Automating Your Agency With AI
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Akvile DeFazio, owner of Akvertise.com discusses the role of AI in media buying and its impact on workflow. She believes that AI will enhance, rather than replace, human creativity.
Akvile shares her experience with AI tools and how they have helped her team create concise summaries, import data for reporting and overall improve efficiencies in managing client accounts. She also highlights the importance of documenting processes and using AI to refine them.
Key Takeaways
How AI is allowing for more efficient account management
Why AI is helping to improve communication skills
How handing over tasks to AI can allow more time for more strategic work
Why documenting processes and using AI to refine them is a most for any agency
To learn more about Akvile DeFazio and her team you can and head here.
If you'd like to learn more about the Founders Community or want to become a member you can do so here.
Full Transcript:
Akvile DeFazio (00:18.89)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (00:53.043)
It's happening.
Edwin @ Snappic (01:00.251)
So Agvila, you are AI, AI. So I'm gonna ask you the question that I think about sometimes when I walk my dog. Is AI gonna replace media buyers? Is this true or false?
Akvile DeFazio (01:14.482)
naturally an optimistic person so I feel like I need to be a realist too but I hope that in our lifetime it doesn't replace us. I don't think it will. It's going to just enhance our workflow, give us the ability to do more with less. You know I think this is just the beginning and the AI has been around for a long time but I feel like we're starting to get a sense of like what the capabilities are, where this might go forward but I have a hard time believing it's going to replace human creativity.
cultural nuances, like it doesn't do that yet, and I hope it doesn't do that for a long time. I like my line of work, I think you guys do too, but I don't think it will fully replace us. It will just compliment us in different ways and we'll have to adapt.
Edwin @ Snappic (02:00.499)
Like, so you use it every day. What tools have you found that actually make a real difference in your day to day?
Akvile DeFazio (02:09.901)
Great question. I'm always playing with tools, but since last year, just really diving into it and seeing, I don't want to be left behind. Jasper.ai, I know there's a chat GBT, but I feel like it has more nuance, and it helps me with everything from refining content to creating it, anything from ad copy to landing page copy to making my summaries for client reports much more concise or.
a little bit more, I hate to use the word embellished, but sometimes it reminds me of words that I don't use as frequently or have gotten out of practice of using. So I feel like in return it's also improving my actual communication skills because I'm starting to implement a lot of words because it is very adjective and heavy, but Jasper and then when it comes to reporting.
I use rose.com and then Noah Fair from the group. He actually introduced me to, it's called Julius AI. So I'm starting to play with that as of the last couple of days. So nothing to report yet, but yeah, so reporting AI. Rose.com isn't an AI specific tool, but I found it to be really useful in importing data from anywhere. It's starting to have, you can sync it now up with Google ads, Google analytics, you can import other things from Meta. So what I'm doing with that is kind of cleaning up
It's like Excel on steroids in a sense, but it does have AI features built in. So you can ask its AI questions about your data. And while data analysis is part of our jobs, I don't do it 100% of my day. I'm not a data analyst. So I do find that once in a while it'll find interesting things about my data that will inform me to maybe do something different with their campaigns or maybe just other ideas for other marketing or advertising things that I could recommend to clients. And it also impresses them and gives them other insight too.
It's not super robust yet, but I feel like it has picked out a few things, or I can do simple tasks. I have a huge spreadsheet and I'm like, which of these ads spent this much, or maybe has a ROAS of 2.7 or higher, whatever it might be, simple questions like that. It saves me a lot of time formatting my reports and I can do it much quicker on there. I'm excited to play this other Julius tool because it does look like it has more AI abilities.
Akvile DeFazio (04:28.15)
Those two things in addition to some research tools and some, I'm starting to play with a creative AI, but it hasn't quite gotten there for me yet, but I'm always trying to find other ways because I'm a very small agency and intentionally so. It's just me, one other person and a few contractors. So I try to be as efficient as possible without sacrificing my business or my clients results. So, but.
Long story long, I feel like I rambled because there's just so much going through my head of like, okay, there's all these different tools I play with, but which ones are the most impactful? So Jasper and Rose right now are like really cutting down how much time I need to do account management and it can actually provide other types of insight and services to our clients.
Akvile DeFazio (05:17.324)
Mm-hmm.
Akvile DeFazio (05:47.19)
Just rose calm and then Julius I just learned about last week So I'm starting to play with that one as well nothing to report back yet, but it's only been a few days
Edwin @ Snappic (06:00.14)
What does Julius do?
Akvile DeFazio (06:01.931)
data analysis.
Edwin @ Snappic (06:03.943)
Oh, like what kind of queries would you drop into it?
Akvile DeFazio (06:09.334)
That I'm still playing around with. I'll report back next time we chat. Noah just shared it with me on Friday. So I'm only like three days into the work week.
Edwin @ Snappic (06:14.163)
Okay.
Akvile DeFazio (06:48.778)
I feel like I'm not the right person to answer this question because I'm still fighting with automation and trying to accept it fully. I don't use ClickUp. I have other project management tools. I just time track everything and I really just try to refine my processes, but I don't really automate yet. Anything that's come from automation is more in platform. I'm not using any third party automation tools at the moment. I've...
I mean, I guess last year I used this company called Weather Ads and with some of my clients they are very weather specific. So that was an automation I did use where it triggered based on weather events or temperatures or whatever settings I gave it and then transferred over to meta ads. But when it comes to actual agency processes, I'm not really automating much yet because I feel like I like having a little bit more control.
Akvile DeFazio (07:59.509)
Yes.
Akvile DeFazio (08:02.914)
Uh, nothing published for clients yet. I'm still playing with it, tweaking it around. I have found that chat GBT plus with the, uh, Canva plugin has been much more fruitful for me personally, just because it does save me a lot of time browsing templates and I can just tell chat GBT what to do exactly with that. Um, mid journey. I like playing with it.
Edwin @ Snappic (08:24.263)
Wait, wait, chat GPT with Canva. What are you doing with it? Cause yeah, tell me like, like an actual application that you're doing with it.
Akvile DeFazio (08:28.386)
So.
Akvile DeFazio (08:34.146)
Sure, more so for my business, not for clients yet, just because they have a lot of great in-house design teams or photographers or videographers. So I'm not providing those services. I don't have a creative shop, but I do want to provide that as a service someday, hopefully using AI to where if I have a client at a pinch, I need to launch something sooner, that I could provide something of quality and on-brand for them. So I really want to get there with those tools so I can do that for my own business and that outsources or rely on a...
client teams, but for Canva with Chat GPT, I'm making images for different work assets that I need for social, for presentations, for examples for clients of what I have a visual idea of what I want them to do, but kind of refine a little bit more with their skills. So it does save me a lot of time instead of just browsing Canva and trying to find the thing that I have in my head because I do have an artistic background and outside of work I am an artist.
So I have all these ideas, but I don't have the tools or the skills to do it yet. So for now, that plugin has helped me be a little bit more efficient into getting that idea out, at least in some first draft form, or if it's something for my business, like a social post.
Akvile DeFazio (09:59.851)
Mm-hmm.
Akvile DeFazio (10:06.427)
Yes.
Akvile DeFazio (10:09.922)
So there's one that I really want to love. I don't know if it's just my prompts aren't up to par with what it needs, but there's runway, which is mid-journey for video. But anytime I put something in there like a client asset, eyes just like the pupil migrates over the eyelid and then fingers just intertwined, especially if there's hands touching, like it's not there yet. I'd love for that to get there.
But I just also learned about another tool called Creatify. So I'm playing with that. That makes videos using AI, and those look really cool. So all you have to do is plug in your domain, and it pulls whatever you want from your site or landing page and can make a video based on that. You can adjust if you want it to talk about specific value props or make it kind of salesy. I haven't put anything out in the wild yet, but that is also Noah's recommendation to me as of Friday. So I'm going to look more into that and let you guys know.
Akvile DeFazio (11:58.051)
Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (12:21.036)
right?
Edwin @ Snappic (12:24.015)
So you're using AI primarily in your workflow, right? And so like, and you keep track of a lot of things. So minute for minute, how much has it actually saved you? Like, because, tell me more about that.
Akvile DeFazio (12:37.51)
I'm so glad you asked. That wasn't in our questions, but I actually did two case studies. Last year, I went fully in Q3 for everything AI in meta, but also everything from ASC to advantage plus audiences, to just leaning into what metas abilities are, and added dynamic copy, having them populate some of that, but also in addition to the tools that I'm using outside of meta.
So for one client, e-commerce, I had a graph of like, if you can guess when I started implementing AI, and there was like a huge drop come August, and it's just been pretty consistently lower. So for this one client, we're spending 50K a month, e-commerce, and implemented ASC, implemented Vantage Plus, audiences with a suggestion of in-platform audience, like engagers, plus the tools that I'm using. So Jasper, Rose, using,
What else for that one? Yeah, it was just those ones. So by doing that, I lowered my time managing their account by 33%, so meaning I could provide other services and do some other higher level strategy, take on more platforms for them. I could also take on more consulting clients and training clients, which I have a lot since then because I have more time now. So I haven't sacrificed performance and all of their metrics are up.
beating prior results. So I'm like, okay, like the platforms kind of figure out what it's doing better with AI, with that streamlined approach and a lot of testing, but it's also opened up a lot more time for me there. And then the second one is a smaller client. Just wanted to show kind of like a larger and smaller one for two conferences I spoke at. And for that one, they're only spending about 10K a month and it's for lead gen. So not as much as I have to do for an e-commerce client, but for that one, my time reduced is 17%.
month over month. So I'm like, okay, great. I have more time again. So that makes it good for somebody at leader business of my size, where I need to be small and nimble and also deliver for my clients, but without sacrificing anything.
Edwin @ Snappic (14:44.98)
That's what just leaning into all the AI products that Meta has put out and then implementing and then leaning into Jasper and Rose for the captions and the data reporting basically.
Akvile DeFazio (14:54.004)
Mm-hmm.
Akvile DeFazio (14:59.818)
And also creating reporting summaries to my clients because usually that takes me a lot of time and I still do weekly reporting for these clients. So that was a huge time saver on the reporting end, but also I really get into the creative weeds when I start writing copy and then go into landing page copy, even though that's not part of my job, but I'm really, I really like to be part of that just because I get somebody to your site doesn't mean that, you know, the end of the journey is there, so I really try to like.
provide more of that to clients and it's been able, I've been able to do more with less for them. So the copy in the reporting front is where most of the time has been saved for me to manage their accounts.
Akvile DeFazio (15:49.826)
Mm-hmm.
Akvile DeFazio (16:15.886)
I feel like I just talk to the robots a lot. Just asking questions and trying to figure out like, how do I get the answers that I need or to where we're hitting a point where this, the conversation is going in a certain direction to give me the insights that I need. So mostly just chat GDP, chat GDP, or my goodness, too many letters. Chat, GZT, Jasper and Rose. I'm also playing with other tools too, but I feel like those,
are just my go-to. I don't go a day without using them, even if it's for a quick question, or if it's something where I'm developing strategy, or I'm like, I wanna do this, but how do I get from this point to that point? It's not great, but it does give me ideas as I'm thinking of how do I communicate this to the machine? And what do I get back? And how can I refine that going forward? So, it's a lot of trial and error. I think it's still in its infancy, but.
those are giving me some insights to where they might not give me the answer that I'm looking for, but it gives me another idea based on the response of like, oh, well, maybe I didn't think about it that way.
Akvile DeFazio (17:43.334)
Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (17:55.542)
Mm-hmm.
Akvile DeFazio (18:09.57)
Yes, great question. Document everything, your processes, and have AI refine a little bit. One thing I did want to say that within Jasper there is you can highlight the content that you want and have it improve the writing. So it makes it a little bit more concise. So I've taken all the documents that I've had. So anytime I do have a contractor, I'm like, here's the way that I like things done, like open to other suggestions by all means. But here's what.
is expected and I just have it refine those documents and I've been tweaking them over the years but it saved me a lot of time to get it to a point where it's understandable by other people that I work with and other partners of like here's what we're looking for and I save that and then you know I don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time but if there's some changes on the platform or some changes in business processes I can just go back in quickly and tweak them.
Edwin @ Snappic (18:59.455)
So, can I ask like, you've spent so much money over the last 10 years, your small shop or you describe yourself as a small shop, I don't know how small it is. How many accounts per head? How many accounts do you guys put per head in your shop?
Akvile DeFazio (19:18.606)
So I'm intentionally very small. I like to manage campaigns and not so much people. And the people have told me that I am a good manager, but it's just there's two of us and then some contractors to fill in some other spaces for my business. But I'm the only one managing the accounts. Since 2020, things have changed everywhere in the world, but also I became a parent and I was remote and nomadic for a while. But...
Edwin @ Snappic (19:21.488)
Okay, like...
Edwin @ Snappic (19:27.632)
Okay.
Akvile DeFazio (19:47.546)
I really leaned into another part of my business that I didn't know I'd enjoy doing and could provide more services for and that's for consulting and training. So I train other agencies that have green staff. I train business owners. I train freelancers. So I still manage, right now I'm managing like nine accounts, but I feel like my business went from about 90% account management to about maybe...
30% account management now and the rest is just consulting and training and, you know, occasional audits here and there. But I found it to be much more lucrative and I'm still in the trenches doing all the work, but for a lot of these other brands because of whatever reasons, the economy or, you know, they're looking to save some money. But at the end of the day, I'm spending less time and making more money by just training people. So I've put together documents and this is where AI has really helped me to where
How do I explain something in layman's terms to somebody that might not be as experienced when they're working in certain platforms? Like what are the caveats? You know, I might know that, you know, all of us, we work in it and we know that like, okay, well this sounds like it would work well in theory, but does it actually work well in execution? So I've put together documentation where I can share that with clients to, you know, maximize my earnings, but give them exactly the tools that they need to get them to the next step. And then I just help them.
step over step until maybe they get big enough and they want to hire me to manage it or whatever the road looks like but Yeah, I'm very small so I really try to dial in everything I have to not have to go back and rewrite something if I don't have to reinvent it every single time
Akvile DeFazio (22:00.182)
I keep thinking about that because a lot of people in the membership do talk about just doing looms. I haven't done that yet, but I just like to hop on a call with a client and I do record those calls, but each client is different and I don't, maybe I could refine that process a little bit more, but I feel like that's a really big thing that clients come back to me and say like, I just love our 101 connection and that this is why we want to keep working with you because we trust you and you're transparent.
I feel like I do have a warmer connection with people, so I don't mind it. I think I take it as I don't have that really refined, but I think it's a good selling point that clients don't feel like, oh, I'm on my own. I'm just watching a video. That might work well with somebody's workflow, but I feel like for my business, it is just me in a way that I need to still be a part of that.
Akvile DeFazio (23:02.494)
Yeah. Yeah, I did. Sorry, just wanted to add one thing. It popped up when I think I'm at Edwin last, the last question about another thing with AI that I use prompt generators. So in Jasper, one thing that really saves me a ton of time is in their chat feature, there is a advanced prompt generator. So I could put something like, write me two sentence piece of copy for a pair of shoes that I'm trying to sell.
I can just put something that broad in there and it knows that I'm an advertiser and like I've done all these things already in the platform and it'll give me like a paragraph of this beautifully written super detailed prompt and that helps me do things a lot faster if I have to take something and plug it into a different tool to give me a better prompt. Triple Whale also has a free e-commerce prompt generator tool thing. There's a very, it's a very long name. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's free.
not just for e-commerce, but you can pick different marketing assets that you want. And if you just pick in a few fields, it'll generate a prompt for you as well. I think it's using, you know, open AI, but those two have saved me a lot of time. If I'm looking to just get an idea out, but I need more details and it does the work for me.
Akvile DeFazio (24:26.961)
Yeah. AI for AI. Sorry. Yeah.
Akvile DeFazio (24:36.352)
I'm going to go to bed.
Akvile DeFazio (25:01.214)
Yes, especially as a small business owner. I feel like having the membership gives me a larger team because any time before that, if I run into an issue with my business or an account or just client relations, I'd go to Twitter and it's like, I'm just gonna put this out there or just keep it to myself depending on what the nature of the context is or what the issue is. But I feel like with founders, I can be a little bit more candid.
about what's going on and I feel like in a way like it just feels safer. Um, cause you know, you never know who's looking on Twitter. Like granted, I don't know all 400 plus people in the group, but I feel like just the vibe of the entire community is just helpful and I can post things and they're like, Hey, like, I don't know, I lost a client or like, Hey, I'm running into this issue and within usually in a couple of minutes, somebody always responds to a question that I post or.
challenge that I have where on Twitter, I may or may not get a response, or how deep do people wanna get, where here I can get solutions much faster and in a much more tailored way. And I feel like it's just a solid group of intellectual people that do the same work. And I don't feel as alone working remotely that if I run into something, or if I just want camaraderie, I've made some really good friends here that I hang out with outside of work. And it's just a really great community, I love it.
Edwin @ Snappic (26:49.623)
I'm, I think I got everything I want covered. Um, yeah, I think I got everything. Yeah. So I'll, I'll trust and then I'll, uh, and then basically I'll out trust I'll be like, hi, I'm Edwin. Then Tristan will be like, I'm Tristan. And then, and then you say hi or I'm Akvila and then, and then say until the next time. Okay.
All right, guys, that has been episode 30 of the Foxwell Founders podcast. We learned all about the AI tools that are helping us right now. How do you save 33% of your time? We told you, we covered it. I'm Edwin.
Akvile DeFazio (27:29.07)
I'm Akvila.
Edwin @ Snappic (27:30.277)
Until the next time.