The CMO’s Real Job Isn’t Generating Leads with Mini Peiris

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[00:00:38] Mini, thank you so much for joining us here today on The CMO Pivot. It is a pleasure to have you on. You've been a CMO for quite some time. You've got a lot of experience in companies like Dolma and Anambra and Nintex and NetSuite. And now Cornerstone. Yes, two and a half months in. Yeah, you are fresh. December 1st, right?

[00:01:08] December 1st. At the time of the recording anyway. You're two and a half months in. So welcome to the show. Give the audience a short elevator pitch of who you are. Sure. So as you mentioned, this is I think my fifth CMO role. And Claim to Fame is NetSuite in the early days. I was there for over 12 years, which is kind of unheard of these days.

[00:01:37] I ran product management originally up until the IPO. So I was there from sort of sub 5 million in revenue. You're like the original myth to me. Yeah. So back then we were writing the SaaS playbook. That SaaS didn't really exist when I started there. So got to have a heavy hand in creating what that looks like. First from a product motion perspective of educating people on what the heck the cloud was.

[00:02:05] To now and then moving into more of the go-to-market side, running product marketing and then eventually all of marketing. And that was when we were getting to the bigger scale. So ran the whole gamut of I've done SMB. I've done mid-market. I've done enterprise. Since NetSuite, I purposely chose companies that were targeted at a very specific industry sector.

[00:02:29] Because I felt like we'd done the shift into SaaS by that point on horizontal solutions. But there were some very underpenetrated domains like digital health. So that was my Ombra Health stent supply chain. That was Alentum. And then PropTech, that was Doma. And then, you know, that I felt like I'd learned a lot in doing that and what it takes to specialize a story into a particular industry. Yeah.

[00:02:58] And so it was time to get back to something broader, which took me to Nintex and now Cornerstone. And I think the pull thread, I would say, for me has always been marketing is about people. And sometimes in the B2B world, we forget that because we think it's about the company and not about the individual who's sitting there making a purchasing decision. Correct.

[00:03:20] It's not, it's always about, we often forget that there is a person who's willing to shell out $5 for whatever it is you're selling, regardless of what it is. And we often forget about that in what we put out and what we're doing in the back room. So before we get into, into, in this story, I want to get into storytelling because I know you've got a good, a good, a good story here.

[00:03:44] But before we get there, talk about your career progression, because we, we, in pre-show, we were talking about, about an older show that we do, the Inside the C-Suite. And I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but I have to do this because it just makes sense. I just got, I got to start here. I can't help myself. So you, because, because you make, you make a good point. You, you went from company to company to company for a reason. You specifically with intent went to a new role to learn something, to do something.

[00:04:15] Talk about that because the, my, my hunch is that people that are listening to this, they're either in the CMO role or they're not in a CMO role yet. Right. And they're aspiring to get there. How do they build their career intentfully, if that's a word, to learn and to grow into that role? Yeah. Look, there's always something people say when you're talking about career progression that, you know, folks have been lucky in your career.

[00:04:43] I think you make your own luck in some ways. And we were prepping for a different podcast about career progression, particularly women in leadership, which is an area I'm passionate about. And we were talking about this yesterday with some colleagues. And I said, well, luck is when you take an opportunity that you're given and you amplify it to the best of your ability. And it becomes then, you know, something that you can put your mark on and have it be part of your career progression. Right, right.

[00:05:12] And if you, you know, if I think about the opportunities I've had and frankly, going way back into how I got into technology, that's the common thread. So my degree is actually in cellular molecular biology. It has everything to do with marketing. Yeah, doesn't it? It just resonates. So I lucked into technology in the first place.

[00:05:35] I had some friends at a startup and I was moved somewhere for the weather, which, you know, not something I recommend, but it did find me a whole new career path. And so I got into this industry in tech support, writing knowledge base articles. Common thread there that I've carried through into marketing world is the ability to take something that sounds complicated and make it understandable. Break it down.

[00:05:59] Yeah, and I think that that start also grounded me on another tenant that you need as a marketer and is keeping the customer first and foremost in mind. Right. So my career advice is like always make sure you take time to think about what you are good at and then select projects that help you amplify that. Right.

[00:06:21] So I often, you know, especially early career marketers, they think there's like this ladder you have to climb, you have to manage a team and you have to, you know, there's the whole director VP progression to C-suite. Right. And sometimes life isn't always that perfect. Right. But if you learn from each opportunity that you get and that helps you, and this is kind of comes back to what Cornerstone does well, is it helps you gain a new skill.

[00:06:52] And a new piece of the puzzle that makes you a better fit for the C-suite roles. Right. That's the secret. So on progression, we recently did an episode with a gentleman named J.R. Keller. He is the, I'm going to butcher his title, but he essentially runs the ILR group at Cornell University. And for their school of HR, et cetera.

[00:07:15] And so we were talking about progression and lateral progression and how lateral promotions isn't necessarily a demotion as most people feel. Like, oh, I got a promotion, but I went here and I'm making the same money, but it's still a promotion in, I believe it is. But I'm curious to get your thoughts on that before we jump in. I promise we're going to get to marketing, but thoughts on lateral promotions. I highly recommend it.

[00:07:42] So when you think about, let's talk about, I mean, this is about the CMO, right? So at this point in my career, I have recruiters who call me and they always ask, so which pillar of marketing do you index on? Right. Because that's, there's usually a profile that they're trying to peg. And I'm like, listen, I've done this five times over now. Like, yes, I came up through product marketing ranks, but I would not be a five-time CMO if I wasn't good at demand gen. If I didn't know how to brand build.

[00:08:10] If I couldn't go category create and handle brand positioning, right? Product positioning. So I think that's where I look at the, like, if you, if I had a chance to do a lateral and go be a field marketer or something, like that would have been an equally good thing for me to have done in order to show career progression. Yeah.

[00:08:31] So I will also say you should, even if it's not a full lateral move, make sure you're volunteering and raising your hand for the projects that allow you to cross collaborate across things that are not necessarily in your wheelhouse that you need to augment your skills on. Yeah. And I don't think, I don't think that thought process stops when you get to the CMO level.

[00:08:56] You could take another CMO role and do exactly this, you know, something a little different and learn something different. You don't necessarily need to be seen as like you're going from a 10,000 person company to a 450,000 person company. It does, that doesn't always need to be the case.

[00:09:12] Yeah. Look, and that's, I think the other trajectory is how do you learn scale? And if you haven't done scale, you know, it's hard to get the scale job. So this is where, if you're looking at company size as an indication of complexity, that may or may not always be the case because in today's world, large companies are being impacted by AI, for instance.

[00:09:37] So there may be a chance to be part of an incubator team that gives you a different flavor of pace of business or vice versa. If you're, you know, at a smaller company, you might get acquired into a bigger entity and that gives you that opportunity to experience the scale. But yeah, I think definitely important to keep in mind that your career path that sets you up for the perfect role isn't necessarily linear. Yeah.

[00:10:33] You're going to have different engineers who have different terminology, who have different needs. And that's a learning in and of itself. And once you do that a few times, it really pushes you on how quickly you can ramp into an industry space. Right. Have you ever taken one of these roles in a new industry and thought, dang it, why did I do this? No, I'm kidding. You don't have to answer that. No, it was never about the industry.

[00:11:01] It was more, you know, the traditional things like market dynamics or where the company was. I will look. Has it been perfect in how I've picked my roles? Not always. There's been ones that were teaching moments. Right. That was one that taught me to push really hard about product market fit. And even though it was, this was not, you know, on paper, it looked like it was, they had it figured out because they had a great list of customers.

[00:11:31] They were 50, 60 million in revenue. So you would have thought that was a decent place to make a bet, but they weren't ready. And I had to go, I had to do a big pivot for them. So we had to redefine where they were going to play. And so that was a learning opportunity. Like you come into a role, it's not what you think it is, but then it gives you a whole different set of learnings that you can parlay into how you look for your next role and curate that for yourself. Right. All right.

[00:12:01] So let's get into storytelling because I love this topic and I know you believe in this a lot. First off, how do you, I've asked this question before and I get a lot of different answers. How do you define storytelling from the eyes of a CMO? For me, it comes back to what it is that we are. So look, people remember how they feel, not what you tell them, right?

[00:12:31] So storytelling at the heart of it has to stem from a really great understanding of the why. So I'm a big Simon Sinek fan. Creating that vision of what you're asking your audience to believe in. In the case of, you know, B2B tech marketing, that is your buyer. What is the thing that's bigger than themselves that you're trying to ask them to buy into?

[00:13:00] And the story starts from that. And then very much the next layer is about them as an individual and how does that story align with their personal drivers and motivations? So I think storytelling at its finest, like Pixar does this better than all of us, right? I've always wanted to write a customer case study, for instance, as a fairy tale. Why not?

[00:13:24] Once upon a time, there was a CHRO who was asked by their CEO to go and transform what they allowed their people to be able to do and how they allowed their people to learn. So kind of create a story arc from that point of view with your buyer as the protagonist. Yeah. So I love that. And maybe I think that's actually a good thing that we should maybe do together.

[00:13:53] Just let's just build it and post it and see what happens. And we'll do a whole thing. All right. So I did some stalking on you. Okay. And in a good way, of course. And I came across an article. I believe it might have been a Forbes article that you contributed on getting customers involved in marketing efforts. Do you remember this article? Vaguely, I think. Yes. Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Just how I planned it. Vaguely remember. So, okay.

[00:14:23] So I want to read you something. And because this was a couple years ago. So I want to get your thoughts on this and see, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I probably should have said somebody said this and see what you thought of that person and it was actually you. I want to see. That would have been really funny. This person is awful. Don't hire this person. And it's you. Okay. So I'm going to read this to you and I want to get your thoughts on this. So you said, so this was feed customers career aspirations.

[00:14:51] Don't think of them as customers, but as people, people who have career aspirations. Feed those aspirations and they will happily become your advocates. And then you went on to say, I'm going to read this because this is more of it. We did this by launching a woman's leadership program that elevated women in our specific industry through awards, speaking opportunities, and social media. We paired them with mentors and ran networking events.

[00:15:18] We gave them a reason to say yes to us. That's pretty good. I thought so. Well, thank you. But let's stay on that. Go deeper on that for us. Talk to me about that because I think this is as logical as this sounds. I think it's often overlooked. And people in your role tend to maybe overlook this a little bit.

[00:15:45] Yeah, look, I think that was that is one of the things I put on my did that well and did it right. That organization is still running, by the way. I was at Ombra Health. They've been they've exited. They've got acquired by Intel RAD. But it was called RADXX at the time. And RADXX is what they've brought into. So Equality for Everyone. And they are one of those orgs that in the radio. So this was when I was in digital imaging and in digital health.

[00:16:14] And it's become one of the sought after events at all of the conferences. So this was like a very outside the box idea. And I think I do think as marketers, like we have to find those ways that we can connect people. And this was a tangible example. So, yes, I very much believe in any you can't like we talked about this in B2B tech in particular.

[00:16:42] And when we're marketing, we do forget that there's a human behind that purchase decision. And finding out what motivates them, what their career aspirations are, this was a way that we could unpack that. Because there was a need in that particular industry to recognize women in leadership. And that was a little unexpected for me. I think, you know, growing up in the tech world, coming up through the ranks at a time when there weren't as many female leaders in the C-suite.

[00:17:13] That was something I could relate to as well. And that whole initiative came up over a dinner conversation with one of our marquee customers, who's a terrific woman that I partnered with. And it was, you know, we sort of co-created this idea and then launched it. And now, thankfully, you had to pick the right partner to do it with. She was a very well-respected and recognized leader in the community.

[00:17:38] And so she was able to be a great person to have as an advocate and brought along a whole community with her as well. Right. So how do you take an event like that or an activity like that? Because I can see the minds of marketers now who are listening and saying, okay, that's wonderful. That's super long tail, right? How do I attribute a pipeline to that? You don't. Yeah. Yeah. But I will tell you.

[00:18:07] It's in their minds. They're thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is how I, like, basically by, so we would have people come up to us at trade shows at our booth and you start having a conversation with them. And they'd say, oh, you're the ones who sponsored this or do this initiative. And so we started, you get brand association to something bigger than themselves that they can be part of.

[00:18:34] And, you know, this is, okay, what is a marketer's fundamental job? To create FOMO. Right? Fear of missing out. So you have to think of creative ways today to stand out from the noise of how you can create that fear. I'm always a big advocate also of getting your customers to tell your story because you're not believable as the vendor, but it's them saying it. And it's not as easy to do. Yeah. It's hard. It's very hard.

[00:19:04] Or we'd all be doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes time and effort and it takes focus. But when you can do that. So that was what I think the way to tie it to. How did it help us drive the mission forward on opening doors?

[00:19:21] For one thing, I could reach out to any woman leader in that field and offer up speaking opportunities at the webinars or live streams that we were doing at the time. So, and come at it not from a, hey, I'm at this digital health company. Like, can I help you with your imaging needs? But come at it from a, hey, I want to connect you in with other leaders like you.

[00:19:48] So, again, you have to understand what's in it for them from a, what helps progress their career? What helps? Do they even want to have that amplification? Mm-hmm. So, this came down to the psychographics of your buyer. I figured out that, you know, in this particular case, radiologists, they were trying to establish their own personal brands in a very big way.

[00:20:13] And that was what we as perceived as sort of the cool startup in that space were able to offer them is that it gave, that we gave them a platform to be able to speak from and to amplify their voice. And so there was a win-win there and it created a draft effect for us that was beneficial as well to the goal of pipe creation. And how do you, how do you justify the, and what can you attribute to that?

[00:20:42] Yeah. This kind of falls into the, I always say, the category, and I say this to my children a lot, give without expectations. You know, and it's, if you're going to give something, then give it. You don't, unless you specifically sign that paper and say, it's a loan, just, you're giving without expectations. You're giving because you want to give. And I think this falls into that category. And it's very difficult. And I'm sure you see this all the time. I see it because we talk to markers all the time. It is very difficult.

[00:21:11] And you can see the struggle in their eyes. And as they're talking to you, how do I separate pipeline? How do I separate the return from everything that I'm doing? How can I write a check for $50,000 just to be part of this event and not expect anything from it? It's very difficult for someone to break away from that mentality. And it's an interesting dynamic. And what do you say to those people? Like, how do you just do that?

[00:21:41] Well, I think, look, if that's the place you're at, then that's, there's a different mission to change the mindset of the C-suite or the board that you're operating within. So I have now, you know, over my career, I've learned to recognize when a company views marketing as strategic and when it views it as, you know, putting more coins into the demand gen machine. Mm-hmm.

[00:22:07] I don't take those roles anymore that are where all you're being asked to do is to feed leads to sales. Right, right. Let's be honest. Today, this is an active conversation I was having with some fellow CMO peers. There's, we, it's not about MQLs anymore. It's very much about pipeline. And in order to build quality pipeline and to be able to reach your buyer in a more effective way. And for me, like I just said this as our last sales kickoff, it's always all about revenue.

[00:22:37] Mm-hmm. And in today's world, there's an entire buying committee around that process. So you cannot be looking at this from one particular vector. You have to take us around effect. And in order to get to that entire buying committee, you have to use very, a variety of different tactics. You will not be, I guarantee you, you cannot measure everything. Right? So this is where if you're looking at marketing from more of that strategic viewpoint of like,

[00:23:05] how is it helping my company vision and company progression in today's world in particular, where we have a million distractions. Mm-hmm. That is when you need to get that permission, if you will, to try a few different things. I always say to my teams, like, we're going to, you can't be afraid to take a risk. Right. We're going to take some risks and not all of them will work.

[00:23:33] Some will work brilliantly, but we measure everything that we do in the best way that we can. Right. And then we learn from what works and what doesn't, and we go iterate again. Like, that has fundamentally been what marketing is always all about. Right, right. Yeah, you got to play with what you're doing and find what works. So, curious, how often do you find that executives at a company are misaligned to the strategy of the company itself?

[00:24:02] I think that depends on which level, right? So, obviously, if ELT is not aligned, that's a huge problem. Yeah, sure. And that's, you know, usually not a good place to be necessarily. Mm-hmm. As someone sitting in that C-suite, it's on you to drive and force that alignment.

[00:24:22] And that's something I do think that is a shift in the CMO role is more and more the how do you bring product together with the revenue function and create that company vision, co-create it with the CEO. Smart CEOs look to their CMO to be a partner in that. So, I think that's where the role of the CMO done well as a strategic CMO. Mm-hmm. You need to own that narrative. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's stay there for a second.

[00:24:52] So, one of the previous conversations we had was the role of the CEO, or I'm sorry, the role of the CMO. Is it financial? Is it just marketing, traditional marketing, or is product involved? Does the CMO also control or own sales in a way? What's your take on that? I think that looks a little bit different depending on the company, who's around the table, where strengths lie.

[00:25:20] I can say in my own journeys, like I've shifted both ways, right? Sometimes you own a little bit more of product if there's a need there. Or I've owned everything from inside sales to enablement to channel, biz dev. There's enough flex in the title that it can morph based on what the company needs and who's around the table. Yeah. Yeah. I promised myself I'd wait at least 10 minutes to get into AI.

[00:25:50] We've beat that. We've done that. So, as we wind down here, because I know you've got things to do in life. Where does AI play into your role currently, if you can figure this out yet, because you've only been there two and a half months. But where does AI play into your role now?

[00:26:11] And where have you seen this shift, we'll say post-COVID, in the CMO role as you've progressed through and up until this role? Oh, gosh. Post-COVID, it's been exponentially shifting, right? So, if I think about my last three roles have all been at some AI adjacent or obviously AI has been incorporated into the product strategy in a big way.

[00:26:38] And particularly today with Gen AI and with now moving to more agentic capabilities, it is front and center. So, within marketing itself, there's huge opportunities. And the team here, we've done pretty well on – we're using the content creation, as we know. If you don't start it in AI and give yourself that extra lift, then you're stupid.

[00:27:05] Like, you should not be trying to create from a blind page anymore. The efficiency it gives you is huge. Now, you have to make sure you're doing that within the governance frameworks of whatever organization you're in, obviously. So, that's front and center. I think there's a huge opportunity. We were – just my particular interest area is in – because, let's face it, today to find the right people with the right –

[00:27:34] And I'm a big fan of an ICP, as you can imagine, that goes down into the psychographics of the individual. Sure. Right? So, it's not just about the company you're trying to reach, but what is the profile of the buyer within that company that you're trying to reach. Now, AI is uniquely suited to help you go find those people because, like, intent data – Right.

[00:27:59] You can – it's one indicator, but, frankly, like, nobody has buying intent these days because they're all operating as a committee. And so, it gets difficult to just rely on that. It's only going to give you one view of where the people are that you're trying to reach. Right. And so, AI has a huge potential to be able to go find your buyers where they are and help you target them in a better way. Right.

[00:28:28] There's also opportunity to just think about nurturing. Sure. And you think about what BDRs do. Like, there's a huge lift area for BDRs on just getting the personalization that, frankly, if you have educated your model in a way, can probably take that first touch entirely automated, right? Right. At this point. And only once you get a response back from a human do you need to engage another human on the other side.

[00:28:53] And so, there's infinite opportunity within marketing to flex and to leverage AI. Obviously, from a product strategy perspective, we are shifting – we have shifted fast there and have some new products coming. Let's talk again in a couple of months because we have something very new and exciting that we'll be unveiling from the Cornerstone side of the house, too. Right. And I said, we will hold you to that. We did last year. We did – was it last year or the year before? I can't remember what year it was. We did last year or the year before.

[00:29:24] There was – at the event, there was the VR stuff for training. And so, I said, I'll do this. I'll play with this. It was fun. I put it on. And I literally walked into an interview. And I sat down. And I spoke with the person. And it was amazing. Like, it was – I've never done it before. And I thought, wow, this is really amazing. I did another one where I had to stock shelves – learn how to stock shelves in a grocery store.

[00:29:52] And so, I literally am sitting here stocking virtually with this thing on my head. And it was – it felt really real like I was there. It was amazing. So, I have to get back and do that again because I'm sure that looks – that's better as well. But you said a couple things in that that I want to maybe double click on. One is people aren't looking with buying intent because they're buying in committees.

[00:30:19] And I think that that's big because not everybody realizes that, right? They're still set up because we see the funnels that companies are building. We work with these companies. And they're building it almost as if that is the only person that matters that comes to your page. And so, the person comes in. They do whatever activities. They come through. And they're only focused on that person.

[00:30:43] And I have my ideas on how do we capture that entire committee without even knowing who's on the committee. You can make inferences there. How do you approach that? Yeah, I think that's – so, how we – I can speak to how we're doing it here. Three different personas we've identified. And this speaks to – you have to understand where you are as a business. So, in the Cornerstone's case, we have rich history in learning.

[00:31:11] That is changing. And so, we do have – we're still going to serve our chief learning officers and our L&D professionals. But there is a bigger story that we can help the companies that our customers curate these days around taking all of that data that you know about people. And allowing you to leverage that in a different way, which is much more interesting to the CHRO.

[00:31:40] And now with AI at the table, the CIO is back at the table. And because they're being chartered with owning strategic initiatives around AI. So, any tech company out there that's doing marketing, you have to bring that CIO along. Because if you have AI as part of your product offering, it's going to eventually end up on their radar, right?

[00:32:05] So, that's the broader shift that we're thinking about in terms of – we've always put the CHRO in a certain capacity around talent management, for instance, that we've brought to the table. The role-playing thing that you were just talking about as an example. And so – but now, you know, CIO is definitely on the table.

[00:32:23] And frankly, when you look at what the bigger worldview that's happening around us, it is still true that people and talent is one of the biggest assets that a company has. And now what AI is forcing everyone to think about is, how do I fully unlock the potential of that asset?

[00:32:46] And does my workforce of the future involve a combination of people and agents and automation? And so, there's definitely a really interesting thing happening. You heard it in the conversations at Davos a month ago, right? Yeah, absolutely. Jobs and workforce was one of the bigger topics almost than AI.

[00:33:13] It was really the intersection of how AI is coming together with the workforce and what that looks for, board mandate on down. And so, what we're hearing in customer conversations these days is very much about, you know, CEOs are handing down charters to their entire C-suite around how to think about unlocking that full potential of all of the workers they have.

[00:33:39] So, you have to think about that in any buying committee that you're trying to go out and curate. Yeah, and I think from the talent perspective, it's an interesting point because from the unlocking talent, we've, in a number of conversations, I would say the common thread, if I had to put this on paper, I'd be very confident in saying that leadership in talent is now, they're now comfortable or getting more comfortable. Close to comfortable, I should say.

[00:34:07] With upskilling their employees and upskilling their talent, knowing that in 12 months, they're probably no longer going to be here at the organization, but they're going to be somewhere else.

[00:34:22] And they've gotten better with being okay with doing that, where in the beginning, there was a lot of hesitancy on investing money in upskilling 1,200 people, knowing that half of them, some part of them are no longer going to be there and you've invested that money that's no longer recoverable. And they've gotten better at this now. Yeah, no, you're right.

[00:34:49] And I think the question for leadership is, which cohort of individuals do I invest in? And most companies can't answer that question or they do it anecdotally based on who you've had an interaction with. And this often happens around the C-suite. Like everybody has people they know in the org and they're like, oh, we talk about nine box ratings and things like that. That's right.

[00:35:14] These are all only one data point at this point and you need a richer, more dynamic picture of your workforce. And it's always evolving. And that's a lot of context that you need to be able to look at when you are thinking about who are the right people to invest in. If I have a new product I'm trying to introduce, who's the tiger team I put behind that? Think about geographic expansion.

[00:35:41] There are so many scenarios where the information you have about your people, you're usually missing a lot of that key information. And so that's an area obviously we're thinking about and leaning into given the heritage of Cornerstone. But coming back to like how so I guess this is a very long winded answer to the question you asked me a bit ago is how do you figure out that buying committee and make time and space for it? You have to know your market.

[00:36:11] You have to know who that buying committee is and what that represents. And then you have to make a strategic plan that allows you to go after all of those vectors. And you may take different tactics because their involvement is at different levels and you shouldn't treat them all equally. So fundamentals, know your customer, know your buyer. It's always going to come down. And so final question because this is going to tie into storytelling.

[00:36:39] It feels tactical for most people when I ask this question. But I believe this is more of a strategic question, especially at your level. Are we optimizing today? And this gets more into content. But are we optimizing today still for SEO? Or have we evolved or should we evolve more towards AEO?

[00:37:07] Yeah, for AEO. I'm losing my words. I apologize. I had so many things I want to say here. What are your thoughts there? Because I think for me personally, I don't believe SEO is dead. I think it's the foundation. But it could be both ways. And we're seeing that in the podcasting side anyhow where some of our greatest traffic in like the thousands come from Alexa. Alexa.

[00:37:35] And so at first we thought, wow, we're getting hit with bots. How do we fix this? And no, it turns out people are just searching on their smart speakers and through Alexa. Hey, Alexa, tell me or find me this. And it's no longer just finding the podcast. It's finding the chapter within the podcast. And landing you at minute 1745 as opposed to minute zero. Right.

[00:38:00] And so I asked that question from a strategic standpoint because how does that affect content in marketing today? I mean, look, I think we all lived that nightmare of when AI Overview launched in Google. Right. Everybody saw the massive drops. Did you know that 60% of people never click anymore? I saw this fact the other day as I was looking up some stuff. 60% of people.

[00:38:30] So out of all the people that go to Google and search or anywhere, but mainly Google. Right. They go to Google. They search. They get the AI overview. 60% of those people will never click a link to go visit the site. They get the answers right from the overviews and the conversation through AI. AI mode. That's right. And let's so look, this is all evolving very quickly. And as marketers, we don't have tools today to measure when we're showing up in the LLMs and the search.

[00:38:59] You know, rely. There's some vendors out there and this, you know, I'm constantly tracking this in CMO circles. I think we're all trying to figure out, is there some secret that we can rely on, you know, the stats that are coming through on how often are you showing up? Are you showing up and feeding into those AI overviews? Or even, you know, like you said, if you, even if you're not getting the clicks, like, are you showing up in? Right.

[00:39:25] Google search has dropped and more people are searching within chat or Claude or wherever their interface is. Right. So it's going to be a little messy for a while is my personal point of view. And we've done this before as marketers, so we shouldn't beat ourselves up. Like we've had, we always have to flex whenever tech changes. Right. Like Google used to change the algorithms all the time.

[00:39:52] SEO is constantly shifting and being a dynamic thing and this is different. Yeah. So I always like try to tell my team, I'm like, let's not stress. We just have to figure, we have to reinvent ourselves, you know, now at a faster clip. Yeah. And that is where, what AI has forced us all to do is to be in constant learning mode. And, you know, you, you do the same thing you do. You go out and find as many experts as you can and take all the inputs and you figure out a plan.

[00:40:22] And so, yeah, I mean, SEO is not dead. It just looks different. And now you have to think about AEO and maybe GEO, depending on the space they're in. And we have all new acronyms nowadays. Yeah. And they're not, they're not going to, there's no shortage of acronyms. And once we get to conference season for at least the HR tech and workspace coming up, they'll be everywhere. So. Yeah. Yeah. And you just have to figure your mix out and where you're going to invest in and make a strategic bet.

[00:40:52] Yeah. Minnie, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking time. This has been amazing and I appreciate it. Thank you very much for joining us.