on today's show we're breaking down what we' do if we start it all over again if we were building a marketing engine to get 100,000 leads today in 2024 what would we do we're going to break down the channels we'd use some of the tactics how we think about building a brand today how we partner with influencers you're going to want to stick around we're going deep today I'm your co-host kit Bodner CMO at HubSpot I'm joined by my co-host Kieran Flanigan who's the CMO over at zappier this is marking Against the Grain let's get to Today's Show on today's show we're going to have some fun today HubSpot generates hundreds of thousands of leads and signups every month Kieran and I did a lot of work to build that but today we're going to go through what we would do if we were starting it all from scratch today how would we build a lead generation signup Engine That Could get 100,000 leads a month or more what would we do in 2024 Kieran it's been a little while my friend I'm glad to be back on the Pod with you uh I I I I had some travel you've had some baby taking care of uh parenting duties happening uh but we're going to we're going to talk a little little leion today on on the show right we are going to go back in time or we're actually going to go forward in time and say if we had to do it all again today where how would we build a marketing strategy that's kind of yielded the kind of results that hopspot have had or zapier had or these kind of SAS Brands so it really broke the mold the mold for the amount of of like demand that they generate like hubs was one of the trail Trailblazers if you wanted to be a breakout company what would you do today is what we're going to tell you cuz we we get a lot of the oh but it's easy for you guys you did this a long time ago it's much harder today it's much different today let's say hey if we were going to build a breakout technology software business today that was predicated on getting a lot of scale distribution which hey they all are like you can't you can't have a great technology business Business Without distribution what would we do and so Kieran my biggest question to you is in the early days of HubSpot we're building that the core strategy the core thing we relied on was organic search optimization basically how we could Rank and get traffic from Google would you do that today would that be your number one place you would start in 20124 so here's some fun things right so I actually jotted some notes that you and I went back and forth on WhatsApp I think there's actually some questions I have that we can answer live for the audience on what's the same and different because I wrote that was the very first thing I wrote out right so typically we covered this on a on a recent a recent show right what what you do is you kind of build out a search Total addressable Market probably B break your keywords into informational transactional transactional are the ones that are closer to a conversion usually lower in traffic higher in conversion harder to rank four and then you have informational further up the funnel educational in nature higher traffic lower conversion right you break you break those two things apart you look to say how much potential traffic is in each one that I can acquire each and every month and then you start there and you answer like is this something I should even do right is like search something I should even invest in because a lot of Brands it might not make sense especially in B2B I think then the question is like HubSpot the way HubSpot approached this which is very different from other B2B companies I think when HubSpot really started uh breaking the mold in how companies did marketing typically what a comp a B2B company would do is just do transactional keywords and they wouldn't even do a search time they wouldn't we wouldn't that was not even a thing but like okay like my my product is this I'll rank for those words right yeah there's 50 keyw related to my product and I'm going to go out and try to rank on the first page for all of them and once I've done that I'm done here and I move on to the next thing right and then and so HubSpot did the opposite right hops were like hey going to be we're going to be educational first we want to actually create value uh and then over time have that person extract uh extract value from that person by having them become a customer or a certain percentage of become a customer I I and I think I would still I would start with this until we have like come to the point where it's pretty clear that AI has eroded the opportunity because the opportunity still exists right if you look at it's hard to get data on this but if you look at kind of the monthly users that Google has or the amount of search queries you can actually look at like how much search is actually being done on Google uh it's still pretty it's still pretty steady right so the opportunity is still there I think what's different is the way you attacked this is very different today right back then there's a real like there's some real things that we figured out in HubSpot that probably is not that common place even today right one of the things we figured out is we could build this model to say you know how much content could a content creator create how much average traffic would each piece of content they create get how much how many conversions would we get from how many average conversions would we get from that so how many average customers over the course of a month is each writer going to bring us and the reason we did that is because we got to the point where we knew we could grow all we needed to do is add head count right so like you could extrapolate if I want to be here in two years I'm going to need to add this amount of headamp because this is how much we get from each individual Rider that is very different today because what AI is really good at is not riding stories or emotive content or anything like that it's really good at informational content right so one writer the ability to create content that is educational in nature informational in nature they can probably write much more content in fact I can see a world where you actually have ai creating a lot of the informational content and you actually hire really great editors right and and so your model looks different in terms of how you grow that and the other thing I'll just add in that I think is different is and then I want to see get your thoughts and I have one question for you is I think you start to do this you start to do multimodal far far sooner right because AI is going to allow us to create blog posts with embeddable videos where the AI tool is able to take the blog post and create a two-minute educational video from that blog post and we can actually embed that in from the start and you can actually add audio right there's audio AI tools that take the blog post can summarize it so you can have like a full multimodal blog post from the start right add audio add image add video and we over time at HubSpot perfected that but you can do that much much quicker so I think the answer is yes but how you do it is much more will be much more efficient and you will be multimodal much more much faster there's one question I have for us to kind of Riff on but what do you think is that you think that or one other thing I think you can verticalized content much sooner again because the cost to create this information content is maybe so I think you could vertical much quicker right because you can uh the cost of content is going down CU AI tools do a lot of this so even if the vertical verticalized content doesn't have a ton of upside but it still might be worth doing now the unit economics for Content come way down and the last thing I'll add is you can go multilanguage much much sooner right so again you would usually build all this engine in English and then we uh hotspot we kind of went Spanish German French like the typical languages but we perfected the system in English first I don't think you need to do that I actually think you can actually uh go multilanguage much quicker again because AI tools allow you to do it at such a low cost there's a lot to react to on on that Karen I I I I have some thoughts first thought is the number one thing I would do today um that we didn't do back then that I wish we would have is I would I would write down and I would say all right I want 100,000 leads a month where are those 100,000 leads a month going to come from and I would just just be like and I would just do the math of like hey I'm going to get 25 from here 25,000 from here 10,000 from here whatever that may be and I'd have a very clear plan of how I was going to get there and how long I thought it was going to take me to get there um in the early days of hubot we didn't have to do that because the second generation Web 2.0 was so new that you could kind of like just do it and get Stu like there was such such little competition you could really go and and crank and kind of be very tactical and and make a bunch of progress in a way that I don't think you can today and I I think what you have to do is first thing you have to say is all right I want to get to 100,000 new PE new people coming in and interacting with my company every month where are those people going to come from what does that look like so once you have understood like where you want those 100,000 leads to come from the second thing is you need to check Karen that your strategy is very different from your competitors right like if where I see most companies today fail is like oh my competitor spends x% of their budget on paid media so I'm going to spend the same amount of money on paid media my my competitor does trade shows so I'm going to do trade shows right what you actually want is your budget and time to look as opposite as possible from your competition right because you want to play where they're not playing and you want to you want to have different tactics and strategies they're going to be very highly differentiated and so if your competition is doing a ton of product marketing and events you don't want to do those things you maybe you do a little bit of them but you don't want to do a ton of them right and so the the being ker to all those things I think matters a ton the the question I have for you Kieran and all this is I you remember our former colleague Dave Farm who worked for us in in APAC he lives in New York now he's working for owner.com and he sent me a question and he was like look we're seeing really good results from YouTube and we're doubling down there but I kind of worried that we're not focused enough on traditional search should I double should I stay focused and Double Down on YouTube because it's working so well or should I diversify more into text based search and I thought that was a pretty interesting and compelling question for like the state of Legion in the world today I've never heard I actually heard that before how would you address that I haven't heard someone trying to figure out if they should continue to invest in techbase search for a B2B company because YouTube is working so well I think if I was faced with that dilemma I would double down in YouTube uh because it's a more defensible platform and actually it's a harder one to make work it's harder to get right it's harder to get right so if I'm like you actually have a far bigger Moote um on YouTube against your competitors because it's just really hard to do it's a total grind and you can always come back to search right I think if if you if you if the question is like I only have SP amount of resources so I can do one or the other and I and again it's not just like the amount of views I'm getting it's actually driving real business outcomes I would definitely double down in YouTube more defensible bigger mode far harder to replicate for your for your customers to your point like do the opposite I think most of their competitors are probably trying to make paid search and organic search work and so YouTube If you have figured it out is the thing I would invest in yeah 100% And so I think Kieran if we were like the pretext of today's show is like what would we do now if we were starting it all over if you and I were co-founders of a startup and we needed to get 100,000 signups or leads a month for our software what would we actually do I think one of the first things we would do is just Master Video search and algorithmic distribution right it'd be YouTube plus short form video reals Tik Tok and and YouTube shorts right like I think that would be number one because it has both High scale in terms of you can reach a ton of people effectively High defens ability it's going to be harder to disrupt by AI it's going to be less disrupted than traditional search engines because it's more personality driven than information driven right right like that is the number one place we would start I think isn't the other thing that we would do which would be very different from most businesses and could be totally incorrect right but wouldn't we choose the product based upon how we think we can distribute it actually a very good point tell people I agree with you tell people what you mean give give people CH so if we feel that hey the thing we really want to perfect in terms of our distribution strategy is short video and YouTube and these kind of channels I would look at the product idea we have and ask do we think it would work within those channels and if it didn't work within those channels not do it right so actually have distribu you shouldn't veto the idea because trying to fit a product that doesn't fit in those channels just doesn't work right like their channels are built with rules you have to adere to those rules you can't bend the rules to how you want them to act for your product and I think it makes it so much easier if you just build with distribution at the Forefront actually like this is my distribution plan what product would fit into my distribution plan like actually write the distribution plan and then actually say okay like well what product can I build that will actually fit within those distribution mechanisms what I think I think this is a very critical point for everybody watching the show today because it's a point we've made a few times on the show over the years but you've said it in in a more interesting way which is like hey I would let distribution dictate it the reason is is there are no shortage of product ideas there way more there's way more an abundance of product ideas than there are distribution Avenues right and so you you have to be picky about distribution and and your product has to just foot with however you're going to distribute it right and if it doesn't then it's just going to be grind and it's already a grind like even when you make the right choices It's a Grind like years and years of hard work and so if you make like if you're just like hey I'm in love with this product and I want to make it work man that is going to be a really really hard SLO if it does not match up with the right ways to distribute it right all right and I I coming back to your point like HubSpot in the early years didn't think too much about like how how to distribute the content because just creating the content the type of content that the hubot was creating was totally unique and so people found their way it ranked in Google there wasn't much competition like copat didn't hire their first SEO until it was Matt so like 214 215 correct that is that is not the world we live in today like people are really good at their jobs in digital like they in a way that I don't think they were 10 years ago and one of the Articles you sent me I read it today was like this you know this kind of new way of thinking around VC funds or finding your co-creator like find a creator with distribution and then figure out how to build a product for them and I I know you have a a kind of a tweet I think it was Atomic habits or something did that over the weekend where I think it was Andrew Lon built the app or for for Their audience maybe you can get into that but that that the reason that is even considered is because it starts with that that's a perfect examples of this it's starting with distribution which the Creator have and then figure how to how to build a product to eat into that distribution yeah I can I can explain explain here right which is James Clear wrote a book called Atomic hadits it was best-selling book hugely popular he I think he has a newsletter and other things all around like how do you build habits and how do you use habits to change your life very powerful very Universal concept and he partnered with Andrew Wilkinson who runs a holding company called tiny and uh friend of friend of my first million friend friend friend of the HubSpot podcast Network and they James has a 60% ownership stake I think Andrew has a 40% ownership stake in this new app an app that helps facilitate people's ability to build habits and and basically productized a lot of the learnings and advice that James has shared in his book and Sh and shared in his online content right and that is a perfect example of it was in the top 10 in the app store for productivity on the day it launched because it had a buil-in audience for launch and that's pretty freaking incredible like that is but which Kieran goes back to the point one of the first things I would do if I was running a business right now is I would be partnering with creators who had audience right right like like if if we want to if we want to break this down because I know if we don't do this we're going to get a ton of YouTube comments because people are going to be like well well tell me the exact percentages and all right I'm going to give you my percentages kieren of my 100,000 leads a month how I would get there and you tell me if you agree disagree with any of this you ready I'm going to say 45,000 leads a month needs to come from YouTube sshort form video so I have to make it my dominant player I've got to figure out how to kill the YouTube short form video game and I've got to get to at scale 45 5,000 leads a month right like that is just no hope holds bar like has to happen I think I have to get another 20,000 leads a month through influencer Partnerships and affiliate marketing I've got to I've got to I've got to basically go to people who have really successful newsletters YouTube channels Tik Tok accounts and partner with them for sponsored content or embedding my product into their content and using that month over month to drive to drive demand at a reasonable cost per lead and that is going to be the majority of my paid budget is going to go to paying affiliate commissions and and influencer uh sponsorship fees and so that's that th those two things combined are going to get me to 65,000 leads a month which is pretty good then I'm probably going to get another 10,000 leads a month from very traditional pay channels Google meta like programmatic paid uh that's going to get me to 75,000 leads month and this is this is obviously its scale this probably this probably going to take you depending on how good you are what do you think 14 to 24 months if you're like amazing to get there if you're amazing two years if you're amazing two years if you're good three years right if you're if you're okay five years right like it's going to it's going to take you a real period of time time to get there and then that leaves the last 25,000 leads a month Karen and I think the the last bits are always the hardest and I think you probably have some type of email newsletter that is generating 5 to 10,000 leads a month uh at scale that you're You're Building off of all those uh all that video audience and you're you're you're moving some of those folks to a newsletter and then that newsletter is getting afforded getting more organic uh subscriptions and you're able to generate 5 to 10,000 leads a month there and then I think the last like 10 to 15,000 leads are just going to come from actually just oneoff campaigns just you know hey I've got this idea this this month and I'm going to run a big content push or some type of big stunt or some free app that I'm launching that I think is going to get me a little bit of boost this quarter it's going to be kind of just like I'm going to plug the gaps to get to my number with kind of in Monon campaigns that is how I would break down where they would likely need to come from if we if you and I were just going to go start a startup we got a solid SAS app and we're trying to turn it into a100 million business which I think if you get 100,000 leads a month you're well on a way to 100 to $100 million business you know as long as you have a decent ACV uh you know as long as you have you know a multi ,000 ACV in annual contract value you're going to get there um that this is a a bad week for Google not not only didn't not only did they have to pull their image generation tool but Kip didn't give them any place for for traditional search in your in your uh in your 100,000 I looked I looked at it I was all in on YouTube I looked at like I was all ontu you're migrating to YouTube I think that I think I I agree with that so I think 55% in the kind of YouTube traditional I would probably still put traditional search in that bucket and you would take you would go hey I'm going to go from 50 45,000 leads to 55,000 leads a month going to come yeah that's probably right yeah that's probably right and on the Creator program like one of the things that I've been thinking through is a lot of in a lot of bdb niches there would not be creators right because creators just not incentivized to create content and certain in certain spaces wouldn't attack certain spaces one of the interesting things you could do from the outset is is make creators part of your marketing strategy by having a Creator program for people who want to have that lifestyle really great at content want to be um like a solar preneur want to just own a niche and have a small number of creators that you work from from the adet and give them an incredible rep share and make your product their like their they feel like that's some sort of ownership over your product and have them as part of your marketing strategy from day one right like hey you're going to going to be our the podcast person that's going to own this Niche for us you're going to be the YouTube person so that's one way you can work with them if you're like well there's not really establish crators in my in my Niche uh there will be in all I think marketing sectors and niches so why not try to give the opportunity for really great people to create those audiences as part of your team and you you'll have to just work at the unit economics because there will have to be some sort of ref share like most creators would want to in most Creator deals like the one even you described 4 they would want to own some sort of like ownership rights but in this one they would own less so You' have to get people who are okay with that but I think that's one way of doing it but I think everything else you said totally makes sense and again the 55% the YouTube the short from video uh traditional shirt l so is really a moe because it is not easy to make that work that is like skill to make that work right the the other one I was thinking through is and maybe it's in there some maybe we would put it in there somewhere is what is AI going to do right for marketers it's going to reduce the cost of code to next to near zero so like we we've always you and I for the most part have always had tool ideas right like you know sitting around thinking about tools and HubSpot have done many many tools but the cost to do those tools is still high in terms of like an engineering cost to create a tool that really is freemium and it should create some sort of demand for the core product right so there's still like the bridge you have to create from Premium app to core product well if the cost of code goes to zero zero the other thing that I thought would be really interesting is to start a fund for creators to build apps for your ecosystem freemium apps for your ecosystem and to fund the best ideas and to give them a REV share and to make like the best ideas to me are the ones that have a clear Bridge into your core product and to get these kind of solar preneurs who can now build incredible tools with AIS as a one person two person team like have those be your kind of freemium tool there right all these incredible Point solutions that easily plug into your core tool I would probably really look into that because I think I could Pro I I think for like there's an 18 24mth period where the cost of code comes down and I could just create this incentive for have people to have people who really want to get into that space to create apps in my ecosystem and start to generate me some really great demand I felt like we were like a year away from that which is why I didn't kind of include it on my original list like we're still quite not there on the cost code quite quite yet it's getting there but um it it's not there but you're bringing up a very important idea that I think everybody needs to keep in mind is that your success is directly correlated to the number of people who want you to be successful and like a lot of your strategies are like oh how do I get a lot of folks out there working on my behalf and shared incentives with me because if I can do that I'm likely going to build a bigger audience bigger business have have more opportunity cuz we're all working together instead of just a couple of us in our startup trying to to get this off the ground yeah it's the ecosystem right like the quicker you can build that ecosystem the more defensible your business is the more ways you have to grow demand for your business the other one that is in there I think that is your 10K marketing campaigns is there's also the other thing that's transformative and will have a window to be transformative is the ability to just create an incredible prospecting engine from AI with it as prospected into your your cold leads your contacts that are not qualified for sales or even just outbound right like I me outbound is having its moment where it's like brought back into the light because you can do it so much better now there we did a whole episode on Gmail bringing out new spam rules that will make this much much harder but there is like I think that I that's the other thing that I would really look at if I'm building a company today is like wow I can build I can get a an engineer who really knows how to code a couple of Engineers um and pair them with like a really great great growth marketer and build an incredible prospecting engine through these kind of AI tooling and I did you see the did you see the new superhuman feature yeah the instant replies yeah so for folks who haven't seen superhuman which is like an email client did instant replies they essentially have an autopilot instead of a co-pilot an autopilot an AI agent that is proactively writing responses that you just review and send to your email anytime you log in which is amazing which is is the four four runner to what you're talking about Kieran right where you've got you know an agent basically doing these proactive tasks for prospecting for you or even through instant engagement of people who are coming in inbound through your video and other campaigns that you're working right yeah I think it's the yeah exactly like this this this agent is creating demand for your sales team whilst you kind of sleep right it's it's able to do all the kind of prospecting the kind of followup all of those different things again I think there's a window for all of this because I suspect in a couple years time all brands have this so then it loses its real impact it just normalizes to average results the other one that I think we agree on is doing something today I would have a AI Ops Team right the the quicker I can integrate tools into how I do everything the more efficient I can be across my entire marketing team and that seems like a no-brainer in terms of something we would do today that's different that we you know because it didn't exist that would make my marketing strategy if I can like create a marketing strategy that is just 10 times more efficient than my competitors than that I can just out execute them right I can execute them out spend them here's the way to think about it what the percentage pie chart that I basically gave you the verbal pie chart around where I would go and get those 100,000 leads from the better or and more effective your AI Ops team is the higher your conversion rate is going to be so the less work you're going to have to go do across all those channels cuz you're going to convert that high that traffic at a much higher rate right so like oh maybe I only need you know 200,000 visits from YouTube instead of 400,000 visits from YouTube every month to my website right like those are the things that change dramatically with AI like again we've got a show coming up soon Kieran with with Emmy from from my team around some of the work that we're doing we're seeing real conversion rate increases through Ai and that is the value and why I think you and I both would have an AI Ops person early early on in our Market early stage marketing team right yeah yeah you the the the really cool thing about this point in time is you can actually There's real leverage to gain if you're willing to invest in things right like and that leverage just dissipates and disappears over time as that industry matures we've seen it time and time again and so I would like think about like where for for me are the points of Leverage that I can just unfairly invest in so I can actually suck up that Advantage before anyone else does the the one other fun thing I put down was it's not actually related to AI but if I was starting again right on the brand side of things I would love to get your your thought I think your brand here's the problem with brand campaigns right wow should I get a cup of coffee and lay back I don't drink coffee so I can't but go ahead right so most brand campaigns are like okay we you know we do this large campaign we introduce these character we have a we have a small little plot line and a little outcome and like we try to make you care right and then you do that for the quarter or six months and then you move on to your next one you do that for the quarter six months and you move on to your next right so you're constantly introduced in like some characters some themes some plot lines whatever it may be I think brand should be treated like each year at least should be treated like a mini kind of TV series right where you actually have real characters that are themed across the entirety of the year so you you get to care about those characters and you bring them to life through a multi uh you bring them to life through a multi kind of media format like a multitude of different content right like short fir video long fir video whatever they may be but you can actually start to ingratiate with these characters you can start to like really you know get to know them right and I think you should have some like really cool plot lines like really clever Ryden right Mo most bran can veins are not clever Ryden they are really uh stagnant like they just sound like another any other kind of B2B brand right even to me I think one of the atlan things that you could do is hire a comedic writer and have that person write your brand campaigns right and be be very very differentiated to your point like do the opposite what everyone else is doing take some real risks and and really introduce entertainment and humor so when you sit down and you're like okay what's happening across the year for the brand campaign it's like why will people care about these characters what kind of personality they have what are the kind of the plot lines the twists that happen across the entirety of the year and how do we integrate our how do we integrate our uh product into that plotline and make people like really care about that plotline that that is one thing that I think I would really take a run at because most brand marketing is boring and sucks and well yeah so you know in the early days of HubSpot I think one of the things we would do over again like most of the things I wouldn't do over again right but one of the things I think I would do over is we kind of just had that this phrase we've talked about on the show before of how do you win the the marketing internet for the week or how do you win your little corner of the internet for the week and how do you do that then every week for a year and then every week for two years and three years right like that's actually what matters here is like you have to win the like mind share and the cool factor and for like you can do that for a few months and it won't seem like it matters you do that for a year and you wake up and like wow the whole world is different consist people think about us in a completely different way and brand has lots of strengths and lots of benefits and it's hard in early stage companies when you don't have a ton of money to spend what you have to do is manufacture ideas and stories that are going to you know spread interesting and be interesting which means you have to have a really strong point of view reminds me of I think what I think a top five Founders podcast episode for me is episode 300 the James Dyson episode and just like man that guy grinded for decades to get those products out but one of the things he said is like different in every way different for the sake of it like everything had to be different right the design had to be different how they went to Market had to be different pricing had to be different everything had to be different and when you're trying to build a brand you're trying to win your little corner of the internet for that week you only do it by being different you only do it by standing out you know the the classics classic Seth Goen book purple cow is like all about this right and I feel the need to like go back and reread that book like once every year or two because you can as I get older and as I do this more and more differentiation only becomes more important not less important right especially as markets get more saturated one of the things I've gone down a rabbit hole of over the past um month or so H and I am this is going to be related I'm going to manage to go all the way back and make a point about Mark in here is like I got obsessed with um Napoleon oh yeah Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great because actually what's unbelievable about these three people are they have such similar characteristics and such similar stories you do start to think maybe this is a similation every hundred years as like we just repeat the same cycle because like how can these three people be so similar and um and so I I I started on the founders podcast that's where I kind of got introduced to their stories and then I actually have gone way off that and just consumed everything I could about about how those three people lived their life and you know the kind of battles that they won but you know what the really interesting thing about those three people that they hold in common that they controlled their own narrative so they actually were really conscious about having people follow them around and write their stories in the way they wanted them told and that was huge for Napoleon actually he was really uh skilled at being able to tell a narrative that he want to told to the masses of people which is like why he was managed to rise to the ranks of Empire with no kind of I think not much like no Noble history behind him right like didn't come through nepotism or the family and it it this it did remind me like at the heart of Storytelling is really the core skill to learn and the hardest skill to learn but to your point like if you can tell a differentiated story it has proven throughout time all the way back to like Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great that being able to control your narrative and tell a differentiated story to make people believe what you want them to believe uh in a positive way right there's ways you can do that in a negative way it's still Timeless right it is like the most important skill to learn and I think too often why why why do you think it's the most difficult skill because if you don't tell your story so there's two parts of that right if you don't tell your story and you don't tell it in a differentiated way then everyone else will decide who you are and for the most part we're not that but that's not why it's hard but that's not why it's hard but why it's why it's hard um why is it hard why is that's a really good I it's just super hard to get people to care right no I I I disagree you don't think it's hard to get people to care how why can't everyone do it then the my controversial take here is that telling stories is really hard because you fail for one of two reasons you either tell people the story you think they want to hear not the story that's authentic to you or you tell the story that's authentic itic to you but in a way that is so self-centered that nobody else can understand it and like the the the reason storytelling when it's magical works is because it is so sharp it is so focused it is like singular to one person's mind right that it is so clear and that Clarity also makes it Universal but the word choice and how that story is brought to life is so Universal that it can appeal to everyone versus just being in some like weird clunky jargon colloquialism or they've always kind of thought but have never been able to articulate what that thought is but it's hard to be interesting right like I think that third part is they they do those things but then the story is just not that interesting right and you are you are competing against a the world we live in today has an array of people who are very interesting like there's just so much content that you could I much you could make an argument we've never been this interesting as a society or at least not in a long time so the competition to break through that that noise or to like Stand Out has never been greater um but I do think a lot of what happens in in marketing is people have not invested or just have not took he that I think Ryden is a more important skill to learn than codin for the future that we are we are learning like and that's not controversial like if you look through history Ryden has been the the most important skill to to learn I think that is going to continue and I think a lot of marketers do not have not believed that and have not put in the time and effort to learn what great Ryan is I think most people believe it it turns out it's just hard and it's easy to distract yourself by saying hey I need to go learn this new app and I I I I don't need to learn writing I'll learn writing later it's the marketing has become more technology data focused than you you call marketing arts and craft I think people have thought of marketing as data and Science and so it's hard to go back marketing is I I truly believe in my heart of hearts marketing is a craft yeah I don't think that's how something that takes patience it's something that takes deep skill and expertise and empathy but at the same time like deep opinion and perspective and belief and without that it's you know it's nothing right like you can have a whole bunch of types of tables in the world but like there are very few like remarkable tables you know like the design of an Ikea table it stands out because it's highly functional and very inexpensive right like they're and it's because they have a strong perspective on what a table needs to look like marketing is the same type of craft it's actually I think brought marketing to a place it was not thought of 15 20 years ago it's given a lot more respect but the period we were in the period we have been in and we we are kind of still in is if you sat 10 Founders then and you said and they're all looking for a marketing leader and you brought two people to them and you said this person is the best person I've ever met in terms of The Craft of marketing this person is the best person I've ever met in terms of the science of marketing I think nine Founders picked the science of marketing and one person picks a craft and then that one person picks a craft sees the kind of reports that the marketer does on the kind of work they're doing and says I actually I go for the science because I understand the $3 the $1 in the $3 back like you know so it's it's hard I I actually think it's really hard The Craft part has become really hard because it's become so blurred with all of the the data we want around the work we we do and I again I think that has been a great thing right hugely great thing it's given all of us much in marketing much more respect I think in terms of the work we do but I do think like we are we are entering a period of time where the craft is going to be critical to be a a great marketer to be a successful marketer and so it's a little bit Getting Back to Basics AI is going to give us access to the data the instrumentation and AI will turn the knobs right you know and that's what's going to be going to be great about AI but if you're a knob Turner AI is GNA take Take Your Role right you're a knob Turner you know if you're a knob Turner if you're like hey I'm on this path and I'm trying to make this thing 5 10 12% better then AI is going to be able to do that really well if you if you can rethink something if you can drastically simplify something if you can CH a new course that is going to be the rare skill and is the rare skill I think in this world today marketing AI is going to be able to do the iteration you don't need correct you have to you have to come to the new Step function thing to do and then AI iterate through it yeah exactly you're the level up AI is iterative so and AI can take the thing that you want to do and iterate and do the incremental gains your job is how do I do step level changes okay we of course we finished on AI because you know it's on our minds but the whole the core of this episode was really what would we do differently if we were starting a marketing funnel marketing team today we gave you the breakdown of where we thought if we were going to try to get 100,000 leads a month where we would where would they actually come from and how would we go about getting them then we actually talked about we have to you have to build a brand to actually amplify all of those and you need build an AI Ops Team to actually increase the conversion rate of all of your lead genin that you're going to do today and then of course we talked a little bit about writing and that great marketers can distill into very clear simple messages and that is probably the biggest thing that has not changed in the entire period of time that we've been doing this any other closing thoughts before we sign off today Karen no you nailed out I can give you one cool fact because I've moved on from Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great to the p oh do the pyramids he's in Egypt now everybody in the Great Pyramid there are 2.3 million bricks you know that that is just unbelievable that is both more and less bricks in the pyramids than I thought yeah there you go anyway I don't know what I would have guessed deep into history you know when you were at school and you're like you're being taught history and you're like this is so boring your history teacher is always this this born person and then you know you're getting old when you're like darn history is like so cool I'm going to spend my time think uh going to learn relearn history I was like listening to a podcast about history last night I was like oh I'm officially old I this is what this what old like the the the the thing is you can't appreciate history or biographies Until you realize how hard things are right yeah you have to and you have to have enough you have to have enough wisdom to know how hard things are yeah well I'm moving on to it takes a little bit of time Atlantis so I will you're on to Atlantis next I'm moving on to Atlantis next it's actually uh pretty pretty incredible facts about Atlanta you know Plato talked about anyway I'll I'll you in here's gon to come back with Atlanta stories and facts next on on the next show everybody uh please hit subscribe please hit like on this video we really appreciate you take stick around and listen to the show today and we'll be back with you real soon on another episode of marketing inam this data is wrong every freaking time have you heard of HubSpot HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated W I can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed hpot grow better
