How Marketing Is Moving to an AI-First Approach

[00:00:00]Marketing is one of those horizontals that's going to be changed and transformed the most.

[00:00:05]>> I'll be moving beyond simple content generation to foundational marketing transformation.

[00:00:10]>> It's not going to replace sort of the wholesale task, right? It's individual areas that will be affected and in product marketing, we need to keep pace with increasingly fast-paced release cycle. [music] >> In this episode of AI Cloud Essentials, I explore interesting product marketing use cases for synthetic research with Suzanne, VP of product marketing at Core Vee.

[00:00:32]>> It's not as simple as just asking for the answer. You need to know what questions to ask and that will never go away, I don't think.

[00:00:39]>> If you lead product marketing, this conversation will transform [music] how you think about research, messaging, and launch velocity.

[00:00:56]Hello everyone. Welcome to season 2 of the AI Cloud Essentials, a podcast series brought to you by Core Vee.

[00:01:02]Today, we are talking about one of my favorite areas with one of my favorite individuals who I've known for a couple of years. Welcome, Suzanne.

[00:01:10]>> Thanks, Ritu.

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, we are going to talk about one of the the favorite topic of everyone in the industry. How are you going to transform product marketing?

[00:01:20]>> Mhm.

[00:01:21]>> Yeah.

[00:01:21]>> How the velocity meets impact and what can be done in that area. So, everyone's talking about for the last couple of years, Suzanne, how you can actually use AI to do content generation, right? But I personally believe that that's really not meeting the entire potential that you can actually do and there's so many interesting use cases where things fall short. But before we dive into it, let's hear from you. How did you come into this your role? What brought you here?

[00:01:49]And what are you seeing in terms of in you're setting up an AI first product marketing group?

[00:01:54]>> Thanks, Ritu. Um it's so great to be here and you're right, it is the topic everyone wants to talk about, right?

[00:02:00]Marketing is one of those horizontals that's going to be changed and transformed the most. And within that space, product marketing is kind of in in the thick of it, right? Cuz we're it's almost recursive, right? We're we're launching the AI products that we have to use AI to launch. So, it's a pretty uh, you know, fortunate moment to be in this space and I certainly feel fortunate that way. I I did not fall into it in a straight line. I can assure you and I think that's indicative of a lot of people's experience right now. I came to marketing from a technology background. I worked in smart cities and IoT and different spaces that were also very disruptive at the time. So, I feel like I I'm just following the disruption, if you will. And and marketing is a great kind of focal point where it some of these technologies have to be explained, they have to be demystified and so that's certainly what brought me to it. This desire to make it more um, um, accessible to more people and that's what I love about, you know, marketing and product marketing in particular. Our job is to demystify these systems, demystify these technologies and show how they bring value. And so, that's what brought me into product marketing and in this AI moment, you know, there's certainly a lot of need for demystification, right?

[00:03:16]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:17]So, you know, like I have some similar threads in my career as well. I've been a, you know, product marketer, I've also been a product manager. And I sit back and think one of my, you know, jobs that I hated the most was to be, you know, creative about product naming, right?

[00:03:33]Even in my current role, when I have started my own startup, that's been my biggest, biggest challenge, right?

[00:03:38]Because uh, there's so many creative minds moving around, but you know, how do you settle on what was going to resonate? So, when you started looking into this, where did you start with and what are the use cases that kind of gravitated to you and your team in terms of, you know kind of making the best use of AI to kind of accelerate the velocity and impact.

[00:03:58]>> I mean, it it's great that you're framing it as different use cases because like you know in a lot of spaces there's it's not going to replace sort of the wholesale task, right? It's individual areas that will be affected and in product marketing we need to keep pace with increasingly fast-paced release cycle, right? And so some of the challenges that come with that are things like naming consistency, naming conventions, uh messaging uh strategies, persona mapping. And so we've we've started to tackle some of these different use cases and um kind of one by one uh here at Corwave and then with my team and then also with interesting partners like Evidenza. And so the the use case of naming is a really interesting one because it it's it's both in terms of the ideation phase, but then it's also in terms of validating the choices you're making against different audiences. And I think we're increasingly able to be specific about what's going to resonate. And so certainly some of the products that we've looked at and and have launched at like a very rapid pace over the last several months, we've leveraged tools uh to figure out which names will resonate the most. So things like zero egress migration are are very clear and and maybe we would have picked that name on our own as well, but having that um kind of counter balance and ability to bounce ideas off of real different personas has been really really helpful and fruitful.

[00:05:26]>> Yeah, you know uh you know it that I've been in the analyst role as well in in in the past couple of years and one thing that always was a pet peeve for me is that while it's exciting to conduct you know industry research and it was really time-taking and consuming and costly and bursty and sometimes we used to joke that by the time you get these survey results, it might be outdated.

[00:05:51]Yes. Yeah, does it really make sense?

[00:05:53]And sometimes it's also very difficult to get the right set of personas that you're targeting. And synthetic research was always on top of my mind as to how you could do that. So, could you talk a little bit about, you know, how you all use some of this synthetic research, just the examples that you just talked about, but beyond that, what were the lessons learned? Walk me through the process so that the viewers who are listening to us can benefit from it.

[00:06:17]It's a It's a great example, right? And and especially because if you think about, yeah, like you said, it takes so much time to do it in person, to do it with real individuals. And some of these individuals might not be that accessible if you're looking at, you know, CEOs, you know, of a particular from a particular industry. How do you find enough of them to have a really indicative sample? And so, this has been very interesting for us and we've certainly been drawing on this ability to test ideas in a rapid way, like in days, you know, not months, right? And and it's been super helpful.

[00:06:53]And it's it's it's been really helpful in terms of also challenging our ideas, right? Because at some level, we've also gotten feedback a lot of the times that resonates. We're like, "Okay, we were on the right track." But in some cases, we've been surprised. We We thought something would resonate and it didn't.

[00:07:09]And so, that's been really eye-opening and also kind of breaking boundaries because in the past, we may have not used research at all, right? I mean, a lot of marketers, they're under time pressure, the launch is happening, you have to make a decision, right? You can't wait around for a 6-month study.

[00:07:25]And so, being able to draw on research and to step back and to try to be more objective and to try to reflect on your own assumptions and biases, right? In a way that's much more constructive has been eye-opening and empowering for the team. And so I see us just thinking harder, challenging ourselves more, and you know, also starting to create a practice of uh feedback and and conversation that we might not even have had before because we were too busy executing and and and and meeting the the deadlines.

[00:08:00]>> Yeah.

[00:08:01]Because I'm sitting and thinking with you here is that in the past I've seen a lot of you reaching out to the analyst for the message testing, right? But it still could be a biased opinion or a very small set of opinion. Surveys have their, you know, long time and you know, costs and inefficiencies, but there are some gotchas in these systems as well, right? So it could create some fiction, could could create some hallucination, could could end up into some kind of a descent. So uh did you guys kind of counter it or balance it with some kind of traditional methods of research along with that? What were the best practices that you learned out of it?

[00:08:36]>> It's a great question and and it's super important because we absolutely we are coming back to, you know, validating our assumptions. We are testing against real focus groups. We're also It It depends on what study you're running, right? Are you doing a uh a naming test or a message test or are you trying to create sort of longitudinal views, at which point you cannot really rely on the models yet as much, right? So that's where you want to use real panels of people and then that allows you to also continuously cross-check your own uh the data you're getting back from the synthetic research against what's happening among the you know, the communities out there. And they're progressing, but the models are changing, too, right? And at the same time and in parallel. And so just keeping these things in balance and having a a back and forth so that you're asking the right question with the right method. Like that doesn't change, right?

[00:09:30]Like even that will always be critical. And so that's where the experience and the and the knowledge of the marketers comes back into play, right?

[00:09:39]>> Yeah.

[00:09:39]>> It's It's not as simple as just you know, asking for the answer. You need to know what questions to ask and that will never go away, I don't think.

[00:09:47]>> Yeah.

[00:09:47]>> So, as you kind of video rightly said, it's not that either or, it's a complimentary. You have to kind of use the right set of tools at the right place and compliment each other. Let me ask you something personal at this level. When you're managing this team, you might have been confronted with your team members who might have not had the experience or knowledge about these tools.

[00:10:06]>> Yeah.

[00:10:06]>> Did everyone embrace it seemingly, you know?

[00:10:09]>> [laughter] >> Not everyone, always. No. I mean, I you know, I'll be honest. I think I'm just maybe I'm just really lucky too that we're we're creating communities of folks who are really really curious and and maybe coming to marketing from a less traditional background. I've always um um brought other people along who are also very very curious. So, it's less about resistance and more about getting past the initial kind of experimentation phase. Like, that's where I've seen the most challenge, right? So, we we we dabble, we try, but now we're at this new moment where we're starting to implement new systems that are really propelling us forward. So, you know, competitive intelligence work or like you said, message testing, >> Yeah.

[00:10:55]>> um persona development and refinement.

[00:10:58]Um these are all things that are now part of our common practice.

[00:11:03]>> Yes.

[00:11:03]>> So, I It's less about resistance and more about giving everyone the tools they need to get to the right level of comfort.

[00:11:10]>> Yeah.

[00:11:10]>> And so, that's where I'm finding the most need to to to jump in and give support. And then a little bit, it's also about creating space cuz I don't know how it is for you, but when I'm under time pressure, I you know, what they say, right? You you fall to your level of training. So, you go back to your safe space. You go back to the things you know how to do.

[00:11:28]>> Yeah.

[00:11:29]>> And that's not the time to try something completely different. And so, how do you create a space where people can experiment? So, you know, we're trying to you know, come back to the old school kind of Fridays are for innovation, you know, fewer meetings, open up longer periods of time, so people have the breathing room to do something differently. And that's key, I think, in all of this.

[00:11:52]>> I think that's very well said and also empowering them to kind of learn and iterate and also fail. Yeah.

[00:11:57]>> Yeah, and sometimes it could be bad, right?

[00:12:00]>> Yeah, but that's okay. Learn lessons and figure out where to go.

[00:12:03]So, I would love to understand where do you see the industry heading, you know, what would be your kind of insight that you see from product marketing kind of evolving in the era of AI, from a role perspective, from a usage perspective of AI? What >> I mean, it's going to be central to everything we do. I mean, I think that is is a given. Honestly, it's a given.

[00:12:24]It's a given because, you know, we our craft is related to to language, to expression, right? So, regardless of how things move, we have to embrace this and weave it into how we imagine, you know, products should be launched, products should be framed. And so, we need to harness it for our purposes. Like, there's no question about it. And so, that will happen. I think where the the interesting components will be is around the speed and the level of iteration.

[00:12:52]You know, one of the things we always talk about is, you know, things like message consistency. You know, message consistency is critical, right? But also moving with your customers is critical, right? So, do you have a way to evolve quickly enough where you're still being consistent, but also keeping pace?

[00:13:10]Because that is where I worry the most, you know, like the the the customers are inventing new products. I mean, whether it's, you know, from all kinds of directions, whether it's an enterprise or AI native startups or the LLM leaders themselves, they're all innovating so quickly that the product marketing risks falling behind if it's not using the same tools to keep pace.

[00:13:32]And so that's where we need to stay focused and and just move very very quickly so that we can, you know, provide the insight and the, you know, that demystification along with the products that are coming out.

[00:13:45]>> So do you and your team members have some wish list that I wish that the technology suppliers kind of solve this problem and I wish they did a better job?

[00:13:54]>> Um I I don't know if we have a wish list. I think our wish list is more about how we how how quickly we can test things, right? Can we test things more readily?

[00:14:04]Can we try more things in different places? Can we create more um uh persona-based journeys in rapid succession? Can we then weave that back in, you know, a lot of conversations are happening now around loops, right? And loop marketing.

[00:14:20]And so it's less about kind of a a linear funnel and it's much more about this iterative conversation you're having with different stakeholders in a in a customer. How do you bring all that together and then make it even more engaging and interesting and and and beneficial really for everyone, right?

[00:14:36]Cuz at the end of the day you're providing real value to customers and you want them to see it, feel it in a way that makes sense to them.

[00:14:43]>> I always kind of joke that, you know, we want less of AI slap and more maturity and more dials and knobs for us to kind of manage it so that the quality improves a powerful tool for us to use and how we get those solutions that give us the power to kind of move it forward with real business, you know, value, right? Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So it seems like you're doing all the right things with your com team members in terms of empowering them, providing them the flexibility. I think because the reason I was asking this question is because that sometimes, you know, some people kind of, you know, hunker down and they have the human paranoia which is human nature.

[00:15:22]So Suzanne, as we're kind of wrapping up this particular episode, I'd love to get your take on your parting advice to the viewers of this particular uh episode.

[00:15:31]>> You know, I think the most important thing, and everyone says this right now, but jump in, right? So, don't wait, don't hesitate. This isn't going away.

[00:15:39]Um and there's so much potential, right?

[00:15:41]The opportunities are vast. So, I would encourage everyone to jump in, and then I would encourage folks to remember what makes them great marketers, and I think the core [snorts] of that is discernment and taste, and the ability to actually figure out what is, you know, you called it AI slop versus what is really valuable kind of nuggets of of insight that will resonate with customers. And then use the technology and the tools to iterate faster, to try more things, so that you can actually progress your own thinking faster. So, focus on your own discernment, trust it, and and then keep iterating quickly so that you can keep pace with the innovations of the stakeholders you're serving within your organization.

[00:16:27]>> Awesome. Awesome. So, I'd like to wrap it up by saying that don't just automate content, rethink your foundational practices like validation and decision-making. And with that, we have come to the end of this episode. Thank you, everyone, for joining us, and stay tuned for more insights from us. Thank you.