What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

What marketer hasn’t been swept up in the AI craze? Maybe it can make our jobs easier. Maybe it can help us hit our sales numbers. Or maybe it’s a big distraction…

Case in point – the other day I spent hours listening to AI-generated isolated guitar tracks from Smashing Pumpkins songs. Fascinating… very helpful when you’re trying to learn parts – but I also got sucked into countless YouTube videos of AI-generated music and guitar solos.

Check out this song by Smashing Pumpkins (non-AI version) while we see what the experts are saying this week…

HubSpot’s AI Solution

As a B2B marketing professional, you understand the importance of creating quality content to engage with your target audience. However, this can be time-consuming and daunting, particularly if you’re managing multiple campaigns.

HubSpot’s latest AI-powered tools, the content assistant and ChatSpot.ai, are designed to save you time and streamline your workflows. These tools use advanced artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI to make work easier for marketing, sales, and customer service professionals.

All in all, AI can be a double-edged sword. Marketers should know both the advantages and disadvantages of using AI in marketing before implementing it in their campaigns. HubSpot’s new tools will be interesting to follow as their user base adopts them.

What do you think? Is AI a friend or foe of marketing? Will it speak to your customers in a language they can hear?

Long Tail, Scarcity & Pop Culture

Within a few weeks, we’re going to see thousands (or millions) of new songs created by AI and available on YouTube and streaming channels. Some of them will be mediocre, others breakthroughs, and even some hits.

Pop culture has traditionally depended on scarcity – with only a few TV stations or a dozen radio stations, it’s likely that many of us have watched or heard the same thing at the same time. A popular TV show from fifty years ago probably reached twenty times as many people as a popular hit today.

But the long tail brings other benefits. More choices, more innovation. Not just a long tail of consumption, but also a spectacular decrease in the cost of production. Innovations in computers, cameras, and AI mean that people can make content without permission from a gatekeeper.

According to Seth Godin, creating music – like writing – is an inherently human activity, and it doesn’t go away. People will make the effort. What does go away is the commercial and creative dynamic of thousands of people in places like Nashville and Hollywood trying to become ‘someones’ with nothing but a typewriter or a guitar.

The end of pop and the rise of the long tail and AI brings us back a century. Just like it used to be – small circles of people, not mass markets. But this time with endless choices and a business model that’s hard to visualize.

What do you think? Can you make it last forever?

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Heads or Tails? AI and the Long Tail appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

For many, this weekend marked the end of summer. This magical switch is flipped in our collective consciousness, and we immediately return to business mode, right? For years I’ve tried to condition my clients to keep pushing their sales and marketing efforts throughout the summer, yet every year we hit September and it’s the mad rush to get things back up and running! Maybe that’s just part of being human…

Give this song by the Killers a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week.

Humanizing Lead Gen

Almost every step of the sales funnel can be automated to a certain degree, from adding prospects to the funnel, through a closed deal. But according to Heinz Marketing, this lack of human connection can be harmful, especially in the B2B landscape. Although we’ve seen an increase in lead gen efforts, we’re also seeing a decrease in personalization efforts, with some thinking that it is not necessary at all.

I’ve seen it with my clients. They always did the best they could with automated processes, spending countless resource hours building ‘sequences’ for sales outreach, but ignoring the human touch points. In B2B – and especially in a complex sale – you can’t ignore the importance of a bi-directional conversation with a prospect. Keeping the human connection alive is a fundamental part of the buyer’s journey, and both digital and human interactions need to be integrated in the overall process.

Humanizing Musical Education

You may know that I helped to bring the ‘School of Rock’ business to Canada years ago. I’ve always been a strong believer in music as a tool for education and therapy – and at any age. Music can bring people together, build community, and improve mental health.

Today outlines some steps for raising a musical kid. I would take these same tenets and apply them to people of ALL ages – including co-workers!

1. Start early
2. Add music to routines
3. Make it playful
4. Share the experience
5. Give life a soundtrack
6. Get creative
7. Find the right kind of lessons

How does this impact B2B? I’ve seen the power of music when used at the corporate level, helping to build employee engagement, etc… and it can make for a fun weekly newsletter!

Try it yourself! See how you can leverage music at work and what kind of results you can get. You’ve gotta let me know how it goes!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Do Your Best to Connect appeared first on Virtual Causeway.