My Interesting Conversations: Breaking the Trade-Off Between Pressures for Growth and Efficiency

Another amazing week, as our book, Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI, debuted at #4 on USA Today's Business and Economics Bestselling Books list. So first off, a big thank you to all who have made this possible, and clearly it's a validation of the resonance of the topic at this moment.??

That was very evident at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Growth Masters Conference of top CMO's where the two most prominent themes were:

1. How to navigate the overwhelming number of AI tools and pitches coming at every senior marketer. Which capabilities matter, how do I evaluate the ability of a company to truly serve us, how should I think about ROI, and what does it take to really get the ROI
2. Related to that, how do we present the value generated by marketing, and the upside we can aim for, at a time when budgets are extremely tight, and the buzz is that GenAI will enable you to slash marketing operations costs

Marketers are feeling under siege, with one side pushing them on the promise of countless new opportunities, and the other pushing for higher targets with smaller budgets. Can the answer come from picking the right tools? I do not believe so. The right tools help, but they are far from enough.?

The moment at hand, as we reference across the many Personalization Leader examples in our book, comes from using the capabilities available to unlock new creative strategies for connecting with customers, new operational approaches that maximize test/learn throughput and scalability, and a dramatically heightened focus on getting one's data in order, to deliver new experiences and measure their impact.?

In a B2B deep dive workshop I led at the ANA conference, I cited the example of an industrial distributor who felt they were not getting enough from their marketing. The reality though, was that they were attracting new customers, but those customers only placed small one-off orders when they were hunting down a supplier for a very narrow need.?

They realized the opportunity was in setting the expectations for the value a one-off purchase could actually deliver to a customer, and then delivering that wow experience. They focused first on the experience they wanted to deliver, not on what cool thing they could do with the new AI tools that vendors were constantly pitching them. That experience needed to show customers added value beyond the availability and cost of an item.?

The distributor focused on delivering an experience where, either online or when a customer was on the phone with a rep, they could go further, providing a customer with good/better/best recommendations for an item, clear simple logic as to why the recommendations were lined up that way, adjacent items that made sense to also buy for each level, and a simple link to enroll in a program that would help them manage the inventory of that part going forward, along with a tracker to monitor its available price.?

The experience required working with OEM suppliers to get all the detailed specifications on their products, add intelligence about quality levels for different applications, logic for finding appropriate adjacent items, availability inputs from their supply chain, and a dramatically streamlined onboarding process to get a customer signed up to use ongoing monitoring tools that they offered.? As online sales grew, and salespeople for the distributor saw higher close rates, they added more capabilities, especially as their data got better about who ended up picking out what types of items, which further advanced their recommendation engine.?

It starts with customer value. It starts with believing that you'll drive growth and reap the benefits of scalability.? It focuses on the data and tools needed to deliver and constantly improve that experience.? And it requires the engagement of way more than just the marketing team.? In this case, managers from procurement, service, sales, and IT worked alongside marketing to design, build, and implement the new approach.?

There are so many tools out there now that, if you have an idea for what you want to do, the capability likely exists. Keep seeing demos though, because it expands your understanding of what is now possible.? But step back and map the flow of what a new experience will be that could take the friction out for a customer, that could open up new customer discoveries, or that unlocks speed or new efficiencies.?

What data is needed, where is it now, how do we need to enhance it. What analytics, automation, or optimization capabilities will we need.? How will users -- agents and customers -- interact with it. And critically, what can we estimate about the upside, given different scenarios about growth in new customers or share of wallet. Then, piece together the engine and model the costs.?

Just chasing new ideas from a new tool you saw can get you spinning. Marketing should be bringing in the richest sense of customer needs, aspirations, and value. Start there.