013. 2021 Marketing Trends with Mike Locke

Hello everyone, this is Emilio Garcia from Boundify and welcome to our next episode of bountify live. Our first season, episode 13. I'm really excited today to have a good friend, Mike Locke, to have a conversation, I think a candid conversation about the 2021 marketing trends. So this is going to be, I think it's a blast. I think we'll back and forth with ideas. I hope that you enjoy it. For those of you that are watching right now, I really appreciate if you can like subscribe, share any of this content that will be really helpful as we build up an audience here. And, and if you watch it later, just play the playlist. You might find a topic that interests you. And Happy, if you have any comments or any questions right now or later, just put it on the chat and I will try my best to answer and if there's something for Mike here to share that question with him. So Mike, welcome. How are you?

Welcome. Great, great. Appreciate being on.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Let us start right away. Beyond obviously the first thing that probably comes up in the mind is that there's going to be way many interesting things on 2021 because of the situation that we're living in 2020. But I don't know, I wanted to start with your overall view of what you think are going to be the most important trends.

Well, of course AI is probably the number one trend right now and we don't know what it's actually going to bring us or lead to. AI used to be, let's say a year or two ago, was used by marketers. If you had an if then statement in your software, you could claim your AI. Now we've moved on to bots which are becoming pretty much standard anymore. And I think every business should be looking at the bots from an AI point of view. They're a great way of building your business, great way of being alive off hours so you don't have to be there or have someone there. So that's a great source to start with AI. Further with AI, we're going to start seeing it really get into the marketing automation piece on what can happen behind the scenes. And that's really where marketers are I think the most anxious to see what can happen. Driving down costs, driving down all the time you need to do things in marketing automation, we'll start seeing that pick up a little bit more. And along with I think some consolidation within the marketing and area, we've gone from 10 years ago 250 vendors to now 8,000 vendors in the Martech. Yes, Arena. And we're starting to see that the larger companies buy out these smaller ones and buy out these niches. And as you and I were talking earlier, a lot of these niches are going to become part of those bigger platforms. You're going to see the platforms get larger. They're going to become like the Microsoft Office suite and have lots of pieces to them trying to be everything to everyone. And these little niche groups are going to fall into that. So I think that's one of the bigger trends we'll see in 2021.

Sorry to interrupt you there but before you jump off the bots or the AI in general, one thing I don't know if you have seen this, that it really fascinates me about AI is that the companies that are doing the most with AI they are barely mentioning it. The companies that really are trying to put there we have this nice algorithm that is usually is more I'm not gimmick or fuss but it's more like trying to put that in front of everyone be on trendy. But the ones that I have seen doing or using it the most are really doing stuff that it's like boiling water right Little you are in a boiling or a pot of water and the temperature is good raising a little bit by little bit. Small changes at the beginning almost everybody says this is not going to work just like transcription or translation I guess at the beginning. But eventually you start seeing how it's taking leaps and leaps of improvement. And I'm seeing it on for example obviously Google algorithms for bidding. I know still there's people that bid manually and there are cases where you or keyword selecting on stuff like that.

But.

But for most common cases the machine is doing a pretty good job at suggesting what you should do. The same goes for started very little on ad testing and now you throw a bunch of assets there headline descriptions and you start letting the machine and humans like collaborate on what people want to see. So I think what AI is doing and this is a little bit both exciting at the same time requires to everybody to think how we are going to change the way we do stuff is that it's replacing a lot of work that is for the grunt work. Yes, yes. And we will find to find ways to take advantage of that and focus on the strategy and focus on different aspects where AI will do most of the job. I don't know if you are seeing that.

Yeah. And excuse me, there's three areas that you're getting with AI. One is the large companies the salesforce that has their product.

Yeah.

Facebook, Google, IBM, it's probably the most well known with the Watson program. And then you come to the second tier that, that you were just mentioning. It's the companies that are using it in the background and they're no longer selling AI as a feature. It's the feature that uses AI behind the scene that they're selling to people. And so people are becoming custom to saying, to understanding it's being used by AI and that's no longer a big deal. It's like saying, I have a color TV. Well, people expect you to have a color TV. They don't have black and white TVs anymore.

Yeah.

And so these features that are going to be added on to these companies are going to be built and utilized through AI. And we're no longer going to be, I think in a couple years, no longer really discussing AI as how you're doing things. It's going to be what's it doing? And you're going to say what was done by AI and oh, of course. And then you mentioned the little small ones that are out there. They've got companies that are, that's their main thing to hang their hat on is saying we have AI. That's the three tiers I look at from an AI point of view.

Now, when you were talking about bots, I'm not saying that it's exactly the same trend, it's slightly different. But the one thing that I have seen with bots is that at the beginning, especially on chats, we marketers try to replace it, to replace previous forms of interaction. Too fast, too soon. Oh, now that old form that I had, I'm going to put it on the bot and in theory sounds fantastic because you are using the technology to perform something that a human doesn't have to be in live. But honestly from the user point of view is I'd rather fill the form right now. That way I don't have to wait for the bot pretending to answering back or replying to me. And, and I just, I, I will have an idea of all the things that you're going to ask me. So I think there's going to be a little bit of learning on that, on finding the right use cases, because they are not for everything. What I think happens when you introduce technology in that way is that sometimes you force people to go back to older or more traditional mediums. Like I will just pick up the phone because I cannot talk to this thing. It's going to be interesting seeing how I think last three years has been a lot of fuss around the bots and I think they're going to, they're going to stay here definitely because they can source information from the CRM, from the website and be more relevant to the user. But we also have to find ways to keep ourselves being human and not put just machines in front of us all the time.

We have to understand the bots are also becoming a great resource to the back end of the product development. They're hearing these questions, they're seeing them, they can read the questions that are coming up. But as you were saying, the, the. When you go in and you're, you're talking to only a bot, you interact differently and you're waiting to talk to a real person. Similarly, I think the bot industry is learning from banks and all the things that you're trying to contact banks and from the telephone companies when you're trying to contact them and the tv. So when your cable's down, you want to speak to somebody, there's nobody available. It's really turns people off. And you don't always have to have the best line or the quickest line, but you got to have a way of getting that to a human just so there's some type of empathy. Because the bot is nothing but a programmed language after the fact. No matter how nice language comes out or how smart it is, it's a robot. So they don't care. Some of the time you just want somebody to care that your, your cable's down, it's a storm, it's winter, the trees are knocked down. You just want to be able to scream in a live person to get your cable back up.

Yeah. So we have to find smart ways to have those interactions when they are needed. And probably that's a little bit also of AI like the kind of interaction if it's, if it makes more sense to put a human in front of the person, in front of the customer instead of just trying to go through a bottom.

The phone companies learned by people screaming for representative to get out of the box. Want to control our control r control R to get out.

Yes, I do that. I do that.

And people need to, I think businesses need to be able to do that somehow to get them to a live person because a lot of they do have their place. And if you get simple questions and it can follow the script is right now, it can answer them and you're done and you're out. But when you're having problems, there's got to be a way of taking the bot and moving it over I think a little quicker. Businesses have to put in some type of human there to. To pick it up. Yeah, no, it's got to be a good marriage. And in fact it's funny story that I was speaking to a CEO one of the bot companies and he said the voices of the boss because I asked him about the gender. It's about 95% women like to listen to women. Of course the guys like listening to the women. And his bots get about seven engagements. People want to marry the bot and then they ask them online about seven times a month so they get engagement. He just thought that was hilarious. And I thought yeah, there's some strange people out there but yeah, but they are coming off as is more human. The voices are better. So I think the bots are only going to get better. And as you were saying that we've got to have that fine medium between the two. So we'll see where that comes from.

Now going back to or getting back to your. What you mentioned about technology, I agree with you. There's going to be this as we have seen across the year, this just like in a start, right? Two conflicting forces, new players coming more specialized, trying to solve unique problems on the Martech space both for marketing, sales and now customer success. But at the same time the big players trying to capture more and more market share, absorbing them, replicating features. And it seems like a battle that is just in the middle point. But you have seen this before in some aspects across your career and across your experience. What do you see forward you think it's going to be at the end of it like in the telecommunication industry where there's just a. I don't think it'll get used to be fracture.

It's More like the IT business was this happened in the late 80s, early 90s. IBM was buying up all these companies. I don't remember if you're old enough to remember that but IBM was buying everything and they were trying to figure out how to put it in together to make this big solution. Sort of is the day when they owned the big iron and a big mainframe that we only could go to that it didn't work. In fact I think it hurt IBM considerably. They didn't know how to absorb it. The merger and acquisition process and its own culture is difficult. And when you take big companies that have cultures with these little niche companies and they want the software from these little ditch companies, they don't realize that they are taking the culture in there also that's probably the hardest thing to keep the talent and the culture of what made those small niche pieces of software great today. That that happened a number of times in the 80s and 90s with it. It's now occurring now in the Martech and back then we used to call it everybody trying to build the God box, they want to build that box that will do everything all the time for anybody. You could look at. Oracle is one of the big IT companies that wanted to build everything and anything SAP. So there's not a lot of them around that weren't successful. Computer Associates was one that's faded away and it doesn't always work well and you only get so big and nobody wants to be tied to a platform and nobody wants to be locked in. That's probably one of the big issues with say a HubSpot or something similar. If it gets too big, it gets too expensive and then you get into the modularization as Oracle does now and you can buy the modules for different pieces but you don't always want to be locked into that. And the company is also looking at going well, we just purchased all these companies so you will be locked in. So you now you got to pay the price for one to get the other two that you want, but you don't want to pay for one. And so now you've alienated customers. And so it's a big process in that back and forth thing is do we buy them, do we don't. Do we keep them as a separate company? Do we have Facebook and Instagram or do we merge Instagram into Facebook? You've got LinkedIn and Microsoft.

Yes.

Why isn't LinkedIn just a part of the Microsoft Office suite now pay $20 billion for it. They've got to recoup their money somehow so they can't put it into office was cost 199 or something, whatever the subscription cost is per year. So that's probably one of the bigger issues of that piecing together and building these huge machines.

Now one thing that I believe is that at least for the next year that increasing complexity on the Martech solutions available will continue just to increase. There's. It doesn't. It's not showing signs of slowing down. Maybe on the contrary. But I also think that it's just not. It's not just adding complexity for the end user. And now the marketer and even small business owners have to figure out how to navigate all this complexity. Maybe with times, with help. It's not that you have to worry about, but I think also in larger companies because of all the expanding on all the tools that you have to manage, they are creating new jobs or new responsibilities that are getting more and more defined as we speak. Right. Probably you have heard of this and probably people that work more on the enterprise will be completely aware of these topics. But for me, new in some points, these more technology focus workers or marketers are like the marketing operations or sales operations and now being called revenue operations that they are not. They are actually disembodied from the sales process itself. They are not managing quota. They don't have sales reps or in the marketing side, they are not really doing marketing. They're just managing the technology and making decisions on what systems to bring and what's better for the user. So it's very specialized IT right role for me and I don't know you're thinking on that. I think it's bringing also opportunities for the industry in general from a human perspective. Right. From the user.

One of the things that we're working on with the Martech association and where you'll be hearing more about is branching off is we'll be working on that type of certification program for these Marteching people. So you can. It'll be more like a unit getting a university degree versus just getting Google Analytics certification or HubSpot certification or any other certification. And we were working now with a number of the HR associations out there and trying to understand what they have because they're running into an issue of right brain, left brain. I need an analytics person who can do Google Analytics in the morning and can do Photoshop in the afternoon. And we're going that's right language that doesn't work.

It's like, it's like asking a person to both design and develop a website. There are people, but there is very rare to find and usually they have a strong, a strong part of both.

And even if they have that talent, there's enough time in the day to do it.

Yes.

So you do not ask your CFO to do janitorial work during the day. It makes no sense. So mixing the two don't make any sense. So what we're working on long term is certification program that deals with that type of issue is will be working with the various institutes that have certification, the content marketing institute, HubSpot for marketing automation, those type of things. And we'll have an exam that will be a final exam to be certified as a Martech person. And there'll be multiple levels within that. But the exam is Based on giving people the understanding that and the questions that the business has X amount of dollars, X amount of employees, they're looking for such revenue growth. And here's all the vendors you can use. Put together a plan and tell me why this works. So you have to understand how SEO affects content, affects your website. What would you use for a website? What would you start using for inbounding? What is going to be out there for your video? How do you get all that? So you've got to put together almost a master type thesis in a short term as your final exam to be certified. And we're working with these other institutes so that the certification alone that you get from either Google HubSpot, the content marketing Institute is great. We're not going to be, we're not going to be competing with them, but we'll have a list of programs that qualify you to sit down for that test. Similar to what you think of I'm going to go get a math degree at a college. Well, I still have to take soc psych, maybe chemistry and then I can go in in my last two years and really take some heavy duty math courses. But, but you've got that background to sit down and say I've graduated from this university, not just this math certification program. And so long term that's what we'll be working on is putting that program together for people and for the HR folks in the world to say this degree makes sense. They understand how to take somebody, a new business and using the technology, all of it, a complete integrated marketing plan, not just knowing SEO or local or anything like that. And all those are very important. But it's the difference we say is it's like a mechanic who knows how to change your brakes and an auto mechanic and how's it fix your car.

Yeah.

And that's what we're working on is putting that type of certification program where you can go out and say this person has this certification program in order to get that we know he understands or she understands the various pieces and has been certified in those areas to be able to sit down and be qualified to take this test on top of having so many hours in the marketing business. So that that's the way we're approaching it and we've got pretty good responses and we're working with a number of people all over the world on that.

That's fantastic. And I think it's, it's sorely needed because. And again I think it's just the reason this is not part of the formal Curriculum of career or something like that is because it has been evolving so fast in the last few years that there's no way a university or college will catch up with all this. The roles are create. Are being created in real time and they are evolving really fast.

Right.

So only a handful of people have the knowledge just because they were there when it all got started. That's when they're happening.

And you're dealing with what we call university time versus Internet time. And it's totally different. You've got university time, which is September to early September, December, then from late January to May. So they work. You got six months out of the year and the other six months the Internet is just flying by at hypersonic speed.

Yeah.

So time you go into a classroom and I spoke to a number of professors, they sit down and the kids sitting there, no more than the professor does on subject because the subject's brand new and there's a great divide and it changes every year. But it's about 35 years old where people were born with the technology and people that were not born with it and started using it in their 20s. And anybody who's been in says there had been in Martech for more than probably five to eight years is not telling you the truth. It didn't exist. It was just called digital. Yeah. So the big change, it's fun to see people, but now we've got executives who are in this level making decisions who've never had a smartphone when they grow up. Email was the big deal.

Yes.

25 years ago there was a movie on email. That's how it's changing. And now everybody wants to get rid of email and go to chat.

Yeah. Now you. Now let me introduce another trend and your again your take on this one. I have some assumptions on it is in my mind there are some areas from both marketing and sales that especially in B2B, they have struggled for adoption just because. Not just because the user do not. Don't want to jump into digital, don't want to jump into the systems, don't want to jump into changing maybe a traditional way that they're doing, but more so that maybe the client or the prospect is not willing to do it. My particular point of view, for example, is especially when I have worked with prospects and clients in Mexico. I remember especially when I came to the US and I want. I needed to work remotely. I'll have this first conversation is going to be over the phone and just trying to start a zoom call. It was like, what's that And I get there, I don't have a speaker on my computer if I don't know how to turn it on or whatever. And then other things are simpler like just this is my meeting link and you just click and set up a meeting for yourself. And obviously putting that information in the CRM, all those little barriers from the user, even if you are willing to test them from the marketing perspective or sales perspective, prevented you. And now I think they have chipped. I don't believe it's going to be permanent because we will get back to normal and people will yearn having physical contact and being present and having in person conversations. But I don't think we're going to just back exactly to where we were before. But I don't know what do you.

Reminds me right now of the 2020. If you look back in the 1920s, that's when radio really took off. Boom. Then people use radio, they still use it today. 1950s was TV. It became affordable, usable. The technology was there. People have always been able to do zooms. Technology wasn't great. The Internet speeds were not very good and everything is just clicked right now. And it takes the technology, the time, the situation to make it click. In 2020, I think we look back 20, 30 years from now will be the zoom era. Looking back, it'll be. That's when everybody started using zoom.

Yes.

And as you mentioned, people weren't receptacle to it. The technology wasn't there, it was always new, was clunky. You have to use it now. I think it's always going to be there. If we, if I have a phone call or a zoom, I'm going to do a zoom. So just, just hit the button and go, I can see you, I can have that, see that facial recognition of something I say or smile or something that you can't do over a phone call. And even though it is a two degree or you know, two dimensional, it's flat, it still has some depth to it. It's not ever going to be as good as being able to shake somebody's hand and have a meeting because you've got sight, smell and all the other senses that are coming in there. But it's better than just a telephone call. It's better than texting. That's right.

Definitely. Now in a similar sort again your take on for example, trade shows. Another thing that have been disrupted during this year and I think eventually we'll come back enough right now is being replaced in my view by the best attempt, but not the greatest. I have been in a couple of. Not thresholds necessarily, but expos or virtual events that try to mimic the experience of being in person. And some people might find it good, but I don't find them fascinating. Like it loses the purpose for me it's just a series of webinars more than anything else. And. And I envision that people will come up with creative ideas to replicate it as much as possible. However, I do believe that what will happen after is that even if things get to a relative normal, there's going to be a hybrid experience still. Right. I think events have to transform to be obviously in person as always because every. Everyone will join from time to time. You've been there and as you said, had that face to face interaction and impression and engage all the senses. But I think some remote experiences will stay for forever.

Yeah, I think the hybrids are here and one of the areas that works out is if you fly to an event, it's very expensive. It's hotels, meals and the plane along with the cost of the event, that's very expensive. So you only get a few people there. You get 100 to some of the hubspots are thousands of. Yes, but think of all the people that couldn't make it there. One or two people from a company go. The other 20 don't. Well now they'll have that virtual event so they can be there. So you will have the chance for that audience to be there and grow and expand. And that's where this hybrids coming in. You can be a live event and also be available for people who couldn't make it for whatever reasons possible. And so you're going to get a larger audience. And for the sponsors that are the ones that are looking at this, they now have more eyeballs looking at it. Yeah, Live one that gives you that personalization. You've got the availability to see it if you couldn't make it. But you also have the recordability for longer term. Now as you're saying, the events sometimes are flat. It's. You got to go back to where TV was, the late 40s, early 50s, before they did three camera shots. It was a single camera shot. It was very flat. And we're gonna, we're at that stage. So you're going to start eventually getting avatars and they're going to be the same avatars as the models on the boat shows. That's going to be that way. And some of the industries I won't mention will be leading that fact. But that'll make it more personable. Those Avatars will have a personality or will match somebody sitting in a booth talking and it'll be presented through an avatar along with VR in some format. That's what I think it'll eventually get to. So you'll have that experience of feeling like you're talking to a real person though you know it isn't. I think that'll come about and that'll be. I'm probably going to be retired before that comes out to a real reality where you, you assume it. But I think in the next few years you're going to start seeing these little add ons, these virtual shows. There's now a platform of these virtual shows, the six Connects of the world, the On24s where you can have these large conference meetings. So you're going to start seeing these little niche companies that we talked about putting pieces in there, avatars that you can do things, presenting more 3D information so it becomes more of a live event and it'll eventually get as good as it's ever going to get. You can't do a hologram and walk into a hologram like on Star Trek and see everything there live. But that's what they want to get to be able to walk in and see what's going on and it'll be a little bit more, I'm gonna say more human. You still going to miss the sights and the smells I think are probably one of the biggest things that people don't realize when you're, you're in a, a television scenario. You have no sense of the smell around you or the other sounds that are around you that you don't recognize the loudness of everybody talking, that hum. So those are things that are missing, you can put them in but I don't know if you ever, I, I love Star Trek but you see the Star Trek gen second generation, watch the show and turn off the sound and then turn it back on and all of a sudden you'll hear this hum all the time. The engine and being in outer space, that sound is missing on these live events. The noise of the crowd, the smell of popcorn off to the side. Yeah, those are the things that live events make fun and you can't. It's like watching a baseball game on TV or being there live. You can bring the popcorn in, you can bring in whatever drink and sit in your most comfortable chair. But that cool crowd is not there.

Yes, yes, I, I don't go to sports that often but for example I, I procure that to my kids because I completely agree with you is the experience being there is very different. You get a sense of. You be part of the crowd and that's something remarkable when you are there. So I think definitely there's going to be a hybrid and, and that hybrid will get more sophisticated trying to replicate all those experiences as much as possible.

That's going to be its biggest challenge if they can do that. But it's. There's always going to be an audience there. If I can't make it to a show, I could watch it while I'm flying on a plane, if I'm flying to another show. So like there's opportunities that we don't think about that for sponsors, they're going to still get more eyeballs there if they, if they do a hybrid versus not doing a hybrid versus renting the.

Booth or just renting. Yes, yes.

Now the challenges they're running into from both the industry and the. And the sponsors are X amount of dollars for just a virtual event and X amount of dollars for a live event. And now you're saying they're both equal. I'm getting you more eyeballs. So it costs us as much and you as much for a virtual event as it does for a live event.

Yeah.

And then if you go to a hybrid, you go to the sponsor, you go, it would say cost you $1,000 for one or a thousand dollars for the other. And now you're going in and the sponsor's going, well, I'm not going to pay $2,000. What do I pay? And we'll offer it for $1500. And you're going, well then which one wasn't worth a thousand dollars? 22 you're running into is you got to provide value. And how do you provide that? Because the sponsors can't afford to just double their. Double the output.

Yeah. Anything is going to be a low transition and eventually as you said, it will just become like something that you can just buy in a, in a package will not be separated anymore and you take advantage of the one that you want. Just. I remember one transition that newspapers that they had at the beginning, this add on to have access to the digital version. But it was just a small portion and then eventually it became the offer and if you wanted the paper like we can send it to you. But this is your.

So this is going to be more of. I think it's going to be a feature they're going to try to sell.

Yes.

People have got to recoup their hard costs for these virtual events and same time the sponsors can't afford to double their costs just to cover your expenses. So they've got to be able to offer it and then as you said take it down. And eventually I think long term and this may be 5 to 10 years where it'll just be assumed that it'll be they're going to throw in the streaming service for your event or the other versus the other way around. There's going to be a lot they do streaming and locally you might have some type of event.

Yeah. And I think long run maybe events will become like a localized time constrained advertising platform like auction. The presence is instead of Google or Facebook have a permanent audience in a long time. Right over infinite amount of time or down the future. I think events will treat the sponsors are as this is how many people are going to come and they're going to be interacting all these different ways and it's going to be for this many days auction your presence there and put your assets and you decide how you want to participate. And this is. You will charge an amount. Maybe have a minimum just having an advertising platform.

Yeah.

To leave it to the market and.

You'Re going to be able to play off each other. You met somebody or you heard somebody. I'm going to say you you don't hear anybody on these events. You read about somebody chatting off the side or asking a question. You want to meet them.

Yeah.

So that's what you'll be at with our. The association we're looking at is doing this both meeting on a monthly basis and then having those available as a streaming service so that other people know locations can see what's going on. That's an advantageous to us. So if you're. You have a chapter of our organization in New York and one in Los Angeles, you're probably not going to meet face to face. But you're going to have the opportunity to log in every now and then and see what's going on in New York versus Los Angeles. What are their local events doing that are you're not seeing there or who are the people there that you never got to see. So there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of growth, a lot of getting more into huge audiences, being able to go into private chats and then coming back and meeting them which is would be nice. That's one of the things that I miss now is not being able to meet anybody face to face, shake their hand and really talk to them more than what we're doing now. Because this is great. But it's not the Same. And most people don't know we three miles apart from each other physically from our homes, but we don't see each other right now.

Another. Another big one, I think, and hopefully you agree on this one too, is video, right? Video for many reasons. And this obviously is not that it will start. I think it will just continue just live sessions or zoom meetings. But I definitely see if you wouldn't consider video at this point mainstream. Definitely going mainstream. And I think I see a lot of trends are helping for this to happen. One obviously the first one is as you were saying about meetings, right. The. The platform, the technology has been clunking because it's just a handful of people using it. And so now the extreme use of all people trying to communicate is elevating the platforms. They have to work faster to solve issues and come up with features and all that. So I think technology is going a point where you don't have to be a power user to take advantage of it. It's becoming increasingly easy. That will be one thing that is going to promote the use the. The other thing is features Live not only change. Not only change the format. I think the other thing that they do is they change the expectations. When you have a prerecorded video, because it's prerecorded, I think the audience expects something more polished, more professional, which obviously require more resources because you are recording and you're putting people there. But when you are doing live, as you were saying, is the expectation is lower because there's my. Some something at house. Right. A kid might cry or a dog bark. And so there are going to be difficulties. And so that lowers the tread for the content creator. That's another thing. And I think it's changing. More people will be more comfortable doing video than before. And the last one for me is from marketing point of view, how versatile is the format for repurposing? If you create a block piece, you can just use it as a block piece. And like working backwards on the other formats are hard. When you record video, you have the video and if the video is not great, you just put the audio in a podcast. And if the audio is not great, just break it down on a blog post or an infographic. But you have all these options down the road, then I think be the unique position to provide to a marketer.

Exactly. Very similar to what a white paper was 20, 10 years ago. I could take that and chop it up into all the different areas. The videos are allowing us to do that.

Yeah.

One of the things I look at is the technology. The microphones are less than a hundred dollars. I've got lights here that are $200.

The camera. Right. You have a professional camera in your phone. And I can't record at 4K 60fps. It's this an amazing piece of technology.

So you get 500 worth of equipment and you're up and running as if you're Howard Stern.

Yes.

And it's amazing. And that that's lowered it. The amount of people ordering it now has just made it a commodity pricing. So that's available where 10 years ago was, it was 5,000. $10,000 to do what we're doing today. It's no longer there. The Internet, the speeds are there. The expectations of you and I not getting dressed up in a suit and sticks and talking to each other. That's been the pandemic. That's just everybody's working in their jeans and T shirts. And it's accepted. That is probably going to be the number one killer of business attire for the next 10 years. I had a gentleman who was from.

California to the world.

Yeah. A show with a gentleman. It was a birthday and he's very prim in properties. That used to be a CMO for Kodak. And it was his birthday, so everybody surprised him with his birthday. And he stood up, he goes, oh, he's in this nice shirt. Jackie stands up. He's in his shorts. His tennis shorts. People accept it.

Yeah.

What's going on in the background? Your cat's walking by at my place. That you said the dog noises. It's just what it is now. And people aren't. Don't have the. And you hear my cat probably in the background now. Just accept it. And it's no longer. You don't have to be a 10 from 1 to 10 on your videos. You don't have to be a 10 or you look down upon. It's everything in between. Now, like you were saying, you can take the technology and make things a 10. You can do the post work, you can do whatever you want and make it great. But people aren't expecting that. They're not buying the CD for $199 and expecting professional classes. They know this is a consumable product. It's here for an hour, it's gone, and it's in the virtual world forever. And that's it. So they take it as it is. I tell people, what was it like? Slices of bread. Once it's consumed, it's gone. But they're individual slices. It's no Longer this huge big process of this great Italian bread. It's just loaf of wonder bread now.

Which presented out of itself a challenge which is abundant content. Then it's harder to send out and everybody's making it. Yeah. It becomes harder to send out and have a unique angle on things. Now let me ask you this one. I consider from my point of view the final one unless you have something else there for me is especially in B2B traditionally some industries are being laggards on adopting digital for marketing and sales processes and definitely customer success or customer experience for some of them. And. And I remember in the past the beginning was just sheer denial. Right. Is sales process haven't changed for us. We don't need this or we really don't market. Everything is we are maybe a manufacturer. We have distribution. There's no point on us on marketing because our clients are the companies that we interact with.

Right.

Then eventually became yeah I know that probably I will need to do that but. But I can go back. I can go buy and not do it and I'm still okay. I believe that the moment that we are living is forcing some companies to realize that now it's not optional that you definitely have to do because your traditional channels are cut off. Like that ratio that launch. That in person meeting cannot happen as often or it cannot happen at all. But. But my first question for you will be do you agree on that or do you really think that most for B2B everybody is jump on the digital transformation and there's not really anyone that will say I don't think we should do this.

I think people are looking at everything and they're making changes in there. There goes my cat.

Yeah. Talking about talking about things that can happen.

They have to look and see what's out there. It's more of retention of older business. You're not reaching them. Where new companies are going after your business through digital. So your customers are now seeing everything out there and they're seeing much more than they did before. It just wasn't the two guys who took them out to launch. It's now the entire world offering them services including all the people in Japan and China that are offering them anything that they want for a lower cost. So what are you bringing to them? So you've got to be able to reach them in some manner. We will go back to the face to face but I think it's going to be more of a closing than the beginning for sales. So it'll be that traditional inbounding of what's going on. People will be shopping and they have been for the last few years. There's no more catalogs. They're. They're looking out there. They're. They're already in the system some manner of trying to find solutions and you just have to be out there or you'll be extinct. I think it's more from a B2B. You've got to be the biggest challenge they're running into is getting out there and being part of the game. It's almost do I, I can sit on the sidelines. I don't have to worry about. I'll come in the fourth quarter.

Yes.

And we'll win the game. Now you won't win the game because you'll be down 40 to nothing before you get in there. And that's the, the change you also got. The people that are 35 now have been in, in purchasing. They're now get reaching higher ranks and purchasing. They're used to the digital. They're used to that. They don't need to be face to face as much until they're ready to sit down and pick out the three companies they want to work with. So that's making things change a little bit. But you've got to be able to do it. As I say to people who are marketers, I say why are you using the term digital marketing? Everything is digital. What isn't digital? Why are we using a term? It's like a tv. It's color tv.

You're right. Yeah. The signal is digital. It's not analog anymore.

Nobody ever says I have a color tv. They just say I have a tv. You assume it's color.

Yes. Yes.

And the same thing I think marketing needs to do is drop the term digital outside of actual print. And the print industry is 90% digital. It's just this final output. Everything what isn't digital?

Yes, it's like a technology. But what doesn't happen or eventually what will not have AI at some point everything will have it in a certain way. But you mentioned something two things that I, I completely agree. I repeat many times over conversations once is that how B2C informs B2B is overlooking. And sometimes people think that it's just because. Because you're selling transactional products that are bought out of impulse and that is permit permeating or moving into from B2C to B2C to B2B. But what I really think is what you mentioned is, is not necessarily how they sell their products is the buyer experience the B2B buyer is a B2C buyer. And if you are getting used to how Amazon provides you services or products and the B2C world, you have those experiences, you start to expect them on the B2B world.

The other thing you're running into is the purchasing agents and the people that are buying. The committees buy the B2C stuff every day for their everyday life. Yeah. And they're used to that experience. I could just go to Amazon. Why can't I go to Amazon to buy your product? Aren't you on ebay? So they're used to buying and working their entire life and they get to work and go, why are we doing it this way? I can just, I can pick up this part from my car anywhere in the world. Just one click and I'm done. Why isn't it simple for B2B? That's what's really forcing the change, is that the customer expectation of what's going on in their daily life outside of work, they're just going to bring it into work. So the purchasing portion of it's very similar to bring your own computers to work. And they finally change the IT mentality that you bring in. The buyer experience from B2C is greatly changing that B2B world.

Yes, I agree. Yeah. So I, I think that if there's any industry at this point that don't see that, or individually you don't see that, I think right now you might be experiencing. And that's when you say, I realize, how is this experience for the buyer? How are you, as you are saying, is by the time they have a conversation with me, even if I haven't changed my process that much, they already know about the company, about the pricing, about the competition, what happened after purchase, what are clients or customers say about the product online? Because you are being forced to follow that path. Even you haven't resisted on the past.

So, yeah, you look back and I'm old enough to remember 35 years ago, 40 years ago, with businesses they were just starting out with, why do I need a computer? What, What I have a secretary, I've got a typewriter, what I need a computer for? And so they had to grow into that experience of inventory and expectations, of email and everything else. Some people survived it, some people just didn't want to do it and haven't survived it. So the digital processing, the digital marketing and all that is what's happening now. And 30 years from now, something new will come along and we'll all laugh at it, going, why do you need that?

We will see what happens at the end of 2021. If, if you're willing to, we might have a similar conversation at some point down the road in the year and see what change and what really stay the same. It will be I think it will be interesting to do that. And Mike, I really appreciate your time today, sharing your experience with us. And I don't know if you have, you know, any final comments or something.

It's just great being here. I'm glad you're doing this. And yeah, I'd love to come back.

Yeah. Fantastic, everyone. Thank you for listening. For those of you again that are listening this later, if you like this episode on the platform of your choice or just subscribe, that will be deeply appreciated. And we will coming up with more topics about marketing and sales for B2B professionals. And until the next time, thank you.