Latest / CX Files / Brian Riback - CMSWire 2025 Contributor of the Year - Beyond AI Visibility: How Brands Build Trust
Transcript
- 0:11Hello and welcome to the CX Files for September 24, 2026.
- 0:15My name is Mark Hillary, and I'm in São Paulo, Brazil.
- 0:20And I'm Peter Ryan, just back from a trip to Egypt and the Philippines.
- 0:24So nice to be back home.
- 0:26Not so nice to be dealing with a jet lag.
- 0:30Well, that's not much fun.
- 0:31That's the worst thing about going on a world trip is dealing with the return home
- 0:37and often you end up sort of flying in at five in the morning or something
- 0:42and then having to cope with rush hour traffic getting home as well.
- 0:47Oh yeah but I guess you know it's the price we pay for the lives we lead in this industry.
- 0:52Yeah, absolutely. Oh, and by the way, today's my birthday.
- 0:55I don't remember having a birthday on an episode date before as well.
- 1:00Well, happy birthday!
- 1:00I don't know how it feels to turn 29.
- 1:03It's been so long, but hope that you are taking full advantage of
- 1:08it. Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:09I'm sure that they'll be out later on enjoying it.
- 1:13Well, this week we've got we're picking up on a subject that we've covered a
- 1:19couple of times.
- 1:20We talked a few weeks ago to Andrew Cox around AI visibility
- 1:25and I saw some stuff written by Brian Riback on CMSWire
- 1:29which was focused on how do you build greater trust in your organization,
- 1:35especially when everybody is using AI as a visibility tool
- 1:39so he's developed some ideas.
- 1:41I mean, he calls it trust ops. You know
- 1:44it's essentially a sort of he's tried to operationalize this idea of generating
- 1:50trust because he's sort of thinking that you need to find some new way of making
- 1:56your organization visible in a way that presents the best side you know. Traditionally
- 2:02we would have had search engines and then links through to corporate websites
- 2:07but this doesn't really work very well anymore.
- 2:10So we need to sort of figure out how
- 2:14if people are using chatbots and AI as search engines or answer engines, then how
- 2:20do you actually create this image of your organization as a BPO that can be
- 2:26trusted? This is a really interesting question and you're right;
- 2:29it sort of does go a little bit further on from that point of discoverability.
- 2:33Because if you're discoverable, that's fantastic.
- 2:35But then, how are you positioned?
- 2:36That's another thing entirely.
- 2:38Yeah and I know that is something that Andrew talked about a couple of weeks ago as
- 2:43well because you can ask a chatbot a question about a certain industry
- 2:48and possibly your company might be mentioned as a potential solution provider
- 2:52but it may actually be a negative thing.
- 2:54It may it may say that you're not doing a good job in this industry, even
- 3:00if you are so.
- 3:01So there's a there's a question there about you know how much do you trust this
- 3:06information that is out there as well?
- 3:09You know, Mark
- 3:09it goes to I think the point that was coming up a lot the last few
- 3:14years about things like Google reviews or TripAdvisor reviews.
- 3:17You know, it's very easy.
- 3:19I shouldn't say it's very easy
- 3:21but you can manipulate these reviews if potentially you don't say you don't like
- 3:25the owner of a business or you don't like somebody who works at a business.
- 3:30You know it doesn't take much to put several bad reviews down that get picked up pretty quickly.
- 3:35And the same thing can be done using some of these large language models, some of
- 3:40these LLMs and that are so important for the functioning a lot of these AI tools.
- 3:45So, the point that's coming up here is a very legitimate one
- 3:49and I'd be interested to sort of hear what some of the key learnings are, what
- 3:54the way forward is going to be for outsourcers that, quite frankly, are going to
- 3:58be so heavily dependent on this level of discoverability
- 4:01but not just discoverability
- 4:02but also positioning once they've been discovered.
- 4:05Yeah. Well when you hear that some BPOs are paying their employees 100 bucks each to write
- 4:10favorable Glassdoor reviews, saying this is a great company, come and work here,
- 4:14then you start questioning.
- 4:15You know, how much should we be trusting any of these sort of review sites that
- 4:21are out there,
- 4:22yeah, no, 100% Well, look, I can't wait to hear a little bit more about this.
- 4:30So let's dive into your interview and see what the what the key trends around
- 4:38trust in association with discoverability actually are.
- 4:42Hey, Brian, it's great to get you on the CX files.
- 4:45I think to kick off, why don't you introduce Labrador Connect?
- 4:48You know who you are, where you're based, and what the business does.
- 4:52Sure. So Labrador is a consulting service that I started several years ago, but it's.
- 4:58It's kind of morphed into just this individual profile
- 5:02if you will, of myself and all the content that I've been writing. So you know
- 5:09it's like a weird transition where I was known for Labrador
- 5:14but now I'm known more as a CMSWire contributor.
- 5:18So which which I embrace.
- 5:20I think it's an honor. Excuse me.
- 5:23I was 2025 contributor of the year with CMSWire.
- 5:27I'm pushing to do the same in 2026
- 5:31and I love all the content that I write. It's wonderful.
- 5:36I also, with my startup, have a new product that I'm going to be launching called
- 5:43Version Lab
- 5:44and Version Lab does versioning of ads and emails with only a few clicks that are
- 5:51specific to different audiences or recipients.
- 5:53So it's it's really really cool technology.
- 5:56So that's kind of how everything's morphed from Labrador to who I am now.
- 6:03Okay, okay, but it's still generally like marketing tech. Then, yeah.
- 6:06Oh, that's my everything. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 6:10It's like yeah, family music, chicken parmesan, and then marketing tech.
- 6:16Well it's your it's your column on CMSWire that caused me to reach out to you because
- 6:22I saw you writing something about how marketing heads, how CMOs can build trust
- 6:27across the AI agents and the answer engines.
- 6:30And this is something that you know I've been thinking a lot about, especially
- 6:36over the past year
- 6:37because I'd like to ask you though
- 6:40because you're you're talking a lot about how do you build trust in like an
- 6:45individual executive who's writing content or a company that's writing content.
- 6:50It's it's but you've argued that it's not really just a messaging problem anymore.
- 6:55It's more like this is actually an operational thing. Yes.
- 6:59But what does that mean?
- 7:00You know, what does it mean when like a B2B company they used to rely on
- 7:07marketing campaigns, analyst relations
- 7:08you know, sales teams going out there trying to do lead gen.
- 7:13What are you saying about this trust generation then?
- 7:16How has it changed?
- 7:18Well, the old model treated trust as a communications output
- 7:22and where we're at right now
- 7:25we need to treat it as an operational constraint.
- 7:29You know, it's it's it's so important.
- 7:33You know, credibility can't live only in campaigns.
- 7:37It can't live only with analysts.
- 7:39Credibility is something that with AI, especially
- 7:43you need to have it be evidence based. You know
- 7:48we need to make sure that you're validating what you're writing, especially with
- 7:54things like AEO, with authority.
- 7:56Authority can't talk today.
- 7:58So you know who was the writer matters.
- 8:02If you if you look at a ton of blogs and articles on websites, rare is
- 8:10the time unless it's a media company where they're actually writing who wrote the
- 8:16thing when they wrote it, right?
- 8:19And those are key for AEO.
- 8:22They're not heavy lifts for companies.
- 8:25They should be simple updates to CMS and things like that.
- 8:30But you know, absolutely 100% You know, you know, analysts still matter.
- 8:36The content curation still matters.
- 8:38It's how you present all of it-that matters so very much right now. Okay, okay.
- 8:45And I mean, traditionally, there's been a sort of a split where the marketing team
- 8:50is optimizing their work based on you know how many clicks they can get on a
- 8:56white paper or a blog. You know
- 8:59they're kind of focused on SEO and Google
- 9:01and the sales team is focused on outreach and trying to build up connections and
- 9:07make contact with people.
- 9:08But if what you're saying is that it's AI that is increasingly like the first
- 9:13point of contact
- 9:14so what kind of mistakes are the B2B companies making then if they're not if
- 9:20they're not taking this approach.
- 9:21They're not taking an AI first approach, I guess.
- 9:25Well, the mistake there, well, from an AEO optimization perspective
- 9:29they're not structuring their content correctly
- 9:31and they don't seem to have a plan to do that
- 9:36which is extremely important.
- 9:37They also are ignoring the operational requirements that are necessary in order to
- 9:43be able to effectively address this all. Right?
- 9:46They keep the same and easier said than done.
- 9:50A company that's been in business for 25 years operates a certain way
- 9:55and all of a sudden they're being tasked with changing that.
- 10:00I 100% understand it's easier said than done, but it's also necessary, right?
- 10:05And so one of the biggest mistakes that they're they're making is they're not
- 10:11addressing the operational needs to align with the approach that's necessary for
- 10:16today. So, and I write a lot about operational readiness.
- 10:20It's something that is a passion of mine, something I challenge CEOs on all the
- 10:27time. The other thing that is important is that I'm convinced that most companies don't
- 10:33really understand how platforms like Perplexity or ChatGPT or Claude how they
- 10:38actually work with respect to content generation and things of that nature
- 10:43but and when I say context generation in this in this context, what I'm referring
- 10:49to is being able to look up sources and making sure that source is reputable for
- 10:56the last thing is that a person might just be looking up a statistic
- 11:02and you know you sell auto parts
- 11:04and you have a response that comes up that 25% of our market purchases auto parts
- 11:11in the spring.
- 11:12I'm making this up.
- 11:14That response is all that person needed, right?
- 11:17And what a lot of people do is they'll take it as an authority, even if
- 11:24it's some random website.
- 11:26But ChatGPT is the source, so it has to be real.
- 11:30So you have to differentiate yourself to the point where ChatGPT is not the
- 11:36source. You are the source.
- 11:38You are the authority
- 11:40and that all comes with understanding how all these systems work, having the
- 11:45proper infrastructure in place and operational structure in place
- 11:49and if you don't have that
- 11:52you're going to continue to struggle.
- 11:54That's what all the data says.
- 11:57I mean that what you're talking about is credibility, then
- 12:00and credibility in information about an industry.
- 12:03And I suppose traditionally, brand-that's what brands did. You know
- 12:07I would listen to Microsoft talking about the cloud or IBM talking about some new
- 12:13kind of technology I want to install.
- 12:16You know, and I trust them because of their brand. But
- 12:20but you know what you're saying is that the content that's created is then used by
- 12:26the AI platform to present an answer to someone who's asking a question about that
- 12:32subject. So does it is this creating a lot of opportunities for smaller companies to build
- 12:39credibility that may have taken traditional brands years to develop.
- 12:43Well, there's two answers to that.
- 12:45At the highest level, the highest level, there's two types of queries for these AI
- 12:50tools, right? There's I'm researching a product or a service that I want to buy, right?
- 12:57Or I'm researching for work and I need to get that statistic that we're talking
- 13:02about. Right, two very different things.
- 13:05I think that smaller companies, well, to a degree, have an advantage they've never
- 13:10had before, in that they could get their products to show up if they become an
- 13:16authority which you could become an authority without having
- 13:19you know, SEO is always about ranking you know
- 13:23it was always about ranking
- 13:25and there's some of that with the AI
- 13:28but it's just treated completely different, right?
- 13:30So you do have the opportunity to do it.
- 13:34How realistic it is, on the other hand, is the challenge that I have
- 13:39because you're up against the big guys who can purchase an entire new department
- 13:44that's focused exactly on this stuff
- 13:47and so can you really compete with Sony if you're a startup?
- 13:51You know, I don't know that is necessarily going to happen.
- 13:55At the same time
- 13:57you could get help with it because if you're selling on Amazon
- 14:02you're selling on Walmart
- 14:03you're selling at these bigger companies.
- 14:05If you put in
- 14:07and this is something I had just done, can't remember what I was converting
- 14:12but I needed to convert one input into a different input
- 14:16and so I could use it in the device.
- 14:20And I didn't know what I needed.
- 14:22I didn't know what it was called
- 14:25so I went into ChatGPT and I described what I'm looking for
- 14:30and it comes up with all sorts of options and stuff.
- 14:34That's all indexing, you know, all of that.
- 14:37And so these some of these companies are doing it right
- 14:41and it really just comes down to setting yourself up for success and
- 14:46differentiating yourself from the big guys somehow.
- 14:49That's the most important part.
- 14:51Yeah I'm interested then in the kind of skills or capabilities that you might need for
- 14:56this for this new environment. I mean, let's.
- 14:59I mean, if I'm.
- 15:01Thinking about an example, let's say I'm a customer service specialist and I'm
- 15:05focused on retail brands. You know
- 15:07so traditionally I would be publishing blogs and white papers, all talking about
- 15:12retail customer service.
- 15:13You know, focusing on the keywords and the page ranking and that stuff.
- 15:18And what you're saying is that idea of ranking is much less important now
- 15:23and what I need to do is build credibility as a provider of those services
- 15:28so that ChatGPT will recommend me when someone asks about that subject. Yeah.
- 15:33So, so what you need to kind of
- 15:36you need to do both because you know SEO is still important
- 15:41and if you were to look at it on a table and like a feature comparison chart
- 15:48they all build off of each other: SEO, AEO and GEO
- 15:53and so you do need to consider ranking.
- 15:57It's an extremely important thing
- 15:59but the ranking is done through a different approach. Like yes
- 16:04you have your keywords and stuff
- 16:06but your key phrases and whatnot become questions rather than statements.
- 16:11And those questions are what supports the AEO.
- 16:15If that makes sense.
- 16:17Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 16:18And how does that change about like a marketing company that's really focused
- 16:23right now on the kind of keywords and publishing stuff that keeps mentioning the
- 16:29services? What's the difference in what they should be publishing then if they want to
- 16:35influence the AI engines rather than just Google page ranking?
- 16:40Oh, if I had that answer, it would it would be a tremendous thing.
- 16:44But we have to remember how new AEO is and the whole philosophy of it.
- 16:49And so I think there's going to be a lot of trial and error.
- 16:54I think there's got to be, but consistent trial and error.
- 16:57You have to be consistent because you have to build up your reputation as an
- 17:02authority or a source, the proper source for these engines to use you.
- 17:07If you put up one article, they're not going to quote you.
- 17:11Perplexity is funny because I do market research for my articles
- 17:14and I can't tell you how many times I come up as a source and it's interesting
- 17:20but I've published a lot of articles for CMSWire
- 17:23so it's also not surprising that it would that I would come up as a source
- 17:28you know, in Perplexity.
- 17:30I've never come up as a source in ChatGPT.
- 17:33They just work differently
- 17:34so you have to be you know you have to do trial and error and figure
- 17:39out how that works,
- 17:41and one of the things that you were talking about in your article is corporate
- 17:46websites. You know because typically
- 17:47I think a lot of B2B brands have expected that companies companies looking for
- 17:52their services would go to the website to find more information.
- 17:56But you've kind of argued that people are only ever going to the website once
- 18:01they've already decided that you're a company that might be able to provide
- 18:06services. So, so it's kind of like you've already pre-qualified.
- 18:09So, how, what sort of different information should people be putting on their website then?
- 18:15I would argue it's not necessarily what information should be different because
- 18:19your product is your product, your service is your service.
- 18:23I mean, this is what I do.
- 18:25This is you know, other than having a separate articles page with interesting
- 18:30content relevant to your audience and whatnot
- 18:32which I think is extremely important, right?
- 18:35You know, the it's the presentation, right?
- 18:38Websites are traditionally more brochures than they're anything
- 18:41and we need to stop doing that.
- 18:43We have to start acting as proof layers that confirm what the person learned in
- 18:49ChatGPT or whatever the you know the case may be.
- 18:52When I purchased that adapter, five or six of them came up from companies I'd
- 18:58never heard of before.
- 18:59Well, which one am I going to buy?
- 19:02Well, one of them was sold on Amazon.
- 19:05There's some credibility there, you know, absolutely.
- 19:08So, how do the ones that are not on Amazon compete?
- 19:12Why am I going to put my credit card information into some random website that
- 19:17I've never gone to before?
- 19:19And a lot of that has to do is when I get to the site, how
- 19:25they validate their brand.
- 19:26You know, they have the trust scores. They have you know
- 19:30they even say things like PCI compliant or yeah
- 19:34which half the world doesn't know what that means.
- 19:37But at the same time, you know, ooh, it's impressive.
- 19:41There's a there's a logo
- 19:43and so they put these things at the top of their site
- 19:47and it validates them.
- 19:48And that's not the best user experience
- 19:51but it just speaks to the point for what a smaller business can do in order
- 19:57to really kind of create the competitiveness.
- 19:59So you want to carry on conversations. You want to.
- 20:03You know, confirm, clarify
- 20:05and correct any sort of misperceptions that a person might have
- 20:09and answer questions quickly.
- 20:10Why are you here?
- 20:12You know, drop down menu.
- 20:13Here's the information on all of our programs that address the thing that you're interested in.
- 20:19You know, that's the whole thing, use cases and case studies, things like that.
- 20:24All of it.
- 20:26Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you're talking about building trust as part of the sales process.
- 20:32And so I mean, traditionally
- 20:34if I was a B2B buyer looking for a company to serve my company
- 20:40I'd be going out there doing discovery you know, finding
- 20:44you know, who are the possible options, evaluating them, doing vendor comparison.
- 20:48So that would mean a lot of conversations and opportunities to build trust with
- 20:54potential vendors. And but a lot of that process is now being handled by AI because I'm
- 21:01I can do all that kind of comparison work using the tools.
- 21:06So how do the B2B brands build any trust then?
- 21:10Well, I was looking for a Beaming provider.
- 21:13Beamy being giver in your inbox
- 21:15you see like the Home Depot logo next to the email, rather than it just being an H
- 21:22you know that's beaming
- 21:23and so I'm looking for a beamy vendor
- 21:26and I go to ChatGPT and say, "Who are all the different Beamy vendors?
- 21:32And it lists them, and then I say, "Which Beamy vendor has the best human support?
- 21:38It's only going to know that if your website has that information, right?
- 21:43So it comes up and it says, "This is these are the top three that I recommend.
- 21:50It speaks in first person
- 21:51that are going to give you the best possible customer service experience.
- 21:56Doesn't mean it's right, by the way
- 21:59but now I have a little bit more trust because I trust ChatGPT.
- 22:04I probably shouldn't, but I do. Right?
- 22:06It's it's as simple as that. And so I
- 22:10you know, things like reviews and testimonials will always be one of the number
- 22:15one drivers of trust because there's nothing that will ever surpass personal
- 22:20recommendations you know, going to brand to brand.
- 22:23But in the B2B space, you know, you got to be a little more apprehensive.
- 22:29And so, part of the thing is you have to know a question to ask.
- 22:35One of the fundamental problems with FAQs, as long as they've been used, is that
- 22:40they presume you know a question to ask
- 22:43so you could go to a ChatGPT and not know a question to ask
- 22:49and write what should I be considering when I'm thinking about getting a CDP?
- 22:54You know, what should I be considering when engaging with a sales team at a CRM
- 23:00company, what questions should I ask?
- 23:03The B2B company should be doing the exact same thing
- 23:07so they know which questions to have prepared and which questions they should
- 23:12answer on their website all the time.
- 23:14But that type of real time interaction and real time spent on that's your new
- 23:20market research to some degree, right?
- 23:22You've always wanted to know what questions a potential client is going to have
- 23:28and you always have the best ofs ready to go.
- 23:32But how great would it be if you're constantly updating your website with more
- 23:37information based on the questions that you see being asked, right?
- 23:41I think that's one of the number one things.
- 23:45You know, what's the perceived weakness is important
- 23:48and being able to address that and changing changing minds through getting the
- 23:53content to be updated.
- 23:54What you don't want is all of the information within ChatGPT coming from g2 crowd,
- 24:00right? You want to be able to surpass that with information that you have and that you're
- 24:07building up and you're answering
- 24:08so that you could be used as a source for your own information.
- 24:14Yeah it sounds like you're you need like an operational team that's focused
- 24:18specifically on building trust and you know
- 24:21but where should that sit?
- 24:23Is that part of marketing, or is that part of sales, or is it something completely separate?
- 24:30Well when I interviewed Andrew Frank from Gartner, brilliant man, he was talking to me
- 24:36about something he wrote in a press release regarding trust ops
- 24:40and trust ops is excuse me, essentially a committee of people that comes from
- 24:46marketing communications, your PR department, your legal department, IT,
- 24:49cybersecurity, whatever you have in your company, all come together
- 24:54and that operational structure.
- 24:55Is what monitors, governs
- 24:57and protects how brand is represented across all AI systems.
- 25:01So it's a very interesting kind of new operating world.
- 25:05But okay, so all these people come together.
- 25:08What do they do, right?
- 25:10Well, they sit in a room and say hi to each other. No they're creating playbooks
- 25:17you know, to figure out how they could become an authority and how to address
- 25:23incidents that might come up.
- 25:25You know, how do you do that? My opinion:
- 25:29I'm I'm vendor agnostic
- 25:30but I've never heard anyone use the term trust ops other than Gartner.
- 25:35So while I'm sure there's other vendors that provide it.
- 25:40Look up Gartner, look up Trust Ops.
- 25:42You know, go through them or a vendor that offers it
- 25:47and let that be your guide. It's important enough.
- 25:51Well I mean
- 25:52you've talked about building credibility, authenticity, showing that you have
- 25:56expertise by publishing ideas and answering the questions that your clients are
- 26:02probably going to ask
- 26:04but everybody today can publish at scale. You know
- 26:08I can go to ChatGPT and churn out 20 blogs a day talking about the stuff
- 26:15that my company does.
- 26:17So, how do I generate that kind of authenticity when my competitor might just be
- 26:23churning out 10,000 words a day for their website
- 26:28because that doesn't matter.
- 26:29I don't think part of this is opinion
- 26:32and I don't usually talk through the lens of opinion.
- 26:35I talk through the lens of data
- 26:38but all of this is so new
- 26:40so it's some of it has to be educated guesses based on what's happened in history
- 26:46and we can't ignore history.
- 26:47I think that if you're writing AI generated content, what you're ultimately doing
- 26:52is there's not necessarily a problem with AI generated content
- 26:55but long form content.
- 26:57I believe there is still very much a need for a writer because if your article
- 27:02is citing Forrester
- 27:03that's not going to help you.
- 27:06That's citing third party.
- 27:07So you know ChatGPT is going to see that
- 27:10and they're going to link you to Forrester.
- 27:13They're not going to link through you.
- 27:15It's called borrowed reputation, right?
- 27:17And it's not anything that's going to be a benefit to you.
- 27:21So what you want to do is you want to again.
- 27:25I said this before is you want to have named subject matter experts.
- 27:30These are people that become authorities within your brand. Very very important.
- 27:34Original Research very important, very expensive
- 27:36but and so I'm not saying that everybody could do it.
- 27:40But you know something, a lot more companies could do it than think they can.
- 27:45Pick up a phone.
- 27:46It's amazing what happens when you pick up a phone these days because people are
- 27:52so not used to it.
- 27:53You know, it's it's it's one of these things. May use SMS. survey people. Go out.
- 27:59Just do it.
- 28:00It doesn't have to be expensive.
- 28:02It just has your time is worth money, of course.
- 28:06But go out there, do it.
- 28:08You just do it.
- 28:09Get your surveys together.
- 28:11Get a representative sample. Ask the questions. Get the information.
- 28:14Put it on your site. It's not crazy. Use customer evidence. Get more testimonials.
- 28:19Don't use the one from 2006.
- 28:21You know, get fresh testimonials.
- 28:23Put them onto your site.
- 28:24Make that you know happen. Personally
- 28:27when I'm on Amazon and I look at reviews
- 28:30and the last review was from 2023
- 28:32I don't buy the product because now I don't feel like people are buying it.
- 28:37You know, recently, which is important.
- 28:40some websites will say this. What's it called?
- 28:4326 sold in the last hour.
- 28:45Brilliant thing to put on your website.
- 28:48You know, this is the kind of stuff that's really going to happen.
- 28:53And then human availability. Make it easy.
- 28:56Make it stupid easy to reach a human, especially if you can't afford a customer
- 29:02level, customer with a K, customer level AI chatbot or something along those
- 29:07lines. I mean, what should what should the head of marketing be measuring then to know
- 29:13that they are having some sort of impact?
- 29:15Should they be like?
- 29:17Should they be testing the different answer engines and asking questions about
- 29:21their industry to see if their company is ever mentioned.
- 29:25Yeah I mean
- 29:26I think to some degree it helps them refine their their customer profiles or ICPS.
- 29:31I think it helps them in refining their MQLs, marketing qualified leads.
- 29:36So I think they should be looking at data that's going to help to refine that,
- 29:42make it more accurate.
- 29:44So I do think that's a very important thing.
- 29:47I think they should still be looking at leads in their pipelines, looking at
- 29:52conversion rates but stop with the awareness.
- 29:55Awareness is one of my naughty words.
- 29:58I never use that word in relation to.
- 30:01Business or marketing-it's you can't measure it. It's not quantifiable
- 30:05and you don't care how many people saw something on ChatGPT that references your
- 30:10company name. There is literally nothing about that is impressive.
- 30:14So this whole idea of impressions and you know that get that out of your head.
- 30:20How many people are clicking through to your site and showing an interest in the
- 30:25product or the service or sign up for your newsletter
- 30:29which is important because if you're if you're not selling a tangible product and
- 30:35you sell a service or you're a media company
- 30:38you want to get the person to come in so you can nurture them and make
- 30:44them not interested in the product or the 25% metric that they looked up, convert
- 30:50them from being interested in that to becoming interested to you
- 30:54and that's what I would be measuring is how many people are we nurturing based on
- 31:00how many you know people are coming through
- 31:03and I think that's very important.
- 31:06I mean, traditionally, sales and marketing have had quite different roles
- 31:10and they've been quite siloed.
- 31:12Do you think that in a few years we'll see not just sales and marketing coming closer together
- 31:20but also this emphasis on the whole purpose of both sales and marketing is to earn
- 31:26trust. Yeah I've I've had my share of experiences with sales teams and whatnot
- 31:31and I think that there is a fundamental problem now, or even historically, with
- 31:37how marketing and sales teams work together, defining roles and responsibilities
- 31:41being at the top of that list
- 31:43and really understanding what makes sales work, what makes marketing work.
- 31:48You know, salespeople are all about I got to get to sales
- 31:52I got to get sales quickly as possible.
- 31:55But marketing people understand you have to nurture the lead
- 31:59and it takes a little bit of time
- 32:02and you want to get communications through.
- 32:04So I actually don't think that's an AI problem at all, right? I don't.
- 32:10I don't think AI has much to do with it.
- 32:13I think it has to do with marketing properly setting up automations.
- 32:18Fine if AI is involved in that and figuring out how to target messaging and things
- 32:24of that nature
- 32:25but it is without question a matter of marketing leading the show, in my opinion,
- 32:31with everybody being accountable for the revenue that comes in, right?
- 32:35And if everybody's accountable for the revenue.
- 32:38Marketing says, "Oh well, we did our best based on the data.
- 32:42No, that doesn't work that way.
- 32:44I think they all have to work together and work in a very specific order.
- 32:50And I don't think AI has much to do with it.
- 32:54It changes the framework, changes how they actually operate.
- 32:57But I don't think that from a workflow perspective
- 33:01it should change from anything but that.
- 33:04Well I mean, just to wrap up, then because we're sort of focused on CX
- 33:09and I was just thinking that advocacy has always been important with CX.
- 33:14You know, basically, people will share on social media saying I had a great
- 33:20experience with this company
- 33:21and that kind of enhances the reputation of that brand.
- 33:25Do you think that this is becoming even more important in an environment where
- 33:31brands need to develop a reputation and create a sense of trust?
- 33:35Because we're going into a sort of AI first buying world.
- 33:39So this idea that great CX then creates a sort of virtuous cycle.
- 33:45I think it's a misconception that we're going into an AI first world with this.
- 33:50There is nothing ever that's going to be better, as I said before, than a personal recommendation.
- 33:56If you go to these mom and dad groups on Facebook, and you're a local plumber.
- 34:02You want to have such a good experience with a customer that when people say I
- 34:08need a plumber
- 34:09you have to call Jim.
- 34:10You have to call Susie, right?
- 34:13That is how it's got to work.
- 34:15I don't think a big brand is ever going to be able to get access to that.
- 34:21I think that is where small businesses thrive
- 34:24and where they have the you know they have it locked down
- 34:28and where bigger companies are going to put an advertisement on the side for
- 34:33plumbing that nobody ever clicks on
- 34:36and if they click on it, there is very little conversion rate, right?
- 34:40So I think there's a time and a place for everything
- 34:44but I think that the customer experience on social specifically is going to remain very personal
- 34:50and I don't see big companies coming in and being able to have leverage over small
- 34:56in that world.
- 34:57I could be wrong, but.
- 34:59I just don't see it.
- 35:01All right, I mean that's that's great.
- 35:02I mean, what are you up to next then?
- 35:05Just just to close out, have you got anything interesting going on?
- 35:08Well, I'm working on Version Lab, which I mentioned earlier.
- 35:11It is it's versionlab.io.
- 35:13If anybody wants to kind of look it up, it's not 100% launched yet.
- 35:18We're looking for some alpha users though, not necessarily paid users
- 35:22but people that might be interested that are more on the creative side that do ad
- 35:27generation, email generation
- 35:28so they can kind of check out what the tool is doing.
- 35:33So that's what I'm working on mostly, and of course my writings.
- 35:37You know, so you can look me up on CMSWire and some great stuff coming out. I have
- 35:43I think, eight articles submitted that'll be
- 35:46you know, coming out over the next several weeks.
- 35:49So that's what I'm doing, and of course, being a dad. So
- 35:54yeah, I know about that. Yeah, definitely.
- 35:55All right, that's great, Brian.
- 35:57Thanks very much for the update.
- 35:59We'll make sure there's all the links in the show notes for your writing and
- 36:03everything else. Okay. Awesome, man!
- 36:06Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been great.
- 36:18Thanks for listening to the CX Files podcast.
- 36:19We really appreciate your feedback and suggestions.
- 36:20You can reach myself, Mark Hillary, or Peter Ryan via LinkedIn.
- 36:22Please also leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast provider, as that
- 36:25helps more people to find us. As always
- 36:26we'd like to thank Chris Haig at Traction Media for the CX Files graphics. See you next week.