Speaker 1: (00:10)
Hey everybody. Welcome to today's Inside Marketing Coffee Break. I'm your host from inside.com. Stephanie Zelensky, we are so glad that you're here. Kate has a lot of fans that are already showing up live. Uh, this is part of a new series we have on marketing every Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern, and I'm so excited for you to meet Kate Bradley Charis. She's the founder and c e o of lately.ai. They use AI to generate highly engaging content in your unique brand voice that's customized to target any audience. So we're gonna be talking about how social AI copywriting is similar to the neuroscience of music. Um, Kate is an expert on all of this because she's a former rock DJ from Sirius xm and she went on to lead a successful marketing agency before founding lately. So we want this event to be as helpful as possible to you.
Speaker 1: (00:59)
Please head to the chat or the comment section wherever you're watching from, whether it's inside.com or YouTube or LinkedIn or Twitter. Please introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you are, what you do, um, and please bring us your questions for Kate. We are here to help you succeed in your business. Before I introduce Kate, I'll quickly tell you about inside.com. We are the best business community for any topic. We have a social news site with over 40 topics that range from startups to venture to HR marketing and more. Um, if you are maybe disappointed with other social sites out there that have some bots and trolls going on, we hope that you'll create a profile and inside.com and check it out. It is all free. We have over 30 email newsletters on such a wide range of business topics. We have a new job board that you can post on or find a job on. We're always shipping new products. We just put up a glossary and we're gonna put up a blog soon. Finally, we host events like this all the time. You can hear insights from industry experts and leaders who are building the worlds of tomorrow. Check it out at inside.com/events. All right, that's about it. So without further ado, I would like to welcome on Kate. Kate, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2: (02:15)
Hi, thank you so much. What's up? Yes,
Speaker 1: (02:18)
So you've got this great presentation about the neuroscience of music and social AI marketing. Um, and whenever you're ready, you can take it away and I will come back afterwards and we'll take all those audience questions.
Speaker 2: (02:31)
Sounds good. Um, and definitely if you guys are out there in the chat, I'd love to know where you're from. How's the weather is my two favorite questions. So I'm in the Catskills of New York where everybody just moved and so not the city. Thank God. Sorry, hate the city. Sorry.
Speaker 1: (02:46)
Everyone's in the Catskills now. Yeah, I love the weather part too. Don't just tell us where you're from. Tell us what the weather is like today.
Speaker 2: (02:52)
How is it where you are? Stephanie, what do you got?
Speaker 1: (02:54)
I'm in Florida, St. Petersburg, my hometown. So warm and glorious, not gonna lie. I feel pretty
Speaker 2: (03:01)
Lucky. I was there around Christmas time when it was like super cold. I don't know why. Yeah, wherever I go on vacation, it's always like the weather doesn't cooperate. But, um, today though, it's 60 degrees here, which is very unusual for February. And Nice. Um, you know, I'm loving it, so, hi. Oh, hey Chris. Hey Ian. So nice to see everybody out there. Okay. I'm gonna share my screen and we will kind of pow get on with this thing. Light the fires. Ba bing, ba bing. All right, everybody can see the screen. Let's do a full screen. Full screen screen. Dun da da. Was that full screen working? Sometimes yes. Drop boxes, like, I don't know, it's not as, not as cool as it used to be. Something's going on here, but, alright, so, um, today we're gonna talk about audio messaging and the power of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: (03:47)
Um, and you know, maybe we'll talk a lot about, a little more about AI towards the end of this. But as Stephanie was saying, cuz it's such a hot topic right now, right? Um, I did used to work in radio. My last gig was broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day at xm. If you can see, like, that's me there, that's my husband who now has short hair and he wears Chinos and he's in sales, but he does still play the guitar for me sometimes. Thank God. Um, the other thing worth telling you is that I was also, um, a marketing agency owner. So I'd been in those trenches spreadsheets, anybody, I mean, you know, kill me now, right? Um, we were, we were overwhelmed by them at the time. I was working with Walmart and the Walmart Foundation and Bank of America and at and t and the IRS and the National Disability Institute, and it was this huge project and through, uh, the grace of spreadsheets, I got them 130% ROI year over year for three years.
Speaker 2: (04:48)
And what I was really interested in was the parallels that I started seeing between writing and, um, and listening and, and being, you know, a dj. Like there was this interesting kind of overlap there. And that's what we're gonna kind of touch on today. Also, as Stephanie mentioned, so I do own an artificial intelligence company, it's called Lately. And what we do is we generate content that is in your own voice, and it's designed to custom target any unique audience, right? So you're very, very, um, tailored the way we work. And then we repurpose long form content like video, just like today's work, um, webinar or any audio, like a podcast or any long form text whatsoever. And we dice it up into dozens of social posts that are all in your voice and all targeting your exact audience, right? Designed to convert LeadGen. Um, so, and we get a 98% sales conversion, I should say, to everybody using only Lately to market lately.
Speaker 2: (05:49)
So SHS Networks is what I'm saying. Um, so back to today's topic, which is the power of sound. I think this is such a fascinating fact. Like marketers rely on site alone, 83%. It's huge. Yet our brains receive all the communications through four other channels, right? Tastes, smell, touch, sound. But we're really focused on this one thing. And this one thing is, you know, not our money sense. Really hearing is our fastest sense. Light travels faster than sound, but the pathway to the conscious brain is so much slower. So think about it like this, it takes humans 0.17 seconds to respond to an audio stimulus versus 0.25 seconds for visual stimuli. That's pretty substantial. And then, you know, as you know, today's world noise, noise, noise, our attention spans are incredibly short and so fast is really everything, which got me thinking a little about Escher, right?
Speaker 2: (06:52)
You guys have all seen Cher's amazing work and how tricky it is, right? Designed to fool the eyes and optical illusions are all about that, but it's very hard to, um, produce an auditory illusion. There's only a handful of them, and they're, um, very complicated and weird. So your eyes are be able to lie and trick you where your ears have a much harder time doing that. They're, they're good at attuning into, you know, what's, what's real. Um, another way to think about this is like an altered photo versus a cover song. So a cover song, for example, like if I do the song in a major key versus the original minor key, if I speed it up versus how it was slowed down, if I have a male voice versus a female voice, you'll still know it's that song, right? You still know it.
Speaker 2: (07:45)
But if you take a photo of me and you make me two feet taller and maybe put on 50 pounds and turn my hair gray and maybe darken the color of my skin, you're gonna have a really hard time recognizing the same photo, right? So it's just a interesting kind of way to really understand how powerful your ears really are. I like to say, look, ma no brains, and this is sort of mean, but you know, video is such a gi it's the lazy, lazy, lazy. And, um, it's because sight is the least intimate sense. It's, it requires the least engagement, the least effort. It's passive, right? There's no imagination required. We veg out to the tv, think about that. You know, I love out to the TVs. I wanna check out into someone else's life for a few hours every night. That's how I escaped, you know?
Speaker 2: (08:45)
But the thing about music and also writing is that, or, or audio, any audio really, and writing is that there's this really powerful, um, role that the imagination plays in the process of the story. So it's more of a two-way street than a one-way three street, right? So theater of the mind is, is the term that we like to talk a lot, a lot about in, in radio anyways, um, television being theater of the mindless. So just think about that effort in the imagination that happens. And I want to double down on this real quick. So when, um, you're behind the mic, and Stephanie knows this really well, I'm sure just being a host, because what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that you're including the audience which chat helps do. Like in the case of video, right? Twitter did that in the very beginning when it was like that third person in the room.
Speaker 2: (09:44)
And, and what it, what you're trying to do is include people and make them feel that even though you're the one wielding the mic or the pen, that they have a role, that they have a, a part in the conversation. And if you're good at being the author or the, or the radio host, you know this. Now the, this is that, that room for the theater of the mind to, to, to, to participate. So you're not, um, totally leading, totally leading them through it. You're giving them the ability to put their own kind of character into the mix, but you're guiding them along so that they get to the same journey, the end of the journey that you want them to, to get to. When you do this, then it makes people feel as though they have a stake in the game. It's kind of like, for those of us, I'm almost 50.
Speaker 2: (10:29)
So for those of us who are old enough to remember live radio and good radio, when, when it existed and there was no internet, we didn't know what anybody looked like. Um, you people would feel like they knew you, you know, like I would have people call me all the time. It was a little weird. Um, but they really thought that they've got to know your voice. And it's because this real, real succinct and deep power of the theater, of the mind and of the imagination. Okay? So this ties into the neuroscience music listening. We've all, uh, hopefully heard of the book. This is Your Brain on Music. Um, if you haven't, it's a great book in worth of read. It's a thick read, but distilling some of it here, which is when your brain processes music, it must instantly access every song you've ever heard before in this instant.
Speaker 2: (11:21)
And what it's doing is it's running down the, the list of songs that it has in your mind, in the memory of your mind, and it's looking for the familiar touchpoints and trying to figure out where to index this new song in the library of the memory of your mind. Okay? So as it's doing that, of course it's tapping on nostalgia and memory and emotion and all the things that make music so powerful, also, all the things that must be in line for trust to happen. And trust is why we buy right now. Similarly, um, and I'm I'm, I'm gonna back, I might be skipping ahead on a slide here, but I just wanna get get to this one. I'm here your voice, Stephanie's voice is beautiful. It's like a song. All sound has a frequency, like a musical note. And so when I hear her, her voice, when I read her her text, when I read her email or read, um, a social media post that she wrote, for example, I'm gonna hear her voice in my head.
Speaker 2: (12:24)
Can't help it, it, it automatically happens. I'm hearing the voice right now. You want it to be your voice. And so that's why like I personally have resting face and writing. I have to use a lot of emojis and italics and other things to communicate what I wanna emphasize or what I don't. And when I'm being lazy, I don't do that and everybody thinks I'm mad at them, right? So I have to be really put a lot of effort for forth to make sure that I'm being heard, but in the way that I write. So there's a really cool parallel there. Um, I think about this too with strategic sound. Um, it's, it's so much more the noise, right? It's, there's an intention behind kind of the way we use sound to drive deeper communication. Um, we're tapping into memory as I mentioned before, but there's so many psychological functions that are overlapping with the brain network.
Speaker 2: (13:20)
So nostalgia, memory, like all that kind of stuff. This is why it's like, it's impossible to resist the power of sound, right? You guys have all heard, um, you know, and BC or like, um, you know, TV shows where the opening track, like you know it right away. And that's intentional, obviously. They, they, they thought about that. They're on onto us around that. Um, stranger things like, you know, that sound right away and, and that your show is coming on and it gives you this feeling. Um, the other thing I think a lot about is how the combination of sound and objective can really drive that visceral power. So like not only would the, so would the soundtracks we were talking about Sonic, or sorry, the Sonic logos, but then there's like this, a ability for soundtracks to obviously tap right into a million things.
Speaker 2: (14:11)
16 candles. Of course, I'm sure there's so many UNP things about that movie, but like, I'll never not love it because of the soundtrack, right? It was my, my my high school years. You can also think about major and minor keys and how they can make you feel happy or sad, right? So like, you know, uh, a fugue always a minor key, right? Um, and then low and high notes. The low notes, like if you move in a song going from low to high, it's usually like a happy feeling, right? Otherwise, like down, um, slower, right? Your shoulders are down. Um, and then there's often a beginning, middle and an end to a song. There's the bridge, there's the chorus, you know, all these kinds of things. So there's a lot happening in the sound that you hear all the time. Just have to pay a little more attention to it because it's very sneaky what it's really doing in the background to you.
Speaker 2: (15:10)
So similarly, like I was touching on previously, strategic messaging is just way more than text when you're really thinking about, you know, how does my voice sound like I was saying to you before, like, I have to work really hard. Um, the best easiest thing you can do is to read what you write out loud and it'll give you a quick, um, sometimes embarrassing , um, way of per of understanding how others perceive you, right? So it's the job of an author to dive into these familiar touchpoints we talked about previously that that music is doing in the neuroscience, the memory isin and emotion, they trigger trust. So if you can think about that even in a, something as small as a social post, like how can I tap into these parts of the brain in just a few seconds, like just a few words and make you feel the way I want you to feel, which is essentially compelled enough to do what I'm asking you to do.
Speaker 2: (16:09)
Cuz all communication is about getting someone to do something, right? And in order to get people to act, you have to make them feel something. Emotion is powerful. Um, so there's a lot, the the strategic, um, sort of point here. It's never just to be nice, right? Even a social post in my world is never just to put it out there, there's always an objective, right? There's only two in social media. Click and share. So that's what I'm thinking about. Um, here's the proof in the pudding here. I talked earlier about the 98% salesing, uh, conversions that I have and it's because of these things, right? So I taught my AI to do exactly this. The, um, familiar touchpoints, right? They're here, I'll, I can, I can actually, I can read my own writing, I think. So, so we touched on this before. I'm gonna read a couple of these so you can hear them.
Speaker 2: (17:04)
Why How's the weather is still the simplest, most powerful question still. That's how I wrote it. Link plus other sales and marketing pro tips that'll make you go, hmm, with Mo and Kacha Alison. So here I am, I'm asking the question, I'm asking the question of all questions. How's the weather? And I'm, I'm giving you a room to sort of think about something that seems so, um, familiar, right? How's the weather? I want you to think about it differently. So I'm tapping into your nostalgia memory there obviously. And then I'm saying still out loud like that and, and impacting it. So I'm, I'm also kind of, I'm including you and I'm ex I'm excluding you, I'm including you in my club of people who would know this already. But if you don't know it then, then I'm making you feel a little fomo. Well why don't I know that it's still the most powerful question, right?
Speaker 2: (17:54)
And then other sales and marketing pro tips that'll make you go, hmm. Child of the eighties and nineties, right? You know, I like a little cheesy, cheesy music there. And then I say with Mo and Katy, Allison and I, uh, think myself of as Ms. Peggy sometimes. So there's my my mo, right? So it's pretty easy to do. Um, and we can give this deck by the way to people afterwards, Stephanie, if they wanna kind of have any of these things to reference. So there's a couple more kind of points here. Um, you know, I, my argument is that sound is the most powerful tool in any marketer's toolkit. And I'll give you some more touch points. So because we use these overarching factors in how we taught our AI to work, we get customers 12000% increases in engagement, 84% time saved writing 200% more leads. It's 82% more clicks, 40 x percent, uh, productivity, um, the increased monthly recurring revenue and 240% in 12 months. And it's obviously that's the power of ai, right? But it's the power of AI that uses these strategies as part of its underlying. Uh, mo you wanna stop sharing my screen now?
Speaker 1: (19:22)
Okay, well dang, I don't think I've ever heard a strong of an argument for AI and true humanness to come together to make something successful. That's awesome. Okay, audience, I implore you to bring your specific questions for Kate to the floor right now because we only have about eight minutes. So a lot of founders in our audience have their unique problems that are unique to their industry and we are here for you. So we will answer those if you bring those questions. But to start, Kate, if there is a founder out there that doesn't get, have an audio content strategy for their company, what do you recommend? Do they have to have a podcast about their industry? ?
Speaker 2: (20:06)
Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, no you don't because taking on a podcast as you know, it's like really hard, um, in a lot of things. But I think, you know, the easiest thing, like I said is, is just reading what you're writing out loud. So whether it's an email to your customers, um, maybe it's a message from cs, even if it's how you're communicating in Slack. Like today I was very lazy communicating with Vanessa, sorry Vanessa, um, over text message because I was in a rush and I know that I sounded like a massive and it's just cause I'm stressed, you know? Um, but you, you know, when you just think about how you sound, I know it sounds sort of crazy, but you know, for entrepreneurs when you're pitching, whether it's sales or whether it's investors, oftentimes it doesn't so much matter what you say. It's how you say it.
Speaker 1: (20:56)
Totally.
Speaker 2: (20:57)
Yeah. Um, which I know sounds kind of weak. Um, but it it is, it is true, you know? Um, so I think like that's the first thing you can do. And then as far as like, you know, technical stuff, I always just think about how, um, like Chris is a great example. He's in the chat here. So Chris has a, a music show online cuz he has, you know, the time to do a million things at once, work for me and, and do that. And he thinks in music constantly. So whenever people are referencing things that he can tie into, he like will grab a YouTube song as his commentary. What's nice about that is he's touching on familiarity, right? He's giving you, I mean he's in sales so he is giving you so many reasons to break down that wall, let you know he's a real human being with a life with taste also too, with multiple reference points, right? He grabs songs from like all kinds of genres and, and mixes. And I'm not saying that's something that everyone has to do, but it's just a great way to think about like how, how can you creatively use an understanding of sound or music in a way that's just, you know, designed to get people to cut through the noise. Like that's what Chris is doing. How can I, how can I make someone paying attention to me in the sea of many salespeople?
Speaker 1: (22:19)
And I like that point that you brought up when you were first answering the question of how it really ultimately all comes back to your voice. Not necessarily your audio voice, but your personality as an individual and as a company. And you can, you know, fine tune that through writing as well. Um, okay, so let's jump to Anthony's question from YouTube. Can we get AI to completely write our social media posts? Any specific tools?
Speaker 2: (22:44)
Uh, yes. Completely does that for you, , uh, of course. But I, you know, let's talk about chat g p t and, and all the things for one second. So there's a lot of options for you guys out there. They're all, I mean it's amazing of course, it really is. The thing that we are really proud of it lately is that we're the only ones that really focus on your tone of voice and customizing content that sounds like you and that will convert your very specific audience. We learned what they will like, comment, and share upon and, you know, sale for us. But the other thing that we do really well as you touched on Stephanie, is we incorporated humans as part of the algorithm when we started. Mm-hmm . So we're not, we're not replacing, we're enhancing. And the reason we do that is cuz we learn that AI on its own is great and it is great. AI with a human involved is galactic those results that I read to you. You're not gonna get those results elsewhere, right?
Speaker 1: (23:45)
Because AI messes up and does weird stuff and humans have to come in and correct it.
Speaker 2: (23:50)
It does. Yeah, exactly. And, and um, I wanted to like also just say for the fear, the fear factor cause I know it's out there. Like, I like to think if, if AI was a human it would only be three months old and remember that a three month hold human, very cute is helpless, can't survive on its own, can't stand up, can't defend itself, can't feed itself. That's where we are in reality.
Speaker 1: (24:15)
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And audience, please drop all of the cool random AI tools that you've found online in the last month into the chat. Um, maybe on the, this is on inside.com and this whole talk will live on in like a post there. So I'll head there afterwards and drop the few that I found really interesting. Some are better than others, you know, there's all sorts of tools, but don't ever take the human out. That's a good kind of message to come back to. Okay, final question. Since we've talked so much about like your personal voice, do you have a recommendation of like an exercise that a founder could do to start nailing down their voice?
Speaker 2: (24:56)
Yeah, these are the best questions cuz people Oh, thank you. Really don't ask me these good questions, so I'm good for you. Um, yeah, the, you know, the, the right like you talk thing has been talked about a lot. Um, you don't want to, you don't want to write like an idiot obviously if you're the kind of person who talks and just says, you know, um, um, um, all the time. Obviously that's like, not gonna work out, but what, you know, what are the tricks I think about a lot is if it feels awkward coming out of your mouth, it's very awkward for the person on the other side, a as they're reading it and it can, the trust factor is everything they're thinking instantly. Spam, untrustworthy, you know, all kinds of stuff. So mm-hmm. , I have, um, I've memorized it, I used to have it right here, but I have a thing from West Elm. I shop there, I like their pillows a lot and um, they sent me, I think it was maybe a bill or something, but at the bottom of it was a coupon 20%. And it said this certificate is a duplicate of the rewards certificate that you've received by email. Okay. Did you guys hear hear me say that this certificate is a duplicate?
Speaker 1: (26:07)
Oh, wordy.
Speaker 2: (26:08)
The words rewards, I can't even do it. Yeah. What they're, what they were saying to me was dingy, we sent you an email coupon also, you can't use both is what they were saying. That's really what it was. Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: (26:21)
But it was like, they should have just said that ,
Speaker 2: (26:23)
They should have just said that. Yeah, so I think like, you know, my, I love to say vomit then edit. So you, you vomit it out on the page and then you, you know, move things around, pull it out, look, read it out loud. Um, almost always the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first three words were, or garbage useless, you know, bur the lead central, right? Um, so there's , it's easy to just kind of be very, it, I find it to be easy to be very ruthless with what you write when it comes to editing. As long as you can just tr you know, trust yourself to get it all out there. Right? Get it out there
Speaker 1: (27:06)
And
Speaker 2: (27:06)
Clean it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (27:08)
Yeah, putting it down on paper in the first place is tough. So just do it and then keep editing. I love it. Um, Kate, where can everyone go to follow along with you and what you have going on?
Speaker 2: (27:17)
Thank you so much. Hi everybody. Um, you can get me at lately AI Kate the team calls me Kailey, uh, on Twitter, , right job hazard. Um, and I'm generally very friendly. So, um, thank you so much and I hope, I hope everybody's recovered from Valentine's Day Super Bowl, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: (27:37)
, it's Thursday, we're almost done with the week we got.
Speaker 2: (27:41)
I can't wait till tomorrow. Please get me there quick.
Speaker 1: (27:44)
I know you have so much going on, Kate, thank you for your time and for sharing all this. This was wonderful. Um, I'll let you go now so you can get to what you need to do, uh, before I read us all out. So thank you .
Speaker 2: (27:56)
Okay, bye. Thank
Speaker 1: (27:57)
You very much. Okay, bye Kate. Audience, thank you for being here. I know Kate has an amazing following. So we're happy that you know you were part of this conversation today. You can check out future events at inside.com/events. If you want to continue the conversation and the learning about marketing, we have a marketing community on inside.com along with a lot of others. So we will see you next Thursday, same time, same place, 1:00 PM Eastern for more marketing conversations. Have a great day and we'll see you then. Bye-bye.
