The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439)

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Strategic Growth: Knowing When to Scale Your Business 30:28

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Building a thriving business isn't always about rapid expansion. When should you hit the accelerator on growth, and when should you pump the brakes? Jannese and Austin are in Nashville, Tennessee to talk with Taku Zhou and Sibusiso Ajayi of TKZ Architecture LLC to explore this crucial entrepreneurial crossroads. The duo shares candid insights from their journey building TKZ Architecture, revealing the moments they knew it was time to scale – and importantly, when it wasn't. They discuss how they balanced the allure of growth against the need to strengthen their foundation through refined workflows, established protocols, and market positioning. Tune in as we unpack the strategic decision-making that goes into sustainable business expansion and learn the telltale signs that you're ready for growth and how to execute that transition successfully. Learn more about how QuickBooks can help you grow your business: QuickBooks.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

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MidJourney generated image of a young woman wearing stylized smart glasses to illustrate the idea of AI-powered augmented reality as the future of computing

It’s time for Big Tech’s earnings once again. And, this time around there were some notable updates, particularly from Meta Platforms (i.e., Facebook) and Microsoft that hint at the future…

The post The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

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The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439)

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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MP3•Trang chủ episode

It’s time for Big Tech’s earnings once again. And, this time around there were some notable updates, particularly from Meta Platforms (i.e., Facebook) and Microsoft that hint at the future…

The post The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.

157 tập

#Business #Tech #E-Commerce Education #Tech Education #Thinking Out Loud #E-Commerce #Industries #Podcasting Education #MBA #Marketing #Tim Peter

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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of (Thinks Out Loud 457) 13:28

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Google may have just told marketers they can never use AI to create content. Or… maybe not. Their actual recommendations are somewhat more nuanced than simply “AI bad” or “AI great.” What’s important about what they said, though, is that they’re being clear about what they’re looking for — and, more importantly, what your customers are looking for. And their guidelines make it relatively easy to understand when you can use AI, when you can’t, and what you should expect from your AI tools when creating content. In this episode of Thinks Out Loud , we break down Google’s guidance around AI content and lay out how you can make it work for you, your customers, and your business. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… (Thinks Out Loud 457)— Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines PDF link Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) My post on LinkedIn about this topic Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers | The Verge You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 13m 28s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. You probably know that Google relies on human beings to review some search results and some web pages, particularly in tough niches. Google provides these search quality raters with guidelines for how to rate the pages they review. In the latest version of these guidelines, which I will of course link to in the show notes, Google tells its quality raters, and this is a quote, “to watch out for pages with main content created using automated or generative AI and rate them as lowest quality.” They continue by saying, “even if you are unsure of the method of creation, for example, whether or not the page is created using generative AI tools, you should still use the lowest rating when you strongly suspect scaled content abuse after looking at several pages on the website. The lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the main content on the page, including text, images, audio, videos, et cetera, is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated…” It continues from there and I’ll come back to that in a minute. This is an amazing document. It almost sounds like Google is saying, don’t use AI to create content, which personally I find hilarious given that they put AI Overviews at the top of a gazillion search results these days. But I digress. That’s not what Google’s actually saying though. So what is Google really saying here? Can you use AI to create your content or not? What’s the real story? This is episode 457 of the Thinks Out Loud podcast. Let’s dive in. The excerpt I read from Google before the break emphasized the AI generated element of the Google Search Quality Rater guidelines. However, when I emphasized that line, I left out the very last part. Here’s the full excerpt: “The lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the main content on the page, including text, images, audio, videos, et cetera, is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated or reposted from other sources with little or no effort, little to no originality and little to no value for visitors to the website. ” Is Google saying that you can’t use AI? No, not really. What they’re saying instead is that you can’t use AI to create crappy content . They’re also saying you can’t use any method to create crappy content. They’re saying don’t put crappy content in front of your customers no matter how or where you get that content. They call out low quality content for what it means. It means that you’ve expressed “little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for visitors to your website.” Which, mean, come on, that feels like we should know that already, right? Forget Google. Can you imagine anyone, any human being saying, “No, really, I would love to see your low effort, unoriginal page that adds no value whatsoever to my life. Please, please, please waste my time that way”? Of course not. That’s never going to happen. So maybe let’s not do that. Let’s start with why AI-generated content is particularly dangerous in this regard, though; why it’s bad for your customers and bad for your business. I’ve mentioned in past episodes that you can’t copyright AI content if it doesn’t include “sufficient expressive elements.” That’s a direct quote from the US Copyright Office. They also call out that copyright doesn’t cover, and again this is a quote, “the mere provision of prompts.” Meaning that if you come up with a perfect, spectacular, never before seen prompt that causes your favorite AI to spit out completely new text, images or video and then present that to the world, the Copyright Office will say, "Bummer, dude. It’s not copyrightable." Weirdly, Google might be okay with that output. Maybe. Depending on whether or not its raters find it of sufficiently high quality. Though, personally, I wouldn’t bank on it. In part, I wouldn’t bank on it because someone else might stumble on an equally perfect, spectacular, never-before-seen prompt that causes their favorite AI to spit out text, images, or video that looks more or less the same as yours. There’s no guarantee that the AIs won’t generate something remarkably similar, and there’s actually some evidence to suggest that they will do exactly that. So it might be decent quality. It might even offer some value. But it’s sort of low effort and it’s likely not terribly original. Or at least it won’t be original for long. Especially since you can’t copyright it. We saw essentially the same thing in search for years, where site owners would hire offshore writers at content farms to spit out tons of SEO optimized — meaning heavily keyword stuffed — content, with titles and text containing words like best and the target keyword over and over and over again. The Verge did one of the best things I’ve ever seen in this regard. They had a hilarious article last year that mocked that practice. The title of the article was "Best Printer 2024, Best Printer for Home Use, Office Use, Printing Labels, Printer for School, Homework, Printer, You Are a Printer, We Are All Printers." Showing, of course, that you can have a sense of humor about these things, Ironically, the article itself was pretty good. Anyway, notice that bad sites were doing then exactly what Google is arguing against now. They were just using human intelligence at the time — and frankly, not much of that — instead of artificial intelligence. It’s the same thing. Google’s not saying AI is bad. They’re saying bad content is bad. Bad content is bad for your customers. Bad content is bad for search results. And ultimately, bad content is bad for your business. It’s not a place you want to be. It’s not a place anyone wants to be. So what should you do instead? What can you do instead? Well, how about we flip Google’s guidelines on their heads? Instead of demonstrating no effort, how about you demonstrate effort? Instead of having no originality, demonstrate originality. And most importantly, instead of having little to no added value for visitors to your website, provide value for visitors to your website, added value for visitors to your website. When I think of quality content, when people ask me what quality content is, it’s that last bit that I always come back to. Your content should, it must, provide value to your website or app visitors. Your content should answer a meaningful question. It should help them solve an actual problem in their lives. It should make their lives at least a little bit better, if not a lot better. Anyone who knows anything about search knows that Google is particularly concerned about what they call YMYL content. That is content that matters to “your money or your life,” YMYL. They want to make sure that any content that ranks for those topics isn’t going to cause people to lose money or damage their health and safety. That seems like a good idea, no? I’d argue that you should take similar care with the content you provide to your customers, even if you’re not in a YMYL business, even if it’s not YMYL information. After all, if you don’t care whether your content matters in your customers’ lives, why should your customers care? Right? This is like 101 right here. If you don’t care about your content, if you don’t care to create quality content, why should your customers care either? This isn’t about AI. It’s about human beings. Do you care about your customers? Do you care about their problems? Do you care about helping them improve their lives or at least improve their day? Of course you do. Then why not make sure that your content shows that you care? You can use AI to help you brainstorm what that content might be. You can use AI to help you outline the content. You can use AI to help you create personas of your target customers so that you’re thinking about the right people as you create those outlines for your content. You can use AI to review your content and find errors in your thinking or your writing. I do this all the time. And yes, you can use AI to help draft some of your content or create alternative or more personalized versions of your content. Just keep your focus on creating content that shows effort. Keep your focus on creating content that demonstrates originality. And above all, creating content that provides added value to your audience and your customers, content that shows you care. Google’s raters will like it better. Google search results will likely rank it more often. And most importantly, your customers will get value from it. And ultimately, so will your business. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 457, plus an archive of all of our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. I’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. See you soon. The post Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of (Thinks Out Loud 457) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) 20:53

cách đây 7 ngày trước20:53

20:53

So, the economy has been going through it over the last couple months — and especially over the last week in particular. That’s a plain fact. But it’s more than just a tough economy. It’s a bizarre economy. It’s easy at times like this to get discouraged, distressed, or just plain confused about how you can make marketing and customer acquisition work in genuinely bizarre economic times. So how do you do that? What works when the economy is… strange? What can you do to connect with customers when the economy is unpredictable? In short, how does marketing work in yet another bizarre economy? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever (Thinks Out Loud Episode 355) Small Business Trends & Research – NFIB Quarterly SBET Report – NFIB SBET – March 2025 The Conference Board | Trusted Insights for What’s Ahead The Lost Art of Value Adds in Marketing (Thinks Out Loud Episode 277) The Race You Can’t Win Does Discounting Work in a Recession? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 315) Marketing in Uncertain Times (Thinks Out Loud Episode 352) What happened in every U.S. recession since the Great Depression Is a Recession More Likely This Year? Here’s What You Don’t Want to Do (Thinks Out Loud Episode 276) Worried About a Recession Next Year? Here’s How Marketers Can Cope (Thinks Out Loud Episode 264) We’re in a Recession. What Should Your Marketing Team Do? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 291) When Will the Recession End? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 289) Federal Reserve Economic Data | FRED | St. Louis Fed C-Suite Outlook 2025: Seizing the Future U.S. Census Bureau Economic Indicators Consumer Spending Data & Trends – Consumer Checkpoint Economic Insights – Current Data & Trends Shaping the Economy U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Econofact The Economic Data You Need to Make Decisions Through Volatility You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 20m 53s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy Hi, I’m Tim Peter and this is Thinks Out Loud . Roughly three years ago, I hosted an episode called “Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever.” We were beginning to emerge from the pandemic, but as I put it at the time, the economic data was “super, super weird.” That’s a quote. I continued by noting, “It’s not just that the economy is bad, though there are parts of it that very much are. It’s also that it’s really, really strange.” Okay, so now fast forward to April of 2025, and, well, things are kind of bizarre again. For instance, the National Federation of Independent Businesses issued its Small Business Economic Trends Report for March 2025. And their top line comment said this, “The implementation of new policy priorities has heightened the level of uncertainty among small business owners over the past few months. Small business owners have scaled back expectations on sales growth as they better understand how these rearrangements might impact them.” What’s been happening, and you’re undoubtedly aware, is that over the last couple of months, the new administration has enacted some significant tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And then, as you again probably know, over the last week we’ve had those relatively few tariffs, then massive tariffs on the entire world — including an island populated entirely by penguins. Except then, by the end of the day yesterday, those tariffs were on hold for 90 days, replaced by 10% tariffs on everybody. No word about how the penguins feel. None of this, for lack of a better word, is normal. And all of it affects your ability to find, engage, and convert traffic to customers. What you need right now is a plan. Now, I’m not an economist. I’m very lucky that I work with some economists at The Conference Board who’ve helped me be smarter about some of these topics. But today’s show is not going to be about economics or the economy. It’s about marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. That’s what I do. I’m also not going to get into the political side of this other than to say that this level of uncertainty makes our jobs as marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition professionals much, much harder. So what should you do about the current situation as a marketing or e-commerce professional? What can you do? This is at Thinks Out Loud episode 456, and today we’re looking at marketing in another bizarre economy. Let’s dive in. So how do you do marketing in another bizarre economy? For better or worse, this is not a new problem. Between COVID, the financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Great Recession that we went through following that, and the dot-com bubble crash of 2001-2002, this is something like my fifth time through weirdness in the economy. And there are some key lessons we’ve learned again and again from these situations that you can apply when marketing your business. One quick note, today I’m going to talk pretty much exclusively about the U.S. economy. This is already a massive topic. I cannot realistically address all of the differences that might matter in other countries. Most of the discussion will be relevant no matter where you work or live. Just be aware that my data and some resources are necessarily going to be US-centric. The other thing today’s show isn’t is any kind of advice about the stock market. If you’re trying to time the market based on anything you hear from me, that is on you. Really don’t do that, okay? We good? All right, good. That out of the way, there are 10 things I want you to think about when marketing in tough times. And I want to start with a somewhat long excerpt from a prior episode where I stated, “First, be a possiblist. I happen, constitutionally, to be somebody who tends to look on the bright side of things. Not because I’m not a realist, and not because I’m an optimist in any extreme sense of the word. What I am is what Hans Rosling refers to in his book, Thoughtfulness , a possiblist. I try to see the possibilities that exist right now while also acknowledging the reality of where we are. And one tangible possibility that exists where we are right now is that times like these are when you get good at what you do. That’s what I said five years ago. I continued by noting, “I have joked for a long time that I used to be the best digital marketer in history. It’s true. Everything I did worked spectacularly. When was this? Oh, it was 2002 to 2008. When, of course everything I did worked. Of course it’s easy to have everything work when everything’s going spectacularly well. It’s not that hard. Times like these are when you actually learn how to get good at what you do because times like these are when it’s actually hard.” I said at the time, “If you’re a bodybuilder and you’re only lifting very, very, very light weights, every time you lift, you’re probably not going to build a whole lot of muscle. You’re probably not going to get stronger. But if you have to lift really heavy weights at least some of the time, that’s going to make you stronger than when you’re just lifting a very light weight all of the time.” So keep that in mind all throughout this. Don’t think about this time as a struggle, but as the time when you’re going to build muscle and get stronger for the long term. How can you do that? Let’s go through them. One, as much as possible, do not cut your marketing activity . I see people make this mistake again and again. Study after study after study shows that companies that market through recessions or other slowdowns generally outperform companies that shut down their marketing or scale back their marketing significantly. Think about it. Now is when you need marketing most. Now is when your customers have tougher decisions ahead of them. Now is when you stand to gain or lose the most relative to the market as a whole. Why would you choose now to stop talking with and listening to your customers? That simply doesn’t make any sense. Yes, you need to be more focused in your marketing. Yes, you need to be smart with your budget. Yes, you need to make sure you can keep your doors open. That’s true. This now is a definite “Core and Explore” moment where you double-down hard on the areas that work and conduct small tests of new ideas and areas. It’s also a time when you need to be more creative to find new channels, new customer segments, and new markets to sell to. Doing anything else could be the difference between keeping your doors open or not. You want to be creative… And speaking of creativity, it leads to our second thing you want to do. And that is “sell the destination first.” And I’m putting that one in air quotes. This is borrowed from the hospitality and travel industry. What I mean by it is that you need to make people understand why what you offer is worth considering in the first place. And what I mean by what you offer, I don’t just mean your specific product or service. I mean the entire category of products and services in which you operate. In travel or hospitality, I can’t get you to choose my beach resort if you’re thinking of going skiing. I have to sell you first on the idea of going to the beach at all. Then I can sell you my resort. The same is true across other industries. If you think about it, the most common choice customers will make is to do nothing. Inertia is your biggest competitor. If your customers are thinking about getting by with what they already have or what they already know, it’s incredibly hard to sell them your specific product or service. You have to get them to consider buying anything, the kinds of solutions you offer generally before you can begin to sell them what you actually want them to buy, which is your product or service. So sell the destination first. The third thing you need to do is don’t discount recklessly . It’s a fallacy that discounting drives demand. What it does do is hurt your bottom line and make it harder for you to raise prices in the future. Running a race to zero with your competitors is a race that you can never win. Don’t run it. Evidence from past recessions and other tough economic periods we’ve lived through has shown that folks who managed pricing effectively during difficult times made more money both during the problem and after the economy normalized . It doesn’t mean you don’t want to test interesting ideas, but there are three things you can do that aren’t just straight slashing your prices. The first is to offer customers different way to pay. Think things like buy now or pay later or lay away or installment payments. That kind of thing. That works for B2C and B2B. Work out different payment plans that work for your customers versus simply offering them a discount. The second is different offerings. Think instead, instead of slashing prices, think about “value adds” or “value minuses.” Sometimes I call them “value unders.” What can you layer onto your product or take away from to provide greater value without changing the base price of your existing products and services. I have a podcast episode I will link to in the show notes called “The Lost Art of Value Ads” that I would encourage you to check out there. And then the third way to price differently is think about different customers. You know, maybe you offer a specific discount to best customers or new customers or some other market segment that makes sense. As long as you can make it clear to those segments why this is a limited time offer to some distinct group, that usually doesn’t have long term effects on your pricing, so it’s something you can do and test and have great success with. Next, automate everything you can that makes sense . What, you thought there wouldn’t be an AI angle here? I mean, what good are these tools, are these artificial intelligence tools, if we can’t put them to work when we need them the most? AI is a useful tool. It can help you brainstorm strategy and tactics for connecting with your customers during challenging times like these. You can test sales coaching tools or predictive modeling for pricing. You can test Google and Meta’s automated ad tools and a host of other AI and automation tools to help you reach your customers faster, cheaper and better. Now is a perfect time to pick a few ideas and try to put AI to work to grow your business. Now is the time you want to make these tools work for you, because if you learn how to do it now, you’re just going to be in a much better position later. The fifth thing you can do is partner with others in your market . To the point of value adds and sell the destination first, think about whether there are complementary companies you can partner with that boost both of your businesses. Joint promotions, cross promotions. Have them email their list on your behalf. Email your list on their behalf. How can you work together to find new customers or create new markets? You do not have to go it alone. You do not have to think or swim on your own here. Partner with others and get the benefit for both of you. The sixth thing I want you to think about is to make any downturn your competitors problem . Now, I don’t mean this to contradict what I just said a moment ago. You want to be a good partner with people. You also want to make sure that you’re getting a fair share or more of whatever demand exists in the market for your products and services with direct head-to-head competitors. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. They can be great sources of intelligence on what’s working in the marketplace right now and what isn’t. Consider copying some of their successes. I don’t mean violate their trademarks. I don’t mean violate their copyrights. But if you see them doing something cool, what’s to stop you from doing it? And definitely avoid their missteps. If you see them do something stupid, maybe don’t follow them. You know, if it’s like they’re slashing their prices like crazy, maybe don’t do that. Maybe instead ask, how can we show greater value without slashing prices? Because I can guarantee which of you is going to make more money in those cases. This isn’t about kicking folks when they’re down. Try to work together with people to grow the pie and not fight over a single shrinking piece. But just make sure you’re also watching your numbers and your reality and make sure you’re working to get your fair share. Another thing that you need to do is take care of your customers . Remember always that your customers are dealing with the same uncertainty you are. They’ve got concerns too. Think about those concerns in your messaging and how you talk with them. I hate, hate, hate, hate when companies prey upon people’s fears to try and drive sales. Can it work? Yeah, I suppose. But maybe think about your customers as, I don’t know, human beings? Maybe think about yourself in human terms too. Where’s your basic humanity here? What do your customers need? What’s keeping them up at night? And how are you helping them address their concerns and fears? Customers will remember who did right by them in the longer term. Try to be one of the folks that does, and you’re going to have great success in the longer term, not just with what happens today. Next, make sure you’re staying informed about what’s going on in the economy overall . There are tons, tons, tons of amazing, free, regularly updated resources out there. I particularly pay attention to the Conference Board and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Economic Analysis are great too. I also like Bank of America’s Consumer Checkpoint and a site called Econofact, as well. They’re all super, super helpful. If you prefer podcasts, Marketplace is an amazing show, and there are just loads of other resources out there that I’ll post links to in the show notes that can help you make sense of what’s going on with the economy at large. Make sure you check them out. Also, stay in touch with your town or county or state chambers of commerce or convention and visitors bureau. Sometimes the local economy matters more for your business than what’s going on nationally or regionally or globally. Your local Chamber of Commerce or your CVB can provide you insights you may not get anywhere else. So make sure you’re giving them a chance. Finally, this is my last point, don’t be afraid to call your Congress people or senators and ask them to help . This isn’t about politics. I do not get into politics on this show. This is about policy that affects your business and your life. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle those folks are on. This is about saving your livelihood. It’s our Congress critters’ job to represent our interests. And they can only do that if they know what your interests are, if they hear from you directly. So don’t hesitate to give them a shout and let them know what you think. So yes, we’re in a bizarre economy, but you can succeed no matter what. Remember: As much as possible, don’t cut your marketing activity. Sell the destination first. Don’t discount recklessly. Automate everything you can that makes sense. Partner with others in your market. Make any downturn your competitor’s problem. Take care of your customers, they’ve got concerns too. Stay informed about what’s going on in the economy overall. Don’t be afraid to call your congresspeople and senators and ask them to help. Above all else, be a possiblist. Think about the possibilities here. Now is the time when you’re going to build the muscle and build the strength and get great at marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Or at least it will if you accept both the reality of where we are and keep working towards your positive vision of the future. I know you can do it and I can’t wait to see what you do. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 455, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thanks for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. Until then, please, be well, be safe, and, as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) 14:24

cách đây 14 ngày trước14:24

14:24

If there’s one thing I hate to see, it’s marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition folks who talk about AI as if it’s going to solve every problem their business has. Yes, AI can be an incredibly valuable tool. But it’s only a tool. The fact is that AI can’t save your business from bad strategy. Only you can. Thinking about AI as a “magic bullet” is a big reason why so many businesses still aren’t seeing the returns they’d hoped for from their AI efforts. Instead, the businesses succeeding with AI in marketing and customer acquisition are those that have figured out their core strategies first, then examined how they can use AI to execute against those strategies faster, easier, or more cheaply. How can you do that? How can you avoid the “bad strategy” gap for your business? And how can you make AI work for you to gain more customers and drive more revenue? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links The State of AI: Global survey | McKinsey Gil Amelio – Wikipedia Quote Origin: No One in This World Has Ever Lost Money by Underestimating the Intelligence of the Great Masses of the Plain People – Quote Investigator® Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 14m 24s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 Welcome back to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. Anyone who listens to this show a bunch knows that I’m fairly bullish on AI. I think it’s an incredibly useful tool. Research from McKinsey shows that marketing and sales teams are the ones most likely to use AI across a wide array of industries. We see this again and again and again. Sales and marketing teams are the folks who put AI to work. And yet… we haven’t seen a lot of evidence of huge lifts in business from AI yet for all that many companies. Sure, there are a few case studies that get cited a lot. And I’m happy to report that clients of mine are absolutely seeing benefits of using AI. But where’s the big lift overall? Remember, I’m bullish. I think that lift is coming. I see evidence of it with people I work with. The challenge for many companies, isn’t in whether or not you’re using AI. It’s whether you’re thinking strategically about AI and where you should be using it. I still hear a significant number of people say, “Well, we’re playing with AI to see what it can do.” I’m sorry, playing with AI? Isn’t it time to ask AI to go to work? Isn’t it time to think about how AI supports your strategy? The truth is, AI can’t save you from a bad strategy. Only you can. This is Thinks Out Loud , episode 455. Today we’re taking a look at why AI won’t save you from a bad strategy. Let’s dive in. Okay, we all know that AI has made content creation faster and cheaper and easier. Marketers are using it to do that kind of thing all over the place. But creating more content, creating cheaper content, creating content more easily — as much as content marketing matters for your business — is not the same as customer acquisition. AI is great at doing those things. What AI can’t do is the strategic heavy lifting for your business: It can’t define your value proposition. It can’t identify core insights about your customers. It can’t set priorities based on your long-term business goals. Yes, it can help you better understand any of those. It can help you do any of those, again, faster or cheaper or more easily. It’s a great brainstorming tool. At the same time, you have to supply the judgment of what makes the most sense for your business. Let me give you an example of what I mean about judgment from an era long before AI. And it starts with my favorite dumb business quote of all time. I mean, this is just pricelessly dumb. As the story goes, Gil Amelio, who was the CEO of Apple prior to Steve Jobs’ return to the company, supposedly once said to Jobs that: Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction. what? Dude, if you’ve got a ship with a hole in the bottom. Your job is to stop the water from coming in. Your job is to keep the ship from sinking. In that situation, worrying about which direction the ship is pointing guarantees that the only direction it’s going is straight down. Believe me, I’ve seen Titanic like 10 times. I’m pretty sure that makes me an expert on sinking ships. This is not what you’ve got to do, right? At any rate, regardless of my nautical knowledge, Amelio’s quote there is obviously an objectively awful metaphor and it’s even worse judgment. But we often think about AI in similar ways when in truth AI is a tool. Strategy provides the map and without the map the tool isn’t going to do you any good. Anyone, anyone who’s listened to the show for any amount of time knows that I’m a huge fan of thinking about not only what will change in the future, but what won’t change. And no matter how much AI shifts our daily practices over time, there are so many key areas about our strategy that simply will never change, no matter what happens with AI: You still need to understand your audience. That is something that simply will never change. You still need to solve real customer problems. And you still need to build trust and relationships with your customers. There are loads of great AI tools that can help you parse your data to better understand your audience. And you might already own and use some of these tools. Tools like Salesforce and HubSpot have AI capabilities built in. There are also tools that can help you solve real customer problems. You can use ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or custom-built models to brainstorm solutions for how to solve those problems. And you can absolutely use tools like Copy.ai or Jasper or Gpng or any number of chatbots to either create more content or engage your customers or improve your sales teams to try to build more trust and build better relationships with your customers. As you know, there are also plenty of great tools out there that don’t use AI that can also help you do these things as well. It’s not like we’re going to turn our business over to the tool, because the point is that it’s not about the tool. It’s about thinking deeply about your customers’ needs and then focusing relentlessly on how you build better trust and better relationships with your customers. Ultimately, our jobs in marketing and customer acquisition are to build those relationships. You’ve probably heard a quote, it’s typically misattributed to P.T. Barnum, that says, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” And you can broaden that to the globe, it doesn’t matter. I hate that quote for two reasons. First, though less importantly, it’s actually American journalist and noted cynic H.L. Mencken who was the original source of the quote. Though, if we’re being fair, plenty of business folks have absolutely adopted and endorsed that quote over the century plus that it’s been in circulation. So fine, whatever. The second thing, and far more importantly, is it is deeply, deeply wrong to think that way. I believe, as sure as I believe anything, that you will never go broke treating your customers well, treating them with respect and dignity, treating them as human beings. Especially in an age of AI, I believe that your customers and the market as a whole are increasingly looking for businesses that are actually, authentically human, that actually treat them like they matter. Sure, tools have their place. You should use them. But you’ve got to make sure you’ve got your hands — and more importantly your brains — on the controls while you’re using them. You know, one place I see people turn over control to tools all too often is in scaling too soon. And yes, for some companies, you’ve got to worry about scale. I used to work for one of the largest hotel companies in the world. Scale mattered. We had to think about it a lot. But using AI to scale the wrong things isn’t going to help your business at all. Instead, think about whether you actually have an execution problem, which scale would help with, or if you’ve got a strategy gap. And some ways you can tell whether your strategy is off is some of the ways are Your content drives traffic but conversions are flat, whether that content is created by AI or created by people You’re producing more but you’re not reaching your audience. Another is that your marketing and your sales efforts are out of sync. Another is that you’re measuring clicks, you’re measuring traffic but not conversions or deals. And the last is that your teams are busy, but that they’re not aligned. They’re not moving in the same direction. All of these are symptoms that you have a strategy gap, not an AI problem. All of those are signs that you’re working on the wrong things. And if you’re working on the wrong things, AI simply isn’t going to help you. If you’ve got a gap in your strategy, ask yourself these questions: First, who are we trying to acquire? Who’s the actual customer? The second is, what problem are we solving for them? The third is, where do they go to learn, decide, and buy? And the fourth is, why should they choose us? Those are the questions that actually matter. Then, take the time to revisit your messaging. Look at your customer journeys, look at how people use your website, look at how people use your app, look at how they interact with your sales teams. And then, take a look at your measurement framework. Are you measuring the right things that actually point you in the right direction? And again, once you have those, then you can — and should! — ask, “How can AI help us execute faster, smarter, or better?” You can use AI to help you answer those questions. Ultimately, though, it’s your judgment that will decide whether those answers make sense for your business. Again, AI has made content creation faster, cheaper, and easier. It’s made marketing faster, cheaper, and easier. But faster, cheaper, and easier alone is not going to drive customer acquisition for your business. Also remember that AI cannot do your strategic heavy lifting. It can’t define your value proposition. It can’t identify core insights about your customers. It cannot set the priorities you need to set based on your long-term business goals. Sure, it can help you better understand those. Ultimately though, you have to supply the judgment of what makes the most sense for your business. And it’s only once you understand where it is you’re trying to go, who it is you’re trying to help, and how it is that you can best help them that you should ask the question, how can AI help us execute faster, smarter, or better? AI is a useful tool, but AI will not save you from a bad strategy. Focus on your strategy, and then your tools will help you build even greater success for your business. I can’t wait to see what you do. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet, I’m pretty confident that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the show? Let them know what you think too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 455, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I very much appreciate that. With all that said, I wanted to say thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week, but I just so much appreciate you tuning in. So until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) 17:02

cách đây 21 ngày trước17:02

17:02

Artificial intelligence plays an ever-increasing role in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Loads of companies and marketers use AI to plan, create, personalize, and measure their marketing activities. In general, that’s a good thing. AI can help you manage your marketing and customer acquisition more efficiently and effectively. So far, so good, right? However, when it comes to content marketing — still one of the most important parts of your customer acquisition process — there’s a huge question we need to ask. And that is: Should you use AI to create your content? My answer is… well, it’s complicated. Should you use AI to create your content? What is the proper role of artificial intelligence in content marketing? How can you put AI to work for your brand and business to drive customer acquisition? That’s the topic of this episode of Thinks Out Loud . Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links NewsNet Issue 1060 | U.S. Copyright Office What I learned at the 2025 Google Search Central Meetup in NYC – Lily Ray Google’s John Mueller Says Programmatic SEO Often A Fancy Banner For Spam What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448) Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) The Rebirth of Trusted Gatekeepers (Thinks Out Loud Episode 307) Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen (Thinks Out Loud Episode 188) Is "Content is King" Dead? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 306) Big Digital Marketing Trends: Who Speaks For Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 377) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) I couldn’t find the original “Don’t play nothing,” story. But here’s another that makes the same point: Herbie Hancock on Miles: Don’t play the butter notes! You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 17m 02s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. Anyone who’s listened to this show for any amount of time knows that I still think content is king. When it comes to using digital for customer acquisition, content remains your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 salesperson and your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 customer service rep. Even in an age when you and your competitors can churn out massive amounts of content cheaply and quickly using AI, all the evidence suggests that helpful content that answers your customers’ questions and meets their needs is one of the single most effective sales and marketing tools in your arsenal. That simply has not changed. And that’s undoubtedly why the question I’m asked most often these days is, should I use AI to create content? My answer, no, you shouldn’t. Well, thanks for listening. Okay, obviously I’m joking, at least to a point. The answer is more complicated than just a simple yes or no. What’s more important than just that yes or no, though, gets at the core of why content marketing matters for your business, for your customers, and your community overall. This is episode 454 of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, and today we’re exploring whether you should use AI to generate your content for your company. Let’s dive in. Alright, my earlier jokes aside, should you use AI to create your company’s content? Truthfully, that’s a more complicated question than it sounds. It’s going to take me a moment to unpack the various pieces inherent in that discussion. But in case anyone’s confused by my ultimate answer, I want to give as clear an answer as I can right now: No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100% of your content. I’m going to say that again, you should not use AI to create 100% of your content. Notice though, that I said "100 % of your content." And there are a few reasons why that’s so. First and importantly, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content because at least in the US, a recent report from the U.S. Copyright Office, "concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements." The report continues by saying "this can include situations where a human authored work is perceptible in an AI output or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts." In other words, even if you’re crafting the most brilliant prompt, once you type that genius prompt into an AI system of any kind, then copy and paste its output, as is, without any further modification by a human being, then that work is not protected by copyright. If you’re looking to create brand assets that matter, whether they’re copy or logos or artwork or what have you, letting an AI do all the work is a losing game. Full stop. That alone probably is enough to suggest why you don’t want to rely solely on AI to create your content. If that’s not enough of a reason, pay attention to what the brilliant SEO expert Lily Ray noted in a blog post outlining what Google said in a recent meeting with search marketers. She wrote, ”Google also further clarified that the use of generative AI for content creation isn’t inherently a problem. What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content. If it’s published primarily to generate SEO traffic, especially at scale, it may be considered a violation, but using AI to support a repurpose high quality original content is still fair game." A couple of years ago, Google’s John Mueller talked about the problems with automating content creation, stating bluntly that, and this is again a quote, "programmatic SEO is often a fancy manner for spam." So Google’s being pretty clear how they feel about this. Lily followed up her earlier observation, adding this insightful comment, “This isn’t entirely surprising given that Google is also simultaneously encouraging publishers to use its large language model, Gemini." Google is talking out of both sides of their mouth a bit here, but their overall point actually makes sense. If you’re creating lots of automated AI generated content, which for our purposes, I’m going to call, let’s say, "crap," you’re not helping anyone and they’re not going to reward you with strong placement in the search results. So again, AI output all by itself is no bueno. When I say "No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content," that’s what I’m talking about. There’s one sentence I want to highlight from Lily’s blog post though: "What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content." Think about that for a moment. "The intent and purpose behind the content." Google and the US Copyright Office come at the problem of AI content creation from different perspectives — One related to search, the other, well, copyright — and arrive essentially at the same place. They’re asking, "What are you trying to achieve? What purpose are you looking to serve? Who are you trying to serve? Are you trying to game the system, whether it’s search or copyright? Are you trying to game the system, search and or copyright? Are you trying to generate massive amounts of content solely for the purpose of generating massive amounts of content? Are you trying to pump out colossal amounts of crap? If yes, why would anyone want that? Why would anyone give that any recognition ever? Who does this help?" If your answer is no one, you’re beginning to think about the problem the right way. Additionally, if everyone is using AI to create their content, regardless of copyright implications, regardless of search implications, how does your content stand apart? If anyone can generate exactly the same quality and character of content, why would anyone ever choose yours over your competitors? It’s not just that your customers won’t benefit, though that’s true. It’s likely that your business won’t either. Instead, let’s think about why you’re creating content in the first place. Too many folks have learned that the right reason to create content is because search and social quote unquote require content. You’ve got to feed the beast, right? I mean, we’ve all done it. I post something to LinkedIn a couple of times per week. My team adds another post or two on our company page. I record a podcast just like this one more or less every week. I’ve often quoted the story from Tina Fey’s book BossyPants to clients where she talks about the first time as head writer of Saturday Night Live when she thought the show wasn’t ready and was told by executive producer, Lorne Michaels, "Tina, we don’t do the show because it’s ready. We do the show because it’s 11:30 on Saturday night." There is merit in holding yourself accountable for a certain level of output. So yes, I can be as guilty as anyone of feeding the beast. But while I’m conscious of the algorithm, I try to make sure I’m not ruled solely by it. Don’t forget that the algorithm also rewards content that people engage with, that people enjoy, that they find useful, that exhibits quality. And sure, yeah, that they find provocative. I personally made a decision a long time ago that we wouldn’t be provocative for its own sake. We’re certainly not afraid to tip over sacred cows. We also don’t just do it for engagement farming reasons. People who know me know that I was trained as a musician. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock likes to tell a story that affected me deeply when I was a young musician. He was playing accompaniment behind a soloist in Miles Davis’ band — comping in the vernacular, right? He’s playing behind the soloist. And Miles came over, placed his hands on Herbie’s, and asked him what in the world he was doing. You Miles was not a fan. And Herbie replied, "I wasn’t sure what to play." To which Miles replied, "If you don’t know what to play, don’t play nothing." I’m very sorry for the bad Miles Davis impersonation, by the way. It’s kind of a legal requirement when telling stories about him that you mimic his voice a little bit. "Don’t play nothing," though, is a perfectly acceptable approach at least some of the time for your business. One of the reasons I’m such a fan of content calendars is not because you’ve got to fill in every box every day. Instead, it’s because they help you see where gaps exist and then choose to create content — or not — as it benefits your business. It’s not great when you leave a square on the calendar blank by mistake, but it’s perfectly acceptable — And sometimes a genuinely great idea — to be quiet on purpose. The purpose of the calendar isn’t to create Lorne Michaels "11:30 on Saturday night" urgency. The planning is the purpose. If you have something worth saying, say it. If not, heed Miles Davis’s admonition and "don’t play nothing." If you do have something worth saying, then it’s absolutely okay to use AI as part of your toolkit for creating that content. These tools exist for a reason. You’d be silly not to use them sometimes. ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Ocoya, SocialBee, Jasper, Copy.AI and a whole host of other tools that I don’t have the time or memory to mention play a huge role in helping you plan, create, review, schedule, customize, post, and measure the effectiveness of your content. Those are all legitimately valid uses of artificial intelligence in content creation. I often use AI to brainstorm ideas for our content calendar. I’ll then craft an outline and use AI to review it for missing pieces. I’ll have the AI review my writing to find logical errors or obvious gaps in my thinking. And yeah, sometimes I’ll use AI to draft or clean up a social post when I need some inspiration. Yes, sometimes we’ve also used AI to create images, a practice we’re moving away from because of the copyright implications. This isn’t a case of either AI or nothing. My team and I always have and always will exercise editorial judgment over the final output. Every word you read or hear is written by a human being, is crafted by a human being, even if those human beings sometimes benefit from review or polish from an AI. We’re working to build a connection between our customers and, well, me, a human being. Even in large companies, you can, and increasingly must, put a human face on your messages, on your brand, on your content. Your customers want to interact with real, live people, with other human beings. It’s critical in an age of artificial intelligence that you show genuine humanity. So yes, you can and probably should use AI to participate in the content creation process. But be very clear about the role that AI plays. More importantly, be even clearer about the role you and your team, the human beings play. It’s okay to use AI in the process, but it’s you, your company, and your brand’s name and face that’s on the final output. You, your company, and your brand is who your customers want to hear from, not some generic machine. You can use the tools. Turning the entire process over to the tools though only produces outputs and results that don’t help anyone. To sum up, should you use AI to create content? No, not really. You ultimately are who must create the content. It’s you who your customers want to hear from and your who customers want to buy from. Anything else doesn’t benefit your customers or your business. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 454, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well. Be safe and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. Can’t wait to talk with you soon. Take care. The post Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) 22:12

cách đây 28 ngày trước22:12

22:12

I’ve long believed that AI won’t steal your job, but rather that smart people who put AI to work will. After all, marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition roles are simply too complicated to automate away. No business leaders would ever be foolish enough to turn these critical functions over to artificial intelligence, right? Well… let’s consider the alternative. I do believe that these roles will survive the age of AI. But, what if I’m wrong about AI in marketing and customer acquisition? It’s certainly true that senior leaders will cut costs or slow down hiring if the economy gets tight. Why wouldn’t they think about using more automation — and fewer people — in some cases? In that case, the real question becomes how do you make sure you remain employed — and employable — no matter how big a role AI and automation play. And that’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce — How You Stay Relevant AI Won’t Steal Your Job: Smart People Who Put AI to Work Will (Thinks Out Loud Episode 208) Is ChatGPT Going to Steal Your Job? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 371) Revisiting “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year” (Thinks Out Loud) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) Is AI Destined to Make Marketing — and Music — Worse? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 432) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) It’s time to take AI job loss seriously Nobody knows what to do about AGI – by Timothy B. Lee Can OpenAI do creative writing? Yes and no AI’s effects on programming jobs AI search engines cite incorrect news sources at an alarming 60% rate, study says – Ars Technica The State of AI: Global survey | McKinsey The professions upskilling in AI | LinkedIn LinkedIn Economic Graph Work Change Report PDF link LinkedIn Economic Graph: Work is Changing and AI has a role to play The Most In-Demand Skills of 2024 | LinkedIn You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 19m 49s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? A couple of weeks ago, I talked about why AI won’t take your job, or more specifically, how to ensure AI doesn’t take your job. Since then, I’ve heard from a number of folks who think I’m minimizing the risks to folks currently working in marketing. Similarly, I’ve been doing a bunch of reading from other folks who know what they’re talking about about the future of all kinds of jobs, such as journalism and programming, from writers including Timothy B. Lee, Matthew Iglesias, Ezra Klein, Ben Buchanan, and Laurie Voss. I’m not going to lie, I find Laurie Voss’s writing about the effect of AI on programming jobs most compelling and most comparable to what I think marketers and digital marketers in particular will go through. Laurie writes, this new layer of abstraction [of AI] will do what all the others did, which is improve the speed at which we can produce software of a given quality. Assuming AI lets us build software of equal quality much faster than we did before, this will produce either higher quality software produced in the same amount of time, more software of the same quality, or enormously more software of lower quality. He concludes, “I think we will see all three at the same time.” I agree. I’m very confident that the same will be true of content, messaging, campaigns, offers and ads. There will either be better quality, more at the same quality, or a lot more a terrible quality. But what if I’m wrong? It doesn’t matter whether AI creates more jobs than it destroys, if the only job it destroys is yours. I’m Tim Peter. This is Thinks Out Loud episode 453. And today we’re talking about what happens if AI threatens your marketing and e-commerce job. Let’s dive in. Whenever I try to plan ahead, I use a simple scenario planning model I learned from Joel Garreau’s book, “Radical Evolution,” that says scenarios, Must conform to all known facts. Must identify “predetermineds,” future events so locked in by those of the past that as he writes, “they can usefully be considered inevitable.” Scenarios usually identify “critical uncertainties,” which are highly uncertain, but highly important events that might occur. You should assess any “wild cards,” any big shocks that could completely blow up your scenarios. They should identify embedded assumptions. And ideally, they should identify early warnings. I’m in the process of gaming out some of the larger scenarios around AI and marketing and e-commerce. But for our purposes today, I think that all we really need to do is explore some of the facts and some of the predetermineds. So what are the known facts, at least as I see them? Well… One is that AI is here today. It exists. It’s not science fiction. AI is capable of doing at least decent quality work in some areas of marketing and e-commerce. The most relevant areas to marketing and e-commerce professionals include reasoning and content creation. And you can make the argument that it is also at least as good as the average marketing and e-commerce professional at other tasks, such as highlighting trends in analytics, forecasting demand, and pricing. AI is also terrible in a couple of areas. You know, it’s laughably wrong sometimes, regardless of what it’s doing. Yes, we’re seeing fewer hallucinations on average, but its hallucinations are increasingly subtle and increasingly dangerous. For instance, the study from Columbia Journalism Review found that, and this is a quote, “AI models incorrectly cited sources in more than 60 % of its searches,” often pointing researchers to incorrect or nonexistent sources. Of course, one last fact that we need to take into account in our scenario is that marketing and commerce folks are continually asked to do more with less. If there’s an economic downturn — about which I have some concerns but no predictions — or if your individual company faces a tougher marketplace, then cost-cutting CEOs and CFOs are going to let some people go from marketing. That’s a pretty universal predetermined reality. I wish it wouldn’t be the case. I generally advise clients not to do that, but we all know that it happens. I don’t see any world where that won’t be the case next time around, at least for some businesses and some business leaders. The question that emerges then when it comes to AI taking jobs isn’t, is the AI better than a person? The question is, is AI going to convince the financial decision makers that its work is good enough . And I think it’s reasonable to say that the answer to that question will be yes, at least in the short term, and at least for some companies and some jobs. Yes, AI is good enough. Research that McKinsey has done shows that marketing and sales is the function that most regularly puts generative AI to work today. 42% of surveyed companies are using gen AI in sales and marketing. And LinkedIn found, and this is a quote, “that 51% of businesses that adopted generative AI reported a revenue increase of 10% or more.” Anyone who assumes that AI won’t take any marketing or e-commerce jobs operates under the assumption that either: A.) it’s not nearly good enough to do any work, which is objectively false, and… B.) that decision makers don’t pay attention to their company’s bottom lines, which is objectively, falser, right? That includes anything you might have heard me say in the past that made it seem like AI couldn’t take any jobs. I certainly never meant to suggest that, and I want to clear up that confusion right now. I’d expect at a minimum that decision makers, at least some of them, will hire some fewer people and probably put more emphasis on technology that offsets any slower hiring. We’ll probably see some mix of junior and mid-level roles slow down if not get phased out entirely. I frequently used the example of my late grandmother, who was a telephone operator back in the 1930s and 1940s, to illustrate the most likely scenario. You know, I’ve noted that telephone operators no longer exist, but that lots of people still work for Verizon, AT &T, and T-Mobile to show that technology absolutely makes some jobs go away, but that it creates lots of others. Of course, that’s still a problem if you’re the telephone operator. Before I go any further on this topic, I want to be clear. I am not going to talk about what you would do if some AI super intelligence or artificial general intelligence springs up and deletes all the jobs. At that point, we are so far off the map that what you should do is far outside my expertise or experience. So I’m simply going to talk about the reality of, you know, we assume some jobs might go away. So let’s assume that AI is gonna make some marketing and e-commerce jobs go away and focus on how you can keep that from happening to you and how you can quickly recover if it does. I’d also like to say that if your only demonstrable value to your organization is work that can be automated, a telephone operator plugging cables into a switchboard, then you probably are in trouble today. But to be fair, if your only demonstrable value to your organization is work that can be automated, you were at risk long before AI came along. I doubt that many people listening to this show fall into that category, but it could happen. The job I see most commonly referenced in this area would be something like telemarketing. I’d also think about sales or CRM support roles and maybe some junior copywriters or media buyers being in particularly vulnerable spots. There’s just a lot of automation that can happen. The key question, regardless though, is how you remain both relevant and fulfilled in your work. For me, there are three core areas you need to focus on, and they are: adaptability Integration of AI and human skills, and Personal branding. I want to start by looking at adaptability. It probably won’t shock you that your ability to stay relevant and employed depends on your ability to adapt, to keep learning and growing. I talked a bit about this a couple of weeks ago, but let me drill into it just a bit more deeply. We live in an era of constant change. LinkedIn’s economic graph team noted that, and this is a quote, “by 2030, 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change, with AI emerging as a catalyst.” Shocking, I know. That same report showed that, and again another quote, 10 % of workers hired today have job titles that didn’t exist in the 2000, and that in the US, it’s closer to 20%. Those jobs simply are new. In other words, your continued relevance starts with your adaptability. Some of the jobs that exist today will not exist, and some jobs that will exist in the future don’t exist yet. If you’re unwilling to adapt, you’re likely going to find yourself falling behind. As the LinkedIn report stated, and again, quote, “38% of global C-suite executives prioritize agility when considering entry-level candidates for their organizations, according to recent LinkedIn research. Companies want individuals who can move through different roles and stages within a company and those who consistently re-skill and up-skill to change with the business.” They know that the jobs they’re going to need in the future might not be that same for the people they’re hiring today, and so they want people who are able to move without having to start from scratch. And while the LinkedIn research says that many companies are investing in training to help their teams re-skill, the McKinsey study that I mentioned earlier tells a slightly different story. It found that only 24% of organizations have re-skilled more than 20% of their employees in the last three years. And while 52% expect to re-skill more than 20% of their employees over the next three years, only 19% expect to re-skill more than 50% of their workforce. Let me put that in other words. You, personally, are responsible for your own training and learning if you want to stay relevant. Your company may provide you training, the good ones certainly will, but ultimately it’s your responsibility. If you’re not putting in the work, you are going to find yourself sitting on the sidelines. Some of that training will absolutely need to be focused on artificial intelligence and greater comfort with data. Just as we saw when computers and the internet entered the workplace. And I should say, as people saw, as computers came before me. But folks have needed to have those skills. I’m amazed that I still sometimes run across job postings and resumes that talk about things like “proficiency with office suites, Word, Excel, PowerPoint,” that kind of thing, for mid-career jobs or higher. I mean… dude. Are there many people in those roles who don’t have those skills? So yes, your technical capabilities matter and those technical capabilities will evolve and are continuing to evolve. That’s a fact. But a huge amount of your marketability as an individual depends more on you being a strategic and creative human. A separate LinkedIn report detailed the most in-demand skills for 2024 and lists these five, after adaptability. The five that they list though are communication, customer service, leadership, project management, and management. Yes, analytics cruises in at number six. Being able to listen to and talk with machines is going to matter. But ultimately, your job in marketing and e-commerce involves talking to people, customers, coworkers, your community. If you can’t communicate, if you can’t take care of customers, if you can’t connect with your peers and employees, you’re in much bigger trouble than if you don’t know the difference between, say, transformers and diffusion models in modern AI. In fact, I can tell you with confidence that my entire career has been built around my ability to translate complex topics for general audiences, whether those audiences were my peers, my bosses, our customers and clients, or business school students. I mean, everything I do revolves around that. You’re listening to me talk and communicate right now, right? And sure, poor communicators can use ChatGPT or Perplexity to draft messages, and those tools ability to do that for you undoubtedly will improve with time. Except… how will poor communicators know if the tool is doing that job well? Judgment matters and judgment requires skill. To give just one remarkable example for why skill matters, I read a, I’m not going to lie, hilarious thread on BlueSky the other day about a couple of crypto bro wannabes who developed a “sophisticated,” air quotes, a “sophisticated” plan to let ChatGPT draft legal briefs on their behalf in a lawsuit rather than hiring a pricey and in their view, entirely unnecessary lawyer. The lawyer who shared the story on BlueSky noticed that ChatGPT’s legal brief exposed the crypto bros themselves to charges of fraud. The problem with that is their opponents’ lawyers also noticed that. And so did the judge. Whoops. Now, obviously law and communication aren’t exactly the same thing. But they’re not not the same thing. Writing a legal pleading requires an ability to make a clear point. This one did, just not the one its users realized. Similar kinds of errors can happen in almost any communication. Your ability to be clear, concise, and, I don’t know, maybe make yourself not look like an idiot or a criminal is best not just left to a bot. And how you make yourself look good is the third skill you must develop, by which I mean personal branding. I am not a personal branding expert. I’ve spent most of my career focused on digital strategy, particularly in the service of finding and acquiring customers at a reasonable cost, and continually keeping up to date on the best ways to do that as the marketplace changes. One of the reasons I’m such a big fan of my friend Mark Schaefer’s work is because he is a personal branding expert. I continually learn from his expertise. At the same time, I’m a reasonably well-known person for digital strategy, particularly in service of finding and acquiring customers at a reasonable cost, continually keeping up to date on the best ways to do that as the marketplace changes. People who know me recommend me to their friends and colleagues because they know what I do. They know what our team does. Clients hire me because they know what I can do for them and that I can deliver on what I promise. None of that is intended as a commercial for my consulting firm. Instead, it’s to highlight how my team and I remain employable by having a clearly defined brand, both for the firm and as individuals ourselves. We know who our customers are and what they need, and we ensure that we maintain a presence that highlights our capabilities and, crucially, that we keep learning too. Making yourself continually relevant requires that people know what you can do for them. And it requires that they know that you keep yourself relevant. You should want to learn new things for the joy and sheer human pleasure of it. You also want to be sure others are aware that you’re doing that. If your personal brand doesn’t include discussion of your growth as a person, as a leader, and as a professional, you’re hanging a sign that says “We’re closed.” So maybe don’t do that, okay? Look, I could be wrong about what’s going to happen to marketing and e-commerce in the coming years. Maybe AI will make many more jobs go away than I expect. I don’t think that will happen. In fact, I think we’ll see more jobs in the longer run. That doesn’t mean that AI won’t cause some short to midterm challenges for some folks. And it certainly can’t stop short-sighted decision makers from cutting workers during any downturns we might see along the way. The best way to ensure those decisions, good or bad, don’t hurt you is to explore possible scenarios and have a plan for each. In just about every scenario I’ve looked at, I remain confident that the three things that will help you succeed are adaptability, integration of AI and human skills, and personal branding. Keep working on those three elements in your career, and I feel pretty good that you’ll land on your feet no matter what happens in the future. I can’t wait to hear what you do. Show Wrap-up and Credits Now looking at the clock on the wall, we are very much out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet — and I’m very — hopeful, that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Did someone come to mind? Why not send them a link to the episode? And let them know what you think, too. Keep the conversation going. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 453, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Finally, thank you so much for listening today. I want you to know this show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition?

cách đây 5 weeks trước

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Content marketing plays a crucial role in driving results for your business. Done well, it’s your organization’s 24/7/365 ” salesperson and your 24/7/365 customer service rep. But the emergence of artificial intelligence puts pressure on content marketing. Almost anyone can produce large volumes of content easily and cheaply using generative AI, making it tougher for your business to cut through the noise. How can you compete in such an environment? What can you do to stand apart from the competition and get your message heard by your customers? Ultimately, will AI kill content marketing for customer acquisition? In this “Best of…of Thinks Out Loud ” episode, we dive in and help you uncover how to make content marketing work for your business in an age of AI. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) Deal With It: Digital Makes Marketing Easier for Everyone, Which Makes Marketing Harder For Everyone (Thinks Out Loud Episode 213) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) Digital Transformation is All About Customers (Thinks Out Loud Episode 323) – Tim Peter & Associates When people are your brand – Tim Peter & Associates Big Digital Marketing Trends: Who Speaks For Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 377) Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy eBook by Mark Schaefer (Kindle Store) The Rebirth of Trusted Gatekeepers (Thinks Out Loud Episode 307) – Tim Peter & Associates Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) Will AI and ChatGPT Kill Your Search Traffic? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 381) Will AI Kill Emotion in Marketing? – Biznology What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) Show Chapters 00:00 The Role of Content in Customer Acquisition 01:33 AI’s Impact on Content Marketing 03:45 The Importance of Human Connection 04:04 Personalization and Community in Marketing 07:45 The Future of Content Marketing with AI You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 15m 10s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Best of Thinks Out Loud — Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? Hi. Welcome back to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. I’m regularly asked whether AI will kill content marketing for customer acquisition? My answer to this question has never changed, not once. That answer is, AI will only kill content marketing for customer acquisition if we let it. Content is your 24x7x365 customer service person. It’s your 24x7x365 sales rep. It’s your job to make sure that it’s doing its job effectively and efficiently. Yes, the availability of AI makes producing quality content relatively cheap and easy. And as I mentioned at the time, whenever new technologies make marketing and customer acquisition easier for everyone, they end up making marketing and customer acquisition harder for everyone. It’s absolutely true that your competitors can flood the marketplace with cheap, decent content on social and search — and, as a result, make it harder for you to cut through to reach your customers. That’s all true. It’s also largely within your control how you put these tools to work and, critically, make them work for your brand and business. In this episode from our archives that you’re about to listen to, I looked at why AI probably won’t kill content marketing for customer acquisition. I talked about how marketers and their companies can use AI to provide information and insights that address their customers’ wants and needs and hopes and fears. I talked about the role that AI plays in improving personalized experience and content creation at scale, while also focusing on how you can be more human to drive better customer connection — and increased company revenues. To take you through how you can do this, I’m digging into the archives, with a repost of a prior episode that asked — and answered — will AI kill content marketing for customer acquisition? I hope you enjoy it. Okay, so let’s get the first question out of the way right up front. Will AI kill content marketing for customer acquisition? My answer is pretty straightforward. Only if we let it. If you’ve listened to this show for any amount of time, you know that I’m not an “either/or” kind of person. I’m all about “both/and.” AI absolutely has its place. This is about both AI and quality content. AI has a place in making that happen. That place, what it can do for us, will undoubtedly grow over time. AI is great for helping you brainstorm new content ideas. It’s amazing for helping you research your customers and their needs. AI can do a credible job, sometimes better than credible, at first drafts and editing. You can use AI to review your content and offer valuable feedback about how well you make your points, all from the point of view of your customers, as well as using it for more tactical items like grammar and style tips. It’s also able to automate developing and delivering personalized headlines and copy and imagery at scale. These are common features in all manner of digital tools today, not just large language models like ChatGPT, Claude or Google’s Gemini. They’re super helpful automating the time consuming and expensive parts of creating content at scale. I also think that you almost certainly don’t want AI to become the face of your brand. Why? Let’s start by remembering Jeff Bezos’ advice about what won’t change. What are the things we know aren’t going to change? One thing that’s not going to change is that your customers value companies that take care of them more than anything. They want to work with companies that make their lives easier. That’s true and it’s always true. Another truth is that people want to work with people. My friend Mark Schaefer in his book, Belonging to the Brand, Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy , argues compellingly that customers continually seek a community that matches their values and concerns. To borrow a phrase, we all want someplace “where everybody knows your name.” That’s why personalization shows up every year on every list of the big trends shaping marketing and customer acquisition. This is actually highly related to the point about customers wanting to work with companies that make their lives easier. It’s not that customers want personalization. It’s that they want companies that understand and address their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their fears. They want to be seen and heard as individuals, as human beings. How many times have you heard people in marketing talking about using “surprise and delight” to drive customer acquisition and retention? The sad truth is that far too often, “understanding customers” and “meeting their needs” qualifies as surprising and delightful. At least in theory, no one should be better at doing that than another human being, and in particular, another human being who genuinely cares. My point here is that Mark is spot on. Community matters. And in a world where AI plays an increasingly prominent role in our lives, being human matters . It gives you a way to connect with current and potential customers in a real, live, human way. If you tilt your head and squint, it’s actually pretty easy to see how community itself is a sort of personalization. Community demonstrates that you’re talking to individuals who share the same values and concerns as they do. It’s a fundamentally human way of demonstrating your own humanity and your company’s humanity. I predict that the companies that do the best job of connecting with their customers as human beings, the companies who center human beings, will be the big winners over the next decade, whether they’re large businesses or small businesses. And that will be true even if they use AI under the hood or behind the scenes. So what has all that got to do with content marketing? Actually… EVERYTHING . No one wants to read or listen to or watch or experience machine-generated content. No one wants generic content that lacks a clear point of view or a style. They don’t want content that isn’t tailored to themselves or the communities that matter to them. They want to know you’re talking to them, both as individuals and as members of the communities that matter to them. They want to hear your voice, both literally and figuratively. Customers want to know who they’re dealing with. And if I could make another bold prediction, we’re going to see, I think, a very real, very serious pushback on AI-generated content. We’re already starting to see it. Your customers, the human beings that you talk to and with every day, want to hear from other human beings. They want to hear from people they trust. They want to see and hear from and connect with people, ideally a person, someone they know and trust. Part of creating quality content that matters for your customers is putting a human face to that content. So why not show them who’s behind it? If you’ve got a webinar or a podcast or a video, you want to be clear about who the people in these conversations are and what they share in common with your customers. There’s a reason that podcasts have the same hosts all the time. They’re all about building a personal relationship with their listeners, with their audience. If you’ve got written content, go ahead and list who the author is, who they are, and again, what they have in common with your audience. It’s about building that human relationship. And sure, you can use AI to help with the planning, with the outlining, with the drafting, and with the editing. You can use AI to help you repurpose the content for different audiences. Automation is absolutely part of both scaling up volume and lowering your cost of customer acquisition. You want to use the best of both worlds, both human and automation, to drive results for your business. That’s what I mean. This is about making sure we’re doing “both/and.” If you want to acquire customers, if you want to acquire more customers , you want to be more human. Not just “seen as human,” but actually “ be human .” You want your content to connect with your customers as people, as human beings, as individuals and as parts of the larger communities that they care about. You want to provide a human face that your customers can grow to trust. And yes, you also want to use AI as a valuable tool to produce and distribute your content more quickly, more easily, and in a more personalized way. It’s not “either/or;” it’s “both/and.” AI is not going to kill content marketing. There, I’ve said it. Let me plant a stake in the ground. AI will not kill content marketing. Bad content will. Boring, obviously machine-generated content that lacks humanity will. Content that fails to connect with human beings as individuals and as members of the communities they care about will kill content marketing. In short, AI will only kill content marketing if you let it. So let’s not do that, okay? Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 449. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

1
AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce — How You Stay Relevant 19:49

cách đây 6 weeks trước19:49

19:49

I’ve long argued that artificial intelligence won’t take your job, but that smart people who use AI might. What you might want to think about though is what “smart people who use AI” looks like in practice. Because your future in marketing and e-commerce undoubtedly depends on using AI well. In this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, we take a look at what “using AI well” in the future looks like. We also break down the skills needed now… and in the future. And, most importantly, we explore how you can stay relevant as AI continues to change marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition overall. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce: How You Stay Relevant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 452) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links AI Won’t Steal Your Job: Smart People Who Put AI to Work Will (Thinks Out Loud Episode 208) Is ChatGPT Going to Steal Your Job? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 371) Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics IDC Estimates that GenAI Will Increase Marketing Productivity More Than 40% by 2029 | Business Wire [AI Replacing Jobs Statistics and Facts [2024*]]( https://electroiq.com/stats/ai-replacing-jobs-statistics/#google_vignette ) Top Marketing Trends for 2025: AI, Automation, and More AI usage in marketing 2022 | Statista What Jobs Will AI Replace & Which Are Safe in 2024 [+ Data] The AI Marketing Jobs Boom: Top Roles, Skills, and Trends for 2025 – Marketing Scoop The AI Marketing Technologist: Revolutionizing Marketing Organizational Structure – Pallas Advisory Report: 64% of marketers fear AI will steal their jobs The Future of Jobs Report 2025 | World Economic Forum The case for human-centered AI | McKinsey https://www.conversica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conversica2024MarketingExecAISurvey.pdf#:~:text=marketing%20use%20cases%20for%20growth,investment%20in%20AI%20tools%20or 77 Artificial Intelligence Stats & Trends for 2025 – Planable Why You Need to Ignore the Coming AI Backlash (Thinks Out Loud Episode 417) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) Will AI Make Marketers Dumber? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 419) Revisiting "How to Add an AI to Your Team" (Thinks Out Loud) Why I’m not worried about AI causing mass unemployment Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever (Thinks Out Loud Episode 355) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 19m 49s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: AI and the Future of Marketing and Ecommerce — How You Stay Relevant Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. You’ve heard me and others point out that AI won’t take your job, but that smart people who use AI will. Especially given that there was a dreadful jobs report released today. What is the future of sales, marketing, and e-commerce roles in an age of AI? We know that AI isn’t going to take all the jobs. That is a silly notion. But what do the marketing and customer acquisition jobs of the future look like? What do you need to do to ensure that your job is safe? How do you stay relevant? How can you survive and thrive as a marketer, whether in branding or performance marketing, or as an e-commerce professional in an age of AI? This is episode 452 of Thinks Out Loud . Let’s dive in. First, let’s acknowledge that the miserable US jobs report today didn’t have a lot to do with AI. A third of the lost jobs come from cuts in government employment alone, apparently enacted by our acting Prime Minister, Elon Musk. That said, economic uncertainty may influence executives at other companies to cut jobs and to believe that AI can replace those workers. While there’s no direct evidence that I’m aware of that that’s happening yet, in any large scale anyway. It’s certainly plausible and something that I’m watching for at present and in the weeks and months ahead. There’s some isolated cases but we’re not seeing it as a large scale trend yet. Second, let’s also acknowledge that despite the possibility of some leaders looking to AI to replace folks in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition roles, there is no way that all of the jobs in those fields go away in any reasonable timeframe. That is simply not going to happen. I like to tell the story of my grandmother, Marie, who worked as a telephone operator back in the 1930s and 1940s. A telephone operator, for those unaware of the gig, was a major job role for many women back in the early part of the 20th century. In 1920, roughly 2% of all women employed in the US were working as telephone operators. I mean, that’s a huge number. More impactful, at least in my family’s case, is that according to the 1930 census, my then 23-year-old grandmother, Marie, and her 25-year-old sister were the only two people in their household with jobs. Their dad, my then 49-year-old great-grandfather, was an out-of-work machinist who had been laid off as part of the Great Depression. These two young women were the ones who actually kept the family fed and housed during a time of enormous economic pain and uncertainty. At any rate, the reason I tell this story is because today, telephone operators don’t exist. My grandmother, who was long retired by the time I came around, is the only telephone operator I’ve ever met. The job is completely nonexistent. Technology, in the form of automated switching, made the job go away. So I don’t want you to take away from this discussion that technology can’t make a job go away. I would never suggest that it’s impossible for that to occur. I know firsthand, or at least secondhand, from my grandmother, that it absolutely can happen. I also don’t want you to think that I believe AI is going to take all the jobs away, period. I suppose it’s theoretically likely, but it’s functionally impossible in reality. Even though Telephone Operator no longer exists as a job role, plenty of people still work for Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile and all kinds of other carriers around the world. Broadening our look at various job roles for a minute, remember when I said the telephone operator was one of the top jobs for women 100 years ago? Well today, the top 10 jobs held by women in the US, representing around 17 % of all jobs, employ more women than the total number of women who had a job back in my grandmother’s day. In other words, there are almost six times as many women working today as there were women working 100 years ago, despite a full century of technological progress. And the numbers for men are smaller, because obviously there were a lot more men working than women working 100 years ago, but the same basic truth applies. There are more people working even in an era with a lot more technology. Research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the job outlooks for advertising, promotion, and marketing managers will increase by8 % between 2023 and 2033, a pace that’s faster than the average of all the jobs they track. And again, they’re taking into account technological change when they make these forecasts. So don’t tell me that all of the marketing and customer acquisition jobs are going to go away anytime soon, or potentially ever. That seems extremely unlikely. Sure, some studies show that almost two-thirds of marketers, and this is a quote, “fear that AI will steal their jobs.” For the reasons I’ve already outlined though, I’m not convinced. I’m willing to bet that there will be plenty of long-term opportunities for marketing and customer acquisition professionals in the years to come, regardless of progress with AI. None of that means, though, that your job won’t change. And none of this matters to you if your job goes away. When thinking about the effects AI might have in your marketing roles, that’s where your focus needs to remain. How do you ensure that you stay employed? How do you ensure that you stay relevant? Let’s start with change. You’ve likely heard that AI affects tasks more than it does jobs. That’s true. There’s some research from IDC that suggests generative AI will increase marketing productivity by more than 40% by 2029, so just in the next four years. And yes, some of those productivity improvements may cause companies to hire fewer people. I bet that more than a few CFOs will figure, “Why do we need more people if the folks we have can improve their output using these tools by 20% or 30% or 40%?” I mean, if you think about it, a four-person team where each person sees a 25 % lift in their productivity, suddenly, on paper, looks a lot like a five-person team. Of course some C-suite execs will think this way. And at least in some cases, they’re probably right to do so. As I see it, there are several areas where people working with AI can be more effective than just people or AI alone. That’s what your job becomes now. How do you become one of those people? If you want to stay relevant, if you want to grow your career in marketing and customer acquisition, there are a number of areas that you need to focus on. These include: Strategic thinking. Given that AI can increasingly handle tactical aspects of marketing — so things like conducting A/B tests or putting together outlines and rough drafts of copy and headlines, those kinds of activities — your ability to think about the big picture becomes even more important than it already is. Your ability to think beyond short-term incentives and look at where your brand and your business fits into your customer’s lives longer term matters more than ever. To that end, it’s increasingly important for you to think about the next area that matters too, which is… Human-centered thinking, things like brand and ethical considerations. AI provides powerful capabilities, but it will never be more human than a human. Who speaks for your customers’ concerns about privacy and safety and the pace of change in their lives? Who represents their needs overall? Who’s looking out for your customers? If it’s not you, do you really think that the machines will? Even when we’re using technology, automation, and AI to move faster, and ideally better, we’ve also got to lean into our humanity to show care and compassion and our core values in every interaction. In many cases, those are what your customers cherish more than anything. If you think about technology more broadly, when human beings started riding bicycles or started driving cars, they also realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t okay to simply mow down pedestrians whenever and wherever they wanted. Right? We don’t want to turn machines loose without guidance and governance from other humans who are thinking about what matters most of all to our customers and to our communities. The marketers who bring those skills to the table will find that they’re able to both do right by their communities and by their companies through their attention to the longer term needs of the people they serve. Be human. It’s something you can always do better than a machine. Another area where you can focus is on data enabled thinking . Notice that I didn’t say “data driven.” Data-driven sometimes turns into following the numbers blindly. Data-enabled instead means that you’ve learned to recognize and value not just the numbers, but the story that those numbers tell you. You can’t ignore the data, that would be foolish. And AI is outstanding at finding patterns hidden within your data, often shining a light on opportunities or hidden insights that you or your competitors might otherwise miss. What’s also true is that you must get good at interpreting what the numbers tell you about the bigger picture. You must get better at asking the right questions of your data. Learn to exercise your judgment around what the data says. This is a key area where you can use AI to help you improve. I’ve mentioned many times before Wharton School entrepreneurship professor Ethan Mullick, who requires all of his students to use artificial intelligence when they do their assignments. But he also requires them to show their work. He wants to assess why they chose a given direction and help his learners understand how to improve their thinking when using these tools. I frequently use ChatGPT or Gemini for brainstorming sessions. I riff on ideas that I see when assessing reports and other data to sharpen my thinking. These tools help me think more deeply and push me towards second order thinking when examining results and improving those results over time by reducing errors, reducing unforeseen consequences, helping me think bigger about our companies and our plans, marketing, and e-commerce activities. All of those are incredibly valuable and make me a better marketer and customer acquisition professional. The last place I’d encourage you to focus is on learning . Now, let’s be fair, learning is hardly a new idea in marketing and customer acquisition. But the rapid pace of change brought on by technology generally, and by AI specifically, demands that we hold ourselves accountable for our own growth over the long term. (As a quick aside, I don’t think this is only true in marketing. It is equally true in every aspect of business and in life. If you’re not learning, if you’re not growing, you’re in trouble long term.) Happily, most marketers are already doing the work here. If you’re not already doing this, you need to put in some time to get comfortable with the tools that are out there. These could include general purpose AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. They also could include AI features in various ad platforms like Google Ads or Meta Ads. And they could include the AI capabilities built into Salesforce or HubSpot, Adobe Suite, Klaviyo, or Mailchimp. But, and this is probably different than what you’ve heard before, the point isn’t necessarily to become expert in any one tool. I’m not saying you should not become comfortable with them. You should. And if you’re earlier in your career, you definitely want to develop a degree of fluency with the tools relevant to your job. There is no doubt about that. What’s also true is that the tools and technologies change rapidly. That’s kind of the whole point of what I’m talking about today. Being really good at just one tool can be career limiting. It’s a good idea to be well known among your peers and community as the go-to person for search marketing, or the best email expert, or the queen of e-commerce. And being proficient, knowledgeable, and up to date in the tools of your trade matter. You should know how to use them. But if you focus too narrowly on a single tool and only its ins and outs, only that, that’s when you’re more at risk. Instead, look for trends and patterns across the array of tools and tactics in your chosen part of the marketing field. Then explore how those tie back to larger marketing trends, how they fit into the bigger picture of customer acquisition. It’s okay to be known as, for instance, a Shopify superstar or an SEO specialist. Just make sure you take the time to fit that into the bigger picture. Because the people best able to connect to the dots, to see how various pieces of the customer journey tie together, are the people best positioned to build a sustainable career. And all the better if you’re then able to communicate complex topics to more general audiences. This stuff, all of this digital stuff, all of AI, can absolutely be complicated. The more you’re able to help others just navigate that complexity, the more you’re able to tie that back to a business result, the more those folks are going to want you around. So to wrap this all up, AI is here, it’s real, and it’s part of your job to understand it. Technology has made some jobs go away in the past. It’s likely that AI will do the same today and in the future. You can compete in an age of AI by focusing on areas where you are naturally better than AI. AI can’t out-human a human. Strategic thinking, human-centered thinking, and data-enabled thinking, plus learning, are key to your longevity in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. That’s always been true, and it’s more true today than ever. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep helping others do the same, and they’ll look for ways to help you too. AI will change some of your tasks, and it probably will change your job, but it will only take your career as a marketer away if you let it. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet I hope that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too. I’d really appreciate that. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 452, and an archive of all our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And of course, as always, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I want to thank you so much for listening this week. I want you to know this show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and take care, everybody. The post AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce — How You Stay Relevant appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 451) 16:58

cách đây 7 weeks trước16:58

16:58

With all of the discussion around ChatGPT, generative AI, and large language models, you’d think that OpenAI’s tools — or those from Perplexity or Anthropic — are crushing Google. It would be easy to assume that search is dead. Here’s the thing, though: The numbers don’t back that up. If anything, Google’s position over the last few months has gotten stronger, not weaker. That’s great, right? If Google’s winning, then you just need to keep doing what you’re doing and business will keep pouring in from Google’s paid and organic search, right? Well, no. In fact, Google winning in the marketplace has as many potential downsides for your business as Google losing. Why is that so? What happens if Google beats ChatGPT in the marketplace? And why does that matter for your business? That’s what this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you… Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 451) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Chegg sues Google over AI search summaries | TechCrunch Chegg – Get 24/7 Homework Help | Rent Textbooks ChatGPT Subscribers Nearly Tripled to 15.5 Million in 2024 — The Information Why Google’s 4th Quarter Results Raise Questions for SEO & PPC ChatGPT Search by the Numbers: How is it Performing in the Search Space? | Datos Browse All of Google’s Products & Services – Google Google 2024 Earnings PDF link AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) How To Run Your Business As If Google Didn’t Exist (Thinks Out Loud Episode 298) Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) Revisiting Google Big AI Problem (Thinks Out Loud) Why AI Makes Customer Experience Even More Important for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 427) Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) Google Loses its Antitrust Case: Why That Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 429) Is Google Doomed? And Other Top Digital Trends for 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 408) Does Google Lack Vision? Big Tech’s Earnings Q3-2023 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 401) Is Google Telling Us That Organic Search Doesn’t Matter Any Longer? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 392) The End of Google? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 372) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 16m 58s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business I’ve been warning people for months that Google could face serious challenges. Those include: Customers shifting to AI for search Customers shifting to SOCIAL (such as TikTok) for “search” Adverse antitrust rulings against them that force them to substantially change their business Privacy regulations affecting their products and overall business There’s a new one on the horizon where an education technology company called Chegg is suing Google using a novel argument. According to TechCrunch: In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Chegg accuses Google of unfair competition — specifically reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment. Google, Chegg claims, forces companies to supply their content in order to be included in Google Search, unfairly exercising its monopoly power in search to reap the benefits of third-party IP. Wild. My concern over the last few years has been that any struggle Google faces could also hurt your business. After all, Google is usually the top driver of traffic and revenue online for many businesses. As far back as 2020, we ran an episode called How To Run Your Business As If Google Didn’t Exist. So, is Google in trouble? Are they doomed? Not… really? In fact, Google is winning. But that doesn’t mean that you should put all your eggs in the Google basket. In fact, I’d still argue there’s a big risk for you here. What is that risk? And what should you do about it? This is episode 451 of Thinks Out Loud. We’re talking about Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning? (And Why It Matters to You). Let’s dive in. If you’re like most businesses, a lot of your traffic and revenue comes from Google. So, anything that hurts their business has the potential to hurt yours, too. That’s not good. One of the biggest threats to Google is how much of its revenues and profits come from search ads. Its 2024 annual report shows that 54% of Google’s earnings last year came from search. Almost 73% of revenues and $33 billion in profits came from its (primarily ad-driven) services. The company as a whole achieved almost $31 billion in total profits. $33 billion from services, $2 billion from Google Cloud and a $3.9 billion loss from its other activities. In simple terms, services — of which search is the majority share — delivered more than 100% of its total profits. My long-standing concern is that customers could switch to ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity easily significantly damaging Google’s business — and yours. All customers would have to do is type a different URL or open a different app and Google could take a 5%, 10% or 20% hit to its business. That would be bad for you, too. Except that’s not what’s happening. Not even a little. ChatGPT is woefully far from knocking Google off. While its growth is staggering, it’s hardly challenging Google’s dominance. According to The Information: Paid subscribers to ChatGPT nearly tripled to 15.5 million last year from 5.8 million a year earlier, OpenAI recently told some shareholders, despite competition from chatbots made by Google, Anthropic and Meta Platforms. Based on what OpenAI charges for the chatbot subscriptions, the increase means ChatGPT was likely generating at least $4 billion in annualized revenue around the end of last year SEMrush data shows that OpenAI.com got roughly 1.5 billion visits in January. And 15.5 million paid subscribers is pretty good, especially given its growth rate. $4 billion in annualized revenue is nothing to sneeze at either. Seriously. Now, let’s look at Google’s numbers. Again, according to SEMRush, Google got almost 140 billion visits in January. And their annual report shows that they had $96 billion in revenue in Q4 and $350 billion revenue in 2024 as a whole. That would more, then, wouldn’t it. In very rough numbers, Google is 100x larger than ChatGPT. And ChatGPT, after Google, is by far the biggest LLM company out there. OK, you might say, maybe ChatGPT’s growth is stealing small amounts of share from Google that haven’t turned up in larger terms yet. It’s a good theory — and one worth watching longer term. Let’s check the numbers, shall we? According to Datos, ChatGPT’s average number of sessions per user in 2024 grew from 0.43 to 1.27. Meanwhile Google’s average number of sessions per user ALSO GREW… from 11.47 to 14.12. I’ll keep watching those numbers. Growth for both has to be coming from somewhere. What I suspect is happening though is what Google’s growth has long been built on: Offering customers more ways to search, more ways to interact with its products, and raising overall digital activity by customers. Yes, its growth is slowing. But that doesn’t mean it has no way to increase those numbers. Consider this. Apart from search, Google also offers: Chrome Gmail YouTube Google Docs Google Drive Google Maps Android Over roughly 110 other services for businesses, developers, and regular old people. ChatGPT simply doesn’t have that level of product distribution. I can’t say it never will. But it’s clearly got a long road to hoe before it’s a serious threat to Google’s business. Cool, so we can all rest easy and let Google do what it always does, right? Our businesses have nothing to worry about, true? Um… no. Google maintaining its share still could be bad for your business. Remember that lawsuit I mentioned at the top of the show? Chegg is seeing real-world business impacts because Google increasingly offers AI Overviews in its results, resulting in fewer clicks to Chegg’s site and a revenue hit for the company. I bet you’re seeing something similar. In our earlier discussions of why Google’s loss could hurt you, we also talked about why Google winning could also hurt you. And that’s what we’re seeing in that Chegg lawsuit… as well as plenty of other real-world cases. You don’t need Google to lose for it to affect your business. They just need to drive fewer clicks… and that’s just what we’re seeing. I also suspect that relatively soon, Google’s going to increase its ad load on AI Overviews that could send you more traffic… if you’re willing to pay for it. As discussed on last week’s episode, “AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated,” you can see fewer clicks while also seeing greater revenue. But you’d sure hate to have to pay for it. In fact, I’d argue that your job from this day going forward is how you get more business from fewer clicks whether those clicks are free or paid. It’s no longer about ranking or driving traffic from SEO. It’s about getting people to your website and your business and then driving greater connection with those folks. The average website has a conversion rate somewhere between 0.5% and 5%. That’s true across B2C and B2B, regardless of your business. I realize that’s a wide range; but conversion rate is a complicated topic. Lots of factors go into how you measure conversion rate, so just work with me on this one. The point is that if you think about conversion solely in terms of people showing up and “purchasing” or filling in a lead gen form, you’re thinking about conversion far too narrowly. And you’re letting your website coast more than it should. Because if Google’s changes make your clicks and traffic hold steady — or worse, decline — you need your website to work better for your business. And that depends on having better content. Too often, we tend to think of content marketing in terms of how it helps you rank in search. But it’s so much more than that. Content is your 24x7x365 sales person your 24x7x365 customer service rep. Its job is to connect with your customers and capturing their interest. Your website is a container for your business’s content. You don’t necessarily need customers to fill out a lead form or put something in your cart — though, of course that would be nice. You need them to learn know more about you. To engage with your content. To want to come back. And, eventually, yes, to buy. Your content’s job is to facilitate each and every step in that process. That could include getting customers to follow you on social media. It could include getting them to opt into your email newsletter. It could include getting them to share that content with their friends and family and fans and followers. It could include getting them come to an event. It could include getting them to compare your products and services. It should do all of these and more. These aren’t vanity metrics. They’re indicators of customer interest and intent. We’ve done work with a bunch of companies that show the value of these actions to your business so you can focus on the right ones. My question today is whether you’re asking your content to do that work. Are you focusing on developing rich, rewarding content that customers look forward to? Or are you taking the output of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity, giving it a quick edit, then posting that to your site? Because one of those points to a better future for your business. And the other is a waste of time no matter how inexpensive it was for you to generate. The big takeaways I’d love for you to remember today is that: ChatGPT probably has a bright future, but it’s currently running a distant second to Google Google’s changes could hurt your business even if they win in the marketplace. Google likely is going to place more ads alongside AI Overviews over time, that could drive up the cost of traffic and customer acquisition for your business. Your job from this point forward is to get more revenue from the traffic you get, whether it involves clicks or not and whether those clicks are free or not Your content marketing must be personal, human, and worthwhile to your customers. It’s got to work as your 24x7x365 customer service rep and salesperson. Otherwise, it’s not worth doing. And we need to broaden our definition of conversion on our websites to measure how well our content is doing its job. Otherwise, we’re wasting our company’s and our customers’ time and money. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 451, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thanks for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. Until then, please, be well, be safe, and take care everybody. The post Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 451) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

1
AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) 17:49

cách đây 8 weeks trước17:49

17:49

Is it possible that clicks are overrated in digital marketing and in marketing more generally? Isn’t the point of marketing to drive revenue? I think so, in both cases. You absolutely can drive revenue without clicks. Great marketing has done that for years. But, if that’s the case, how do you measure the value of your marketing, and especially, of your content marketing? How do you stand apart in a sea of sameness? And what role does AI play in all of this? AI, content, and revenue — and why clicks are overrated — is the topic of this week’s episode of Thinks Out Loud , our marketing and customer acquisition podcast. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Traffic Is Down; Revenue Is… Up? – SparkToro Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) Learn more about Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World from Mark Schaefer’s website, Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow Buy “Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World” on Amazon You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 17m 49s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated Welcome to Thinks Out Loud , I’m Tim Peter. I read an article the other day from Amanda Natavidad at Spark Toro that asked, “Traffic is Down, Revenue is… Up?” Weird, right? The fact is that I see this all the time. Google search on social and ad performance sometimes declines, and yet revenues are either flat or better. In the immortal words of Diondre Cole, “what’s up with that?” Does that mean your marketing isn’t working? Or is it possible that clicks are overrated? Can you drive revenue without clicks? And if you can, what role does your content marketing play in making that happen? Lastly, how does AI play into all of this? The answers are, well… Hang with me a second. I’ll get to them shortly. This is episode 450 of Thinks Out Loud . We’re talking about driving revenue without clicks. Let’s dive in. Before I get too far into this discussion, I want to address the big question, which is “what is the point of marketing?” The answer, which you probably know, but might surprise a few folks, is marketing exists to drive revenue. Your job isn’t to drive clicks or traffic. It’s not even to build your brand. The point of marketing is to drive revenue, period, end of story. Building a brand is a great way to do that, to drive revenue. Almost always, it’s a critical step towards driving revenue. And clicks and traffic certainly help. But they’re also steps towards the overall goal. And that goal is revenue, or even better, profits. As a buddy of mine likes to say, “you don’t deposit clicks. You deposit money.” I don’t mean this to be mercenary. Your company and your team and you yourself may have larger, more altruistic, more beneficial motives for the work that you do. There are so many companies who do great work in this area. Think of companies like TOMS or Patagonia or Out of the Closet, a thrift store in my backyard, that donates its proceeds to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. They’re all remarkable. They do tremendous work in their communities and they deserve credit for their commitment to making the world better for all of us. But without revenue, without profits, without cash money, those companies can’t deliver of their amazing admirable promises to their communities. Marketing that doesn’t deliver revenue, at least in the longer term, is a waste of time, it’s a waste of budget, and it’s a waste of effort. That’s why I always say that content is your 24 by seven by 365 salesperson and your 24 by seven by 365 customer service rep. It is marketing in action. It is marketing intended to drive results. The salesperson part of it is obvious. It drives sales. And the customer service rep part helps drive satisfaction and retention among your customers. Those lower your long-term cost of customer acquisition by helping you keep the people already using your products and services and getting them to come back again and again and again. That’s why, what you’ve heard me say before, that content is king and customer experience is queen. They work together to sell and retain your customers. So shouldn’t your content at least drive clicks? Again? No, not necessarily. I mean, it’d be great if it did, but it’s not necessarily what you need it to do. Your content exists to connect with your customers, both real customers and potential customers. It helps them understand who you are and help people solve their problems, how you make their lives better. And again, help convert them to customers and keep those customers coming back again and again and again. Convert and keep. That’s what your content needs to do. Clicks are one way to do that, sure. But your content can do so much more than that. So much more than simply drive a single click. When your content is shared on social channels, it can keep your name in front of potential customers. And that can drive people to type in your URL, or far more common, search for your brand name. Think about how much search has changed over the last couple years. We don’t have 10 blue links any longer. We don’t have the way search has always worked. When people search for your category or a topic area or something more generic, you might show up. Do you know what comes up when people search for you by name? You, your brand. That is a genuinely good thing. Capital G, capital T, GOOD THING. You love to see it. And getting people to be invested in your brand is part of what your content is supposed to do. Because that’s how you drive revenue. You get people to care about your brand. You get people to care who you are. You get people to care about what you do to help them live a better life. That’s the whole point. My friend Mark Schaefer has a new book, “Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World,” which is well worth your time. It is filled with tons of case studies of brands doing amazing work, creating great stories shared with their customers, friends and families and fans and followers that drive actual, real, honest to goodness engagement in the best possible sense of the word with brands just like yours. It causes those folks to want to learn more, to browse, and yes, to buy, to create revenue for your brand, to create profits for your business. Content that gets people curious about your business is good content, is really good content. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Because getting people curious about your brand, getting them invested in your brand is how you convert them to customers and how you convert to revenue. You also can measure it. I know this might sound contradictory relative to what I said a little bit ago, but you can see the value here even without clicks. Pay attention to changes in traffic from brand and keywords. Keep track of how much direct navigation and activity on your app you receive if you have one. Most importantly, keep a close eye on your revenue. While the specifics of how you drill down into the details around this kind of tracking are beyond the scope of today’s episode, every one of these are signs that your marketing is reaching the people you want to reach, that it’s doing the work you need it to do. In fact, I’m going to say something a little controversial here, but if you can’t see it show up in your revenue, then your marketing isn’t working. That’s a sign right there that you have work to do. You need to be able to see something to know that it’s working. And if you’re not seeing it, then it’s not working. And if you are seeing things happen, then it’s a sign that things are working. It’s just drilling into the details to know how to do that. Drop me a line if you’d like to learn more about how to do that. We help people solve that problem all the time. So content marketing is good even without clicks on the content itself, right? It makes sense why you want to use it. How does AI fit into this picture? Well, I’m glad you asked. First, I want to go back to our prior episode from a couple of weeks ago where I said “AI won’t kill content marketing, bad content will. Boring, obviously machine generated content that lacks humanity will. Content that fails to connect with human beings as individuals and as members of the communities they care about will kill content marketing. In short, AI will only kill content marketing if you let it.” I am dead serious about that. AI will not produce the content that your customers love. Almost no way, no how. What AI can do though, is help you brainstorm ideas for content. You can use AI to generate personas for your target customers. Then ask your favorite AI to provide feedback about your ideas before you invest too much time and treasure into producing them. You can use AI to help you craft outlines or even, and I can’t emphasize this word enough, create rough drafts for your content, for your imagery, for your video scripts, and for your social media posts. Again, rough drafts, not the final draft. You can also use AI to help you parse your data to uncover whether any spikes in your analytics represent a fluke or a longer term trend. When you use AI to help you craft content, do not, and I am begging you, DO NOT take the output these tools provide and post them as is. Do not use them as the final version of your content. Anyone can do that. Increasingly, it feels like everyone is, and that’s why we see so much crap content. I mean, if I’m being perfectly honest, I use AI-generated images more than I should. We’re going to be moving away from that over time. They’re just not always great images. They don’t do what we need them to do. They don’t tell the story of the brand we need them to tell. It was great to test them out. It was great to learn about them. It was great to see what could be done with them. But fundamentally, do they actually represent us at our most human, at our most sincere, and at our most truthful and honest? No! They’re not great content. They’re fine. But they’re not great. Instead, your content should reflect your brand, your personality. And as much as possible, a specific individual, a specific human within your company who can build longer term relationships and trust with your target audience. You don’t want customers to connect with a robot. For one thing, they probably won’t. Right? For another, it doesn’t stand apart from anybody else’s robot. Instead you want your audience, you want the people you want to talk to to connect with human beings, with the human beings that make your company, your brand distinct and human. To give one real world example, this podcast that you’re listening to right now is not scripted by a machine. It isn’t hosted by a machine. We do use AI to transcribe the recording. We use AI to test titles. We use AI to generate the image that accompanies each episode and do some careful curation of multiple possible images. We occasionally use AI to review the script and provide feedback. And that’s it. That’s all we do. Other companies we work with use AI to help personalize messages or test alternatives for different customer segments. Some use AI editing tools to streamline video production. They — and we — use AI to improve efficiency and scale. But all of those start and end with human crafted content. That’s the only way you’re gonna stand apart. Otherwise, you’re gonna sink into a sea of sameness. So what are some key takeaways as you think about using AI to help your content marketing drive revenues without clicks? The first is that the point of your marketing is to drive revenue, period. Next, your content marketing is your 24 by seven by 365 salesperson and 24 by seven by 365 customer service rep. If your content helps you gain customers or keep existing ones, your content is doing its job, whether those people click or not. Next, your content that makes customers curious about your brand and your business is good content. Do more of that. Next, you can track your content’s effectiveness by watching branded activity in search, social, and your website. AI can help you identify traffic and trends there. Next, AI can also help you streamline or scale production of great content. But AI shouldn’t be the face or voice of your company. Customers want to work with people they like and that they trust. Your people must own and produce your final content deliverables. Plus, remember that everyone who uses AI to create their final content deliverables increasingly all look and sound the same. Break free from that herd. Be human. Ultimately, great content produced by and for humans will help you drive revenues and profits for your business with or without clicks. Embrace that reality. Your business, your brand, and your bottom line will all thank you for it. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might so know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 450 of Thinks Out Loud , and an archive of all of our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thanks so much for listening today. This show wouldn’t happen without you. I very much appreciate you doing it. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

1
Revisiting “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year” (Thinks Out Loud) 25:16

cách đây 9 weeks trước25:16

25:16

There’s only one way to succeed this year & and every year. Success is more than just what you do in digital or marketing. Success goes far beyond just your business. Of course success in digital and marketing and your business matters. But, business success often follows from success across multiple areas of your life. Successful people may seem like they’re accomplished in many areas… because they are. They’re not focused solely on being “their best selves” only at work or only in part of their lives. They bring that to every aspect of what they do. It’s the idea of being your best self that’s at the heart of the conversation I want to have with you this week. What does “being your best self” look like in practice? What can you do to achieve it? And how does it apply not only in business, but across many areas of your life? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Revisiting “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year” (Thinks Out Loud) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444) Why New Year’s Resolutions Set You Up to Fail | Psychology Today New Year’s resolutions often don’t last. Here’s why they fail and how to keep them, according to an expert. – CBS News Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Wikipedia 8 Traits of Flow According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) wheel of life – Google Search Navigating Life’s Spheres: Your Guide to the Balance Wheel | Love Light & Inspiration The Vor Game – Wikipedia "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud Episode 358) Revisiting "What Are We Doing Here?" How Are You Holding Up? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 316) Lessons Learned: The TPA Anniversary Show (Thinks Out Loud Episode 420) Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 25m 16s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Revisiting The Only Way to Succeed Next Year Right before the end of last year, we had an episode called “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year.” We’re roughly half way through the first quarter. 1/8th of the year is already behind us. And given that around 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the end of January, it felt like a good time to revisit this discussion. The key takeaways from the episode were around how you drive success. If driving success in your business — and your life — matters to you in 2025, you need to think beyond just business and marketing and digital. You need to think about the kind of person you want to be, in every area of your life. You need to think about the kinds of relationships you want to have, the people you want to spend your time with, outside of business as well as within it. You need to do the work to get better in those areas, to improve your relationships with the people that matter to you. Focus as much as you can on the areas and people that give your life meaning. Doing the work towards improving in those areas help you find flow in your activities, which help you feel more fulfilled overall. And finding greater fulfillment overall helps you persevere during the tougher times of your days and weeks and months. I think you’ll enjoy this discussion. This is Thinks Out Loud , let’s dive in and revisit “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year” Well hello again everybody and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 444 of the Big Show, and I think we’ve got a really cool episode for you today. Most of what I’m going to talk about in this episode, on the surface, has little to do with marketing or digital or business strategy, the topics we typically talk about here. I don’t have any big predictions for 2025 yet, or any major recap of 2024, you know, those are coming. And if you only care about those topics, you might want to skip to your other favorite podcast right now and then check our future episodes for that content. I’d recommend against that though, because what’s also true is that what I plan to talk about today has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy. I suspect it will be obvious why shortly, but I’ll explicitly call out the reason at the end for you. The thing is, as we come up on the end of the year, I have a problem with the conventional wisdom that almost everybody spouts off about almost every holiday season. You know, you’ll hear people say that it’s time to look back at the year you just experienced and what went well and what didn’t go well and what did you learn from those experiences. They’ll tell you to look ahead at what you hope to accomplish, and your goals for the new year, and what you’re going to do more of, and what you’re going to do better. Most people, many people, will tell you to spend time with family and reconnect with old friends. People will say, “You really need to make the most of this time. You never know how much longer you’ll have with grandma or grandpa, or your parents, or whomever.” I hate this advice. Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t want to challenge the conventional wisdom around what you do for the next two weeks. You should look back. You should look ahead to what you want to accomplish, and you absolutely should spend time with the people you love, and reconnect with old friends, and enjoy this time with your family. My problem isn’t “Why aren’t you doing this during the holidays? “My problem is, “ Why aren’t you doing this every single day and week and month throughout the year? ” Seriously. Yes, we should all use every opportunity. To look back at what we learned, we should use every opportunity to look forward to what we hope to accomplish. And we all should spend more time with family and friends and the people we love. If I wanted to be funny, I would say, “Notice how I listed friends, family, and the people you love into three separate categories?” You know, in truth though, if they’re not the people you love, maybe the problem isn’t that, it’s that you maybe shouldn’t categorize them as family or friends. Maybe the reason they’re not the people you love is something you need to work on, and more on this in a bit. The reality though is don’t spend too much time with toxic people. And if everyone you know is toxic, Then I suspect they’re not the problem, and I will have much more on that a little later, too. At any rate, when we’re talking about how you use this time, I think you really need to set yourself up for success every week and every month all year long. And I mean success in a broader way than just what you do in your business. You may remember that I talked about a balance wheel or a wheel of life in last week’s episode. I’m not going to recap the whole process for you, but the idea is that this provides you a great time and a great tool to take stock of where you are in every area of your life that matters to you. Work? Sure. But also family and friends and your mental and physical and financial well being. The great thing about an exercise like this is that you get to decide which of those areas are important to you. You also get to decide how satisfied you are in each of those areas, and you get to decide, once you’ve taken a look at that wheel, which ones you want to work on, and the order you’ll do that work. That’s something you can do all year long, and that’s how you succeed next year. This isn’t about New Year’s resolutions, either, and it certainly isn’t about, you know, hustle culture, just “doing more.” Don’t get me wrong, hustle culture can be useful, to a point, but it’s usually focused solely on your work. It usually thinks solely in terms of, what are you going to turn out today from a work perspective? Success in work is up to you and obviously important. It’s something I talk about on this show all the time. Work often is a huge contributor to the meaning in our lives. It’s also not the only thing that gives our lives meaning. In fact, I would go so far to say it shouldn’t be the only thing that matters to give your life meaning. Instead, I’m talking about being the best version of yourself in all of the areas of your life that matter to you and that give your life meaning. And there’s a way that you can do this to drive improvement throughout your life, all year long, where New Year’s resolutions fail. New Year’s resolutions don’t tend to work for two reasons, for at least two reasons. I mean, one of the big ones is that they often aren’t necessarily seen as fun. But the two big reasons are, one, that there’s no consequence, really, if you break them. You might feel bad about it for a couple of days, but eventually it’s just something that happened and you move on with life. And the second is you have to wait an entire year for them to come back around again. If you didn’t accomplish this year’s New Year’s resolutions by, you know, if you haven’t made progress by the end of January, oh well, I guess it’s over. No big deal. We’re drawn to New Year’s resolutions because the first day of the year is symbolically important. And that symbolism has a certain power, one that our brains latch on to. It’s really important to our minds, that date, because it’s imbued with so much culture and tradition. There’s research that backs this up, by the way, that our minds just get wrapped around specific dates. Days like New Year’s Day or the first of the year as being hugely important. There’s also research that backs up what I’m about to share that’s just kind of crazy. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who to credit for this one. So while there will be links in the show notes for many of the things I’m talking about, there won’t be for this one. A Google search wasn’t helping me out. I will certainly update the links later if I can find it. In any case, the further we get away from January 1st, the less power it holds over us. Its symbolism dwindles. Here’s the funny thing about that research, though. It showed that January 1st, isn’t the only symbolically important date in our lives. Other dates have meaning, too. For instance, your birthday is a pretty big day. We give it a certain power in our minds. If you’re married, your wedding anniversary is another one of those days. If you have children, your kids birthdays have a certain power. And any of those can be used as days where you start something new or reassess or have the drive to start again, to renew yourself. Each of these are opportunities to reinvigorate and renew your focus on the things that matter to you. But brace yourself, because the research found something even stranger. It turns out almost any day can hold that same symbolic power, as long as that date matters to you. Which is crazy, because it really means that almost any day is an opportunity to reinvigorate yourself and renew your focus on the things that matter to you. That’s incredible when you think about it, because now we’re not talking about New Year’s resolutions. We’re talking about where am I starting from today. Now the funny thing is, if you find that too abstract a concept to get your head around, in terms of how you would execute that, there are two days that almost everyone recognizes as powerful And those are the first day of the month and the first day of the week, which means you don’t have to have New Year’s resolutions. You can have new month resolutions and new week resolutions. You can renew and reinvigorate every month and every week. You don’t have to think about what matters to you and what you want to change next year. Just think about what you want to change in January, and then again in February, and again in March. You can do the same every Sunday or Monday too, depending on what you consider the first day of the week. It could be the first day of the week, it could be the first day of your work week. You, all you have to do is take a few minutes and make a short list of what you’re going to work on from your balance wheel this week. Then do it again the following week, and the following, and so on. There’s this great hidden benefit to it, compared with New Year’s resolutions, by the way, that if a single week doesn’t go as planned, it doesn’t throw you off for the whole month or the whole year. You just reset on the following week, focus on what matters to you that week, and work towards becoming more completely yourself. And the great thing is, whether you do this 12 times a year, or 52, or some number in between those, I mean, we can all have a week that gets away from us, you will end up growing as a person. Over the course of those 52 weeks, you’ll end up building better relationships with the people who matter to you. Those outcomes, that focus, is what I mean when I’m talking about the only way to succeed next year. In this case, success isn’t just a business concept, it’s a life concept. It’s how you grow as a person. Now the funny thing is, that growth has other benefits beyond just the obvious. And that’s where this does have something to do with marketing or digital or business strategy. In fact, it has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy. Why? Because the greatest successes in marketing and digital and business strategy, and pretty much anything else in life, occur when you’re your whole self, when you feel good about yourself, when you’re able to bring your entire being to the moment and to the thing that you’re working on. I met somebody new and a client the other day whose approach just absolutely thrilled me, filled me with joy. He was so thoughtful and so present and so clear minded about his work and his life and what was important to him. He was so clear about what he thought he could do well and what he thought he couldn’t. He set appropriate boundaries with the people in the room without any argument or any drama. He simply wanted to focus on doing his very best work and supporting the team as a whole in the best way that he could. He is, already I’m finding out, just a delight to have met and work with. At least from what I can see on the surface, everything is going right for him. And I think it’s because he’s true to what matters to him. If you look at the people who constantly gripe that nothing ever goes right, they’re almost always at least a little bit at fault. Now, hang with me for a second. Because this is the internet, let me say right away, of course there are exceptions. Unfortunately, far too many cases exist where people are discriminated against or find themselves in abusive situations or have serious health issues. On a personal level, I’ve lost multiple family members and dear friends to things like cancer. I know people who struggle with mental illnesses and other very real problems in their lives. Situations like that absolutely suck. There’s no two ways about it. And I offer anybody going through anything like that nothing but peace and comfort and good fortune every day going forward, starting today. I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the people who you encounter from time to time — we all do — who really don’t have any major issues in their lives in any real terms and still find ways to bitch about everything in the world every day, right? In high school, by the way, one of my teachers, a priest as it happens, once told me the difference between bitching and complaining. It’s pretty big. Complaining is when you talk about your problems to someone who can do something about them, who can help you improve the situation. Bitching is when you talk about your problems to everybody else.* You know, and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with bitching every now and again if it helps you move past something that’s bugging you. I bitch to my wife regularly about whatever things that are going on, whether trivial or significant, that has drawn my attention on any given day or in any given week. We all do. That’s normal. If you’re doing it all the time though, you know, maybe the problem isn’t with what’s going on in the world. Maybe it’s how you’re reacting to it. So with all I’m that out of the the way and speaking only about those who bitch about quote-unquote, “everything” — as well as those of you who simply want to find new ways to succeed — the simple fact is you can change your outcomes by changing your outlook. And I know that might sound trite. But it’s true, the groundbreaking work around flow, that is the state of operating at peak performance, you know, fully in the zone, identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, depends on three factors. And those three factors are, you’re working towards a single clear goal. That goal matters to you, it’s meaningful in your life, and the work challenges you without overwhelming you. It, it causes you to push yourself. When you’re working with flow, you feel energized across many areas of your, areas of your life. You’re happier as a person, you’re more fully yourself. In other words, working towards your goals will make you feel better in pretty much all the other areas of your life. So even if you don’t love where you are in your career, or maybe your company is struggling and you’re not in a position at the moment to do a lot about it. But if you imagine you’re spending time each week and each month learning from what you’d accomplished in the prior week or month, that would move you towards a meaningful goal of self improvement. Imagine if you were truly present for your family and friends and the people you love, that would move you towards the meaningful goal of building stronger and healthier relationships. Even when you can’t find flow at work, you can find flow in the other areas of your life, Which are areas that are going to continue to exist even as you change jobs and careers over the course of your working life. Working in this way on yourself helps you become a more fully realized version of yourself, which actually helps you become more focused and thoughtful at work. And quite possibly help you move forward as a digital marketer and strategist. And if not, you’ll still be fulfilled outside of work. You know, that’s really a great thing. It reminds me of a quote I love about strategy from the Lois McMaster Bujold book, “The Vor Game,” which you should totally check out. A character in the book says, “The key to strategy. Is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to victory.” Now, in fairness, she follows that up by saying, “ideally,” acknowledging that it’s not always easy to have all paths lead to victory every single time. Still, it’s worth choosing as many as you can that help. So, if you’re not necessarily having the best place at work, working on yourself is something you can control. Working on your relationships is something you can control. And that goes the other way, too. If you’re doing well in work, it allows you to say, “Okay, maybe I can’t control what’s happening with my relationships or a specific relationship, because the other person is not being everybody. They can’t control it. You would like them to be, but you can work on yourself and you can work on your work.” So ultimately, it’s working towards all paths helping you to succeed. If your success matters to you next year though, you need to think beyond just business and just marketing and just digital. You need to think about the kind of person you want to be in every area of your life. You need to think about the kinds of relationships you want to have, the people you want to spend your time with outside of business as well as within it. And then do the work in those areas to improve your relationships with the people that matter to you. Make sure you focus as much as you can on the areas and people that give your life meaning. Working towards improving in those areas helps you find flow in your activities, which will help you feel more fulfilled overall. And finding greater fulfillment overall helps you persevere during the tougher times of your days and weeks and months that undoubtedly will happen. Remember that you don’t have to think about New Year’s resolutions or wait for January 1st to roll around to make changes. You get to reset your objectives and renew your focus every month and every week. So the point I want to leave you with today is that your ability to be the person you want to be is entirely in your hands. And becoming the person you truly want to be is, in my book, The only real way to succeed next year, and every year after that. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. I hope you get to spend it with people you love, and that everything next year goes really well for you. Just remember, a lot of that is within your hands, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Do you know anybody that needs to hear this today? Do you know anyone who needs to hear what we just talked about. I’m pretty sure you just thought of someone. So be sure to share this episode with them. And of course, like and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you regularly get your podcasts. Until next time, I hope you’re well, I hope you’re safe, and I hope you take care of yourself. We’ll see you soon. The post Revisiting “The Only Way to Succeed Next Year” (Thinks Out Loud) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) 14:02

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We’re living through an evolving landscape around content marketing in the age of AI. This evolution raises the question of whether AI will kill content marketing for customer acquisition. What… The post Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448) 20:15

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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

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When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) 19:04

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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

1
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