013. 2021 Marketing Trends with Mike Locke
Mike Locke on what's coming in 2021 marketing: AI moves from buzzword to background tool, video becomes essential, and buyers expect the digital experience they get at home. Expect more hybrid events and martech specialists as companies finally catch up to what customers demand.
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Hello everyone, this is Emilio Garcia from Boundify and welcome to our next episode of Boundify Live. Our first season, episode 13. I'm really, 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 it will 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 how we build up an audience here. 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. So let us start right away. Beyond obviously, you know, 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 22, 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 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, you know, 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 area, we've, 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 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.
Let me. 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. Right. Like, you know, the companies that really are trying to put there like we, we have this nice algorithm that is doing something usually is more. I'm not gimmick or fuss but it's more like trying to put that in front of everyone, kind of like 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. You are in a boiling or a pot of water and the temperature is good. Raising a little bit by little bit is small changes at the beginning. Almost everybody says this is not going to work just like transcription or translation I guess at the beginning. Right. 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. Right. I know still there's people that bid manually and there are cases where you or keyword selecting on stuff like that. But for most common cases, the machine is doing a pretty good job at, you know, suggesting what you should do. The same goes for. Started very little on ad testing. Right. And now you throw a bunch of assets there, headline descriptions and you start letting the machine and humans kind of like collaborate on what people want to see. So I think, 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 is replacing a lot of work that is, you know.
For, 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 you know, 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, Salesforce that has their product. 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, well, 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 onto 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, well, it 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. Yeah, that's kind of 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. Like, oh, well, now that old form that I had, I'm going to put on the bot. And in theory sounds fantastic, Right. Because you are using the technology to perform something that a human doesn't have to instead of being live. But honestly from the user point of view is I'd rather fill the form.
Right.
That way I don't have to wait for the bot pretending to answer me back or replying to me. I will have an idea of all the things that you're going to ask me. 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, right. 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 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, you know, put just machines in front of us all the time.
And 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, they're seeing them, they can read the questions that are coming up. But as you're saying, the, when you go in and you're, you know, you're talking to only a bot, you interact differently and you're waiting to talk to a real person. Similarly, I think the bide 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 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, 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 the language comes out or how smart it is, you know, 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. You know, it's a storm, it's winter, the trees are knocked down. You just want to be able to scream at a live person to get your cable back up.
Yeah. So we, we have to find more ways to, to have those interactions when they are needed. Right. And probably that's also of AI, Right. Kind of 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 bot.
The phone companies learn by people screaming for representative, representative, representative. To get out of the bot loop, you almost want to control R, 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, 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, I was speaking to a CEO, one of the bot companies and he said the voices of the bots because I asked him about the gender. It's about 95% women. The women like to listen to women. Of course the guys like listening to the women. And his bots get about seven engagements. You know, people want to marry the bot and then they ask them online about seven times a month so they get engagement from their bots. 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. They're better. And as you were saying that we've got to have that fine medium between the two.
Yeah.
So we'll see where that comes from.
Now going back to or getting back to 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 star, I guess, right. Two conflicting forces. Right. Is the 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 so seems like a battle that is just in the middle point. But you have seen this before I guess 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? Kind of like in the telecommunication industry where there's just a. I don't think it'll get players or it's going to be fractured.
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 own the big iron and the 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, the software from these little niche 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. Well 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 can 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 kind of faded away. 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. 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? Well, they paid $20 billion for it. They better recoup their money somehow so they can't put it into office was cost 199 or 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. Yeah.
Now, now you know one thing that I, I believe is that, that 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 not just adding complexity for the end user. Right. And now the marker and even, you know, small business owners have to figure out how to navigate all this complexity, maybe with times, with help. It's not that 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 it's kind of new in some points. This more technology focus workers or marketers that are like the marketing operations or sales operations and now being called revenue operations. Right. That they are not. They are actually disembodied from the sales process itself. Right. 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 like a very specialized IT.
Right.
Role for me and I don't know your. Your thinking on that. I think it's bringing also opportunities for the industry in general from a human perspective. Right. From the user.
Well, 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 a Google Analytics certification or HubSpot certification or any other certification. And we're working now with a number of the HR associations out there and try 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 could do Photoshop in the afternoon. And we're going that's right language that doesn't work.
Yeah, it's like, it's like asking a person to both design and develop a website.
Right.
There are, there are people, but there is very rare to find. And usually they have a strong. Right. 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 we'll 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, 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 you 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 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 to 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'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 sorely needed because. And again, I think it's just the reason this is not part of, you know, the formal curriculum of, you know, a 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. Right. The roles are being created in real time and they are evolving really fast. So only a handful of people have the knowledge just because they were there when it all got started.
Right.
That's what 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 in it changes every year. But it's about 35 years old where people were born with the technology and people that were were not born with it and started using it in their 20s. And anybody'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. It didn't exist. 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 let me introduce another trend and again, your take on this one. I have some assumptions on this. It is in my mind there are some areas from both marketing and sales that especially in B2B, they have struggle for adoption just because. Not just because the user don't want to jump into digital, don't want to jump into the systems, don't want to jump into, you know, 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. Right. 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 is well, I'll have this first conversation is going to be over the phone, right? 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, you know, this is my meeting link and you just click and set up a meeting for yourself. And obviously putting that information CRM all those little barriers from the user, even if you are willing to test them, you know, 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, and people yearn, you know, having physical contact I guess and being present and having in person conversations. But I don't think we're gonna just back exactly to where we were before and But I don't know what do you.
Kind of reminds me right now of 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 and 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 for sure.
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. You know, right now it's being replaced in my view by the best attempt, but not, not the greatest.
Right.
I have been in a couple of, you know, not thresholds necessarily, but expos or virtual events. Virtual events that try to mimic the experience of being in person. And some people might find it good, but I don't, I don't find them fascinating. It kind of like it loses the purpose, I guess. For me it's just a series of webinars. Right. More than anything else. And I envision that people will come up with creative ideas to kind of like 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 journey 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. Right?
Right. 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. If you only get a few people there, you get a hundred to you. Well, some of the hubspots are thousands. Yes, but think of all the people that couldn't make it there. You know, 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 could 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 live. One that gives you that personalization. You've got the availability to See if you could make it. But, but you also have the recordability for longer term. Now as you're saying, the events sometimes are flat. You got to kind of 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 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. It'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 that those, 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, that'll come about and that'll be. I'm probably going to be retired before that comes out too. 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 know, you can't do a hologram and you know, walk into a hologram like on Star Trek and see everything there live. But that's what they want to get to, to be able to walk in and see what's going on and it'll be a little bit more, I say more human. You're 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 humor. So those are things that are missing. You can put them in. But I don't know if you ever. I love Star Trek but you see the Star Trek second Generation watch the show and turn off the sound and then turn it back on, and all 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.
Right.
And you can't. I mean, 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 crowd is not there.
Yes, yes, yes. I don't go to sports that often, but for example, I procure that to my kids. Right. Because I completely agree with you is the experience being there is very different. Right. 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 the hybrid will get more sophisticated trying to replicate all those experiences as much as possible.
Right. That's going to be its biggest challenge, if they can do that. But 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 and seeing it if I'm flying to another show. So 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, well, they're. 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, well, it would say cost you a thousand dollars 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 so, well, we'll offer it for $1,500. And you're going, well, then which one wasn't worth $1,000? That's kind of the 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 the output.
Yeah. Anything is going to be a low transition. Right. And eventually as you said, it will just become like something that you can just buy in a package will not be separated anymore and you take advantage of the one that you want. Just like I remember one transition that newspapers that they had at the beginning, this add on to have access to the digital version. Right. But it was just a small portion and then eventually kind of like it became the offer and if you wanted the paper, well, we can send it to you. But this is your access.
So I think 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 cost 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 you do streaming and locally you might have some type of event.
Yeah. And I think long run maybe events will become like localized time constrained advertising platform. Right. Kind of like auction. The presence. Right. Is instead of, you know, Google or Facebook have a permanent audience in a long time. Right. Over you know, 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.
Right.
And it's going to be for this many days auction your presence there. Right. 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 like an advertising platform.
Right? Right.
Yeah. To leave it to the market, I guess.
Yeah. 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 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. You'll be at with our. The association we're looking at is. Is doing this both meeting on monthly basis and then having those available as a streaming service so that other people in other 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, which is 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, 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, you know, we're what, three miles apart from each other physically from our homes, but we don't see each other right now.
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 right. I think it will just continue just like 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 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 to point and 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 other thing is features like live not only change the format. I think the other thing that they do, they change the expectations. When you have a pre recorded video because it's prerecorded, I think the audience expect something more polished, more professional, which obviously require more resources because. Because you are recording, right and you're putting people there. But when you are doing live, as you were saying, right. Is the expectation is lower because there might some something in the house, right. A kid might cry or a dog bark. And so there are going to be difficulties and so that lowers the Threat for the content creator. Right. 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?
Right.
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 it is 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 $100. I've got lights here that are $200.
The camera. Right. You have a professional camera on your phone and that can support at 4K 60fps. Is 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. 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 or 10 years ago was. It was 5,000, $10,000 to do what we're doing today. It's no longer there. The Internet, like the speeds are there. The expectations of you and I not getting dressed up in a suit and stitch 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. I was on a show with a gentleman. It was his 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 and 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. It's just what it is now. And People aren't don't have the. And you can 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. Yeah, they know this is a consumable product. It's here for an hour, it's gone and it's in the virtual world forever. Yeah. And that's it. So they, they take it as it is. I, I tell people what was it like? I said, well, it's like slices of bread, you know, 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, you know, wonder.
Bread now which presented out of itself a challenge. Right. Which is abundant content. Then it's harder to send out and everybody's making it. So yeah, it becomes harder to send out and have a unique, I guess 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 doing laggards on, you know, adopting digital for marketing and sales processes and definitely customer success or customer experience for some of them. 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, you know, we are maybe a manufacturer, we have distribution. There's no point on us on, you know, 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 by, I can go by 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 is not optional that you definitely have to do because your traditional channels are cut off. Right. Like that threshold that launch, that in person meeting cannot happen as often or it cannot happen at all. 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, 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, in China that are offering them anything that they want for lower costs. 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, 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 looking out there. 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. I can sit on the sidelines. I don't have to worry about. I'll come in in the fourth quarter.
Yes.
And you know 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, the, 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, it's color tv.
You're right. Yeah. The signal is digital. It's not analog anymore.
Right, right. Nobody ever says I have a color tv. They just say, I have a tv. You, 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. Right. 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 to two things that I completely agree. I repeat many, many times over conversations. Once. Is that how B2C informs B2B? Right. It's overlooking. And sometimes people think that it's just because you're selling transactional products that are bought out of impulse and that is permeated. Permeating or moving into, from, from B2C to B2C. But, but to B2B. But what I really think is what you mentioned is it's not necessarily how they sell the product is the buyer experience. Right. The B2B buyer is a B2C buyer. And if you're, if you are getting used to how Amazon provides you services or products and the, you know, B2C world, you have those experiences, you start to expect them on the B2B world.
And the other thing you're running into is, 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? Why 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 for my car anywhere in the world. Just one click and I'm done. Why doesn't it the 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 finally change the IT mentality that you're bringing in the buyer experience from B2C is greatly changing that B2B world.
Yes, I agree. Yeah. So I, I, I think that if there's any industry at this point that, you know, don't see that or individually, you don't see that. I think right now you might be experiencing it.
Right.
And that's when you say, you know, I realize how is this experience for Dubai? How are you, as you are saying, is but 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, you know, clients or, or customers say about the product online because, because you are being forced to follow that path, even if you haven't resisted on the past. So, yeah, it's going to be very similar.
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? I have a secretary, I've got a typewriter. What do 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, and haven't survived it. So the digital processing and the digital marketing and all that is what's happening now. And 30 years from now something new will come along. Yeah, we'll all laugh at it going, why do you need that?
Well, we will, we will see what happens at the end of, you know, 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, 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 you want to say to the.
It's just great being here. I'm glad you're doing this and yeah, I'd love to come back.
Yeah, fantastic. Well, 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.
