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S2. Ep15 Navigating the Future of Marketing with Pete Steege
45 Plays10 months ago
On this episode of Dial It In, Dave Meyer and Trygve Olsen interview Pete Steege, a national treasure, folk singer, social activist, author of "On Purpose," and CEO of B2B Clarity. Pete shares his journey from engineer to marketer and prolific author, highlighting his passion for writing. He discusses his framework for solving CEOs' marketing problems and shares insights into marketing truths. Tune in to learn more about Pete's inspiring story and his impactful work in the marketing world.
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
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Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Dial It In Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations. I can't believe you got this guy as a guest, Dave. Can I do the intro?
00:00:28
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm super excited today. We have an American treasure here today. He is an American folk singer and social activist. He was a member of the weavers in the 1950. He has been a prolific writer. His best-known songs include Where Have All the Flowers Gone, If I Had a Hammer, and Turn, Turn, Turn.
Pete Steege's Career Journey
00:00:52
Speaker
Trigby, Trigby. Awkward. There's a T in there. I think you got that wrong. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. So, Mr. Olson, we are interviewing a fantastic friend of ours.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yes. You reset and I want you to take a couple of notes because Pete is an absolute brilliant friend of ours. Pete's standing at the National Treasure. He is the author of On Purpose, the CEO's Guide to Marketing with Meaning, and he is the head of B2B Clarity. He also has authored the CEO's Pocket Guide to Marketing Without a Marketing Leader.
00:01:37
Speaker
He is yet to write a song. He is in fact not Pete Seeger. Well, you don't know that I haven't written a song, though.
00:01:46
Speaker
Well, Pete Seeger's dead as I'm reading on Wikipedia as I'm looking this out. That would have been your first clue, huh? I thought it was weird when you told me we had Pete Seeger, but when I passed you in the hall. But all right. Hey, Pete, welcome. Thank you, Trigrad. Great to be here. I think one of the things that Dave and I were chatting about before we got started is you're a regular prolific author.
Solving Marketing Problems with Clarity
00:02:11
Speaker
What inspired you to want to write your own book?
00:02:15
Speaker
You know, I have I started as an engineer, a little trivia. I actually was going to be an engineer all my life and kind of found myself moving into marketing and just loving marketing. So one transition was from engineer to marketer. And then maybe 20 years ago, I started doing writing as part of my marketing job, you know, blog posts and articles. And I found that I really liked it.
00:02:41
Speaker
I really got a kick out of it. So I had that impetus there. And then when I started my B2B clarity business three years ago, I created a framework based on how I was going to solve these CEO's problems, marketing problems. And I found that I was
00:03:00
Speaker
I was seeing patterns and I had some what I felt were kind of truths about marketing that I just really felt a need to put together in a story and tell that story. So that's what resulted in the book On Purpose.
00:03:16
Speaker
It's a great book, and it's something that I certainly recommend that anybody who wants to check it out, it's on Amazon. But let's talk about your framework, because I think that's a great... We've been on this podcast and talked to all sorts of different people in all sorts of different ways, but we haven't really spent a lot of time talking specifically about marketing.
Pete's Marketing Superpowers
00:03:36
Speaker
So you've got a three-part framework for the clarity framework. So what are the three parts to it? I'll be on each.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah i would love to tell you that before i describe the three parts. I wanna i wanna talk about kind of what the three you know what's the purpose of the three parts and and actually i call them the three superpowers of of ceo for marketing and really what it is that i found talking to a bunch of bbc eos over the years that a lot of them were struggling with.
00:04:13
Speaker
They had a lot of activity with marketing, but usually it was disappointing. The results weren't there, and they didn't know why. It was very frustrating because they're investing this money, and it didn't seem like the activity was connected with results. What I found is the core difference there is CEOs that have
00:04:41
Speaker
created marketing as part of why they exist so having marketing with a purpose. Before they choose to spend any money on any tactic and you can go through the laundry list alphabet soup of all the possible things marketers you know companies can do with marketing today.
00:04:59
Speaker
All of that should come after you figure out who you are, who you serve, and how you share that with your clients. And that's what marketing's job is.
Fractional CMO Experience
00:05:11
Speaker
So that's the background. That's kind of the purpose for the three superpowers. And I call that a mindset of meaning. The CEOs that have a mindset of meaning are able to actually do less and get better results with their marketing.
00:05:28
Speaker
I love that description because a lot of times what we get is people come to us and say, well, yeah, we'd love you to rebuild our website. Okay. Why? Well, it just doesn't look as nice.
00:05:42
Speaker
That's not a good reason to do something just because it doesn't look as shiny. It's funny. But I kind of feel like they approach us as doctors and they come in and they're like, you know, my elbow itches. And they tell me, you know, that's the equivalent of I need help with SEO. They're like, well, SEO doesn't necessarily get you what you want. So that's why I love the purpose and the clarity.
00:06:06
Speaker
that you bring to your clients. And that's why we love working with CMOs like you, Pete. And I know that Pete and us have worked at Busy Web, have worked together on a number of clients. And it's fascinating to work with someone that can approach
00:06:26
Speaker
true strategy from the good of the organization as a representative of the organization and it's so much more fun for us to work at that level and i know you mentioned that you know just a few years ago you pivoted to being a fractional cmo so what was that journey that led you here and then i know we have a couple of really fun topics that we want to break into so how did you get to where you are right now.
00:06:53
Speaker
Well, after that started engineering, I had about 30 years of marketing experience in several technology-oriented businesses. So because of my background, I kind of gravitated to industries and businesses that had either a technical product or a technical audience.
00:07:13
Speaker
And kind of did all the marketing roles over 30 years and just really learned how I, you know, just 30 years of anything you get to kind of know how things smell, you know, and then I just kind of got to the point where I realized I could spend a lot more time
00:07:32
Speaker
Solving those problems if I was in rather than in one company that I could just spend a little time on that To be able to actually find people that had that need and spend kind of all my time solving those problems So that's when I decided to go off on my own and that's what I do I look for CEOs that don't have a marketing leader on their team and
00:07:55
Speaker
Like you talked about the importance of that might be a CMO. It might be a marketing director or VP. But if they don't have that role, then they have those symptoms of being kind of lost. And they know it's not working, but they just don't know how to fix it. They might also even have a junior marketer on their team. And that's even harder because they're they're investing in an employee and they can't provide that. That person knows how to do stuff, but they don't know what to do.
00:08:23
Speaker
often and they struggle to give them that direction as well. That's the hole that I fill with my services.
Authenticity in Marketing
00:08:33
Speaker
Excellent. The relationship that you forge with your clients and you don't take on a ton of clients at once, it's like a handful because you can only get that deep with a few people without completely burning out your time. Right.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's also a mindshare thing. I found that I can't keep too many businesses needs and you know, opportunities in my brain at the same time either. So let's get back to the framework discussion that you've got the three superpowers. What's the first one?
00:09:11
Speaker
These three superpowers you're gonna you you might be surprised at what they are because they're not They're not your typical marketing pillars. So the first one is be authentic and You know another way I say that is tell the truth And I don't mean I don't just mean be honest, of course, you know, it's good to be honest I think what what I'm talking about is being being totally clear on
00:09:39
Speaker
about who you are and what you do, but more importantly, being transparent about that with your employees and your audience in everything you do. So what authenticity in marketing means is your clients know clearly who you are and why you're doing what you're doing, the real reasons, and your employees know what your mission is and why you're doing it.
00:10:08
Speaker
That's so important because marketing, you guys know, marketing is not that one experience they have when they get that one ad that one time.
00:10:19
Speaker
Marketing is the accumulated experiences that a prospect or client have over the life of their relationship with you. And if you have that authenticity in what you do and why you do it, then every touch point they have, whether it's an employee, an account manager, whether it's your product, how it works, whether it's an advertisement, all those touch points are built on each other. They reinforce each other.
00:10:46
Speaker
What's really common is when
00:10:49
Speaker
People don't have that and they're doing those tactics somewhat randomly, random acts of marketing. The prospect is getting conflicting signals and we're all busy, right? Especially B2B companies. So that just cancels. They just, okay, this is confusing and you lose your opportunity. So that, that authenticity breeds consistency. It breeds trust and it helps you see the value. So that's the first superpower.
Intentional Marketing Strategies
00:11:19
Speaker
Okay, what's the second number two is the intentional This one's more maybe more traditional, but this is the idea that the best marketing is purposeful and is chosen intentional CEOs say no more They do fewer things their companies do fewer things in marketing, but they do them really really well and
00:11:47
Speaker
I can't name the number of times in my career I've worked in an organization from small to huge organizations that had a big campaign, a big initiative or a product launch and they didn't finish it. Either something changed in the market or the results weren't there or they got tired of it or there's another priority, but they just quietly get shut down. That happens so often.
00:12:17
Speaker
That's a waste, right? Because a lot of marketing campaigns, there's a threshold where for the first work you do, you put in, you don't really get much back. The payoff comes when you reach critical mass and the resignation happens and that so often businesses will invest that time and money and mindshare in these projects and then turn them off before they actually deliver anything.
00:12:43
Speaker
So intentionality is about having this ability to stay with things and have accountability. Another thing it is, is when you do choose those tactics, you want to have a reason for everything you're spending time and money on.
00:13:03
Speaker
The reason I say that's important is in marketing particularly, think of all the quote free apps or free tools that marketers could have. Totally. They're not free. They are sucking up your team's mindshare and your management meeting discussions and your
00:13:24
Speaker
experience of your clients, right? So, having a shorter list is not intuitive, but that actually is the more potent marketing when you're choosing maybe three really important tactics and hitting those out of the park. And then, yeah, depending on your size, you might add more, but prioritize doing them right and succeeding and finishing, right? That's what intentional the second superpower is. Absolutely. What's the third?
00:13:52
Speaker
Third one is my favorite and it's be generous. Counterintuitive, be generous. Focus on giving, focus on not what you are getting back, okay? And what I mean by that is it goes beyond customer centricity, right? Yes, it is that, but it's that on steroids, really. An example I'd give is
00:14:20
Speaker
Rather than having an internal meeting talking about how can we get them to click or how can we get them to buy? Rather have a meeting about how can we give some of this away? How can we wait longer to charge them and give them more value before we do? It's a mindset about putting your customer first in everything you're doing.
00:14:49
Speaker
And you might say, well, wait a minute, I'm in this business to make money. So I have to make money. The best way to make money is actually, I'm gonna say you're in this business because you have a solution that your customers will value. Yes, that results in you getting paid. But if you focus first on that providing value, what happens is your prospects, you will stand out in a way that you can't buy.
00:15:19
Speaker
There's something intuitively attractive to a vendor that wants to help you. And if you truly believe that that company is looking out for you and is looking for the best for you, you're going to stand out in that market. Now none of that applies in a commodity market, but so set that aside. Other than that,
00:15:47
Speaker
It's a paradox. The more selfless your business is, the more business you will have. For sure. I think the important part here is to go back to your company's name, Pete, because it's B2B. In businesses where you're building relationships,
00:16:06
Speaker
is still very useful in a B2C or in a retail environment, but relationships are where it's at and being generous, and your other superpowers are super powers for businesses that are crafting long-term relationships. I love that you said that, Dave, because my definition of marketing is creating relationships, marketing's job. It's the only job they have, and that relationship
00:16:35
Speaker
results in sales and revenue and retention and all those things. Right. Perfect. Yes.
Mapping the Customer Journey
00:16:43
Speaker
One of the things that you're a big fan of Pete, and I know we are too, that we've really never really blown out and spent a lot of time was talking about is the customer journey.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think that's one of those things that as I get deeper into my marketing career, that is so critically important, but yet is also discussed very flippantly. So when people hear their marketing company or their marketing consultant talk about the customer journey, what does that mean to you? And what does that look like?
00:17:19
Speaker
Great question, and I view that as a central tool construct to create those relationships. It really is the map of the path to those relationships that end up resulting in a champion customer at the end of the day.
00:17:38
Speaker
So what i like to do is use a seven stage customer journey but the stages you could have a different set of stages that's not the important thing for me is it's the complete story of your customers experience with you. From before they know you to them being a rabbit fan right and that by having a customer journey map in your business.
00:18:08
Speaker
does a couple things. One, it gives you...
00:18:12
Speaker
a way to diagnose where marketing has the biggest opportunity, bang for the buck for your business. So I'll give you an example. What I do with clients is we do an exercise where we map out there, we pick a target audience, right? That's one thing that's often missing in this whole scheme for CEOs without a marketing leader is they're trying to sell to too many people. They have a broad definition of who they help. Oh, we can sell to everybody.
00:18:41
Speaker
Favorite definition that I got to kick out of is I asked somebody that, who's your target market? Companies that make software, that create software. That's a lot of companies. They're not very actionable, right? So that's the first thing with that customer journey. It needs to be about a specific set. But then what we do is we map out what you know what you want to happen.
00:19:08
Speaker
You know your value, and in the best case, what does success look like? How do they find you? How do they first hear about you? How do they learn more? How do they commit to buying from you? You go on and on. So we map out all those steps, specifically where they will hear about us, who will tell them what they will know, why they will decide, all those things.
00:19:34
Speaker
And then we go back through and we say, well, what's the reality? What's the thing that's happening today? And what will always happen is that's not what's happening today. And there'll be a certain point or two
00:19:50
Speaker
where it's either totally blocked and customers just by luck are going around it to get to the further down the path or there's friction or you know there's there's a problem with there's a gap between the customer journey they they dream of and the customer journey they actually have that is your marketing priorities those points in the journey where your relationships are getting stuck
00:20:17
Speaker
That's how you choose where to invest your marketing tactics and decide, is it ads, is it website, is it social media, is it PR, whatever it is, probably combination, right? But you focus on those problems. And then the other benefit is it is so much easier to come up with what success looks like now and have metrics for this success because you've defined what you're trying to achieve in each of those steps.
00:20:47
Speaker
The gap between where I am today and where we need it to be. That's how you decide why you're going to do what you're going to do. Back to what we talked about earlier, you don't get that, hey, let's do a video.
00:21:01
Speaker
Because it sounds cool no it's problem starts with the gap okay ideas what could we do to get this behavior to go to that. Right and now you're now you're able to get some real concrete conversations about will that do it or want to do it how much do we need to spend to achieve that in the scoping of the project. Becomes requirements based.
00:21:26
Speaker
One of the things that I've always admired you for is, and I've heard you say this before, is that it's not really hard to get somebody to purchase from you. The challenge comes in repeat purchases. That's true. Yes. So, so true. I think back to the customer journey. I think the real common mistake is companies focus on the left half of the journey.
00:21:50
Speaker
So if you can see my video right now, I'm showing from the beginning of that journey. They bought from us. We got revenue. Woo hoo. And for some companies, it's different, different companies, different ways, but for some B2B companies, 90% of their revenue growth opportunity is going to be after the first sale.
00:22:14
Speaker
because of, as you said, Dave, it's a relationship sale often. They're choosing you as a vendor. They're probably not going through that effort to buy that one time from you. They would prefer it if they have a partner that now they can depend on for a stream of services over time, right? And depending on the business model they have, that stream could be so much bigger than that first sale.
00:22:42
Speaker
It's part of the analysis. The work needs to be done to see what is the value of that first revenue versus the ongoing revenue. Frankly, Trigba, that's part of that analysis you do in the customer journey as you map that out, and that helps prioritize the work too.
00:23:00
Speaker
One of the things that I like clarifying with my customers, and I'm sure that this is something that we do with all of our customers in kind of marketing, but for a true B2B sale, what you're trying to get to with that customer is that they'll never have to research or make that same purchase decision again, because they've now found their guy, their partner from that moment
B2B Sales and Long-Term Partnerships
00:23:27
Speaker
forward. So for what you do as an organization,
00:23:30
Speaker
you want your customers to always think of you as their solution and that's it, full stop. And what makes that happen? Relationship. Trust, absolutely. Yeah, not price, not quantity, not, not, uh, you know, I'll knock 20, I'll knock 20 cents off for you. It's, it's, is this the end of my decision process for this particular need? Right.
00:23:57
Speaker
I actually had an experience with somebody where I offered to knock 500 bucks off the cost of something. And she said, well, great. Then I don't really know. But why don't you expect to have that $500 put towards another project? Right. Because by saying that, you're saying what I'm offering you is not worth that extra $500, right? Well, I mean, it all depends on how you frame it. If you don't couch it in a way that is helpful,
00:24:27
Speaker
I did that. So what I did, as I said, you know, the first hurdle is often the most difficult one because you don't know what kind of work we can do and what kind of deliverables we can give you and how good we are at actually doing what we say we do. So if I can mitigate your risk, if I take $500 off,
00:24:46
Speaker
Would that make you feel, would that help you on the trust factor? Because I know that we're going to make it up down the road and I know we're going to continue to, there's a lot to be done together. And that's what you said. Sure. Right. You know, if you do the used car salesmen and say, you know what, Pete, why don't I just knock $500 off the truck? What would it take you to get to this marketing plan today?
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, I like what you said because it's not just a random price cut. It's talking about a value for, you know, there's a different value if you don't have that price there. I'm with the opinion that for most people in business, unless you're an owner and it's literally your checkbook, money doesn't matter. Instead, money is a definition of risk.
00:25:39
Speaker
And if it's a lot of money, then that's a lot of risk. If it's not a lot of money, it's not a lot of risk. And that's how people really view the price of things in the business. Yeah.
00:25:51
Speaker
You know, kind of related to that, it reminds me of something that I like to talk about, and that is it's related to the generosity topic, but it's not about you. It's not about your business. It's about your client. And where that comes into pricing to me is the more your conversations with your client are about the value they're getting versus what you're charging.
00:26:20
Speaker
That means the topic is them and the topic is not you. And yes, there's a price that needs to be agreed to. But if the weight of the conversation, if the focus of the conversation is leaning towards
00:26:34
Speaker
the opportunity for them to have more revenue or less cost or whatever it is they want, and then you just say, yeah, and we'll do that. That's what we're going to do for you, and it's one cost. That's the conversation that is going to win more often. Absolutely. One of the things that we use to reframe with our customers quite a bit is, okay, so you need to do all of these tactics in order to drive business to your organization.
00:27:04
Speaker
what cost wise is it going to take if you try to hire that internally? And then let's talk about the price about what busy web would be if you just use us instead of bringing an internal hire and then you talk about taxes and vacation time and hardware and training. And so you just need to reframe it into something that matches what your customer actually needs. I love that. Exactly.
00:27:31
Speaker
When we started chatting, Pete, I know right before we started recording, you said you had a couple of pet things that you would love to chat about if given the chance.
AI in Marketing: Tool or Creator?
00:27:41
Speaker
I think one of those was AI. And as a marketing leader for a number of organizations, how do you see this artificial intelligence, this chat GPT stuff, all of those funky things where you can type in and get robot assisted content dumped your way? What do you see on the horizon?
00:28:00
Speaker
And before you answer, I'm going to take this opportunity to offer a cheap plug. Episode five of the Dial It In podcast is Dave's and my penetrating gacha interview with the chat GPT robot. Right. And it's available where all where you got this podcast. Also, big shout out to my cousin Matt for reading the chat GPT robot.
00:28:26
Speaker
So huge topic, right? Huge topic. And it's been stunning for me to and I think for a lot of people to watch the just the flux that this is definitely a game changer, not just for marketing for almost every, you know, yeah, everything. Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
00:28:47
Speaker
I've been watching it and learning and I guess a couple of takeaways for me from a CEO when it relates to their marketing.
00:28:56
Speaker
And one is I encourage every, this is probably true for anything, but I encourage everybody to get out there and try and play with it. Cause it's really takes no time at all. You want to know what it is. It's less about to start doing something with it as get a feel for it. Cause it's just different, right? And there's, it will spark, it will help you to be familiar with what people are talking about by, yeah, you can read an article, but you ought to just try and putting some prompts in.
00:29:24
Speaker
to chat or some other tool. And it's pretty amazing, right? And it's an eye opening experience. That's the first thing. And I think I have two other marketing related thoughts on AI. One is AI is going to be a huge productivity tool for marketing.
00:29:46
Speaker
Huge, as in a lot of different things. Examples of that are today, even if we need to create a press release, if you wanted, you could tell a chat GPT. Draft me a three-paragraph press release of this many words on so-and-so topic. While it's a very, very powerful productivity tool, the mistake that people are going to make that I would strongly encourage people listening to not make
00:30:14
Speaker
is to treat AI as a writer or a content creator. There's a subtle difference here. It is not a content creator for your business.
00:30:25
Speaker
I'll tell you why it shouldn't be. It is a productivity tool for your content creator, writer, whoever that is. It may be as simple as it with chat GPT as you as the CEO doing that. Probably not, but it can become a lot easier to create content. But at the end of the day, if your content is just what AI is creating,
00:30:49
Speaker
Your content has now just been commoditized to be what is the standard, basically Wikipedia. Because chat, the way it works is it's a language model, right? So it's drawing on all the information that's out there. Not what you are and why you exist and what you do for your clients. So your content has to, for marketing to work,
00:31:18
Speaker
Content value added content is content that gives away some of your insight and expertise to your prospects or clients. That's why we create content and marketing. So at the end of the day, you have to add your special sauce.
00:31:35
Speaker
or you are on a race to the bottom with your content. Think about mass emails, spam, that whole industry. That's going to happen with content.
00:31:51
Speaker
So what's going to happen is the way today you get emails or robocalls that you have a great delete, delete spam, blah, blah, blah, all that, that annoying effort you have. That is now going to happen with blogs and articles and everything else because it's easy. It's free to do. People can do it. That's why it's so important that you don't jump on that bandwagon and just create, uh, I'll call it empty calorie content.
00:32:18
Speaker
you need your content to be infused with what you do or you will be viewed as a spammer just like everybody else.
00:32:26
Speaker
Oh my, yeah. I kind of view the AI thing or like chat GPT right now as like the world's most helpful librarian, where it's going to spit out content that you've already seen or that's already out there in the world in a much more comprehensive way than you've ever seen before. But it doesn't mean you should just use it as your own, right? Right. And I also believe that, sorry to interrupt you Dave. Yeah, no.
00:32:51
Speaker
but that it's changing so fast that even a year from now, its capabilities will go from librarian to personal scribe. It is going to be able to do amazing things. But I guess the key message here is you have to have the plan. It has to be your story or you don't want a robot writing for you.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like you just said, it's a race to the bottom if you don't add your knowledge and intention to it. I love that. Also, I added kind of a legal detail. I think it's the trademark US patent office has come out with a ruling that said they will not award copyrights to AI-generated content.
00:33:43
Speaker
That's right. So what that means for you is if you use a copy that was created by AI,
00:33:52
Speaker
you cannot copyright it. And you might say, well, I don't care. But it's something for you. It's another reason for you to think about this because they have recognized that just what we said, they're codifying that, right? They're saying, you have to give your protection on something you didn't write. That's not you, right? Back to what we said. So you might want to talk to your lawyers about how much can I use AI to help me before it becomes AI content.
00:34:21
Speaker
You know if that's important if you want to protect your content something free to check out for sure i think we attended a conference last week last month where the going thinking is that i generated content with at least seven significant modifications.
00:34:39
Speaker
is copyrightable still, but there's like a seven levels of you need to make it your own in order to qualify. Trivi, you and I have been chatting about this quite a bit and I know you have some AI related input.
00:34:55
Speaker
Back in the dark ages of Google, which we like to call it when Dave and I had a lot more hair and we thought of it back in the 20 aunts, as it were, that there was this new thing called Google Images where you could put in a keyword and then all of a sudden it would throw you all these images. But the problem is those aren't your images to take and do with as you will.
00:35:18
Speaker
And so what we in the marketing community found is that what sprung up as a result of that is an entire subset of ambulance chasers who would do nothing but scour the internet looking for picture usage and then sending people a $700 fine for using the picture. And they would make tens of thousands of dollars.
00:35:43
Speaker
that because the original owner of the picture is the original owner of the picture. So anything that you do in chat GPT is not original. It is not yours. It is like looking at a photo. Yes, it might be helpful. Yes, it certainly is there quickly, but it doesn't replace original content. I think I want to echo what Pete said is
00:36:07
Speaker
that there's a value in having content, but it's fairly shunted if it's not original and authentic and actually talking to the people that you want to talk to.
00:36:19
Speaker
The second thing is I had two experiences that were really helpful in, you know, because my job is selling marketing. I talked to a guy who, his job was a Marine surveying, nicest guy in the world. And he, I'm not a writer. I don't know how to do this. I don't know. So I said, Oh, okay, fine. Give me a topic.
00:36:40
Speaker
And he gave me a topic and I went, okay, fine. And I entered it in a chat GPT 500 word thing to cut and paste it into an email and gave it to him. This was several months ago before I learned better. He's saying, Oh my God, that's great. Fantastic. I was like, well, sure. It's chat GPT. And then I did the same thing about a month and a half ago with a woman who sell her, her, she has a reseller of shipping containers.
00:37:07
Speaker
I'm worried about content. I said, give me a topic that you'd write a blog on. And I did. And I did the same thing, cut and paste, and sent it to her. And her response was incredibly, incredibly helpful, which was she read it all the way through, and she said, this is the neatest thing I've ever seen, and it's 100% inaccurate.
00:37:32
Speaker
So it's completely and utterly wrong. This isn't how you do this thing. So I think what scares me is that there's so much out there in the world and a good portion of it is bad.
00:37:47
Speaker
But the opportunity to use a tool like this for the sake of speed isn't the same thing as being good. And we see this also in the MarTech world, which we're all in. A couple, three years ago, you saw that there was LinkedIn automation in order to use that for sales.
00:38:08
Speaker
And that happened right around the time of the pandemic where. People would pay us a couple hundred dollars to a service who would then use linkedin sales navigator to start reaching out to the people you really wanted to talk to and send them messages.
00:38:25
Speaker
But the problem was is everybody sent the same expletive deleted here, DAGGUM meeting for Andy, the editor. So that's not really what I'm thinking, but I know we don't want to swear. The DAGGUM meeting. And we all get this and it goes as follows. Hello, Dave. I was recently looking at insert business name here and think it's awesome.
00:38:51
Speaker
I do A, B, C and D and I would like how is next week for a meeting to talk about what I do. Thanks so much. Can't wait to talk to you. Love random person. And I don't know about you guys, but I get that 20, 25 a week. That's the new spam.
00:39:11
Speaker
It is, and it's no such thing as a free lunch and there's no such thing as a shortcut, which is why going right back to what you do, Pete, and bringing clarity into the marketing that you're doing, focusing on those superpowers, you actually focus on what's in it for your customer and work to build a generous, helpful relationship right from the get-go.
00:39:33
Speaker
As far as I know, AI can do, I can't see anything AI probably won't be able to do for marketing. I think the one thing that's not going to be able to do, I'm pretty sure, is define your meaning, is give your business meaning. So go right back to
AI's Limitations and Brand Storytelling
00:39:49
Speaker
it. It'll do what you tell it to, but it can't create that reason for your clients for existing.
00:39:57
Speaker
One of the things that, one of the most helpful things I've learned in marketing is I learned from a guy named David Mann, who's local here to Minneapolis. Yeah, I know David. Oh, you do? Yeah, he talks about the disease of Weemias, where so many people in
00:40:13
Speaker
marketing, and in sales in general, have this terrible disease of wimea, where I will tell you what we do, and how I help people, and the things that we have done, us, has done in the past. We, me, I, us. Because it's about me. Because that's the most helpful thing if you meet somebody is to talk about you. The harder thing is to talk about them and learn about them.
00:40:41
Speaker
And so to create any sort of value in a relationship, you have to understand what somebody's talking to you about and what problem you're, that somebody might have that you're trying to solve. Right. Totally great. So yeah, still we me eyes if you like.
00:41:02
Speaker
People, where's marketing going in your eyes in the next two to three years? Because it's always perpetually revolving. Where do you see the industry going?
00:41:17
Speaker
Along the lines of the conversation we just had, I believe that the experience, the communications part of marketing, the way customers, companies share who they are with their clients.
00:41:37
Speaker
Is going to go through a huge revolution because of ai. And as we just talked about i think what's going to happen is what today we we assume is. Oh they have a video personalized you know video on like i do videos once a week on on linkedin.
00:41:57
Speaker
In some amount of time, in the next two to three years, I think AI could create a video like that with my face and saying what AI wants to say. I don't know what the next thing will be, but I see a lot of the current tools
00:42:18
Speaker
that are valuable having to be rethought and reinvented because of the race at the bottom, because of the spam effect of AI content creation. And I don't know what the next level will be, but it's gotta be a way for people, CEOs need to find a way to share their meaning and their value with their clients in a way that's unique
00:42:46
Speaker
And as we said, if every company is creating personalized videos with AI, we're going to have to find something else because they won't be able to tell the difference. Dave, same question to you. Where do you think the industry is going?
00:43:02
Speaker
Oh man, I think to layer on top of what Pete's saying, the ability for tools like AI to enhance thought is going to be much more powerful. It's going to be counterbalanced by that race to the bottom and people being lazy. And so it's up to us in the thinking space of marketing
00:43:31
Speaker
to provide and fight the good fight about, okay, well, let's use it for good and not for, you know, I'm not even going to say evil. I'm going to say, don't be lazy with AI and instead use it to challenge your thinking. And I can create a prompt right now that says, you know, I am a seasons marketing professional with 20 years experience and I need to provide all kinds of different feedback and context
00:43:58
Speaker
and you can put this prompt, and prompt engineering is going to be one of those new job descriptions. But I can generate a prompt that's actually going to be very useful because it tells the tools to mine specific kinds of data in its AI process. So I think that's important, that's interesting.
00:44:22
Speaker
knowing the difference between easy to do and done well is going to be another master skill. Like right now, if you gave me four different articles,
00:44:35
Speaker
And three of them were written by AI, by chat GPT. And one of them was written by a human. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to pick the one human out right away. You can just tell it's, it's super circular. If you ask chat GPT to write any.
00:44:53
Speaker
I think the analogy there is CGI 20 years ago. At the time, we're like, oh my gosh, we're not going to need actors anymore. It's amazing. Now, to your point, it's like, oh yeah, that's CGI. It discounts it and we can tell. I'm still hiring actors and I'm paying them big dollars because there's something there.
00:45:19
Speaker
When I was a kid, the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was utterly terrifying because a guy got stabbed through the head with the speech. And I just shared it with my 8-year-old.
00:45:34
Speaker
And he just blew right through it. And I thought, am I raising a sociopath? Not at all. I'm like, are you okay? And he goes, well, yeah, just go back and pause. And then he walks up to the TV and he diagrammed how everything was scary to me, was really just movie magic.
00:45:57
Speaker
The last thing I want to say about what the future of marketing is, is people are going to, with more veracity, look for real connection because that's uncanny valiness of the content that we're about to be flooded with.
00:46:15
Speaker
is going to get so tiresome that we're just going to say, just get me a real person. I think you're right. Potentially, it's the resurgence of local events and event marketing. Wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. It makes sense to me back to the future of a gene. That does make sense.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:46:37
Speaker
Pete, this has been absolutely fascinating and we could and we probably should do a part two at some point. But remind everybody where we can find you and what we can do and how they can use your talents.
00:46:54
Speaker
Thanks, David. It's been just great. But before we get to that, I want a cheap plug. Pete does a tremendous amount of video work that if you follow him on LinkedIn is everything that we talked about today. It is helpful, it is purposeful, and it is thoughtful and insightful and is 100% worth the time of watching Pete's videos.
00:47:21
Speaker
All right, now go. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. And people can find me in a couple of different ways. One is my website, b2bclaritymarketing.com. And the blog has the videos that Trigvey's talking about. I'm also on YouTube, same thing. And probably the easiest way to reach me is just look me up on LinkedIn, if you can spell my last name. S-T-E-E-G-E. Not Seager, sorry. Right.
00:47:48
Speaker
And I'd love to chat. You know, back to the idea of generous marketing, I try to practice what I preach. And I would just love to have a half hour chat with you if you just you want to lay down on the marketing therapy couch and share all your concerns. I would love to see if I can provide you some advice and just help you along the way.
00:48:10
Speaker
Absolutely. I need all the therapy I can get. Pete, it's been a joy. Thank you for joining us. And if you need some clarity in your marketing, Pete's a great guy to know.