The Marketing Smarts Live Show recently featured a compelling episode with David Greenberg, CMO at Conversica, discussing the transformative role of generative AI in marketing.
This article delves into the key insights from that episode, exploring how AI-powered conversations and the "Conversation Automation Index" are affecting B2B marketing.
The Power of AI-Powered Conversations
The episode begins with a focus on AI-powered conversations and related potential benchmarks for B2B companies.
Greenberg emphasizes the importance of such benchmarks that allow companies to gauge their performance against industry averages.
He highlights a critical metric: the conversation rate, which stands at an average of 25% among Conversica's customers. That rate signifies that one in four people engaged by its AI have meaningful interactions, surpassing marketing metrics such as open rates or click-through rates.
The Conversation Automation Index
Greenberg introduces the Conversation Automation Index, a tool for companies to benchmark their performance in AI-powered conversations.
The index allows businesses to compare their results across different geographies, industries, and functions. It's a valuable resource for understanding where a company stands and how it can improve its AI-driven engagement strategies, according to Greenberg.
Moreover, not all industries perform the same; the Conversation Automation Index helps businesses tailor their AI approaches to unique industry needs. Customization is crucial to maximizing the effectiveness of AI in various market segments.
Overcoming Hurdles in Generative AI Adoption
In the second part of the show, Thomas and Greenberg discuss the challenges B2B organizations face in adopting generative AI. They explore how companies can overcome those hurdles to fully harness AI's potential in enhancing marketing strategies and customer engagement.
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Check out the video for more details, and the full podcast (link below the video) for the entire insightful conversation.
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Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 61
- Live date: December 18, 2023
- Episode link: youtube.com/watch?v=BcP_bsa3eWg
- Original podcast episode: Generative AI-Powered Conversations and the Conversation Automation Index: David Greenberg on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Guest's social media profiles:
- LinkedIn: David Greenberg
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
- Three Ways Generative AI Will Change B2B Marketing
- Three Keys to Safely Using Generative AI in Marketing
"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:
"From the #mpb2b Community" links referenced in the show:
Transcript: Generative AI-Powered Conversations and the Conversation Automation Index, With David Greenberg
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I’m super excited to bring you episode 61 of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week's topic is all about Generative AI-Powered Conversations and the Conversation Automation Index.
So, if you’re ready to get your learn on, buckle up and let's get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I’m your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than David Greenberg.
David Greenberg is the CMO at Conversica, a conversational AI platform. David has over 20 years of experience as a marketing and go-to-market leader, with deep expertise in building high-growth organizations that disrupt the "old way" of doing things.
He is deeply passionate about using technologies to create significant step-changes in the business.
Prior to joining Conversica, David was the CMO at Act-On Software, where he was responsible for the overall strategy and execution of the marketing and product functions.
David has also held numerous senior executive positions across groundbreaking organizations such as Jive Software, Airship, and Liveops.
Now, remember the clips of David Greenberg today are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode, and if you want to listen to the full interview with David Greenberg and myself, make sure to tune into the Marketing Smarts podcast, link to the full show will be in the description below after the live show ends.
Now, in this episode, again, I'm talking with David Greenberg about Generative AI-Powered Conversations and the Conversation Automation Index.
In this first clip, I wanted to dig into the AI-powered conversations and possible benchmarks that B2B Companies might be able to pay attention to and, therefore, make smart decisions for their B2B organizations moving forward.
Here’s what he had to share.
David: Probably the most important thing that comes out of it is it benchmarks the average across your various segments. People can look at it and self-identify whether they want to do it by geo, industry, or function, and see where they sit compared to others. With these new metrics, we now have sort of a benchmark.
Back in the day when you would look at click through rates, and you'd talk about the average benchmark is 3.5%, and you would use that as a gauge to better your own performance inside your organization. I would say at the high level, similar here, people can look at it. On average, our customers reach a 25% conversation rate, so that means one in four of the people you engage with the AI actually engage and have more than a two-way conversation. A pretty important metric because that's a deeper quality than an open rate or a click through rate, as an example. Similarly, 12% overall of our customers reached the conversation-qualified rate, meaning over time 12% of them say, "Yes, I'd be willing to take that next step," whatever you define it to be.
I think there's a real opportunity here for people who are in particular industry areas. We all know industries perform very different, that's why there is this construct called industry marketing, and you need to approach those differently. I think looking through the industry lens is probably the first place that I would start to benchmark yourself.
Are you leveraging AI-powered conversations?
Do you have benchmarks to help you measure your success or failure moving forward?
Heck, do you think AI-powered conversations are even right for your organization?
Put the answer to that in the chat pane or let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b and, of course, tag me using @georgebthomas.
We’ll get back to David Greenberg and his thoughts on Generative AI-powered conversations and the Conversation Automation Index, But first, I have to ask...
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading to mprofs.com/mptoday - That’s mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now, it’s time for one of my favorite sections...
In The B2B News - Where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips we find on the Google news tab related to you and your B2B business. This week, the title is...
Generative AI in Marketing and Sales: 8 High-Impact B2B Use Cases By Chitra Iyer
Discover how generative AI in marketing and sales is reshaping business. Learn from experts about its impact on revenue, partnerships, and task augmentation.
Wondering what the gist of the article is?
- Not just efficiency. Sales and marketing leaders are getting more comfortable with leveraging generative AI tools for revenue generation and boosting profits.
- Not just internal. Generative AI is amplifying marketing and sales outcomes not just for internal teams but for channel and strategic partners externally, too.
- Not just automation. Generative AI in marketing and sales is all about task augmentation, and B2B organizations are realizing the compounded effects of human + AI efforts.
When ChatGPT stormed into our lives in 2022, sales and marketing pros recognized it as a tool to make work more efficient, lowering expenses, time, and effort across multiple tasks related to their jobs. They were about to discover generative AI in marketing and sales.
To read this article, check out the link below when the live show ends.
So let’s get back to David Greenberg and his Marketing Smarts podcast episode.
In this second clip, I wanted to dig into hurdles or pain points that B2B organizations might be facing and how generative AI or AI-powered assistance can help you and your organization get over those hurdles.
Here’s what David had to share about this conversation.
David: I think we talked a little bit earlier around starting with something you can digest and finding a high value pain point that you can focus the project on to get started. We talked a little bit about applying this to the funnel.
I'll throw out two very common pain points that you see universally across B2B marketers: how do I appropriately follow up at scale in a timely way and how do I make my current leads be better quality. Those are two fairly universal marketing pain points that I think you can use generative AI or AI-powered digital assistance to help improve your funnel performance and velocity.
I think that's one thing is just stay focused on the one high value place. The other one is I think over time—this may be an over time thing, not right now—companies, especially large organizations, I hear all the time many of our customers forming AI ethics committees, organizations on how they appropriately want to bring it in, what guidelines and what sort of protocol and rails have to be in place for that. I think that's something we're going to see more and more, especially as you go up market into larger organizations where they're bringing this in more broadly and in many more different groups.
The first one is a no-duh to me. The other one, we'll have to wait and see a little bit, but I would anticipate that as being something you have to think about and connect to as you start bringing AI into your company to supercharge it.
Did you hear that?
Get started with something you can digest!
Find your high-value pain points in your organization.
Were you agreeing with what David called universal pain points?
Do you have an AI Ethics community or terms of use in your organization?
We will return to David Greenberg in a few minutes, but first, it’s time for some...
Dope B2B Learnings From The Vault of MarketingProfs Articles
That's right, it’s time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer.
Article one this week is: Three Ways Generative AI Will Change B2B Marketing
by Christopher S. Penn
Generative AI—the use of AI to create content, such as images, text, and video—is everywhere. You can't read online without running into some piece about ChatGPT/GPT-4 or other large language models (LLMs).
Generative AI tools have captivated the imagination of millions, but what do they have to offer the B2B marketer? How will we be applying them in our work?
Article two this week is: Three Keys to Safely Using Generative AI in Marketing
by BrandGuard
In the fast-paced marketing world, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. Marketing teams must continually innovate to capture the ever-elusive customer's attention and drive conversions.
One such innovation that is taking the marketing world by storm is generative AI.
Reasons to Use Generative AI in Your Marketing
If you're still on the fence about embracing AI technology, here are compelling reasons why your marketing team should use generative AI to market your products.
Want to keep learning more? If so, check the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to David Greenberg... Let's dive back into this conversation of Generative AI-Powered Conversations and the Conversation Automation Index
In this next clip, I wanted to know what AI-powered success looks like in modern organizations.
While David thought it was a tough question, he did have some thoughts and a great answer for us.
Here are his thoughts on what AI-powered success looks like.
David: Tough but good question. I'll try to answer it the best I can. Certainly, you would expect to see major step changes in your revenue and your P&L and your company performance, but I would actually offer that I think really what success looks like is that AI has been deployed the right way with people.
We have this concept at Conversica, and I'm a strong believer in this, that this is going to really change how you think about how you organize and where you deploy people. Even in business today, there is a massive amount of highly repetitive work that people do. I really think this is an opportunity to break free of that and to get people doing what they're really good at.
I talked about the sales development function. How many emails and phone calls? Yes, there have been some new technologies that have made it a little bit faster, but it's fundamentally the same. Businesses don't design their workforce differently. I think success here is going to be organizations think about deploying and designing their workforces differently, where people actually do stuff that people are really good at rather than repetitive tasks.
It's a real common pushback point that you hear in the market, too. I would offer out at some point this is going to be a tipping point. It's actually more of a how you design your workforce to get maximum yield in the business. That's where I think success will go.
Have you started hiring employees based on their AI skills yet?
Will you in the future?
Have you been thinking about how to plug AI into your organization over the next three months or three years?
If not, 2024 is the year this needs to happen for you.
We’ll get some words of wisdom from David Greenberg here in a few minutes, but right now, it’s time to turn the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yep, time for...
From The #MPB2B Community
We searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversation to bring to the masses.
So, first, make sure you are using the hashtag, and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.
Then, we’ll spotlight you or your crew on the show. This week, it's...
Jason Lorentz is a Certified Salesforce Administrator at MarketingProfs on LinkedIn.
His post goes something like this.
Email open rates got you down? Truth is, they’ve never been a reliable metric for sales. Instead, focus on the big picture, including:
? Clickthrough rates
? Conversions
? Reputation
It’s important to get moving in the right direction ASAP because Google and Yahoo will roll out new SPAM regulations in February 2024.
?? https://lnkd.in/eP2yq4hU
#mpb2b #b2b #marketing #sales #google #yahoo
But you need to check out the description and click that link to check out the post and read or learn more!
Marketing Smarts viewer, I have to ask... will you be next to get the spotlight?
Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro-tip: it won't hurt if you tag me in your post as well I'm @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
OK, let’s kick it back to David Greenberg and some words of wisdom around this topic of Generative AI-powered conversations and the Conversation Automation Index.
Here is what David Greenberg wanted to leave us with...
David: The first thing that immediately comes to my mind is really step back. I'm sort of dating myself here, but when I started marketing, the fax machine was in, so I've seen three or four big revolutions happen with marketing automation, mobile marketing, social media marketing. Having been in a marketing leadership position through all of those, this feels like the next big wave. I would just offer out that it's going to be hard to ignore it. Imagine living in a place right now where you were like, "I ignored social media," or if you're a B2C brand and you said, "I'm ignoring mobile." It would be impossible, you wouldn't succeed.
Step back and look at how big of a shift this is!
Are you looking at AI as the next big wave?
Are you ignoring it?
This is not a variable marketing strategy moving forward.
Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know, and use that hashtag #mpb2b on whatever platform you are joining us on.
