Jaycee De Guzman – Artificial Intelligence’s threat to Outsourcing

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast. My name, as always is Derek Gallimore and this is Episode 126. Today, we have Jaycee de Guzman back with us. He is from iPresence of digital marketing. He’s a C.E.O. and founder. We have had Jaycee. on previous episodes which is number 120 and 123 discussing his background and his digital media agency and now we go more broadly with Jaycee and discuss the future of content,  the future of outsourcing, the future of digital media so I’m sure you’ll find this interesting. If you want any of the show notes then go to outsourceaccelerator.com/126. Enjoy.

Derek: Hi! Welcome back everybody today again we’re lucky to be joined by Jaycee. de Guzman of iPresence Digital Marketing. Hi Jaycee

Jaycee: Hi Derek!

Derek: And yeah, thanks so much for joining us. We have interviewed you previously so if you want to go back and check those episodes then of course please do. I want to now just, you know, tap you now Jaycee for your insight into the future. You know, you have been involved in the sort of digital economy since 2001 and you know which is a good amount of time and it’s evolved tremendously since then but I can only imagine that it’s going to evolve at a greater pace over the next fifteen years and you know, I think that gradually the world is just going to become one place settling sort of in terms of economics and the internet. But yeah, I suppose initially, before I rattle on too long, could you maybe just introduce yourself and and just mention a little bit about iPresence?

Jaycee: Yes Derek, thank you. So I’ve been into the digital marketing business for over seventeen years and we started by offering up a content writing services to our clients. I myself begun by offering content writing only. But today we have we have six services which will turn into nine services before the end of the month but at the moment the six services that we offer to our clients are the following: we have content writing, keyword research for marketing, virtual assistance, website design, and graphics design

Derek: Cool. I mean, 17 years is a huge amount of time and especially in a tech industry where there’s high, a sort of evolution and redundancy and it’s interesting that, you know, initially you started with just content writing, now you have six services, now you’re going to nine services. Where do you think you’re going to be in 15 years and you know you’re going to keep on having services? Do you think some services will become kind of irrelevant and redundant? Where do you see the future of the industry and your business going?

Jaycee  Yes Derek, at the moment the trending fear, I would say, quote unquote, “trending fear” of many is the coming, if it has not come yet, the coming of the artificial intelligence into the business sector. So some people ask me, “Jaycee., let’s say five years from now, let’s say Google fully employs artificial intelligence into their algorithm, SEO-wise, do you think written content will still have a place, will still play a role when it comes to search engine optimization? Will forum marketing where you would you manually interact with people in a community, in an online community, do you think that will still matter as soon as artificial intelligence is injected by search engines’ algorithm?” I would say yes. I would say yes because I think for me artificial intelligence would just speed up what we’re currently doing right now whether that’s manual or even an automated one. It will improve how we do things. But I don’t think it will remove the very things that let us interact or establish relationship with our clients or even with our prospects because for an example, it would be this: When you do for a marketing, you don’t actually, we don’t actually sell, we don’t do an outright selling to people. We build our reputation. We tell them what we know. We tell them, we share with them what we know so they can do it as well on their end if they would like to. And then, they become intrigued on what we do for a living. I think giving, interacting with people in a community is all about giving giving, giving. Giving value and then if they inquire to you about your services, that’s just the the after effect of what you have done for them.

Derek: Yes so it’s real relationship building isn’t it and I imagine it would be sad, sad day if forums were filled with bots. That we’re just talking to each other on these pre-programmed kind of scripts. That would be a pretty sad day for forums wouldn’t it?.

Jaycee: Yeah, that’s right

Derek: You know you started in content production in 2001 and it’s coming a long, long, huge long way since then. You know there is talk now and there is actually content being produced by robots. So this is short or long form blog articles actually written by robots that are, you know, complying with some sort of algorithm. Do you see that as a concern certainly for the content production industry?

Jaycee: It’s a good thing that some developments are happening right now and being in the content writing business, sometimes we have clients who can’t help but ask us about the difference of the quality of our content with content that was made by content spinners right? So, I believe content that is written by a machine cannot and will never outrun content that this written by a human with emotions, a human with humor, a human who has a personal connection with his or her target readers. A machine does not know that you’re going to send that article to people who are, you know, who are quite serious or maybe who are quite funny. But if a human writer will, a human writer knows those things. He or she knows how to, you know, how to build connection because writing is communication. You have to be on that level of your audience. If you can’t meet them on their level then it’s tough to make them read. It’s tough to make them finish what you’re writing.

Derek: Well yeah and the emphasis is then more on the relationship isn’t it that is created as a result of the content and the sort of emotional connection because soon, words will just start to be produced by computers which is a bit of a potentially scary future. Just I suppose, contrasting the past with the future, there’s been, and I’ve heard this from people that work on Upwork and Freelancer and things like that, that there really is a bottoming out of prices especially in content in that, you know, previously you know and you can hear this from New York Times journalists, and things that generally content production and writing and journalism is getting more and more undervalued now and, you know, the going rate for writing content can be 3 to 12 cents a word. But, how are you seeing that trend? Are there more and more people that expect stuff to be done for one cent a word? Is the price generally going down?

Jaycee: I would agree to that. I will agree that there’s a very tough competition right now when it comes to pricing especially when you are marketing or services on freelancing websites. Sometimes you would you would think that you have already offered the lowest price possible only to find out later that someone is willing to who work for some that’s almost close to free.
I think here comes in the, this is an opportunity not quit the business but an opportunity to make it clear to your prospects how valuable, how valuable your content is even though your price is not as cheap as they would want it to be. So you just, you just need to, you just need to provide customer education again to your prospects. Make a case study. For example, in in our case, since I deal directly with our clients, I always hear a story. This story has never been absent in our conversations wherein a customer would say I wish, I wish I had discovered you a long time ago because I tried this particular writer who only writes for fifty cents per one hundred words and it turned out that it has cost me more now because I will have to throw away what he did and then outsource everything to you again.

Derek: Yeah. You know and I think more and more people have seen frustrations in Upwork and Freelancer because actually you know I know people who work on those platforms and they are saying that people now are wanting to pay people less and less because it’s almost being normalized that you can find cheap resource. But then, of course, the downward pressure means that no one can earn a living so of course that’s not sustainable but certainly, you know, I think there’s a lot of disappointing engagements in Upwork and Freelancer because, you know, this just kind of less and less standard there and yeah, you can get content produced for very little but then you’ll spend a lot more time reviewing it, editing it, possibly throwing it away, finding another writer, so I think the sort of anyone with savvy really realizes the benefits of going with an agency or going with a higher quality service provider.

Jaycee: Yes, and I think for iPresence, we thrive in the business because we don’t want to kill the competition based on pricing. We don’t want to compete based on price, we want to compete  value. So we keep on increasing our value so that the price itself won’t be an issue anymore to our clients. I’m going to give you an example Derek. When a client order some content or articles from us we, don’t just write the content, we also get our editorial team proofread it. So this client now when have to hire another editor to proofread our work. Our own an editorial team will check the writer’s work and then the editor-in-chief will verify her editor’s work, and then, we also post it for free on the client’s website. And we all know that most bloggers now nowadays the have this SEO plugin so we also fill that out for free. We write the meta-description for free, we write some all tags we optimize the featured image, we change the file name of the image to the title of the article so that it will increase your chance of getting found, as well, on Google Images. So those sort of things, those are added value that one of the things that they like the most about what we do.

Derek: Yeah absolutely, and it’s really important that isn’t, that you get the whole job because an article is just really one aspect of the blog content production manufacturing line isn’t it? Certainly if you’re doing it at scale, if you have to then, you know, pool the content into your website, add images, optimize it, do the SEO, then publish it you know. It’s really another,sort of, two or three jobs on top of the companies piece

Jaycee: The posting and formatting works alone are you, know, tedious already so we take it out away from you. Leave the work to us, we’ll get it done

Derek: Yeah absolutely. And so, where do you see the future of outsourcing and the kind of world market in terms of, you know, more interaction between all the countries? Where is this all going in another fifteen years? Do you think everyone will be outsourcing less people? Will be outsourcing work? What’s the trend?

Jaycee: If I’m not mistaken in one of the seminars that I attended a few months ago, if my memory serves me right, I heard that the outsourcing business will become a trillion dollar business come 2020. So imagine that, imagine that that forecast alone and personally, I feel that’s a conservative forecast because as I see right now, more and more people are, you know, have started to learn how to welcome the idea of outsourcing. And you will notice as well, you’ll notice that trend as well here in the Philippines. Lately I have noticed that this outsourcing kind of thing has been televised a number of times, maybe once a month on a monthly basis, on television. Here in the Philippines, it’s already being broadcast at five years ago! Five years ago, I did not remember hearing the outsourcing business on the television. But lately, it’s been broadcasted on on the T.V. and you know how freelancing, how outsourcing has not only changed the lives of the freelancers –  the work at home people, but also the trend of the businesses of those of SME’s particularly who who have chosen to outsource their business operation especially here in the Philippines.

Derek: Yeah, absolutely. It really is a growing trend isn’t it?. I think there’s huge potential for everyone in the Philippines to be a global employee. You know, there’s no more borders, there’s no more sort of barriers to employment and there’s potential that people sitting in the Philippines can educate themselves to as high a level as those sitting in Silicon Valley or Wall Street and they can earn as high a level as those in Silicon Valley or Wall Street if they are good enough you know. So there’s this huge potential in this in terms of like a one world employment. Actually you know, I’m on a mission to spread this concept that outsourcing in twenty or thirty years won’t be called outsourcing it will just be called employment because employers will just look for employees wherever they are in the world and find the best employee at the best price really. It’s just going to level out.

Jaycee. I like the idea!

Derek: Yeah, let’s push it, let’s push it. So thank you so much Jaycee. and of course you know it’s super valuable to talk to you and learn about iPresence and I encourage people out there to consider, like you know, consider a true meritocracy of suppliers, sort of assess people based on the cost but also the quality, not just where people are sitting necessarily and you know and I think is this really huge opportunity there for businesses in the West to explore what’s on offer here in the Philippines. So if people want to get in touch with you J.C. or  learn more, how can they do that?

Jaycee: Sure! Please visit our website at www.ipresencebizsolutions.com. You’ll also find us on social media like Facebook,Twitter, and Instagram and at the bottom of this podcast, you’ll find our contact details.

Derek: Yeah, absolutely, we’ll put all of that into the show notes. So thank you so much for joining us J.C and we will stay in touch.

Jaycee: Thank you so much Derek. It’s a pleasure.

OK that was Jaycee. de Guzman. You have been joined by him before. I hope you enjoyed that conversation and his insights. If you want any information about Jaycee. or his company iPresence, then go to our show notes which is at outsourceaccelerator.com/126. And if you want to ask us anything or get in touch, just e-mail us at [email protected].