Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 548 | Future-Proof Your Marketing: How AI Agents Are Changing the Game
Transcript
- 0:01This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
- 0:04pressing B2B go to market challenges.
- 0:07Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
- 0:09marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
- 0:12strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
- 0:18Everyone, welcome back to the Home Based Podcast.
- 0:20I'm your host, Chris Moody, and today I'm really excited to have
- 0:24Mark Booth with us to talk about future proofing marketing with
- 0:27AI agents. Mark, thanks for joining us
- 0:30today and welcome to the show. Chris, everybody, thanks for
- 0:33joining and excited to be here. Yeah, this is an episode I'm
- 0:35really pumped for. I was thinking about all the
- 0:38stuff we should talk about and then you and I were just talking
- 0:41before we hit record and almost used our entire recording,
- 0:44Linda. So lots of passion points around
- 0:47future proofing, marketing and making sure we are not left
- 0:50behind. But before we dive into that, we
- 0:53love to start with a little bit about your journey, so
- 0:57understanding what led you to what you're doing today.
- 1:00Yeah. So I am a creature of marketing
- 1:02from a long time ago. I am a deep lover of customer
- 1:06marketing. I started my career as a as a
- 1:08junior PR person. And if I'm being honest, I hated
- 1:11it. I didn't like it at all, but it
- 1:13gave me opportunities to jump in and see what our customers were
- 1:18doing. That was back at a place called
- 1:19Omniture many, many, many years ago.
- 1:22And the individual who was running customer marketing took
- 1:25another job and I had a great mentor shout out to Eric
- 1:28Anderson who who decided to take a chance and give me the
- 1:31opportunity to to kind of lead customer marketing as a very
- 1:35junior person. I didn't deserve it for sure,
- 1:37but he took a chance and that turned into me doing customer
- 1:40marketing for a long time and we got acquired by Adobe and I
- 1:43spent a long time doing it there.
- 1:45And then I ended up running, doing some content marketing at
- 1:48Adobe, running social media for, for their digital experience
- 1:52business. Spent quite a bit of time, spent
- 1:54well over a decade there at Adobe and Omniture and then went
- 1:58over to to an Ed tech company. If you're familiar with Canvas
- 2:01LMS, your kids probably use it and structure is the company.
- 2:05I was there for a bit and LED digital and LED customer
- 2:07marketing and LED social and then came over to Domo 3 plus
- 2:11years ago to lead enterprise marketing and then was made the
- 2:15CMO about a year and a half ago. Not quite.
- 2:18Outstanding. I think every parent knows
- 2:19Canvas. To your point, I love it and
- 2:22hate it. There are times where both.
- 2:24Right, Like just all the school activities with multiple kids.
- 2:27Yeah. Well, one thing I'm really
- 2:30curious about is as we get started on this, I was a product
- 2:34marketer too. So I, I love what you mentioned,
- 2:37customer marketing. Your experience reminded me of
- 2:40being a product manager and a product marketer, so listening
- 2:44to customers. So we will certainly Orient
- 2:47around why this matters for our audience.
- 2:51But before we do AI agents, a lot of folks are throwing out
- 2:55the term. They don't really know what it
- 2:57means. They don't really know what it
- 2:59does. They just know we have to have
- 3:01agents and they hear a gentic. So maybe we could start there
- 3:04with how you define AI agents and how do they work?
- 3:08Yeah, so AI agents really are. They're tireless teammates.
- 3:13They can help you do things like automate tasks, adapt
- 3:17dynamically to growing alongside any kind of business that it is
- 3:21that you're building. You know, those agents will help
- 3:24you tailor to whatever the needs of your business are, which is
- 3:27which is really cool. Essentially, you've got to
- 3:29understand number one, and we preach this pretty heavily at
- 3:32Domo, is your data AI ready to be able to do things in the
- 3:36right place because AI is simply garbage in garbage out.
- 3:41If you are good at prompt engineering and you give the LLM
- 3:45or whatever the right information, you can get some
- 3:46really stellar results. If you are not good at that, if
- 3:50your data is trash, you're going to be really ineffective at
- 3:55using any kind of AI at all. Then you get into the idea of,
- 3:59OK, an agent should help you do tasks autonomously, and then you
- 4:03can get into stuff like, are we talking agent to agent?
- 4:06Are we talking? There are so many different
- 4:08permutations of what you can do, but the whole idea is agent
- 4:12should help you automate tasks for me, very best if it can
- 4:17automate the joyless tasks that you don't really like doing.
- 4:21And there's a lot of those. You see how many CEO notes and
- 4:24messages today that are talking about a is coming for your job.
- 4:28And I'm, I'm not going to say it any differently.
- 4:30Like if you are not leaning in today, you're behind and not
- 4:35behind by a little bit, you're going to get left behind
- 4:38completely. And so using agent specifically
- 4:42to help you do superhuman things that you just simply can't do,
- 4:46you know, think of some of the things that I like about agentic
- 4:49workflows and agent specifically.
- 4:52When you start thinking of, well, an agent, if you train it
- 4:55right with the right information, they never forget,
- 4:58they can pull back in seconds on anything that you've trained
- 5:01them with. Well, I can't do that.
- 5:04I know that my entire SDRBDRADM team, they can't do that.
- 5:08And they are amazing. They are incredible at doing
- 5:12business development, but I can't say here are 500 slides
- 5:17and 15 terabytes of data. Go review all of it and don't
- 5:21forget it. Remember it and serve up that
- 5:23information at the right time. That's what agents can do in any
- 5:27way, shape or form, whether it's healthcare, retail, financial
- 5:31services, media, high tech, and on and on and on.
- 5:34That's what agents do. They can take difficult
- 5:36workflows, lots of times joyless workflows, and do it in a way
- 5:42better way than any kind of human could do it.
- 5:44Awesome. I, I think you nailed some of
- 5:46the social clips we'll pull for this in the first question.
- 5:49It's a great job. I love, I love the concept of
- 5:51tireless teammates. That has a nice ring to it as
- 5:54well. I can see it on a T-shirt.
- 5:56You know, to your point about the right time for the CM OS who
- 6:01are listening, that are used to doing things a certain way or
- 6:04they think their, their team is going to have them covered on
- 6:07AI. Why is now the right time for a
- 6:10CMO to pay attention and start to adopt AI agents and their
- 6:14strategy? Because you're already late.
- 6:17You're already late. We had a really interesting
- 6:19session just earlier this week, Chris.
- 6:22We called it the Agentic AI Innovation Summit that we
- 6:25hosted. We had 6000 plus registrants for
- 6:28this thing and just amazing speakers.
- 6:31The head of AI go to market for Google, multiple people from
- 6:34AWSA person who's built an agent on the Domo platform from
- 6:39Torchy's Tacos, the VP of software development at Opus
- 6:43who's doing some really cool things with Domo and Agentic.
- 6:46You are, you're late and you're going to completely miss the
- 6:49boat if you don't get going. Don't be afraid now.
- 6:53Be secure and be governed. Because you know, how many
- 6:57examples are there now of companies who have not taken
- 6:59security or governance in the right way?
- 7:02And it's come back to buy them? So make sure that you were
- 7:04buttoned up in those ways. But there's a lot of ways to do
- 7:06that today, but do it. It will make your life
- 7:10exponentially easier. There was a, a piece of content
- 7:14that I was working on just the other day and the ability for me
- 7:17to use a secure version of, you know, think ChatGPT to be able
- 7:22to draft and ID 8 and start creating in minutes what would
- 7:29have taken a significant amount of time in the past.
- 7:32And the output was incredible. Now, again, you got to make sure
- 7:36that you have the right data. You got to make sure that you
- 7:37are feeding it the right stuff, that you're training it in the
- 7:39right way because that is a perfect recipe for disaster if
- 7:44you're not prepared and you're not ready.
- 7:46AI readiness from a data company is so important.
- 7:49If you haven't given context to the data and you start asking
- 7:52questions, you know, you get into a place today where from an
- 7:55analytics, from an AIBI perspective, yeah, you can ask
- 7:58your data questions and it can serve up the right stuff.
- 8:00But if your data is not ready for that, you're going to get
- 8:03some really crappy answers that may not help you run your
- 8:05business. Yeah, great stuff.
- 8:07Well, before we jump to the next question, coming out of that
- 8:10event where you look 6000 plus registrants for those who don't
- 8:15run webinars or virtual events, that's really, really good.
- 8:18That's a huge number to have that many folks attend.
- 8:22What were a few of the key takeaways where you know, if you
- 8:25were trapped in an elevator with someone and they were saying,
- 8:28what did you learn from that event?
- 8:30What stood out to you from all the sessions you heard?
- 8:33That is an excellent, excellent question.
- 8:36So let me dig into a couple of things that I heard from Jim
- 8:39Fairweather specifically, he's that the the head of AI go to
- 8:43market. These were a couple of the a
- 8:45couple of the takeaways that I noted down.
- 8:47One was, if you're not already working on agents, you're late.
- 8:52This is again from the head of AI go to market.
- 8:54This is one of the one of the notes that I have.
- 8:57Another is don't build for what AI is doing right now.
- 9:01Build for where it's going, which is fully autonomous agents
- 9:04that that plan, that adapt, that collaborate with people.
- 9:08You think of stuff like Kate, you've got groups like Google
- 9:11and others that are releasing agent development kits, you
- 9:16know, frameworks that could help you build, manage, orchestrate
- 9:19agent logic, memory tools. And at Domo we have, we launched
- 9:23at our big user conference Domopalooza here a few months
- 9:25ago, something that we called Agent Catalyst, which
- 9:28essentially a way to go and build these agents.
- 9:30We have customers who are building agents.
- 9:33Just yesterday actually we shared some information on our
- 9:39earnings call that was kind of intriguing.
- 9:42It was about one of our customers who who joined think
- 9:45of it as a webinar, an AI like webinar where they were teaching
- 9:48how to build and within 37 minutes that customer already
- 9:53had something that was that could do some really cool
- 9:56agentic like things like this is not a OK.
- 9:59And now I got to wait and in six months I might have some no go
- 10:02build, start playing, figure out what might My head of product
- 10:07marketing came into me today and he showed me this graphic.
- 10:10Now it wasn't even a graphic. It was a piece of content that
- 10:14he had created that essentially shows people how they can make
- 10:19sure that they are building AI agents in the right place.
- 10:22So it was an agent planning worksheet is what he called it.
- 10:25So, you know, at the very top, if you just start digging into
- 10:28the tech, whatever the tech is you're going to use, and I'm
- 10:30just going to start building an agent, you're not going to get
- 10:32anywhere if you haven't made sure that you understand what
- 10:35are the goals and the purpose of that agent.
- 10:38Why am I building this thing then, OK, from a knowledge
- 10:42perspective, how am I structuring this, whether
- 10:45whether it's structured data or unstructured data?
- 10:47And then the tools, what are the actions that these external
- 10:51systems and other agents need to take?
- 10:54Like there are frameworks already built out.
- 10:56There are things that can be done, but go jump in, Do not be
- 10:59shy and do not wait anymore because because you're late.
- 11:03This was the stat I think I, I may have mentioned to you.
- 11:06Chris Gartner says 80% of companies are increasing AI
- 11:11investment, but only 9 percent, 9%, are seeing measurable value.
- 11:16That gap is, is real. So there's a lot of people
- 11:19experimenting. And now you could say, well,
- 11:22maybe that means I ought to just wait a little bit longer.
- 11:26Don't. Everyone is at different stages.
- 11:29Some teams are crawling, some teams are jogging, some are
- 11:32falling flat on their face. But the Sprint is, is coming.
- 11:38And one of the greatest things that I took away from that
- 11:40session from Jim yesterday was the riskiest thing you can do
- 11:44right now. Wait and see, I'll say it one
- 11:47more time, the riskiest thing you can do right now, wait and
- 11:51see. Like when you think right now
- 11:54about what should I be doing around AI, go plan and then just
- 11:59start delivering. You think from Acmos
- 12:02perspective, we spend a significant amount of money on
- 12:05paid search. OK, well the entire organic and
- 12:08paid search landscape is changing a lot.
- 12:11You had AI overviews that went into place May of last year.
- 12:15Any CMO who tells you, well, we're not seeing any kind of
- 12:18impact. I would say they're lying
- 12:21because it's just the way that buyer behavior and search
- 12:24experiences are changing. You do it, Chris.
- 12:26I do it. I pull up Google today and I
- 12:28search and what do I do? Most of the time I read that
- 12:30very top AI overview. I get all the information I need
- 12:33and there is no reason for me to click on a paid an organic link.
- 12:37None. So for Acmo, who's spending
- 12:40significant amounts of money on things like paid search or
- 12:44making sure the web experience is good or making sure you're
- 12:46optimizing for SEO or Geo as they're calling things now, like
- 12:51you do not have the luxury of waiting anymore.
- 12:54And if you wait even a few months, you'll look back and say
- 12:59we're in a hole that's so big I can't get out of it.
- 13:02Yeah, it's so much to react to there.
- 13:04We should have scheduled about four hours for this one.
- 13:06I'm realizing, I know for a fact that agency that helped us with
- 13:10our rebrand, their number one source of traffic is already the
- 13:15AI summaries that are popping up on things.
- 13:17They shared that on LinkedIn. And then as soon as you said
- 13:20earnings call and you said, oh, I'm going to pull out my phone
- 13:23for a second to look at something I said, oh, this isn't
- 13:26a, this is a, an opportunity for me to run to ChatGPT or Gemini
- 13:32and just say, hey, I'm on with the CMO of Domo.
- 13:35Tell me a couple takeaways from their earnings call this week.
- 13:38And you know, it just popped up and said, strengthen strategic
- 13:43partnerships and consumption based model and goes through all
- 13:46the new partner agreements, improve customer retention
- 13:48metrics, goes through gross retention and everything.
- 13:51And that was what, 10 seconds? 10 seconds?
- 13:55So being in the scale at which you can get information, but
- 13:59then more importantly, leverage that information to take action
- 14:03in whatever form that makes sense, is like nothing we've
- 14:06ever experienced. But remember that thing that I
- 14:10told you about the individual from Google?
- 14:12The biggest thing you could do to hurt yourself right now is to
- 14:16wait and see. Yeah, I love that.
- 14:18You know, let's talk about adaptability.
- 14:20So traditional automation methods have been a bit rigid.
- 14:25We go through, we build out our our workflow, our canvas, our
- 14:29journey, whatever it may be. We go through and we try to set
- 14:32every step up along the way. How do agentic workflows improve
- 14:37adaptability as things change to better adjust to whatever might
- 14:41happen in our go to market strategy?
- 14:43Yeah. When I think of just the scale
- 14:46and the ability for them to consume information and stay
- 14:49ahead of the curve, I mean we have, you can build a lot of
- 14:53agents with with this agent Catalyst with Domo right now.
- 14:56But we're also using technology outside of Domo.
- 14:59But agents are paramount to your success as and not just a
- 15:04marketer, I would say as a designer, as a finance
- 15:07professional, as a product manager, as an engineer, as an
- 15:11on and on and on and on and on and on.
- 15:13They can help you adapt to whatever it is that's happening
- 15:17in the market. Like the ability for them to
- 15:20understand things and comprehend things and think about things
- 15:25way further in advance. We were talking earlier about
- 15:28that application that you talked about that you essentially said
- 15:31go build me a website, go build me a, a marketing campaign.
- 15:34And it just does it. It just doesn't.
- 15:36You don't even have to think through that.
- 15:38Now we can get into the whole conversation about AI is coming
- 15:42from my job. No, that's not that silly.
- 15:45You know what AI is coming for Those people who are not willing
- 15:48and ready and jumping in to use AI to get better at their jobs,
- 15:52absolutely hard stop. If you are not jumping in, AI
- 15:56will take your job. That, I mean, I realize that's
- 15:59probably a harder take than people like, but just go look at
- 16:03what's happening. And those AI agents have the
- 16:06ability to be able to, whether it's competitive intelligence
- 16:09and staying up on what every single one of your competitors
- 16:11are doing, or whether it's looking at, you know, what's
- 16:14happening from a paid search perspective, whether it's
- 16:17looking at the content creation process that can happen via AI
- 16:20or an agent, the list could be endless.
- 16:23That's what agents can help you do.
- 16:25And if you're not already jumping in to be able to do
- 16:27them, you're you're behind and you need to.
- 16:29Totally. How do you ensure that AI driven
- 16:32decisions remain aligned with enterprise priorities?
- 16:35And look, we've been around the block and marketing.
- 16:38I think we can all be honest and every listener would probably
- 16:41agree that historically there are plenty of times where the
- 16:44marketing function itself runs in a lot of different
- 16:48directions, sometimes not always tied to the business objective.
- 16:52So how do we make sure with AI that we are connecting to the
- 16:56most important priorities? Yeah.
- 16:58I mean, I think it comes from the top down.
- 17:00So making sure that you as a leader are sharing and
- 17:04reiterating over and over and over and over again, what are
- 17:09those key things that matter the very most to you.
- 17:12For us, we are extra focused right now on our ecosystem
- 17:15partners. You know, we're seeing some
- 17:17really good increases from a from a top of funnel perspective
- 17:21in leads that are coming in from ecosystem partners.
- 17:25AI is another really big priority for us.
- 17:27And so we're we've done a lot of investing there.
- 17:30We've got a lot of customers that are doing a lot of cool
- 17:32things, but reiterating over and over again our customers and
- 17:36helping them adopt and use the tool and get value.
- 17:39Most importantly, that is of the utmost important, but you have
- 17:44to make sure whether you're a marketing leader or anywhere
- 17:47else that you are reiterating those company priorities that
- 17:50everybody could say them six ways to Sunday and backwards
- 17:54that these are the priorities. So do my do my projects.
- 17:58You think back to the days where we were so focused on vanity
- 18:01metrics, Chris. I mean, and it wasn't that long
- 18:04ago, wasn't that long ago where it was like, yes, we got this
- 18:07many likes on a tweet and you're like, oh great.
- 18:12And it may not have been, it may have not been attuned to any of
- 18:15those big priorities. Most of the time that's where we
- 18:18get into. We had our conversation earlier
- 18:20about attribution models and I have a love hate relationship.
- 18:23Somehow I got attribution into this conversation, Chris,
- 18:26because any marketer that tells me my tweet led to $1,000,000
- 18:29deal, I want to say you are up in the night.
- 18:32You're up in the night now. Could it be a touch in that
- 18:36deal? For sure it could for us.
- 18:38I may see hundreds, if not thousands of sales and marketing
- 18:41interactions I can look at. I can look at every single
- 18:45interaction that would happen if we close the deal with someone.
- 18:48So if that is the case, which we can today, how can an agent not
- 18:53make you way smarter and way faster and way more adaptable?
- 18:57Well, you have to make sure that it is aligned with the key
- 18:59priorities of the company because if you do that, then the
- 19:03key things that you do in marketing will all align back to
- 19:06it. But you have to as a leader,
- 19:08make sure that you are harping on continually.
- 19:11This is what we care about. Are your initiatives related to
- 19:14those? Because if not, we got to adjust
- 19:16or figure out how they become related.
- 19:19Awesome. Great stuff there.
- 19:21And I this next question I think you may be the most prepared to
- 19:25answer of anyone based on the business at Domo.
- 19:29How can AI agents transform complex data into actionable
- 19:33insights at scale? And you know, this could be
- 19:36hypothetical examples or real world examples.
- 19:41It's an interesting question. We have a lot of customers that
- 19:44are using us to build or create AI agents already.
- 19:49But really you have to go back to the basics of making sure
- 19:52that you understand what are you trying to accomplish.
- 19:56Like don't overcomplicate it. We're talking about AI agents
- 20:00and it's easy for people to say, oh, I'm just going to go build
- 20:031. Yes, start, but start in the
- 20:05right way. What's your objective?
- 20:07What's your goal? Make sure that you understand
- 20:09it. Does it align to these big
- 20:11priorities that you have as a company?
- 20:12Because if you, if it doesn't, what are you doing?
- 20:16I know I have to drive Chris, you know this, you've lived it.
- 20:19Biggest issue that I see. Marketers likely face in the
- 20:24marketing seat is we drove amazing top of funnel, record
- 20:30numbers of top of funnel, no one cares.
- 20:32No one cares unless you can track it back to are we driving
- 20:37pipeline and more importantly, ACV and LTVI mean the longer you
- 20:41can get a customer to sign and adopt and get value, the better
- 20:45the relationship is for you and that customer.
- 20:48But as marketers, so often we get stuck in when we brought the
- 20:51lead and we got the inquiry, we got the MQL, the sale got passed
- 20:54over. What what are you doing?
- 20:56It's sales fault. As a marketer, your job is not
- 21:00to drive top of funnel leads. As a marketer, I get paid really
- 21:06well. If our stock does really well
- 21:08and if all I'm doing is driving top of funnel, that doesn't do
- 21:12any good for the business record top of funnel does not mean
- 21:16anything. So making sure, making sure that
- 21:19you are tied back to those key company initiatives and goals
- 21:23that matter and will actually move the needle.
- 21:26And so when you look at agents that can help you do things like
- 21:30that, make sure that you have a key priority and make sure that
- 21:34you are ready. That doesn't mean wait, but go
- 21:37get ready today. If you need to make sure that
- 21:39you are ready to do the things agentically that you may need to
- 21:42do. Is your data in a good place to
- 21:44be able to make those decisions? You have the people and the
- 21:48tools and the framework and the infrastructure to make sure that
- 21:52you can effectively use AI to be able to change and make a
- 21:56difference. Because if we're just getting
- 21:58back to the same days of wow, we drove record numbers of top of
- 22:01funnel or WOW, we drove a whole bunch of other likes and shares
- 22:05and vanity metrics that your board is not going to care
- 22:08about. What your board's going to care
- 22:10about is, is the company growing the way that it should?
- 22:13Are you building pipeline? Are you nurturing that pipeline?
- 22:17Are you helping the sales team all the way through so that they
- 22:19can get close? And then are you making sure
- 22:21that the onboarding experience is absolutely fantastic so that
- 22:26customer never has any reason to want to go anywhere else?
- 22:29That's the power of what AI agents could and should be able
- 22:32to do. But it starts with the basics of
- 22:35am I prepared? Are my people prepared?
- 22:37Is my data ready to be able to go and build those things?
- 22:40You think of the idea of crawl, walk, run, that's the place to
- 22:43start crawling is is my data, are my people, is my
- 22:47infrastructure? Am I ready to be able to get the
- 22:49value out of agents that I really can and should be
- 22:52getting? Yeah, that's great.
- 22:54Let's pick on the data piece. So is my data ready for
- 22:58organizations that haven't quite solved how to make all their
- 23:03data AI ready and putting it all in one place, the potential for
- 23:07garbage in, garbage out, as you said, what are the challenges
- 23:11that they're going to face and getting their data AI ready and
- 23:14how can those be addressed? Yeah, So a lot of it we have at
- 23:17Domo, we have an entire AI readiness guide, Google AI Chat,
- 23:22do whatever you will to find that, but.
- 23:23Yeah, we'll link it to this episode for sure.
- 23:27Go check it out because it will give you kind of that idea of
- 23:31what is it that I need to do to make sure that I am really ready
- 23:35to be successful. So we'll share a few things
- 23:37there, but one, you got to think about how do I actually prepare
- 23:41that data? So that may be things like how
- 23:43do I clean and organize it? How do I make sure the data is
- 23:46accurate? How do I make sure that it's
- 23:47orderly? You may have to deep clean it.
- 23:49There may be some stuff you have to purge that you got to get rid
- 23:51of. Then you've got to start
- 23:53thinking about how do I create deeper data relevance?
- 23:56How do I make sure that I'm updating and documenting that
- 24:00process and that governance is a big part of this data governance
- 24:04is that was another thing that came out in the AI innovation
- 24:07session yesterday was the AI governance is cool, which who's
- 24:12heard that said maybe ever we're at a time now where you have to
- 24:16have clean governed processes and data because if not, AI can
- 24:21get out of hand really, really quickly.
- 24:24So having a really solid governance strategy in place can
- 24:28make all the difference. So make sure your data is ready,
- 24:31make sure you're giving it context where it makes sense.
- 24:34Make sure that you get everything in a place where you
- 24:36can ask your data any question and it can give you answers to
- 24:40whatever question you ask. I mean, we are literally living
- 24:43in a world where you could ask, how is my paid search driving
- 24:47pipeline these days? What about for the past six
- 24:48months, the past 12 months or whatever?
- 24:50Like that's all very easy to do stuff.
- 24:53As long as your data is in a good place, you can get any
- 24:56answers that you need. As a CMOI, don't know how I ever
- 24:59would have done my job without something like Domo because I
- 25:03have the ability today to get any information that I need to
- 25:06know. How are things, how are things
- 25:08producing in Japan versus APEC versus North America, whether
- 25:13it's paid search or its events or whatever else, How are we
- 25:16getting attribution to the right things?
- 25:17And you can ask questions to that data as long as it is
- 25:21prepared and ready. So get ready, it's getting late.
- 25:24Get ready and start using it. Well, this may be a question you
- 25:27could ask too, but I, I'm curious as a CMO, how do you
- 25:32evaluate the ROI of AI powered initiatives?
- 25:35Because clearly there are some that we have to do and there are
- 25:38some notions of brand building where vanity metrics could be
- 25:42indicators that we're training in the right direction, but it's
- 25:45still not attaching the pipeline and revenues.
- 25:47So most are going to say yes and like we have to do it.
- 25:51But I'm, I'm curious if you're putting any ROI lens on AI
- 25:55initiatives right now? Yeah, it's a tough one, Chris,
- 25:58for sure. I mean, we are doing a lot of
- 26:01things with AI, whether it's AI chat on a website, whether it's
- 26:05having an AI agent make dials to people to invite them to things,
- 26:10whether it's content creation, whether it's image generation,
- 26:14whether it's, you know, competitive intelligence, the
- 26:17list goes on and on and on and on and on.
- 26:20And some of them are probably easier, you know, I guess it's
- 26:23easier to be able to say if we had an agent that went and made
- 26:26a whole bunch of dials for us, you can compare that to, well,
- 26:30how did they do compared to what some of our, you know, pre sales
- 26:35Adms or SDRS might have been able to do?
- 26:38What's the cost that those Adms or SDRS would cost us to be able
- 26:43to do something versus what that agent would cost us?
- 26:45So it all depends on what the function is that you are trying
- 26:49to achieve. What's the end goal?
- 26:51If it's content creation, well guess what, you're going to be
- 26:54able to create content exponentially faster.
- 26:56Now is it to the quality that you need?
- 26:59I am a big champion and fan and have been of a long time of
- 27:03content is only as good as the distribution strategy behind it.
- 27:07Kill the messenger, anybody who wants to, but you could give me
- 27:10the very worst piece of content. Very worst.
- 27:14And I can make it seen with enough money and enough strategy
- 27:19and enough of the right people helping us on the back end.
- 27:22But you give me an incredible piece of content with the right
- 27:25strategy in place, it could go bananas.
- 27:28So if it's content stuff, make sure you're looking at the
- 27:31metrics that really do matter. Because yeah, if you're just
- 27:34saying, well, wow, I can create blog post 20X faster in every
- 27:39language I want to, but is it? Is it good?
- 27:42And again, who cares? Unless you have a killer
- 27:45strategy in place to be able to push it out to the people, the
- 27:49key audience that you need to push it to like, it's not going
- 27:51to do any good. So make sure that you're looking
- 27:54at the individual activities that you're trying to do, no
- 27:58matter what it is, whether it's social, whether it's content,
- 28:01whether it's dialing, whether it's whatever.
- 28:04And then you've got to figure out what is the ROI or how do I
- 28:08measure the effectiveness of that specific effort.
- 28:11And it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be clear a
- 28:14lot of the times. However, I don't think it means
- 28:18you shouldn't do it currently. You should at least trial and
- 28:21test and see what you can get out of it.
- 28:24Absolutely, Mark, you triggered me a little bit there.
- 28:26I'm not going to lie. The distribution comment, I have
- 28:29left a job before because we built the best content I've ever
- 28:35been a part of it. We had the whole kit, we had
- 28:39everything for social, we had the videos and then it didn't
- 28:41get hooked into the distribution engine and it led to a
- 28:44conversation of you're paying me too much to not let me do my job
- 28:47respectfully. It was a great 2 hour chat and
- 28:51turned out to be one of the the drivers to one of my favorite
- 28:55roles I've ever had in my career.
- 28:57But yeah, when you said that, I really felt seen and heard
- 29:01because it's so true. It's so true.
- 29:03So you have we have to get both of those right.
- 29:06We're entering the final few minutes we have together.
- 29:09So we're going to shift to the lightning round.
- 29:11These can be quick hitters. The first, you can only pick
- 29:14one. What is the single biggest
- 29:17challenge in marketing today? Yeah, cool.
- 29:20I think you've covered that. Yeah.
- 29:22So I like the lightning round answer that was Family Feud
- 29:25style there like. I know I I talk too much.
- 29:28I apologize, but it's not only the biggest challenge, it's also
- 29:31the biggest opportunity by a mile.
- 29:33But it's changing so fast at every every day it feels like a
- 29:38new piece of research or something comes out.
- 29:41So yes, it's the biggest challenge, but that's not a
- 29:43reason not to do it. Like it is such a huge
- 29:46opportunity and you will get left behind if you're not
- 29:48already in and doing it. Yeah, I love that.
- 29:51And you know, very quick aside which you can agree or disagree
- 29:55on this, but one thing that I would stress here too, this is
- 29:58coming out of strength training. We had our marketing leadership
- 30:01off site and our executive off site recently in the past month.
- 30:05And I think many in marketing we're used to lots of attempts
- 30:11and failure and tend to obsess a little bit on our weaknesses.
- 30:15So I know for me personally, AI initially was in two buckets.
- 30:20It was we're going to be infinitely creative and try to
- 30:22learn new things and then some of the things I don't want to
- 30:26do, how can I get AI to do those things?
- 30:29The strength and opportunity you going from challenge to
- 30:33opportunity flag to that for me to say, I would encourage
- 30:37everyone listening to also think about how AI can supplement
- 30:41strengths because there's certainly the time save the
- 30:45things that we can do, but also if if we are uniquely good at
- 30:50certain things, T shaped marketer.
- 30:52I always say Roman numeral 4, right?
- 30:54Like like we go deeper in more areas.
- 30:56But if we think about that, how can we use all these tools to
- 31:00make us even stronger and more differentiated?
- 31:03I don't know if you would fight me on that one, but you going
- 31:06from challenge to opportunity really resonated with me because
- 31:10it was timely for something I've been thinking about personally.
- 31:13Because I will beat myself up over weaknesses and that
- 31:16detracts. It takes time away from me
- 31:19pushing forward on strengths where I'm different.
- 31:21Yeah, I think it's an intriguing question.
- 31:23Chris, our our CEO hawked his whole keynote at our big user
- 31:28conference Domopalooza. This year was heavily focused,
- 31:31of course, on AI and it went into a lot of things.
- 31:34It's intriguing. That's another one we ought to
- 31:36link to. But it went into a lot of the
- 31:38things that that AI is really, really, really good at, like
- 31:42Expert, and also the things that humans are really good at.
- 31:46And there's a lot of things, everyone, news flash, that
- 31:50humans are really good at, really good at.
- 31:53And so the ability for AI, an agent specifically, to be able
- 31:57to take whatever those Chris or Mark strengths are and amplify
- 32:01them or multiply them significantly is huge.
- 32:04It's not just about, hey, I can go create content way faster.
- 32:08Yeah, you could do that. Sure, that's table stakes at
- 32:11this point. But what are the things you are
- 32:13uniquely good at? The AI could help you be even
- 32:16better. That's the key.
- 32:18I wouldn't, I wouldn't fight you on that at all.
- 32:19I would say 100%. But too often with AI, we don't.
- 32:23We don't look at that. You look at, oh, it could create
- 32:25my content way faster. It could blah, blah, blah, blah,
- 32:27blah. It's like, yeah, but what about
- 32:29what I'm really good at? Can it make me better at that?
- 32:31I guess it can't totally. Yeah, that feels like the trap.
- 32:34So I I love that. OK, I broke the rules.
- 32:37I said lightning round and then I took us down a different path.
- 32:40So we're going to hit lightning round.
- 32:41Couple quick ones here. Favorite tools or technology?
- 32:44What stands out to you today? I am a big fan of Jasper.
- 32:51We're doing some cool things there.
- 32:53I am a big fan of DOMA. If that's not cheating, it is
- 33:00making my job as a marketer so much easier to know where I'm
- 33:03going and where where I've been and where I am going or should
- 33:06be going in the future. So those are a couple that are
- 33:08clear up at the top of the list. Tools, not so much.
- 33:11Platforms. I am a monster LinkedIn fan.
- 33:14I could not be a bigger fan of a social network.
- 33:16It's not even close. Awesome.
- 33:18What about Goodreads? And we could take that anywhere.
- 33:21Book, blog, newsletter, Podcast video.
- 33:25So I'm a little bit old school. I would say that the Business
- 33:28Bible may be the very best business book in the history of
- 33:31the world is How to Win Friends and Influence People.
- 33:34And you can read that, you can listen to it and be like,
- 33:37there's not really anything revolutionary in here.
- 33:39And you're like, well, yeah, yeah, there's not.
- 33:43But it's the simple basics of, of people and people matter and
- 33:48taking care of people and staying out of bad conflict.
- 33:52Conflict sometimes we run away from, but good conflict is
- 33:55really necessary for us to get to where we need to be going.
- 33:58So without question, that's my number one.
- 34:00I'm a big Patrick Lancione fan right now.
- 34:02I am in Brene Brown's Dare to lead.
- 34:04That's actually the book. We have a book club in our
- 34:07marketing and Adm organization. And right now we're we're just
- 34:11getting started. We have our our next book club
- 34:13meeting tomorrow. First first read of Dare to
- 34:16Lead. So those are a couple of
- 34:18interesting ones. Awesome, and who inspires you
- 34:21and B to B? So one of the companies that I'm
- 34:24obviously just a monster fan of is is Snowflake and Data Bricks,
- 34:29honestly. And Google and Oracle, like a
- 34:32lot of these these partners that that we work with quite a bit.
- 34:36I think that all of them on different levels have figured
- 34:39out to tell how to tell a really interesting story on sometimes
- 34:44what could be seen as a boring product.
- 34:47Denise, the CMO over it at Snowflake.
- 34:50I think that they've done some absolutely masterful things from
- 34:54a marketing perspective. And you look at their earnings,
- 34:56it's like, holy cow, you're growing how much on what size of
- 35:00a business? But Denise and team have done
- 35:02some incredible things in the BDB marketing space.
- 35:06Awesome. And then the most important
- 35:08question of all, Mark, how can everyone get in touch with you
- 35:11after the podcast and we know you're going to say LinkedIn?
- 35:14It it is absolutely positively carrier problem Jen it will be
- 35:20LinkedIn mark dot booth 1 booth with an E find me.
- 35:23Thank you so much, you crushed it.
- 35:24This is a great episode, appreciate your time.
- 35:27Thanks, Chris. Thanks for joining us for On
- 35:30Base. If you enjoyed this episode,
- 35:32please be sure to share, rate, review and subscribe on Spotify,
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- 35:39The show is brought to you by Demand Base, the only account
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- 35:45alignment.