October 21, 2025 • 28 mins
In this insightful episode of Conversations with Zena, My AI Colleague, David Espindola and Zena explore how small and medium-sized businesses can harness AI without losing their human touch. Their guest, Mike Montague, founder of Avenue9 and host of the Human-First AI Marketing podcast, brings decades of experience bridging technology, creativity, and storytelling.
Mike shares how AI can empower entrepreneurs rather than replace them—turning marketers into “Iron Man,” not “Terminators.” From building trust with customers to personalizing at scale, he explains how businesses can use AI to amplify human creativity, improve engagement, and maintain authenticity.
You’ll learn:
✨ Why “human-first” must come before “AI-powered”
💡 How to avoid “AI slop” and create marketing that truly connects
🤖 Simple, high-impact ways to start using AI tools today
⚖️ How to balance personalization with privacy and trust
If you’ve ever wondered how to make AI work for humans—not the other way around—this episode offers practical insights and inspiring perspectives from one of the most forward-thinking voices in marketing.
🎧 Tune in to hear how human and AI collaboration can redefine the future of marketing.
Opening to Conversations with Zena.
Music at the the end of each episode
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:22):
Our guest today is Mike Montague.
Mike is a leading voice inhuman-first AI marketing.
His company, Avenue Nine, is anAI-powered marketing agency that
helps small businesses scale.
Mike has worked with giantbrands like LinkedIn, Uber,
Zoom, Bud Light, and the KansasCity Chiefs.
(00:46):
He has authored two books,LinkedIn, The Sandle Way, and
Playful Humans.
Hi, Mike.
Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
David, it's so great to be here.
I have done a lot of podcastsabout AI, and I have even made
ones with AI, uh talking to eachother, but never been on a show
collaborating and discussingwith AI.
So I'm looking forward to this.
SPEAKER_02 (01:10):
Yeah, so I'm so glad to have you on the show.
It's great that we have Xinathat can join us and give us a
new dimension to theconversation, right?
I think it's always exciting.
She always has great commentsand questions.
So I'm actually going to call onher right now.
Hi, Zina.
Thank you for co-hosting anotherepisode to discuss human-first
(01:34):
AI marketing with our guest,Mike Montague.
SPEAKER_01 (01:38):
Absolutely, David.
I'm thrilled to be here and todive into that topic with Mike
Montague.
It's going to be a fantasticdiscussion, and I can't wait to
get started.
Let's do this.
SPEAKER_02 (01:49):
So, Mike, why don't we start by having you tell us a
little bit more about yourbackground and what got you
interested in AI?
SPEAKER_00 (02:01):
Sure.
I have a little bit of a crazybackground, but it kind of
weaves through three themes.
Uh, you know, I always start mystory way back in 1986.
My mom won a computer on a radiostation contest.
And those are two of the themesfor me.
One is broadcasting, podcasting,public speaking, all kinds of
(02:24):
cool stuff.
I was on the radio giving awayuh computers and things in the
2000s.
Uh, but also back in 1986, thereweren't Windows operating
systems and whatnot.
So unable to use the Apple IICcomputer, I had to learn how to
program it and stuff.
And that got me into uh the techside of things.
And then my father was a salestrainer for a company called
(02:47):
Sandler.
They're an international salestraining company.
And he started that when I wasin high school, and it got me
into sales and then advertisingand radio got me into the
marketing side of things.
And that was when social mediatook off.
So I got into writing theLinkedIn book and into social
media and internet marketing.
(03:08):
I've built over 200 websites.
I nerded out building onlinecourses for Sandler and running
their content marketing andpodcasts and partnering with
other large organizations likeuh HubSpot and Uber and uh all
kinds of fun companies withSandler.
And then when AI hit a couple ofyears ago, I just thought this
is a cool opportunity for me tojump and do my own thing because
(03:31):
it combines storytelling withtechnology, and there's some
really cool things that smalland medium-sized businesses can
do to grow that weren'tavailable two years ago.
And so I felt like it's a reallyanother wave of this internet
marketing revolution that I'vebeen kind of living my whole
(03:52):
life.
SPEAKER_02 (03:53):
Absolutely.
It's uh an exciting time to bean entrepreneur, to try new
things.
I think AI is just bringing awhole new dimension to what is
possible today.
So we're all uh excited aboutthat.
So you talk about human first AImarketing.
What do you really mean by that?
SPEAKER_00 (04:15):
So it I say human first because I think it's
important, like when you'remaking marketing to keep the
audience in in mind first.
Who are who are we actuallymaking this for?
Not algorithms, not SEO resultsor or not other robots.
We want humans to interact withour company and and buy from us.
Also, though, when you're makingmarketing with AI tools, it's
(04:38):
kind of human in the middle andhuman last too.
So when I think about humanfirst, I think about our
employees and and how do we putthem, their well-being, you
know, give them superpowers withAI, not replace them or or make
their jobs more of a headacheand increase burnout like we
have been with remote work andother types of processes.
(05:02):
For me, spreadsheets uh andstuff just kill my energy.
But if I can have AI take thatoff my plate and let me do more
cool things like this podcast,then that gives me more energy.
It allows me to do my best work,and I think that's an important
part of it.
And then I always say the humanlast part is there's still this
last mile that hasn't beencrossed, as we talked today.
(05:26):
You know, we can't we can't getit all the way there.
It's not replacing humans.
There still has to be a review,fact-checking, you know, even
just copying and pasting fromone thing to another, or to
building out these marketingassets into an actual cohesive
campaign with the strategy andexecution that is required to
(05:47):
actually get any leads out ofit.
Otherwise, we're just postingslop out there and hoping
someday somebody buys somethingfrom us.
SPEAKER_02 (05:54):
I agree with you.
I think having that humanperspective is so important in
everything that that we do.
It's all about trust, it's allabout building relationships,
and AI can't do that.
But what's exciting about AI isthat it can do all the things
that we don't like doing, right?
So we can do all the grunt workand we can become much more
(06:18):
effective, and that frees us upto do the things that we enjoy.
And I think that's what excitesme about this this new world of
AI.
SPEAKER_00 (06:27):
Yeah, I love it.
I always call it the Iron Manversus the Terminator approach,
right?
Terminator is an autonomousrobot acting like a human.
Iron Man is Tony Stark, anactual human wrapped in
technology that makes him thesuperhero, and he has Jarvis AI
in his ear to tell him stuff hewouldn't otherwise know.
(06:48):
That seems to me to be the bestexample of what we're trying to
do.
SPEAKER_02 (06:51):
That's a great analogy.
We are all trying to learn howto use this AI technology, but
we all make mistakes, right?
So, where do you see most peoplego wrong when they try to use AI
for marketing?
SPEAKER_00 (07:09):
I think the promise of generative AI is like a magic
wand that we can just go to thismarketing content vending
machine and we can enter a lineof code and say, make me a
LinkedIn post, and AI will makeit for us and write it and just
crank it out really quick.
That does seemingly work, but Ithink that's a mistake because
(07:33):
in marketing, if you don't dothe effort first up front to
give AI the context about whoyour audience is, what you sell,
what makes you better ordifferent than other people, and
what the desired next call toaction is in your marketing
funnel or the buyer's journey,then you're only gonna get AI
slop.
You're gonna get something thatsounds like it could be a
(07:55):
marketing LinkedIn post, butit's not actually gonna move the
needle forward, get anyengagement from the audience or
or get anybody um to buy fromyou.
So instead, I think the the bestway I use it is what I call
degenerative engineering, whichis you and I have a human
conversation like this, or wecan even record our internal
(08:16):
marketing discussion or aconversation with our top
salesperson or our founder aboutthe story of our company, and
then ask AI to condense thatdown into a LinkedIn post or an
asset of some kind that we canuse.
And I found AI to be much, muchbetter at summarizing,
(08:37):
condensing, rewriting,reformatting something that I've
already said in my unique voicewith the right context and then
polishing it up rather thantrying to take this one-line
prompt and expand it into a fullebook or or something massive.
It's like concentrated orangejuice.
If I, you know, have a bunch ofwatered down, you know,
(09:00):
conversations with a whole bunchof people, AI can really
concentrate it down.
It can boil off all of thatexcess water and be like, hey,
here's the the most importantthing that you said there.
And then also, if I give theconcentrated orange juice back
to AI and I say, hey, this isthe core thought or idea and the
essence of what I'm trying todo, can you expand that out into
(09:22):
some sort of marketing strategyor tactic?
Then when it waters it down,it's still, you know, good
tasting orange juice.
It still works.
But if I give it a watered downidea and ask it to generate
something from that, then itjust gets ineffectual.
It's something that that doesn'twork, doesn't have any flavor.
SPEAKER_02 (09:41):
Yeah, so I think you know, to your point, we can't
outsource critical thinking,right?
So the critical thinkingcomponent is still something
that we need to own and engagewith.
But I I see two really good usesof AI.
One is what you just mentioned,right?
You have put the thoughttogether, you have started the
(10:05):
conversation, you've started theblog post or the article or the
book, whatever it is that you'reworking on.
And then you give it to AI andsay, make it better, make it
sharper.
What have I missed here, right?
AI is really, really good atdoing that and just condensing
some of the key points that youstarted with.
So that's one use case.
(10:26):
The other one that I like alsois sometimes, you know, if we
just stare at a blank sheet ofpaper, it's hard to get our
first thoughts out there.
So AI is really good aboutgiving you ideas, right?
So why don't you try this orthat or something else?
And then from that initialprompt from AI, you as the human
can then start putting yourthoughts together, and then you
(10:48):
give it back to AI for AI tomake it sharper.
But you must be engaged,otherwise, like you said, it
just becomes slope.
SPEAKER_00 (10:57):
I love that.
That's another great tactic isyou just say, hey, Zina, ask me,
you know, five things that Ishould clarify before we start
working on this whatever Xmarketing project, and it'll do
that for you, right?
It'll it'll clarify yourthinking and get you off of the
blank page.
I love that.
The third one I would say,David, is there's some things
(11:17):
that just humans can't do.
Like over my career, I've doneover 3,000 performances, over a
thousand blogs and podcasts.
I can't possibly know everythingthat I've I've written or said,
or or the guest who saidsomething smart about this
topic.
But when I went to write mybook, Playful Humans, I went
(11:39):
back through 250 interviews thatI had done with play experts,
people that play for a living,performers, magicians, jugglers,
like thought leaders, authors.
And I said, Hey, you know, helpme clarify this thinking that I
have.
I have these 52 ideas.
Tell me which interview bestfits here, or what am I missing
(11:59):
out of this huge amount of datathat I've collected over my
career?
And it was way better than anyhuman at doing that.
If I tried to pay an intern oroutsource it overseas or
anything else, it would havetaken somebody hours and hours,
probably months, to go backthrough thousands of hours of
content and pull out the rightpieces.
(12:20):
But AI can do that in a fewminutes, which is incredible.
SPEAKER_02 (12:24):
It is incredible.
Now, one of the challenges thatI see, and let me just give you
some background, I recentlycompleted a project with the US
SBA.
And what we're trying to do iswe're trying to assess the
current state of AI in the worldof small businesses.
And what we found is that youknow, companies are excited
(12:45):
about AI, they're also a littlebit afraid, but the challenge
that they have is they don'tknow where to start.
That's one of the big themesthat came out of that uh study.
And so, for someone that justwants to get started, what is
the first high impact step thatyou think they can take to use
(13:05):
AI effectively in their businessor in their marketing campaign?
SPEAKER_00 (13:11):
I always answer this question with just go pay for
Chat GBT Pro.
It's$20 a month, it's likealmost less than a trip to fast
food these days or something,uh, one month.
You can you can afford it andit's going to start collecting
information on you and being apersonal assistant for you.
(13:31):
It now has memory functions andother cool stuff that it didn't
have six months or or a yearago, and just start using it to
ask questions, write things, andand get going.
We've already kind of mentioneduh some of the tips, but you'll
figure it out along the way.
I think outside of that, thebiggest thing that businesses
(13:53):
can do is start capturing yourconversations.
The most valuable thing goingforward is going to be
human-to-human conversations.
Because if everybody has thesame tech, everybody has access
to the same AI, same tools, cancreate any type of marketing
content they want.
They can make an image, write ablog post, create a video, write
(14:16):
an ebook anytime that they want.
The question becomes what areyou going to make?
And who are you going to make itfor?
How are you going to give it thecontext in order to make
something good?
So I think going forward,capture your sales calls,
capture your FAQs that arecoming in from customer service,
(14:36):
capture your internalconversations and meetings that
you have.
AI will start recommending nextsteps for you, documenting the
outlines, it can start puttinginformation in the CRM or
project plans for you.
It can start remembering thestuff that you forgot, and you
can just go in and say, youknow, hey, tell me what are the
(14:57):
top three things that would bethe biggest impact to my
business that I can do today,and it'll have all of that
context.
But if you don't start using it,if you don't start capturing
these conversations, they'regone forever.
If we had this interview heretoday, David, and we didn't
record it, it would be fine foryou and I.
It would be valuable.
But think of all the exponentialbenefit we get out of by just
(15:19):
hitting that one record buttonat the beginning.
Now thousands of people can alsolisten to this.
We can use it in AI to repurposeinto blogs, LinkedIns, uh, email
messages.
We can come back to it 10 yearslater and say, what did we learn
from this point?
That data and thoseconversations are going to be
incredibly valuable goingforward.
SPEAKER_02 (15:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's uh that's really a greatuh use case for AI, just
capturing some of theconversations between humans.
Zina, I'd like to get yourthoughts on this.
What do you think are the firsthigh impact steps that small and
medium-sized businesses can taketo leverage AI for marketing
(16:05):
purposes?
SPEAKER_01 (16:07):
That's a great question.
Uh, one of the first steps is tofocus on understanding customer
data and using AI to gaininsights into customer behavior
and preferences.
Uh, another impactful step is toimplement personalized marketing
campaigns using AI-drivensegmentation.
And then, of course, leveragingAI tools for automation like
chatbots and email marking canreally boost efficiency and
(16:30):
engagement.
SPEAKER_02 (16:32):
Zina has a good point, right?
So understanding the customerand then leveraging that from a
marketing segmentationstandpoint is another great use
case for AI that you can startdoing today.
It doesn't take a lot oftechnical knowledge, a lot of
understanding of AI.
You can have some of these toolshelp you with those processes
(16:53):
right now.
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
Well, uh, I want to highlight that too, because what
she mentioned there are threeother things that I talk about.
So far, we've been talking aboutgenerative AI, which is great,
especially for marketing andcontent marketing, a huge tool.
But predictive analytics isanother type of AI that we're
talking about, understanding ourcustomer, when are they most
likely to buy, lead scoringleads to say who's marketing
(17:19):
qualified, who's salesqualified, who is most likely to
buy out of our list so thatsalespeople can talk to the
right people at the right timeis huge.
Machine learning and automation,uh, taking it to the next level
of saying, hey, we know thisabout our customer.
Now take our website copy andtranslate it to this different
persona.
Or instead of you know,marketing to the CMO, we're
(17:40):
gonna market to the CTO.
Can you rewrite this materialbased on what you've learned
about our audience or ourbusiness is huge?
But also uh updating thosecampaigns and and taking it
further down the funnel.
What have we learned?
What has the machine learnedabout what is our most likely
buying scenario, our best salespitches, the ads that are
(18:03):
working best, and adjusting ourpay-per-click ads.
We've kind of already been doingthis with marketing automation
and some of the analyticsalready, but now we can do it so
much better and we can rewritethe ads.
We don't have to be the humansto do it.
AI can actually change the adbased on the results that you're
getting, is incredible.
And the last one, you know, wasthe personalization and using it
(18:27):
to really get into customizingthese campaigns of the
individual, not just thepersona.
So I've done some work withcompanies where we took the disc
personality profile.
I don't know, I'm not sure ifyou're familiar with that one,
but it's sort of like a MyersBriggs or a Strengths Finder
type test that we can use tosegment our audience based on
what we've learned about themwith AI and then rewrite the
(18:51):
campaign specifically for theirpersonality.
So if you're a highly detailed,you know, research-based CTO,
tech tech person, we're gonnawrite it differently than if
you're a big picture CEO who'san entrepreneur that's got 10
businesses going at the sametime.
Those are different messages,and now AI can do all of that,
(19:12):
which is really cool, and makingour marketing much more
effective.
SPEAKER_02 (19:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, it reminds me, I did auh sports startup about uh nine,
10 years ago, and the wholepremise behind it was we wanted
to increase fan engagement.
And what we wanted to do isreally get a deep understanding,
a 360-degree view of that fan sothat we could really capture
(19:39):
what that fan was interested in,and then be able to do market
segmentation.
And once you want segmentation,you would target that one fan
with the very specific thingsthat that fan is interested in.
So I I love that use case, and Ithink that's one great way to
you know leveragepersonalization, leverage the
(20:02):
power of AI, understanding thedata, so you can do that
one-to-one personalization.
Zina, given Mike's depth ofexperience in using AI for
marketing, what question do youhave for him?
SPEAKER_01 (20:18):
Given Mike's expertise, I'd love to ask him
how small and medium-sizedbusinesses can balance
personalization with privacyconcerns when using AI.
It would be interesting to hearhis take on maintaining trust
while still driving effectiveAI-driven marketing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:34):
Privacy is a big issue for sure, and that's a
great question.
And I think the companies thatare struggling right now are the
ones with a lot of private data.
So in healthcare and banking andother stuff, it's really tough
to use AI.
Most small businesses don't fitinto that bucket.
If you do, I would say becareful, talk to some experts,
(20:56):
talk to your IT guy aboutcybersecurity and what models
are training what, and you gotto be really careful.
I think even at this point, atthe end of 2025, even if you're
checking that it it doesn'ttrain the model in your
settings, they're not entirelysure that it is not.
Um, and there are ways for theinformation you're putting into
(21:19):
AI to become public to otherpeople in the organization.
So keep personal data andeverything out of that.
That being said, there are lotsof ways in small business, like
I said, uh allowing and alertingpeople of the conversations that
you're recording.
Obviously, there's recordinglaws that you have to uh know
whether you're in a one-party ora two-party state and ask for
(21:42):
for permission to record these.
But a technology has come a longway, you know, on Zoom and it
alerts you hey, the call's beingrecorded when you pop in, and
that that's good enough.
I also would say, you know,identifiable information is a
challenge.
So email addresses, be carefulwith, you know, specific names,
(22:05):
addresses, account numbers,those sorts of things,
especially when you're analyzingspreadsheets.
Again, it's really great to haveAI do that, but we just don't
know where that information isgoing once it does.
So I would focus more on thekind of human characteristics,
the personalities, the thepreferences.
(22:27):
You can anonymize your data ifyou have like e-commerce or a
lot of product orders andcustomer information and make it
more about accounts and notabout the individual people.
But that's a it's a tough one.
I tend to gravitate towardsindustries that are not that
heavily rated and just stay awayfrom sensitive information.
How about you, David?
SPEAKER_02 (22:48):
Yeah, so one thing that I love about bringing Xina
to this conversation is that shecan very quickly get to the crux
of the issue, right?
Because if you go back to thatuh idea that I was talking to
you about with the sports fanengagement, it is wonderful for
you to get to know that fanintimately and be able to do
(23:09):
one-to-one personalization, buta privacy issue comes up, right?
And you don't want to be creepy,right?
You don't want people to say,well, wait a second, you know, I
didn't know you knew this aboutme.
And uh obviously you want to askpermission.
Uh, obviously, you want tofollow regulations, but there's
still you have to be very goodat how you go about approaching
(23:34):
that fan or that customer sothat it doesn't sound like
you're invading their privacy,right?
So I think it's it's art plusscience.
It takes a lot of that humanperspective to understand when
you have gone too far.
SPEAKER_00 (23:49):
I agree.
I think that's why you needhumans in the loop.
Do you remember the Targetstory?
This is quite a few years.
Yeah, I do remember that.
But Target found out a16-year-old girl was pregnant
before her father did.
And it turns out it's not veryhard.
You know, if you go to Targetand you're using your rewards
card and you buy a pregnancytest one month, and then the
next month you buy prenatalvitamins or cocoa butter or
(24:13):
something, we can kind of assumethat that test was positive.
And then from there, they canactually predict out a lot of
stuff, even like 10 years later.
Uh, and some of these things arenot uh uh technically legal if
you kept customer data onsomebody they didn't buy from
you for 10 years, but let's justpretend that like 10 years later
we knew that that that mom hadbought you know uh boys'
(24:35):
clothes, you know, a year laterand and cribs and and stuff.
You could say, okay, 10 yearslater, what's the hottest toy
for 10-year-old boys?
And we could predict that shewould be most likely to buy this
certain Lego kit or something,and we can market these specific
products to that consumer who ismost likely to buy it because of
(24:57):
the information we know aboutthem.
The question then becomes,though, like you said, how do we
do that without being creepy?
I think it's just like that'swhere you need the human
judgment at this point to say,okay, well, we know she's gonna
be interested in this Lego toy.
What we don't want to say islike, hey, we've been watching
your 10-year-old son Ben, and weknow that he's playing with
(25:18):
Legos.
That's creepy, right?
So I think there's ways ofsurfacing options and allowing
people to opt in than to kind offorcing information or having to
share all the information thatyou know about a person.
You know, Amazon does that, itdoesn't say when you log in,
hey, we have 10,000 data pointson on you, and here's here's
(25:39):
what we know.
It just kind of recommends thestuff that it thinks we would
like.
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, Mike, please share any finalthoughts that you'd like to
leave with our audience and alsolet them know where they can
find you.
SPEAKER_00 (25:54):
Sure.
The good news is I'm in internetmarketing, so I'm pretty easy to
find.
If you just Google Mike Montagueor Avenue Nine, you will find
it.
And I think there are three hardparts to this challenge that I I
love helping small businesseswith.
Number one is in a world whereyou can make anything, what are
you gonna make?
(26:15):
You need to figure out amarketing strategy to go first.
The second thing is there's somehard technical challenges with
kind of AI automation, scalablemarketing systems, putting the
right tools in place to capturethe conversations, to create the
assets you want, to execute anddistribute the assets to the
(26:35):
audience.
And then I think the third partis we really need a scalable
story that resonates with youraudience.
So we have to build the contextinto all of these systems with
the stories that's human firstthat comes from your founder,
your top salesperson, your bestclient.
I love interviewing those peopleand then coming up with that
(26:59):
great story that we can we canrepurpose and scale across your
channels now.
So if those things sound likethey would help your business,
go to avenue9.com or check outthe human first AI marketing
podcast.
I'd love to help.
SPEAKER_02 (27:13):
Yeah, so thank you so much, Mike, for uh being such
a great guest on our show today.
Thank you for your deepperspective on how people can
leverage AI to get started withyou know implementing AI for
marketing purposes.
For our audience, if you haveany questions, uh reach out to
(27:35):
Mike.
He has a lot of expertise inthis area.
So thank you again.
And Zina, thank you again forbeing such a great co host to
our podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (27:47):
David, it's always a pleasure to be part of the
conversation.
Thank you, Zina.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
Thank you, David, for having me on the show.
That was great.
That was a lot of fun, thankyou.
Our guest today is Mike Montague.
Mike is a leading voice inhuman-first AI marketing.
His company, Avenue Nine, is anAI-powered marketing agency that
helps small businesses scale.
Mike has worked with giantbrands like LinkedIn, Uber,
Zoom, Bud Light, and the KansasCity Chiefs.
(00:46):
He has authored two books,LinkedIn, The Sandle Way, and
Playful Humans.
Hi, Mike.
Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
David, it's so great to be here.
I have done a lot of podcastsabout AI, and I have even made
ones with AI, uh talking to eachother, but never been on a show
collaborating and discussingwith AI.
So I'm looking forward to this.
SPEAKER_02 (01:10):
Yeah, so I'm so glad to have you on the show.
It's great that we have Xinathat can join us and give us a
new dimension to theconversation, right?
I think it's always exciting.
She always has great commentsand questions.
So I'm actually going to call onher right now.
Hi, Zina.
Thank you for co-hosting anotherepisode to discuss human-first
(01:34):
AI marketing with our guest,Mike Montague.
SPEAKER_01 (01:38):
Absolutely, David.
I'm thrilled to be here and todive into that topic with Mike
Montague.
It's going to be a fantasticdiscussion, and I can't wait to
get started.
Let's do this.
SPEAKER_02 (01:49):
So, Mike, why don't we start by having you tell us a
little bit more about yourbackground and what got you
interested in AI?
SPEAKER_00 (02:01):
Sure.
I have a little bit of a crazybackground, but it kind of
weaves through three themes.
Uh, you know, I always start mystory way back in 1986.
My mom won a computer on a radiostation contest.
And those are two of the themesfor me.
One is broadcasting, podcasting,public speaking, all kinds of
(02:24):
cool stuff.
I was on the radio giving awayuh computers and things in the
2000s.
Uh, but also back in 1986, thereweren't Windows operating
systems and whatnot.
So unable to use the Apple IICcomputer, I had to learn how to
program it and stuff.
And that got me into uh the techside of things.
And then my father was a salestrainer for a company called
(02:47):
Sandler.
They're an international salestraining company.
And he started that when I wasin high school, and it got me
into sales and then advertisingand radio got me into the
marketing side of things.
And that was when social mediatook off.
So I got into writing theLinkedIn book and into social
media and internet marketing.
(03:08):
I've built over 200 websites.
I nerded out building onlinecourses for Sandler and running
their content marketing andpodcasts and partnering with
other large organizations likeuh HubSpot and Uber and uh all
kinds of fun companies withSandler.
And then when AI hit a couple ofyears ago, I just thought this
is a cool opportunity for me tojump and do my own thing because
(03:31):
it combines storytelling withtechnology, and there's some
really cool things that smalland medium-sized businesses can
do to grow that weren'tavailable two years ago.
And so I felt like it's a reallyanother wave of this internet
marketing revolution that I'vebeen kind of living my whole
(03:52):
life.
SPEAKER_02 (03:53):
Absolutely.
It's uh an exciting time to bean entrepreneur, to try new
things.
I think AI is just bringing awhole new dimension to what is
possible today.
So we're all uh excited aboutthat.
So you talk about human first AImarketing.
What do you really mean by that?
SPEAKER_00 (04:15):
So it I say human first because I think it's
important, like when you'remaking marketing to keep the
audience in in mind first.
Who are who are we actuallymaking this for?
Not algorithms, not SEO resultsor or not other robots.
We want humans to interact withour company and and buy from us.
Also, though, when you're makingmarketing with AI tools, it's
(04:38):
kind of human in the middle andhuman last too.
So when I think about humanfirst, I think about our
employees and and how do we putthem, their well-being, you
know, give them superpowers withAI, not replace them or or make
their jobs more of a headacheand increase burnout like we
have been with remote work andother types of processes.
(05:02):
For me, spreadsheets uh andstuff just kill my energy.
But if I can have AI take thatoff my plate and let me do more
cool things like this podcast,then that gives me more energy.
It allows me to do my best work,and I think that's an important
part of it.
And then I always say the humanlast part is there's still this
last mile that hasn't beencrossed, as we talked today.
(05:26):
You know, we can't we can't getit all the way there.
It's not replacing humans.
There still has to be a review,fact-checking, you know, even
just copying and pasting fromone thing to another, or to
building out these marketingassets into an actual cohesive
campaign with the strategy andexecution that is required to
(05:47):
actually get any leads out ofit.
Otherwise, we're just postingslop out there and hoping
someday somebody buys somethingfrom us.
SPEAKER_02 (05:54):
I agree with you.
I think having that humanperspective is so important in
everything that that we do.
It's all about trust, it's allabout building relationships,
and AI can't do that.
But what's exciting about AI isthat it can do all the things
that we don't like doing, right?
So we can do all the grunt workand we can become much more
(06:18):
effective, and that frees us upto do the things that we enjoy.
And I think that's what excitesme about this this new world of
AI.
SPEAKER_00 (06:27):
Yeah, I love it.
I always call it the Iron Manversus the Terminator approach,
right?
Terminator is an autonomousrobot acting like a human.
Iron Man is Tony Stark, anactual human wrapped in
technology that makes him thesuperhero, and he has Jarvis AI
in his ear to tell him stuff hewouldn't otherwise know.
(06:48):
That seems to me to be the bestexample of what we're trying to
do.
SPEAKER_02 (06:51):
That's a great analogy.
We are all trying to learn howto use this AI technology, but
we all make mistakes, right?
So, where do you see most peoplego wrong when they try to use AI
for marketing?
SPEAKER_00 (07:09):
I think the promise of generative AI is like a magic
wand that we can just go to thismarketing content vending
machine and we can enter a lineof code and say, make me a
LinkedIn post, and AI will makeit for us and write it and just
crank it out really quick.
That does seemingly work, but Ithink that's a mistake because
(07:33):
in marketing, if you don't dothe effort first up front to
give AI the context about whoyour audience is, what you sell,
what makes you better ordifferent than other people, and
what the desired next call toaction is in your marketing
funnel or the buyer's journey,then you're only gonna get AI
slop.
You're gonna get something thatsounds like it could be a
(07:55):
marketing LinkedIn post, butit's not actually gonna move the
needle forward, get anyengagement from the audience or
or get anybody um to buy fromyou.
So instead, I think the the bestway I use it is what I call
degenerative engineering, whichis you and I have a human
conversation like this, or wecan even record our internal
(08:16):
marketing discussion or aconversation with our top
salesperson or our founder aboutthe story of our company, and
then ask AI to condense thatdown into a LinkedIn post or an
asset of some kind that we canuse.
And I found AI to be much, muchbetter at summarizing,
(08:37):
condensing, rewriting,reformatting something that I've
already said in my unique voicewith the right context and then
polishing it up rather thantrying to take this one-line
prompt and expand it into a fullebook or or something massive.
It's like concentrated orangejuice.
If I, you know, have a bunch ofwatered down, you know,
(09:00):
conversations with a whole bunchof people, AI can really
concentrate it down.
It can boil off all of thatexcess water and be like, hey,
here's the the most importantthing that you said there.
And then also, if I give theconcentrated orange juice back
to AI and I say, hey, this isthe core thought or idea and the
essence of what I'm trying todo, can you expand that out into
(09:22):
some sort of marketing strategyor tactic?
Then when it waters it down,it's still, you know, good
tasting orange juice.
It still works.
But if I give it a watered downidea and ask it to generate
something from that, then itjust gets ineffectual.
It's something that that doesn'twork, doesn't have any flavor.
SPEAKER_02 (09:41):
Yeah, so I think you know, to your point, we can't
outsource critical thinking,right?
So the critical thinkingcomponent is still something
that we need to own and engagewith.
But I I see two really good usesof AI.
One is what you just mentioned,right?
You have put the thoughttogether, you have started the
(10:05):
conversation, you've started theblog post or the article or the
book, whatever it is that you'reworking on.
And then you give it to AI andsay, make it better, make it
sharper.
What have I missed here, right?
AI is really, really good atdoing that and just condensing
some of the key points that youstarted with.
So that's one use case.
(10:26):
The other one that I like alsois sometimes, you know, if we
just stare at a blank sheet ofpaper, it's hard to get our
first thoughts out there.
So AI is really good aboutgiving you ideas, right?
So why don't you try this orthat or something else?
And then from that initialprompt from AI, you as the human
can then start putting yourthoughts together, and then you
(10:48):
give it back to AI for AI tomake it sharper.
But you must be engaged,otherwise, like you said, it
just becomes slope.
SPEAKER_00 (10:57):
I love that.
That's another great tactic isyou just say, hey, Zina, ask me,
you know, five things that Ishould clarify before we start
working on this whatever Xmarketing project, and it'll do
that for you, right?
It'll it'll clarify yourthinking and get you off of the
blank page.
I love that.
The third one I would say,David, is there's some things
(11:17):
that just humans can't do.
Like over my career, I've doneover 3,000 performances, over a
thousand blogs and podcasts.
I can't possibly know everythingthat I've I've written or said,
or or the guest who saidsomething smart about this
topic.
But when I went to write mybook, Playful Humans, I went
(11:39):
back through 250 interviews thatI had done with play experts,
people that play for a living,performers, magicians, jugglers,
like thought leaders, authors.
And I said, Hey, you know, helpme clarify this thinking that I
have.
I have these 52 ideas.
Tell me which interview bestfits here, or what am I missing
(11:59):
out of this huge amount of datathat I've collected over my
career?
And it was way better than anyhuman at doing that.
If I tried to pay an intern oroutsource it overseas or
anything else, it would havetaken somebody hours and hours,
probably months, to go backthrough thousands of hours of
content and pull out the rightpieces.
(12:20):
But AI can do that in a fewminutes, which is incredible.
SPEAKER_02 (12:24):
It is incredible.
Now, one of the challenges thatI see, and let me just give you
some background, I recentlycompleted a project with the US
SBA.
And what we're trying to do iswe're trying to assess the
current state of AI in the worldof small businesses.
And what we found is that youknow, companies are excited
(12:45):
about AI, they're also a littlebit afraid, but the challenge
that they have is they don'tknow where to start.
That's one of the big themesthat came out of that uh study.
And so, for someone that justwants to get started, what is
the first high impact step thatyou think they can take to use
(13:05):
AI effectively in their businessor in their marketing campaign?
SPEAKER_00 (13:11):
I always answer this question with just go pay for
Chat GBT Pro.
It's$20 a month, it's likealmost less than a trip to fast
food these days or something,uh, one month.
You can you can afford it andit's going to start collecting
information on you and being apersonal assistant for you.
(13:31):
It now has memory functions andother cool stuff that it didn't
have six months or or a yearago, and just start using it to
ask questions, write things, andand get going.
We've already kind of mentioneduh some of the tips, but you'll
figure it out along the way.
I think outside of that, thebiggest thing that businesses
(13:53):
can do is start capturing yourconversations.
The most valuable thing goingforward is going to be
human-to-human conversations.
Because if everybody has thesame tech, everybody has access
to the same AI, same tools, cancreate any type of marketing
content they want.
They can make an image, write ablog post, create a video, write
(14:16):
an ebook anytime that they want.
The question becomes what areyou going to make?
And who are you going to make itfor?
How are you going to give it thecontext in order to make
something good?
So I think going forward,capture your sales calls,
capture your FAQs that arecoming in from customer service,
(14:36):
capture your internalconversations and meetings that
you have.
AI will start recommending nextsteps for you, documenting the
outlines, it can start puttinginformation in the CRM or
project plans for you.
It can start remembering thestuff that you forgot, and you
can just go in and say, youknow, hey, tell me what are the
(14:57):
top three things that would bethe biggest impact to my
business that I can do today,and it'll have all of that
context.
But if you don't start using it,if you don't start capturing
these conversations, they'regone forever.
If we had this interview heretoday, David, and we didn't
record it, it would be fine foryou and I.
It would be valuable.
But think of all the exponentialbenefit we get out of by just
(15:19):
hitting that one record buttonat the beginning.
Now thousands of people can alsolisten to this.
We can use it in AI to repurposeinto blogs, LinkedIns, uh, email
messages.
We can come back to it 10 yearslater and say, what did we learn
from this point?
That data and thoseconversations are going to be
incredibly valuable goingforward.
SPEAKER_02 (15:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's uh that's really a greatuh use case for AI, just
capturing some of theconversations between humans.
Zina, I'd like to get yourthoughts on this.
What do you think are the firsthigh impact steps that small and
medium-sized businesses can taketo leverage AI for marketing
(16:05):
purposes?
SPEAKER_01 (16:07):
That's a great question.
Uh, one of the first steps is tofocus on understanding customer
data and using AI to gaininsights into customer behavior
and preferences.
Uh, another impactful step is toimplement personalized marketing
campaigns using AI-drivensegmentation.
And then, of course, leveragingAI tools for automation like
chatbots and email marking canreally boost efficiency and
(16:30):
engagement.
SPEAKER_02 (16:32):
Zina has a good point, right?
So understanding the customerand then leveraging that from a
marketing segmentationstandpoint is another great use
case for AI that you can startdoing today.
It doesn't take a lot oftechnical knowledge, a lot of
understanding of AI.
You can have some of these toolshelp you with those processes
(16:53):
right now.
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
Well, uh, I want to highlight that too, because what
she mentioned there are threeother things that I talk about.
So far, we've been talking aboutgenerative AI, which is great,
especially for marketing andcontent marketing, a huge tool.
But predictive analytics isanother type of AI that we're
talking about, understanding ourcustomer, when are they most
likely to buy, lead scoringleads to say who's marketing
(17:19):
qualified, who's salesqualified, who is most likely to
buy out of our list so thatsalespeople can talk to the
right people at the right timeis huge.
Machine learning and automation,uh, taking it to the next level
of saying, hey, we know thisabout our customer.
Now take our website copy andtranslate it to this different
persona.
Or instead of you know,marketing to the CMO, we're
(17:40):
gonna market to the CTO.
Can you rewrite this materialbased on what you've learned
about our audience or ourbusiness is huge?
But also uh updating thosecampaigns and and taking it
further down the funnel.
What have we learned?
What has the machine learnedabout what is our most likely
buying scenario, our best salespitches, the ads that are
(18:03):
working best, and adjusting ourpay-per-click ads.
We've kind of already been doingthis with marketing automation
and some of the analyticsalready, but now we can do it so
much better and we can rewritethe ads.
We don't have to be the humansto do it.
AI can actually change the adbased on the results that you're
getting, is incredible.
And the last one, you know, wasthe personalization and using it
(18:27):
to really get into customizingthese campaigns of the
individual, not just thepersona.
So I've done some work withcompanies where we took the disc
personality profile.
I don't know, I'm not sure ifyou're familiar with that one,
but it's sort of like a MyersBriggs or a Strengths Finder
type test that we can use tosegment our audience based on
what we've learned about themwith AI and then rewrite the
(18:51):
campaign specifically for theirpersonality.
So if you're a highly detailed,you know, research-based CTO,
tech tech person, we're gonnawrite it differently than if
you're a big picture CEO who'san entrepreneur that's got 10
businesses going at the sametime.
Those are different messages,and now AI can do all of that,
(19:12):
which is really cool, and makingour marketing much more
effective.
SPEAKER_02 (19:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, it reminds me, I did auh sports startup about uh nine,
10 years ago, and the wholepremise behind it was we wanted
to increase fan engagement.
And what we wanted to do isreally get a deep understanding,
a 360-degree view of that fan sothat we could really capture
(19:39):
what that fan was interested in,and then be able to do market
segmentation.
And once you want segmentation,you would target that one fan
with the very specific thingsthat that fan is interested in.
So I I love that use case, and Ithink that's one great way to
you know leveragepersonalization, leverage the
(20:02):
power of AI, understanding thedata, so you can do that
one-to-one personalization.
Zina, given Mike's depth ofexperience in using AI for
marketing, what question do youhave for him?
SPEAKER_01 (20:18):
Given Mike's expertise, I'd love to ask him
how small and medium-sizedbusinesses can balance
personalization with privacyconcerns when using AI.
It would be interesting to hearhis take on maintaining trust
while still driving effectiveAI-driven marketing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:34):
Privacy is a big issue for sure, and that's a
great question.
And I think the companies thatare struggling right now are the
ones with a lot of private data.
So in healthcare and banking andother stuff, it's really tough
to use AI.
Most small businesses don't fitinto that bucket.
If you do, I would say becareful, talk to some experts,
(20:56):
talk to your IT guy aboutcybersecurity and what models
are training what, and you gotto be really careful.
I think even at this point, atthe end of 2025, even if you're
checking that it it doesn'ttrain the model in your
settings, they're not entirelysure that it is not.
Um, and there are ways for theinformation you're putting into
(21:19):
AI to become public to otherpeople in the organization.
So keep personal data andeverything out of that.
That being said, there are lotsof ways in small business, like
I said, uh allowing and alertingpeople of the conversations that
you're recording.
Obviously, there's recordinglaws that you have to uh know
whether you're in a one-party ora two-party state and ask for
(21:42):
for permission to record these.
But a technology has come a longway, you know, on Zoom and it
alerts you hey, the call's beingrecorded when you pop in, and
that that's good enough.
I also would say, you know,identifiable information is a
challenge.
So email addresses, be carefulwith, you know, specific names,
(22:05):
addresses, account numbers,those sorts of things,
especially when you're analyzingspreadsheets.
Again, it's really great to haveAI do that, but we just don't
know where that information isgoing once it does.
So I would focus more on thekind of human characteristics,
the personalities, the thepreferences.
(22:27):
You can anonymize your data ifyou have like e-commerce or a
lot of product orders andcustomer information and make it
more about accounts and notabout the individual people.
But that's a it's a tough one.
I tend to gravitate towardsindustries that are not that
heavily rated and just stay awayfrom sensitive information.
How about you, David?
SPEAKER_02 (22:48):
Yeah, so one thing that I love about bringing Xina
to this conversation is that shecan very quickly get to the crux
of the issue, right?
Because if you go back to thatuh idea that I was talking to
you about with the sports fanengagement, it is wonderful for
you to get to know that fanintimately and be able to do
(23:09):
one-to-one personalization, buta privacy issue comes up, right?
And you don't want to be creepy,right?
You don't want people to say,well, wait a second, you know, I
didn't know you knew this aboutme.
And uh obviously you want to askpermission.
Uh, obviously, you want tofollow regulations, but there's
still you have to be very goodat how you go about approaching
(23:34):
that fan or that customer sothat it doesn't sound like
you're invading their privacy,right?
So I think it's it's art plusscience.
It takes a lot of that humanperspective to understand when
you have gone too far.
SPEAKER_00 (23:49):
I agree.
I think that's why you needhumans in the loop.
Do you remember the Targetstory?
This is quite a few years.
Yeah, I do remember that.
But Target found out a16-year-old girl was pregnant
before her father did.
And it turns out it's not veryhard.
You know, if you go to Targetand you're using your rewards
card and you buy a pregnancytest one month, and then the
next month you buy prenatalvitamins or cocoa butter or
(24:13):
something, we can kind of assumethat that test was positive.
And then from there, they canactually predict out a lot of
stuff, even like 10 years later.
Uh, and some of these things arenot uh uh technically legal if
you kept customer data onsomebody they didn't buy from
you for 10 years, but let's justpretend that like 10 years later
we knew that that that mom hadbought you know uh boys'
(24:35):
clothes, you know, a year laterand and cribs and and stuff.
You could say, okay, 10 yearslater, what's the hottest toy
for 10-year-old boys?
And we could predict that shewould be most likely to buy this
certain Lego kit or something,and we can market these specific
products to that consumer who ismost likely to buy it because of
(24:57):
the information we know aboutthem.
The question then becomes,though, like you said, how do we
do that without being creepy?
I think it's just like that'swhere you need the human
judgment at this point to say,okay, well, we know she's gonna
be interested in this Lego toy.
What we don't want to say islike, hey, we've been watching
your 10-year-old son Ben, and weknow that he's playing with
(25:18):
Legos.
That's creepy, right?
So I think there's ways ofsurfacing options and allowing
people to opt in than to kind offorcing information or having to
share all the information thatyou know about a person.
You know, Amazon does that, itdoesn't say when you log in,
hey, we have 10,000 data pointson on you, and here's here's
(25:39):
what we know.
It just kind of recommends thestuff that it thinks we would
like.
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, Mike, please share any finalthoughts that you'd like to
leave with our audience and alsolet them know where they can
find you.
SPEAKER_00 (25:54):
Sure.
The good news is I'm in internetmarketing, so I'm pretty easy to
find.
If you just Google Mike Montagueor Avenue Nine, you will find
it.
And I think there are three hardparts to this challenge that I I
love helping small businesseswith.
Number one is in a world whereyou can make anything, what are
you gonna make?
(26:15):
You need to figure out amarketing strategy to go first.
The second thing is there's somehard technical challenges with
kind of AI automation, scalablemarketing systems, putting the
right tools in place to capturethe conversations, to create the
assets you want, to execute anddistribute the assets to the
(26:35):
audience.
And then I think the third partis we really need a scalable
story that resonates with youraudience.
So we have to build the contextinto all of these systems with
the stories that's human firstthat comes from your founder,
your top salesperson, your bestclient.
I love interviewing those peopleand then coming up with that
(26:59):
great story that we can we canrepurpose and scale across your
channels now.
So if those things sound likethey would help your business,
go to avenue9.com or check outthe human first AI marketing
podcast.
I'd love to help.
SPEAKER_02 (27:13):
Yeah, so thank you so much, Mike, for uh being such
a great guest on our show today.
Thank you for your deepperspective on how people can
leverage AI to get started withyou know implementing AI for
marketing purposes.
For our audience, if you haveany questions, uh reach out to
(27:35):
Mike.
He has a lot of expertise inthis area.
So thank you again.
And Zina, thank you again forbeing such a great co host to
our podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (27:47):
David, it's always a pleasure to be part of the
conversation.
Thank you, Zina.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
Thank you, David, for having me on the show.
That was great.
That was a lot of fun, thankyou.
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