Sunday Shuffle v. 2

Happy Sunday and welcome back to the Sunday Shuffle: a quick 3-minute glance at the latest news, tips, and insights from the past week in the world of saas-tech.

A big thanks to all who subscribed and shared feedback last week! Some have asked, "Hey Jimbo, why the newsletter?"

Here's why: With over three decades in the SaaS marketing world, I've ridden a few waves of tech innovation, starting with my first encounter with Mosaic in '93. Now, we're at the brink of a new 30-year cycle of unprecedented innovation spurred by GenAI.

Unlike the early Internet, where its impact was hard to imagine, GenAI is tangible and already woven into our lives. I'm both thrilled and cautious, aiming to stay informed, hands-on, and share whatever insights I can with you.

Last week, I mentioned a McKinsey report highlighting how marketers are leveraging this technology more than most. Yet, GenAI also poses risks to our careers by potentially automating major aspects of what we do.

The best way forward for us as marketers? Share stories, data, frameworks, best practices, and be open, fearless, and collaborative. Together, we can stay ahead of this big wave and be the best SaaS Marketeers we can be.

So, 'nuf said. Let's do the Shuffle!

Inside this week's Shuffle:

• Top Stories: AI and your Board & What's Google up to?
• Quick hitters
• Framework of the Week
• Job Board (NEW!)
• AI Bookmarks (NEW!)
• The Marketeer Next Door (NEW!)

Top Stories of the Week:

Your AI Narrative for the Board:

More than one-quarter of companies using AI say the topic is already on their Board Meeting agendas. With summer winding down, some of you may be squirming and thinking about the possibility of getting that question at your next meeting. This past week I polled members of a CMO community with the question: How many of you have been asked to give an update on how you're leveraging AI in marketing?

The answers were pretty evenly split:

• 40% said "YES, I have been asked and will give an update."
• 10% said, "NO, I have not been asked but I PLAN to give an update anyway."
• 45% said, "NO, I have not been asked and I DO NOT plan to give an update."
• 5% said, "NO, I have not been asked but other department heads will give an update."
• The upshot: AI is on about half of the Board Meeting agendas. Why not more? Not strategic enough? Too many other important topics to cover? I'd be curious to hear what others think.
• Why it matters:?Boards, sooner or later, will inquire about the risk/reward of these new solutions, especially as early adoption often begins in marketing. Be prepared to discuss the solutions you're using or testing, their measurable impact on productivity, customer experience, or market performance, and be ready to articulate the policies and safeguards you have in place to safeguard the business.

"I have done AI usage updates at the last two Board Meetings ... and I explicitly point out where I think my team's learnings could be useful to their other portfolio companies." - Kimber Spradlin CMO

What's Google Up To Now?

Rany Ng , Google's VP of Product Management put out a blog this past week about the company's new Generative AI capabilities they launched 3 months ago. If you haven't tried it yet, I encourage you to sign up by clicking on the lab beaker in the upper right hand corner of their search page using Google Chrome browser (see below).

I cannot help but wonder how this fast-changing paradigm of search will impact our future search traffic and demand funnels.

I happen to be an avid listener of Perpetual Traffic, a weekly podcast hosted by Ralph Burns (CEO, Tier 11) and Kasim Aslam (CEO, Solutions 8). A recent episode dug into this very topic with Google Search expert, Kasim Aslam riffing on how he sees this all playing out. It's definitely worth a listen starting at 9:30.

The Highlights:

• Throughout its history, Google has given us "options" to our search queries, which linked us to the highest-quality websites, content, etc.
• Several years ago, Google starting rolling out "snippets" (called answer boxes at the time) to give us written answers to popular questions in addition to giving us links/options. These were being generated by their AI engine.
• Today, they want us to step beyond the snippets into a more interactive conversation, also enabled via their AI chat engine. This Search Generative Experience (SGE) is referred to as "experimental" by Google as they tune it.

The Takeaway: Many believe this new model could vastly decrease the amount of traffic to other 3rd party sites since info, data and answers will be delivered in-stream. Essentially, Google is disintermediating the information supply chain by packaging and personalizing the long tail of content, which many of us created over the years. Hmmm. Does that seem fair?

• This highly customized and iterative approach will fundamentally change the size, shape and speed of digital marketing by increasing the number of overall interactions but decrease the amount of traffic going to the content creators. Lead volume will likely go down (which we may already be seeing BTW), but presumably be more qualified and sales-ready.

Quick Hitters:

• Fear of AI:?Nearly 2/3 of US adults say they are a little-to-a-lot fearful about AI developments, with 82% saying they want to slow it down.
• The CMO Survey: Duke Fuqua's Annual CMO Survey?(31st year) is in-market. It is pretty quick 10-min survey, and if you complete it, you'll get access to the results.?Special questions on AI, DE&I, and spending trends.
• Art Lapinsch ?? sent me this great follow up to his post from last week, Climate Tech's Story Problem.
• AIM reports that OpenAI could go bankrupt by the end of 2024 as it burns ~$700k per day!
• Bernstein Research reported this week that "The Tech Job Recession is Over." In an email to clients, they said, "tech layoffs have slowed to a trickle." Music to my ears, but many like me still want to know when will the hirings will accelerate?"

My SaaS Framework of the Week

As a follow up to the Marketing Stack framework I shared last week, many asked: Where is Hubspot?!?! Chris Arden , being one of them, put his own spin on the framework by adding Hubspot and segmenting by growth stage, which I thought was brilliant! If you have a different spin on it, let me know.

If you don't have access to the file, just request it by clicking here.

Job Board

For all you marketeers looking for their next big gig, here are a few "under the radar" roles that I stumbled upon this past week.

• In addition to a Sr. Product Marketing Manager, rumor has it that Replicant is also looking for a new CMO.
• Search firm Illuma (formerly known as Consultiar) is looking for a VP, Marketing for their cybersecurity client, Blumira.
• Nintex is looking for a CMO. Search being handled by John-Stuart Fauquet at Bonell Ryan Search.
• If you're looking to make the move to Clean Tech I highly recommend you bookmark the Climate Tech List from Steven Zhang, which includes a lot of jr. marketing roles and a few senior ones like this one at Lumen Energy

"Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places 
if you look at it right." - Jerry Garcia        

AI Tools Bookmarks!

How do you keep track of the tsunami of AI tools out there? Here are a few resources to bookmark for fast and easy reference to the growing population of AI tools. (NB: This doesn't include the established software companies that embed AI into their tools, like Adobe, Wix, SEMRush and many others).

• Product Hunt: This has been around for a decade, but they have a whole section now devoted to AI tools.
• Super Tools: For me, this is the definitive list I keep at my fingertips and monitor pretty closely. It's developed and curated by Rowan Cheung (Founder/CEO of The Rundown)
• ClickUp: The Always Up-to-date List of the 50 Best AI Tools in 2023

The Marketeer Next Door

My pipes are fine, but I still want to grab a beer with this dude! Love the self-branding, Professor ... In addition to the nice vanity phone number, if you query Google, "Who is the professor of plumbing?", guess who comes out on top? You guessed it! Bravo Professor!

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Keep the feedback coming as the Shuffle is intended to be more yours than mine.