Fireside chat with Jon Miller:B2B marketing’s future in the age of AI

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Julia Nimchinski: we are transitioning to our next session, and it’s going to be a fireside chat. Our community is fired up about it. Future of B. 2 B. Marketing. Welcome to the show. John Miller and Caroly Dietrich

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Julia Nimchinski: super pumped for this. How are you doing.

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Carilu Dietrich: Good thanks. I’m sorry. I felt like I was interrupting the last one logging in. So it’s nice to see all of you happy happy day, and thanks for hosting us. Julia.

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Julia Nimchinski: Yeah, it’s just an endless loop for 3 days, 6 h long. So let’s go.

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Jon Miller: Lot of awesome content. But this is going to be the most awesome of all the content.

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Jon Miller: because we have Carol.

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Carilu Dietrich: Well, I’m pretty excited about it. John and I got an hour over the last month, and I never get enough time with him. Super excited to interview him today. Founder, co-founder of Marketo, founder of Engageo, hosting us today to talk a little bit about his stealth Startup in the AI space. So we have lots to talk about. I guess 1st I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Carrie Lou Dietrich.

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Carilu Dietrich: I’m a former Cmo. Most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. And these days I advise Ceos and Cmos of hypergrowth companies.

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Carilu Dietrich: companies like one password sprout, Social bill.com and others, and I write a blog@carolu.com, where I share some of their best practices. And one of the reasons I advise Ceos and Cmos is because a lot of the marketing problems aren’t just marketing execution problems. But business strategy problems. And John and I are going to talk about that today. And the role of the Cmo. To be more of a business strategist. So, John, how much are you sharing with the public about your stealth? AI company? What can you share with us today.

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Jon Miller: Well, well, 1st off, let me say I am as excited to talk to you as I think you are to talk to me. And I hope that it’s a conversation, not just an interview, you know. It’s like you’ve got obviously so many things to say and I want to, just, you know. Give a quick shout out, you know, for to your blog and your sub stack, you know it’s really good even your post today about, you know, leadership at gunpoint was really really awesome. So thank you for sharing that story.

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Carilu Dietrich: Well, I really appreciate that.

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Carilu Dietrich: you know you’ve been writing a lot, that marketing is broken, and that the old ways of doing things that you helped invent are are not getting the same kind of traction, and part of that is because of the change in AI behavior. Part of that is because of the overwhelm. But I presume that’s kind of what’s behind this latest company. You’re going to help us build some tech that is is native to how things are now like, how are you thinking about that?

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Jon Miller: Yeah. So

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Jon Miller: for the company. Specifically, we are still stealth, and we will be, for, you know, a few more months at least. But you’re exactly right. I you know, I’ve been in marketing technology for 19 years. I helped build. I think you know, some of the leading platforms of the old era.

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Jon Miller: And I think that you know, we have basically a new era which we’re gonna talk about where marketing is changing. And I don’t think that the platforms of the old era are, gonna you know, meet the needs of today. So I’m trying to create.

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Jon Miller: you know, an AI. You know the marketing platform for the AI era is is probably the kind of the best way to describe that.

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Carilu Dietrich: What’s broken now, what what’s not working for marketers that you’re seeing most.

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Jon Miller: Yeah, exactly. So.

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Jon Miller: you know, we’ve been for 15 plus years. Now, I think there’s been kind of a standard playbook

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Jon Miller: that I helped to preach that people should do, you know, and it starts with using content. And to kind of, you know, gate, the content to capture leads, and then you nurture them and score them, and pass into an Sdr. At the right time. Maybe you have some outbound Sdrs via prospecting into accounts as well, and you try to make the whole thing really measurable.

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Jon Miller: You know, I’m going to do this many campaigns. I’m gonna get this many Mqls.

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Jon Miller: you know, and you know, for for a while. That worked, you know. But I think 2 2 main things. Well, let’s say 3 main things, I think, have started to make it kind of really fall apart.

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Jon Miller: You know, the the 1st one is that

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Jon Miller: you know I call it the tragedy of the comets. Everybody started doing those tactics

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Jon Miller: and buyers started to get overwhelmed

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Jon Miller: and to the point that they learn to kind of opt out and tune out and toss out. You know all that content all that emails, you know they don’t want yet another ebook.

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Jon Miller: They’ve learned to become anonymous. They’ve learned if they fill out the form to get the ebook. They’re going to start getting one onto phone calls, you know. And it’s it’s just not working, you know. Second, and I think more insidious. If you will.

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Jon Miller: is that there was a a mindset to the traditional playbook

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Jon Miller: that you know. Oh, I can just run another campaign, and I’ll get more Mqls.

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Jon Miller: and I think it taught marketers and executives, boards and Cfos, and all that.

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Jon Miller: to sort of think of marketing as like a simple gumball machine

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Jon Miller: where you know you can put your quarter in and you get your candy out.

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Jon Miller: But the reality is marketing doesn’t work that way. You know, marketing is a complex system, not a simple machine.

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Jon Miller: It’s non complex. Systems are nonlinear, you know. And and you, you know. And so what happened? What ended up happening is we? We kept trying to do these sort of, you know, put the quarter into the machine.

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Jon Miller: and it wasn’t working. And so we just started trying to do more quarters. And you know that that was ultimately not only ineffective but actually hurt the customer relationship.

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Jon Miller: And so we’re seeing that today, you know, we’re seeing companies are struggling to create enough pipeline. We’re seeing rising costs, you know, to generate pipeline, you know, decreasing. Go to market productivity. Sdr productivity going down, and perhaps worst of all, cmo, tenures are about as short as they ever ever have been.

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Jon Miller: Yeah. So something’s got to change. And then you you mentioned that, you know. AI, so I’ll let you queue it up. But I think that’s the 3rd thing that’s going on.

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Carilu Dietrich: Right. And so in summary, it’s really kind of the overwhelm that that customers are feeling the kind of stockedness in a in a experience that’s not right for them. So so is it really that we have to reimagine the the experience that the customers, having, instead of like the way we can use our systems to reach them.

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Jon Miller: Well, you know, I think, that in many ways we.

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Jon Miller: But in treating marketing like a machine, we

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Jon Miller: he treated, you know, potential customers as leads to be captured

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Jon Miller: and not relationships to be built.

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Jon Miller: you know, and then trying to tune this machine, I think we sort of lost the soul of marketing.

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Jon Miller: you know, in terms of trying to make it measurable. We lost the meaning.

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Jon Miller: and at the end of the day, you know, we could debate what? What is the purpose of marketing? I’m curious kind of how you would define it. But I would say, one of the most important purposes is to create an emotional connection in the hearts and minds of our buyer.

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Jon Miller: you know, and that doesn’t happen with a gumball machine mentality.

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Jon Miller: you know. And and I guess that’s the at the core of what I’m sort of talking about with the old playbook not working.

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Jon Miller: you know. In some ways we need back to the basics.

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Carilu Dietrich: And we can come back. We’ll come back to AI because we’ll talk about AI a lot. But I mean, you know, what’s been interesting is you’re you really come from this demand generation background. But one of the things you’re talking about is really more brand building and experience.

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Carilu Dietrich: And this is coming at a time when you know SEO, which was a brand building technique many of us use to kind of be practically helpful about the brand is really kind of imploding. I mean, Cmos are telling me they’re losing anywhere between 15 and 25% of their top of funnel from some of their traditional like, what is, how does it work? Educational content which brought people into their brand?

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Carilu Dietrich: I mean, it sounds like this. This connection is these brands and experiences, not just the digital execution of dimension.

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Jon Miller: Yeah. The short answer is, I think you know, we you know we we lost.

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Jon Miller: I think, the important. You know, we we focus so much on demand generation that I think we sort of, you know, underinvested in brand creation.

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Jon Miller: You know, because it’s less measurable right? So if you put all your. If you try to make everything measurable, you’re going to put everything into things that are measurable.

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Jon Miller: right? But I think

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Jon Miller: you know we’re that that will miss out on the, on kind of ultimately, where things need to really happen. And and it’s it’s the. It’s the complex machinery that we were just talking about.

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Jon Miller: you know.

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Jon Miller: there’s great research out there, you know. 6th sense has been talking about the fact that by the time somebody actually kind of raises. Their hand.

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Jon Miller: you know, becomes in market and ready to buy 80% of the time. They already know who their preferred vendor is

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Jon Miller: right. And so if we’re not, you know, if if what you’re doing is oh, I have intent data, and I’m going to find out who are people in market. And then I’m gonna reach out.

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Jon Miller: You’re too late.

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Jon Miller: you know, like we’ve got to find a way to start building preference and engagement with potential buyers before they raise their hands, you know, in this world where they want to be anonymous.

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Jon Miller: you know where they where they aren’t necessarily even coming to our website. It’s a different playbook.

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Carilu Dietrich: And what are you know? I feel like it’s both a different playbook, and I also always feel like everything old is new again, like I’ve had some of these conversations recently about like Shit SEO is going to change the the way

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Carilu Dietrich: we can deliver this year because we used it for so much of our inbound top of funnel. Maybe we should start creating our own lists like a newsletter, you know, or or you know, provide really helpful. You know, thought leadership that like brings people in like by investing more in social or in investing more in events.

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Carilu Dietrich: You know, some of which is like new, and some of which is new as old again. What? What are some like? I don’t know. 3 to 5 of the most important tactics you think are important for Ceos to reinvent our Cmos to reinvest in in today’s landscape.

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Jon Miller: Yup

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Jon Miller: alright. Well, I before I get to that, I gotta want to unpack some things that I think are important, you know, to set up here. Right? So so the the 1st thing is.

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Jon Miller: we could talk the whole time about this. But you know there’s this idea of revenue marketing

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Jon Miller: right and and marketers. We we want to be tied to revenue.

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Jon Miller: And and you know there’s a whole discussion on Linkedin. I think, late last week around the fact that you know, you know.

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Jon Miller: revenue marketing to to a lot of people

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Jon Miller: seems to be demand Gen. Mql. Creation. You know the stuff that’s kind of, you know, measurable.

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Jon Miller: I’d argue that we need to redefine what revenue marketing even is

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Jon Miller: right. Revenue marketing is, are you impacting long-term revenue.

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Jon Miller: you know. Are you, you know. And and are you supporting the efforts of the entire? Go to market team, you know, and that’s what you know back to. We need to invest in Brand and some of these these other factors. So that was the 1st thing I want to back. The second thing is, we sort of talked a little bit about I and bounced off of it a little bit.

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Jon Miller: So I think AI is having.

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Jon Miller: It’s starting to have, and will have even larger impacts on how people buy, and that, I don’t think is getting enough attention. So you already mentioned the drop in SEO traffic.

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Jon Miller: Right? We’re seeing that because of 0 click search. AI is summarizing the results, you know. And therefore I never even go need to go to the website.

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Jon Miller: Let’s think about email.

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Jon Miller: right email is still the number one channel people use to prospect and reach out to, you know, customers, and you know, interact and and be at least in b 2 b.

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Jon Miller: we already there already is this thing. If you use Google called the promotions Tab.

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Jon Miller: right? That is a form of AI deciding which emails go into the priority inbox and which ones go to promotions.

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Jon Miller: That’s just going to get more and more. We are not that far away from having an AI agent that sits in our inbox

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Jon Miller: and basically says, Here are the emails you need to pay attention to. I’ve already drafted a reply for you.

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Jon Miller: You can ignore all this other stuff.

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Jon Miller: right? And and what’s gonna happen to our open rates and our click rates. And our email is exactly what’s happening to our web traffic right today.

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Jon Miller: So you know, no matter what the channel is.

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Jon Miller: we’re entering this world where traditional digital marketing can get disintermediated by AI

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Jon Miller: and AI will be summarizing all that content for us.

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Jon Miller: So sounds scary. But now, to get to your question, like, Okay, what should we be doing?

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Jon Miller: You know in this new playbook. We have to build Brand, you know, but we can’t do it with some of the old stuff. We need to focus on the things that AI can’t summarize.

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Jon Miller: And I think that’s probably the my, my most important takeaway. What is the marketing that AI can’t summarize? And

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Jon Miller: you know, for simplicity. I would just break that down into 3 categories.

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Jon Miller: Right? Number one experiences right. A Chris Penn likes to say, a photograph of my vacation to Hawaii

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Jon Miller: is not the same as actually feeling the sand, my feet in the sand in Hawaii. Right? You cannot summarize an experience.

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Jon Miller: I was at a dinner with other Ceos last night, and you know.

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Jon Miller: maybe you know the content. I learned about how people are using AI and go to market. Maybe you could like write a blog post about that, but it would not be the same as the experience I had, you know, drinking penicillin cocktails with, you know, with with these other Ceos and talking about go to market. So so I yeah, I mean dinners and other in-person experiences and events, I think, are an increasingly important part of the new playbook.

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Jon Miller: Number one, number 2 relationships.

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Jon Miller: Again, what old? What’s old is new?

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Jon Miller: Right? But but you know there’s there’s no substitute for somebody you trust, saying, I vouch for this company this content. You know this information. It’s why we’re seeing such a rise in ecosystem or partner led growth.

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Jon Miller: It’s also why we see folks like you and others basically building B to their brands as b 2 b influencers.

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Jon Miller: right? That you know, that is a kind of relationship, you know, when you have kind of a trusted influencer. It’s why you have executives building their presence on Linkedin.

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Jon Miller: you know, because that’s you know, again, you’re forming kind of that trusted relationship.

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Jon Miller: That’s why communities are so important part of marketing today. Because, you know, again, it’s all about relationships.

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Jon Miller: In some ways. I think it’s sort of like what we see in the media, right? We’ve gotten to a very fractured media landscape where, regardless of your politics, you know, you might see different media than I see, because we trust the source. But we basically whitelisted certain places that we trust

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Jon Miller: right. I think that’s what’s going to happen right in in our buying, too. Like, like, I trust, this source. Carolu’s. You know. Newsletter says this is a good thing.

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Jon Miller: I’m going to trust that right? So so investing in these relationships number 2,

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Jon Miller: and then number 3, I think, does come back to content and thought, leadership and and creativity, you know. But what we have, you know, in terms of the the content that we’re creating. It has to be things that AI couldn’t create itself.

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Jon Miller: It’s got to be something truly original, because AI is really good at remixing things that already exist.

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Jon Miller: but is not good at coming up with something truly truly original.

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Jon Miller: So that could be because it’s really creative.

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Jon Miller: It can be because it’s actually new thinking that doesn’t exist. Yet true thought leadership.

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Jon Miller: or it can be. And one of my favorite examples, that’s the easiest to scale

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Jon Miller: is original research based upon proprietary data.

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Jon Miller: Right gong. Does this really, really? Well.

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Jon Miller: you know, Carter, does this really really well, like they have information about

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Jon Miller: what works in sales calls, or what do companies you know? How do they structure their cap tables and their fundraising? And they publish this data in a way that is really valuable to their audience, and only that company can do that because only they have access to that data. And AI cannot generate that content

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Jon Miller: with a prompt.

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Jon Miller: So anyway. Long answer. But but experiences, relationships, and truly original content, I think, are kind of the 3 strategies I’d point to in the age of AI.

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Carilu Dietrich: I love it. I’d like to unpack them kind of each. I think we could. You know we could probably do a webinar on each, but we’ll at least give him a couple of minutes. I love Peter’s work at Carta. He’s 1 of the folks that I follow most closely. And and he kind of combines that like building a relationship as a person, right? Carter republishes his content. But they really have this like data expert. That’s the face.

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Carilu Dietrich: And and you know, Peter and I know each other personally, and he pitched this job because he was interested in in being this kind of person that was like the face of really great data, and being able to analyze and and and

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Carilu Dietrich: write about and and engage with people over over the data. So so

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Carilu Dietrich: you know, when I think about

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Carilu Dietrich: when I think about those one of the ones that’s hardest for a lot of marketers is actually building personality as a company. So like, let’s talk about, you know, community, you can have user meetups and user groups or user conferences. There’s kind of a playbook for that experiences and thought leadership like data thought leadership is amazing. There’s some some other examples I might want to talk about

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Carilu Dietrich: when we dig in there. But I see a lot of folks, you know. There’s a couple companies where the CEO has gotten really good at Linkedin, and cares, and just gets this massive viral following. And then there’s all these marketers in the world that are trying so hard to make their brand page relevant. But no one’s really interacting with brand pages, like people are interacting with people and personalities. And it’s really tricky for people to get some of their executives involved.

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Carilu Dietrich: Even some social media companies don’t have particularly social executives like, how

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Carilu Dietrich: how do you think about navigating this like kind of tying? What AI can’t be, which is like a person with with thoughts and ideas and feelings and insights to to a marketing strategy.

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Jon Miller: Well, I I think you gotta start like like it’s not everybody right? You know, you’re not going to get every executive to suddenly become an influencer or a thought leader out on Linkedin. You know, I actually got to have the opportunity to have dinner one night with Nicole bear who’s the Cmo of Carta

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Jon Miller: and so Peter works, I think, somewhere in her organization.

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Carilu Dietrich: Yeah. He works for her.

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Jon Miller: And you know, like she was smart enough to go make sure to, you know. Have a guy like Peter on her team, you know it’s like she’s like, all right. It’s not gonna be her. It’s not gonna be the CEO carta. But let’s really empower Peter to go do it.

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Jon Miller: You know, when I was Cmo at Demand Base, I’ll be honest. One of my biggest regrets is, I was trying sort of at the end of my tenure to get something spin up, you know, demand based labs in somebody to kind of do the same thing. And and I wasn’t successful in kind of getting it, giving it enough life before I left that it kind of continued but Nicole’s done a great job on that. So I think that’s you know, it’s really important to if it’s not you

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Jon Miller: to empower somebody to do it, and and just recognize that that is key, you know.

616
01:49:15.710 –> 01:49:20.810
Jon Miller: There, you know you. You can also build influencer marketing programs.

617
01:49:22.023 –> 01:49:36.580
Jon Miller: You know where, where you know ideally you have your own influencer on staff as well. But but you can, I think, invest budget and time and energy in cultivating relationships with the other creators out there.

618
01:49:36.740 –> 01:49:41.520
Jon Miller: B, 2 C companies have been doing that for 5 years, and B. 2 B companies should be should be catching up.

619
01:49:42.280 –> 01:49:45.279
Jon Miller: So I don’t. I don’t answer your question directly, but but.

620
01:49:45.280 –> 01:50:10.229
Carilu Dietrich: I mean, it’s tough, right? There’s a different strategy for every company at Atlassian I actually set aside a head count for, and we hired someone from like deep in the bowels of engineering and program management, who became ultimately Dominic price, who ultimately, you know, is on stage with the CEO of virgin America and is speaking, has a Ted talk with like a million followers. And there was always this aspect where I was like slightly jealous.

621
01:50:10.230 –> 01:50:24.079
Carilu Dietrich: I was like that was awesome. Why didn’t I do that? And you’re like, Oh, because I’m running a massive operational machine, and some of the time you need for thought and writing and engaging and speaking and traveling isn’t the same as as operational leadership.

622
01:50:24.892 –> 01:50:29.763
Carilu Dietrich: But I’ll say the the other thing that I’m seeing now

623
01:50:30.280 –> 01:50:46.070
Carilu Dietrich: is, you know, I think this is always true, but marketing has never been just marketing’s job, like maybe it can be at a b 2 c company. But at a tech company, you really need engineering and product management. You need like thought leadership out of the technical ranks

624
01:50:46.070 –> 01:51:07.659
Carilu Dietrich: to be to get really tight traction with technical audiences. So again, Atlassian, we, we had someone in kind of engineering program management and like, earlier in my career, we had product managers that would write white papers or do some of this data analysis because they were closest to the technical product. So I guess I would just encourage marketers

625
01:51:07.660 –> 01:51:17.869
Carilu Dietrich: that you know you could have a face. But you know you’ve got to make sure that you’re getting the right depth of thought, leadership for technical audiences from the right technical departments.

626
01:51:18.100 –> 01:51:21.480
Jon Miller: Yeah, that’s fair, and it varies by company. I mean, I’ve always had.

627
01:51:22.320 –> 01:51:37.329
Jon Miller: You know, my whole career. I’ve marketed to marketers, you know, and as a marketer. I therefore become a very obvious person to kind of go do that. But if you know, if you market to Cfos it’s different, you know, and and I just want to acknowledge that

628
01:51:37.490 –> 01:51:40.079
Jon Miller: 2 other quick things I’ll say, you know.

629
01:51:40.360 –> 01:51:45.169
Jon Miller: regardless, you know. If it is. If you decide it is something you’re going to do

630
01:51:45.660 –> 01:51:58.099
Jon Miller: right you you want to this to be part of your personal world. If you’re a CEO or or or a Cmo or something. You know, the advice I have is just sometimes you gotta still do stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

631
01:51:58.490 –> 01:52:10.779
Jon Miller: You know I, personally do not like being on camera like I can do something like this all day long, but like actually hit record. And and I need to sort of like talk, you know, just into the camera.

632
01:52:10.890 –> 01:52:22.100
Jon Miller: you know. It’s awkward, as all hell, you know. But I decided I have to do it because, you know, it’s important, you know. And I started doing these videos. You may have seen them on Linkedin, where I, you know, make a cocktail, and I talk about marketing

633
01:52:22.560 –> 01:52:28.780
Jon Miller: and the 1st one I did. I showed it to my wife, and she was like, you know, Stanley Tucci.

634
01:52:29.375 –> 01:52:31.599
Jon Miller: and I’m like my crap, my crap.

635
01:52:31.820 –> 01:52:48.840
Jon Miller: I did not spend as much time in front of the camera as Stanley Tucci has, but you know the second one was a little better, and the 3rd one is a little better, and the 4th one was a little better. And I think that’s just the advice I have is, you know, sometimes you just have to start doing it, and you’ll get better at it.

636
01:52:49.400 –> 01:53:18.550
Carilu Dietrich: So let’s turn left and get into where else AI is going to totally change marketing. And and I think one of the main places is personalization. You know, like part. If if you can catch them at the right time, or they do come to your site or subscribe to your newsletter or participate in something you’re doing. How are you thinking that the next era of Martech is going to help us with personalization and data analysis, and all of that.

637
01:53:20.650 –> 01:53:21.395
Jon Miller: Yeah,

638
01:53:22.960 –> 01:53:36.210
Jon Miller: I guess I 1st think that a lot of marketers are spending time and energy in the wrong place you know, which is trying to have AI personalize the content.

639
01:53:36.810 –> 01:53:44.119
Jon Miller: you know. And we see that the most with this massive rise in AI Sdrs

640
01:53:44.709 –> 01:53:53.689
Jon Miller: driven also by tools like clay. Now, 1st off, I’m a big fan of clay and and kind of you know how they

641
01:53:54.120 –> 01:54:02.010
Jon Miller: can turn unstructured data into structured data to support all aspects of your go to market. But most people are using it

642
01:54:02.450 –> 01:54:06.160
Jon Miller: to feed into automated Sdr prospecting.

643
01:54:06.310 –> 01:54:08.940
Jon Miller: which, you know, ends up with.

644
01:54:09.040 –> 01:54:13.399
Jon Miller: you know, emails that are, you know, seem personalized

645
01:54:13.500 –> 01:54:27.689
Jon Miller: because AI has researched with a school I went to and can reference the the you know, the football game that we won or lost last weekend, you know, from from my team and stick that into an email that seems like it got personalized.

646
01:54:27.790 –> 01:54:29.139
Jon Miller: you know, or whatever

647
01:54:29.390 –> 01:54:40.984
Jon Miller: you know, referring the weather in my, in my local city in that day, or naming a local restaurant, I mean, there’s lots of I’ve seen lots of examples of of these things. But it’s not. It’s not

648
01:54:42.520 –> 01:54:53.079
Jon Miller: It’s just more gumball machine thinking, I think, you know. And it’s not personalization that is truly in the spirit of. Is this making it better for that prospect, or that customer

649
01:54:54.376 –> 01:54:55.550
Jon Miller: and so.

650
01:54:55.550 –> 01:54:59.090
Carilu Dietrich: Or what you think would be the the dream realized.

651
01:54:59.410 –> 01:55:02.710
Jon Miller: Yeah, well, so so, my, my- my.

652
01:55:02.900 –> 01:55:05.229
Jon Miller: you know. So so number one, it’s you know.

653
01:55:05.670 –> 01:55:11.089
Jon Miller: the number one. The main use of AI, I don’t think is going to be crafting personalized emails.

654
01:55:12.140 –> 01:55:19.460
Jon Miller: Where I do think the value is is, you know, I’d like to sort of, you know, refer back to my Instagram feed

655
01:55:19.830 –> 01:55:23.719
Jon Miller: that, you know when I log on to Instagram. I’m not a Tiktok user. Maybe I should be

656
01:55:24.158 –> 01:55:29.080
Jon Miller: but I do use Instagram. And you know, when I look at my Instagram.

657
01:55:29.560 –> 01:55:33.550
Jon Miller: it’s quite engaging, like the stuff there is interesting.

658
01:55:33.800 –> 01:55:38.779
Jon Miller: And I would say even the ads are pretty good, right? What have they done?

659
01:55:39.010 –> 01:55:41.609
Jon Miller: They have personalized my feed

660
01:55:43.426 –> 01:55:51.590
Jon Miller: effectively, almost like Spotify. They’ve given me a playlist, that is, you know, personalized to me based on my interests and what I found engaging.

661
01:55:51.910 –> 01:55:57.820
Jon Miller: That’s AI right? Why can’t we apply AI in b 2 b

662
01:55:58.000 –> 01:56:00.850
Jon Miller: to deliver the same level of relevance

663
01:56:01.020 –> 01:56:05.559
Jon Miller: and personalization to the playlist of interactions that we send to our customers.

664
01:56:06.260 –> 01:56:14.439
Jon Miller: Right? That’s where I think AI needs to be going for around personalization, you know, is literally personalizing the playlist

665
01:56:14.580 –> 01:56:16.440
Jon Miller: more than personalizing the content.

666
01:56:18.520 –> 01:56:22.930
Carilu Dietrich: And it’s funny, because what it makes me think about is how difficult change management is.

667
01:56:23.030 –> 01:56:45.639
Carilu Dietrich: You know, when I think about rolling out new tools and all the different tools I’ve rolled out over my career. Sometimes the tool can be great, but trying to get the sales org and marketing organ alignment to use it. There’s been times where the sales org doesn’t want you emailing customers they’re engaging with. But you feel like you can surface this right playlist. So can we surface the playwrit list

668
01:56:45.640 –> 01:56:58.619
Carilu Dietrich: to sales people, can we, you know, think about our enablement through these like multivariant paths, instead of like a linear sales cycle. And how are you thinking about the change management of just

669
01:56:58.940 –> 01:57:01.860
Carilu Dietrich: how team processes work? This is gonna change everything.

670
01:57:02.100 –> 01:57:13.280
Jon Miller: Yeah. Well, 1st off we shouldn’t be thinking about multivariate visio flows. If this, then that branching, I mean, that’s gonna quickly become spaghetti, and is the opposite of what I’m saying. Right? What I’m saying is, you know.

671
01:57:13.440 –> 01:57:21.300
Jon Miller: each person and account should have a personalized playlist of interactions, you know. That’s right for them.

672
01:57:23.590 –> 01:57:25.110
Jon Miller: Now, if a salesperson.

673
01:57:25.110 –> 01:57:42.109
Carilu Dietrich: Graphically. Your stealth, your stealth tech stack surfaces that to the right people at the right time. I mean, I’m calling it multivariant, but it’s the same thing. If every sales rep has a different thing. What marketing recommends, sales, reps, use at a certain time becomes a totally different game.

674
01:57:42.360 –> 01:57:47.860
Jon Miller: Well. But but my point is like, if if if a salesperson sends somebody an email

675
01:57:48.560 –> 01:58:01.020
Jon Miller: right, then whatever playlist that that person’s receiving should know about that email that the salesperson sent and adjust and respond appropriately, so that you’re not sending too many things or disjointed messages

676
01:58:01.420 –> 01:58:05.540
Jon Miller: right? And I think that’s what it means to kind of have an AI

677
01:58:05.670 –> 01:58:09.019
Jon Miller: that is crap curating this playlist for you.

678
01:58:09.630 –> 01:58:11.130
Jon Miller: Right? You know. I mean.

679
01:58:11.130 –> 01:58:12.240
Carilu Dietrich: All panels.

680
01:58:13.200 –> 01:58:14.110
Jon Miller: Across all the.

681
01:58:14.110 –> 01:58:17.479
Carilu Dietrich: Yeah, that are showing up and things we want to send them and all the rest.

682
01:58:17.480 –> 01:58:27.299
Jon Miller: That again. Oh, look, we have an image here. So we’re talking about one of these on here. Yeah. Well, anyway. So

683
01:58:27.790 –> 01:58:31.450
Jon Miller: so yeah, so playlists, I think you know, should should be

684
01:58:31.660 –> 01:58:40.009
Jon Miller: should handle the change management by being smart about understanding what’s happening across the customer experience.

685
01:58:40.600 –> 01:58:46.239
Jon Miller: you know, and and and and fundamentally, I think, what what goes on behind the scenes there

686
01:58:46.650 –> 01:58:53.400
Jon Miller: is. It’s a move from a campaign 1st model to a customer 1st model.

687
01:58:54.600 –> 01:59:00.290
Jon Miller: Right? So think about what marketers. What most marketers do today is they run a campaign

688
01:59:00.850 –> 01:59:02.669
Jon Miller: right? I have a webinar.

689
01:59:02.790 –> 01:59:04.459
Jon Miller: It’s scheduled for Wednesday

690
01:59:05.180 –> 01:59:14.190
Jon Miller: next week. So tomorrow I am going to send an email to invite people to that. And then, 2 days later, anyone who hasn’t responded, I’m going to send another email.

691
01:59:14.910 –> 01:59:21.609
Jon Miller: you know, and maybe I’m really clever. And for my top 100 accounts I also ask my Sdrs to do some personalized outreach

692
01:59:22.260 –> 01:59:22.815
Jon Miller: right?

693
01:59:23.480 –> 01:59:25.730
Jon Miller: That’s a campaign. That’s a campaign. 1st mentality.

694
01:59:26.610 –> 01:59:29.690
Jon Miller: right? But you know, if you

695
01:59:29.970 –> 01:59:32.779
Jon Miller: move to this more customer 1st mentality.

696
01:59:33.540 –> 01:59:39.069
Jon Miller: you know, I’ll go back to my spotify analogy. Right? We’re we’re crafting playlists for each person.

697
01:59:39.740 –> 01:59:46.010
Jon Miller: Right? The marketer’s job isn’t to run the campaign. The marketer’s job is to create the songs

698
01:59:46.640 –> 01:59:51.210
Jon Miller: right and think about it in some ways that lets us really lean into our creativity

699
01:59:52.060 –> 01:59:54.690
Jon Miller: right? How do I create the best songs possible?

700
01:59:55.120 –> 02:00:00.099
Jon Miller: You know the ones that are going to really resonate with my audience that are going to be really engaging.

701
02:00:00.380 –> 02:00:20.379
Jon Miller: really useful. Imagine if all of our time and energy went there and not into. Well, I got to manage this micro segment versus that segment. So I don’t email them at the same time. And I have to have this whole meeting once a week, where all the marketers get together and talk about which campaigns are we sending? And, you know, make sure there’s no overlap. And, like just man. It’s enough to make your pull your hair out.

702
02:00:20.540 –> 02:00:24.819
Jon Miller: You’re right, and is, that’s none of that is in the spirit of doing right by the customer.

703
02:00:25.840 –> 02:00:30.210
Jon Miller: Right? It’s it’s, you know. It’s just the complexity of the old playbook.

704
02:00:31.280 –> 02:01:01.090
Carilu Dietrich: And how much of this is vision versus what you think marketers going to be able to roll out in the next 6, 12, or 18 months, cause I you know what I’m hearing on like, let’s say the Sdr front is that things that are fully automated still have a lot of hallucination, or don’t feel quite right. So what’s working best is like a recommendation engine that comes to a human who then approves it and uses it. So it’s like an accelerant versus a replacement. You know this playlist concept, how how far out is this relative to the

705
02:01:01.090 –> 02:01:06.000
Carilu Dietrich: challenges of putting AI on autopilot.

706
02:01:08.080 –> 02:01:21.190
Jon Miller: Well, it’s a technology thing and a change management thing. As you said, right? And the technology will be there. The technology has to be there as a prerequisite, you know, for the people to kind of accept the change.

707
02:01:21.670 –> 02:01:29.289
Jon Miller: you know. You know what’s what will probably end up happening is, we’re gonna be in a hybrid world for a while, right where?

708
02:01:29.590 –> 02:01:34.080
Jon Miller: Where, let’s say, the technology exists. Marketers will still run some of their traditional campaigns.

709
02:01:34.620 –> 02:01:39.269
Jon Miller: you know, and and and yet but maybe the AI takes over more of the nurture.

710
02:01:40.090 –> 02:01:49.069
Jon Miller: you know, and and and maybe they start marketers start saying they’re trusting the like. Okay, I still gonna invite you to this campaign.

711
02:01:49.240 –> 02:01:52.639
Jon Miller: But maybe they let the AI figure out what time of day to send it

712
02:01:53.150 –> 02:01:54.950
Jon Miller: right. Little little things like that.

713
02:01:55.230 –> 02:02:01.129
Jon Miller: and over time, I think, you know, we will see, you know as they as they can see what’s going on. They’ll see more trust.

714
02:02:01.690 –> 02:02:08.330
Jon Miller: you know, in in kind of what’s you know is going on there. So

715
02:02:11.610 –> 02:02:15.319
Jon Miller: yeah, the tech, you know, tech 1st change management follows that.

716
02:02:18.070 –> 02:02:19.363
Carilu Dietrich: And so

717
02:02:20.120 –> 02:02:43.719
Carilu Dietrich: I think most marketers this year are struggling with what we talk about every year, but feels even more pointed this year that we have to do more with less, you know, for the last several years we just had to do more with less because there was less. And then this year, what I’ve seen in a lot of financial plans is a return to higher growth rates, but budgets not growing at that same rate and at the same time.

718
02:02:43.920 –> 02:02:50.630
Carilu Dietrich: you know, we’ve got this big loss of SEO at the top of the funnel that people are trying to to kind of overcome.

719
02:02:51.280 –> 02:03:01.459
Carilu Dietrich: you know. And these new investments in AI, right, there’s this, all these things that that we’re all juggling? You know. How do you see?

720
02:03:01.780 –> 02:03:12.129
Carilu Dietrich: When do you see AI providing some relief in accelerating growth relative to being like a big change management and tech cost for people to kind of

721
02:03:12.240 –> 02:03:14.170
Carilu Dietrich: shift away from what they’ve had before.

722
02:03:18.770 –> 02:03:23.059
Jon Miller: I I think it is. There’s going to be some bumps along the road.

723
02:03:25.810 –> 02:03:30.510
Jon Miller: I don’t think you can get to where

724
02:03:31.210 –> 02:03:35.680
Jon Miller: that to where we need to be by

725
02:03:35.910 –> 02:03:40.179
Jon Miller: just adding some AI candy on top of our existing tech stacks.

726
02:03:41.170 –> 02:03:51.869
Jon Miller: You know whether that’s existing vendors adding an AI feature, or you know you the ability to go buy some magical tool that will somehow.

727
02:03:51.990 –> 02:03:55.680
Jon Miller: you know, make my legacy tech stack better?

728
02:03:56.290 –> 02:04:01.840
Jon Miller: Right? I think we are gonna need to go through a infrastructure evolution

729
02:04:02.733 –> 02:04:16.846
Jon Miller: you know, and much the same way that you had to for telecommunications. Right? We, you know, went from landlines to mobile, right? But like that, there, some technology transition need needed to happen.

730
02:04:18.260 –> 02:04:23.009
Jon Miller: you know. And the problem is, people are really scared of change.

731
02:04:23.980 –> 02:04:26.679
Jon Miller: Yeah, when they start, you know, when they think about their tech stacks.

732
02:04:27.537 –> 02:04:35.590
Jon Miller: They’re like, you know, I’ve got this, you know. I’ll but I’ll pick on Marketo, right? Which you know, I’ll start. You know, Marketo is 19 years old.

733
02:04:35.760 –> 02:04:47.140
Jon Miller: Right? So people look at their marketo. They’re like, Yeah, it’s not. It hasn’t really innovated much recently. And it’s got all these problems. But at least I know how to work around the problems. And I’ve built all this stuff.

734
02:04:47.310 –> 02:04:50.150
Jon Miller: You know. That sort of somehow make it work.

735
02:04:50.550 –> 02:04:58.590
Jon Miller: you know, and it’s bailing, you know. Duct tape and bailing wire, or whatever. But it works at least sort of mostly of most of the time.

736
02:04:58.860 –> 02:05:00.920
Jon Miller: I’m terrified of changing it.

737
02:05:01.470 –> 02:05:06.819
Jon Miller: you know, and yet there’s you have no chance of adapting to this new playbook

738
02:05:07.790 –> 02:05:09.319
Jon Miller: if you don’t change it.

739
02:05:10.080 –> 02:05:16.329
Jon Miller: And I think what needs to happen is that people need to recognize that the risk of staying still

740
02:05:16.800 –> 02:05:20.209
Jon Miller: is significantly greater than the risk of moving forward.

741
02:05:21.712 –> 02:05:24.010
Jon Miller: But that’s not gonna happen overnight.

742
02:05:24.880 –> 02:05:31.549
Carilu Dietrich: And I was talking to Sydney Sloan, the Cmo. Of G. 2 over the last couple of weeks, and she she’s just

743
02:05:31.690 –> 02:05:55.689
Carilu Dietrich: seeing that she expects there to be some sort of consolidation of Mark Martech and Sales tech. And then as a Gtm. Tech. But you know, as we’re if we’re reorienting around the customer experience. You you can’t really. You know, there isn’t a dividing line between marketing and sales as much. If it’s this dynamic playlist that’s really

744
02:05:55.930 –> 02:06:04.990
Carilu Dietrich: surrounding the customer like, do you think that the the tech stacks for sales and and marketing are gonna converge in the years to come?

745
02:06:08.010 –> 02:06:12.090
Carilu Dietrich: I mean because there’s the market Keto and Salesforce right? Or it’s the Hubspot.

746
02:06:12.090 –> 02:06:15.160
Carilu Dietrich: I don’t think those 2 categories come together.

747
02:06:15.430 –> 02:06:19.230
Jon Miller: You know. Ultimately.

748
02:06:19.450 –> 02:06:26.019
Jon Miller: I I might be wrong. But what I generally assume happens as long as there are different departments

749
02:06:26.370 –> 02:06:27.699
Jon Miller: there will be different technology.

750
02:06:27.700 –> 02:06:28.550
Carilu Dietrich: Welcome back!

751
02:06:28.730 –> 02:06:31.280
Jon Miller: That are owned by those departments.

752
02:06:31.757 –> 02:06:35.800
Jon Miller: Now, it’s really important that those technologies talk to each other

753
02:06:36.100 –> 02:06:39.800
Jon Miller: right? Just like Marketo and Salesforce had a really really good integration.

754
02:06:41.620 –> 02:06:48.669
Jon Miller: I think, where we’ll see consolidate tech stack con. Consolidation is with kind of more within the department.

755
02:06:49.640 –> 02:06:55.679
Jon Miller: Right? Do you really need a marketing automation platform and an Abm platform one for leads and one for accounts

756
02:06:56.140 –> 02:07:01.209
Jon Miller: like, I don’t know. Forrester certainly says no, that you know you. You don’t need both of those things.

757
02:07:03.280 –> 02:07:05.819
Jon Miller: Where I think it gets blurry is around Sdrs.

758
02:07:06.390 –> 02:07:14.665
Jon Miller: Right? Is marketing. Should should Sdr tech be part of the marketing stack or the sales stack, you know, you know, in some ways.

759
02:07:15.700 –> 02:07:23.540
Jon Miller: so so yeah, there’ll be some consolidation. But I don’t think you know there’s like one go to market

760
02:07:23.760 –> 02:07:25.880
Jon Miller: revenue platform to rule them all.

761
02:07:27.680 –> 02:07:29.490
Carilu Dietrich: I’m sure Salesforce would want to be.

762
02:07:29.740 –> 02:07:30.930
Carilu Dietrich: We’ll see if they can get.

763
02:07:30.930 –> 02:07:35.559
Jon Miller: They want to be the one vendor for all those things, but I don’t even think they would say it’s all gonna be one platform.

764
02:07:35.840 –> 02:07:38.970
Jon Miller: right as opposed to multiple products that integrate together.

765
02:07:40.817 –> 02:07:54.020
Carilu Dietrich: Let’s talk a little bit about this trend. A number of people have been talking about over the last several years in the Cmo crowd, but I know that you’ve taken up recently as well. You know.

766
02:07:54.303 –> 02:08:13.300
Carilu Dietrich: Christine Heckart, who was the Cmo. Of Cisco, says that she was part of naming chief marketing officer before that there wasn’t a chief marketing officer, but she feels like she made a mistake, and it should have been chief market officer because it should be more about strategy and less about the Ing, and you feel like this new wave of technology is only gonna

767
02:08:13.300 –> 02:08:20.019
Carilu Dietrich: put more pressure on Cmos to be more chief market officers and business strategists, can you? Can you share more of your thoughts on that.

768
02:08:20.730 –> 02:08:28.310
Jon Miller: Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways at the core comes to what I said a few minutes ago around redefining what revenue marketing means.

769
02:08:28.500 –> 02:08:37.239
Jon Miller: and really redefining what marketing means. Right, you know. And I think too many marketers, especially in b 2 b tech.

770
02:08:37.910 –> 02:08:42.959
Jon Miller: you know, have focus only on one of the piece, you know, promotion

771
02:08:43.130 –> 02:08:52.639
Jon Miller: at the at the cost of the other 3 P’s. And and and got too focused on being like this, like Mql generating machine.

772
02:08:54.410 –> 02:08:59.619
Jon Miller: When what we’re talking about the new playbook is things like building your brand.

773
02:08:59.730 –> 02:09:06.410
Jon Miller: you know, building. On which? How do you build your brand. Well, you do it by understanding the market and understanding the customer

774
02:09:06.570 –> 02:09:15.659
Jon Miller: right? And and by creating experiences that might have an impact, you know, in a way that’s very nonlinear and unmeasurable

775
02:09:16.050 –> 02:09:17.350
Jon Miller: right? So

776
02:09:18.340 –> 02:09:23.340
Jon Miller: I we I at the end of the I don’t care what people call themselves in terms of their title

777
02:09:23.690 –> 02:09:32.620
Jon Miller: right. But I think we marketing executives need to have conversations with their Ceos and Cfos and boards

778
02:09:33.060 –> 02:09:36.739
Jon Miller: about how the function has changed.

779
02:09:37.190 –> 02:09:44.569
Jon Miller: and how what worked in the old playbook isn’t gonna work today and tomorrow, especially because of AI.

780
02:09:44.740 –> 02:09:56.259
Jon Miller: And so we need to think about what you know, what is the role of this function and of this leader. And how do we measure this function? How do we assign budgets to this function? All that’s got to change?

781
02:09:57.150 –> 02:10:08.179
Jon Miller: You have to have those conversations, and if, if, having the conversation around being a chief market officer versus a chief marketing officer is a way to have that conversation. Then I’m all for it.

782
02:10:10.600 –> 02:10:12.640
Jon Miller: You know, but but to me it’s a means to the end.

783
02:10:14.290 –> 02:10:33.936
Carilu Dietrich: It’s interesting because I started my career in sales. And then I went on to marketing. And and when I wanted, when I decided I wanted to be a Cmo. I did a tour of duty in every function, thinking, that’s how you became a Cmo like, here’s my demand, Gen. Era and my product marketing era and my data era and my events and community era.

784
02:10:34.560 –> 02:11:00.768
Carilu Dietrich: and you know, in some ways I wish that I’d spent a couple of years in management, consulting, and and had, like a business, a real business era. You know. Of course, the trajectory of everything would be different. So you can never trade off the past. But you know, the higher I got, the more I felt like I needed business alignment. And you know, when I look at the results of AI, and I use AI every day across all sorts of different projects.

785
02:11:01.260 –> 02:11:09.619
Carilu Dietrich: it’s the discernment that’s the most important skill. And and I think that that remains for Cmos.

786
02:11:10.310 –> 02:11:24.800
Carilu Dietrich: You know there’s really hard trade-offs to make when you’re in brand, because there’s no right answer. And you kind of have to like. Have some confidence and take a stand in your executive suite about a way that you’re going to talk to the market, or

787
02:11:24.800 –> 02:11:52.130
Carilu Dietrich: a way, you’re going to position yourself. And you know we’ve been through different phases. There was like the category creation phase. And then there’s don’t create a category. But this kind of like, how do you? How do you become a strategist? And I was having conversation a couple of years ago with the Cmo. Who had told me. You know, when I come into a new role, the 1st thing I hire is like a marketing strategist, or I hire a competitive benchmarker, or you know, I have these people that do the work so that I can be really strategic.

788
02:11:52.130 –> 02:12:09.650
Carilu Dietrich: And when I’m looking at this AI landscape to me. I’m wondering if there’s new roles like I, you know, there’s gonna be a playlist operator that’s not exactly the same as like the marketing Ops. And the analyst who was like analyzing the data because it’s a little bit more of a product marketer.

789
02:12:09.700 –> 02:12:20.520
Carilu Dietrich: But it’s kind of a product marketer who’s an optimizer like, have you? I mean, I know this is like philosophical, but you and I are old enough to remember when there was one person on the team who was the digital marketer?

790
02:12:21.037 –> 02:12:31.199
Carilu Dietrich: And then, of course, all of us are digital marketers, like all of us are kind of AI people right now, but it seems like there’s going to be a role in marketing for some sort of AI

791
02:12:32.450 –> 02:12:39.829
Carilu Dietrich: experts that that do something. What is that kind of role? And does that come out of marketing? Ops? Does it come out of product marketing.

792
02:12:42.740 –> 02:12:52.269
Jon Miller: I don’t know, is the 1st answer. Right? You know we’re all. We’re all guessing on some of these things, but my hunch is that you know. That is how the marketing operations role evolves.

793
02:12:53.090 –> 02:13:06.769
Jon Miller: You know, I think, that market operations today spends probably too much their time punching buttons in Marketo, or Hubspot, or Pardon, or Eloqua, and and not enough time, you know, working at this kind of higher level of strategy.

794
02:13:09.570 –> 02:13:18.960
Jon Miller: you know, I think you know, in some ways, organizationally, I alluded to this a minute ago. But what I’m what I think will happen, and I’m excited for it to happen

795
02:13:19.420 –> 02:13:25.490
Jon Miller: is for the you know, the folks that today we’d call demand Gen. Marketers or field marketers

796
02:13:26.040 –> 02:13:31.330
Jon Miller: right for them to evolve more towards.

797
02:13:31.740 –> 02:13:33.879
Jon Miller: But probably segment marketers.

798
02:13:34.240 –> 02:13:40.740
Jon Miller: You know people who are thinking customer 1st and say, Okay, I’m responsible for marketing to this population.

799
02:13:41.610 –> 02:13:46.970
Jon Miller: How do I craft use my creativity to craft the songs.

800
02:13:47.830 –> 02:13:52.510
Jon Miller: you know, that will resonate and engage that population

801
02:13:52.790 –> 02:14:00.539
Jon Miller: so that way, when the Aidj is figuring out the best thing for each playlist, it’s got the right enough to work with.

802
02:14:01.630 –> 02:14:13.040
Jon Miller: you know, and you know I I’m excited for that for marketing, because I think that’s frankly what a lot of marketers got into marketing, to do

803
02:14:13.720 –> 02:14:20.480
Jon Miller: right, to be creative and to really create campaigns that engage and resonate with buyers.

804
02:14:21.190 –> 02:14:25.080
Jon Miller: Right? That’s in some ways, I think the hope for AI

805
02:14:25.490 –> 02:14:31.169
Jon Miller: right is that that if we can get to a world where AI is handling more of the tactical details

806
02:14:31.630 –> 02:14:39.840
Jon Miller: that humans can actually be free to focus on experiences and relationships and truly original content.

807
02:14:40.644 –> 02:14:48.339
Jon Miller: You know, or I think, as you alluded to a minute ago, if AI is doing the ing in marketing. Then we can focus on the market.

808
02:14:50.490 –> 02:15:01.379
Carilu Dietrich: I’m excited. It’s never. You know, it’s it’s fun that technology and technology marketing keeps evolving there’s always so much to learn and so many surprises.

809
02:15:01.640 –> 02:15:11.389
Jon Miller: Everything I just said is is, I’m guessing right? We don’t we? You know it might play out very differently. The the speed of change right now is as fast as it’s ever been.

810
02:15:11.770 –> 02:15:31.360
Carilu Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing that’s so fascinating about this shift, is, there’s not people you can already hire. Who are, you know, decade long experts. Except in like machine learning. AI, which we’ve been doing for longer. But now it gets a rebrand again. But but a lot of this is learning on the go, and people who are willing to take chances raising their hand.

811
02:15:31.380 –> 02:15:48.329
Carilu Dietrich: I want to ask one quick, round question, and then we’ll take. I’ll look at a couple of the questions that we’ve had from the chat, because we have about 10 min left. Where? Where should people be learning like, so they can follow you on Linkedin. Who who are you?

812
02:15:48.781 –> 02:15:53.300
Carilu Dietrich: Reading? And and what are you watching to? To stay abreast of all of this.

813
02:15:54.980 –> 02:16:10.000
Jon Miller: Yeah, I mean, Linkedin is my go to you know, as you know, I sort of alluded to. My Instagram feeds pretty good and relevant. You know my Linkedin feed has more garbage in there than I’d want, but there’s also a lot of really good nuggets in there.

814
02:16:10.745 –> 02:16:21.394
Jon Miller: You know some of the folks that I I would point to that. I definitely like learning from, you know. I think on the AI side, Chris Penn from

815
02:16:22.000 –> 02:16:28.689
Jon Miller: trust insights is, you know, his weekly newsletter is is a must read for me.

816
02:16:28.790 –> 02:16:40.470
Jon Miller: and you know Kieran Flanagan also has, I think, had you know some really good advice on how to use AI in marketing there. There are others out there that have some good stuff there.

817
02:16:41.950 –> 02:16:46.539
Jon Miller: A lesser known person that I would point everybody to is Kathleen Schwab.

818
02:16:47.139 –> 02:16:54.539
Jon Miller: She’s the she was. She was the head of the Cmo. Practice for Idc. I think if I’m getting that right.

819
02:16:55.394 –> 02:17:01.139
Jon Miller: She has a a book coming out that does

820
02:17:01.580 –> 02:17:15.679
Jon Miller: a way better job than I could ever do of explaining how marketing is a complex nonlinear system that cannot be tuned and optimized like a machine. And therefore what are the implications for all of us?

821
02:17:16.104 –> 02:17:19.849
Jon Miller: You know, which is, I think, at the core of this kind of whole new playbook.

822
02:17:20.474 –> 02:17:30.129
Jon Miller: So I think I think she’s great. You know. I already said, I like your sub stack, and there’s some other, some other really good sub stacks out there as well, that I also think people should

823
02:17:30.240 –> 02:17:31.360
Jon Miller: should be checking out.

824
02:17:31.959 –> 02:17:55.519
Carilu Dietrich: Great. Thank you. Okay. So the question I wanted to go back to, if we have time, which we do is is talking about some of the best impactful content and best original impactful content. So so use. We talked about carta already. They have this like unique data and have done this data. Analysis. What are some other examples? And then I have one. I’m excited to share.

825
02:17:56.330 –> 02:18:06.238
Jon Miller: I’d love to hear if you have more, because I always go back to Gong and carta as as kind of the 2 best examples that I’ve seen in particular, people who are producing

826
02:18:07.700 –> 02:18:11.839
Jon Miller: fact-based research based on their own data.

827
02:18:12.514 –> 02:18:34.490
Jon Miller: As you know, obviously, I worked at demand base, and we competed against 6 cents. But I alluded to the research that Carrie Cunningham does over there. I think you know they, you know that’s not. That’s not analyzing their data. That’s just analyzing surveys. But it’s still, I think you know, some of the best. b 2 b research. That’s out, you know, that’s out there as well. But yeah, if you have others, let me know. I’m curious.

828
02:18:34.690 –> 02:18:50.179
Carilu Dietrich: Well, and to both of our points earlier. 6 cents hired. A former analyst carries from Forrester. Right? I mean, he’s a Forrester analyst. They hired to come in and be a researcher and be a face of research. So it’s a strategic decision. If you really invest in it.

829
02:18:50.626 –> 02:19:02.199
Carilu Dietrich: I was going to talk about one that I’m going to write about in my blog in the next month or 2 about these maturity frameworks. So I’ve been wanting to write about it for a long time, but

830
02:19:02.260 –> 02:19:30.869
Carilu Dietrich: earlier, but I don’t have the assets. So it stopped me. But I met someone yesterday who is running the same campaign. I think we’re going to Co. Write it. And what we did was we create. We had a product at the time. It was for business process. It was a business process management. So you know, digital transformation map out your processes and automate them. And you know it was a Sas sale. And we created this maturity framework that had a 5 levels of of

831
02:19:31.158 –> 02:19:35.190
Carilu Dietrich: you know what you know. If, as you become more advanced as a digitally

832
02:19:35.190 –> 02:19:48.829
Carilu Dietrich: forward thinking company. And you have automation in place. What are these levels of maturity? And then we we set up a survey, an online survey. So back to your kind of survey and proprietary data, where people could fill in

833
02:19:48.910 –> 02:20:12.970
Carilu Dietrich: facts about themselves, around their infrastructure and their business processes and their collaboration between departments and some different like categories we thought of, and then in real time it populated a report with their answers compared to the norm of everyone. So they got this like, really personalized, both like, how you know data about the market.

834
02:20:13.431 –> 02:20:19.899
Carilu Dietrich: Strategy, advice thought, you know, like thought, partner, advice, not sales advice and

835
02:20:20.060 –> 02:20:45.049
Carilu Dietrich: an asset that they could use and share with their team. And then we had this add on component, which was a workshop run by a business analyst who would come in, and he, if you got your executives together to talk about your process strategy and business strategy, you know we’d run this workshop to help them everyone be together, which turned out to be the best sales asset ever. So you know, and the the gentleman who’s doing it is suresh bala super

836
02:20:45.050 –> 02:20:52.389
Carilu Dietrich: at meridian link, and they sell to credit unions. And so they basically have this like

837
02:20:52.390 –> 02:21:01.890
Carilu Dietrich: trust and credit and financial services maturity model that they share. So again, some of these assets take a long time. They’re not like.

838
02:21:02.080 –> 02:21:22.279
Carilu Dietrich: let a junior person write a blog, you know. It’s like you kind of can have one really big asset a quarter often, although, you know again, Peter at Carta has this like rhythm going and and several analysts working on it all the time. But you know, when you invest in a massive asset, sometimes you get, you know, 10 x, the response that you otherwise would.

839
02:21:23.050 –> 02:21:47.389
Jon Miller: What that reminds me of is, you know, back when I used to write definitive guides, you know, at Marketo, you know, we have a 200 page book and then, like, All right. Now, how do we leak out the content for that? You know, you know, over over months, you know it’s it’s kind of they would talk about slicing the turkey up, or something, or, you know, using every part of the buffalo. That’s sort of what what I hear you saying in terms of your research.

840
02:21:48.500 –> 02:22:08.369
Carilu Dietrich: yeah, and I mean, a lot of people, do the state of the market like the spotify is their unique data or, you know kind of what’s going on in the overall market and the Tam, and how things are changing like there’s a lot of like deep, rich assets that I think you know, will continue to be really important, because it’s something unique that that you can’t get. Otherwise.

841
02:22:10.281 –> 02:22:13.939
Carilu Dietrich: John, anything else we didn’t get to cover that you want to cover.

842
02:22:14.210 –> 02:22:18.449
Jon Miller: Well, that last piece. It requires the Cmo to make investments

843
02:22:18.910 –> 02:22:29.150
Jon Miller: in that kind of, you know, creating that kind of content. You know, which which may maybe just to to wrap. As you said. What we haven’t really talked about is metrics.

844
02:22:30.364 –> 02:22:37.380
Jon Miller: You know, and I’m sort of saying, All right, don’t measure marketing like a gumball machine. Don’t measure marketing like Mqls.

845
02:22:37.920 –> 02:22:40.310
Jon Miller: Well, then, what should we measure marketing on?

846
02:22:42.780 –> 02:22:48.869
Jon Miller: You know, and I’ve got. You know, I’m sort of starting to form a a point of view

847
02:22:49.544 –> 02:22:59.330
Jon Miller: around. How do we get better at quantifying our impact on, you know kind of the the brand side of things.

848
02:23:00.020 –> 02:23:04.510
Jon Miller: It was inspired by a conversation I had with Lena Waters, who’s a Cmo. Over at grammarly?

849
02:23:05.383 –> 02:23:14.439
Jon Miller: And you know she was talking about like her. Her number one priority is to change how people think and feel about grammarly.

850
02:23:14.770 –> 02:23:20.329
Jon Miller: You know that it’s they don’t see that. So they don’t perceive it as the tool that the kids use to check their grammar.

851
02:23:20.610 –> 02:23:23.620
Jon Miller: But that is an enterprise, AI solution

852
02:23:24.270 –> 02:23:33.859
Jon Miller: right? And and their whole executive team agrees that there’s nothing more important than getting their buyers to think about them in the right way.

853
02:23:34.810 –> 02:23:37.460
Jon Miller: So she has a very clear metric

854
02:23:37.680 –> 02:23:42.529
Jon Miller: right? What percentage of her audience thinks about her that way.

855
02:23:43.100 –> 02:23:48.720
Jon Miller: you know. So what she said she did is she’s just basically did like, I think it’s 1 fewer trade show

856
02:23:50.064 –> 02:23:57.649
Jon Miller: and took those same dollars and put them into a tracking study to to measure that.

857
02:23:57.780 –> 02:24:04.849
Jon Miller: you know, and and she can go back to her board and say, Look, we’re moving the needle on this thing that we said that we all really really care about.

858
02:24:05.620 –> 02:24:06.660
Jon Miller: You know.

859
02:24:06.660 –> 02:24:36.240
Carilu Dietrich: The hardest part of that is just what a slow burn it is. So when I ran an awareness advertisement for Oracle, you know, I was spending 40 to 80 million dollars a year and running that survey. And it’s just multi year strategy. And you’re right that the Board and the CEO have to be committed that you’re building a brand. You’re you’re building a brand for the long term that’s going to return compounding interest, but possibly not all in the 1st year, and that that’s hard slash. Impossible with some PE backed companies with smaller time windows. But certainly

860
02:24:36.680 –> 02:24:49.260
Carilu Dietrich: it makes a big difference, and and I can see it with that Atlassian. Now, right like part of the reason Atlassians been so successful is the like continuing build, you know, not just the the in your returns.

861
02:24:49.530 –> 02:24:56.089
Jon Miller: Yeah, it’s undeniable that it’s hard that the time that these brand benefits pay off is longer than the tenure of the average Cmo.

862
02:24:56.280 –> 02:25:01.420
Jon Miller: and that’s why it’s so important to have these more strategic discussions that we sort of talked about.

863
02:25:01.550 –> 02:25:05.740
Jon Miller: You know about what is the role of marketing and how we’re gonna

864
02:25:06.610 –> 02:25:12.480
Jon Miller: probably as good a spot to end on as anything but as always, it’s fabulous talking to you.

865
02:25:12.980 –> 02:25:42.490
Carilu Dietrich: Well, it’s great to talk to you, too. I’m super excited to see and try out stealth. Tool. Tbd, and I think we’ll talk for a couple more minutes until the next speakers are here. Since it’s an open, it’s an open zoom forum. I was. Gonna ask answer one question. Someone asked, who I follow same question as you. I follow you and some of the folks you mentioned one person that’s that’s maybe relevant to one conversation. There’s a woman named Samantha Mckenna.

866
02:25:42.490 –> 02:25:56.150
Carilu Dietrich: who’s was a Linkedin salesperson. And now runs executives, Linkedin, for many top companies where executives aren’t good at that and I actually follow her stuff pretty closely to get all my own tips on like working the system.

867
02:25:56.501 –> 02:26:17.720
Carilu Dietrich: I follow Lisa Adams. On AI. I follow the marketing AI Institute. That’s probably one of the podcasts I listen to weekly and I also, I also follow this woman named Allie, and I can’t think of what her last name is, but she’s like the number one AI person she works at Aws and then Google. She’s like a Linkedin super influencer.

868
02:26:17.720 –> 02:26:42.120
Carilu Dietrich: So if someone knows who what Ali’s last name is, I couldn’t find it fast on my Linkedin, but I get all my like market news from her. And then, lastly, Tamash tongs tongue is I don’t know how to say his name, who is a Vc. For theory, ventures and has his own blog. It’s the only blog that I let come into my inbox directly, and then to your point, John, I have them auto populating into different

869
02:26:42.190 –> 02:26:48.240
Carilu Dietrich: tabs. To come back and read, but I read his in real time. So yep.

870
02:26:48.240 –> 02:26:49.590
Jon Miller: Good stuff.

871
02:26:49.590 –> 02:26:52.329
Carilu Dietrich: Well, thanks for having us, Julia. Are you still here?

872
02:26:53.630 –> 02:27:04.899
Julia Nimchinski: Yeah, thanks so much. If you were to start the company today, Carolyn John, you did actually still in stealth. But what would be your 1st hire, and why?

873
02:27:07.520 –> 02:27:09.180
Carilu Dietrich: His Co. Founder, his technical.

874
02:27:09.180 –> 02:27:19.730
Jon Miller: I have to hire a CTO. I don’t code. So you know, my 1st hire was a technical CTO, and my second one was a chief scientist, because I don’t build machine learning models, either.

875
02:27:20.372 –> 02:27:26.019
Jon Miller: I think my hunch is behind. Her question is who it’s the 1st go to market higher.

876
02:27:26.020 –> 02:27:26.890
Julia Nimchinski: Exactly.

877
02:27:27.422 –> 02:27:37.110
Jon Miller: I think that depends a lot on your skills. As a you know, kind of who you are, as the founder, you know. In my case I can do the marketing.

878
02:27:39.150 –> 02:27:54.740
Jon Miller: I think I felt comfortable thinking about founder led sales to sell to certain companies. But you know my new company. I want to be focusing on kind of mid market and enterprise companies. So let’s just say 500 employees. And above.

879
02:27:55.380 –> 02:28:05.640
Jon Miller: you know, that’s a more complex enterprise sale I have less experience with. So I’m thinking about my 1st go to market higher being somebody who can help me kind of do the more upmarket sales

880
02:28:06.830 –> 02:28:07.740
Jon Miller: hopefully. That is.

881
02:28:08.323 –> 02:28:10.659
Carilu Dietrich: Mean a salesperson, not a a marketer.

882
02:28:11.520 –> 02:28:12.709
Jon Miller: Right, yeah, yeah.

883
02:28:13.177 –> 02:28:19.839
Carilu Dietrich: Yeah, I, you know, I advise a lot of companies and talk to a lot of really early stage founders and it’s difficult because

884
02:28:19.840 –> 02:28:44.230
Carilu Dietrich: marketers know that there’s kind of multiple different brains in marketing. There’s this data and analyst and process oriented brain. And there’s this kind of creative strategy business, slower brain, and it’s not slower, but but thinks less in urgent, you know, checking results and more. And like, How’s this all going to work together? And it’s difficult because an early stage startup you can’t usually hire both at the same time. You kind of got to pick.

885
02:28:44.230 –> 02:28:52.329
Carilu Dietrich: So yeah, to John’s point a lot of early stage founders do the product marketing more themselves and get someone to come in and build the demand generation engine.

886
02:28:52.576 –> 02:29:00.220
Carilu Dietrich: But you know, ultimately, you really need both for the CEO to focus across the business. And and that’s when we get a product marketing team and a demand Gen. Team.

887
02:29:00.360 –> 02:29:03.350
Carilu Dietrich: But maybe someday a brand and creative team.

888
02:29:03.650 –> 02:29:11.559
Jon Miller: Yeah, but we don’t think about as a demand Gen. Team, you know. But kind of you know how we’re gonna really move the needle on experiences and relationships and original content.

889
02:29:12.050 –> 02:29:20.990
Carilu Dietrich: Yeah, the experience, the the experience team after rename chief marketing officer. You’ll have to rename the demand Gen. Team to their new. Their new.

890
02:29:21.210 –> 02:29:21.840
Jon Miller: I tried to

891
02:29:21.840 –> 02:29:28.259
Jon Miller: do that for a company I’m on the board of. They hired a director of field marketing, and I was like, why don’t you call the director of Experiences so.

892
02:29:29.050 –> 02:29:30.030
Carilu Dietrich: There we go.

893
02:29:30.410 –> 02:29:31.430
Carilu Dietrich: I like it.

894
02:29:32.028 –> 02:29:35.519
Carilu Dietrich: Well, thanks, Julia, for having us, and Hi, Mark and Nick and Lisa.

895
02:29:35.520 –> 02:29:36.360
Nick “Mehtaphysical” Mehta: Hey, everyone.

896
02:29:36.990 –> 02:29:38.310
Julia Nimchinski: Thank you so much again.

897
02:29:39.130 –> 02:29:41.520
Nick “Mehtaphysical” Mehta: Hey? Hey, John? Good to see a long time.

898
02:29:42.180 –> 02:29:43.430
Jon Miller: Good to see you all.

899
02:29:45.850 –> 02:29:46.310
Lisa Sharapata: 2 days.

900
02:29:46.310 –> 02:29:47.399
Mark Organ: Good job, everyone.

901
02:29:47.910 –> 02:29:50.169
Lisa Sharapata: I know it’s a party, Lisa. It’s it’s nice.

902
02:29:51.654 –> 02:29:52.559
Julia Nimchinski: Okay.

903
02:29:52.560 –> 02:29:54.319
Jon Miller: Hang out. You guys can tag in.

904
02:29:54.320 –> 02:29:58.219
Carilu Dietrich: Okay, we’re gonna go out. Speaker soon. Bye.