AI Marketing Strategies: What Is Your Competition Up To
Are you wondering what your competitors are really doing with AI? In this episode of Stop Being the Best Kept Secret, we explore “AI Marketing Strategies for Manufacturers: What Is Your Competition Up To?” with video marketing expert and creative strategist Paola Santana.
Paola helps business owners connect with their audiences through powerful video content and smart social strategies. With a background in motion design and years of experience in video editing, she has worked with churches, nonprofits, government teams, and private companies alike, crafting stories that stick and building brands that win attention online.
If you’re a manufacturer or business owner feeling left behind in the AI race, this one is for you. Paola will share how AI tools are transforming content creation, how to avoid getting stuck doing “what used to work,” and how you can start competing smarter, not harder.
Paola’s insight can help you get out of the weeds, reach your best-fit customers faster, and finally start using video and AI to stand out, not just keep up.
Key Highlights
• AI Marketing Strategies Introduction 0:02
• Understanding Marketing Journey and Baseline 1:40
• AI’s Role in Visibility and Competitor Analysis 4:16
• Balancing AI and Manual Data Collection 6:57
• AI’s Comparative Analysis and Suggestions 8:35
• Thought Leadership and Business Ethics 11:25
• Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts 15:36
Resources
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Transcription
Damon Pistulka 00:02
All right, everyone, it’s Friday, and you know what that means? It’s time for stop being the best kept secret. Let’s get going here. I’m one of the CO hosts, Damon Pistulka, that is Curt Anderson, right over there. We’ve got Paola Santana, wordsmith extraordinaire, with us today, we’re going to be talking about AI marketing strategies. What is your competition up to? Curt, let’s take it away and get going.
Curt Anderson 00:31
Dude, let’s do it. How is it? Is it cold in Seattle?
Damon Pistulka 00:35
Not really. Oh, it’s that. How
Paola Santana 00:37
about Paola, Idaho? It’s cool. We had our first little bit of snow a couple days ago. So it’s Christmas.
Curt Anderson 00:46
Well, West Midwest and east coast, it’s like single digits. Man, it is cold. Oh my goodness. So I think it’s a balmy like 20. It’s like a heat wave right now. It’s gorgeous, but it is ski weather. So it is get your skis, get your jackets. So let’s dive in. So, Paola, happy Friday. Thank you for joining us. How are you?
Paola Santana 01:06
Yeah, thanks, good. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.
Curt Anderson 01:10
Oh, we absolutely love having you here. And so we you’ve done an amazing job. We’ve been doing like, some competitive intelligence and like, not necessarily stalking, but checking out our competitors. You and Damon have been creating some, like, new prompts and diving in, and I know, like, it’s helped us, like Damon, we discovered some really powerful things for B2Btail website, and you’ve been finding some wonderful things for client websites. Paola has as well. Yeah, yeah, Paola. So go ahead and start. If you could just share a little bit like, how this got started, this process, and what you’re discovering, and how folks could apply this for them, for them, their business. Yeah.
Paola Santana 01:44
I mean, I think the biggest thing anytime you embark on a marketing journey, whether that’s as a small you know, one person team, it’s your own business, or just so that you can understand what’s what your marketing team or vendor is doing for you. I think it’s always a great idea to start where you’re at at the moment, because then you can start to track how much progress you’re making, how what needs to be shifted or changed or tweaked, or, you know, just something that helps continue to create momentum and help create some, you know, more business for your for your business. And so we’ve decided one of the things we want to do for our own personal clients was really to start to really come up with a baseline. And you know, everyone starts at zero at some point, whether it’s at the very beginning, even the people who have been doing this for years and maybe have even maybe a few months, who have millions of followers or millions of views or generating a lot of revenue. They all started somewhere. And so we want to make sure that we’re able, as a business, no matter how big you are, that you can kind of see that growth and kind of help keep that tracking, you know, the KPIs, or the key performance indicators, or any any like meter metric or, you know, those kind of ratings we you always want to take gage where you’re at, and it’s just healthy to do that as a business. I think we all learn that at some point in our business, we need to know how healthy we are, and the same goes for our online visibility. So Damon and I, we’ve been working on creating a prompt using, you know, chat, GPT and AI to help us, you know, do this, and you know, the results have been really, really good. You always have that little asterisk afterwards that you want to always make sure and double check that the numbers are correct. You know, I always take it as a grain of salt because, you know, it’s you’re letting ai do the work, and we should really be doing some of it ourselves, just so that we can make sure that it’s giving us the right output. It’s not giving us inaccurate information. And you know, we always want to create based on reality, not something that’s made up either by ourselves or the AI system. And so we’ve had some really great results from it, just seeing where our clients are at online. And I think the main point for this is that as AI is becoming, now very prevalent in all of our lives, no matter what we do, to hide under our beds and not come like it’s going to be part of our processes or business somehow, whether it’s just showing up in AI results and search results, that’s going to become even a bigger, you know, something to keep in mind and track. And so this is really why we started. It was to combine those two, you know, getting results for our clients. But also, how do we show have them show up and ourselves show up online, on a AI bot, yeah, search engine.
Curt Anderson 04:37
Well done. Damon, your thoughts and your calling the visibility report. What’s your takeaway?
Damon Pistulka 04:43
Well, I you know this. This all started with, you know, we’ve always been looking at things like, you know, visitors, where they’re coming from, on a website, and those kind of things. But as we started into 2025 and now that we’re going into 2026 Visibility and AI became, is becoming more and more. You know, a lot of clicks are not straight through clicks, and the whole buying, the whole buyer’s journey, is changing, because we’re getting answers instead of getting served up a bunch of URLs that are going to give us, potentially give us information that can answer our question, right? So now chatGPT AI enhanced or AI enhanced browsers, like, if you got Gemini and Google, it’s trying just to answer your question there. So you’ve done a good job. Curt with creating content to help companies get up into that AI to be part of the answer. And I was really after reading some more articles about it and understanding how much that’s really affecting businesses and visibility. Because if you look it’s taken away slots for for URLs to be listed, and everything else. So you look at that and go, Okay, that being visible there is pretty important. And then we backed up and went, Okay, how can we measure that visibility somehow? And why not ask chat GPT to try it? That’s really where the interest came and the idea came from. And as Paola has said, we’ve, we’ve, we get good general information that really does allow you to compare yourself to competitors. Allow you compare yourself, just from past to now, if you can do that, and it gives you some, some general, I mean, generally, good suggestions to move forward. So that was really the powerful insights that we’re seeing from it now that’s that’s helping us.
Curt Anderson 06:44
Yeah, I love it. Paola, what do you want to add to that?
Paola Santana 06:48
No, not much. I think that’s what kind of everything I already said. And then what Damon was saying too, you’re basically asking it to check itself to see how your client or yourself would show up on it. And that’s really what the value of the prompt is like, I’m not, you know, to transparency. I am not an AI like fan. But, you know, it does help to for us to run up and catch up with, you know, the expertise of our clients. It helps us to kind of get, you know, some of them been doing this for years and decades. And so me coming in at, you know, 25 years of age, right? I have a lot of living to go no but it just, it’s a really good tool. It’s a great way for us to catch up to our clients and their knowledge and their expertise and their base. And so that’s really why I lean on AI, is to help with that process and help us to really, you know, see what, what AI sees about them, right,
Curt Anderson 07:47
right? Yeah, go ahead, Damon, and
Damon Pistulka 07:50
I really think as we work in this more it’s what we’re going to end up with is some sort of combination between AI doing its review of everything it can see, and then other things like Google Search Console or other, maybe even an API interface, or manually getting data from those, those places, to really measure that more succinctly, but the AI part of it is huge for that first step, and really understanding some, some great things that you can do right out of the box, yeah.
Curt Anderson 08:23
And I can you we even discovered, like, on our own, very, our very own website, we had a pretty significant, you know, challenge issue, and that visibility report pointed out immediately, and so we could start taking actions to correct that. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 08:35
And the one thing it’s really good at, that I’ve been pretty, pretty consistently happy with is that when you look at competitors, it does a really good job of going, Okay, here’s where you’re at, and that goes and looks at the other people that you’re comparing yourself to. It does a pretty good comparison. I mean, it might not be exactly, you know, I’ve got this many index pages or something like that, but the overall comparison is pretty strong. What do you think about that? Paola, you’ve done it on a few now. Yeah.
Paola Santana 09:05
So I don’t really get the index things. It’s more of a surface level of, like, the content that’s already being produced by you and then your competitors. And so what I really like about it, kind of like reviewing just a little bit of what we’ve done it for our clients, is it gives you these, like takeaway moments of like, this is what they’re doing. This is what you’re doing. And you know this client, or your your business is really prime to if you do this, or if you do more of it. Or I really like the suggestions it gives it now again, like, it’s AI and it’s telling you what it thinks. But it doesn’t hurt to try, right? If something isn’t working for the business and you need something to start creating momentum, it really giving you that really insightful look of like, Hey, start try something different. See if this is going to make a difference for your business. And I think in one of our clients at the very end of all this, like, I don’t know, is it 13 pages sometimes? I am like, 1520, pages of just analysis, analysis, and it just says, like, Hey, by the way, guess what? AI is getting better. You need to make sure that you are leaning on your experts within your business, because that is AI is getting smart enough to know if you’re pulling content from different areas online to create a blog, or are you actually leaning into the experts in your own business? Are you actually being thought leaders? And so one of the processes, yeah, that we offer our clients is doing those SME interviews, those subject matter expert interviews, and we’re creating content from the actual experts. And so AI is recognizing you’re not just collecting information and curating it, you are actually getting it from people who’ve done this for either decades or for a long time period of time that they can be considered experts.
Damon Pistulka 10:49
Yeah, those insights that you just talked about are great because it it really does help us then too, that for the SME interviews structure better questions that are deeper in in knowledge base. So that when you hear, you know, a Susan talking about something in depth that’s three levels deep in something, and we’re doing an SME interview on that, it really comes out in the in the content generated from it, that that they know what they’re talking about. That’s an awesome point because, because AI is looking for that depth of knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff.
Curt Anderson 11:25
And I love what Paolo you mentioned about, like, the thought leadership, because, like, so And the thing is, so many entrepreneurs, they just they, when they hear that phrase, they’re just like, you know, I just been doing this for 20 years. I just been 30 years. They don’t realize the wealth of incredible information, expertise, passion that they have about their product and solutions. And, you know, don’t realize that, like, geez, we just need to extract that, to get that out there, right? Yeah, all right, well, we’re going to start winding down so on. You know what I’m going to show, since it is football season, and I know Powell’s not a big football fan, but I’m going to show real, a quick little analogy. So Damon, remember the other day, we’re chatting about the New York Jets Yeah. So hey, and our little software tool, the digital game plan, that’s we actually have a tab where you can diagnose. So if you’re a New York Jets fan out there, and if you’re a Jets fan, who do you hate, Damon, who do you like? How about these guys? Right? Yep. And dreaded patriots, right? So this tool, what it does, it actually pulls like a SWAT. You know, strengths, opportunities and threats and, you know, like, Hey, what are some weaknesses that, oh no, that New England Patriots. I don’t know if New England has any weaknesses this year.
12:37
David, this year.
Curt Anderson 12:40
Man, is anybody getting tired of the patriots like and they’ve been around way too long, but I don’t mean it was. Maybe it’s just me. Paola, what do you what’s your what’s your takeaway?
Paola Santana 12:49
I don’t care.
Curt Anderson 12:52
She could care less. Team
Paola Santana 12:53
USA, that’s it. That’s
Curt Anderson 12:55
right. Okay. Now, if we’re talking about the Philadelphia Eagles, what do we have right there, right? Recent Super Bowl win, right? Yeah, highly engaged and passionate fan base. Their their fan base is so passionate they were, they were booing them last week, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, to play. But that tool is just super helpful, because what it does, and so it was, matter of fact, I was just on a client call Wednesday and pulled up the tool, the guy like, that’s our hated enemy. That’s our hated competitor. You know, I know, Hey, Paola as Christians, we shouldn’t say hate, right, but we strongly dislike them, right? How’s that? But, yeah, just teasing. But so anyway, it’s just a great opportunity to get out there and like, hey, you know, not, I think. And we also, Paola, we have a client that sometimes we feel like we get a little too close or too obsessed with what the competition is doing, where I think it’s good to be in tune. Let’s close out on that. I think it’s good to be in tune with your competition, but we just want to be kind of mindful. I don’t know. Do you have any insight as far as, like, what’s a healthy boundary, or, like, studying competition, as opposed to, like, getting too deep?
Paola Santana 13:59
I think it’s like any any marketing strategy or tactic or business thing you’re going to do for your business is you just have to find that balance. You want to see what they’re doing, but at the same time, like you don’t want to just when you start to compare yourself too much, you get into that comparison paralysis, and you try to be something that maybe something similar. But the truth is, is, like, you know your business, you don’t know what the behind the business of their that business, unless you, you know, maybe we’re partners at one point, and you kind of knew what the behind the scenes are. But really, it should be your lane, and you shouldn’t be afraid to try something different. It doesn’t hurt to see what they’re doing and, you know, maybe be a little bit sneaky and try to say, okay, they’re doing that. Maybe do the opposite, to kind of grab their customers, but you always want to be a balance. You know, as a person of faith, you always want to have integrity. For me personally, that’s where my integrity comes from. My work ethic comes from. And even if you know someone, if you’re not a faith like you, there should still be some type of business ethic. So always keep that in mind. How. However, you know, it’s not a bad thing to check out your competition. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Just, you know, don’t, don’t get caught in the weeds of like, I have to copy exactly what they’re doing. Obviously, there’s some strategy for, like, copying hooks and trending audios and things like that on a social media base or marketing tactic type of situation. But be, it’s okay to be yourself and be unique and to stand out you. You know the people you are speaking to you, if you’re going through, like, our framework, the digital game plan, then you already know who you’re speaking to. And so you can almost, almost instantly say, like, you know what? I don’t care what they’re doing. I’m focusing on the people that I need to help and what they need.
Curt Anderson 15:39
Yep, drop the mic. That is, yep, phenomenal, man. I tell you, always bring your it’s a master class when we have Paola Damon, anything that you need, words of wisdom, parting thoughts, anything that you want to share.
Damon Pistulka 15:51
No, I think the main thing is you should be aware that search is changing and and AI can help you, at least generally understand how it’s changing in your industry and how it’s stacking up for you and the others in your industry.
Curt Anderson 16:08
Yep, exactly. Paula, words
Paola Santana 16:09
of wisdom. Parting thoughts, no, I would just say, like, if you guys want to do something on your own, like, as for people who are watching or who are listening in, you know, utilize those chat you know, those chat bots. I like to call them chat mates, right? That’s my my buzzword, my I’m coining that phrase. Maybe I’m not the one who says it, but, you know, just ask it. Like, ask those questions, put in your own prompt. Come up with your own prompt. Like, help me. You know, here’s my business. This is what we do. These are my competitors. Give me. Like, how are they showing up? How am I compared showing up to that. How am I showing up compared to them? And see what it says. Like, you know, again, it’s you want to always take it with a grain of salt. You want to take the information, see, dig, dig into it. And that’s all I would just say. That’s how you can start to do it yourself
Curt Anderson 16:55
as well. Love it. Awesome. All right, we’re going to close out for today. So Paola, hey, having a big round of applause for Paola, just absolutely crushing it. Thank you, Paola, appreciate you. Damon, you want to close this out too.
Damon Pistulka 17:09
All right, everyone, thanks for being here today. We can see you were out there listening to us. Thanks for showing up, stopping by listening if you got into this late, go back to the beginning and start over, because we did share some things that you may want to learn about, and using AI to help you really understand how you are comparing to your competitors online. Thanks everyone. We’ll be back again next week. Have a great one. See you.