How to Outrank LLMs, Bypass AI Agents, and Actually Get Noticed!

Summary

Podcast Title: Marketing Trends
Host/Author: Mission
Episode Title: How to Outrank LLMs, Bypass AI Agents, and Actually Get Noticed!
Release Date: April 30, 2025
Host: Lacy Peace
Guest: Stephanie Postles

---

Introduction

In this episode of Marketing Trends, host Lacy Peace engages in a dynamic conversation with Stephanie Postles, a seasoned marketing expert, to explore the evolving landscape of marketing in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The discussion delves into how AI is transforming traditional marketing strategies, the emergence of Account-Based Experience (ABX), the decline of conventional methods like cold emailing, and the paramount importance of human connection and experience in modern marketing.

AI's Transformative Impact on Marketing and Sales

Stephanie opens the conversation by emphasizing the unprecedented impact of AI on the marketing industry. She states, "AI is, I believe, like the biggest innovation, bigger than the Internet that we've seen in our lifetime and previous lifetimes" (02:59). Stephanie highlights that AI is reshaping how marketers approach tasks that were previously reliant on human effort, such as cold emailing and mass marketing.

Key Points:

• End of Traditional Cold Emails: Stephanie points out that cold emails are becoming obsolete as AI-driven filters like Gmail’s AI redirect these to lesser-seen folders. She notes, "For me, mine are all getting filtered into promotion tab... So I don't even see a lot of cold emails anymore" (04:34).

• Shift to AI-Driven Buying: Consumers now demand immediate answers facilitated by AI tools like ChatGPT, leading to a "one click buy" mentality where browsing websites becomes less common (05:00).

Transition from ABM to ABX (Account-Based Experience)

The conversation shifts to the evolution from Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to Account-Based Experience (ABX). Stephanie explains that ABX is more holistic, focusing on the entire buyer's journey rather than just targeting specific accounts.

Key Points:

• ABX vs. ABM: ABM traditionally targets key accounts aggressively. In contrast, ABX tailors experiences based on where a customer is in their buying journey, enhancing engagement at every stage (05:50).

• Lifecycle Understanding: ABX involves understanding the lifecycle of the buyer and creating customized experiences before, during, and after the purchase, fostering long-term relationships (18:09).

Notable Quote:

"Account based experiences... is really around understanding where the buyer is in their buying journey and connecting with them based on where they're at." — Stephanie (18:09)

AI Agents in B2B and B2C Markets

Stephanie and Lacy discuss the concept of AI agents and their potential roles in both B2B and B2C environments.

Key Points:

• B2B Advantage: Early adoption of AI agents in B2B settings is enabling businesses to streamline processes, making AI integration a strategic asset (10:22).

• Future of Consumer AI Agents: While currently more prevalent in enterprise settings, there's a foreseeable future where consumers will also utilize AI agents for tasks like finding the best service providers or managing purchases (11:30).

Notable Quote:

"I'm not going to go onto G2 and look at this. I'm going to tell my agent... do it for me." — Stephanie (08:44)

Human Connection and Experience in Marketing

A crucial theme of the episode is the resurgence of human-centric marketing strategies in an AI-dominated landscape. Stephanie asserts that as AI handles more technical tasks, human elements like building communities and creating memorable experiences become differentiators.

Key Points:

• Human Experiences: Brands need to offer unique, community-driven experiences that AI cannot replicate to maintain customer loyalty and stand out in a crowded market (09:55).

• Trust and Decentralization: As systems become more democratized, trust becomes a pivotal factor. Companies must build genuine relationships and leverage micro-influencers to foster trust (14:34).

Notable Quote:

"What's going to stand out is that human level connection... building out communities of like very engaged customers." — Stephanie (15:54)

Innovative Content Strategies and Enterprise Entertainment

The discussion explores innovative content strategies, particularly the concept of "Enterprise Entertainment," which combines marketing with engaging, entertainment-driven content tailored for B2B audiences.

Key Points:

• Enterprise Entertainment: Drawing inspiration from consumer marketing, Stephanie proposes that enterprise companies create entertaining content, such as reality TV-style shows featuring industry leaders, to engage and entertain their target audience (28:21).

• Relevance and Relatability: Effective content must resonate with the specific pain points and experiences of the target audience. Collaborating with those who understand the industry deeply ensures content authenticity and relevance (31:41).

Notable Quote:

"You've got this like human meat suit an experience... Community driven stuff's going to stand out. These are the things that I can't do." — Stephanie (16:43)

Aligning Metrics and Incentives Across Departments

A significant challenge addressed is the misalignment of metrics and incentives across marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Stephanie emphasizes the need for cohesive metrics that support long-term goals rather than short-term wins.

Key Points:

• Long-Term Vision: Focus on metrics that foster lasting customer relationships and brand loyalty instead of merely tracking immediate engagement or conversions (22:07).

• Incentive Alignment: Organizations must align incentives across departments to ensure that all teams are working towards common objectives, enhancing collaboration and reducing siloed operations (21:23).

Notable Quote:

"It really takes someone to have a long-term vision... Make sure everyone's on the same board and proactively doing that." — Stephanie (22:07)

The Decline of Traditional Search Traffic and the Rise of AI-Driven Discoveries

Stephanie discusses the seismic shift in search traffic dynamics due to the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Traditional SEO strategies are becoming less effective as AI provides summarized answers, reducing direct traffic to websites.

Key Points:

• Drop in Search Traffic: Companies like HubSpot have reported an 80% loss in search traffic as users increasingly rely on AI for information (24:36).

• Content Adaptation: Marketers must adapt by creating diverse content types—audio, video, podcasts, and written content—to remain relevant across various platforms utilized by AI systems (26:00).

Notable Quote:

"People used to just bet on SEO and make lots of blog content... Now the world is very different... very specific niche questions." — Stephanie (26:05)

Building Trust in a Decentralized and Democratized Marketing Landscape

Trust emerges as a cornerstone in the decentralized marketing environment. Lacy and Stephanie explore how trust influences consumer decisions and the role of micro-influencers in building trustworthy brand narratives.

Key Points:

• Trust Through Community: Engaging in niche communities and leveraging trusted voices within those spaces enhances brand credibility (14:34).

• Personalized Marketing: Tailoring marketing efforts to align with the trust and expectations of specific audiences ensures more meaningful and effective interactions (32:34).

Notable Quote:

"Trust is going to become even more important... It's vital for these especially large enterprise decisions." — Lacy Peace (14:34)

Lightning Round: Relevant or Irrelevant?

Towards the end of the episode, Lacy introduces a fun segment called the "Lightning Round," where she presents various topics, and Stephanie quickly assesses their relevance to modern marketing. This segment underscores the episode's key themes, emphasizing the importance of relevance, trust, and innovation.

Examples:

• Long Form Newsletters:
  Relevant only if it's actually good content.

  "A not boring newsletter that's super long... it depends if it's good content." — Stephanie (35:19)

• Cold Calling:
  Not relevant.

  "Cold calling not relevant." — Stephanie (37:03)

• Enterprise Entertainment:
  Highly relevant when executed with creativity and relevance.

  "Doing scary shit... that's ultimately what's going to stand out now and in the next five years." — Lacy Peace (34:41)

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a mutual appreciation between Lacy and Stephanie for the insightful discussion. They reiterate the importance of adapting to AI-driven changes, fostering human connections, and maintaining trust in marketing strategies. Stephanie encourages marketers to embrace innovative approaches and to focus on creating meaningful, experience-driven content that resonates on a human level.

Notable Quote:

"Moving into this more human way of marketing... stand out as a human and as a brand where other humans want to come to me as a human." — Stephanie (15:54)

---

Timestamp References

• 02:59 AI as the biggest innovation
• 04:34 Decline of cold emails
• 05:00 AI-driven buying behavior
• 05:50 Transition from ABM to ABX
• 08:44 Role of AI agents in B2B
• 09:55 Importance of human experiences
• 10:22 AI agents in B2C markets
• 14:34 Trust in decentralized marketing
• 15:54 Human connection in marketing
• 18:09 Definition of ABX
• 21:23 Aligning metrics and incentives
• 22:07 Long-term vision in metrics
• 24:36 Impact of LLMs on search traffic
• 26:05 Adapting content strategies
• 28:21 Enterprise Entertainment concept
• 31:41 Relatability in content creation
• 32:34 Building trust in marketing
• 34:41 Importance of bold marketing moves
• 35:19 Lightning Round insights

---

Final Thoughts

This episode of Marketing Trends provides a comprehensive exploration of how AI is reshaping the marketing landscape. Stephanie Postles offers valuable insights into adapting to these changes by focusing on human-centric strategies, fostering trust, and embracing innovative content creation methods. The conversation serves as a vital guide for marketers and business leaders aiming to navigate and thrive in the rapidly evolving digital marketplace.

Transcript

[Lacy Peace]

We are flipping the script. We're putting Stephanie, your typical host, in the hot seat.

[Stephanie]

People are going into ChatGPT, they're asking questions. They want to get the information they want right away. It's being summarized for them. But this is a very different space of buying. Can't be summarized.

[Lacy Peace]

Yep. What is an account based experience and why are you thinking that that's the.

[Stephanie]

Future when it comes to search? I mean, we're moving to this place of like one click buy, give me my answer right away. I'm not going to go and like, browse on someone's website.

[Lacy Peace]

It's not just marketing. It's across the board. We're seeing this transition of how sales, marketing, customer success all interact.

[Stephanie]

Giving my human meat suit an experience that I'm out in this world and I'm like, that brand brought me here with all these amazing people and it was weird and it was funky and they did this event thing for me and like, that's going to stand out. Community driven stuff's going to stand out. These are the things that I can't do.

[Lacy Peace]

We talked a lot about B2B AI agents. Do you think consumers will have AI agents of their own? All right, welcome to Marketing Trends. I am Lacy Peace, your host for today. You've probably never, ever heard my voice, which is pretty hysterical because I've been behind the scenes for about a decade now, and we are flipping the script today. We're putting Stephanie, your typical host, in the hot seat. She's right here. Hello, Stephanie. Welcome.

[Stephanie]

Little scared about this. I know, but this is fun bringing you on the mic. I mean, geez, the fact that you've not been on the mic in 10 years and you've just been doing everything at this company behind the scenes, so I'm happy to have you.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

Thank you.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah, I'm excited and I hope you feel a little sweaty.

[Stephanie]

I already am. Actually. I was thinking, I was like, I actually already am sweating, so it's a good sign.

[Lacy Peace]

When was the last time you were interviewed?

[Stephanie]

I mean, that was probably six months ago, probably on Justin Donald's podcast, where that was only like my second time ever being interviewed. And I was like, that was weird. I think I like interviewing people.

[Lacy Peace]

So this is your third time being interviewed?

[Stephanie]

It's my third time.

[Lacy Peace]

Oh, my gosh. Wow. That's pretty fascinating since you've done. What is it, 2000?

[Stephanie]

Definitely over 2000 guest interviews.

[Lacy Peace]

Wow. I'm gonna get you out there more.

[Stephanie]

Maybe.

[Lacy Peace]

Maybe we'll see how this goes, right?

[Stephanie]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

Well, What I'm really excited about today with this episode and the reason why we're doing this is because I've heard so many conversations with you and executives over the last decade, but also most recently in the last three months discussing marketing in the age of AI. And there's so much to uncover there. And there's been these little tidbits you've shared that haven't been on mic, that I hear you tell friends or you're out at dinner and you mention something. And so I kind of want to take this opportunity today to just dive into the things that people haven't heard from you yet and hear how you're thinking about marketing in the age of AI and kind of what's coming up for the rest of the year. We're already almost a third of the way through. Can you believe that?

[Stephanie]

No.

[Lacy Peace]

Like, by the time this releases, it'll definitely be a third of the way through the year. So, yeah, I just want to see you up there and kind of hear how you're thinking about marketing now.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. So, yeah, it's definitely been interesting watching the shift because I think, I mean, AI is I believe, like the biggest innovation, bigger than the Internet that we've seen in our lifetime and previous lifetimes. I mean, it has the impact or it's going to have the impact in ways that we can't even predict. So that's probably why in the past couple months that has been the bulk of conversations of how do I think about AI and marketing and my job and what's happening in this space and where's it going when I think about marketing right now? And a lot of what I'm hearing is that what we've done before is just not going to work anymore. Everything that we've learned, all the skills that we built up when it comes to cold emails and like cast a big net and, you know, let's focus on MQLs and see how many people we can get in. And then it shifted into abm. How can we really go from like casting a net and catching lots of little fishies and hoping some of them are qualified and they convert to then going to ABM and saying, how can I focus with like a spear, like spearfish, go after my key account, my big executive, really target them hard to finding out maybe that wasn't. It's not going to work anymore because now people are smart and customers want to buy how they want to buy and they know what's happening to then now shifting into this more like AI driven space of wondering how do I learn new skills market in a completely different way. Which I mean if you think about like let's just go to how your emails are right now. Like you used to be able to get into people's email, their inboxes pretty easily.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

Now I mean do you ever really see cold emails coming through?

[Lacy Peace]

I do, but I ignore them like.

[Stephanie]

Okay, they don't even work.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephanie]

For me mine are all getting filtered into promotion tab, like Gmail's AI and all that is just like filtering things out. So I don't even see a lot of cold emails anymore. And this is just the beginning of like cold email. I find it hard to see how it's gonna work in the way that it ever has before. Cause the systems are too smart. Then when it comes to search, I mean we're moving to this place of like one click buy, give me my answer right away. I'm not gonna go and like browse on someone's website in the future. Probably this is a little farther away, but people are going into ChatGPT, they're asking questions, they want to get the information they want right away. It's being summarized for them. And so this is a very different space of buying, of getting information, of learning, of content. And so the space I think we're in now is moving into a world where how can we build marketing tactics that can't be summarized, it can't be grouped into a ChatGPT response that it can't be summarized by these AI systems that are looking for the best answer. And you don't have as much time with your customers for them to bump around and figure it out. And so when I think about it not being summarized, this is where this account based experiences comes from which many people have talked about. It moved from ABM to abx. It's really around. I view it as a couple different ways of when it comes to these experiences because it really depends on where this customer is in their buying journey and how to connect with them based off where they're at.

[Lacy Peace]

What's interesting about what you just mentioned is it wasn't just marketing. You said marketing tactics but cold email sales. Right. And buyer's journey where people are finding things. That's experience. And so it's not just marketing, it's across the board. We're seeing this transition of how sales, marketing, customer success all interact is changing completely in the age of AI and in the age of like information being more readily available. So I just kind of wanted to point that out that it's not just marketing, it's everywhere.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. And I mean, that's exactly. The world that we're in now is getting out of the silos and for so long. I mean, I even remember back in my finance days, like you were just in your silo and you wouldn't really pop up and be like, hey, what's marketing doing over there? Like, hey, what's the IT team up to now? The world is so like combined. And so like you just said, like you've got. If you are in marketing and you're not understanding customers, customer experience and customer success and you're not understanding and working with the sales team and you're not understanding what your CIO is thinking about when it comes to implementing all these new AI driven marketing tools. Like, you're already losing. You need to be very collaborative with all of your stakeholders within the business. And that is also a new mindset shift. So yeah, that's a great point.

[Lacy Peace]

It's not just about the silos, it's just how customers engage with companies now is just completely different and how companies should be thinking about it. A lot of them aren't changing quick enough. So you said something at the beginning about impatience, where customers are just really impatient. Like, I go on chat with GPT, I expect to see something right away of what I want. And if I see one thing that's negative, you know, I'm discounting that company for the rest of eternity. I'm not going to work with them. Right.

[Stephanie]

Damn.

[Lacy Peace]

That's how my brain works. Yeah, I'm like, oh, never mind. One negative review gone. So I do find that pretty interesting that it's, it's not just about how the customer's interacting, but how can organizations change completely and overhaul their systems to communicate with each other better so that marketing and sales align? And like, is there even gonna be really a difference between these two categories of things in the future? I kind of start to question that.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that these two are definitely gonna be coming together closer, which is kind of nice. I mean, we've been hearing like, oh, marketing and sales alignment for I, I mean, literally a long time, 10 years. And it seems like it's always been a problem, but now's the time where it can't be a problem anymore. Like, it has to be very cohesive and especially when it comes to bringing in this whole new world of AI agents. And I mean, think about it. You're going to have these like, buyer agents who are just going and finding the best like you say I want to buy the best CRM and you send out your buyer agent to go figure it out for you. Like, I'm not going to be on a website looking anymore and being like, let me go onto G2 and look at this. Like, I'm going to tell my agent.

[Lacy Peace]

Your agent, my agent out there and do it for you.

[Stephanie]

Go do it for me. Go look up all the best reviews. Here's how I think. Like, which reviews matter to me or not? Here's the ones that you should look into. Bring back price points, go talk to their sales agents, bring back any discounts you can get. Like, I will have it. Be very goal oriented with this is the problem solving and I don't care as much about like doing all the details myself. If I can have someone, AKA an AI agent, a digital employee doing this for me, then that means that there's a lot of ways that brands need to stand out in that process to get to me. Because all of those other things are details and all those things are going to be commoditized because companies can compete on the same technologies, the same features. But how you stand out as a brand, like we mentioned earlier, is around experiences and community. Like giving my human meat suit an experience that I'm out in this world and I'm like, damn, that brand brought me here with all these amazing people and it was weird and it was funky and they did this event thing for me and I met amazing other CMOs that I never knew before. That's going to stand out. Community driven stuff's going to stand out. Even referral partner programs referring each other to a company. These are the things that AI can't do.

[Lacy Peace]

In that example, you said AI agents and we've talked a lot about B2B AI agents. As a business owner, I might build a buyer agent that goes out and searches these vendors to find the thing that I want or I make a digital employee that helps with customer success. Do you think consumers will have AI agents of their own? And how soon do you think that's going to be a thing? Because that would affect. We're talking a lot about B2B marketing, but that would affect a lot with B2C.

[Stephanie]

So yes, this is an interesting space because when it comes to B2B, for a long time I think B2C had the advantage because they were a lot more innovative. The marketing was way better. So when it comes to marketing and B2B versus B2C, that's an area where I'm like, that's just converging. However you're marketing for B2C companies, B2B companies should be doing the same. That is what you should be comparing yourself to. So from a marketing perspective, I think in an opposite way, but when I think about the AI agent thing that you're referring to, that's where I actually think anyone who's been in this B2B world is going to have first advantage to experiencing this and then bringing it back into their consumer life. Where before it was kind of opposite. Like you'd be as a consumer buying something, let's just say slack. You would get it on your own maybe and then it would be like a bottoms up approach into the organization. And now you Canva or Canva. Yeah. It's like you would get it as a consumer and then you would kind of push the organization to get it. And then all of a sudden you have 5,000 people with like licenses and you're like, oh shit, I need to consolidate this. But when it comes to AI agent stuff, I actually think people who are working in these enterprise companies are getting first access to like, what is this technology? My company's making a bet on it. I'm able to play with it in a way that like right now it's kind of hard for still just a normal consumer to play with, probably AI age or even know that they exist. Or even know they exist. Yeah. So I think that one will take more time. But yes, I do see a world where in the future, even me as a consumer, I'm not going to be going out and looking for, you know, the best telecom provider, utilities provider, trying to get a charger for my Tesla. Like I don't care to do those things and probably AI can go in and look at what are all the rules in Austin, Texas when it comes to getting rebates for this. Let me go look through the 5,000 word manual to figure out how to get the rebate, what the process is, and then come back to me with, okay, I found that you can do it this way. And here's the company to get the rebate with, here's how much it'll be. Do you want to buy this thing or not? Like that's I think the future we're headed in. Which means that brands have to think very differently about how they're showing up online and how they're standing out well.

[Lacy Peace]

And what partnerships they have. Right. So I think about like Nerd Wallet where I go on there and there's like the 20 different auto loans that we Recommend for you. And most of those are partnerships, like, they're highlighting people that they work with. And so if you think about the AI agent thing, there will probably be a bunch of different tools that are making these already for consumers.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

So as a business, you want to be partnered with those top AI agent recommendation processes or softwares. So it's kind of an interesting. That's also an interesting problem. So it's not just about how am I showing up for the consumer, but what kind of partnerships with people am I working with? What, what maybe micro influencers have built out these really cool systems that I could partner with.

[Stephanie]

A good thing to consider as well when it comes to the world is becoming more decentralized, systems are becoming more democratized. And so now back in the day, you'd have these companies who are like, I've got all the views. I can say, I'm gonna give you the best list. And meanwhile, people are paying me to rank their service on the top. And because all of these things are now getting distributed more evenly when it comes to the tools, technology, what's happening? Even companies who previously were like, wouldn't tell you pricing until you were like, zoom info. Like, you can't know the pricing until you're way into the conversation and you gotta be in a year contract. Like, all of these systems are shutting down right now because people have access to more information than ever and they can choose now. And they know also, like, if there's a list here, like the Gart. What was it? The Gartner Magic one, What's it called?

[Lacy Peace]

Magic Quadrant, whatever that is.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, that thing. It's like people know how to get on that. Like, they know probably like, this is a pay to play thing for the most part. I'm sure there's some legitimacy in it. But people know and you're going to be able to say going forward, I want whatever AI agent I have to build out rules in a way that matter to me. And so while one person might not care, it might be like, Forrester is the best person to listen to. I love them. That's like Wall Street Journal. Sure. I get that paper every day. I really trust whatever they say. You can build it out in that way with your methodology or you can say, here's the scrappy way I want to go out, go about finding the best tools for my life. Like, set up my life in this way. Like you're going to get to dictate things in a way that we just weren't able to before.

[Lacy Peace]

Well, and it's decentralized. But I still think trust will really, really matter. Right. And so like I have my Instagram or my LinkedIn or the people that I follow that I really trust. If they recommend this thing or my friend group, if they recommend this person, I know they vetted this person. I know that I can trust this. And I think trust is going to become, I know trust will become even more important. It's already vital for these especially large enterprise decisions. But as we get into more decentralization, I think we're going to see more of these micro influencers pop up that I trust they're vetting it especially as technology becomes easier to access and things are easier to build. So I was using the example of video games where if I could just think of a video game idea and the barrier to building it was less because there's all these AI agents that can support me with it now. People aren't coming to me because I'm the best video game builder. They're coming to me because they trust that I'm going to build a landscape or a world that they want to play in for whatever reason. It's the thing we've seen with authors for a really long time where I trust that you're putting really good content into this book even though you're just one person. I trust any book that you write I'm going to read. And I think it's going to become more like that because the barriers to some of these technologies like making a video game, it's really complicated, but it won't be in the future. So what's going to be important is who the person is building it and do I trust them?

[Stephanie]

Yep, yep. Yeah. And that's exactly why I think the whole world is shifting when it comes to marketing away from who has the best, you know, marketing campaign, cold emails, going out, retargeting capabilities and all that and moving more into this like human way of marketing. Like I said, AI will do what it's doing. And a lot of these tasks are, I mean, going to be automated in such amazing ways. But what's going to stand out is that human level connection. So when it comes to having a whole partner, network, referral partners, like someone I trust, saying, hey, this tool is the best tool. That's what's going to stand out. Building out communities of like very engaged customers, adding your prospects in there, but giving them experiences that they want to be in this community because they know like I can't get this anywhere else. And so yeah, moving into this More how can I stand out as a human and as a brand where other humans want to come to me as a human.

[Lacy Peace]

Everything you're saying there, Human, human, human. You had Zach Cass on Mission Daily recently and he talked a lot about this and I really thought it was amazing to think about how AI is going to make you, allow you to be more human. And the skills that people value are going to be the more human skills of connection and holding a conversation and let's of the technical skills. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people are going to have to awaken to that and maybe change how they're thinking about career building because it's not so much about did I get the degree and have 10 years of experience in this thing if suddenly AI can do it for someone else tomorrow. Now, it doesn't matter that I'm the best web designer. What matters is people trust me and they want to work with me.

[Stephanie]

Yep, yep, exactly. And for anyone who does not know who Zach Kass is, he is, I mean, people call him an AI futurist. He was one of the first couple employees at OpenAI. And so he kind of was there in the early days. But yeah, definitely his interview was epic. So we'll link it up.

[Lacy Peace]

Look, he dropped. Yeah, plugging that.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

So getting in. You mentioned experiences a lot throughout this. You talked a lot about human experiences and how marketing is changing. I think it was a week ago we were meeting and you'd said abx. And embarrassingly, I had no idea what that was. And I was too embarrassed to like be like, Steph, I have no idea.

[Stephanie]

What you're talking about.

[Lacy Peace]

I was just like, yeah, definitely, for sure. Like, this seems like something I should know. I knew abm. So I was like, it's account based something. And you said account based experience. So what is an account based experience? And why are you thinking that that's the future?

[Stephanie]

We kind of mentioned this a little bit in the beginning, but it looks at where the buyer is in their buying journey. Like where are they at in that life cycle? And then it's working with them based off that. And so for example, with abm, it was just very targeted, like just to show the difference. ABM was, this is my account, it's this V.P. now I'm going to go hard after them. And they might not even be in the buying cycle yet. They can still be on your target list and you're still going after them and you're trying to sell them your, you know, really expensive IT networking system and they're not even in a buying cycle but they're on your target list. And like this is my prospect. And so this one is more understanding, like where is this person in the buying cycle? And maybe they are just beginning to hear of us. Okay, great. We're going to craft some kind of experience for them based off that. Okay, great. They've already talked to someone within our company but we don't have any other connections with any of their other C level leaders at this point. It's just maybe the cto. And so like who else should we start bringing into this space? Because we know that a lot of these purchases, at least when it comes to enterprise you need like seven plus sign offs and like everyone, which is good. Like you have a lot of people now who want to know what purchases are being made because it is influencing everyone in the company. And so maybe that like having that knowledge of, okay, we need to start, you know, bringing experiences and contact points and like pulling these people into maybe an event or like what kind of custom thing can we do for them and their leadership team? Because we know we only have one touch point here or maybe it's even after they've bought so they've bought something. But most times there's a lot of other things they can buy with you. And so oftentimes with ABM it was so focused on just pushing them into a conversion and then what happens afterwards? Like then there's all this open space for account expansion opportunities that never happen because the marketing team is just like well done, passed it to sales. I can attribute that to me, thank you very much. Back to my big campaigns. And it's like, I think the future of marketing is understanding the whole life cycle and then being like, okay, now this person is, you know, four months post purchase and they haven't opened up any of these other areas, these other features. So let's contact them and make sure they're first getting like they're fully utilizing what this platform has to offer. Let's go there first. Okay, now we see that they're using these features really heavily and we see how they're doing it with their like inside their company. Oh, here's two other products we offer. Like now might be a great time to start bringing awareness around that and maybe we should bring them to speak at a conference with us or whatever. It might be a webinar or maybe like let's bring them to an amazing C suite executive experience here in Texas and like let's really put something together that's going to be fun and entertaining and create fun content and like have have them walk away afterwards loving our brand and wanting to know more of what we do. And so it's really just understanding the whole life cycle of that buyer and where they're at before, during, after purchase. Which is why also, you know, we talk about blending in customer experience and sales and marketing. It's like everyone should know what's happening in this buyer journey. And so that's where it goes from just a marketing role of like account based marketing to account based experience and viewing it as a long term, the.

[Lacy Peace]

Whole experience for the customer. From the first time I see your logo to I've bought your product, now I want to renew.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

I'm curious your thoughts on incentives. So sales, for example, like their metric of success is deal closed marketing. Maybe it's leads generated customer success success, it's retention and renewals. Three completely different incentives. Do you see these changing, morphing where organizations maybe start to focus in more on like how can we together align incentives across the board so people that come in from point A to renewal, we're not just handing off leads that are not going to, not going to confer on sales or not going to convert into renewals.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, I mean a lot of this and I, I saw this at Google quite a bit where metrics can lead people down the wrong way.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

And we would be tracking things that we'd be like. I mean for example, it was some app they were working on and they were looking at the usage of the app and the whole team was very excited and they were tracking it every, every week and they were tracking the daily active users of it and it going up and the time spent. And so everyone was very excited about time going up. And this one executive was like, I think this might be not so great actually that they're in this app this much. Because isn't this app meant to help them when it comes to like support in this way? And like do we really want someone to have like why are they here so long? Because the whole goal of this is like make you maybe more efficient and better. And so it took him coming in to be like, I know the market typically tracks on daily active users and usage rates and eyeballs and like how much time you're getting from that person. But I feel like that's a bad metric for the long term because the goal of this high level is to do something different and that when it comes to metrics of like sales, marketing, brand impressions, like I think it takes a leader to come in with a longer term vision of like, what are we doing here? And not just optimizing for small wins, short term wins. Because when you start doing that, you get customers who maybe won't stay customers for very long. And you're putting a lot of investment into all these attribution models and people are incentivizing, marketing teams are incentivizing for these things that the leaders put in front of them. But it really takes someone to be like, what is the balance between brand is more important than ever right now. It kind of became like not a good thing to work on. No one wanted to say they were doing brand awareness and they changed it to top of funnel. And like the words keep changing because marketing leaders were getting scrutinized for brand. But that's more important than ever now in the space that we're in, there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of people who can just start companies right away now really easily. Like no code platforms. All of a sudden I have the best CRM possible, AI agents. And so people need to know who you are, you need to be able to stand out, you need to be able to give these experiences. And to do that you have to have a long term vision when it comes to the sales metrics, the marketing metrics, the customer experience metrics, and make sure everyone's on the same board and proactively doing that. Right.

[Lacy Peace]

Because so much of it is retroactively. Like we ran this campaign, now we're going to see what worked or what didn't work. So people aren't relying on Google. We've already talked about that a little bit. Like people are discovering things in different ways. They're using LLMs, they're using ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc. To find new products or decide if they want to switch from one vendor to a different vendor. How much is the LLM search actually affecting traffic?

[Stephanie]

What's crazy right now is that like we're still in such early days of this movement. I mean, I forget what the number was the other day of like how many people had used ChatGPT. And to me I'm like, everybody, 100%. And it was very small.

[Lacy Peace]

Still low.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, the percent is very small.

[Lacy Peace]

It's like 8% or something. Very small.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. But what's wild is, I mean we've even seen this at our company and like from search traffic that comes into our podcasts, there was a big shift from how much was coming from people in Google and you could see, you know, where they were coming from to then all of a sudden traffic began to drop. I mean, just overall traffic began to drop. And then you start to see that the sources that people are clicking through from are the ChatGPTs and these other LLMs. And so there's definitely a big seismic shift happening here when it comes to this search traffic. Because now, I mean, like we mentioned earlier, people will just go and say, show me the best podcast with CMOs who talk about account based experiences and C suite activation. And it's just gonna be like, here's the top three. And so instead they would have a whole page to look through and lots more information. And now it's like, here's why I think these top three are actually based off everything you've ever searched for before. I know things about you to be like, I think you would like these three. And so search traffic that we've experienced before, I mean, I think HubSpot lost 80% of search traffic. They said, I think they were open about this.

[Lacy Peace]

I've seen other companies that lost like 60%.

[Stephanie]

Traff. Yeah. And so it's like, it's all going down. Search is getting more, you could call it efficient. Some would say, like, you know these elements.

[Lacy Peace]

From a consumer standpoint, it's very efficient. I don't have to click on anything and I have my answer.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, yeah. So it's going down. Summaries are happening, which is why, yeah, this is something to pay attention to. Like, how do you show up in these summaries? What kind of content are you making to be able to be relevant? Because people used to just bet on SEO and make lots of blog content. And let's try and optimize for these keywords that Semrush is telling me to optimize for. And now the world is very different. It's not based off that, it's based off much more on like, question, answer, can you solve my problem? Long, like long tail questions and answers, Very specific questions. Yep. Very specific niche questions, different kinds of content. Like if you don't have audio content, video content, podcast content, written content, like, you need to have some amazing thought leadership. In all different platforms. It's gonna be hard to show up and rank. Like, you need to be in all the spaces to be showing up, at least having the possibility of showing up when these LLMs are finding the best result.

[Lacy Peace]

But it's not just being present in those spaces, it's being relevant in those spaces. Right. So I've seen so Many usually larger companies that write a blog post that is highly relevant for their audience right now, but it takes two to three months for it to get out or. Or a podcast episode. Right. So it's like they were searching that thing three months ago. So there needs to be more speed to getting content out and really actually, like, giving your audience something that they need right away. So how do you do that?

[Stephanie]

Yep, yep. I mean that. Yes. And we have seen that a lot with different very large companies that we have worked with before. That's just very hard to get things out internally. And that's going to be a problem because the market is moving so quickly right now. Like, all companies need to be in a very scrappy. Get shit done, get it out. 80% of the way is better than 100%. Like, I'm not gonna let perfection get in the way of good enough. Like, just getting things out there so that you can stay relevant. And. Yeah, it's just happening so quickly right now. It's hard to. Hard to stay relevant if you don't.

[Lacy Peace]

I kind of want to switch gears a little bit too, because we talked about content, so I guess it's not totally switching gears, but there's this new way that you want to think about content at Mission. And I know in general, and it's not a new concept per se, but I think how you think about it is unique and new. And I've been calling it biztainment. You've been calling it what? Enterprise entertainment.

[Stephanie]

Enterprise entertainment, yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

What is that?

[Stephanie]

Yeah, we've seen this in the consumer space of, like, you know, all the different skits and, like, comedy things going out and, like, brands using humor to really elevate their brand and, like, form communities and conversations. Good bad, you just don't want to be indifferent, but, like, good bad is fine. And so that's hilarious because that's corporate language.

[Lacy Peace]

You don't want to be indifferent. Like, literally every corporate thing is just.

[Stephanie]

Exactly.

[Lacy Peace]

I have no opinion.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. Like, I might rather you. I'd rather you have very angry people at something you said maybe, than being indifferent.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

And so when I was watching these spaces, I'm like, why can't enterprise companies play in this space? Because people who are buying enterprise software products experiences. They're the same consumers who are watching this ridiculous, you know, spiritual comedy skit and, like, living their best life and then going and buying an incense pack afterwards, like, whatever. And so I started seeing this, and I'm like, why can't these companies that we work with also Play in this space of this enterprise entertainment where, I mean, let's just say that you sell into chief technology officers, for example. Very hard to reach community. These people. You can't. I mean, we know because we have a whole podcast where we feature them. They're hard to get ahold of. But what we do know is that if they know they're gonna have a fun time and that maybe they're gonna walk away with something from that experience that lives past that experience, like, you can show them, like, this is gonna be fun, a good time. We're gonna make some content. That's where I had the idea of, like, what if we made a reality TV show about these people? Like, bring them together, have them, like, doing something ridiculous and, like, who knows what it could be? I mean, there's so many, like, shows that you can, like, literally mirror from. You don't have to make up all your own stuff. Like, there's good examples of things that you can copy, paste into this format.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

But giving these, like, people experiences while making content that's hilarious, relatable, and drives roi.

[Lacy Peace]

But I will say, you said fun.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

So what's fun for a CIO or CTO is totally different than what's fun for me. Right.

[Stephanie]

So you would probably like watching the series.

[Lacy Peace]

I agree with that. But I'm thinking through, like, when I'm a cio, CTO or whoever, like, making it really relevant and fun for them. I think about the memes that there's, like, the meme channels on Instagram that are super niche and specific for tech people. And I don't get half of them, but they think they're hilarious. They're getting a bunch of engagement. And this is, again, why having those really niche, focused communities is important.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. We had a CMO who I think she was selling some very intense cybersecurity stuff, and she was saying that her team, they come to her with all these memes, and she doesn't get any of them. And they're all, like, over there, like, dying, laughing, like, oh, my God. So hilarious. About, like, socks. Something's on there. Like, she's like, if you guys think this is funny, like, I'm just not the market buyer.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

And she's like, so every time they bring things to me, I, as a cmo, know, I have no idea if this will resonate. If you say it'll resonate, like, go for it. She's like, and then they hit so hard. Like, people love them. All these IT people think they're hilarious and so it is a good.

[Lacy Peace]

But that's super true, though, because, like, marketing departments oftentimes aren't actually in B2B. Like, they're not the ICP.

[Stephanie]

Yep.

[Lacy Peace]

You aren't the buyer. So there's an interesting point there of, like, how do you collaborate with these communities so that way you can educate yourself or trust them. That way you're not critiquing everything and creating copy or content that is really not relevant at all to your audience.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good point of, like, when thinking about content. And we've had a couple guests come on the show as well that talked about this, of if you don't have someone on your marketing team and the one who's creating your content or these skits, for example, or, like, the comedy, who has actually felt the pain points of what you're selling.

[Lacy Peace]

That's good.

[Stephanie]

Like, you're not gonna have good marketing, you're not gonna have good content. You're not gonna have good funny business entertainment stuff that you can even put out there, because you're gonna be making content that's funny to you as the marketer. Whereas what you need to make content be funny for is the person who's, like, literally struggle with that problem within it or whatever. Like, you have to find someone who's had that problem and they felt the pain point of it and then have them help create the content of, like, what would be funny based off this. How do I speak this lingo? Yeah, because you were that kind of person. You were the IT admin who had to deal with everyone in the org, like, what's funny ways to, like, present this, or what is, like, helpful ways to present it. So.

[Lacy Peace]

And in comedy, this is super true. Right? So comedians talk about this all the time. You have to be really specific with your jokes. And sometimes they seem outrageously specific. Like, I was on an air, you know, in an airplane, and this specific thing happened. And weirdly enough, all of us have had that experience. And so the more specific you get with comedy, the more, like, relevant and the more that it resonates with people that are listening.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

Who's doing this?

[Stephanie]

Well, I haven't seen many in the B2B space, which is a challenge to all B2B companies that, like, do cool shit. And if you need help, we can help you. We're right here. Hi. Hello. But someone who's doing it really well is a company called torq T O R Q. So I met with their cmo. What he's doing is just Hilarious. He's going to come on the show as well. Marketing trends. But he's also done this before, which is interesting. He showed me his previous company, the previous startup he had, and what he's doing at Torque. It's like a copy and paste of what he did at this other company. And it's just the most ridiculous marketing. I think they just sponsored Gravedigger at the monster truck.

[Lacy Peace]

You were talking about this.

[Stephanie]

Yeah. And they have trucks driving all around and these laser beams coming out. And they've got this whole comedy skit going out about their media intern they hired who doesn't know cybersecurity. And like, here he is trying to figure it out and getting his JCPenney headshots. And, like, it's ridiculous.

[Lacy Peace]

I saw the video of that and it was hilarious. Yeah.

[Stephanie]

And so I asked him. I was like, this is funny and I'm dying laughing. I'm not even in cybersecurity and I'm following your page, but is this actually driving revenue? And he was like, yes, it is. And so he'll come on the show. We're going to dive into all these details. But to me, that's like the vision for a lot of companies of how to stand out. Because once again, you're gonna be competing on similar features. Like, technology is giving so many companies the same advantages. And so how you compete, I think is getting into these very different spaces that most enterprise companies would have typically stayed away from. Because it's scary. Because it's like. Could be controversial because your CEO is like, is that, you know, tying to pipeline? How is it attributing to MQLs?

[Lacy Peace]

And it is tying to Pipeline, though.

[Stephanie]

It can. Yeah, Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

I think the message I've received from this whole conversation is do scary shit.

[Stephanie]

Do scary shit.

[Lacy Peace]

Sorry, marketers, sorry, sales people. Like, you're going to have to do the thing that's kind of hard, kind of difficult, hard to get buy in on. But that's ultimately what's going to stand out now and in the next five years.

[Stephanie]

Yep. Yeah, totally agree.

[Lacy Peace]

So for Marketing trends and a lot of the other shows, we've been doing something called the Lightning round for years. I wanted to change it up. We've launched a new company in the last, what year? Called Relevant, that's R E L B N T. And I wanted to do a lightning round that sort of mimics that. So I'm going to say something and you tell me if it's relevant or.

[Stephanie]

Irrelevant, but not why.

[Lacy Peace]

You can tell me why.

[Stephanie]

Oh, yeah. Okay, quickly, quickly, quickly.

[Lacy Peace]

Yes. Okay. Long form newsletters.

[Stephanie]

Relevant only if it's actually good content. Yeah, A lot of people who are doing, trying to do long form, it's like not good content and they're just like summaries of like all the news out there that's not relevant. But like the not boring newsletter that's super long. It's like a million pages of like him deep researching a company. Very relevant. So it depends if it's good content.

[Lacy Peace]

Pickleball.

[Stephanie]

Relevant. I'm in Austin. It has to be relevant.

[Lacy Peace]

LinkedIn relevant.

[Stephanie]

Why? People are using it more as like a connection platform more now than ever and I see it becoming more interesting. Whereas like five years ago I was like, lame. Who wants to be on LinkedIn? Just recently I started getting back into it and I have seen that there's a lot of momentum and ways that you can connect with people on there and finding your people more easily than ever. And so I think now more than ever, this is the only platform that's really bringing together at least like hard to reach executives. Executives that are not going to open your cold email and building like having the ability to build out your own brand where, I mean, when people search my name, my LinkedIn is probably the first that pops up. So it's a good platform to build up your brand awareness and it's not as lame as it used to be.

[Lacy Peace]

Despite all the AI comments that are out there.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, that'll get fixed over time.

[Lacy Peace]

It will. Definitely. Let's go with co working spaces.

[Stephanie]

I mean, I would say relevant if they're good. Yeah. There's so many co working spaces.

[Lacy Peace]

I feel like it was such a thing though for so long and now I don't hear about anyone going to co working spaces.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, I think new ones will be built that will entice more people to come. If it has cool things that actually like, I want the cold plunge and the sauna and like good food and like, you guys are awesome. And for some reason there's a cultural fit happening in this co working space where it's like, yep, a lot of cool people doing cool shit. That is I think the coworking space I would work in. But a lot of the just like rent a room type of thing, just not for me.

[Lacy Peace]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

Cold calling not relevant.

[Lacy Peace]

No, I knew you were gonna say that.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

Not even close to relevant, but cold.

[Stephanie]

Texting, I'm open to it.

[Lacy Peace]

You've literally bought things cause people have cold texted you.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Someone was just like, hi, I found Your number somewhere and I can do this for you. And I was like, whoa, great. Okay, sure. And I bought it. And I was like, best person's ever did that.

[Lacy Peace]

I would have ignored it.

[Stephanie]

And we still hire that guy every month. He's great.

[Lacy Peace]

He is great.

[Stephanie]

He does great work. Yeah, that's hilarious.

[Lacy Peace]

People naming their pets after food.

[Stephanie]

Very relevant.

[Lacy Peace]

This is just for you.

[Stephanie]

Just for me. For my dog Toasty, named after a piece of toast. But his original name was going to be Cannoli because I named him when I was pregnant and hungry.

[Lacy Peace]

Hungry fractional executives.

[Stephanie]

Relevant why? So I think the market right now is changing so quickly that having people who can just kind of come in and like look at what needs to be done, lower investment cost, making sure it's a good fit, like, I think that is going to be just more relevant than ever because of how quickly things are moving. Company mascots, not relevant.

[Lacy Peace]

I totally disagree with you.

[Stephanie]

Is this my lightning round or yours?

[Lacy Peace]

I totally disagree with you. Rose is over here. She disagrees with you as well.

[Stephanie]

Tell me why. Why you like mascots?

[Lacy Peace]

Duolingo.

[Stephanie]

Okay, I think I know. Oh, they killed it. See, they're realizing the track. Oh yeah, Yeah. I can only think of a couple companies that I'm like, yeah, I get it. But I'm like, I wouldn't go buy something because of Duolingo's mascot. I don't care about that. So it's like you either have a good product, you are pulling me into some kind of community I'm excited about, like having you as a company I'm buying. But it's not because you're mascot. For me personally, like, I don't care about that.

[Lacy Peace]

I don't think I buy something because of the mascot, but I might become attached to it. Like when I think about Duolingo, it's the gamification and then they have the owl, like just looking at you, crying on your screen. If you haven't, you know, used it in a while.

[Stephanie]

It's like a Tamagotchi Pete. Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

You're over there heartless.

[Stephanie]

Like I don't even care. We have a different attachment style probably. Like I look at someone like, meh, like, all right, Tamagotchi or whatever it was called. See ya. Having a hard day. Bye.

[Lacy Peace]

You take care of yourself yet, Needy resumes. I think this is a good one actually. Resumes. Yeah.

[Stephanie]

Not relevant.

[Lacy Peace]

So what are people gonna do instead?

[Stephanie]

I think that, I mean, think about how we hire. Like, I don't care about people's who Have I ever asked for their resume from. Yeah, maybe. People send it to me, but I've never looked at it. I'm like, show me your proof of work. Show me a test assignment. Show me your energy. Show me your excitement. Show me if you're gonna fit with a team. Are we gonna have fun together? Like, what's your mindset like? Are you a lifelong learner? Are you super curious? Can I put you in different roles and we can just, like, have fun while building together? That's what I look for. And so when it comes to being like, I worked here, here, and here, I just. Yeah, I don't really care about that.

[Lacy Peace]

Last question. Purple. Relevant.

[Stephanie]

Not relevant. You know how I feel about purple.

[Lacy Peace]

Total inside joke.

[Stephanie]

Yeah.

[Lacy Peace]

All right, well, this was great. Thank you so much for letting me take the host seat and interview you. I'm looking forward to hopefully doing it again, and you will be what a.

[Stephanie]

Good host you are. So, I mean, this is super fun. We get to have you on the mic more. And until next time.