Latest / Talk Commerce / B2B Marketing Strategy Under AI Pressure with Kathy Floam-Greenspan of POM Marketing
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:01.318) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce that I have Kathy Floam-Greenspan. She is the founder and chief strategist for POM Marketing. Kathy, do a much better introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (00:17.454) Okay. Well, I started POM Marketing over 25 years ago. And like you said, I'm the founder and chief strategist, chief cook and bottle washer, really. You know, me and my team, we work with growing B2B companies, you know, typically companies that have big growth goals, but lean, they're lean and internal resources, which really is kind of a common thread in today's world. so my role, the industries that we're in are cybersecurity, IT services, Saas infrastructure, high stakes, a big need to be clear, and in the world of marketing. So my role is to help organizations cut through the noise, get focused and execute in a way that's going to really move the needle in terms of moving their business forward. So that's my and it's I really feel like in teeth in today's world. I've turned into the chief protector of focus in marketing because it is tough out there Brent Peterson (01:29.786) Yeah, good chief protector of focus. And how about passions? What kind of passions do you have outside of outside of marketing? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (01:32.238) Mm-hmm. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (01:37.774) Well, I live on the water in the Chesapeake Bay, so love boating, love how summer is coming. Even have a dog, a golden doodle named Summer. So just really love life on the water and I'm excited to kind of embrace the season. It's been a long winter. Brent Peterson (01:59.556) Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, I to spend my winters in Hawaii, so we're also on the water, but then I spend my summers in Minnesota. So if anybody knows where Minneapolis is, it's between LA and New York, and it has a lot of water. All right, so before we get started, and we're going to talk about the survey that you did and some of the results that you saw and maybe some things you were surprised from the survey, we're going to do the free joke project. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (02:05.697) Kathy Floam-Greenspan (02:16.362) Okay. Brent Peterson (02:29.508) I'm going to tell you a joke. You just give me a rating 8 through 13. So here we go. A man bursts into a doctor's office yelling doctor doctor help I'm shrinking. The doctor looks at him and says relax. You'll just have to be a little patient. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (02:33.622) You got it. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (02:48.142) Good one! Cute! I think it was cute. I'll give you a ten. Brent Peterson (02:54.25) All right, well, thank you very much for that. All right, so, like, just start off with, like, how did you end in B2B? And 25 years ago, were you still doing B2B marketing? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (03:08.206) So yeah, I, 25 years ago was working for a small agency. First I worked for a big one, then I worked for a small one and I got real hands on with working with tech companies back then, which is kind of crazy. And just found that I had this ability to understand complex stuff and put it into English in order to help market it. you know, at some point I just decided to go off on my own. was, I turned into an account manager. So I was out there talking to, the clients and hearing about their business challenges and just went off on my own and, use this kind of like, you know, idea of helping people translate what they're doing in a way that would resonate with their target audiences. And, lo and behold, POM was born. And it's gone through lots of different iterations over the years. Kind of where we've landed today is I have this great team that I've worked with for years. And we just are more of a boutique firm where we plug into tech companies that have little resources in-house, which, you know, they'll have like a couple people and big, big goals. And they're looking for capacity and firepower. So that's how they plug into our team to get results. Brent Peterson (04:41.414) Yeah, that's great. So you did this survey. us a little bit about what was in the survey, and maybe we can then go into what are some of the things that you've learned from doing the survey. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (04:53.484) Yeah. So, you know, was just so much change going on in the industry. We thought it would, you know, we saw it and we felt it with all the clients that we were working with. And we thought it would be cool to kind of do a survey to find out what B2B marketers are really thinking and experiencing in today's world. So we did the survey and, you know, it came back with lots of, you know, different interesting findings, but there were some key ones that, you know, kind of made us take note. And so I can kind of get into those types of things if you'd like, the FQ findings. Okay. Brent Peterson (05:31.28) Yeah, yeah. What made you take note? That'd be really interesting to hear. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (05:35.082) Okay. Some of the things that, you know, the first big finding was the resource gap. So we interviewed a hundred B2B marketers, all different types of roles. Like I said, like director of marketing, marketing managers, CMOs. It was very interesting. And across the 69 % of the people that we interviewed said that expectations are outpacing staffing time or budget. So. You know, it's like, there's a lot of pressure on marketers, B2B marketers today. Um, yet they don't have all the resources they need in terms of staffing time or budget to get things done. So that was definitely eye opening, although we witnessed it. Um, but it was cross the board. Um, the second is the ROI challenge. Um, 29 % of marketers, only 29 % of the marketers that we spoke with. that we surveyed, feel confident proving marketing's impact. Which, you know, with all the technology that you have today to, you know, get analytics and data and reporting, that was kind of surprising to us. And then the third is that, you know, 80 % say that AI is impacting strategy, but many don't have a clear plan on how to use it. That I think that Really what we saw is a lot of misalignment in terms of, you know, it's not a lack of effort. It's not a lack of talent. It's kind of a lack of clarity around priorities. It's just intense out there in the B2B marketing land. Priorities are shifting and I would say even weekly priorities are shifting. And I think marketers are really struggling to keep up. That's what we're experiencing. So I feel like, you know, this, all this data kind of illuminated all this when we did the survey. Brent Peterson (07:40.764) Do you think that some of that trying to keep up and maybe missed expectations on ROI could be leadership's thought on AI is that AI is gonna deliver everything and anything always, and it's gonna do it with less people. And when the marketer actually sits down and starts to use it and realizes, hey, you know. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (07:57.516) night. Brent Peterson (08:06.904) chat GPT is giving me the exact same thing that it's given the other marketing companies that are using chat. The other million marketing companies that are putting in the same thing that we're not really getting anything different than how do you stand out? then how do you stand out with less resources and less people? Right? Is that kind of what one of the things or one of the hypothesis? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (08:16.108) Right. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (08:28.022) Yeah, well, and I think they just keep like, let's do this and let's do that. And let's do this. And it's just like keeping things on marketing to get, you know, just think that everything can be done easier and faster. And, you know, it's a tool, AI is a tool that you can collaborate with and get ideas and, you know, all that. It's just not yet the end all be all it can't, you know, plan and run and handle every single aspect of an event for you. I mean, and it can help. It can put things in spreadsheets. It can do a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong, but there is a human aspect of marketing that I believe to date can't be replaced by AI. Maybe you can have less people, but I just see leadership as just, I don't even think they're thinking in the industries that we work on. you work in, I think it's just a demand for more, more, more. I don't even know that they're thinking about AI necessarily. I think they just want more and it's like a reaction to how dynamic the environment is now. They're just, you we were doing this and we're doing, you know, you got to stay the course with marketing to really get results. And if you keep changing directions, you can't get results. I don't care how much AI is involved in the equation, you know? So I think that is where the protecting the focus comes into play. Brent Peterson (10:04.538) Yeah. mean, think protecting the focus sounds like a really great name for a marketing newsletter. And I can say, can speak from experience that I've had leadership teams that are constantly changing direction, then always disappointed in the results because maybe they ran it for two weeks or they ran a campaign for a month. you know, where a campaign maybe should go for a full quarter to start seeing results. And even, I think if you go into LinkedIn, they're going to say, just to get the tools to learn what your audience is, you should run it for two weeks, right? I think there's so many things that are real that people overlook because like you said, the hype and they're excited to get to the next thing. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (10:37.44) Exactly. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (10:47.5) Yeah, it's like whiplash, you know? And so I try to, you know, it used to be, you know, back in the day, you'd have kind of an end of year planning meeting and you'd set goals for the upcoming year and you come up with a marketing plan and you'd put that plan into, you know, action. And sure, things would change and you would shift, but it wasn't like today. Now it's like, if you could get a quarterly plan in place and implement it, that's a win. You know, that's really a win. And that's what I try to do with our clients is steer them into having a quarterly plan and just staying focused on that plan. And then it's, you you want to do a new campaign in the next quarter? Okay, let's get that on the docket and start planning for that. But don't keep changing the focus because you're not going to be happy with the outcome. I just think that there's this consistency that's needed and to get results, like you're saying, for many different reasons. what's going to happen. think that everybody's trying to do so many different things right now that they're just, everybody needs to take a breath and really think about what the priorities are and what goals you have and what the success really looks like and stay the course. Play the longer game with it. It's hard. Brent Peterson (12:19.762) Yeah, I'd be interested to learn, like I'm a big EOS believer, entrepreneur operating system, and I believe it's a framework that helps you move forward and it puts you into a quarterly rock and you have L10 meetings and all kinds of things that what you're talking about sets you up for success and measuring what you're doing, giving everybody a scorecard. Do you differentiate between your clients who may be using a structured system to... manage their business like EOS or I know that there's a bunch of other systems out there, bloom reach, compared to the ones that aren't using anything and they're just kind of flying by the seat of their pants. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (13:00.998) I mean, I don't want to, every client has their different way of measuring results, you know, in terms of what they report back to leadership, the metrics that they're reporting back to leadership. What we try to impose is, you know, they're using 9 million different tools and all of them have analytics in them. And it's really hard to create a story with all these different tools. And we work with our clients to get them to feed them into one system, a dashboard system where everything can live in that system and we can start interpreting the data for them where marketing is concerned. I personally find it extremely useful in terms of, you know, being able to guide their efforts. But I still, in some ways I feel like they're still like living in the day. And they're really, it is just like, it's a bit of the wild west out there. You know, so I just try to, every time there's a shift and I try to reflect back what the last goals were and why aren't these important and where are we going with this now? And, know, sometimes it works and we can stay the course because I'm, you know, holding up the mirror. You know, but some like in terms of data, We use the dashboards. They typically use PowerPoints that are generated from data from the dashboard to show to leadership. And that's fine. know, whatever works. There's no one system that I haven't seen any common thread in any of the companies that we're working with, sadly. Brent Peterson (14:43.762) That's interesting. know that one of the things that you found was that 79 % of the markets agree that AI has significantly impacted them, but there's also a lot of adoption without a roadmap. Talk a little bit about how that plays into this sort of disconnect with maybe leadership. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (15:08.096) Yeah, I'm still kind of watching and to see how this all plays out. feel like everybody in the land that we're working in, everybody kind of has their tools of choice that they like, you know, and sometimes it depends on their environment and what they're allowed to use. And then sometimes they just have things that they like. you know, right now, I feel like the marketing teams that we're working with are so overwhelmed that they're to use it to produce you know, PowerPoints for events and things like that, you know, for speaking events and things like that. And they like feel somewhat hopeful about how it can help them, but then they're not really that happy with the outcome of the content that's created. You know, people are using it for ideas and things like that, but I feel like the marketing teams that we're working with are just so underwater, that they're just kind of relying on us to figure stuff out. And our team really has kind of our tools that we like and that we use, but we use them with caution. And you know, we still check things out and make sure that, you know, you still they still do the things need to be still kind of source to make sure that it's Legit, I still have a healthy amount of skepticism with AI. I think that if you just don't, then that's, I think, worrisome, honestly. Brent Peterson (16:46.45) Yeah, I mean, think, and the other thing I think of that users are now recognizing, especially when content is created by AI. So you as a marketer need to be very educated on what content is out there that is generated by AI that's very, call it AI slop. And that how are you users gonna receive that? It might be. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (17:07.362) Right. Brent Peterson (17:11.978) If you're in gated B2B, it might be a little different. Maybe people don't care so much because they just want to get to the product. But I think in actual marketing speak, people recognize now that AI, if not helped along by a human, is going to be pretty generic. What else? I like one of your quotes. You said these findings should be a wake-up call for the C-suite, not just a marketer. What did you mean by that? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (17:30.062) Yes. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (17:40.674) I think it comes back to the protecting the focus. I think that we need the C-suite to help with that. And it is tough. if they're, you know, to really commit to what the objectives are and communicate those and, you know, marketing needs to help feel confident and secure enough to kind of hold them to that, which is not easy, you know. but I do think it, the C-suite needs to help protect the focus. I think that's, critical of knowing what they're looking, to achieve and, and letting marketing, be, have the, you know, enough of a ramp to do so, you know, just enough consistency and time to achieve it. Because I just see that as like the number one problem out there and the land. And as far as AI is concerned, just to kind of circle back to that, you know, one of the things that I've done is I took this masterclass on AI and it's like 13 hours of training and you get a certificate out of it. And I know there's other things out there, but it's actually really well done. It's in that masterclass, you know, website that they have all these different classes. And it's like, I did it. And then I've been kind of using that, my learnings to guide my team and what I think that they need to be using the tools that we need to be exploring, how we need to be using them. I think like most people are just like, they have no idea really of the, how much AI can do, you know, and how to use it. And, know, I mean, it's just so much more than writing an email for you or, know, coming up with an idea. It's it's amazing. But there's so much education that is still needed for people. And I think that's, nobody's thinking about that, which is kind of amazing. Brent Peterson (19:43.026) Is there anything out of the report that just was like, oh wow, I did not see that coming? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (19:49.198) think the number one thing that was kind of astounding to me was how the issues that we saw, it had nothing to do with title. It didn't matter about company size and it didn't matter about role. It was a consistent experience. Whether you were director of marketing, marketing manager, or CMO, people were describing the same tension. regardless of company size or title, not enough resources, challenges proving ROI, needing to figure out AI, but having very little time to do so. Pressure to keep up. Brent Peterson (20:30.482) Do you think there's... So one thing I've heard in the B2B community is that more and more younger, the younger generation like yourself, are taking over some of the legacy leadership and that their expectations of what B2B is, is completely different than the person who started 40 years ago or 30 years ago. Do you think that just the switch from dynamics on like millennials now running companies and Gen Xers are now retiring, which I can't believe, is that, do you think that plays into some of these different expectations? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (21:10.382) Right? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (21:14.35) I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. I think it's so many different things. There's also like the, just the environment, like with private equity, companies changing ownership rapidly, that changes focus and in terms of focus, vision, goals, everything. mean, all of that's happening regularly in the B2B environment. So yeah, I think it's whatever, the leadership in the team and just this dynamic environment of rapid change that is all around us. And it just makes you wonder, know, I, you know, I've, I saw the whole.com that whole thing and what went on with that. know, I've lived through enough changes in this business environment to just wonder about. Don't you feel that way, Brent? You know, you're just like, is this a bubble? Everybody and their mother is now putting AI on their website. You know, we do a lot of work with government contractors and, you know, just like it's AI, AI, AI. And it's like, you know, one would think that government contractors need to be careful about how they're using AI. So it's just, I just wonder about all of this. Could just be a tool. Brent Peterson (22:10.13) Yes, definitely. Yep. Brent Peterson (22:38.054) Yeah, I an interesting report from ChatGPT, I think it was, where some of the Accenture data was getting leaked back into, because there's so many developers from Accenture using AI to do code that a lot of that stuff was going back and getting back into the... Because of the volume of that, what they're doing was enough to kind of push the needle on. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (22:53.187) Yup. Brent Peterson (23:05.006) on that and you have to be careful when you're sharing it back, especially if you're on a, I suppose the older systems were different than they are today. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (23:12.94) Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yep. Brent Peterson (23:14.424) so Kathy, we have a few minutes left and she's, it's already, we've already burned through our 15 minutes and 25 minutes. We could, we could keep talking for the next hour. But as, as I do finish off the podcast, I do every, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like, but would you like to plug today? Kathy Floam-Greenspan (23:33.966) Well, I guess if you have any interest in the survey that we did, we published a report called "Marketing Under Pressure" and you can access that at POMAGENCY.COM/survey. So you can access the survey. There's also a lot of great tools for marketers in the resource section of our site. And you know, if you're a company with big growth goals, but a lean marketing team, you know, we'd love to talk. further so you can hit the contact page on our site at POMagency.com. Brent Peterson (24:09.746) That's awesome, and I will make sure we get all those in the show notes. Kathy, it's been such a good conversation. Thank you so much for being here today. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (24:13.185) Awesome. Kathy Floam-Greenspan (24:17.422) Thank you, Brent.