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AI Marketing: Trends, Tools, and Transformations w/Mark Fidelman
314 Plays10 months ago
In this episode of AI-Driven Marketer, Dan Sanchez talks to Mark Fidelman, host of the AI Marketing podcast, about his three-year journey into AI in marketing, and the transformative potential of AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude Opus for marketers. They delve into the groundbreaking advancements of AI technologies such as Synthesia by OpenAI, and explore how AI is rapidly changing content creation, customer service, and personalized marketing. Mark also shares practical insights on overcoming resistance to AI adoption within organizations and leveraging existing data for dynamic, personalized user experiences.
Timestamps:
03:11 Doubtful about video editing with AI prompts.
09:16 Podcast used to learn about blockchain and AI.
09:46 Using AI to build wealth, differentiate platform.
15:13 Leveraging AI for marketing and outreach strategies.
16:54 Custom email outreach for influencers yields 80% response.
21:03 Privacy concerns overlooked, data obtained non-consensually.
25:05 CTOs need to be marketer friendly, AI.
27:03 Marketing departments must lead in implementing AI.
30:23 Carefully consider use case before proceeding.
35:10 Future trends: Solopreneur unicorns vs. automated tasks.
38:07 Using AI for CMO activities with Sora.
39:02 Architecting processes for AI is key.
42:25 Primary focus shifted from Twitter to LinkedIn.
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Naming Strategy
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the AI Driven Marketing Podcast. I am Dan Sanchez, my friend's Commie Danchez, and I'm here with Mark Fadilman, who is the host of the AI Marketing Podcast. So I'm on a kick of interviewing other AI marketers who are doing podcasts, and Mark is actually the top one. I know you named that strategically when you picked that name, because when you do a search on Apple for AI Podcasts, AI Marketing Podcasts specifically,
00:00:30
Speaker
Yours is up front. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you. And I should have named it Driven. It sounds like you're more driven than I am in AI, which you probably are.
Early AI Marketing Experiences
00:00:39
Speaker
The facts are I started AI marketing three years ago, and then I rotate seasons. And only recently have I come back to AI marketing because I'm like,
00:00:48
Speaker
You know what? I've done presentations on AI marketing all over the country, and people love it. And they don't, these marketers aren't very sophisticated with it. I'm like, really? I do a show of hands at the beginning of these events, and only about a third of them raise their hand of people that are using AI in their marketing. I'm like, what? What am I missing here? If you're not- So you started the show with AI marketing then? I did. What year was that? 2020, I think?
00:01:18
Speaker
Okay. So like that was really
AI in Marketing Evolution
00:01:20
Speaker
early. That would have been early for AI marketing period because the AI was around, but like the only people really tapping into it. Oh, you know what? I will say Salesforce had a big AI push maybe around 2019, 2018 with Einstein and they made a big deal out of it. But I honestly looked into it and I'm like, man, Einstein was so-so and actually helping. So you were early. What did you see back then that you were like, Hey, this is something to look into now.
00:01:46
Speaker
More on the IBM Watson side and some of the other Salesforce, I think was an episode we did. I was just covering what marketers need to know about AI. Sometimes I got into healthcare. How do you market an AI healthcare? So it didn't necessarily mean AI for marketers. It meant
00:02:04
Speaker
Hey, how do you market AI within these other companies? Now, of course, everything is fine-tuned for me anyway, Dan, to be, okay, here's how you use AI to become successful with your marketing efforts, which if you're not using, you're going to fall way behind.
Current & Future AI Impacts in Marketing
00:02:20
Speaker
But the good news is that it's easy to play catch-up. There's a lot of tools, but you could just start tomorrow and become pretty proficient, pretty fast.
00:02:29
Speaker
So what do you think the current state of AI marketing is then? You've seen some of the early stuff in the beginning. There's clearly lots of talk about where it's going. Where do you feel like it's at right now?
AI's Revolutionary Role in Video Production?
00:02:42
Speaker
very robust right now, but we're at the very, very beginning. So I look at this as somewhat of a marathon running fast forward, but we're still at the, you know, a hundred foot line because what's coming is mind-blowing and it's going to change everything. And just Sora alone, you know, people would be involved in putting together a video, I don't know if you saw Balloon Head,
00:03:10
Speaker
I did. Yeah. I mean, they're doing that with, I don't believe this, but they said they did it with one prompt. I think it was probably multiple prompts and some editing in there. But so what? You know, try filming that thing on your own without AI. And it's very realistic if you haven't seen it. So I mean, if that's what we're looking forward to in less than six months,
00:03:34
Speaker
Dan, why do you need video editing teams? Why do you need video producers? Why do you need video anything? You just type in a prompt. It's unbelievable. It's like we're going to live in the matrix here pretty soon. We're not going to know what's real. It blew me away when they launched it.
AI Avatars in Marketing & Customer Service
00:03:50
Speaker
Have you seen synthesis or Synthesia that's using chat GPT 4.0 or whatever they're calling it?
00:04:01
Speaker
Uh, I mean, I've seen chat chat GPT four. Oh, but I haven't seen the thing you just mentioned. So literally you talk, you can set up your own avatar or somebody else's and using chat GPT four. Oh, which has voice capabilities, right? Yeah. Pretty damn good. And you are talking to an avatar that looks real back at you answering questions. You can ask it what it sees on your screen. It knows.
00:04:27
Speaker
It's scary, man. But you could use that for marketing, right? You could use it as a customer service bot, not even a bot, looks like a human. You could trick, not that you'd want to, but you could trick people into thinking that you're somewhere else. I don't know, man, the sky's the limit. I'm just getting my head wrapped around all this stuff that's coming out pretty quickly. And it's a brave new world.
00:04:50
Speaker
I see what you're saying. You're not talking about a different company. You're talking about the stuff they just released this last Monday, right? Yes. They're coordinating with OpenAI because this came out way too fast. They launched it the next day. There's a pretty cool video on Instagram that I'll forward to you. You can put the show notes here where they're demonstrating
00:05:14
Speaker
This looks like a female, attractive female bot. And you cannot tell if she's not human, at least on Instagram, having a casual conversation with the guy who is real on the other end, describing his background and where she thinks he is. It's like, okay, where are we? Okay, I haven't seen this. I will send this to you. And I'm thinking to myself, can you imagine when marketers get ahold of this tool, which is now,
00:05:40
Speaker
and what you're able to do with it. I don't know how, if you have to train it, I don't know. But I'm gonna dive into that pretty heavily pretty soon.
Personalization of AI-Generated Content
00:05:50
Speaker
I mean, really, like it doesn't, it can't need more training than what you'd be putting into a chat bot right now. I mean, because it's really like underneath the words that it's speaking won't be different from a chat bot, but how it goes about the conversations a little bit different. So the text different, but underneath,
00:06:08
Speaker
It won't go, it could theoretically perform as well as the best chat bot when it comes to what information it gives and how it navigates a conversation. I wonder if we could do this like this. Let's experiment. You can always cut this out. Well, can you take a guess at what it might be doing based on what I'm showing you here? Hmm, from what I can see, it looks like you're in some kind of recording or production setup with those lights trying
00:06:44
Speaker
The thing that stood out to me a lot about that video is how smooth the conversation was from the AI. She sounded intelligent. She sounded interesting and personable way more than he did. Now he's a dev, so his social skills aren't at the same level as somebody who's out there a lot. He sounds more awkward than she does, and she's the eight. I'm like, whoa, that's a new milestone.
00:07:01
Speaker
I did see this video.
00:07:11
Speaker
I'm like, what is going to happen next? Now, I haven't, you can't zoom in on this to see if, you can always tell in the mouth, whether it's AI or not, at least you used to be able to. I can't tell, I haven't looked at it that closely, but Dan, I mean, even if you can tell slightly, what's Gen 2 of this going to look like?
Blockchain & AI Integration in Real Estate
00:07:30
Speaker
It's going to be indistinguishable.
00:07:32
Speaker
You might have people falling in love with these AI bots. It's going to get weird fast. So, I mean, for me, I started this whole podcast because the writing was on the wall to me. I'm like, okay, this is going to take over everything. And clearly there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers. So I'm starting this podcast to learn as much as I can because there's no books on this topic. Usually I love books. I got a whole stack of books behind me. I'd go and find all the books written on the topic and read them all. There aren't any.
00:07:59
Speaker
So I'm like, what's left? I start a podcast and go interview people who know what they're talking about like yourself. I did exactly the same thing. And don't ever read a book on AI. You can just have the AI write the book that you need to know now.
00:08:12
Speaker
and then just read like click notes every day. I think the best way, and I do have a podcast for AI, as you mentioned, but I don't have a newsletter. And I do have a newsletter for blockchain, which really forces you to learn this industry. So if anyone's out there listening, if you want to really learn AI, create a newsletter and you'll get a ton of subscribers, especially if you have a unique angle. Like I like to come out and talk about new stuff like this and how it benefits a certain community like AI marketing.
00:08:43
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about that. I noticed your podcast went from AI marketing to blockchain heavy and is now back to AI marketing. You're learning different things as things are coming out. I think we all had a blockchain kick, at least I did a couple of years ago. Gary V got me on it and I went and bought the ETH and went through the thing. I never bought his stuff because ETH went up and I was like, I'm selling out.
00:09:03
Speaker
I went and made some profit on it and got out. But where do you see all this coming
Podcasts as Educational Tools for AI & Blockchain
00:09:10
Speaker
together? How did you get into blockchain and now coming back to AI? And then how do you see these things coming together in the future? Well, you've already stolen my thunder here, but I look at my podcast as going back to school.
00:09:21
Speaker
I don't want to go back to university. I had a good time, but my time is over with, let's say, traditional schooling. So that is my school. And I use it like you do to learn from other people and get their perspectives. And I learn a lot. So blockchain, I've got a blockchain company.
00:09:39
Speaker
Now we're going to combine AI in it, AI to do property due diligence because we do have a tokenized platform AI to help you build wealth, you know, it'll tell you which properties on the platform will help you achieve your goals.
00:09:54
Speaker
And so we're bringing AI into the platform. So I needed to learn it myself. So I moved back from off of blockchain, which is moving just as fast as AI, by the way, in terms of the innovation that's coming out of it. Over the AI, because I know we're going to introduce AI into the platform, I want to become more knowledgeable about it and maybe learn something that's really going to differentiate my platform from everybody else's.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit more about your product. Like how are they, how is it using AI and then blockchain together in order to drive a better outcome? Like you kind of teased it, but like dive a little bit deeper into like the workflow. Okay. Well, it's not yet, but we're, I've got a grant coming for it. So I have to get really knowledgeable on it really fast.
00:10:41
Speaker
So as you know, blockchain is very transparent. You can see every transaction. You can see everything that's going on on it. You can see government interaction. Eventually, everything will be on the blockchain. And I'm speaking in terms of real estate. You don't need title insurance if you have a blockchain that records every single thing that's happened to this property and this token. You don't need it. The AI can go across it.
00:11:04
Speaker
And they can say, here's your house facts or your commercial property facts report like that, you know, car facts. Well, the AI could do that, do the due diligence, also send you a report on how the real estate market's doing in Zimbabwe, what the risks are, what the challenges are. Oh, it analyzed the financials because all the rents have been recorded on the blockchain.
00:11:29
Speaker
That's what's happening. It's going to happen fast, like in the next five years. So that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is, well, our financial advisor is usually steering you a certain way, depending on what kind of commission they're getting from certain people or institutions. I want an AI that I wanted in my 20s, which says, hey, Mark, you invest in this, this, this, and this. In 10 years, you'll have a passive monthly income of $20,000.
00:12:00
Speaker
That's pretty powerful and the AI is making you stick with it. It's taking the money out of your bank account or whatever wallet you have set up. It's doing it automatically and it's making adjustments automatically so that it gets you to the goal of $20,000 a month passive income. That's pretty freaking cool.
Complementary Nature of AI & Blockchain
00:12:17
Speaker
So those are the two things that we're developing with this grant and I'm excited about it.
00:12:21
Speaker
That is exciting. I kind of feel like AI and blockchain are kind of like a yin and a yang thing going on, right? Very different technologies. Yeah. When you put them together, they become a powerhouse because they, honestly, they kind of create problems by themselves. AI, it's like, oh, the mass duplication of content and content everywhere. And you don't even know what's what anymore. It's like, well, that's where blockchain comes in. You can verify authenticity in a way that AI can't. Good point. I love the way you stated that.
00:12:49
Speaker
So to you and me, it's clear that AI is a big thing now, has been developing for a while. It's going to take over marketing, certainly whole companies. What do you think some of the challenges are when integrating AI, the businesses are running into with integrating AI into their companies right now? I know you're a fractional AI, you do a lot of fractional AI work with companies. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. The number one problem is people.
00:13:16
Speaker
you know, they don't want to lose their jobs. Every one of these objections is understandable. There's a lot of resistance, especially because as AI infiltrates these companies and corporations, people are seen as
00:13:32
Speaker
less effective imagine a copywriter AI can blow you out of the water, not everyone, I still think the best of the best humans are still way better than AI, way better, because they know how to create those emotional connections but most copywriters you know the average ones to even good ones.
00:13:48
Speaker
are going to get replaced by AI. It's just a fact because I can program the AI just to study the masters and it does a pretty good representation of it. And then when you get into images, it is so incredibly interesting what's happening here. So people are threatened. That's the number one roadblock I see. Secondly,
00:14:08
Speaker
Originality, although I've seen some really original things with images and probably video that's coming up, I don't see a lot of originality in the writing yet. I don't feel like there's AI that can duplicate a Shakespeare.
00:14:27
Speaker
and make it original. Because they don't have a body. They haven't lived. They're just taking the experiences of everything that's been given to it and trying to conjure something up. But there's not a real connection to real life yet with this AI. I think it's going to come. But so again, I still think the best of the best are going to be in business for a long time. And everyone else, you better learn how to be the architect of AI.
00:14:56
Speaker
And that's your job security right there.
AI's Impact on Jobs & Originality
00:15:00
Speaker
How are you walking companies through their strategic planning when it comes to AI? Are you just integrating? Are you helping them craft or figure out where AI fits into their strategic plan? Or do you start with AI in the beginning? How does it fit into that process? I always start the same way, which is what are your goals?
00:15:16
Speaker
And if you want to run campaigns, or if you want me to train people on how to use AI in, I don't do training, but we will come and show you how we will implement it for you. And if you want to sit and observe and take over in the future, we'll certainly work with you on that.
00:15:34
Speaker
But what are their goals? I don't really bring AI to the forefront. I just tell them, hey, this is why I could charge you a lot less and become way more effective because we are leveraging AI tools in order to bring this to market, this idea, this marketing plan, all of the PPC that we do.
00:15:55
Speaker
PR to some extent with outreach using AI, but right now, I mean, there are a few companies that have been hitting us up, but right now I don't see PR agents being replaced because somebody's calling or these journalists
00:16:14
Speaker
and having a conversation. It's not as good as Synthesia. Maybe that's the first thing I should try is get a Synthesia agent to start calling all these journalists and explaining the story and seeing if they'll do it. Have a conversation with them about it. That's interesting that we're just coming up with this on the fly.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's the more conversations you have, the more you realize, I'm like, oh, there's more capabilities here. I didn't even realize until I started thinking about it and talking it out loud. Right. Exactly. So the PR thing can be really big. Could be. What's an example you have with one of the clients that you've worked with that you're really proud of, of like, hey, they had the school and AI really helped them get there faster, better.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the one that comes to mind, and I'm under NDA with them, so I can't bring it up. I've got to be a little bit careful. But let's just say it was a large web-based company, and they wanted to do automated outreach. So custom emails that were sent to influencers and messaging that would look at their LinkedIn profile, would look at all their social media profile, and come up with very accurate and specific things about them.
00:17:23
Speaker
And I'd say the response rate was probably 80% because you're hitting everything that they talked about and what they're doing and what their interests are. And you're painting it in a way that gets them to respond. And that was a big one. We were not expecting that kind of response, but because we hit everything on their
00:17:43
Speaker
about them and shaped it in a way that it just drew them in, right? Giving them back their story. I thought that was really effective use of AI. There's several more, but that one first came to mind. How powerful that is. I mean, how long would it take you to do that for a hundred influencers? It would take you a ton of time. Yeah, tons. This was just doing it like this. Just give it the social media profiles and let it run. It was cool. Yep.
00:18:12
Speaker
I've not done a lot of outreach. I usually do, if anything, I'm doing outreach for like podcasts or for clients podcasts where I'm trying to get guests. Not as hard because it's an easier ask to have somebody on a podcast, right? But I've always wondered, I'm like, what you just described, I'm like, oh, that's awesome for outreach, but who's doing that for inbound? Like how come no one's doing that with the newsletter? I finally just got a, like I built a little AI fundamentals course and
00:18:38
Speaker
I just gather a few pieces of information based on a form they fill out and then use that to auto schedule a prompt that goes and says, hey, here's the transcript of the lesson. Here's what we know about the marketer. Now, GPT, write me a custom lesson plan. Here's the outline of what it should look like-ish. Now, give me a custom lesson plan for a CMO in a beauty company if that was the variables or whatever. Bam, it injects it into the email. So now it's a custom course.
00:19:02
Speaker
But I'm like, how do you go and automatically scrape their LinkedIn profile so I can learn about pick up the things that they don't even know I know and then put that into the course? Now that would be sweet, right? Well, you can't do it directly. LinkedIn for some reason blocks it, but there are providers that give you, I don't know if they scrape it. I don't know how they do it, but you can get that just by using these third-party providers just as a tip.
00:19:27
Speaker
that would be a cool and bound tool. Even if you only had to do it once for newsletter subscribers on the first time they subscribe, you do once, you go grab some interesting facts about them, and then you just sprinkle it in randomly into content in the future. I'm like, I would like that. I mean, some people would probably find it creepy, but marketers wouldn't, that's what I'm talking to. Yeah, not me at all. I would love it. I would love to get access to credit card data.
00:19:52
Speaker
and be able to do that as well. That becomes really profitable if you start sprinkling in affiliates and all that find their buying patterns. Right.
Future AI Technologies & Personalized Marketing
00:20:02
Speaker
As we look to the future, what emerging AI technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on businesses specifically within marketing? Like let's say because within the next six, eight months.
00:20:13
Speaker
I see two. One is something like Sora, which I think is just so mind blowing. I don't even know what more you need. I mean, you're going to need more than just Sora to do videos, but imagine how connected you can become to your customers. If you have a tool like that, that actually works the way I think it's going to work. Wow. I mean, you'll have people crying, laughing. I mean, it's going to be a crazy new world.
00:20:43
Speaker
And then, you know, I think somebody's gonna solve the advertising issue on the PPC side. It's still a lot of guessing and a lot of...
00:20:56
Speaker
And I know you're not getting enough data from Facebook anymore. It used to be. Yeah, it used to be great. Now it's a crap sheet. And they don't care. And we had all these whiners, sorry, in the beginning that were complaining that, Oh, we're getting, you know, they're getting my data. They're getting my data. Well, they're just getting it other ways. And they're not sharing it with advertisers. They got it. They're just not sharing it. And who knows what's being done with it now. It's not transparent because they don't want you to know. So you'll, you won't complain to your Congressman. But
00:21:25
Speaker
I think AI will be able to triangulate who these people are. I'm sure there's data gatherers that are categorizing you and me, Dan, by our social media profile. Feeding that to the AI and the AI is going to be able to do some amazing stuff with targeting us.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. I'm like, cookies are going to go away and AI is going to probably replace it real fast. And I'm going to enjoy it. He's just going to go scrape it and follow you around and figure it out, but they could do it a mess. So we don't even need the cookies anymore. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm going to enjoy it because I want an AI agent to come to me and say, Hey, I, I know you were looking for this and, uh, I found five of it and here's the best deal. And if you order today, you get $10 off. I can't wait for that date. That's me. I don't find it creepy at all.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, I don't find it creepy. I guess part of me knows, I'm like, there'll be things for the consumers to block it too, as there always are. It's like, oh, advertisers get a little too aggressive and now we have ad blockers. So pretty soon it'll be like, have your AI call my AI. Have your AI come and advertise to my AI. My AI will sort the offers that I particularly want. That'll be interesting.
00:22:37
Speaker
I think you should always have the right to turn it off. Absolutely. Your right to privacy should be paramount. And guys like you and I will just open it up. Why? Just say, come at me. I know what's going on in the background, and I'm not doing anything nefarious that I'm worried about. So come at me. I want to learn.
00:22:55
Speaker
But I respect the fact that people like my 18-year-old son don't want any kind of footprint out there and doesn't want to be targeted like that. Okay, fine. Just turn it all off. You better give them the right to, or else I think a lot of people have a problem with that.
00:23:09
Speaker
I tried to go full private or like just delete a bunch of my information. I got concerned about it. Cause I had almost had credit fraud once. Like I found out someone got my social security number, started asking for credit cards. None of it went through. Luckily it got locked down and shut down. But I got concerned and I just started deleting tons of information and I hired, there's companies that will go out there and like shut down all the public information about you, which apparently like, have you ever put in your name and your address?
00:23:37
Speaker
Like how many data sites have information you didn't even know they had, who you're married to, who your friends are, what schools you've been to, all the stuff. Like I went and there's a comp, there's companies that will go and take all that information out about you. So I did that once, but I was, I realized, I'm like, you know, the AI is going to be able to get around that very soon. So why even try? It's just, there's not going to be much you can do about it. Kind of like right now, most people don't even know how much data is out there about them, even if they are quiet.
00:24:05
Speaker
On the address front, just use a PO box. That's what I do. That's the security block there. Anything digital, even things that aren't digital, like a school application can get out there. I don't know why they digitize that stuff and put it out there, but they do. I would always use a PO box and never put my home address, if you're that worried about it. Yeah. Who do you think owns AI in a company?
00:24:34
Speaker
Who owns it? Yeah. If it's going to be a technology that's going to be company-wide, who should lead the charge in a company?
Leadership & Bureaucracy in AI Initiatives?
00:24:41
Speaker
I don't think companies should own their own AI. I mean, they're going to compete with these juggernauts of Google, Microsoft. Elon Musk is coming out with, I think it's called Grok. Grok, yeah. I don't mean like have their own LLM.
00:24:56
Speaker
or LN, whatever it is. I don't mean like develop their own AI tech, but who spearheads the process of making a company more AI driven? Oh, okay. I definitely think the CTO should have a hand in it, but I don't find too many innovative CTOs that are marketer friendly. There are some MarTech people that I would trust if they're CTOs, but
00:25:20
Speaker
I think the CTO has to own it, but eventually I think there'll be an AI specialist if there's not already that comes in and helps implement it. But like anything, I don't want to give too much power, especially AI power to any one individual. I'd want the head of marketing to say, okay, you're going to help me with this. And I'm telling you what I'm going to use. You're not telling me, but
00:25:45
Speaker
You know, I have a bias because I've been held back by CFOs and CTOs my whole career. Yeah. No, they're definitely very security focused. And I've, I don't know, I usually kind of have to, I have to build strategic relationships with them just so you can do what you need to do. Otherwise they're going to strong arm all of your initiatives. My biggest problem is they go to legal.
00:26:10
Speaker
And then good luck getting around that. If an attorney that's not business friendly is saying, this is a security risk or a litigation risk, it's over, right?
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a tough one. It really is a tough one. Hopefully, if you're in marketing at CMO or BPM marketing, just take charge of it and just let everyone know, hey, this is what I'm doing because it's going to save us X and make us more money and apologize later. But that's me. I mean, I'm not saying put your company at risk.
00:26:45
Speaker
But for me, I just I drive it forward. And I'm on I'm seen as the leader at that point. And then people are usually coming to me, hey, how can I implement this in customer support? And it's less likely to get shut down or you get fired on the two. So maybe you shouldn't listen to me.
00:27:03
Speaker
I do feel like marketing departments need to lead the charge in the whole thing. They're one of the first ones to really benefit from it, but as it starts to mature, to me, it seems like the whole organization's going to have to make some strategic choices on larger AI tech.
00:27:18
Speaker
Like Microsoft co-pilot, like that, that's probably going to be implemented company-wide, which means IT is going to have to be involved, which means it's probably going to need to be driven from the CEO. Maybe you need to hire an AI specialist to help consult the CTO or CIO or whatever. Because you're going to have to start, if you're doing it right, you're probably going to want to work, leverage your company's data source, right? Because that's where it really starts to, you know, become a flywheel because it can learn and get smarter on the dataset that your company has.
00:27:46
Speaker
I find these people, though, are the business prevention team. And I hate to say that because they're afraid of losing their jobs. The CTO must understand that an AI could manage the network a lot better. Not in every case, but in a lot of different cases. You always need a CTO, but maybe not 50 employees underneath you. So I'm always skeptical of letting them run anything. They don't want to lose team members. I get that.
00:28:16
Speaker
So be very careful. I've ran into a few that have tried to block these things coming in. I'm like, hey, whether you block it now, it's going to come in later and you're going to be behind and then you're going to lose your job. I'm bat frank with them because I don't work for a big corporation. I'm coming as a
00:28:32
Speaker
a marketing team or an advisor or consultant. But still, they're like, oh, I could save myself a year or two. And I'm like, what kind of thinking is this? That's the thinking of a corporate bureaucrat that you're going to be dealing with. So understand that that might be what you come across.
00:28:49
Speaker
Man, that's a good, good warning for those who are thinking about trying to be the like AI champion. And I used to call them digital champions as people are starting to use the internet of things in order to level up their whole companies, but now it's gone to digital to AI real fast.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I remember anybody adopted this early stuff like blockchain, the fastest, got the promotions. They also went to different companies with bigger pay. It would be crazy not to jump on this and lead the charge. You will advance your career by decades if you're seen as the leader because you'll be able to name your spot once you've mastered it. Let's say you're a marketing CMO at a midsize company.
00:29:29
Speaker
You're going to have big companies that say, holy cow, we've seen what you did there. We want you to come over here and they're going to give you a heck of a lot more. I just discussed that data is probably a big thing. Where do you see data fitting into the whole conversation?
00:29:44
Speaker
So I look at data and AI as, okay, what's your sandbox? And do you want to limit the sandbox? Is it an open sandbox? How are you setting that up? So data is critical. I mean, everything derives from it. And it's how you...
00:30:00
Speaker
it's how you package it up or it's whatever the sandbox is that you
Future of Personalized AI-Driven Websites
00:30:04
Speaker
define it. I'll give you an example. There's been companies that have wasted millions and millions of dollars trying to create their own version of an AI for a specific purpose, but then they test it against chat GPT-4 and chat GPT-4 still beats it.
00:30:19
Speaker
It's like, well, why is that? Well, because it's got more connections that are out there. So you really have to be careful on the use case. If the use case is, okay, we're chatbot and we just want to talk people through helping them to use our software. I think you can sandbox that in, right? But if it goes beyond that and it requires connections from elsewhere around the web and continuously updating, do not try to compete with chat GP4, wait till you see five.
00:30:47
Speaker
where it's asking you questions and really trying to get the root of what you're looking to do. So it really comes down to what it is that you want to do and whether you just need a sandbox or you need the whole world, but you're putting boundaries on it so you get to the answer faster. It's like prompt engineering, but it's done in the backend.
00:31:08
Speaker
I mean, some of it can be training the model, but then there's like other, there's like static data that I think AI can leverage in order to build personalized experiences or not only for the customer, but probably for the prospect eventually. I was just talking to, I had a guest on the podcast that has a company that runs this AI tool.
00:31:33
Speaker
that helps customize user interfaces for apps. So instead of just split testing things within apps, it like dynamically just deals with individuals one to one. But it has to have a data set in order to do that. So like, hey, like Mark logged into this weight loss app, and he didn't interact with this little piece of content.
00:31:54
Speaker
He he so we're gonna try something new and we don't have to like split test it so many times before we know he's not gonna click on it It's like kind of like we've done this with people like him before if you didn't interact with it the first three times We don't we're gonna take that out. We're gonna try this thing next. We're gonna try this thing. It's like
00:32:09
Speaker
customized for the user using AI, using good stats, but primarily data. I'm like, but everybody's got that kind of data. Even if they're in HubSpot, you have that kind of data in Salesforce, whether you're running like a SaaS app or not. Like everyone's got that kind of data somewhere in their CRM. So far, I haven't seen a lot of people leverage that level of data yet with AI, but I feel like that's like a huge unlock when you could start to tap into the powerhouse of data that companies are already collecting.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like somebody's going to do that. And I imagine it like you go to Dan's website and the AI quickly figures out the user journey that Mark wants to take on your website and kind of guides me through it. It maybe dynamically changes the web pages on the fly based on what it thinks I want to see or do. Or maybe even ask me a question. Can you imagine that? Where's that? Somebody hasn't created that dynamic website yet. I'm shocked. I'm sure it's coming.
00:33:05
Speaker
But I'd love a website that changes and morphs and is a chameleon according to whoever is on it, but really laser targeted. Like whether it's looking at a cookie from you or some pixel or something, it knows you. Maybe because you're in my database, it starts to change your website experience because it knows who you are. I mean, that's a killer app. I mean, who wouldn't sign up for that?
00:33:31
Speaker
I feel like that's the future with AI. I mean, right now, Sora has to be prompted in order to generate it, but eventually, like, you've seen Facebook's new image generator in AI. It's like real time. So as you're typing in the prompt, it's generating the image. Oh, really? You're like a girl, and it generates a girl on a street corner, on the street corner, with a balloon, and then bam, the balloon's there. And it literally is doing it as you're typing it. It's so fast. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, it's so fast that...
00:34:00
Speaker
Like and it's like we're gonna be able to do this with video and whole websites like in the matter of seconds It's gonna load and it's gonna be a personalized experience just for you a little video will pop on and maybe interact with you in real time It's gonna be like a freaking video game. I mean, how are we gonna know who's real who's not and I think blockchain Yeah, it'll be able to validate if someone's real but will it really I
00:34:26
Speaker
be able to discern whether somebody's real or not on video. Like if you're talking to somebody on video, you know, the concept of catfishing, uh, catfishing is going to become a problem outside of dating. And I think there'll be some additional catfishing. These scammers get ahold of these tools and oh my God, they can impersonate your mom, your dad, your, whoa, it's going to get crazy.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, hopefully. No, it's going to happen. Apple and Google develop some tech to help block that. Right. AI detectors. That's going to be a problem. AI detectors, right? For video. So that's another business. We're giving out so many business ideas. Just make sure you credit us when you create these companies and hire us as consultants to help build it out or something.
00:35:10
Speaker
There you go. So something I've thought a lot about, and we'll finish with this, is I find that the future is riddled with these two extremes. On one extreme, on the opportunistic side, it's kind of like Sam Altman's talked about the future of the solopreneur unicorn. Billion in revenue, one person team, because they have so many AI agents that are making it so efficient that they can do it. It's probably a SaaS company, but still, I'm like, that's cool. That's one extreme. On the other extreme,
00:35:39
Speaker
I think Sam Altman's predicted that like 95% of marketers will, not marketers will lose their jobs, but 95% of marketing tasks will get automated through AI.
AI as a Business Enabler & Productivity Assistant
00:35:49
Speaker
Both I feel like are reasonable. They're pretty extreme, but still not unreasonable. How do you see both these things play now? The first one is what again? The solopreneur billionaire, as in they will have these super efficient people.
00:36:05
Speaker
I feel like there's people on Wall Street or traders that have already done that, but maybe not a billion dollars, but that's gonna come. But yeah, I think a company will be run by one person and a team of bots, but then I would just say, why couldn't you just have a bot, the first bot billionaire, why couldn't a bot do it all eventually? And now we're competing with bots in business, how crazy is that gonna be? And then why wouldn't government take over the bots and just run everything for us anyway?
00:36:35
Speaker
That's a scary proposition. I never want to see that. Then we're getting into matrix scenario where nobody's working and we're just eating and drinking. Don't you feel like we're heading towards video game status as real life? It just feels like we're heading that direction.
00:36:51
Speaker
I don't know. In those kinds of conversations, you're starting to get into worldviews and philosophies in order to try to decide what the future is, which are really fun conversations, though I generally try to stay away from them for this podcast. I like to stay into the practical, but they are fun to think about and talk about over a beer at a pub somewhere.
00:37:10
Speaker
What I'm thinking is you might have a CMO as a bot that's running things for you if you're a CEO. We're far from that, folks. Don't get too worried. But it's in the realm of possibility in the next three to five years.
00:37:28
Speaker
At the rate it's going, I mean, Smara was a major mile marker that I was like, oh, I thought this was at least a year or two out to have that ability, because we'd only just crossed it with images. Images, finally, just not long ago, were like, oh, these look like real people. Huh, I wonder when video will come around. It's probably a few years out. I don't know. Video was a month from then. Like Mid-Journey 6 or whatever had just come out in December, and I'm like, wow, these actually look like freaking good. Then Smara comes out, and it's like Mid-Journey level video.
00:37:59
Speaker
And then if you look at what Dolly3 is doing where you can edit the image on the fly, you just highlight and say, change this. Imagine when video comes out and you have Sora doing that. I mean, that's good, total game changing stuff. So why not be able to train an AI agent with an avatar image that appears on a screen as your CMO to do CMO activities. And it already knows all the most successful campaigns
00:38:23
Speaker
Oh that was fast.
00:38:29
Speaker
that have been in the past and current and it's drawing upon those experiences to create your own based on the data it has about your organization. I mean, it's a no-brainer. Now, I'm hoping these AI things will always be assistants or agents and that humans are always in control.
00:38:47
Speaker
I know we're going for our field here. And that's the future I would plan for if you're watching this. Don't think the AI is going to take over your job. Be the architect and make it your assistant. And you'll be fine for the next five years, I promise.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, I find that the future that I can see within the next couple of years, like next year to five years, the ones who know how to build and architect processes will be the ones that probably move forward the fastest, because that's what you have to do with AI. AI is good at doing the manual tasks, but someone's got to architect the process in order to deliver the value.
00:39:23
Speaker
whether that's in marketing or product development or whatever it is. Like someone's got to tell the AI what to do, which means you have to be able to think big picture in order to architect it so that AI can run its play over and over again. Not everybody knows how to do that well. No, I mean, we're all still learning. And unfortunately, from my experience in speaking around the country, only a third of us are even using AI, which is mind blowing to me, especially in marketing.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say, and only a third of those people are even logging in regularly, or have even paid for a single AI tool. I don't get it. I mean, even my techie friends are just now upgrading to plus. So I'm like, it's, I find that most, there's a small community of people like us that are like in it every day, all day. And then many people just aren't, they don't know how to leverage it yet.
00:40:13
Speaker
or think that they asked it to write a LinkedIn post once and it didn't do a good job, but they never learned how to really leverage it in order to do something good with it. Or the prompts or something like that, they didn't know how to prompt it correctly. But to me, it's like, okay, you've been eating McDonald's hamburgers, nothing wrong with McDonald's folks, but McDonald's hamburgers, and then you and I get a bite of Wally Burger out of Santa Monica if you've been there,
00:40:38
Speaker
And you're like, oh, my God, I'll never go back to Hamburg again. I mean, it is literally 10 X better than anything that you're doing right now, unless you're the very, very, very top of your field for whatever the copyright comes to mind. It's going to do a better job. It's going to do it faster and make you more productive and better just by adopting some of these tools. One in particular, chat GPT as well as Claude Opus. Those are two tools everyone should be using right now as marketers.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yep. Mark, this has been a wonderful conversation. I've learned a lot as far as thinking about how to approach this as a business, as an organization. I think the future is going to be very AI driven and we all need to get on the ball as far as learning how to leverage these things in little ways, think about them in big ways, and of course have those bigger conversations for how to protect ourselves from theoretical future. Like I didn't even think about the catfishing part. I'm like, oh yeah.
00:41:39
Speaker
That's going to be a thing. I'll get to think about how to start recognizing that now. Cause that's literally around the corner. That's probably less than eight months away. Oh, and I know with voice, it's already been done. So I know somebody tried to scam their parents. They made this public scan their parents out of a hundred thousand dollars claiming to be a daughter locked in a Mexican jail wire, almost wired the money, but they were able to get ahold of the daughter before they, thank God, but they were convinced it's her voice. Yeah. So.
00:42:08
Speaker
Be careful. Go check out Mark's podcast, the AI marketing show and where else can they connect with you? That's right. You just go search for AI marketing. It's going to be the first one there. So I'm joking. I'm joking. Where else can people connect with you?
00:42:25
Speaker
LinkedIn is probably where I spend most of my time now. I'm finding a lot of value in LinkedIn. They gave me this label, which I don't think increases my SEO value on LinkedIn, but it's kind of cool to see a voice of blockchain logo or something like that. Anyway, that's where I'm spending most of my time. Twitter for me used to be where it was, but not that I love what Elon's doing at Twitter. I like all the openness of it, but it's not as effective for what I'm doing. So LinkedIn.
00:42:56
Speaker
Fantastic. Thanks for coming on the show. All right, thank you.