How to Outrank LLMs, Bypass AI Agents, and Actually Get Noticed!

0:00We are flipping the script. We're putting Stephanie, your typical host, in the hot seat. People are going into ChatGPT. They're asking questions. They want to get the information they want right away. It's being summarized for them, but this is a very different space of buying. Can't be summarized. Yeah. What is an account-based experience and why are you thinking that that's the future? When it comes to search, I mean, we're moving to this place of like one click buy. Give me my answer right away. I'm not going to go and like browse on someone's website. It's not just marketing. It's across the board.

0:30We're seeing this transition of how sales, marketing, customer success all interact. Giving my human meat suit an experience that I'm out in this world and I'm like, that brand brought me here with all these amazing people. And it was weird and it was funky and they did this event thing for me. And like, that's going to stand out. Community driven stuff's going to stand out. These are the things that AI can't do. We talked a lot about B2B AI agents. Do you think consumers will have AI agents of their own?

1:01All right, welcome to Marketing Trends. I am Lacey Peace, your host for today. You've probably never, ever heard my voice, which is pretty hysterical because I've been behind the scenes for about a decade now. And we are flipping the script today. We're putting Stephanie, your typical host, in the hot seat. She's right here. Hello, Stephanie. Welcome. Hello. A little scared about this. I know. But this is fun. Bringing you on the mic, I mean, And geez, the fact that you've not been on the mic in 10 years and you've just been doing everything at this company behind the scenes. So I'm happy to have you.

1:34Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I'm excited. And I hope you feel a little sweaty. I already am. I'm sure. I was thinking I was like, I actually already am sweating. So it's a good time being nervous. When's the last time you were interviewed? I mean, that was probably six months ago, probably on Justin Donald's podcast, where that was only like my second time ever being interviewed. And I was like, that was weird. I think I like interviewing people. So this is your third time being interviewed? Oh, my gosh. Wow. That's pretty fascinating since you've done. What is it? Two thousand? Yeah, definitely over two thousand.

2:05Oh, my gosh. Wow. I'm going to get you out there more. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see how this goes. Right. Yeah. Well, what I'm really excited about today with this episode and the reason why we're doing this is because I've heard so many conversations with you and executives over the last decade, but also most recently in the last like three months discussing marketing in the age of AI. And there's so much to uncover there. And there's been these little tidbits you've shared that haven't been on mic, that I hear you tell friends or you're out at dinner and you mentioned something. And so I kind of want to take this opportunity today to just dive into the things that people haven't heard from you yet and hear how you're thinking about marketing in the age of AI and kind of what's coming up for the rest of the year.

2:46We're already almost a third of the way through. Can you believe that? No. Like by the time this releases, it'll definitely be a third of the way through. the year. So yeah, I just wanted to see you up there and kind of hear how you're thinking about marketing now. Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely been interesting watching the shift because I think, I mean, AI is, I believe like the biggest innovation bigger than the internet that we've seen in our lifetime and previous lifetimes. I mean, it has the impact or it's going to have the impact in ways that we can't even predict. So that's probably why in the past couple months that has been the bulk of conversations of like, how do I think about AI and marketing and my job and like what's happening in this space and where's it going?

3:27And so when I think about marketing right now and a lot of what I'm hearing is that what we've done before is just not gonna work anymore. Like everything that we've learned, all the skills that we built up when it comes to cold emails and like cast a big net and let's focus on MQLs and see how many people we can get in. And then it shifted into ABM. How can we really go from casting a net and catching lots of little fishies and hoping some of them are qualified and they convert to then going to ABM and saying, how can I focus with a spear, like spearfish, go after my key account, my big executive, really target them hard to finding out maybe that wasn't, it's not going to work anymore because now people are smart and customers want to buy how they want to buy and they know what's happening to then now shifting into this more like AI driven space of wondering, how do why, learn new skills, market in a completely different way, which I mean, if you think about like, let's just go to how your emails are right now.

4:24Like you used to be able to get into people's email, their inboxes pretty easily. Yeah. Now, I mean, do you ever really see cold emails coming through? I do, but I ignore them. Like they don't even work. Yeah. Yeah. For me, mine are all getting filtered into promotion tab. Yep. Like Gmail's AI and all that is just like filtering things out. So I don't even see a lot of cold emails anymore. And this is just the beginning of like cold email. I find it hard to see how it's going to work in the way that it ever has before because the systems are too smart. Then when it comes to search, I mean, we're moving to this place of like one click by give me my answer right away.

5:02I'm not going to go and like browse on someone's website in the future. Probably this is a little farther away, but people are going into chat GPT. They're asking questions. They want to get the information they want right away. it's being summarized for them. And so this is a very different space of buying, of getting information, of learning, of content. And so the space I think we're in now is moving into a world where how can we build marketing tactics that can't be summarized? It can't be grouped into a chat GPT response. It can't be summarized by these AI systems that are looking for the best answer.

5:36And you don't have as much time with your customers for them to bump around and figure it out. And so when I think about it not being summarized, this is where this like, you know, account based experiences comes from, which many people have talked about. It moved from ABM to ABX. It's really around like I view it as a couple of different ways of when it comes to these experiences, because it really depends on where this customer is in their buying journey and how to connect with them based off where they're at. What's interesting about what you just mentioned is it wasn't just marketing. You said marketing tactics, but cold email sales, Yeah.

6:08Right. And buyer's journey where people are finding things, that's experience. Yeah. And so it's not just marketing. It's across the board. We're seeing this transition of how sales, marketing and customer success all interact. It's changing completely. Yep. In the age of AI and in the age of like information being more readily available. So I just kind of wanted to point that out, that it's not just marketing. It's everywhere. Yeah. And I mean, that's exactly the world that we're in now is getting out of the silos. And for so long, I mean, I even remember back in my finance days, like you were just in your silo and you wouldn't really pop up and be like, hey, what's marketing doing over there?

6:43Like, hey, what's the IT team up to? Now the world is so like combined. And so like you just said, like you've got if you are in marketing and you're not understanding customer experience and customer success and you're not understanding and working with the sales team and you're not understanding what your CIO is thinking about when it comes to implementing all these new AI driven marketing tools, like you're already losing. You need to be very collaborative with all of your stakeholders within the business. And that is also a new mindset shift. So yeah, it's a great point. It's not just about the silos.

7:12It's just how customers engage with companies now is just completely different. And how companies should be thinking about it. A lot of them aren't changing quick enough. So you said something at the beginning about impatience, where customers are just really impatient. Like I go on Chabitz GPT, I expect to see something right away of what I want. And if I see one thing that's negative, like, you know, I'm discounting that company for the rest of eternity. I'm not going to work with them. Right. Damn. And that's how my brain works. Yeah. I'm like, oh, nevermind. One negative review gone. So I do find that pretty interesting that like, it's not just about how the customer is interacting, but how can organizations change completely and overhaul their systems to communicate with each other better so that marketing and sales align.

7:58And And like, is there even going to be really a difference between these two categories of things in the future? I kind of start to question that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that these two are definitely going to be coming together closer, which is kind of nice. I mean, we've been hearing like, oh, marketing and sales alignment for, I mean, literally a long time, 10 years. And it seems like it's always been a problem. But now's the time where it can't be a problem anymore. Like it has to be very cohesive. And especially when it comes to bringing in this whole new world of AI agents. And I mean, think about it.

8:26You're going to have these like buyer agents who are just going and finding the best. Like you say, I want to buy the best CRM and you send out your buyer agent to go figure it out for you. Like I'm not going to be on a website looking anymore and being like, let me go on to G2 and look at this. Like I'm going to tell my agent, your AI agent out there and do it for you. Go do it for me. Go look up all the best reviews. Here's how I think like which reviews matter to me or not. Here's the ones that you should look into. Bring back price points. Go talk to their sales agents. bring back any discounts you can get.

8:57Like I will have it be very goal oriented with, this is the problem I'm solving. And I don't care as much about like doing all the details myself. If I can have someone, AKA an AI agent, a digital employee doing this for me, then that means that there's a lot of ways that brands need to stand out in that process to get to me. Because all of those other things are details and all those things are going to be commoditized because companies can compete on the same technologies, the same features, but how you stand out as a brand like we mentioned earlier is around experiences and community like giving my human meat suit an experience that i'm out in this world and i'm like damn that brand brought me here with all these amazing people and it was weird and it was funky and they did this event thing for me and like i met amazing other like cmos that i never knew before like that's going to stand out community driven stuff's going to stand out even like referral partner programs like referring each other to a company.

9:53Like these are the things that AI can't do. In that example, you said AI agents and we talked a lot about B2B AI agents, right? So like as a business owner, I might build a buyer agent that goes out and searches these vendors to find the thing that I want. Or I make a digital employee that helps with customer success. Do you think consumers will have AI agents of their own? And how soon do you think that's going to be a thing? Because that would affect, we're talking a lot about B2B marketing, but that would affect a lot with B2C. So yes, this is an interesting space because when it comes to B2B, for a long time, I think B2C had the advantage because they were a lot more innovative.

10:31The marketing was way better. So when it comes to marketing and B2B versus B2C, that's an area where I'm like, that's just converging. However you're marketing for B2C companies, B2B companies should be doing the same. That is what you should be comparing yourself to. So from a marketing perspective, I think in an opposite way. But when I think about the AI agent thing that you're referring to, that's where I actually think anyone who's been in this B2B world is going to have first advantage to experiencing this and then bring it back into their consumer life, where before it was kind of opposite.

10:59Like you'd be, you know, as a consumer buying something, let's just say Slack, you would get it on your own maybe, and then it would be like a bottoms up approach into the organization. And now you're like Canva. Yeah, it's like you would get it as a consumer and then you would kind of push the organization to get it. And then all of a sudden you have 5 ,000 people with like licenses and you're like, oh shit, I need to consolidate this. But when it comes to AI agent stuff, I actually think people who are working in these enterprise companies are getting first access to like, what is this technology?

11:25My company is making a bet on it. I'm able to play with it in a way that like right now it's kind of hard for still just a normal consumer to play with probably AI agents. Or even know that they exist. Or even know they exist. Yeah. So I think that one will take more time. But yes, I do see a world where in the future, even me as a consumer, I'm not going to be going out and looking for, you know, the best telecom provider, utilities provider, trying to get a charger for my Tesla. Like I don't care to do those things. And probably AI can go in and look at what are all the rules in Austin, Texas when it comes to getting rebates for this?

12:02Let me go look through the 5 ,000 word manual to figure out how to get the rebate, what the process is, and then come back to me with, okay, I found that you can do it this way. And here's the company to get the rebate with. Here's how much it'll be. Do you want to buy this thing or not. Like that's, I think, the future we're headed in, which means that brands have to think very differently about how they're showing up online and how they're standing out. Well, and what partnerships they have, right? So I think about like NerdWallet, where I go on there and there's like the 20 different auto loans that we recommend for you.

12:30And most of those are partnerships, like they're highlighting people that they work with. And so if you think about the AI agent thing, there will probably be a bunch of different tools that are making these already for consumers. So as a business, you want to be partnered with those top AI agent recommendation processes or softwares. So it's kind of an interesting, that's also an interesting problem. So it's not just about how am I showing up for the consumer, but what kind of partnerships with people am I working with? What maybe micro influencers have built out these really cool systems that I could partner with?

12:59A good thing to consider as well when it comes to, like the world is becoming more decentralized. Systems are becoming more democratized. And so now, like back in the day, you'd have these companies who are like, I've got all the views. I can say I'm going to give you the best list. And meanwhile, people are paying me to, you know, rank their service on the top. And because all of these things are now getting distributed more evenly when it comes to the tools, technology, like what's happening, even companies who previously were like wouldn't tell you pricing until you were like Zoom info. Like you can't know the pricing until you're way into like the conversation.

13:34And like you got to be in a year contract. Like all of these systems are shutting down right now because people have access to more information than ever. And they can choose now. And they know also, like if there's a list here, like the Gartner, what was it, the Gartner, what's it called? Magic Quadrant. Whatever that is. Yeah, that thing. It's like people know how to get on that. Like they know probably like it's a pay to play thing for the most part. I'm sure there's some legitimacy in it. But like people know and you're going to be able to say like going forward, I want like whatever AI agent I have to build out rules in a way that matter to me.

14:12And so while one person might not care, it might be like Forrester is the best person to listen to. I love them. That's like Wall Street Journal. Sure. I get that paper every day. I really trust whatever they say. You can build it out in that way with your methodology. Or you can say, here's a scrappy way I want to go out, go about finding the best tools for my life, like set up my life in this way. Like you're going to get to dictate things in a way that we just weren't able to before. Well, and it's decentralized, but I still think trust will really, really matter. Right. And so like I have my Instagram or my LinkedIn or the people that I follow that I really trust if they recommend this thing or my friend group, if they recommend this person, I know they vetted this person.

14:48I know that I can trust this. And I think trust is going to become I know I know trust will become even more important. It's already vital for these especially large enterprise decisions. but as we get into more decentralization I'm going to I think we're going to see more of these micro influencers pop up that I trust they're vetting it especially as technology becomes easier to access and things are easier to build so I was using the example like video games where if I could just think of a video game idea and the barrier to building it was less because there's all these AI agents that can support me with it now people aren't coming to me because I'm the best video game builder they're coming to me because they trust that I'm going to build a landscape or a world that they want to play in for whatever reason.

15:32It's a thing that we've seen with authors for a really long time where I trust that you're putting really good content into this book. Even though you're just one person, I trust any book that you write, I'm going to read. I think it's going to become more like that because the barriers to some of these technologies, like making a video game, it's really complicated, but it won't be in the future. So what's going to be important is who the person is building it and do I trust them? Yep. Yep. Yeah. And that's exactly why I think the whole world is shifting when it comes to marketing away from who has the best, you know, marketing campaign, cold emails going out, retargeting capabilities and all that, and moving more into this like human way of marketing.

16:08Like I said, AI will do what it's doing. And a lot of these tasks are going to be automated in such amazing ways. But what's going to stand out is that human level connection. So when it comes to having a whole partner network, referral partners, like someone I trust saying, hey, hey, this tool is the best tool. That's what's going to stand out. Building out communities of like very engaged customers, adding your prospects in there, but giving them experiences that they want to be in this community because they know like, I can't get this anywhere else. And so, yeah, moving into this more, how can I stand out as a human and as a brand where other humans want to come to me?

16:42As a human, everything you're saying there, human, human, human. You had Zach Cass on Mission Daily recently, and he talked a lot about this. And I really thought it was amazing to think about how AI is going to make you, allow you to be more human. And the skills that people value are going to be the more human skills of connection and holding a conversation and less of the technical skills. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people are going to have to awaken to that and maybe change how they're thinking about career building. Because it's not so much about, did I get the degree and have 10 years of experience in this thing?

17:15If suddenly AI can do it for someone else tomorrow, now it doesn't matter that I'm the best web designer. What matters is people trust me and they want to work with me. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And for anyone who does not know who Zach Cass is, he is, I mean, people call him an AI futurist. He was one of the first couple employees at OpenAI. And so he kind of was there in the early days, but yeah, definitely his interview was epic. So we'll link it up. Low key drop. Plugging that. Yep. So getting in, you mentioned experiences a lot throughout this. You talked a lot about human experiences and how marketing is changing.

17:48I think it was a week ago we were meeting and you'd said ABX. And embarrassingly, I had no idea what that was. And I was too embarrassed to be like, Steph, I have no idea what you're talking about. I was just like, yeah, definitely. For sure. This seems like something I should know. I knew ABM. So I was like, it's account-based something. And you said account-based experience. So what is an account-based experience and why are you thinking that that's the future? We kind of mentioned this a little bit in the beginning, but it looks at where the buyer is in their buying journey. Like where are they at in that life cycle?

18:19and then it's working with them based off that. And so, for example, with ABM, it was just very targeted, like just to show the difference. ABM was, this is my account, it's this VP, now I'm gonna go hard after them. And they might not even be in the buying cycle, yet they can still be on your target list and you're still going after them and you're trying to sell them your, you know, really expensive IT networking system and they're not even in a buying cycle, but they're on your target list and like, this is my prospect. And so this one is more understanding, like, where is this person in the buying cycle?

18:51And maybe they are just beginning to hear of us. Okay, great. We're going to craft some kind of experience for them based off that. Okay, great. They've already talked to someone within our company, but we don't have any other connections with any of their other C-level leaders at this point. It's just maybe the CTO. And so like, who else should we start bringing into this space? Because we know that a lot of these purchases, at least when it comes to enterprise, you need like seven plus sign-offs and like everyone, which is good. Like you have a lot of people now who want to know what purchases are being made because it is influencing everyone in the company.

19:22And so maybe that like having that knowledge of, okay, we need to start, you know, bringing experiences and contact points and like pulling these people into maybe an event or like what kind of custom thing can we do for them and their leadership team? Because we know we only have one touch point here, or maybe it's even after they've bought. So they've bought something, but most times there's a lot of other things they can buy with you. And so oftentimes with ABM, it was so focused on just pushing them into a conversion. And then what happens afterwards? Then there's all this open space for account expansion opportunities that never happened because the marketing team is just like, well, done, passed it to sales.

20:00I can attribute that to me. Thank you very much. Back to my big campaigns. And it's like, I think the future of marketing is understanding the whole life cycle and then being like, okay, now this person is four months post-purchase and they haven't opened up any of these other areas, these other features. So let's contact them and make sure they're first getting like they're fully utilizing what this platform has to offer. Let's go there first. Okay. Now we see that they're using these features really heavily and we see how they're doing it with their like inside their company. Oh, here's two other products we offer.

20:32Like now might be a great time to start bringing awareness around that. And maybe we should bring them, you know, to speak at a conference with us or whatever it might be a webinar, or maybe like, let's bring them to an amazing C-suite executive experience here in Texas. And like, let's really put something together that's going to be fun and entertaining and create fun content and like have them walk away afterwards, loving our brand and wanting to know more of what we do. And so it's really just understanding the whole life cycle of that buyer and where they're at before, during, after purchase, which is why also, you know, we talk about blending in customer experience and sales and marketing.

21:06It's like everyone should know what's happening in this buyer journey. And so that's where it goes from just a marketing role of like account-based marketing to account-based experience and viewing it as a long-term. The whole experience for the customer from the first time I see your logo to I've bought your product. Now I want to renew. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious your thoughts on incentives. So sales, for example, like their metric of success is deal closed. Marketing, maybe it's leads generated. Customer success, it's retention and renewals. three completely different incentives. Do you see these changing morphine where organizations maybe start to focus in more on like, how can we together align incentives across the board?

21:48So people that come in from point A to renewal, we're not just handing off leads that are not going to convert on sales or not going to convert into renewals. Yeah. I mean, a lot of this, and I saw this at Google quite a bit where metrics can lead people down the wrong way. And we would be tracking things that we'd be like, I mean, for example, it was some app they were working on and they were looking at the usage of the app and the whole team was very excited and they were tracking it every week and they were tracking the daily active users of it and it going up and the time spent. And so everyone was very excited about time going up.

22:26And this one executive was like, I think this might be not so great actually that they're in this app this much because isn't this app meant to help them when it comes to like support in this way? And like, do we really want someone to have like, why are they here so long? Because the whole goal of this is like make you maybe more efficient and better. And so it took him coming in to be like, I know the market typically tracks on daily active users and usage rates and eyeballs and like how much time you're getting from that person. But I feel like that's a bad metric for the long term because the goal of this high level is to do something different.

22:58And that when it comes to metrics of like sales, marketing, brand impressions, like I think it takes a leader to come in with a longer term vision of like, what are we doing here? And not just optimizing for small wins, short term wins, because when you start doing that, you get customers who maybe won't stay customers for very long. And you're putting a lot of investment into all these attribution models. And people are incentivizing, marketing teams are incentivizing for these things that the leaders, you know, put in front of them. But it really takes someone to be like, what is the balance between brand is more important than ever right now?