The AI Marketer's Playbook

9 | Mastering AI Marketing Funnels with Justin Hardy of Hardy Marketing

• Audrey Chia, Justin Hardy • Season 1 • Episode 10

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In this episode of the AI Marketers Playbook, Audrey Chia hosts Justin Hardy, founder of Hardy Marketing. With a wealth of experience spanning over a decade, Justin has perfected the art of building marketing funnels that effectively turn prospects into customers. He discusses his journey from working with marketing agencies to starting his own consultancy, serving clients from small businesses to industry giants like Forbes and Unilever. Justin also explores the potential of AI in marketing, sharing how he integrates AI tools to streamline content creation, improve personalization, and optimize campaigns. Gain valuable insights on leveraging AI to boost your marketing efforts.

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Audrey Chia:

Hello and welcome back to the AI Marketer's Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to actually leverage AI in business. I'm Audrey Chia, your host, and today I have with me Justin Hardy, founder and consultant at Hardy Marketing. Now, with over a decade of experience, Justin has mastered the art of Building funnels, and turning prospects into paying customers. From small business owners and coaches to global giants like Forbes and Unilever. Justin creates unique data driven campaigns that drive actionable results. We are so excited to have Justin on the show with us. Welcome, Justin.

Justin Hardy:

Thank you, Audrey. I'm very excited to be here. And let's get into that introduction.

Audrey Chia:

I'm always happy to speak with Justin because we have been chatting, you know, for quite a while on LinkedIn and we have been following each other's journey. So it's always like talking to a good friend. But for our audience and our new viewers, Justin, can you tell us more a bit about yourself, your background and how you got started with your own business and own marketing activities?

Justin Hardy:

Yeah, definitely. So, like you said, I've been in digital marketing for about 10 years now. my first digital marketing role was with Pimlodge and Alex Ramosi, so a lot of people know me on LinkedIn from that. Alex mentioned that sometimes and what I learned there. I was there for a little over a year and did everything marketing wise for the funnel. So creating content, creating websites, building pages, crafting ads, things like that. and then it evolved from there, so I went on to work for a couple other marketing agencies, doing similar funnels for influencers, or corporators, things like that, a lot of webinar funnels. And then after a couple years of working with agencies, and actually I had a direct marketing role, but I went off on my own and sold it to third party marketing. And that's been the last three years, you know, it's been really fun. I. I'm pretty entrepreneurial, I like working for myself, I like teaching others how to do it and stuff like that as well. But more recently, I guess the last 7 months, we met on LinkedIn and got talking about AI. Yeah, I've been posting a lot about AI and how you can use it to, do the same funnel process I talked about, or I've been learning, teaching, but do it faster, do it on scale, more personalized, better results, kind of what I do nowadays.

Audrey Chia:

Awesome. And for yourself, right? When you first, you know, saw the potential of AI, how did you take it? Were you on the, I'm a bit scared of AI camp or are you on a, Oh my gosh, this is the best thing that has happened.

Justin Hardy:

I'm a diehard positive person. I, it's very hard for me to like, I was definitely more of the, this is an opportunity, better way. You know, when the internet first came out, you had a few bubbles, right now we're in the AI bubble, but that'll, that'll settle down and pop, and you're gonna grow into a solid opportunities and job then. actually, John, you, you mentioned, Like, I think last week was, a couple weeks ago, was like, It's gonna, it's gonna come, so it's up to you on how you want to do it. Or, you can ignore it and be anxious, or you can get out of it, or you can just spend your life. That's really how I've done with my life. So, we kind of got bit into that, I wasn't up here, I feel like there's a lot of limitations to it, personally. Yeah, I think we all know how to use it, or they don't know how to, so yeah, I'm team AI, but I'm also team human.

Audrey Chia:

That is true. I always talk about the human AI approach, right? And I think for both of us, because we use AI every day, you sort of realize that at this, at this point in time, AI is able to give you maybe like a 60 to 70 percent, you know, version of your work, but you still need to refine and review the results. And that's like the last 30 percent. And then that's really how you get like a more seamless workflow. And I think speaking of workflows, I would love to know, like, how are you really using AI in your day to day? Like so many people talk about it, but still not many people are actually using it, in their actual workflows.

Justin Hardy:

Yeah. Yeah, so, with AI, you know, it's kind of a different level of the game. I work with a lot of content creators and small businesses that just either can't afford or realistically don't have a huge budget or time to, you know, put out content That's where I've been using AI, is using that to either plan how much I can produce, so that, like, a lot of, like, 3D or 3D, creating a lot more copy than I normally do, like, creating a framework and getting prompts, then having, like, a regular social media post, or emails, things that I know are always gonna go out, happen, and then I do 80 percent of the work. That's mostly where I've used it, and then, besides the LLM, there's more tools that I'll use for like, the actual sales page, you know, like, the chatbot, like, not the AI, or, like, to do something else, like, more advanced, I'll go down that route, but, like you said, most people are very Early on, with their understanding of it, so I tried to be very simple and just say, Okay, normally, we create 8 emails every month for this client. Let's create a system so we can use ChatGPT to now read that 10 times a day. And then with that extra time, what can we do? And we, you know, work more on the strategy, work more on the data, so that's more, if you want a different campaign, look at those offerings. So, there's some people, you know, who do huge chains and workflows, and do improved prompt engineering, and that's awesome, but, for a lot of the clients I see, it's really just scaling content, and then, normal marketing funnel, so like, a conversion. Metacritic analysis is augmenting the core foundation of the coding foundation or, of a problem.

Audrey Chia:

I like what you said about, like, taking the time saved and then actually turning it into something that is more, at higher level, right, because now you're thinking about strategy, about, you know, A B testing, and then figuring out how do you optimize your process. Then I think most people don't. recognize the fact that the time saved, you know, by using AI actually frees up their, employees even to do even more. So for people who feel like they are going to be replaced, they don't have to, as long as they shift how they are spending their time. and now you can do so much more. For myself, I used to take about, three weeks to build a super full landing page and that includes like eight different steps. Now we can streamline the process to three days while still maintaining that quality and that time saved, right? You can probably use it for a business owner, right? Network, pitch to new clients, create new content. So there is so much benefits to AI, but people are not fully maximizing it for now. And I hope to, to see like more of that, but I would love to know also about funnels because for a lot of new business owners, funnels isn't a thing they are familiar with. Could you tell us more a bit about what are funnels and how does it work?

Justin Hardy:

Yeah, that's it. so, kind of going back to what I was saying in my introduction, I, now, I build custom funnels for my internet, just to kind of give a definition of what a funnel is, that's essentially the actions or the steps that your ideal customers take, and once they're aware of you, or like, what you're offering, you do all the way to like, conversion, whether that's purchasing a volume, follow, whatever that is for that campaign, and then the follow up, whether that's sending out more emails, tracking them, Reaching out to DMs, whatever that process might be. That's the entire funnel. And I like to mirror it. I think that's customer journey. So, you know, like, A brief example of this would be, I'm going to use a Facebook ad. For a free 50% off massage Docs. So, click on that to add. I'll create that ad. And then they'll go to the sales page, put in their information, it's really targeted on just what that offer is, that ideal target, not what they want, everything that's under the sun about the company. Very focused on that first main point and all the research you should be doing, you know, ahead of before you start the campaign. That's right there in the sales page. And then after that, the reason, you know, we're doing a funnel versus other type of marketing strategy. It's kind of the other popular strategy where you realize what you're doing. websites are great for establishing brand recognition and trust and telling everyone about everything about your brand and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, more long term play. But really bad for conversion. There's way too many menu options. people get distracted. The average time on a page is like a second. Though. If you have all that information, you're just starting yourself with a version, but the funnel is very targeted of, you know, who is this, what's this one ad, or like, one problem we're solving with one target audience, what's that one offer that's going to be most attractive, test that, and then keep going. And that way you can reiterate, start getting a contact version versus having a website and offer a funnel on that. And that's why I'm a funnel agency versus a website agency, even though I'm I

Audrey Chia:

think it helps people to quickly make a decision, especially because you know, you are so targeted at your pain points. and you know as a copywriter or as a marketer You always need to understand your audience insights and pain points so that you can effectively target them with copy. So I know, like you said, that there's a difference between a website and a funnel, which is true because for a lot of the websites that are out there, there are different use cases for them. Some websites could be branding websites where it's really inspirational, you know, a big idea, how do you feel when you see it? the website. And some websites are a lot more sales driven. there are like copy heavy websites where 90 percent is text, and it's of a certain type as well. And then there are those like in between, which probably are like sass. Kinds of websites where you sort of understand, you know, what is the product and the pain point, but yet it isn't too salesy. So I think that there's the beauty in like looking at, you know, different types of ways to convert customers and funnels definitely is one of the smartest ways to really help your audience go from one part of their journey to another. But with that, now I would like to ask that big question of, can you show us how you actually use AI to build funnels and how someone can do the same?

Justin Hardy:

Of course. Screen. but yeah, before I could dive into it. What we were saying before, you can really use AI at every step of building the funnel. So like if we were talking about how to build an entire funnel, like add email, you know, that like three or four hour podcast. So I'll just hone in on how I used, AI tools or LLMI, had. That's one of the main things that take up a lot of time. Once you really have the copy and I usually write my final work, so it just has like, failed letters, so here, you know, whoever your target audience is, writing all that out, and then designing it. Some people don't do it that way, but, so that's usually the main piece, and then you can kind of work backwards, making emails or ads, that would lead up to that, and then also knowing what the end goal is.

Audrey Chia:

So Justin is going to share his screen. We also have some listeners who won't be able to see the screen and no worries about that. I think Justin will be able to walk you through what we are seeing on screen. and of course we highly recommend that you check out the Full video so that you can actually see the amazing stuff that Justin will be sharing with us today.

Justin Hardy:

Yeah, so before we go all the way into like how I actually make this sales page or landing page, just a little brief on what exactly I have elements done. So I like to think of a sales page as kind of a building block, like a section. you're going to have your hero banner, which is like a big You have your main headline, you know, what, what you're talking about, what the main promise is. You have headlines, e. g. how to deliver a unique, you know, selling proposition, delivery mechanism for your product or service. And you have a social proof bar that's like testimonials and awards. And we'll have to deal with that. Just so everyone has an idea of what I'm talking about. You're going to call out your audience. You're going to go ahead and introduce your solution. Start sharing the benefits. Introduce your expertise to the brand, depending on the campaign. You're going to put a full offer stack. That's breaking up everything included in that offer. Full of blank, every little thing. What the value is. and wrap them up together in the offer for testimonials. Future pasting is just having, painting the page on what the 3rd and 5th are going to be like when they make a decision to buy or report. Frequently asked questions and then file callbacks. So the reason I'm going over this is just so you understand the building blocks of a page, you can use this to really build one. I have a prompting guide that I'll share with anyone who wants to do after. Get that from you, Audrey.

Audrey Chia:

Awesome. And you can see that what Justin has here, right? He has so many different elements of a sales speech. A lot of people think that it's just copywriting. Its words on a on a page. How hard can it be? But you can already see how detailed you can be, right? You know how specific you need to be in each section because they all serve a specific function and you want to guide the audience as they flow through your landing page or your final page and get them to understand your offer and what's in it for them and then finally also persuade them to convert and take action right now. So I think if you have a very effective page, your audience should feel like, Hey, Have I have to purchase it. If I don't, I'm missing out. I'm missing out. I'm missing out

Justin Hardy:

on life. Yeah. But also, yeah, like you said, the point of the, what I like to tell people about sales page and really, funnel page, is not to sell the person. To explain away all their objections or concerns or fears. So that's why you want all that information in there and the first and last question. Ideally, someone should be able to read that page and not have any other questions, or at least not a common one. And be able to decide whether or not they want to move forward. alright, let's get into it. So, this is the free guide I'll, available to anyone who wants it. But I just want to go over in more detail what we're talking about and also the prompt I'm going to be using. So, So you can see here, this is a mega prompt, so for anyone unaware of that, it's giving the LLM, a lot more context than a basic prompt. A basic prompt would be like, FTP, maybe, one post about, so it doesn't really have any context, people from, It has, like, millions of parameters and data points that you can potentially use. The context has these points in the direction, like, where you want to go from and what you want to think about. So, yeah, I'll just read through this, and then I can kind of do an example of what I've done for clients. That would be amazing. This can be done on a premium plan, plan obviously ChatGPT 4 is gonna give you better output. So here's the prompt and expert and copywriter and landing page builder in. I work a lot with clinic and doctors in the healthcare industry. We are selling, and then what is your product or service to do? One of my new clients, he has a practice where he does non cure medical services, so he'll be your doctor around the clock. That's when patients need to call a customized view. Pretty cool. You're gonna insert target customer, which is, you know, you had this already researched out. We're gonna do that. I want to be more simple, telling you how your medical care is going. Stay tuned, for me to update you all in the next few weeks. I still know that I want you to live longer and have healthier activities. Again, you could really, like, So, to go more into detail and break this up and put all the pain points and everything, like, I was really trying to move everything. Thank you! That, but generally the more context you can establish, the better. But yeah, so the creator of this project or service is If the brand is tactical. then you have to do the oxygen. And you do release again you tactical. Full information of using copy from the website, is that you're actually getting the website, you can do it, and upload it, to a live form, and that way they'll actually read the copy, and they'll know that, this, price, can be roughly, over, 150, per month, is, usually, cheaper. Okay, then you're gonna say the tone of voice, so, yeah. It's just pretty, active, friendly, personal. Okay, so the next part is to create, just a framework, create a sales landing page, copy what you want, or the product you want, while following the PDF framework, so hopefully you're familiar with the problem, solution. and this is exactly, this is where we go back to earlier on the pamphlet slide, to the headline. What you want to do is create a CD and format it for the product. Alright, that's it now. The headline that explains the promise and causes his sister to use more. So the proof section, this ukulele is going to be at least 500 feet forward. So for that, we'll add in a book. for him, I'm just going to put, local, family owned, used. so then you're going to get him a payment point. customer, or, you can list these out. I'm actually just going to upload a book from there. Now, like I said, I'm gonna upload, this is market research. We have a little bit of Intel Health MD market research. So this is everything about competitors, target audience, all that stuff. Obviously, this isn't necessary, but let's just go for it. The more you do this type of stuff and the more content you give it within reason, the more you're going to be able to perform and the better the copy will be. One caveat on this, and again I'm just trying to keep it simple for everyone, but you could literally go second by second here, and I know some people want it that way. So you start with, if you want an outline, and then you start with the second one, and counter prompt that, and go second by second. I found this way on YouTube, and it worked fine, so, that's good. but yeah. There are people that want it that way. and as little work as necessary.

Audrey Chia:

For a lot of marketers, right, we find that AI has been a super handy to, and actually I think that marketers, and writers are probably one of the first few folks to really. reap the benefits of Gen AI, right? Cause it just, right? And it's so intuitive for us to start, you know, using it to create content. But like what Justin said, you need to have your, foundations right. Like if you don't have the marketing knowledge or expertise, you'll find that you don't know how to prompt. And even if you prompt for a certain output, you don't know if there is a good output or not. Yeah. Which is why the knowledge here is It's definitely important. So be sure to have your skill sets really, you know, sharpened even before you use AI. And then AI will be a tool that really supercharges your entire process. I think like the entrepreneurial journey isn't easy. and most people want their first like big client as soon as they get started. But I think many of us started on Upwork or Fiverr just trying our first projects. Right. I think I started off with like a 5 client. on Upwork and that was one of my earliest projects and I also tried, you know, Testing different platforms, right? So I tried going on TikTok for a month to see if I could find an audience there But I also realized that your channel is very important and your audience that you're looking for needs to have that channel fit. So if you're on TikTok, there is a high possibility that you're not going to find a lot of founders and business owners unless they're in e com. So that was the wrong, the wrong channel for me. And then after that, what's coming to LinkedIn, and learning how to focus on one channel. focus on growing this channel and understanding like who are the prospects who are on this channel and what they're looking for. This is also a very important skill set to master, as you grow as a professional. Yeah, and with that, I think we have learned so much from you, Justin. It was a pleasure having you on the show. And thank you guys for tuning in. So don't forget to subscribe to the AI Marketers podcast and hit the bell for more actionable AI marketing insights. We'll see you next time.