In a world where technology continues to advance at neck-breaking speeds, companies and brands are finding themselves in an increasingly difficult position when it comes down to connecting with their target audiences effectively.

There can be no doubt regarding the fact that sales and marketing strategies will have to adapt to this fast-paced environment. A sense of agility will be required - first and foremost - if they are to leverage these technological advancements to their benefit in the long-term.

While several multinationals have already allocated resources towards these endevours, smaller companies and businesses would be well-advised to do the same - or ultimately risk being squeezed out of the market if they don’t. To learn more about this phenomenon, Omnia Strategic Counsel interviews an extraordinary specialist in Sales & Marketing, Seth Fuchs.

Fuchs is CEO at Empollo, as well as Director and Founding Member of iXperience in Cape Town. His role at iXperience included building cutting-edge education programs online (and abroad) to help college students get ahead. At Empollo, Fuchs built a company that specialises in working closely with sales teams to ensure their leads are coming in consistently, are well nurtured, and have a high chance of closing. Fuchs has built Empollo to provide businesses with a high return on investment for their digital strategies, and shares some of his industry insights and expertise with us today.

Image 1: Seth Fuchs regularly presents seminars on these topics, and has shared his industry insights at multiple universities worldwide, including Duke University and the University of Michigan in recent years

Q: Seth, before we begin, could you highlight how your career and skillsets have impacted your field?

A: Of course! My career in sales and marketing has always been multi-faceted, although I believe most of these achievements were a result of the fact that I used my full-stack revenue skillset to build marketing and sales strategies for success. My background in coding, website production, lead development, and online advertising created a very strategic mindset in my approach to marketing and sales. And I think that is something I would love to share with people today - in terms of how I have applied strategic thinking to leverage the very best that artificial intelligence has to offer the sales and marketing industry locally and globally.

Q: Speaking of AI, what are your thoughts on the use of advanced technology in sales and marketing in Africa?

A: Marketers of the future, especially those based on the African continent, should leverage AI and technological tools to improve their abilities and skillsets. While there is a unique opportunity for its use on our continent, I would argue that this resource specifically offers a gateway to improving efficiency on a global scale. The entrepreneurs of today simply do not need to struggle against the tide - the technology and resources exist to build systems for success - if they choose to leverage these tools to build their companies and careers from the very get-go.

Q: This makes sense, but we can’t ignore the fact that this fast-changing technological environment has been very overwhelming for some. What are your thoughts on this phenomenon?

A: When people look at the technology and tools available today, they do get scared, yes. But its happening and no one can stop it from happening. Think about the internet. When the internet happened, people became quite overwhelmed. The same sensation appears to have rocked many people and business owners when it comes to AI. I would encourage entrepreneurs to not see it as a challenge but rather as an opportunity to scale, grow, and optimise their systems for success.

Q: Very well, then. How have you used AI? Do you have reference points for others?

A: I love sharing these insights with everyone I meet, because I have really done my best to leverage every ounce of efficiency from these advanced technologies. Over the last few weeks specifically, I have used various AI tools to build bots that have been trained to speak like me, to help me respond to more emails, faster, especially in my voice (as opposed to low-quality content that people usually pull from ChatGPT).

The other day I was on the radio discussing another bot I use to archive my top reads and books. I have since programmed this bot to help me use the insights of these books when it comes to my decision-making processes. Can you imagine? Being able to ask a book from your favourite author - be it F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ralph Waldo Emerson, how they would respond to or perceive a situation? The same applies to books on financial literacy, negotiations, business growth - the list is endless!

Q: If we were to look at these advancements in terms of marketing and sales - what would you suggest?

A: I would begin by using AI to help categorise your data and gain significant insights into your target market. Money spent on advertising by companies generates a lot of data - AI can help you find insights on the data on your ad spend. In previous years, small businesses could never afford a deeper analysis of their ad spend and the data it generated. With AI technology, you can do this at a fraction of the original cost! You can also use bots to solve problems and issues relating to advertising, marketing, and sales campaigns. But that would take a lot more time to answer.

Q: ⁠Could you perhaps give us a few specific examples of where you have implemented AI or modern business growth projects at Empollo and iXperience?

A: Recently, I was tasked with growing a new product into a foreign market using digital advertising to drive early sales. So, where would one start with something like this? Before you start a campaign, you need to define who it is that you’re trying to reach – your Ideal Customer Profile (or “ICP”).

Your ICP defines a few of your different ideal customers - their demographics, needs, challenges, desires, and more. It is essential to start by building your ICPs before you launch into trying to market a product. So, I started by looking at existing customer data to find trends and build out the ICPs. The problem was that I had a mountain of existing customer data to work with – I’m talking thousands of lines of data.

Before AI analysis tools existed, it would’ve taken me weeks to work through this data, preventing me from acquiring new business while remaining stuck on this task. Luckily, with a chatbot I installed, trained and prompted on my laptop, I was able to secure the insights I needed within hours, to develop 3 Ideal Customer Profiles. I used these profiles to build personalized, intentional digital campaigns, which have since allowed that product to generate millions in revenue every year, growing at more than 80% year on year. I continue to use AI to re-analyze new customer data so I can refine my customer profiles and keep improving my campaigns. It’s a no-brainer.

Q: Which three AI tools would you recommend companies use as a sales and advertising specialist?

A: There are 3 top tools in AI that I believe specialists in marketing and sales should familiarise themselves with, both locally and internationally. These include ChatGPT4 (the paid version), Midjourney and Grok AI.

Chatgpt4 - the paid version - has a whole marketplace of plugins to enhance your experience. It can help you cut down the amount of time you spend on a task or campaign or help you develop game-changing ideas that can revolutionise marketing and sales strategies in 2024. With Midjourney you gain a terrific assistant in terms of graphic and visual designs for businesses that would otherwise not be able to afford the development of visual materials. You can also use it to help you brainstorm visual ideas for your graphic designers as well.

Grok AI must be one of my favourites though, because it has live access to all the data that has been uploaded to X, providing marketing and sales teams with a live understanding of what people are thinking about in the world. You can use this to enhance your business and the manner in which it engages with potential consumers and clients.

Q: Could you outline any of your future plans for leveraging AI to drive further industry changes and address complex challenges for growing businesses? 

A: I love helping small and medium sized businesses take their next step of growth. Oftentimes, when I’m consulting with these businesses, I notice how daunting it can be for them to embrace this next step - using new technology, new processes, new concepts, to drive growth. And I’ll be the first to say it - like learning a new language for the first time, AI is daunting. It’s the big new thing that promises to revolutionize the world in ways we can’t imagine, like the Internet did in the late 90s.

My goal is to make AI-enabled technology and business processes accessible to those who aren’t necessarily technical, so that they can use this amazing technology to build a better life. One example of how I plan to do this is to build tools that overlay on existing advertising systems that allow small businesses to quickly build digital campaigns on these tech platforms with just a few clicks to start driving leads and more revenue – no specialized certification necessary. What if a business could use AI to quickly analyze live data in a particular market and suggest the best messaging, pricing, platform, and sales process? And then implement that for you. It’s an exciting future, and I’m eager to help businesses large and small get ahead of the curve and win.

Q: Any last thoughts or comments before we close-off Seth?

A: I would like to share that these are fundamentally nerdy tools - you need to know how to use them if you want them to deliver those results. That being said, YouTube and several other platforms have free training courses that anyone can use - and once you know the basics, it’s just like operating a smart phone. You simply won’t be able to imagine your life without them in it.