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!
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.
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.
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.
Is your ABM program not producing the results you hoped? Hear Scott describe how Personality Based Marketing (PBM) can improve ABM success during his session at the B2SMBI virtual conference. A replay of Scott’s presentation is available below:
For more information on Personality Based Marketing” download our e-book Carbon Quadrants.
Did you know, that until recently restaurant owners only cared about the cleanliness of the food prep area? Most customers, and owners, assumed that if someone got sick after dining out it was because of food poisoning. That was until Carbon Design and Challenger Inc. helped “challenge” the norm by showing owners that half of the outbreaks in a restaurant were caused by people to people transmissions.
Now owners know where the “hotspots” are, and as a result, restaurant are cleaner than ever. Grab your face mask and enjoy a safe night out, but you may want to avoid the raw oysters 😉.
CASE STUDY
How do you do it? By giving clients and users what they want. Using the remaining budget that was to be used to update the site with the new branding we designed and built an entirely new site on a new platform. But audience needs are constantly evolving so the work never stops. Our team continues to audit performance and make improvements.
As a result, the two-year journey has paid off with the site being named #1 in the industry. Even more importantly, their key priority areas (site search, attorney profiles, etc.) were ranked in the outstanding category. Proving that excellence is a journey not just a destination.
CASE STUDY
It’s not unusual to find companies referring to their relationship with clients as “partnerships.” It’s common to find client logos on vendor websites. But how often do you see an agency or consulting firm’s logo on client websites? If you visit www.evepark.ca – that’s exactly what you’ll see.
Carbon Design, represented side by side with, a global architecture powerhouse, a world-class designer, and the project principal: the innovative green-tech engineering firm, S2E Technologies Inc. Under S2E’s leadership, these firms are inventing a new consumer category – one that integrates bold new ideas about housing and transportation – and radically resets the carbon footprint of both at the same time.
