Liana Ling: Mastering AI for Lead Generation and Facebook Ads

In a recent Coach Yu show, I had an engaging conversation with a special guest, Liana Ling, the Lead Gen Queen, an expert in AI and Facebook ads. She provided great insights into how you can put ChatGPT to its maximum use.

Liana, you’ve been sharing some incredible insights on using AI for lead generation and Facebook ads. For those unfamiliar with AI, how should they approach it?

That’s an excellent question, and I wish more people asked it because of what I’ve discovered, and I’m not afraid of AI. I went through that phase initially, but then I realized its potential and started using it to my advantage.

What surprised me was that to use AI effectively, we need to leverage our human qualities, especially our imagination. I spoke to data scientists and AI experts, and they all emphasized the importance of imagination in maximizing AI’s potential.

I view AI, like ChatGPT, as just another member of my team—a geeky assistant that can help me achieve my goals. When I interact with ChatGPT, I see it as a smart colleague I can have a dialogue with, just like I would with a human team member. It’s about being specific in your instructions and engaging with it creatively to get the best results, just like you would with a real person.

That’s an interesting perspective. I agree that AI can become an essential writing tool, but what are some phrases or techniques you use to ensure it doesn’t provide repetitive or generic responses?

Indeed, ensuring diverse and innovative responses is crucial. When I get a response from ChatGPT that seems repetitive, I ask it to rewrite or provide something unique. I’m persistent until I see novel outputs.

Additionally, for Facebook ads, I’ve created a prompt that instructs ChatGPT to write in the style of different copywriters and marketers, like Robert Collier and Perry Belcher. This allows me to test various styles and see what works best for a particular campaign.

Similarly, I use this approach for design elements in Canva, asking ChatGPT for different styles like boho, retro, and futuristic. The key is to provide specific instructions and iterate until you get the desired results.

That’s a clever way to optimize your content creation process. Now, what are some guidelines you’d recommend to avoid potential mistakes while using AI, especially with VAs or international partners who may not be familiar with these tools?

I wouldn’t say there are mistakes, but there are some guidelines to follow.

First and foremost, treat AI as a writing tool and not a researcher. Don’t believe everything it generates since it’s sourcing information from the internet. Also, be cautious about the data you feed into AI, particularly in terms of privacy.

Avoid uploading sensitive information or personal data. It’s best to use AI for writing and content generation rather than data collection.

Secondly, be specific in your prompts and let AI know exactly what you want. The more specific you are, the better the results. Encourage VAs to engage in a dialogue with AI and iterate on the responses to improve the outcomes.

AI is a powerful tool, but it requires human guidance to produce the desired results.

Solid advice. It’s about striking a balance and using AI to complement human skills. Moving forward, how do you see AI impacting the roles of VAs and other professionals in the digital space?

I believe AI will transform the roles of VAs and other professionals in the digital space. Instead of replacing VAs, AI will elevate their responsibilities, making them more focused on strategy, managing automation, and higher-level tasks.

AI can handle repetitive and mundane tasks, freeing up time for VAs to learn new skills, take on more creative responsibilities, and grow in their roles.

However, it’s essential for business owners to embrace this change and invest in their team’s personal development to maximize the potential of AI and foster empathy and creative thinking among their VAs and employees.

This way, everyone can leverage AI’s capabilities to their advantage and drive business growth.

That’s a fascinating perspective. VAs can embrace AI as a powerful tool and focus on higher-level skills. Now, for those who are not tech-savvy, how can they learn to use AI effectively and overcome any apprehension they may have?

The best way for non-tech-savvy individuals to learn AI is by using it hands-on. I often encourage them to start with user-friendly platforms like Bing Chat and begin with simple tasks which can help ease apprehension and provide a less intimidating environment.

They can experiment with asking ChatGPT to rewrite emails, create schedules, or even just have fun with creative prompts. This hands-on approach allows them to become familiar with the tool and gain confidence in using it. They can learn by trying different prompts and observing the outputs.

For non-technical individuals, like coaches or creatives, incorporating AI into their content creation process can open new doors for creativity and efficiency. The more you engage with the technology, the more comfortable and skilled you become in utilizing AI to achieve your goals effectively.

Additionally, seeking help from others who are experienced in using AI can be beneficial. Joining AI-related communities or forums where knowledge is shared can help them learn from other’s experiences and gain insights into best practices.

Practical learning and community engagement will undoubtedly help individuals become more comfortable with AI. Looking ahead, what impact do you think AI will have on the workforce and creativity?

Absolutely. AI’s integration into various tools and systems will likely automate mundane tasks and streamline processes. This automation will allow humans to focus on higher-level thinking, strategy, and decision-making, leading to increased efficiency and productivity.

However, even with AI handling these repetitive tasks, there will always be a need for human oversight and creative direction. While AI can empower us, we must remember that implementation and follow-through are still essential to harness its full potential.

Balancing AI’s capabilities with human ingenuity will be the key to success in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and beyond.

I completely agree. AI can be an enabler for creative professionals, empowering them to explore new possibilities and enhance their offerings. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, do you think there might be a risk of an overabundance of low-quality content?

You’ve brought up an important point. As AI becomes more accessible, we might see a surge in content creation, which could lead to an abundance of low-quality content. This is reminiscent of the era of content farms and spammy articles. However, I believe that, just like in the past, quality will ultimately prevail.

Creators and businesses that focus on producing valuable and unique content will stand out and garner the most engagement. Consumers are smart and can recognize genuine content from automated or mediocre content.

To succeed, businesses and creators must maintain a commitment to delivering high-quality content and using AI to augment and enhance their creativity rather than relying solely on AI-generated content.

Excellent point! Quality and authenticity will always be valued by consumers, and creators need to maintain their commitment to delivering valuable content. Now, as we see more non-technical individuals using AI, what skills do you think will become crucial in this AI-powered era?

In this AI-powered era, certain skills will become increasingly valuable.

Firstly, creativity and imagination will be vital as they are the keys to leveraging AI effectively. As AI generates content and ideas, human imagination will guide its use in innovative ways, providing unique perspectives and solutions.

Secondly, empathy and active listening will play a significant role. Engaging with AI requires understanding its outputs and asking the right questions for the desired results. Empathy helps in creating meaningful conversations with AI.

Finally, continuous learning and adaptability are essential. As AI technology evolves, individuals need to stay updated with the latest advancements and be adaptable in integrating AI into their workflows. These skills will empower individuals to make the most of AI’s capabilities and maintain a competitive edge.

Those skills are incredibly valuable for thriving in an AI-driven world. Imagination, empathy, active listening, and adaptability will set individuals apart in leveraging AI’s potential.

As we navigate this evolving landscape, what advice would you give to business owners and individuals looking to integrate AI into their workflows effectively?

For business owners and individuals integrating AI into their workflows, I would offer several pieces of advice.

First, approach AI as a valuable tool and a team member. Understand that AI can enhance creativity and productivity, but it requires human guidance to deliver the best results.

Second, focus on the outcomes you want to achieve with AI and be specific in your prompts. The clearer your instructions, the better the outputs.

Third, invest in continuous learning and training to keep up with AI advancements. As technology evolves, staying informed will enable you to use AI optimally.

Finally, treat VAs and team members as valuable contributors. Help them embrace AI as a powerful ally and provide opportunities for personal development and growth. By combining the strengths of humans and AI, you can achieve outstanding results and drive your business to new heights.

Such valuable advice! Embracing AI as a collaborative tool, being clear in objectives, investing in learning, and empowering team members will undoubtedly lead to successful AI integration.

Do you think AI is going to be integrated into CRM tools to automate actions? It seems like AI is being integrated into almost every tool these days. What’s your take on this?

Customers still have to get things done, even if AI can handle some tasks automatically. So, while AI integration can be helpful, there might be bigger problems to address. I think it will be like an additional layer, and we might even have conversations with bots in the future.

However, there will always be the need to take the next step and do more to grow our businesses. But I do look forward to the day when AI can handle mundane tasks without us having to think about it.

Yesterday, in preparing for this podcast interview, I said toChatGPT, “I’m interviewing Liana Ling, and I’m Dennis Yu. What kinds of questions should I ask? What kinds of comments should I make? What jokes should I say to create some humor and things like that?” And it gave me a bunch of tips and examples.

I feel like I’m cheating by using any of these things, but I also know that the more the AI knows about you because you’ve published a ton of videos and articles, you run a massive community, which ChatGPT can’t see since it’s on Facebook as a group.

But I feel like the more the AI knows about you, the more it can help you, especially your business, publicly as you grow your personal brand, which you’ve been doing a great job of.

Question for you, Liana Ling. I’m giving the closing keynote in a month at the National Funeral Directors Association. So thousands of funeral directors will be there, and they chose me to talk about AI.

What do funeral directors who are typically like your mom and my mom, not as technically savvy, do? So you can imagine what they do in their day-to-day, and this AI thing is like some Tom Cruise Matrix Minority Report kind of movie thing.

What should they understand? What is true and what’s not true, and what should they be doing practically when it comes to all this? Every day there’s like another set of tools, right? What should they be? What should I say to them?

They need to understand and have a deeper understanding of the problems and challenges in their business. That’s where I would start. Let’s talk about the problems they face on a day-to-day basis. The biggest one is marketing, and they don’t understand SEO and websites and all the agency nonsense being thrown at them.

Every day people tell them, “You need to be on Snapchat,” “You need to run Facebook ads,” or “You need to do this or that.” And they have no idea how it’s like me going to the mechanic, and the mechanic says, “You need a new transmission.” I’m like, “How do I know?”

They also struggle with how to get the word out in a way that is relevant and palpable to the audience, as nobody likes to talk about death, and nobody’s sharing posts and doing dances inside of a funeral home. It’s just inappropriate. I think they also struggle with that.

So I would say you look at your problems first and pick the first problem, and then think about how AI can be the “iron triangle”? How can it make things cheaper, faster, better?

So I’ll give you a problem. Funeral homes are doing fewer caskets and burials, which is how they make a lot of money because people are moving towards cremation. That’s a lot less money.

Funeral homes have to make money. So the Jewish folks are the ones that make the most money because they want the burial, and they gotta get the body into the ground by the time the sun gets down.

People are also doing the celebration of life instead of holding it at the funeral home. They’ll hold it at their church or some pretty place outside by the lake, and it’s like this happy party thing with the DJ instead of the somber mood where everyone wears black kind of thing. Which is less money for the funeral home.

This is the general trend. People will say, “Oh, funeral homes are always great even in a recession because people still die.” But that’s not true because people will spend less money in a recession. So funeral homes are having to deal with people’s changing culture so often. How do you deal with that?

I would be telling them exactly what you just said. I would take that whole transcript of what you said and put it into ChatGPT. First of all, I would ask ChatGPT to provide me with some ideas of how I, as a funeral home, can pivot to stay relevant and capture some of this business.

Even just as you spoke, I’m immediately thinking, yes, we think of funeral homes as very somber places, but why does it have to be that way? Because they haven’t evolved over however many years that we’ve been using them as a society. So I would ask ChatGPT to give me some ideas.

Again, just use it as a sounding board.

The other thing I would do is if they somehow have, and again, ’cause I know it’s an awkward time, but if you’re getting feedback from people that you’ve worked with, you can collect their answers in a survey and use the ChatGPT code interpreter. Y

ou can upload a CSV file, and I uploaded those answers in there, and I just had a dialogue with it. I just used it as a sounding board and asked questions like “What are their deepest, darkest desires that they haven’t expressed?” based on everything you know. Or “Would this deeply resonate with that audience?” You can also use it to generate questions that you should be asking to stay relevant.

It sounds to me that the way you’re describing it is that they haven’t evolved enough yet. How can they facilitate, how can they provide that celebration experience themselves? Why are people looking elsewhere? Can you imagine this is actually cool?

If they had a campaign where they did have a celebration of life and provided that and they wrote articles about that and put pictures and followed your dollar-a-day strategy and put that out there, people would see this funeral home as not just providing a somber, solemn service but also facilitating other options.

They can be that trusted partner and guidance for people during this difficult time, providing whatever it is that customers want to do instead of just offering one option and letting them go look for something else.

That’s true. A lot of that is gonna be pre-need versus at-need. At-need is when someone has just died, and now there’s this mad rush.

But obviously, pre-need is way better because you have planned, and you can, instead of just waiting for someone to die and trying to rank on those Google terms, you can plan ahead.

That’s a killer point. What else can they provide that is pre-need and also a value? Why do funeral homes only have to sell something when somebody dies? Is there something else that they could provide beforehand that is actually very valuable and helpful to families?

They can offer services related to wills and probate. If they take care of all those things before people die, people don’t have to worry about that when they’re grieving.

That’s a killer, killer idea. You can use ChatGPT to validate this idea. You can say, “Hey, we are thinking about this as an additional product line. What do you think about that?”

Ask ChatGPT what the fears, objections, and problems would be from selling that. I’m just thinking because when I do it, I just throw it in there, and then I have a conversation with it.

That’s a good idea. I think the more that people can have a conversation with AI, the more comfortable they’ll get with it. The more they can imagine different possibilities and ideas.

That’s interesting. Funeral homes are facing changes due to the increasing popularity of cremation and other factors. I’ll definitely share these ideas with them.

By the way, you mentioned earlier about the Code Interpreter in ChatGPT. It’s a game-changer – can you elaborate?

The code interpreter is a new feature in ChatGPT that allows users to upload an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file and have a dialogue with the AI based on the data. It’s quite powerful as it can process and interpret vast amounts of data quickly.

I’ve been using it in various ways, from writing SOPs to troubleshooting coding issues. But the most empowering way I’ve used it recently is in creating a vision for my “storybook self.” By describing my ideal self and asking the AI questions about it, I’ve gained new insights and perspectives, which have been incredibly motivating and empowering.

That’s fascinating. I’ll definitely try that exercise myself. Liana, before we wrap up, is there anything you wish people would ask you more about or any topic you feel is not discussed enough?

I wish people would ask more about failure and deeper discussions about personal growth. Failure has been a significant part of my journey and has led to many of my successes. I believe that by talking openly about failures, we can learn valuable lessons and help others on their own paths to success.

Additionally, I appreciate it when people ask how they can contribute and add value to the community, as collaboration and support are crucial for growth and progress.

Thank you so much, Liana. You are a true optimist and a remarkable individual. Your abundance mindset and willingness to help others are truly inspiring.

To connect with Liana, you can find her as “The Lead Gen Queen” on social media or inside the Ad Skills Community on Slack. Liana, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show!

Thank you, Dennis. It’s been wonderful, and I’m looking forward to more collaborations with you.