with their AI overviews that
you'll see now a lot of times atthe top of a search result, they
are starting to pull contextinto the search.
So there's a difference betweenan educational search, which
(15:07):
might be you're obviously tryingto educate yourself versus an
intent to buy, a transactionalsearch, versus a brand search.
If someone searching for Carl'sbedchamber, then you, you know,
you guys come up very well forthat.
Bret Schanzenbach (15:20):
Sure.
Gwen Beren (15:20):
So so there's different kinds of searches,
search intent, and people usedifferent platforms for those
different things. So that'sreally where the strategy comes
into building kind of a reallygood content plan and SEO plan.
So over the last year, I've kindof said, oh, we're an SEO first
(15:42):
agency, and then that reallykind of freaks people out
because they have no idea whatI'm talking about. Yeah. So now,
it's more of, like, we are auser first agency.
We're we're looking at howpeople are searching for your
business and also topics relatedto your business. Are they using
AI? Are they using, you know,Google My Business searches? Are
(16:05):
they using Yelp? Or how what arethey doing to Right.
Find your business? And thenwhen they get to your website,
what are they doing on yourwebsite? And all of those things
kinda can come together to makea better user experience and
then ultimately generate moremoney for the business.
Bret Schanzenbach (16:19):
Right. Yeah. Fascinating. I noticed on your
website Mhmm. Also focus onsomething we haven't talked
about yet, but video marketing.
Yeah. Talk about, you know,where that's at because it seems
to be pretty hot topic, maybenot quite as cutting edge as the
AI discussions, but it's prettymuch pretty high up there. So
(16:40):
Yeah. What's going on withvideo? How do you guys see it,
and how do you use it, etcetera?
Gwen Beren (16:44):
I think video has been the biggest game changer
for our business and for ourclients in the last three years,
other than AI, of course. Butthey're they're a little bit
related. But with video, it's soimportant, I think, that people
can see who you are when they'retrying when they're deciding
whether or not they wanna workwith you. You know, I have a
(17:07):
couple of clients who arecoaches or profitability coaches
or they're, leadership executivedevelopment coaches. And so
those types of people are it'sreally important to be able to
see who you're talking to, andto see who you might be working
with, and to hear what theirphilosophy is.
And video makes that so mucheasier than someone reading
paragraphs and paragraphs oftext on your website.
Bret Schanzenbach (17:29):
Yeah.
Gwen Beren (17:29):
So so it's really important. Plus, it it allows
you to have a little bit morefun. And honestly, I find it way
easier than writing content.Because you could if you're a
domain expert and you a subjectmatter expert, and you could
just talk and talk and talkabout your area of expertise,
it's so much easier to do thatthan to sit down with the cursor
blinking and and try to write ityourself. So from from the
(17:53):
client perspective, video isgreat.
And then from the, you know,customer perspective, you get
just to know the person thatyou'll be working with. And and
it's also really great forsearch engine optimization,
because YouTube is the secondlargest search engine, also
owned by Google. But Right. Ifyou're putting videos onto
YouTube, you have the ability toshow up and search over there as
(18:17):
well.
Bret Schanzenbach (18:17):
Yeah. It's wonderful. And, I mean,
sometimes when I feel like someof our members or small
businesses or whatever hear, oh,I gotta do more video, they
think big expense and bigproduction and hassle, but it
seems like we've all gottenpretty comfortable with just
somebody popping out thesmartphone and taking, you know,
(18:40):
videos that way that the qualityhas gone way up on the
capabilities So
Gwen Beren (18:45):
good.
Bret Schanzenbach (18:45):
Yeah. Talk about that.
Gwen Beren (18:46):
Yeah. So I mentioned I went to school for
photography, and I was telling aclient this the other day. When
I was in school for photographyat the beginning of the
February, I purchased a camerathat it was a top of the line
camera for, like, $5,000, and itwas 12 meg pixels. Megapixels?
Yeah.
Megapixels. Oh my goodness.Yeah. And that was like, oh my
god. This is such great quality.
(19:07):
And now no. That's that'slaughable. That's like probably
what comes in a kid's toy Yeah.For them to take pictures on
their watch or something likethat. So
Bret Schanzenbach (19:17):
Crazy.
Gwen Beren (19:18):
Phones have increased so much in the quality
that they're able to produce.And then also, the technology
around editing your videos andputting them together and
getting them published hasreally they've made the user
experience so much easier to beable to actually edit video,
that it's it's really they'vethe bar to entry has really been
(19:42):
lowered Yeah. So so much. Andyou can make a great quality
video without having to spendtens of thousands of dollars on
a huge production.
Bret Schanzenbach (19:51):
Nice. Yeah. That's that's good news.
Gwen Beren (19:53):
Yeah. It's great news.
Bret Schanzenbach (19:56):
And then so, you know, we were talking about
SEO and, you know, optimizingyour website for the different
purposes, like you mentioned. Ireally like that. But there was
an interesting statistic on yourwebsite that I would love for
you to kinda explain.
Gwen Beren (20:11):
Okay.
Bret Schanzenbach (20:11):
It says you guys have a 927% ROI on organic
revenue generated. I thinkthat's what it said.
Gwen Beren (20:23):
Yes. So What does that mean? That was for one of
our clients who was in theindustrial they were in
manufacturing shelving space.
Bret Schanzenbach (20:34):
Okay.
Gwen Beren (20:35):
So that was a very niche space. But when they came
to us, their website wasn'tconverting very well. And so
this is really where the userexperience part comes in. And so
we were able to put trackingsoftware on their website that
showed us how people werestruggling to purchase the right
(20:56):
to find the right thing thatthey wanted to purchase on the
website. And so through trackingthe, conversion rate
optimization or conversion rateon the website, we were able to
determine, okay, we need to movethese things around on the
website to make it easier forpeople to find them.
And so we were able to makethose website changes, and
(21:17):
between that and the searchengine optimization that we put
into the website, Inrelationship to the spend that
they were paying us, theyachieved a 900% ROI on on the
investment that they made tomake those changes. That's
amazing. They had originallycome to us and said we dropped
(21:38):
off the the first page ofGoogle, and we're bleeding 40 to
$50,000 a month because we'renot getting that traffic
anymore. So we're we were ableto get them back to where they
were, and then increase it muchmore from there.
Bret Schanzenbach (21:51):
Amazing. Amazing. And thing you talk
about, and you've mentioned it alittle bit in passing as we've
been talking, but this termcontent marketing.
Gwen Beren (22:01):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (22:02):
Yeah. Talk to us about what does that actually
mean to the layperson?
Gwen Beren (22:06):
Content marketing, how I simplify it for everyone
is this is just all of thecontent that you're creating.
You're whether you're creating ablog post or an ebook or even
videos. I also I now put videosinto your content strategy
because you have to think aboutwhat's gonna work better on a
video versus in a blog post.Like I mentioned, you know,
(22:28):
instead of reading paragraphs oftext Mhmm. Somebody might wanna
watch a two minute video to beable to understand exactly what
they're looking for.
People's attention spans, as weall know, are not very long, so
the easier that you can make itfor people, the the better
you're gonna be in that respect.So for content marketing, what
(22:48):
we like to do is we like to whenwe're doing your research, your
initial research for yourproject, we're not only
bucketing those keywords thatare transactional, like I
mentioned, where we're talkingabout, you know, best chamber in
North County, but then we'llalso do we'll also look for
terms that other people aresearching that are those
educational things, like, whatdo I look for in a chamber of
(23:10):
commerce Sure. To know that it'sgonna be the right fit for me or
something along those lines. Soso your content strategy should
definitely pull in your or orkinda work with your SEO
strategy, and it can include alot of different things. Your
web pages, your blog posts, yourebooks, all of those things,
because you want people tosearch for them.
(23:32):
You don't wanna just create themand have nobody see them. You're
not building a billboard in adesert.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:36):
Building a billboard in a desert. I'm
remember that. One of the thingsI saw on your website spoke
about how you guys employcuriosity.
Gwen Beren (23:50):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:51):
Creative problem solving.
Gwen Beren (23:53):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (23:53):
I thought that was really interesting
because, like, you just gave usan example of a a shelving
manufacturer or something likethat. I mean, that super niche,
but
Gwen Beren (24:03):
Yes.
Bret Schanzenbach (24:04):
But everybody's got their thing
that's kinda unique to them. Andso everything I'm hearing from
you speaks to this where youguys are willing to really take
the time to learn about thembefore you delve in with
strategies.
Gwen Beren (24:19):
100%. Yeah. Most of our projects start with an audit
of the brand, which alsoincludes competitive research.
What is everyone else doing?What's working for them?
What's not working for them? Andso, yes, we really start from a
place of curiosity of what's outthere, what can we do. But we
also employ that with ourcurrent clients too, because you
(24:41):
don't want your marketing forsome we've had clients that have
been with us for ten years. Soyou don't want that to get
stale, you wanna continue tostay up with market trends. And
so the curiosity part and thecreative problem solving really
come into play when we'rethinking about how can we
refresh this?
How can we make sure that thisis relevant to new audiences and
(25:04):
to current trends? So, you know,when Instagram started becoming
a big thing in 2015, everybody,all of our clients were on
Facebook, and then, oh,everybody's gotta now we've
gotta go to Instagram. We'vegotta come up with a new
Instagram strategy. So that'sreally part of what makes our
job fun is that we're constantlyable to learn. We're able to
(25:27):
learn from our clients.
We're able to learn about newdigital marketing techniques.
And it doesn't hurt that, youknow, I have an art degree, and
then I'm very left brain, rightbrain, so I'm able to take both
of those approaches and kindameld them together for a path
forward.
Bret Schanzenbach (25:42):
That's great. The other thing that I noticed
and it's clear from listening tois you you mentioned on, again,
on your website about how youemploy measurement. You're gonna
measure everything which, youknow, if somebody's investing,
they wanna know the results.Right? So talk about that.
Gwen Beren (26:04):
I think that a lot of strides have been made in the
ability to report on differentthings lately, which is great
through whether it's GoogleAnalytics or other analytics
platforms. I think that itbecomes really overwhelming for
people to pull information fromall of these different places
(26:25):
and try to make sense of it. Sowe have incorporated a new
reporting style that allows usto see all of these things in
one dashboard. Nice. So we don'thave to go through three or four
different things, and also sothat people don't have to look
at a spreadsheet, you know.
Spreadsheets aren't fun for mostpeople.
Bret Schanzenbach (26:43):
Right.
Gwen Beren (26:44):
So True. And on that same token, we do wanna make
sure we're trying to makedecisions based off of real
world data. So that's why we dothe research upfront. We find
out where are these people, whatare they searching for, how are
they behaving. And then we alsoafter we do those things, we go
(27:05):
back and say, okay, what wasworking?
What didn't work? What performedthe best? What hasn't performed?
And so we're really trying toinstead of making decisions
based on how I feel, we'retrying to make decisions based
you know, what is the datashowing us that we need to
follow so that we can getresults for our clients.
Bret Schanzenbach (27:26):
That's great. I love that. We talked about AI
earlier, but I also saw you yougot an AI certificate from MIT.
Gwen Beren (27:35):
Mhmm.
Bret Schanzenbach (27:36):
That's pretty cool.
Gwen Beren (27:37):
Yeah. It was this was in 2018. Yeah. So I actually
went to a conference, think, in2015 where one of the speakers
totally blew my mind. His name'sChristopher Penn, and he's a AI
thought leader these days, AIand marketing thought leader.
And he told he's told theaudience that the singularity
(27:59):
could be achieved within ten totwelve years, and that's
basically now. Yeah. And and Ididn't even know what the
singularity was. I'm not reallya sci fi person. But at that
time, it really intrigued me,all the things he was saying
where if you can put a processto it now, AI will be able to do
it in the future.
(28:20):
So that really got me thinking alot about AI, and when I saw
this opportunity to do this MITcertificate program for AI for
business applications, I wasreally trying to future proof my
business by thinking how isthere something that I could
develop that would help us bemore productive and help us have
an edge on the competition? Andthe answer, of course, was yes.
(28:42):
It was yes, and you'll needmillions of dollars to do it.
Bret Schanzenbach (28:46):
Oh, my.
Gwen Beren (28:47):
If anybody is up to date on, like, you know, the
amount of money that ChatGPT israising for all of their, you
know, developments, it takesquite a bit of money and quite a
bit of resources. So that reallygave me a good basis though for
understanding how AI works andhow it impacts our world, and
also some of the, you know,downsides of AI, you know, it's
(29:08):
unless you train it properly, itcan give you really terrible
results of a for a lot ofdifferent reasons, for a lot of
different things. So so it wasreally interesting to learn
about that in 2018 way beforechat GPT or any of these other
things. And now that we have allof these wonderful tools, it's
(29:28):
given me a good basis for how wecan ethically use AI to enhance
what we're doing without takingaway that human creativity.
Bret Schanzenbach (29:40):
Yeah. Fascinating. And it's evolving
ever ever. I can imagine havinga certificate in AI feels like
you gotta get another one andanother one and another one
because it just keeps changing.But no.
That's awesome. And I'm surethat's a huge value to the
clients that you work with aswell. Well, if somebody's
(30:01):
listening in and they're like,oh, this is very interesting.
These guys they're exactly whatI'm looking for. Best place to
start with you guys might beyour website?
Gwen Beren (30:11):
Yeah. You can definitely go to
illuminousmarketing.com, and youcan connect with me on LinkedIn,
Gwen Baron on LinkedIn. I'm morethan happy to, you know, make
connections and talk about whatthe needs are for the business,
what the business goals are.That's really where we strive to
create strategies around whatyou wanna achieve in your
(30:32):
business.
Bret Schanzenbach (30:33):
So that's illuminousmarketing.com or Gwen
Beren, b e r e n, on LinkedIn.That's great. Well, thank you so
much for taking the time to comedown and share about all your
expertise and your company andall the great stuff that you do.
We really appreciate you being apart of our chamber and our
chamber family.
Gwen Beren (30:52):
Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Bret Schanzenbach (30:54):
It was my pleasure. Thanks for joining us
today on our Carlsbad People,Purpose, and Impact podcast. If
you got value out of our episodetoday, please hit the follow
button on your favorite podcastapp, and please tell a friend.
Can't wait to see you next timeon Carlsbad people, purpose, and
impact.
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