The Most Valuable Marketing Skills Right Now (Per Greg Isenberg)

0:00Eric Siu:Does your experience with AI sound a little something like this? You've been prompting for 20 minutes. The output is polished, confident, and completely useless. That's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. HubSpot's AI works with your actual customer data, every interaction and every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. The most valuable marketing skills on the planet right now. Okay, so Neil, we can kind of go back and forth here.

0:30Eric Siu:So I think number one in my mind is if you have the ability to build community, and when I say build community, that means hosting small dinners, hosting happy hours, hosting small events. If you know how to build these communities, these are going to become more and more valuable over time. I mean, I remember even Sam Altman talking about this, you know, I think it's maybe three years ago or so seeing communities, events are going to become more and more valuable. And I truly believe that because we talk about all this AI stuff right now, but what ends up mattering is we start to realize that it's the human connection that matters more.

1:04Eric Siu:So if you know how to build that stuff, you can start small first. I've always mentioned this. Start small with a small dinner with like-minded people. You don't have to have a big network, right? You might be thinking, oh, it's easy for you to say. I literally started with a bag of chips and I didn't even have any money. And I was like 26 years old and I just connected a group of marketers together. and we just talk about our biggest problems and then we talked about the biggest hack that's working well for us right now. And then eventually that transitioned into doing happy hours. Then that transitioned into doing smaller events and then larger events, right?

1:31Eric Siu:And then you can even, then all those skills, by the way, those skills compound. And so let's say you get invited to speak at a conference. Well, then you could throw a side event that's tied to that, right? And so I think there's a lot of different ways to play it. And I think doing these events is a lot better than sponsoring a booth, for example. Yep. Dude, I totally agree. I think another skill set that's super important in marketing that people take for granted is storytelling. I look at marketing as building relationships with people. I know Eric talked about doing in-person events and building a community, but people tend to buy from people that they can relate to, that they like, that they can connect with.

2:08And to do it at mass scale, you really need to leverage storytelling. Yes, there's a social web and getting your message out there on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever channel you choose. But if you're not good at storytelling, you're not going to just be able to bring people in as much and build that relationship and be able to close them. I think it's a very underutilized skill. Everyone talks about storytelling and how it's powerful in marketing, but very few companies actually leverage storytelling from what I see. Yeah.

2:40Eric Siu:I think another one's going to be, I've talked about the rise of the forward-deployed marketer. So Palantir has this forward-deployed engineer, and people have different definitions of this now, but Palantir's model is they insert basically a full-time engineer in your company, and they learn how your business works, and they help you deploy on their foundry system, right, which is what Palantir has. And so I think you can also have versions of this where it's a full-time marketer on your staff where they go into a company, they implement agents, so they will set up the agents properly, they'll customize them and they'll continue to maintain them for the business.

3:15Eric Siu:And they might have an engineering helping from time to time. So at least that's what we're doing with my company. And so now, even when I had a good chat with somebody yesterday, even when I had a chat with him, I'm like, look, man, we're not hiring you to join traditional agency. That model is dead, right? You're coming to be a forward deployed marketer. I'm here to break the model, right? And he's like, that's exactly what I want to do. You get him excited. But then he has to be able to speak the game. He has to talk about what he's actually deployed before. Because my belief now is that the human can say, okay, the human starts at the beginning, they find what they want to do.

3:45Eric Siu:The agents should be able to handle the bulk of the work. I'm not saying all the work, but a lot of the work. And then you have the human at the end for judgment and taste, right? And then you should be able to compound out a lot more. But all that stuff, like your clients want this, right? They want you to figure out how to manage it for them. They want you to figure out the right connectors. They want you to figure out the right workflows. They want you to even figure out token routing as well, token optimization. I mean, I'm in this one AI chat right now where there's like 23, 24 execs. And a lot of them are operators of businesses doing, they have like thousands of employees.

4:15Eric Siu:I'm talking like some are five, 8 ,000 employees or so. And they're all talking about their AI challenges. But I can see this. I'm telling you, a lot of people want this done for them. And they want some form of forward deployed happening for their business. I would say another skill set that's super important is being able to understand data. And you may be thinking, Neil, why do I need to understand data when I can just use chat GPT and it can just crunch all the numbers for me or use Claude or any of the other solutions out there? It's not the same. The reason I say it's not the same is, let's say you are starting a brand new marketing campaign and you want to run Google and Facebook ads.

4:54In the first few days, if you If you're having it analyze your profitability and ROI, the chances are you're losing money and it's doing terrible and it's going to end up telling you, hey, it's not working. But if you've been doing marketing for a long time, you know that your first few days, even first few weeks, sometimes even first few months aren't going to go as well as you may want. The campaign is not going to be fully perfect and fine-tuned. It takes time to scale, ramp it up, and fine-tune conversions and experiment with different marketing messages, campaigns, landing pages, creatives, etc.

5:31So if you just have AI look at the data, it'll tell you it's not working, but it may not understand that it needs time to really learn and figure out what traffic sources are best for you. what creative combinations are best for you with the headlines and texts and all that kind of stuff with the landing pages. But a marketer who understands data combined with having experience is going to much better understand what's working, what's not, how fast it's progressing, and if they should keep doing it or not. And I wouldn't recommend fully relying on AI just for number crunching. In many cases, it's off.

6:14I'm not saying majority. It's gotten a lot better than before. but I think you as a marketer need to be good at understanding data, reading it, and deciding what to do based off of it. I don't think you should be relying 100 % on AI to just analyze the data for you and then tell you what to do because there's going to be a lot of times where it's wrong. There's also going to be a lot of times where it's just rinse and repeating what's worked for other people in the past. And what we see in marketing is doing new stuff that other people haven't been doing is, you know, much more successful than in many cases, that's what bears the success than just rinse and repeating the same old playbook that everyone else is using.

6:56Eric Siu:You know what AI is, Neil, for some people? AI, not some people, a lot of people. AI is the abdication of intelligence. You abdicate your intelligence because you expect to just do everything for you. Oh, analyze the data. And then they take it at face value. And then they have the they have the guts to present that data to you as well. That's the worst, right? Or when you see people, let's say they do a sales presentation, right? They're doing a sales presentation. Oh, wait a minute. Wait, Neil, the sales presentation you're showing, didn't you just do that with Cloud Design? Because it has all the elements from Cloud Design and it looks like slop.

7:29Eric Siu:And so if you aren't, we said that there's that two by two where you have people that are maybe not the smartest and then they use AI, they become slop cannons, right? You don't want to do that. So I think another one that sticks out to me is you don't only want just someone that's good at marketing. That's obviously very important and it's becoming more and more important. You want to know how to marketers who can ship. So let's say like a builder or like a builder, like a marketer builder. That's what we'll just call it, right? If you can build something, let's say you get a prototype out there, it's 80 % there, and you continue to iterate on it, but you know how to drive distribution, so you know how to make LinkedIn work, you know how to make X work, you know how to make short form work.

8:11Eric Siu:You see a lot of these people on Instagram right now, comment this, 9 ,000 likes on it, right? So if you learn how to crack the code on one of these, just get one of them good, and eventually you can learn the other ones, you're going to be in a really good spot. Yeah, I would also say the next skill that, you know, if you want to succeed as a marketer is you need to, I wouldn't say creativity, right? Because I think AI can help you with quite a bit of creativity. But it's more so leveraging that creativity and running a lot of experiments. if you can't run enough experiments on different channels and you're not good at thinking of what experiments to run it's just tough to do well because what I found is when everyone says oh go look at me look at this case city this is what works copy it step by step and then enough people eventually do it it tends not to work as well going forward in the future all good marketing channels eventually get saturated the way you end up winning right Eric talked about that compounding effect.

9:12If someone's using AI before you and they've been using it for a year, you have a lot to catch up on. The way you catch up isn't by doing the same stuff that they did. It's by trying a whole new approach. If someone zigs, you zag. By doing something drastically different, in many cases, you can catch up and beat someone by doing one-tenth, one-twentieth of the output, but by just doing something totally different that the market will love. And it's hard to figure out what that is unless you experiment and you're going to get a lot of failures.

9:41Eric Siu:Yeah. I want to talk about something before I talk about how agents will use software 100 times more than people. So you and I, we know somebody who is relatively well-known in the creator space. I'll just leave it at that. And it's interesting because the number of creators that this person has hired for their, their, let's say their creator team, has gone through like four iterations basically, right? And what I had learned from one of these individuals working with this guy is that he actually had a good quote. He's like, look, man, like the content can build a brand, okay? But it's the culture that retains.

10:26Eric Siu:I'm gonna say that again. You can get all the views in the world and they'll build a great brand for you. But ultimately, once people come to work for you, they start to realize who you actually are and they start to ask themselves is if this is a place that they actually want to stay at right so the culture that you build matters um and culture those of you might be thinking oh like what does that even mean culture is just how you do things right and you might align with how certain certain companies do things you might not align you just gotta find a culture that works for you but i just found that was really interesting because there's a lot of good people that churned from that uh that company and it's interesting because when I play poker with this group of entrepreneurs, that was kind of the topic that came up.

11:07Eric Siu:It's like, oh yeah, that company had churned through a lot of creators, right? So all that to say is that you can, like we just talked about, it's important to build distribution. It's important to build a good brand. But I think if you really want to, if you really want to compound using that word again for the long term, you have to learn how to bring people along. What's that inspiring mission? Okay. What's that culture? How do you bring them into that culture too, and not just make it all about you, you, you all the time. I'll just leave it at that.

11:38Dude, people forget about culture and marketing. It's like you have a crap culture. It really screws up the team in the long run. I think that goes well beyond marketing. But just generally, people are like, oh, I want to hire this person. They're so amazing what they do. I'm like, but they have a crap culture. Or they have a crap attitude. Their beliefs don't align with your company beliefs. It won't end up working.

11:57Eric Siu:Well, Neil, hold up. I mean, one second on that. You think about this, right? You look at your relationships you've had over the years from people that have worked with you a long time ago. I look at my relationships that I've kept over the years. So, for example, Raghav, shout out to Raghav, who's Gary V's right-hand man now. He worked for Single Grain for a while, right? I keep in touch with these people. And you've kept in touch with some of these people for a very long time, even people that have left you. And some of these people that have worked for you, and same thing for me, they've gone on to start their own companies.

12:23Eric Siu:And I'm very proud of these people, right? And so people like over a long period of time, this is why people like to watch long form podcasts to see who you are. They can tell who you are. And so all I'm saying is like you can do the content thing, but eventually people are going to realize who you are. You should just play for the long game. And that means treating people the right way. And so all of that does factor into your marketing. So go ahead. And I want to say another thing that you really need to do as a marketer is have a great network. So Eric talked a little about community at the beginning.

12:52That was the first one. but Eric and I have both been to a lot of conferences. And when you go to conferences, you'll see sessions. People talk about what they're doing, what they're not, what's working, what isn't, share some stats and case studies. But Eric and I, when we've been at conferences or just business networking events, we found that some of the best strategies come not from being in the session, not necessarily from drinking with people. I don't think Eric drinks alcohol, I don't either. but it's come from sitting down one-on-one, kind of like at a bar, it doesn't matter what you're drinking and just sharing what's working with other people and people just talk and they'll end up saying, hey dude, you should try this out, look at the results from this and they'll share the stuff with you that they would have never shared in public or to a mass audience.

13:39I've gotten a lot of strategies that way. I don't know if you have Eric, but I'm guessing you have.

13:43Eric Siu:All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host, is Neil's agency called NP Digital. And they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and Answer to Public. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more. And we'll see you on the other side. And that's why. I have a really good one. Let me give you this one. Do you remember there's this time when we both went to traffic and conversion conference in San Diego and we sat at the bar of a Starbucks? Do you remember this? No. Okay, so this had to be like close to 10 years ago.

14:16Eric Siu:So sorry to interrupt you, Neil, but this one conversation Neil and I had saved my business. Okay. This is the time, the same time when I took over single grain, I made it go from bad to worse. And the outside accounting firm said it might be time to shut it down. This is weeks after I had that conversation. Okay. So Neil and I were just talking at traffic and conversion conference. He's like, at the time we started ranking number one for the keyword digital marketing agency. Right. And so, but Neil's like, oh, you should refer the leads to this one agency. We refer all the leads to this agency and we take a, like a, we could, we take a nice cut from them.

14:45Eric Siu:Right. and I was like, oh, who's the agency? We started sending all the leads over there. That revenue recovered us so we were able to hire the people that we needed but that's an example of a random conversation Neil and I had and it wasn't even like I was looking for that conversation. It just happened. Yeah, and that's what happens when you get people one-on-one but I would have never said that publicly in front of a speech at that time at Traffic and Conversion even though it was a paid mastermind although I didn't pay to go. I don't know if you did. it was a paid mastermind. I don't know what people were spending.

15:17Was it 25, 50 grand? We weren't at the mastermind.

15:20Eric Siu:We were at the big conference for that one. It wasn't War Room. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Traffic and conversion, not War Room. But still, right? Traffic and conversion ticket, let's say it's a few thousand bucks. Whether it was that or whether it was War Room, I don't think I would have went on stage and be like, hey guys, in front of 100 people or whether it's 1 ,000 people and said, you can end up doing this. But one-on-one, people are more flexible. And you get some of the best marketing strategies from it. But dude, I was one-on-one two weeks ago with someone and they were talking about, what is it called?

15:51Quora. So I don't use Quora too much. And Quora is not really like a social site like Reddit where people give reviews on a company or product. But sometimes they do mention companies and stuff like that. and there was this guy in there. He was telling me on how there was a thread on Quora and it mentioned his company name and it did it in a really negative way. And I'm like, you mean Reddit? He's like, no, no, Quora. I was like, oh, okay. And I was like, so what'd you do? He's just like, I got it deleted. I'm like, you got it deleted? He's like, yeah, I know someone who could get a lot of stuff deleted on Quora.

16:27I was like, oh, that's interesting. He's like, let me know if you need an introduction. I'm like, I'm good, but thank you. For example, if I needed something deleted on Quora, you know, I could leverage that introduction. My philosophy though, when it comes to social communities, isn't to focus on quote unquote deleting, it's to be proactive and try to figure out the root of the problem and then solve that. Because if you just pay to get something deleted, I believe it's just going to come back with someone new and all they're going to end up doing is just trying to milk some money off of you, right?

16:59Because they're just like, oh, I'll pay to get this deleted or pay and people keep charging you. And two, I don't like the concept of pay for play. I believe if someone's mad at you because of a review or a bad product or a bad experience, if you fix it and you show it and you show that you genuinely care, it can be used as an opportunity for marketing and for you to get more customers. I think North Face is a great example of this. Someone was hiking with the North Face jacket. This was supposed to be waterproof. It didn't work out well. They put on social media complaining. North Face flew with a helicopter, delivered the new product, and the person was ecstatic and it really helped their brand and get out there.

17:35That's why I'm a big believer in not paying to delete or delete. Instead, what you should do is fight fire or fight people hating on you with kindness. And I found that that usually pays off.

17:47Eric Siu:That was a great North Face thing campaign. But I think that was a UGC campaign that they put together. It looked real to me. And then someone's like, oh, it's a UGC campaign. I'm like, oh, okay. But they did it a few times too. But one thing to go back on with Neil talking about networking in general. So I always collect intros. I'll tell you this much. Because like, for example, like maybe there's a Quora guy, maybe someone does this, maybe someone does this. So I always will say, like, who are the best people you know? Who should we talk to, right? And then I always just make a list of these people that I'll potentially come back to later.

18:20Eric Siu:That's one thing you can do. So it's all about building relationships. But going back to War Room. So War Room was the mastermind that Digital Marketer had. And I did pay for it, Neil. This is in 2017, 2018, something like that. that. But it was our late friend, Brandon Stapper. And then Yaniv, we joined as a throuple, basically. And we were real estate investors. And so we got a good deal there. But anyway, all that to say is that from that group, we formed almost like a mastermind group from that. It's a group of eight or nine people where we meet every single year. Since 2018, we've met every single year.

18:57Eric Siu:First, we started with Cabo. We've been to Boldrum, Turkey together. Last year, We go to all these places in Mexico, right? Next year, we're going to Mexico again. But all that to say is that I remember we would go on a little boat trip. I'm not going to name names. Someone had a conversation, and that one conversation led to millions of dollars for one person. I'll just leave it at that, right? So I'm just saying that these relationships compound, and you want to keep them over time. And look, William has joined us as well. William's going to be famous on the internet. so yeah and dude one thing i learned from talking to with uh yaniv from nextiva he has a phone company he's like dude one other way to do well is you go into industries that are regulated or hard to just enter in and even because like he's in telecom you can't just go set up a telecom company and just compete it is very regulated throughout the whole world but the same goes for even setting up a marketing agency it's not hard like we opened up uh incorporation in taiwan the amount of money we had to put in and all the restrictions and stuff just to get it set up in Taiwan it adds up those things just make it more and more harder for other people to play and compete how dare you enter my country um but anyway i need some space if you want me to enter sooner

20:22Eric Siu:oh there you i'm not on mute your your dad cannot come in you guys can come though So, all right. So, I'm going to move over to... Tell her when you're on mute. Okay, so Erin Levy says this. Agents will use software 100x, 100 times more, Emma, more than people. So, when that happens here, let me share my screen over here so you can see this, Neil. So, check this out. Okay, so when that happens, there's a huge need for guardrails on what the agents are doing so they don't leak data or change the wrong information, authoritative sources of truth for them to work with, logging and auditing of what they're doing, the ability to collaborate with people through these systems and more.

21:04Eric Siu:So all this to say is that you look at Salesforce. People are using Salesforce five times more than before because they have this headless system, right? And nobody wants to log into UI because Salesforce UI is a piece of crap. A lot of the stuff I query around HubSpot now is just me talking to the API, right? And just querying from my agents. And so we've talked about our softwares, whether it's Ubersuggest or whether it's ClickFlow. We do have an API. We do have an MCP for it. And we're starting to see this happen more and more. I think it was Stripe that just came out with the agent directory.

21:34Eric Siu:And so all this stuff is forming right now. And I think if you can start to optimize for the agents, I think, by the way, someone just mentioned on X that he's just creating directories for med spots, for example, to kind of just spam for the agents to pick up. And so there's going to be a lot of agent spam for sure. We would encourage you again to take the long approach here. But I do believe that agents will use software 100 times more than people. And because of this usage, I think they'll probably come up with more creative ways to use it as well. Dude, I totally agree with you on that one.

22:07The other cool part with agents is the moment they start using software, I think you're going to start seeing a whole boom in the software industry.