Latest / Unstuck Pod / When Content Isn't Enough (Malcolm Friedberg and Jamie Schneiderman)
Transcript
- Jamie: Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode. I wanted to introduce Malcolm Friedberg, who's here to chat with us today. Malcolm, thanks for coming. Malcolm Friedberg: Thanks for having me. Jamie: So the sake of everybody who's watching, listening, can you ⁓ yourself, tell them a bit about what you've done the past and what you're up to today? Malcolm Friedberg: Sure. Happy to. So I'm Malcolm Friedberg. Background is 20 plus years in marketing, demand gen. Cut my teeth really early on in the space. was a particular software called Eloqua. In fact, we talked about knowing Mark Organ, the founder, back in the day. I was in 2000 and I was customer number 50 at Eloqua and really just rode the wave of automation in the early days. I was helping VCs understand like the space. I built my own agency with clients like Dell, Lenovo, Intel, Salesforce, built technology, a CMO for a lot of startups here in the Valley. And ⁓ in the last couple of years have seen the whole space blow up and I'm very curious to see, I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, what reinvention of marketing and sales looks like, but you know, have been a marketing sales BD guy my whole career. Jamie: Okay, awesome. No, and I think that's well, I think you sort of set it up well when you talk about a ⁓ that has undergone, you ⁓ I know if any space has undergone more change. Some would argue, you know, software, software development, some of, you know, something, but everything is getting, everything is changing. So let's talk about the reinvention of ⁓ sales and marketing and how the two of them go together, what that looked like. You know, I say back in the day when you were on the leading edge of where ⁓ was headed with with Eloqua marketing automation in world and then ⁓ where is now from your perspective. Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah, mean, it's funny because I think back, there was a lot of structure. was technology, there was processes, there was a playbook, you you saw all around MQLs and you had white papers and webinars and you collected email addresses and you sent emails and ⁓ When people responded or showed some buying intent, sent that to STRs, then they banked phones, and then those people got further qualified. And, and it was very kind of structured and formulaic. And that whole model is just completely blown up. spent the last year and a half as a sort of startup CRO and a company the logistics space and nobody answers phone calls. Nobody certainly responds to cold emails, even LinkedIn messages. I think I had like a one, one percent response rate. ⁓ it's really a new world order. You've got to figure out how do you get people's attention? And that's really the, you know, what's at a premium is people's attention. And it's really, really hard to do when, and all those processes and the structure and the infrastructure that was used. Jamie: No. Malcolm Friedberg: just doesn't work anymore. Jamie: So you mentioned getting people's attention, which I think is a great, I it's always been important in marketing, right? Always sales and marketing, always. But now it to be ⁓ at a new level of premium. ⁓ A lot folks will say, ⁓ won't just, using market, sorry, AI fix all of this. What are your about that? Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah, I think AI is a great amplifier, but you still need the fundamentals, right? You still need to know who you're selling to, what you're selling, what your value proposition is. And even if you have all those things, how do I get through the clutter to get somebody's attention? I mean, if somebody's actively looking for a solution, okay, then you have a little bit of a leg up, but if somebody's not looking for a solution. If you're selling something that's new, or you have a different take on an existing solution, it's just hard to get people to sort of pull their heads out of the sand or whatever they're doing and pay attention. And so that's a real challenge. And again, the, you know, the ways that people looked to find the information before has changed. You know, you used to be able to produce a white paper. Jamie: Yeah. Malcolm Friedberg: And people would be willing to take a look at it because the quality of the content was there and thought leadership had some value. mean, certainly with AI, it's so easy to crank out content. Like that's not going to work anymore. I you know, maybe if you have a big brand, but quite frankly, look at the big brands. mean, look at Gartner Gartner's lost. don't know what the number is, but like 70 % of its value as a company because AI has basically replaced it. As you know, a way to acquire information and learn quickly about what's happening in an industry. So I really think that there are, we're just at the beginning. mean, that's really unprecedented. The upheaval that we're looking at, but I think ultimately it comes down to the fundamental thing of, I get your attention? And AI doesn't particularly help with that. It can get you in front of more people. but not necessarily with a way that's gonna sort of incent them to engage more. Jamie: Okay, hear you, there's, so ⁓ a bit of, ⁓ I say doom and gloom, I don't mean, I mean it in the context of it's challenging, it's more challenging than it's ever been. You talk about the difficulty or ⁓ the around how do I get in front of the right, in front of people, the right people. So let's talk a little bit about what, you know, let's expand on the concept of the fundamentals and leveraging the fundamentals to, kind of both break through the clutter one and also, you really engage with, ⁓ and to work with clients. So what kind of, ⁓ sorry, work with potential ⁓ clients customers, ⁓ what, things have you seen that have worked really well, or have worked better, that you've tried? Malcolm Friedberg: Well, probably the most successful hack that I deployed was trying to build an advisory board. So leveraging existing relationships to get in front of people. Because I mean, again, even assuming you have, you know, a clear value proposition, you know, who your ICP is, you know what the pain points are. Jamie: interesting. Interesting. Malcolm Friedberg: And you've got a solution to address those pain points. Unless I can get five minutes of Jamie's time, it's really hard for me to, you know, find an audience that's willing to listen. ⁓ and so I think, you know, obviously COVID sort of exacerbated the, the situation around people educating themselves, buying groups, just doing all the education online. And so. Jamie: Okay. Malcolm Friedberg: ⁓ of marketing, I should say, has had even less impact because people ⁓ not willing to engage until like they're super educated and then they really want to talk to a salesperson. So what's come out of that now is that I see more activity around events and dynamics where can leverage personal relationships and kind of human contact. to be able to least decide if even a conversation ⁓ worthy or valid. ⁓ always felt, and particularly in some industries in particular, like dealing with CTOs and technology-oriented people, that validation from a peer ⁓ is think marketers as a group, and maybe true for salespeople as well, are a little bit more open to to look at new things, but there always have been groups, technical buyers that I've felt like it's super hard to get their attention unless you are kind of one of their brethren. but you know, whether you have the credibility or not, I I always liked selling to marketers cause I could talk to them with a, I've walked a mile in your shoe, kind of a, an approach, but still like, like I wouldn't. Jamie: Yeah. Malcolm Friedberg: Think about trying to call on a marketer cold. I mean, you know, they're not going to take my call even with kind of my background. The only way to get in front of people is, Hey, Jamie, do you know so-and-so? Can you refer me in? Jamie: Wow. So, so, challenging, so much harder, like you're talking about. I want to go back to one of the first places that you went to ⁓ was sales and marketing. And I just want to go back for a second and talk about the relationship between the two and how, how has that changed? talked about, you know, someone's done all their research. They're, they're ready to go. they're thinking about it and then they're ready to talk to a salesperson if they get there. So to your point about the relationship piece. like There's ⁓ that a marketer can do, but if it's relationship building, how much of that feels like sales and how much of that feels like true relationship building? I want to talk about the, Are they starting to overlap the two or are they separating more? What do you see there? Malcolm Friedberg: Well, so I'm kind of bearish, quite frankly, on B2B marketing. I think B2B marketing is, could go the way of the dinosaurs. I really do, because I think what you can do with AI in terms of developing an ICP and a go-to-market strategy and messaging, it gets you 80 % of the way there. It doesn't get you a hundred percent of the way there, but it definitely gets you 80 % of the way there. So an experienced marketer who has spent time in the industry can definitely provide value in that 20%. And that, you know, that 20 % it's important, but for everyone else, for an average B2B marketer or somebody who doesn't have time in a particular industry and is kind of you know, approaching it from a little bit more of a generic perspective. Like you can easily get replaced by you know, just good enough. So I telescope out, if I'm a CEO running an organization, I need salespeople because they close and they touch people and they get it across the goal line. And that will always be valuable, but getting it to the goal line. know, if I have an ⁓ native go to market strategy with agents doing the outreach, especially as these agents kind of mimic human interactions more effectively and get. more dynamic, I don't see a scenario where that's good for marketers. I think that, you know, more and more of that kind of early conversation, understanding what content, I mean, I can envision a universe where AI is generating the content, creating the website, telling me based on, you know, site visitors and different types of advertising campaigns. what's working like on a weekly basis, know, reformulating my messaging, redeveloping my content and it just being like a living breathing organism that is completely void of having, you know, an active marketer. Or maybe you have somebody again, who's a domain expert who's kind of kibitzing in that process, but that's pretty potent. Jamie: Yeah. Malcolm Friedberg: In terms of being able to, to be that dynamic and that flexible and make those kinds of changes. mean, that's really kind of like a B to C model, you know, where they're like constantly optimizing applying that to a B2B framework. Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, no, no, find that ⁓ fascinating. So and there's all the marketers who are watching this right now and going and cracking open a bottle of whiskey or something else and going, wow, ⁓ this is pretty. So so, you know, I so I what wanted to do was actually but I do still so I'm still a that And I think you said it, the right marketers can find the 20%. Right? And that 20%, that difference can be huge for a company. So, tell me what you, what do you think that looks like? So you Gave me a little, you Gave us a little bit, but I go a little further there. Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah. Yeah. So I think that marketers have kind of left I know, capital on the table by not being sort of contributing to the strategic part of the business. Like ⁓ my with are they're smart. Like as a cohort, marketers are thoughtful and intelligent and if they sort of lean into the business can contribute to the strategic direction. Because if you think about who sits around the table, right. That's not going to come from the sales guy. Like they're transactional. They, from my perspective, generally don't have a great 30,000 foot view. There are occasional sales guys who kind of think that way, but by and large, that's not kind of a cloth that they're cut from. CFO is not going to do it. Maybe you have a product guy that has some sort of vision. So it's really the CEO that's doing that. And I think marketing has both the license and the opportunity to lean in and contribute to sort of articulating the vision of where we want to go. So I think sort of upping the level of one's game and being a strategic contributor ⁓ important. And I think really being in glove with your salesperson to understand what they need to be successful. mean, again, I've spent my career as a marketer only in last couple of years have I worn sales hat and it's been humbling. It's hard. And ⁓ the of, you know, of the things that we do as marketers, the content. the advertising, the messaging, you know, you're basically left to sort of do it on your own. So I think if you really sort of work well with your sales guy, there is still a lot of value you can add. And what that means to me is like, you know, potentially being on sales calls, understanding what the objections are, create, you know, being creative, thinking outside the box and hey, how are we going to under ⁓ this? know, know, deficit that exists for getting people to pay attention to what to your particular message. Jamie: So so fascinating to me that, you know, what I've just heard from you, and I think, if I frame it, it's, there's a world where ⁓ more of is moving down the e-commerce style path, right? It's like learn transaction data numbers. talked about ⁓ agents more more of that and the skillset to be able to do that. And then it's. Who are the folks that are going to sort of build that and then move way up like call it truly strategic sales and marketing, which is, which is a different conversation. I think. Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah. Again, if you go back to your first point, five years ago, 10 years ago, like the super sophisticated marketing organizations had, you know, data analysts and were really analyzing information and applying those learnings to change what they were doing, you know, understanding the, you know, buying patterns. ⁓ understanding how people engaged, understanding which content performed better. Now you can just do that. you've built the right kind of system, AI can do that for you instantly every single day. So that value add ⁓ completely removed from the domain of a marketer because technology can do that for you. So. ⁓ In that regard, think kind of the real time, I mean, you'll never have as much data as obviously you have in a B2C environment, just because, you know, the numbers aren't comparable, but whatever you launch a campaign ⁓ can see in hours and certainly in days, hey, which my, you know, even creating like AB testing, you know, was kind of a lift. mean, Jamie: audience. Malcolm Friedberg: You know, you should be able to do ABCD testing now within, you know, a day or two days or ⁓ much time gives you enough data to be able to then iterate and optimize and continue to do that. Jamie: So, so actually want to, so here's the place I'm trying to poke into, right? Which is, look, if you're the, historically, if, ⁓ people look at the businesses and marketing, they either come from a more pure, ⁓ it marketing background. mean, again, that's not the case everywhere, but, across the broader ⁓ of, you know, the U S that's kind of the way I would look at it. And, ⁓ they're very, technical. and meaning they understand it. What you're describing in terms of building out that capability that system, given where it's at, given how early it is, who's that? How do you know what should be in that? What does that look like versus your role? Like, I'm talking about the senior marketer. ⁓ How does look? How does someone piece all that together? It feels very complicated. Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah, so I think that's a great question. think, you know, it's a little bit of a... People are throwing up a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks everyone and their mother is building agents. now some people are building agencies that leverage, you sort of ecosystems of agents, know, an agent tech approach. So I think that needs to be netted out. I mean, I'm about to start an endeavor where I'm being asked to build a you know, a go to market program that is AI first and I don't know where to start. ⁓ Really know what that I mean, I understand what that means intellectually, but I don't know how I'm gonna do that I mean, I may just go find an agent say and say hey, I'm being asked to do this, can you do this for me? That sounds you know first time cutting my teeth a little bit more Jamie: Hahaha Malcolm Friedberg: than trying to like build it from scratch, but maybe we'll build it from scratch. don't know. I got to go talk to some technology guys. I can tell you the first place I'll go to answer that question is you know, Claude or ChatGPT and say, Hey, I need to build a AI first ecosystem for to market for this company. What should I do? I mean, like that's the thing you just, that becomes AI your source of even understanding how to solve problems, let alone building the solutions that then solve the problems. Jamie: Wow. So mean, it's the fascinating sort of philosophical discussion also about like, so when say this, don't mean, so it's like, what's your role? Like if AI doing that, what's your role? I don't mean it like. Malcolm Friedberg: ⁓ so yeah. Yeah. Your role is to set up the guardrails to, you know, set realistic sort of expectations and goals around what can be accomplished. I I think what's going to very quickly emerge like in the next six months marketers ⁓ have done this ⁓ they'll be at a premium. Like companies will say, ⁓ Hey, have you built an AI first go to market strategy? We want to pay you to come do that. Whether you end up being our full-time CMO or not. And I think for a period of time, maybe for a while, there'll be a real opportunity for agencies to do that. You know, in fact, I got a phone call actually earlier this morning with a company that does that. only focus in. you know, on businesses that have more than $5 million in revenue because they feel like, you know, there's not enough pain and chaos that the marketer has gone through to be able to leverage their system. But at that point in time, you know, they figured out how to create an ecosystem of systems ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ of it. There are no more playbooks. I mean, that's part of it. Is that it's sort of the playbook is be dynamic and use AI to figure out, you know, 87 % of this, and then use you as the experienced marketer to kind of validate. yeah, there's the whole hallucination thing, but to me, it's more, you know, it's just that little, know, that 10 % that if you've got domain expertise, ⁓ can really ⁓ kind of some key insight. to kind of really just crisp up everything. I think I a scenario where marketers have smaller marketing departments with agents. mean, why would you have a content writer? In this day age, I can't imagine going and saying, I'm gonna go get a content person. I just can't. And have hired when I ran my agency, ⁓ Jamie: Yeah, I'm just saying. Malcolm Friedberg: We had a couple of full-time content people and they're great people, but I feel for them because, know, I mean, there's no way you can compete with that. Jamie: No, well, yeah, volume, speed, volume, and equality. Malcolm Friedberg: Volume speed. Yeah. And again, if it's 80 % as good in 10 minutes, like what are you going to do? I mean, it's just, you know, maybe even things I think about product marketing, you know, if you can get AI access to enough information, why couldn't it be your best product marketer? And as he gets better and is able to do videos and create other types of content. Again, you're just going to like, it's going to be AI marketing in a bottle. And I don't like it. I'm not sort of a fan of it, but I am a realist and I do feel like that's the way it's going to go. Jamie: Yeah. ⁓ I was having this conversation last night with some friends about, you know, sort of the where is it going and what will it look like and, you know, what will we do AI can do everything? What does that mean? And you're painting a picture that's showing it's at least heading down that path, maybe not for everything yet, but certainly on the marketing, sales and marketing front. Okay, so you've been great. This is fantastic. advice that you want to leave with the folks out there who are listening, whether it's a CEO of a company, which I think a lot of people running B2B startups, or even someone who's in marketing today. Malcolm Friedberg: Yeah. So, you know, as a founder, I think, if one is a CEO or a founder, you got to get really, really clear about why your product is different and how you can build a mode around it. Because the time to market the time to develop a product has, the, some of the time that barriers ⁓ have ⁓ diminished. much easier. You can build entire applications with cloud code. So things that used to sort of protect or make your business unique are not always gone, but many of them have been removed. So if you're a CEO, that's kind of the lens that I would look at something through. If you're a marketer, ⁓ mean, let's stay in the obvious. You got to figure out how to leverage AI. mean, you know, I'm sort of in the, you know, I don't want to say the tail end, know, towards approaching the end ish of my career. Like if I was in my twenties or thirties, I would be quaking in my boots or I would be like, I'm just going to be a Jedi knight of AI because you know, that is the tool. And I'm not even sure. You know, it's interesting. I know people who have like sent their kids to to study computer science, you know, at college. And it's like, poof, there goes an entire career, like an entire industry. Like who's going to be coding? Nobody's going to be coding, you know? And I think that's the thing marketers have to be mindful of. If you're going to go be a marketer, you know, there'll always be brand and creative stuff and... But I might think about taking some public speaking courses and go out there and do some of the sales stuff. Actually, it's been funny because again, I literally have been a marketer my entire life and I kind of enjoy the sales stuff, which was new to me. But I think you need to be more multifaceted, that's for sure. Jamie: Interesting. That's great. That's great. advice. Can you tell folks how to get hold of you? ⁓ Malcolm Friedberg: Sure. You can just connect with me on LinkedIn, Malcolm Friedberg, F R I E D B E R G. And, you know, always looking to connect with fellow marketers. And if anybody needs some help happy to pitch in where I can. Jamie: Awesome. We'll add some links in the description so people can find you. But Malcolm, thank you so much. This is great. And everyone, thanks for watching, listening. ⁓ until next time.