by Christina | Jan 23, 2025 | 2025, Tech Trends
As previously published on 1/16/25 in MarTech
An interesting piece of research was released last week but may have been lost in the busy holiday season.
Previsible, an SEO consultancy, announced that traditional Google search has “basically plateaued and has begun to have its search dominance degraded.” Why? People are using AI assisted search because it has gotten more capable and accessible.
ChatGPT, Claude, Co-pilot, and even Google, offer an AI search version available to most users. Compared to the traditional search, which relies mostly on keyword matching, AI search uses advanced algorithms to understand the context and intent behind the query. As a result, at least in theory, it should provide more relevant and personalized results.
The new capabilities and changing user behaviors are creating a potential warning about the risk of relying on AI. Because of AI’s ability to draw upon vast amounts of information, users often default to trusting that the query output is most likely to be the right answer, solution, recommendation, etc.
As opposed to the traditional search which returns the links to what are the most likely options to answering the query, the user has to make the effort of analyzing the results, reading and filtering information, and drawing conclusions.
And here lies the potential problem.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, stated on the company’s most recent earnings call that we are “in the beginning of a new generation of foundation models that are able to do reasoning and long term thinking.”
Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus says the AI we are currently building is basically like “System 1 thinking,” a reference to Noble Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow” book.
In his book, Kahneman explains the dichotomy of human thought. System 1 being intuitive and fast with no voluntary control. This being one of the reasons he concluded that humans are bad at making decisions. System 2 thinking allocates attention to the effort that demands focus, oftentimes because of its complexity and/or need for computations. Think of the two systems as instinct or “gut feel” and critical thinking.
If, as the AI experts state, we are building System 1 AI models then users are at risk of making the same mistakes using AI as they might make in day-to-day decision making. And, as an observer of younger generations of marketers using AI, they may be particularly vulnerable.
My son, home for the holidays from grad school, mentioned that classmates are not only using ChatGPT to summarize course work, but also to write their presentations. And…they’re not questioning it, they follow the recommendation completely because it “saves time.”
B2B marketers are using AI tools profusely for research, writing, and recommending actions because they are “quick and accurate.” They have grown up in an environment that has emphasized scale and speed, and they lack the experience or interest to question the accuracy of what is being outputted by AI tools.
Where is this headed? Combine all of these factors and it could point to a massive wave of “group thinking” marketers that either lose the ability to think creatively and/or strategically, or eliminate it completely because they are wired to trust AI.
Generative AI has already come for the creative department as witnessed by Omnicom’s recent acquisition of IPG. If marketing executives don’t act now to create a plan to manage AI, “Hal” could become your CMO in a few years.
How should marketing executives respond to this threat? Daniel Kahneman might suggest focusing on skill development that emphasizes System 2 thinking. Teach your team how to do long term, critical and strategic thinking.
Combine the strength of using AI System 1 thinking to enable your staff with training on higher level System 2 type efforts like competitive intelligence (which I rarely see any more), market intelligence and strategy.
There is good reason to get back to these core strategic marketing building blocks. Marketing performance in 2024 was significantly down across channels and activities. It’s time to dig in on strategy. There are significant challenges to address. Going faster and creating more noise in the market is not a strategy that will win.
In 2017, I wrote an article on how Amazon had become the default search engine for buyers who knew what they wanted based on our research on buying behavior. In that post, I predicted that because of that trend, Amazon would soon eat away at Google’s advertising monopoly. At that time, Amazon only had 1% of the global advertising market. By 2020, it had grown to over 10%. This year it will be 14%, and by 2026, it’s estimated to become over 17%.
I see a similar trend with AI eating away at the marketing department, not because of the tools themselves, but by how behaviors are changing because of them (similar to what I observed with consumers and Amazon). To be clear, it’s not necessarily the technology that is the threat, but rather the behavior change caused by it.
If marketers want to remain valuable inside their organizations they will have to learn how to use AI tools to enable better decision making and not default to them as the decision maker. Or as my son’s professor said; “use them to become a better student, not to be the student” and remember, they’re only System 1 thinkers 😉.
by Christina | Jan 16, 2025 | 2025
Last year was a busy one for content. Here’s the “best of the best” of 2024 in case you missed one.
Based on engagement data from MarTech, LinkedIn, our newsletter and website, these are the top five stories from 2024 across platforms.
- How to Build a Better Buyer Journey Using Customer Behavioral Data – this was the number one post on all platforms. First published on MarTech in August it has been viewed over 5000 times. To read click here (add hyperlink below). https://martech.org/how-to-build-a-better-buyer-journey-using-customer-behavioral-data/
- The B2B Social Media Checklist for CEO’s – this was the second most viewed but the most shared post of the year. It was also the topic of a podcast on Alice Heiman’s Sales Talk for CEO Talks podcast. To read the article click here to listen to the podcast visit Sales Talk for CEOs
- Gone in 30 Seconds: Marketing in an Increasingly Distracted World – the #3 most viewed posts of the year was also the most liked on LinkedIn. It discussed the impact of decreased audience digital attention spans on marketing performance. In the past 20 years our focus on the screen has fallen from 150 seconds to under 30 seconds. Read more about the impact.
- The 4 Types of Content Buyers Really Want – based on our five years of research on content consumption habits across 7 industries, we narrow down the top content buyers are actually viewing. https://martech.org/the-4-types-of-content-buyers-want/
- Using Ai Enabled Personality Based Marketing Webinar Series to Design ABM Programs – our two part webinar series covered how to use the rule of 65/’75 to scale personalization to better connect with key audiences. It also provided case studies on how companies were using offline behaviors and motivations to gain deeper insight into online behaviors. To view the on demand webinar click here.
Best of luck in the new year!
by Christina | Jan 10, 2025 | 2025
As previously published on 11/27/24 in MarTech
Artificial Intelligence search company, Perplexity, has raised three rounds of funding this past year. They have now begun their fourth round of funding which will value them at more than $8 billion.
The startup seeks to challenge Google’s supremacy in search by combining the best of traditional search functionality with providing answers to questions similar to ChatCGT. The company currently has annualized revenue of slightly over $10 million. It recently launched an enterprise version for corporate customers that will search internal files.
Last year, we signed an agreement with an AI startup who provided that same enterprise functionality. This year, we didn’t renew the agreement because it’s now built into our Google Workspace platform, Gemini. We went from paying $150 per month, to $10 per month, for the same functionality. See what Google did there?
Guess who else is playing this same game? Hmmm…Have you heard of Copilot, Microsoft’s new “AI Companion.” The partnership and investment with Open AI has all the bells and whistles as Chat GPT 4.0 (see below).
There is a free version, a Pro version (priced similar to Google Gemini for $30 a month), that will integrate into your Microsoft 365 suite.
With a voice interactive interface ( four voice options), you can now delete your Amazon Alexa, Calm, Apple News, and many other apps, if you choose. See what Microsoft is doing?
Apple has quietly acquired more AI companies over the last three years than any other company in the world. Last year, they acquired 32 companies in the AI and machine learning space, almost twice as many as Microsoft. The new IPhone 16 with Apple intelligence is just the beginning.
Oh, and let’s not forget Facebook, who is in the process of launching new tools via Meta’s Ads Manager now, and throughout next year. Ad creatives will get new background, image and text generators.
All of this is happening at a time when marketers are looking to consolidate and/or reduce costs related to their martech stack. According to MarTech’s latest Replace Research, 61% of respondents said the number one factor for a replacement solution was cost savings.
Every technology wave brings about winners and losers, but it also creates an evolution, a better way to accomplish something. The dot com bust gave us Amazon, Ebay, Coupon.com and new ways to buy traditional products more efficiently. AirBnB, Uber, and Venmo emerged from the ashes of the “Great Recession” of 2008, providing us with more efficient ways to buy and pay for services.
The AI bubble will produce a similar set of winners and losers. It has already provided us with new ways to create code, images and content. But, outside of Open AI and Antrophic, it’s not clear who else in the AI generative space will be a winner.
One thing is sure. We are only at the beginning of the wave of AI solutions. According to CB Insights, AI startups are currently getting one third of all investment dollars with B2B startups getting $10 to every $1 invested in B2C applications. As a result, we know we are going to see more and more AI applications aimed at B2B marketers.
For Perplexity, will it emerge as an AI winner or will Google put it out of business by building its unique functionality into search? Marketers are facing a similar question, which may come down to opportunity cost. Is it worth the expense and time of learning a new tool, or do we play the waiting game to see if our current platforms integrate the functionality?
Perhaps I am drawing the circle too small by just focusing on integration and costs. Carrie Mahon, CMO at Unanet point of view is “Embracing new AI tools early not only provides marketers with a strategic advantage in creativity and efficiency but also fosters a mindset shift that speeds up AI integration and unlocks greater benefits. Delaying could mean missing out on these initial advantages and innovation opportunities in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.”
Could the real value and strategy be experimenting with new AI technologies, although perhaps costly, and then moving to more efficient platforms as they become available. Capture the opportunity to learn and experiment, then become efficient.
As an old IBM client once said about new technologies “Let a thousand flowers bloom then cut them all down except for the tallest few.” He would then follow up with “make sure that you tend to your garden!”
Maybe the AI wave is not a bubble to burst, but rather a garden to nurture.
by Christina | Nov 2, 2022 | 2022, ebooks
Why hasn’t sales performance improved since I carried a bag 30 years ago?
It’s fundamental, despite millions invested in tools, we still don’t understand buyers, and how people make decisions. Yes, even in B2B, people make decisions, not titles, roles or budget holders.
For four years, we have been using personality profiling tools, like xiQ, to assess how individuals make decisions based on who they are as a person.
We’ve dug in deep on closed deals (won and lost) and the data in our client’s sales and marketing systems. This e-book will provide you deep insights into buyer behavior and personality driven motivation.
It will provide you with the insight you need to understand why deals stall and how to reignite interest to get them moving again.
by Christina | Mar 22, 2022 | 2022, Insights
As previously published on 3/14/22 in The Drum
by Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
Let’s give credit where credit is due, most B2B organizations have made the transition from leading with products to being customer or market focused. Content is now shaped first with the needs of the target audience (industry, company and buyers).
Many companies make it a regular practice to research “hot topics” in the industry, the needs of those buyers and their channel preferences . Personas are shaped around the insights, and content and messaging are created to align with needs, then carefully aligned to the buyers’ journey.
So is that personalization?
What about the customer experience on the website? This is how Forbes describes website personalization.
Website personalization is the practice of creating a custom experience for site visitors based on who they are and what they want. Rather than providing a single experience for all site visitors, website personalization allows B2B businesses to create unique experiences for visitors based on factors like location, industry and even website behavior.
Ok, got it. Let’s add location, website behavior and personalized digital experiences, and we should be good. Does anyone see the problem here? Bueller, Bueller, anyone?
There is no “person” in any of this so-called “personalization.” There are personas, but they’re most likely role based. Web behaviors, yes important, but without understanding the motivations behind those actions, you only left to guess their intentions.
How do you begin to understand behaviors, motivations and preferences? Start with understanding audience personalities.
In almost every industry, there are only 1-2 dominant personalities. If you’re in the life sciences segment, there is a good chance you’ll over-index with “skeptics” and “status quo” seekers. Selling to a marketing audience? You’re going to find an overabundance of “influencers” and “champions.”
To truly create a world class customer experience, you have to be able to align to the preferences of your audience. Those preferences are not driven by a title or a role.
And it’s not just their preference for channel and content, but more importantly, how the content is packaged, how it’s messaged, and/or how it’s created.
Understanding your dominant audience provides the insight to set your marketing, digital and engagement strategy. It provides the level of insight necessary to take your existing activities and assets to the next level.
Webinars appeal to a certain audience, but only if the topic is research or data backed, and presented by a credible speaker. Animated videos are preferred by another audience type, as long as they are sharable and short.
Don’t rest on thinking you have the right content, at the right place (in the buying process), in the right channel. It’s not enough. Not all the buyers are the same, they all don’t take the same path, consume the same content, and/or prefer the same channel.
In fact, without really knowing their personal motivation and behaviors, most of this insight is based on previous experiences that happened randomly but is assumed to be true for all, and/or based on research with buyers who will say one thing, and then do another.
Deep down inside we know that to be true, because we know that buyers are people, and people are as unique as their personalities…just as no two buyer experiences are the same.
“Personalization” as it is defined for B2B today, is more about trying to get the tools to work better, than it is about improving customer experience. Technology is an enabler, but it is not personalization. Understanding what makes buyers human is. The process has to be flipped so that it starts with the goal of understanding buyers at a deeper level, do that, and the tools will begin to work better.
