How AI Can Help Local Businesses Get More Customers!

Full video transcript

Hello, my name is Sinarlan. Today we are going to talk about AI follow-up systems, especially for local service-based businesses. I am running a digital marketing agency for local businesses for more than six years, so this presentation will actually give you the 50,000-foot overview of what is happening on the follow-up side, and I will just provide as many ideas as possible.

So let’s start with why follow-up matters. The main reason is that in the United States and most other countries, the purchases — the sales — happen after multiple touches. About 80% of transactions happen after multiple touches, and most companies aren’t even doing one or two. The opportunity window is as short as 48 hours, and if you are running ads and leads are coming in, you actually have about five minutes to follow up on the lead, because each day matters, each day is actually costing you money, and your leads are getting called by other companies each day.

So why is this important? Because most businesses are not doing this — they are just focused on “get more leads, get more leads,” but who is doing the follow-up? Why not just focus on getting leads and doing lots of follow-up? Even right now, with the technology available, you can let AI do the heavy lifting for you, and this way you don’t have to spend extra money or do other things to get more leads. I’m going to dive deeper into this, but that’s what’s happening right now.

So what is AI doing right now for us? AI is providing predictive analytics, natural language processing for human-like actions, optimized touch points so that each touch point is personalized, and behavioral targeting, which creates tailored messaging for a client’s actions. AI is important because it saves time, reduces errors, and boosts results. Saving time means eliminating manual follow-up tasks so employees can focus on high-value activities like sales. Reducing errors means preventing missed opportunities and ensuring consistent messaging at the back end. Boosting results means increased conversion rates and enhanced client satisfaction.

So basically, when we run AI into the system, people think they are actually talking to a real human — most of the time, that’s not the case. Here’s an example: one of the cabinet stores we work with actually called us with a kind of complaint, saying the bot we gave them brought someone into their store, but the problem was the person came in asking for a brand they don’t carry. So the store kindly offered the visitor something else, and they were able to see how powerful it is. This incident happened about two years ago — think about how powerful the follow-up systems, the chatbot, are: they never forget, they never give up talking with the person, and they bring them to your business, to your appointments. From that incident, when we implemented the bots two years ago, that business saw a 30% conversion rate increase in just three months, because most company workers and even designers I work with are so busy they forget — they’re not doing follow-up properly, but AI is doing it right now, even stronger.

Here’s an example of a follow-up system. Each company has a unique version, but the main structure includes: a thank-you, a quality check, adding volume, reminders, a win-back, and also asking for feedback and referrals. This is a kind of framework for you, but with LLMs you’re able to make the follow-up perfect for your business. That could be another project or recording where I go deeper into specific metrics you have to follow, but these are the basic things — how it’s happening and what we can do with AI right now.

There are actually four things we are using, plus one bonus. First, we are using AI chatbots. We also use AI voice agents, and we are able to send personalized videos — think about every lead getting a personalized message touching base with them. For instance, when I go to networking events, about an hour after I meet someone, the system sends a text message: “Hey Jessica,” “hey Albert,” “hey Mike, it was a pleasure to meet you, it was so valuable what we talked about — here’s a calendar link.” It’s like, “hey, I shot you a video,” and most people respond with “wow, how did this happen — he thought about me and shot a video, let me respond.” This is powerful.

Personalized custom songs — this is my favorite so far. I’ll show you some screenshots of emails I’ve received. Basically, you look at people you want to connect with, or your customers, and write a custom song for the company or the person. It’s literally done in minutes, and you’re able to send the song. People respond by thanking you, giving you free mastermind tickets, and even becoming emotional — which makes you happy too. So the idea I keep coming back to is: instead of focusing on getting more and more, what if we focus on making more out of the leads we already have? As a bonus, I’ll also mention how, when somebody visits your landing page without filling out a form, you’re still able to get their information.

Let me talk about AI music. I joined a company as a marketer at the KBIS trade show and created about 100 custom songs for companies there. The first reaction was usually “oh, another marketer, I don’t want to talk,” but then I said, “I have a gift — here’s a song,” and they reacted with hugs, sometimes almost crying. It creates a bonding effect. One letter I received was from a person named Randy, who said that in his 25 years of marketing he had never seen anything like it — an extraordinary touch. Another example: I looked at someone’s Instagram, noticed she has a dog and some of her activities, and wrote a complete song referencing that and sent it to her. Her response was that after being worn out by exhibitors all week, the song “absolutely made my Friday afternoon” — she became one of my best friends, at least based on that letter. It shows how powerful a simple custom song can be for follow-up — if you know your friends or customers well enough, and you want a referral or testimonial, you can create a custom song in minutes and send it.

When it comes to follow-up, don’t think of it as just a 15-day, 45-day, or 60-day sequence. Follow-up is about touching base with someone, aligning with them, and keeping the relationship going with a smart system that follows up for more than two years — we’ve optimized our sequences for two years, because that’s enough time for a client or lead to become someone who gives you referrals and testimonials.

Now let’s go deeper into the lead-generation system — this is the bonus part. Right now, whenever somebody visits a website, we’re able to use AI to match their information with big data. There are providers that give you email, phone number, address, name, and last name — you just put a pixel on the page and start collecting the data. This is how powerful it is right now with AI. So think about it: you have a contact page, and even if the visitor doesn’t connect with you directly, you’re able to get their data. Or you have a sensible landing page — a webinar page, for example — where you get the data without them having to come to you directly.

This is the follow-up system I implement for local businesses, including remodeling companies. The first part is the data — using a third-party tool to get data on somebody who visits, say, a remodeling company’s contact page. Think about it: each lead could be an opportunity worth $50,000, $100,000, or more. So after you get their data, your first goal before the sale is to get them to come to your showroom, connect with you, and then use email and physical touches — like sending a promotion, saying “here’s what we can offer.” After that, especially once you’ve built the relationship, let the system send physical gifts, emails, and simple postcards referencing happy memories or special days. The whole idea is to keep asking — for testimonials, for referrals — maybe four or five times a year. If you close a $100,000 remodeling deal with a client and that person likes you enough to bring you five referrals, think about what that means for your business. Most relatives don’t even call each other on special days, and we build a system that actually touches base with people and personalizes that outreach. We’ve also improved this further, using AI to analyze who we’re sending to and get more detail — that could be another subject for another talk, but it’s possible, and we feed the results back to Google and Meta to improve targeting.

This is a follow-up sequence combining cold email and direct mail: we send branding emails, then offer emails, then a follow-up series, until we turn the lead into a sale. After the sale, we continue asking for referrals and testimonials, and for other work the person’s neighbors might need. The system continues on and on for up to two years, deepening the relationship the way I like to think about it — as increasing emotional bonding, not just chasing a sale or testimonial. It’s more like, “hey, today I just thought about you, so I wanted to send you an email — how are you?” Simple touches like that become more human at a time when so much else feels fake. That’s the goal: to become more human, and to use AI to help connect with people that way.

This system works through examples of what we can send, and we’re able to measure things effortlessly — for instance, tracking whether postcards with QR codes were opened or not, along with other marketing tracking for conversions. We use direct mail and cold email together for targeting, retention, and acquisition, running different campaigns for each, including postcards and other gifts we can send.

So, thank you very much — this is all for now. I hope this gives you information and ideas about follow-up systems in 2025. This is just the beginning; I didn’t get to mention a lot of other things, but hopefully at the next summit we’ll go deeper and build out some good follow-up systems together. Thank you.