October 17, 2024 • 26 mins
Kendra talks imperfect marketing with B2B marketing expert and podcast host Eric Eden. With over 20 years of experience leading marketing teams for internet services and SaaS companies, Eric shares his insights on the evolving landscape of B2B marketing.
Topics covered in today's conversation include:
- The most remarkable marketing strategies Eric has implemented
- How marketing channels have shifted in recent years
- The rise of podcasting and YouTube as effective B2B marketing channels
- The impact of AI on marketing processes and content creation
- The changing landscape of in-person events in B2B marketing
- The importance of measuring ROI in marketing activities
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Connect with Eric Eden:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of
Imperfect Marketing.
I am your host, kendra Korman,and today I am joined by Eric
Eden.
I'm going to take a look at hisbio really quick.
So he has over 20 years ofexperience leading marketing
teams for internet services andSaaS companies.
His experience includesbuilding great marketing teams,
(00:21):
implementing marketingtechnology solutions effectively
, driving demand and drivinggrowth, which is hugely
important.
His greatest gifts are hisstrategic vision, his ability to
implement dynamic marketing andbranding strategies.
He says show me any businessand I will accelerate it to its
highest potential.
That sounds so cool.
(00:42):
Thanks so much for joining metoday, eric.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thanks for having me, kendra, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Oh, and he's also the host of the Remarkable
Marketing Podcast, so I love itwhen I have podcast hosts on too
.
I know that I've been on yourshow and now I have you over
here on Imperfect Marketing, sothat's always good.
So let's go ahead and jump in.
Your podcast is called theRemarkable Marketing Podcast.
Can you tell me something aboutthe most remarkable marketing
you've done so?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
my daughters would tell you that I'm very old and
so I've done a lot of greatmarketing things over the last
25 years.
Of great marketing things overthe last 25 years.
I've always worked for venturecapital and private
equity-backed companies, sowhere the growth is supposed to
be 100% a year, and so that iswhat I love and what I'm
(01:46):
passionate about, and I've hadeight exits, so ranging in price
points of the exits where I'vebeen part of the leadership team
and leading marketing for thosecompanies, totaling $8 billion.
So, I think, driving growth ofthose companies and helping them
get big exits, in several cases, after raising more than $100
(02:07):
million and after going publicand it all happened really
because at those companies, webuilt sales and marketing
machines that drove really highgrowth, and so that's really
what I'm most proud of a lot ofthe things that add up to that.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
That's pretty amazing .
I mean, people that have onesuccessful exit are considered
extremely successful, and thefact that you've had multiple
totaling that amount is amazing.
And yes, you're old, so am I.
It's all good, it's all good,so let's go ahead and start
talking about.
(02:46):
Marketing has changed a ton sofar this year.
How are you seeing it?
What changes have you beenseeing and where do you see
things going?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's funny if you went back just five years and
took five years off and then youshowed up again today, it would
be a totally different thing ofleading marketing at B2B and
growth companies.
I think a lot of that is becausethe systems and technologies
and tools have changed andevolved quite a bit over the
(03:16):
last five years.
I also think it's because thedistribution of which channels
make the most sense has changedpretty significantly over the
years, and so the amount ofmoney that you spend on like
people typically say, like halftheir marketing budget is on
(03:37):
program spend you know moneythat's going out to third
parties, advertising and thingslike that and so I think that
how they spend that money hasshifted quite significantly.
And I think the final piece ofit is you know, there's systems,
there's programs and there'speople, and I think the people
(03:59):
and the skills that you needtoday, because the channels and
the systems are different, arealso, in some cases, different.
People that you need today,because the channels and the
systems are different, are also,in some cases, different people
too that you need for your team.
So I think, across all threemain areas where you invest in
marketing, those three thingshave changed and just the
willingness and curiousness tothink about that is what makes,
(04:22):
I think, a lot of peoplesuccessful in the new world
order, if you will.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yes, curiosity, I think, is really, really
important and I don't thinkwe're giving it enough credit.
I actually think it's going tobe my word of the year for 2025
is to be curious because, again,things are changing so rapidly,
talking about the channelsshifting and where your money is
going, what channels are youseeing?
(04:48):
Increase versus decrease?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah.
So I think one of the channelspre-COVID was an in-person event
.
Pre-covid, I think, was a solid35% 40% in B2B businesses.
One business by going to otherpeople's events, holding their
own events.
So events was um more than athird of the equation pre-covid.
(05:12):
I think it's come back, but ithasn't come back quite to that
level um, because the cost ofdoing those events was always at
the higher, the higher um, oneof the higher cost channels and
and now that people are over thepandemic it's still like well,
they're like it's a higher costchannel and there's other
channels that might be more costeffective.
(05:32):
So I think yes to events, butpeople aren't quite going as big
on sponsorships and they're notspending $100,000 to go to a
certain trade show and thingslike that.
They're thinking differentlyabout that.
So that's one change.
Another change is around onlineadvertising.
I think Google and Facebookadvertising has gotten so
expensive.
(05:53):
It's prohibitively expensivefor a lot of companies unless
you have a much higher pricepoint.
I just frame it up this way is,in B2B, a lot of companies used
to be able to acquire acustomer via Google or Facebook
advertising.
If they spent $3,000 inadvertising they could win a
(06:17):
customer.
And now you have to spend morelike $7,000 to $10,000 to
acquire a customer, and that dogjust doesn't hunt.
For a lot of companies it'sjust too much.
They're losing money In SaaScompanies.
They say it takes years for themto pay that marketing cost back
if they spend that much, and soI think online advertising was
(06:41):
a couple years ago.
20-25% of business came fromthat, and now I think companies
just can't really afford to bewinning 25% of their business
that way.
It's just too expensive.
So those are just two examples.
I think on the other side ofwhat's more efficient is I think
a lot of companies are lookingat channels like podcasting and
(07:05):
YouTube as channels that have alot more reach and you can do a
lot more than you can withwritten content, and so I think
a lot of companies are investingmore in those channels because
they can get awareness in thesechannels and then connect with
(07:28):
people.
So I think five years ago Idon't think people were waiting
more than a couple percent there, and now they're waiting more
like 10 to 20% there.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It definitely does.
So before we switch to our nextquestion, let's spend a little
time here, because I love thatwe're doing that.
So, yeah, in-person is bouncingback a little bit, but it's
expensive and I think companiesdid get a little bit of a
reprieve, you know, on theirbudgets from that and it's hard
(07:58):
to get it to go back there.
I went to my first, maybe second, large conference since COVID
earlier this year and I was likewow, like it really made a
difference, Um, and which isinteresting, um, you know like,
(08:19):
because it the connections werethere, the conversations were
there, I was energized and sothere's a lot of value to those
events coming back.
But you're right, they'renowhere near where they were and
I think a lot of that has to doagain with budgets and and
coming off of that sort ofspoiled us a little bit in the
marketing budget world.
But I also I also like whereyou're headed with the YouTube
(08:42):
and podcasts, Because there's alot of people that are
generating a ton of AI contentright now and, yes, you can
generate AI video and all thatother stuff, but I feel like
more of the podcasts and thevideos seem to be more authentic
and less fake, for lack of abetter term than a lot of the AI
(09:05):
generated content.
That is just sort of blah,right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
So I think the interestingthing is is that from a written
perspective and I say this assomeone who is a journalism
major in college 30 years ago soI love to write and I've
written like a gazillion blogsover the years and I like
writing on social media but thereality is, is that on podcasts,
where you can hear people'svoice, you can hear the emotion
(09:34):
come through.
You can can hear people's voice.
You can hear the emotion comethrough.
You can hear when someone'ssmiling, you can hear when they
laugh, you can hear when they'resarcastic, you can hear when
they're frustrated.
I think that's a different modeof communication than just the
written word and I think somepeople said just well, written
content and B2B has gottenflooded and there's just
everyone has an ebook andeveryone has a gazillion blog
(09:55):
posts and it's just really hardto cut through that noise.
So I think podcasts and YouTubewith the audio and the video
cut through some of that noiseand you add in the factor and
what it does is it beigeifieseverything, taking everything to
(10:15):
sort of the lowest commondenominator.
And I think if people followsome of the best practices like
you tell, you know, chat, gpt,not to include the generic best
practices and if you do fiverevisions of everything it gives
you, you can probably get to amore real sort of answer.
(10:36):
If you're really good at givingthat sort of direction but I
think the super majority ofpeople do it give vague
direction and you get back thelowest common denominator of
beige-ified stuff that reallydoesn't move the needle with
anybody, and so I think that'slike, from a content perspective
(10:57):
, the issue with AI today.
I mean in six months maybe itgets better.
Some of the cool things I'veseen that are next.
One of the cool things I'veseen this next generation is you
sort of put in a persona, youput in the role you're targeting
, you put in the tone you want,like inspirational, motivational
, and then it gives yousomething that's a little bit
better.
Just by having several inputprompts like that, it creates a
(11:19):
better prompt for you.
Uh, but we're not really thereyet, in my opinion, with chat,
gpt 40, some of the other modelslike um, gemini and some of the
other ones like they're notquite ready for primetime yet,
to automate, to just put stuffin and get stuff out.
We're still not there yet, right?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And I don't know if we'll ever be 100% there.
It'll be interesting to see howit evolves, and I do think that
it's important.
I'm a huge fan of AI.
It saves me a ridiculous amountof time on everything that I do
.
It saves me three hours anepisode per podcast Like that's
a lot, because I bulk record.
I'm recording five episodestoday of interviews and when I
(12:06):
go to edit these in a couple ofweeks I'm not going to remember
what we talked about.
So the AI generated transcriptdoesn't require me to re-listen
to the whole episode again, andthe magic clips that Riverside
makes for me allows me to, andthey still need editing, you
know, to find some of thoseimportant little snippets that I
(12:29):
can leverage on social andthings like that.
But yeah, it all takes somelevel of input from us and the
more we rely on it, the moreit's going to.
The world is going to bebeige-ified and you know, our
information becomes a commoditywithout our stories and our
(12:50):
feelings and our experiences,and I think it's a dangerous
situation.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I think there are a number of things in business
that it will get there and itwon't be a co-pilot, it'll be
the pilot.
And what I think is going tohappen is every single process
in business, in marketing, isgoing to be evaluated to say, is
this a business process thatcan be co-pilot, or there can be
(13:18):
an AI agent created that canjust do it, and there'll be some
, a third bucket where itdoesn't apply like you just
can't do it.
But I think that bucket will bemuch smaller than people
realize.
So I think the AI agent usecase will be things like book a
meeting or book this trip for me, and it knows what your
preferences are, that you likein ILC and you want to fly in
(13:40):
United and you won't want to flyin the morning and you always
have to fly.
You know premium economy.
You can put in those things.
I think it'll get good enoughwhere it can like book the trip
for you and maybe you review itor you can change it after.
But I think there will be anumber of cases where you can
just tell it do it, and it'll begood enough in the next couple
of versions, maybe not today,but maybe in the next year or
(14:03):
two.
So I think that'll be reallyinteresting and fun to watch.
I think there'll be a lot ofgrinding of the years to get
there, but I think we'll get toAI agents and to get there.
But I think we'll get to AIagents and I think that's pretty
interesting to think about.
If you think that's where it'sgoing.
It'll sort of inform some ofyour behavior today and I do
think that we'll get beyond,even on the co-pilot stuff.
Right now I use seven differenttools when I'm doing a podcast.
(14:26):
I can do a podcast episode fromstart to finish in two hours,
but if I hadn't had any of thosetools that have AI capabilities
, it'd probably take me 10 hours.
So similar sort of time savings.
But I still look it over and Iwould say it only gets it like
60% of the way there.
So if we can get to the pointwhere it gets it 99% of the way
there and maybe you changesomething and got slightly wrong
(14:49):
, that'll be interesting if wecan get closer to that
directionally right yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, and I definitely think we are headed
there, so it should be veryinteresting to see how it goes
and evolves.
Again, going back to curiosity,this is where you know it's
going to make a difference.
I find so many people haveopinions on everything and they
haven't, like, really spent muchtime with these tools to be
(15:18):
able to weigh in on them.
You know, and it'll beinteresting to see, I think, as
it evolves and as it goes, butthe more mundane tasks that I
can delegate to AI, the betterfor me.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
One other sales and marketing.
Go ahead.
Sorry, no, go ahead.
One other sales and marketingexample that I saw that I think
is really powerful, that speaksto this is I've actually seen AI
tools that act as a BDR rep toqualify a prospect and book a
meeting, and I actually haveseen several of the solutions
(15:58):
that do it probably just as goodas a real BDR would have done
it.
They gather the requiredinformation, they qualify the
person, they even customize itand personalize it and build
rapport and they actually bookthe meeting on the calendar.
And if I think back five yearswhen a lot of tech companies
were hiring a team of 10, 20, 50BDRs, it's really shocking to
(16:24):
see the testing of some of thesetools.
I wouldn't claim they're allready for primetime yet, but you
can see it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Which, to be honest with you, I don't think I would
mind dealing with an AI BDR,because I had a bad experience
recently with a real live onewho booked an appointment and
then everybody's trying to trackit back down.
Gave him all this information.
The next guy when he wascalling to reschedule cause they
scheduled it for a holiday week, and the guy they didn't
realize it was going to he wasgoing to be on vacation and then
(16:57):
he's like, well, can I ask youthese questions?
I'm like I already answered allof those questions.
Do you not have thatinformation?
So something got lost intranslation and I think AI
probably would have been abetter BDR in its current
iteration than the real personthat I spoke to, which is
(17:18):
frustrating at times, right?
So, in the world of B2Bmarketing I love B2B marketing
because I feel like there's somuch low-hanging fruit and so
much impact to be had there andto be made.
So let's talk a little bitabout where things are shifting,
because we talked a lot aboutevents.
Events are starting to comeback more and more.
(17:41):
I think I don't think they'llever come back to the level they
were pre-COVID, but I do seethem potentially playing a
bigger role.
What do you think?
What about people that aretrying to leverage events for
their marketing, especially inB2B?
How are they going to getbetter results from them?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
So I think better results come from thinking about
investment in those eventsdifferently.
So it may not simply be you buya booth for $10,000 at the show
.
It may be that you sponsor adinner or reception instead.
It may be that you go to theevent and you do networking.
(18:24):
You send two or three peopleand buy the conference pass.
I just think people arethinking about the way they
invest different.
I don't know if we'll get backto people buying $50,000 of
signage that is what the piecesof it that'll be harder to come
back.
Or I've literally seen peoplespend a million dollars on
designing a booth those piecesof it.
I'm not sure that'll be thesame, but I think people going
(18:47):
and networking and building upengagement activities.
I think people going andspeaking at sessions whether
they pay to speak or they getpaid to speak I think those
aspects of it will probably liveon in a very meaningful way.
I think that other aspectsoutside of events are also
changing in a pretty seismic way.
(19:09):
That makes it disorienting formarketers too.
If you think about SEO with theimpact of AI, it's really
shifting in that the new SEO ishow do you get your company to
be included in the AI summaries,not how do you get in the top
page of Google, it's how do youget into the top page of AI
(19:33):
summaries.
So it's sort of a differentmotion to do that.
And then when you look at otherthings like we've talked before
about email marketing, which Istill think is a great channel,
but you have to sort of dodifferent things within that
channel in order to realize thesame success there as years past
(19:54):
.
And so I think if marketersaren't curious and they're not
learning how each channel isreally evolving, it's a mistake
to just assume this worked lastyear or a couple years ago.
We'll just keep doing more ofthat, because even things like
blog posts because SEO haschanged the way you do blog
(20:15):
posts shouldn't be the way youdid it a couple years ago, right
, and so this is all just verydisorienting for everybody, I
think at some level.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, I think that this has been just a
revolutionary change BetweenCOVID and AI.
We've had our fill of changeand the need to adjust and
hopefully, be curious and adjustand learn and test and
experiment.
Speaking of testing andexperimenting, this show is
(20:47):
called Imperfect Marketing andone of the questions I ask all
my guests is marketing is not aperfect science, right?
We know that.
What's been your biggestmarketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
My biggest lesson learned has been around
measuring the return oninvestment of every single thing
you do in marketing.
And this is because when youdon't look at the unit economics
and you don't treat marketinglike an investment, it leads you
to doing all the wrong things.
So if someone comes up and says, why don't we spend $10,000 on
(21:24):
this activity let's say, forexample, a trade show booth If
you're not thinking about, well,what will our return on that be
?
And I think SaaS companies havebeen the best ones at having a
really good investment mindsetand marketing because they
developed all these SaaS metricsand they said like customer
(21:45):
acquisition costs and lifetimevalue and payback time.
And this is because VCsinvested in 10,000 SaaS
companies and they demanded, asinvestors, this level of rigor
of looking at it.
Because a lot of companies makethe mistake and I've made the
mistake in the past to answeryour question of someone says
(22:05):
well, if we spend $10,000 onthis, as long as we get at least
one customer for $10,000, wegot our money back right, it was
successful.
And the answer is no.
You probably need to makesomething like five to 10 times
what you spend, becausemarketing should be something
like 10 to 20% of your revenue,not 100% of your revenue is the
(22:27):
marketing cost, and so notthinking about marketing as an
investment leads you to makingbad decisions, which frustrates
everybody involved, becauseeverything directionally works.
You'll get some customers ifyou do some marketing, but if
you don't hit the rightinvestment ratios, it's like
would you rather invest and get1% back or would you rather get
(22:50):
10% back?
It's a very different result.
Saying I got something, I gotsome return.
It's not really the same thing,and so I think that's the
biggest mistake I've made in thepast and I've learned that
lesson a couple times.
So I really just try to helpother people say you got to look
at marketing's investment, andif you're not, then that's when
(23:13):
everybody on the rest of thecompany the management team, the
investors, everybody is unhappy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yes, and I think that's really important.
I love how you put it.
Marketing is an investment.
It is an investment of moneyand it is an investment of time.
It is an investment on a returnright.
I mean, you don't buy stocks todonate to the companies that
you're buying stocks from, right.
You're buying because you wantyour investment to grow, and
(23:41):
that's the way marketing shouldwork too.
You know, again, there's a lotof different tools and a lot of
different ways that we canstreamline our time investment
coming up here, but it's goingto increase the monetary
investment, maybe for a littlebit before it gets more
streamlined as it goes too.
So I think that looking at it asan investment expecting a
(24:02):
return expecting more than azero return right, and that zero
return is really important.
So you should be looking atyour marketing that way.
So I love that and I love howwe got to chat about all of the
different things that arechanging in marketing.
So we talked about a little bitabout how marketing is changing
(24:27):
and where it's going with theadvent of AI, and I love that we
got out our crystal balls andstarted talking a little bit
about where things are headed.
But life is going to be getting, I think, more challenging to
differentiate.
Everything is starting tobecome again beige-ified, to
steal your term.
(24:47):
I like it, I might be using itin the future again.
But everything's becomingbeige-ified because we are using
some tools as a crutch whenthey should just sort of be a
support, as a crotch when theyshould just sort of be a support
.
So I'm looking forward toseeing how things change, how
things get easier, and how we'reable to still change things up
(25:08):
and break through.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
So any last words.
Eric, I think you summed upreally well.
I would just say that I think,if you have the right mindset,
if you're curious about it, it'san exciting time, more than it
is a scary time.
And generally, as these thingsare all changing and evolving,
what I like to tell people islike hey, marketing has never
been easy, but it should alwaysbe fun, and if you take that
(25:35):
approach to it and you put thatinvestment lens on top of it,
you'll have a lot of success.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Great.
Thank you so much for all ofyou watching and listening,
wherever you're watching andlistening.
If you learned anything ormaybe had some fun in
discovering what we're talkingabout, it would really help us
out if you would rate andsubscribe Until next time.
Have a great rest of your day.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of
Imperfect Marketing.
I am your host, kendra Korman,and today I am joined by Eric
Eden.
I'm going to take a look at hisbio really quick.
So he has over 20 years ofexperience leading marketing
teams for internet services andSaaS companies.
His experience includesbuilding great marketing teams,
(00:21):
implementing marketingtechnology solutions effectively
, driving demand and drivinggrowth, which is hugely
important.
His greatest gifts are hisstrategic vision, his ability to
implement dynamic marketing andbranding strategies.
He says show me any businessand I will accelerate it to its
highest potential.
That sounds so cool.
(00:42):
Thanks so much for joining metoday, eric.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thanks for having me, kendra, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Oh, and he's also the host of the Remarkable
Marketing Podcast, so I love itwhen I have podcast hosts on too
.
I know that I've been on yourshow and now I have you over
here on Imperfect Marketing, sothat's always good.
So let's go ahead and jump in.
Your podcast is called theRemarkable Marketing Podcast.
Can you tell me something aboutthe most remarkable marketing
you've done so?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
my daughters would tell you that I'm very old and
so I've done a lot of greatmarketing things over the last
25 years.
Of great marketing things overthe last 25 years.
I've always worked for venturecapital and private
equity-backed companies, sowhere the growth is supposed to
be 100% a year, and so that iswhat I love and what I'm
(01:46):
passionate about, and I've hadeight exits, so ranging in price
points of the exits where I'vebeen part of the leadership team
and leading marketing for thosecompanies, totaling $8 billion.
So, I think, driving growth ofthose companies and helping them
get big exits, in several cases, after raising more than $100
(02:07):
million and after going publicand it all happened really
because at those companies, webuilt sales and marketing
machines that drove really highgrowth, and so that's really
what I'm most proud of a lot ofthe things that add up to that.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
That's pretty amazing .
I mean, people that have onesuccessful exit are considered
extremely successful, and thefact that you've had multiple
totaling that amount is amazing.
And yes, you're old, so am I.
It's all good, it's all good,so let's go ahead and start
talking about.
(02:46):
Marketing has changed a ton sofar this year.
How are you seeing it?
What changes have you beenseeing and where do you see
things going?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's funny if you went back just five years and
took five years off and then youshowed up again today, it would
be a totally different thing ofleading marketing at B2B and
growth companies.
I think a lot of that is becausethe systems and technologies
and tools have changed andevolved quite a bit over the
(03:16):
last five years.
I also think it's because thedistribution of which channels
make the most sense has changedpretty significantly over the
years, and so the amount ofmoney that you spend on like
people typically say, like halftheir marketing budget is on
(03:37):
program spend you know moneythat's going out to third
parties, advertising and thingslike that and so I think that
how they spend that money hasshifted quite significantly.
And I think the final piece ofit is you know, there's systems,
there's programs and there'speople, and I think the people
(03:59):
and the skills that you needtoday, because the channels and
the systems are different, arealso, in some cases, different.
People that you need today,because the channels and the
systems are different, are also,in some cases, different people
too that you need for your team.
So I think, across all threemain areas where you invest in
marketing, those three thingshave changed and just the
willingness and curiousness tothink about that is what makes,
(04:22):
I think, a lot of peoplesuccessful in the new world
order, if you will.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yes, curiosity, I think, is really, really
important and I don't thinkwe're giving it enough credit.
I actually think it's going tobe my word of the year for 2025
is to be curious because, again,things are changing so rapidly,
talking about the channelsshifting and where your money is
going, what channels are youseeing?
(04:48):
Increase versus decrease?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah.
So I think one of the channelspre-COVID was an in-person event
.
Pre-covid, I think, was a solid35% 40% in B2B businesses.
One business by going to otherpeople's events, holding their
own events.
So events was um more than athird of the equation pre-covid.
(05:12):
I think it's come back, but ithasn't come back quite to that
level um, because the cost ofdoing those events was always at
the higher, the higher um, oneof the higher cost channels and
and now that people are over thepandemic it's still like well,
they're like it's a higher costchannel and there's other
channels that might be more costeffective.
(05:32):
So I think yes to events, butpeople aren't quite going as big
on sponsorships and they're notspending $100,000 to go to a
certain trade show and thingslike that.
They're thinking differentlyabout that.
So that's one change.
Another change is around onlineadvertising.
I think Google and Facebookadvertising has gotten so
expensive.
(05:53):
It's prohibitively expensivefor a lot of companies unless
you have a much higher pricepoint.
I just frame it up this way is,in B2B, a lot of companies used
to be able to acquire acustomer via Google or Facebook
advertising.
If they spent $3,000 inadvertising they could win a
(06:17):
customer.
And now you have to spend morelike $7,000 to $10,000 to
acquire a customer, and that dogjust doesn't hunt.
For a lot of companies it'sjust too much.
They're losing money In SaaScompanies.
They say it takes years for themto pay that marketing cost back
if they spend that much, and soI think online advertising was
(06:41):
a couple years ago.
20-25% of business came fromthat, and now I think companies
just can't really afford to bewinning 25% of their business
that way.
It's just too expensive.
So those are just two examples.
I think on the other side ofwhat's more efficient is I think
a lot of companies are lookingat channels like podcasting and
(07:05):
YouTube as channels that have alot more reach and you can do a
lot more than you can withwritten content, and so I think
a lot of companies are investingmore in those channels because
they can get awareness in thesechannels and then connect with
(07:28):
people.
So I think five years ago Idon't think people were waiting
more than a couple percent there, and now they're waiting more
like 10 to 20% there.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It definitely does.
So before we switch to our nextquestion, let's spend a little
time here, because I love thatwe're doing that.
So, yeah, in-person is bouncingback a little bit, but it's
expensive and I think companiesdid get a little bit of a
reprieve, you know, on theirbudgets from that and it's hard
(07:58):
to get it to go back there.
I went to my first, maybe second, large conference since COVID
earlier this year and I was likewow, like it really made a
difference, Um, and which isinteresting, um, you know like,
(08:19):
because it the connections werethere, the conversations were
there, I was energized and sothere's a lot of value to those
events coming back.
But you're right, they'renowhere near where they were and
I think a lot of that has to doagain with budgets and and
coming off of that sort ofspoiled us a little bit in the
marketing budget world.
But I also I also like whereyou're headed with the YouTube
(08:42):
and podcasts, Because there's alot of people that are
generating a ton of AI contentright now and, yes, you can
generate AI video and all thatother stuff, but I feel like
more of the podcasts and thevideos seem to be more authentic
and less fake, for lack of abetter term than a lot of the AI
(09:05):
generated content.
That is just sort of blah,right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
So I think the interestingthing is is that from a written
perspective and I say this assomeone who is a journalism
major in college 30 years ago soI love to write and I've
written like a gazillion blogsover the years and I like
writing on social media but thereality is, is that on podcasts,
where you can hear people'svoice, you can hear the emotion
(09:34):
come through.
You can can hear people's voice.
You can hear the emotion comethrough.
You can hear when someone'ssmiling, you can hear when they
laugh, you can hear when they'resarcastic, you can hear when
they're frustrated.
I think that's a different modeof communication than just the
written word and I think somepeople said just well, written
content and B2B has gottenflooded and there's just
everyone has an ebook andeveryone has a gazillion blog
(09:55):
posts and it's just really hardto cut through that noise.
So I think podcasts and YouTubewith the audio and the video
cut through some of that noiseand you add in the factor and
what it does is it beigeifieseverything, taking everything to
(10:15):
sort of the lowest commondenominator.
And I think if people followsome of the best practices like
you tell, you know, chat, gpt,not to include the generic best
practices and if you do fiverevisions of everything it gives
you, you can probably get to amore real sort of answer.
(10:36):
If you're really good at givingthat sort of direction but I
think the super majority ofpeople do it give vague
direction and you get back thelowest common denominator of
beige-ified stuff that reallydoesn't move the needle with
anybody, and so I think that'slike, from a content perspective
(10:57):
, the issue with AI today.
I mean in six months maybe itgets better.
Some of the cool things I'veseen that are next.
One of the cool things I'veseen this next generation is you
sort of put in a persona, youput in the role you're targeting
, you put in the tone you want,like inspirational, motivational
, and then it gives yousomething that's a little bit
better.
Just by having several inputprompts like that, it creates a
(11:19):
better prompt for you.
Uh, but we're not really thereyet, in my opinion, with chat,
gpt 40, some of the other modelslike um, gemini and some of the
other ones like they're notquite ready for primetime yet,
to automate, to just put stuffin and get stuff out.
We're still not there yet, right?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And I don't know if we'll ever be 100% there.
It'll be interesting to see howit evolves, and I do think that
it's important.
I'm a huge fan of AI.
It saves me a ridiculous amountof time on everything that I do
.
It saves me three hours anepisode per podcast Like that's
a lot, because I bulk record.
I'm recording five episodestoday of interviews and when I
(12:06):
go to edit these in a couple ofweeks I'm not going to remember
what we talked about.
So the AI generated transcriptdoesn't require me to re-listen
to the whole episode again, andthe magic clips that Riverside
makes for me allows me to, andthey still need editing, you
know, to find some of thoseimportant little snippets that I
(12:29):
can leverage on social andthings like that.
But yeah, it all takes somelevel of input from us and the
more we rely on it, the moreit's going to.
The world is going to bebeige-ified and you know, our
information becomes a commoditywithout our stories and our
(12:50):
feelings and our experiences,and I think it's a dangerous
situation.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I think there are a number of things in business
that it will get there and itwon't be a co-pilot, it'll be
the pilot.
And what I think is going tohappen is every single process
in business, in marketing, isgoing to be evaluated to say, is
this a business process thatcan be co-pilot, or there can be
(13:18):
an AI agent created that canjust do it, and there'll be some
, a third bucket where itdoesn't apply like you just
can't do it.
But I think that bucket will bemuch smaller than people
realize.
So I think the AI agent usecase will be things like book a
meeting or book this trip for me, and it knows what your
preferences are, that you likein ILC and you want to fly in
(13:40):
United and you won't want to flyin the morning and you always
have to fly.
You know premium economy.
You can put in those things.
I think it'll get good enoughwhere it can like book the trip
for you and maybe you review itor you can change it after.
But I think there will be anumber of cases where you can
just tell it do it, and it'll begood enough in the next couple
of versions, maybe not today,but maybe in the next year or
(14:03):
two.
So I think that'll be reallyinteresting and fun to watch.
I think there'll be a lot ofgrinding of the years to get
there, but I think we'll get toAI agents and to get there.
But I think we'll get to AIagents and I think that's pretty
interesting to think about.
If you think that's where it'sgoing.
It'll sort of inform some ofyour behavior today and I do
think that we'll get beyond,even on the co-pilot stuff.
Right now I use seven differenttools when I'm doing a podcast.
(14:26):
I can do a podcast episode fromstart to finish in two hours,
but if I hadn't had any of thosetools that have AI capabilities
, it'd probably take me 10 hours.
So similar sort of time savings.
But I still look it over and Iwould say it only gets it like
60% of the way there.
So if we can get to the pointwhere it gets it 99% of the way
there and maybe you changesomething and got slightly wrong
(14:49):
, that'll be interesting if wecan get closer to that
directionally right yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, and I definitely think we are headed
there, so it should be veryinteresting to see how it goes
and evolves.
Again, going back to curiosity,this is where you know it's
going to make a difference.
I find so many people haveopinions on everything and they
haven't, like, really spent muchtime with these tools to be
(15:18):
able to weigh in on them.
You know, and it'll beinteresting to see, I think, as
it evolves and as it goes, butthe more mundane tasks that I
can delegate to AI, the betterfor me.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
One other sales and marketing.
Go ahead.
Sorry, no, go ahead.
One other sales and marketingexample that I saw that I think
is really powerful, that speaksto this is I've actually seen AI
tools that act as a BDR rep toqualify a prospect and book a
meeting, and I actually haveseen several of the solutions
(15:58):
that do it probably just as goodas a real BDR would have done
it.
They gather the requiredinformation, they qualify the
person, they even customize itand personalize it and build
rapport and they actually bookthe meeting on the calendar.
And if I think back five yearswhen a lot of tech companies
were hiring a team of 10, 20, 50BDRs, it's really shocking to
(16:24):
see the testing of some of thesetools.
I wouldn't claim they're allready for primetime yet, but you
can see it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Which, to be honest with you, I don't think I would
mind dealing with an AI BDR,because I had a bad experience
recently with a real live onewho booked an appointment and
then everybody's trying to trackit back down.
Gave him all this information.
The next guy when he wascalling to reschedule cause they
scheduled it for a holiday week, and the guy they didn't
realize it was going to he wasgoing to be on vacation and then
(16:57):
he's like, well, can I ask youthese questions?
I'm like I already answered allof those questions.
Do you not have thatinformation?
So something got lost intranslation and I think AI
probably would have been abetter BDR in its current
iteration than the real personthat I spoke to, which is
(17:18):
frustrating at times, right?
So, in the world of B2Bmarketing I love B2B marketing
because I feel like there's somuch low-hanging fruit and so
much impact to be had there andto be made.
So let's talk a little bitabout where things are shifting,
because we talked a lot aboutevents.
Events are starting to comeback more and more.
(17:41):
I think I don't think they'llever come back to the level they
were pre-COVID, but I do seethem potentially playing a
bigger role.
What do you think?
What about people that aretrying to leverage events for
their marketing, especially inB2B?
How are they going to getbetter results from them?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
So I think better results come from thinking about
investment in those eventsdifferently.
So it may not simply be you buya booth for $10,000 at the show
.
It may be that you sponsor adinner or reception instead.
It may be that you go to theevent and you do networking.
(18:24):
You send two or three peopleand buy the conference pass.
I just think people arethinking about the way they
invest different.
I don't know if we'll get backto people buying $50,000 of
signage that is what the piecesof it that'll be harder to come
back.
Or I've literally seen peoplespend a million dollars on
designing a booth those piecesof it.
I'm not sure that'll be thesame, but I think people going
(18:47):
and networking and building upengagement activities.
I think people going andspeaking at sessions whether
they pay to speak or they getpaid to speak I think those
aspects of it will probably liveon in a very meaningful way.
I think that other aspectsoutside of events are also
changing in a pretty seismic way.
(19:09):
That makes it disorienting formarketers too.
If you think about SEO with theimpact of AI, it's really
shifting in that the new SEO ishow do you get your company to
be included in the AI summaries,not how do you get in the top
page of Google, it's how do youget into the top page of AI
(19:33):
summaries.
So it's sort of a differentmotion to do that.
And then when you look at otherthings like we've talked before
about email marketing, which Istill think is a great channel,
but you have to sort of dodifferent things within that
channel in order to realize thesame success there as years past
(19:54):
.
And so I think if marketersaren't curious and they're not
learning how each channel isreally evolving, it's a mistake
to just assume this worked lastyear or a couple years ago.
We'll just keep doing more ofthat, because even things like
blog posts because SEO haschanged the way you do blog
(20:15):
posts shouldn't be the way youdid it a couple years ago, right
, and so this is all just verydisorienting for everybody, I
think at some level.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, I think that this has been just a
revolutionary change BetweenCOVID and AI.
We've had our fill of changeand the need to adjust and
hopefully, be curious and adjustand learn and test and
experiment.
Speaking of testing andexperimenting, this show is
(20:47):
called Imperfect Marketing andone of the questions I ask all
my guests is marketing is not aperfect science, right?
We know that.
What's been your biggestmarketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
My biggest lesson learned has been around
measuring the return oninvestment of every single thing
you do in marketing.
And this is because when youdon't look at the unit economics
and you don't treat marketinglike an investment, it leads you
to doing all the wrong things.
So if someone comes up and says, why don't we spend $10,000 on
(21:24):
this activity let's say, forexample, a trade show booth If
you're not thinking about, well,what will our return on that be
?
And I think SaaS companies havebeen the best ones at having a
really good investment mindsetand marketing because they
developed all these SaaS metricsand they said like customer
(21:45):
acquisition costs and lifetimevalue and payback time.
And this is because VCsinvested in 10,000 SaaS
companies and they demanded, asinvestors, this level of rigor
of looking at it.
Because a lot of companies makethe mistake and I've made the
mistake in the past to answeryour question of someone says
(22:05):
well, if we spend $10,000 onthis, as long as we get at least
one customer for $10,000, wegot our money back right, it was
successful.
And the answer is no.
You probably need to makesomething like five to 10 times
what you spend, becausemarketing should be something
like 10 to 20% of your revenue,not 100% of your revenue is the
(22:27):
marketing cost, and so notthinking about marketing as an
investment leads you to makingbad decisions, which frustrates
everybody involved, becauseeverything directionally works.
You'll get some customers ifyou do some marketing, but if
you don't hit the rightinvestment ratios, it's like
would you rather invest and get1% back or would you rather get
(22:50):
10% back?
It's a very different result.
Saying I got something, I gotsome return.
It's not really the same thing,and so I think that's the
biggest mistake I've made in thepast and I've learned that
lesson a couple times.
So I really just try to helpother people say you got to look
at marketing's investment, andif you're not, then that's when
(23:13):
everybody on the rest of thecompany the management team, the
investors, everybody is unhappy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yes, and I think that's really important.
I love how you put it.
Marketing is an investment.
It is an investment of moneyand it is an investment of time.
It is an investment on a returnright.
I mean, you don't buy stocks todonate to the companies that
you're buying stocks from, right.
You're buying because you wantyour investment to grow, and
(23:41):
that's the way marketing shouldwork too.
You know, again, there's a lotof different tools and a lot of
different ways that we canstreamline our time investment
coming up here, but it's goingto increase the monetary
investment, maybe for a littlebit before it gets more
streamlined as it goes too.
So I think that looking at it asan investment expecting a
(24:02):
return expecting more than azero return right, and that zero
return is really important.
So you should be looking atyour marketing that way.
So I love that and I love howwe got to chat about all of the
different things that arechanging in marketing.
So we talked about a little bitabout how marketing is changing
(24:27):
and where it's going with theadvent of AI, and I love that we
got out our crystal balls andstarted talking a little bit
about where things are headed.
But life is going to be getting, I think, more challenging to
differentiate.
Everything is starting tobecome again beige-ified, to
steal your term.
(24:47):
I like it, I might be using itin the future again.
But everything's becomingbeige-ified because we are using
some tools as a crutch whenthey should just sort of be a
support, as a crotch when theyshould just sort of be a support
.
So I'm looking forward toseeing how things change, how
things get easier, and how we'reable to still change things up
(25:08):
and break through.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
So any last words.
Eric, I think you summed upreally well.
I would just say that I think,if you have the right mindset,
if you're curious about it, it'san exciting time, more than it
is a scary time.
And generally, as these thingsare all changing and evolving,
what I like to tell people islike hey, marketing has never
been easy, but it should alwaysbe fun, and if you take that
(25:35):
approach to it and you put thatinvestment lens on top of it,
you'll have a lot of success.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Great.
Thank you so much for all ofyou watching and listening,
wherever you're watching andlistening.
If you learned anything ormaybe had some fun in
discovering what we're talkingabout, it would really help us
out if you would rate andsubscribe Until next time.
Have a great rest of your day.
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