SPECIAL GUEST!! CMO Thryv Tami Cannizzaro→ AI for Small Businesses! | Ep. 395

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast. And we have an incredible guest, a really good friend of mine, Tammy Zaro is here now. Who's Tammy? Tammy is the chief marketing officer at Thrive, but she's a really big deal. Even before Thrive, she had big positions at IBM at eBay, at Oracle.

Jay Schwedelson: I mean a marketer's marketer, and if you don't know, thrive, all right? They are IT for small businesses, legitimately it, helping over 50,000 small businesses worldwide with everything from their, you know, listings on Google to their email sending to their billing to reviews. If you're a small business and you haven't checked out Thrive, T-H-R-Y-V.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know what you're doing, but Tammy, all the marketing is her fault. We're gonna be talking about AI stuff today. I'm so excited to have her here. Tammy, welcome to the show.

Tami Cannizzaro: Thank you so much, Jay. Great to be here.

Jay Schwedelson: This is gonna be fun. Um, alright, so before we get into all of this, I'm just curious about something as it relates to your role in Thrive, because everybody out there is that listening.

Jay Schwedelson: A lot of 'em are marketers. Okay. You're, this is not a commercial here for Thrive, but I've always been curious about something. Thrive does so much stuff. I go to your website, you have like all this different stuff that you do as how do you wrap your mind around your go to market and actually marketing thrive?

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause that's gotta be hard to tell your story.

Tami Cannizzaro: Yeah, it's, it's true. I mean, we, I look at it that we tried to provide, I call it utility for our customers, and so. You know, how can we help small business owners with their marketing plans and their marketing strategy, getting found online and then engaging customers and getting repeat business. And so we produce lots of content around, you know, top ways to market your business.

Tami Cannizzaro: You know, how you get found online, building your brand, and. The idea is that that kind of draws people in to kind of listen to your, you know, to you and what you have to say, you know, and then, you know, we, we provide a, a methodology for growth for small business and you know, then we provide the technology to support it.

Tami Cannizzaro: But even if you decide you're not a customer and you're not in the market for technology, I think you can get a, a lot of value out of the relationship with Thrive.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, and I think it's pretty cool what you all do. And I think this is for anybody out there that has lots of different lines of services, I think the top of the funnel game is so, so important, putting out so much thought leadership so that way that people can find what they need and they can find you.

Jay Schwedelson: So I, I like how you guys go to market. There's, speaking of go to market these days, uh, if you haven't heard, there's this thing called ai. It's catching on a little bit. Um, and in general for small business owners, 'cause that's kind of your core market, are small business owners, are they shying away from ai?

Jay Schwedelson: Are they using it more? I feel like you all can take the temperature on small businesses and AI use.

Tami Cannizzaro: Yeah, and I, I would say we did a survey, we just recently did a survey, and it turns out that over 50% of small business owners are starting to use ai. But I would say we get the question a lot. How you know people are used to Google, you're kind of used to SEO, right? And getting found online, and we get asked the question a lot, you know, how do I get found in AI and.

Tami Cannizzaro: It's actually good that the way you get found in AI is actually the same way that you get found in traditional Google advertising online. All the same best practices. Make sure you have a great online listing. Make sure you're actively updating and changing and promoting your listing. Make sure you have a good website.

Tami Cannizzaro: Um, you know, make sure you're consistent with your keyword strategy. So all those same best practices that kind of got you found online and on the web is. Small business owner and stand out above your peers. It's actually those same best practices. The only thing I'll say is user generated content, so community forums, reddit groups, any, any sort of like user based customer feedback becomes even more important for you to focus on in the world of ai.

Jay Schwedelson: That's super interesting. You know what I just saw, which I've been messing around with, not to go off script, but Oh well, that you can now go on, for example, chat, GBT, and you could ask chat GBT. What is the most upvoted, uh, Reddit. Uh, comment or post, uh, in the last six months on whatever topic, and it'll actually show you which, uh, subreddit, comment, whatever is the most upvoted.

Jay Schwedelson: So to your point, digging into these communities and making sure that you're present there as a small business, it's kind of like, it's, it's table stakes now, right? I mean, is that like what we have to focus on?

Tami Cannizzaro: It is. It absolutely is. Yes. And Reddit's come up with their own search engine, right? Reddit answers and, and I, I think folks. I do think folks have gotten a little, um, jaded over Google because it's, it's so much advertising and it's hard to know what's real and what's not real. And so, you know, surfacing this user generated content from like real people about, you know, real products as opposed to advertisers, I think is, you know, is becoming even more important in this, you know, in this next generation of the internet.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, so along those lines, the ultimate user generated content is reviews, right? Is is getting the reviews, making sure you have good reviews, all that stuff. How do, how can small businesses, uh, who. Reviews are their lifeblood. Use AI to kind of maximize reviews or manage reviews or what, which of the, I know Thrive can help you do that, but beyond just Thrive helping you do that.

Jay Schwedelson: How can anybody do that?

Tami Cannizzaro: Yeah, it really helps with any sort of social, either social advocacy or managing your customer reviews. You can use, you can use a tool, so you can use a kind of a, you know, a, a bot response that generates an immediate response because. FOC folks don't have time, and they expect an immediate answer, right?

Tami Cannizzaro: That's kind of consumer, consumer behavior these days, and so with AI you can, you can have it generate automated responses so your customer get responded to right away. The other thing that people really don't like, if you're, if you're, and I'm sure you know this as a consumer, right? If you, if you don't get a response, whether it's a, whether it's a negative review or a positive review.

Tami Cannizzaro: Folks expect an immediate response. And so AI can kind of help to quickly generate that immediate response, um, to make sure that you are, you know, you're responding to those reviews and you're active online.

Jay Schwedelson: So is that like what, what small business owners are doing? They're taking like, okay, let's say they get negative reviews or whatever and they're just copy and pasting saying, okay, we got this negative. Review, how should I write back to this thing? Is it that simple?

Tami Cannizzaro: It really is that simple. And you know, the, what's great about AI is it takes best practices from all the best brands in the world, right? You're a, you're a small business owner, you don't have a. A department to handle this, right? You're handling it on your own, and so it can really pull in all the best practices for how you handle negative reviews and give you that expertise at your fingertips.

Jay Schwedelson: So is that where it stops for a small business? When I say a small business, I always think of like somebody out there that owns, like an HVAC company that's got some sales folks out there or or technicians out there losing their minds. They could barely get their invoicing done, they can't answer their phones, they can't look at reviews.

Jay Schwedelson: When I say small business, it's always what's in my mind. And then. You then position like, okay, now you should use ai. And they're like, really? I don't have time for that. Like how else besides for reviews is that HVAC person that's owning that business, are they really using ai? 'cause they seem like they're overwhelmed.

Tami Cannizzaro: Well, one of the, one of the best ways that customers. Can drive more initial profits is by repeat revenue from your current customer base. Right. And to that point, small business owners are super busy, so it's hard to remember to stay in front of your customers and wish them a happy birthday and send out a back to school campaign.

Tami Cannizzaro: Right. But with ai. Literally at the click of a button, you can really think through. Okay. You know, for a year, for my customer base, let's look at the year. I wanna wish 'em a happy birthday. Um, during the off season, I wanna, you know, uh, run a discount so I can kind of help to even out my sales. I wanna remind them when their services due the next year.

Tami Cannizzaro: You know, and, and all you have to kind of do is think about your customer base and how it would be best to sell into. And AI can really take care of the rest. It'll write the email, it'll generate a recommended offer. Um, and then you can add automation. So rather than you having to worry about each customer and staying, you know, staying in touch with them, keeping keeping top of mind, you're able to automate all that and use AI to really make it pretty easy to generate.

Tami Cannizzaro: You know, lots more repeat business for your, for, you know, through your current customer base.

Jay Schwedelson: And I, I love all that. And I think for small businesses in particular, there's a mindset shift that based on the data that you shared, that over 50% are now using it. It's finally starting to happen. Um, I feel like early on small businesses were like, I remember back in the day when Amazon first started.

Jay Schwedelson: Everyone's like, I'm not giving my credit cards. Amazon, you crazy. I'll steal my identity. And then obviously now there's 200 million plus Amazon Prime, you know, customers, whatever. I feel like for small business owners, it's the same thing with AI that originally was like, I don't care about those robots are doing.

Jay Schwedelson: And now everyone's like, um, this is a game changer. Like have you felt that sentiment shift from small business owners? Are they finally like truly on board or is there still that reluctance like, ah, I'm old school, I don't need to use that stuff.

Tami Cannizzaro: I think there's a reluctance. I, and I also think, I think people are dipping their toe in the water, but you know, really understanding how to use it across their business to drive and grow their business. I, I, I think we're all on a learning curve and you know, what I suggest is, you know, really get in there and try it.

Tami Cannizzaro: 'cause there's really almost nothing you can't do. So anything you're gonna do manually. I would. Stop and say, could AI do this to me? Whether it's writing an email, it's writing an invoice, it's, you know, asking for repeat business. It's, you know, your whole billing process. Anything that you do manually today can truly be automated and is repeatable.

Tami Cannizzaro: And I think one of the. Best things that, you know, it, it can help with our small business owners is, you know, working 24 7 and, and kind of never getting a break and it really can help you to kind of automate and take some of that busy work and give you some time back in your day.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, and to that point, uh, if I did own that HVAC company and I was nervous about not understanding ai, I would go to any of the AI platforms, the free versions, Claude Chat, GBT, perplexity, doesn't matter. And I would say, listen, this is the business I own, this HVAC company, whatever. How can I be automating my company using this platform?

Jay Schwedelson: And. You. It will tell you. It will tell you, you can do these five things. Like you don't need to know how to do it. It will actually tell you. And, and I think that that's the part that people get intimidated by. But you, you can't be intimidated. It's not going anywhere. Right. I mean, this is it.

Tami Cannizzaro: I agree. I agree. I also think there's this notion that people feel like they're cheating, right? Well, is ai, you know, is it real? Am I cheating if I use ai? And I think, I think you sort of just have to get over it, right? This is the world that we're living in, and if you're, if you're not using ai, you're, you're missing out on a competitive advantage.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, and speaking about competitive advantage, the, the thing that I love doing the most, and if I did own that HVAC company, what I would do is you could literally go to any AI platform and say, these are three of my competitors. I'm in, uh, San Francisco, and these are three other HVAC companies. Uh, here are their URLs.

Jay Schwedelson: Can you analyze their pricing, their marketing, their offers? Tell me what they're doing and tell me what I'm not doing, and boom. And it will tell you in three seconds. So I, I love it. Yeah.

Tami Cannizzaro: and even your positioning right? Here are my three competitors. How can I stand out against these three competitors? What could I do differently or better? And it'll help to give you, you know, potentially a, a competitive advantage from how your positioning or pricing.

Jay Schwedelson: I love it. And so I feel like you have this kind of crystal ball that actually is clear. You could see the future. Uh, what is the, what is the next year, two years, five years, 10 years? How is it gonna play out for small businesses and ai? I mean, do you see, like, for example, on your platform. You all have a lot of AI stuff going on in there.

Jay Schwedelson: Are you adding even more functionality that's gonna become commonplace for small businesses to use?

Tami Cannizzaro: Yes, absolutely. And this, this world of kind of bots, little AI helper bots, right, that are kind of helping you. And you know, they say that this generation of AI is your asking. The, the, the kind of the next generation is you're gonna be prompted, you know, and AI is almost gonna kind of take the lead. And I think that'll be really helpful as small business owners, you know, kind of, kind of helping to, to, with a learning curve on, on how to use and how to prompt.

Tami Cannizzaro: 'cause this, you know, AI prompting is a, it's a bit of an art and a science all in itself.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, it's so funny you say that. What I've come to realize is I'm, I'm very bad at prompting, so what I always now do, which works so well, is I go to AI with whatever I'm trying to do. I say, what is the prompt I should ask you? To get this thing and they'll say, actually, here's the prompt. So it's like, um, I almost, I almost don't even know if you need to be great at prompting anymore, as long as you just ask it.

Jay Schwedelson: What is a great prompt? Which is so ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.

Tami Cannizzaro: It's pretty.

Jay Schwedelson: Yes. Um, I, I, I wanna know something for in your real life now you're not, you know, CMO of Thrive, you're whatever. Maybe you're planning a trip, maybe you're thinking about what, what's for dinner tonight? I don't know your weekend plans.

Jay Schwedelson: How does Tammy use AI in her life?

Tami Cannizzaro: So I've started, I'm actually planning a wedding and I've started planning the, I'm overwhelmed by the prospect of this. And so I've just started, you know, asking, asking chat GBT, you know, where should I get married? Who should I marry? No,

Jay Schwedelson: oh, that, that's loaded right there.

Tami Cannizzaro: um, you know, to try. I can't, I can't, no. You know, to try to figure out, you know, all, all the, you know, all the avenues.

Tami Cannizzaro: 'cause you could put lots of parameters. Here's how much I wanna spend, here's what I'd like it to feel like. You know, and it's much more advanced than Google in terms of sort of understanding what you're looking for and being able to promote, promote choices.

Jay Schwedelson: Wait, now I, now I'm like, okay, would you upload like your, who you're inviting, like this person has to talk to this person in two years. This is my aunt. She's very annoying. Like, and say, where should they all be seated? There's 10 people at a table go.

Tami Cannizzaro: Oh, I love that. That's a great idea.

Jay Schwedelson: You are like, I'm gonna do that. That's amazing,

Tami Cannizzaro: There's no end, right? The speeches, you know.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. Oh, definitely. For speeches. That's a no brainer. That's a great idea. Yes. I love it. I love it. Alright, the other big thing that we have to talk about is that Thrive has this incredible in-person event coming up, and I'm gonna be there. I don't know if that's a, if that's a good or a bad thing for everybody listening, but, uh, I'm gonna give everyone this crazy discount code.

Tami Cannizzaro: Well, we're super excited about grow and what we really want is to introduce this, you know, growth method, right? Three steps to growth. You know, you need to get bound online, you need to turn leads into new customers, and you need to nurture your customers to drive great repeat business. And that's kind of gonna be the storyline we have.

Tami Cannizzaro: Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tape. Shark and fame will be there. Um, you know, and she'll, she'll give her sage, you know, some sage advice to small business owners. We also have David Heath, who's the co-founder of Bombass. We have our, our very own Jay Swen will be giving best practices what to do and not to do at person.

Tami Cannizzaro: And I attend your session at Inbound, uh, last year. And it was. It was one of the best sessions, so we're super excited to have you speaking as well. Um, and it's, I really think it's gonna be a fantastic event with great content. We also have speakers from Google and Yelp, you know, really talking about, uh, building a great digital foundation for your business.

Tami Cannizzaro: And the idea is you'll come out of this two day, two day event really. Uh, positioned to, uh, take your small business above your, your peer competitive set within your, within your local industry.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, well before Tammy came on, I twisted her on, I said, I need an amazing discount code for our listeners for Grow. And she said, okay, fine. And so 25% off to attend Grow. This is amazing. It's gonna be in the show notes. Uh, you're gonna put the code in. It is J Podcast one word. And I'm gonna be there.

Jay Schwedelson: And Tammy, uh, thanks for being here. This was fun.

Tami Cannizzaro: Thank you, Jay. We're excited to see you in October.

Jay Schwedelson: All right, see everybody at Grow.