Agentic AI is a joy-killer for NBD

A “cold call battle”

I love a contest as much as any athlete… but this makes my blood run cold.

It’s an advert to promote agentic AI compeing alongside CSRs to book appointments.

You may not know this, but I’m a demon cold caller. It’s a service I provide as part of B2B Marketing – yet the underlying premise of this service is going to drive enshi*tification into yet another part of business marketing.

I know I can spot many online fakes, bots and robo-voices.

Soon we won’t be able to do this.

Agentic AI cold calling bot service

It will be ‘fun’ to try to get the automatic agents off the line quickly – but where’s the joy in beating a machine? It’s man-to-man mortal combat that gets my adrenaline surging.

That’s only a sorta-joke. I do like a competition. I do like to pit my skills and my wits against another person. But only in a fair fight.

I’m sure that these services will shortly be incorporating human-like aspects of speech and language to persuade the listener that they’re not talking to a bot.

Yet again – where’s the fun in that.

Does agentic AI risk taking all the fun out of doing business? Your thoughts….

Old clothes and porridge

Old clothes and porridge

I got back from holiday recently and apart from the hideous time zone dislocation I definitely know that I achieved some of my goals – rest, a change of scene and the opportunity to do some quiet thinking without interruption.

Settling back into the work routine comes easily yet I find the best outcomes from this time are to start making changes.

Ideas, plans and thoughts which I have captured while travelling are always freshest and best implemented when energy levels are high.

Going back to your old routine feels as comfortable as familiar old clothes, but I believe it’s worth resisting and taking risks with new ideas and new plans.

And anyway, I like porridge!

Corporate phone numbers

Are these a thing of the past? Or are they still a useful marketing tool.

Remember when having a round number (ending in 000 or 5555) was a really important part of your business marketing positioning? We slaved to get the same 4 digits for all our regional offices back in the day.

Today, I’m calling Harcourts Real Estate in Brisbane – head office for a kinda large real estate business. Their switchboard has a voicemail. I left a message on 18th March – called again today – still on voicemail.

What message does that send?

YOuTube still of Air NZ safety video with Stephen Adams

Airline safety videos are a great messaging platform

I read an article about airline spend on glossy safety videos and found some great marketing reasons for investing in high production values.

YOuTube still of Air NZ safety video with Stephen Adams

4.8 million views and counting

First – aligning cultural values with education. Air New Zealand partnered with the Department of Conservation (DOC) to promote the importance of wildlife protection. That was after they did a movie hook up from Men in Black featuring the All Black rugby stars.

The baton was picked up by United whose $1m spend and 160 crew on their current Safety in Motion video boggles – but apparently viewers love it.

Qantas uses a true customer romance story (with actors and the actual people in the credits – no they don’t look alike at all), British Airways features home grown “national treasures” like Gordon Ramsay. So far so good – but did you know some of these get millions of YouTube watches? Sounds like a new revenue stream from people who won’t even be paying to fly with you.

In these straitened times, does this make the cost of production a worthwhile marketing investment?

Sources:

New ideas often receive pushback

New ideas often receive pushback.

That’s because they’re new, they represent change and that can be threatening to jobs, budgets and ‘the way we work round here’.

It doesn’t mean they are necessarily a bad idea. I find that frequently it takes a couple of goes to overcome the pushback and also it takes some time – maybe a year or more.

There’s nothing more powerful than “an idea whose time has come”. But that doesn’t just happen. The marketing communications outreach that builds the comprehension, that challenges the status quo, that offers alternative pathways is where us B2B marketers can prepare the ground so that you overcome the pushback, get acceptance for a pilot or a trial and then move towards adoption.

Here’s a case study.

I’m the MC for a B2B marketing careers event at the Marketing Association which I first proposed as an un-conference a year ago. Now the event is re-framed and is happening next week.

Let’s talk?

Not everything is enhanced with AI.

Use your experience of life, of human communication and decision making to work out times in the customer journey when personal, individual, manual actions will have greater effect.

I love using letters, phone calls, SMS – all great tools for use cases when you need cut through and to effect human-to-human contact as a context for making a sale.

PM me and I’ll tell you one use case I’m doing right now with a CV for a job application.

No it won’t do the whole job for you, yes you will use your human insight and creativity to frame up the AI supplied text. It’s so satisfying.

Getting a “no” is a good result for the sales pipeline

The inexperienced new business development marketer will disagree with that statement. Why wouldn’t you want more prospects in your pipeline?

The customer doesn’t owe you their business – but they do owe you an answer.

Creating marketing tactics that provoke the prospect to answer “no” is a good thing. Sales know not to pursue them and can focus their efforts elsewhere.

And remember, no is just for now.

95% of B2B prospects aren’t ready to buy at any one time. So going back to them later, may mean they’re ready to hear your brand message and review their plans.

Academy for Women Entrepreneurs, Pacific Women in Business

AWE Pacific Summit 2023

I am a panelist at the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs summit talking about Social Media, Marketing and communications.

Three talking points and answers

From your experience in B2B Marketing, what do you think our Pacific & Maori business women who target businesses as customers should focus on for their marketing activities?

  • Understand the customer – walk in their shoes
  • Keep good records – CRM
  • Businesses may look daunting as sales targets but they are made up of people – befriend them.
  • Use LinkedIn – buy a Premium membership and Sales Navigator
  • Build your email list from day one
  • Don’t build your house on rented land
  • Focus on local marketing first

Can you give some examples of SME women led businesses you have supported with your digital marketing insights expertise?  

  • Sue Skeet – Notice Match
  • Climber Property – Grace Hu
  • Equal Exes – Bridgette Jackson
  • PICMI – Genevieve Griffin-George
  • Catherine Stewart  Barrister
  • Method Recycling – India Korner

What are some tips you can give our Pacific & Maori business women for their digital marketing activities & campaigns? 

  • Buy expertise if you don’t have it yourself. Fiverr, Upwork
  • Learn how to brief
  • Find your tribe…. start very very narrow for your audience
  • Keep your owned digital assets at the core of your strategy.
  • Stay in touch regularly
  • Build community
  • Join the Marketing Association B2B SIG

Happy to give guidance to anyone who needs more detail on these topics.

Simplify your martech stack

I attended the Marketing Association’s B2B meetup and here’s my write-up on the event.

Key learnings

  • Use what you have to the fullest extent – all functionality
  • Simplify your stack NOW
  • Check your use case matches your technology
  • Bring the team with you – upskill them to be confident using technology

Match your MarTech Stack to your needs

Technology is an essential component for successful B2B marketing – but the plethora of choices is beyond confusing – it’s daunting.

The Marketing Association’s Special Interest Group for B2B marketing hosted a panel discussion “Does your martech stack fit your needs?” to tackle this giant question head on.

Ably led by Cassandra Powell (Assurity), the panel shared their insights and experiences using technology to support marketing activity.

Find the right tools

Half the panel confessed that they were in the process of simplifying their technology at the moment. Traverna Addenbrook (Spark) assesses each based on whether it supports Spark’s data unification goal while Sharn Piper (Attain) always matches the tool to the job which needs to be done and then tries to use that tool to its fullest extent.

Datacom’s Alex Mercer confessed that when she joined they had 220 websites! Her team are integrating platforms in support of their brand development. Getting the data talking across platforms is a sizeable job. Simon Wedde (Stitch Tech) strongly advocated seeking native integrations between different software tools and to never use custom integrations, because one software update can cause you headaches. He also recommend to use your own data when doing demos of new tools so you can assess tech platforms’ suitability to your unique use case.

Bring the team with you

Many marketers inherit ‘hangover’ software which is already in place. This is not necessarily a disaster because if you assess the adoption rates for each, you’ll quickly be able to make a case for getting rid of the ones you don’t like or have become outdated. By surveying your team and understanding the landscape of actual use Travena managed to simplify her stack and improve both the integrations and the processes which support the marketing team. She had a word of caution about fear. Some team members may not use technologies which are in place and you need to understand your team’s capability around each tool before deciding which to sunset out of the tech stack.

Get the most out of your stack

Many marketers already know that we use only a small percentage of the capability of the software tools we buy. Relax says Simon, just use that part really well – but also build your use cases to confirm that the tools are aligned with business needs.  It’s important to understand where your data is and how clean and up-to-date it is says Traverna. She reminded the meeting that sometimes things turn out in unpredictable ways – this isn’t a disaster. Don’t blame the model is her advice. If you understand data lag and the implications you will not have any trouble explaining to stakeholders what happened and why. If you’ve already done your internal PR with these folks you can remind them why they invested in this tool, that they should trust your marketing process and trust you. Marketers need to be comfortable around technology so they’re empowered to make informed decisions.

What about AI?

Sharn is not worried about AI tools replacing marketers, but he is worried about a marketer who knows the AI tools better than you replacing your job. The AI itself is not what you should be concerned about. His team is already running tests using AI to save time or money in the business. Get it done, know what works and what fails and build your knowledge about how to write AI prompts.

Rebecca Caroe

Member of the B2B Special Interest Group Board