MMarketing Against The Grain
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23 May 2023

The State Of A.I. In 2023: Useful Tools Vs Hype (#120)

3Frameworks
11Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Hot Take· 7

Hot Take12:00

Every Buyer Will Have a Personal AI Concierge

Kieran predicts that AI will guide buyers continuously from their first website visit through onboarding and ongoing customer status. This could reduce the adoption barriers that have historically limited complex software products.

  • AI assistance can span the entire customer lifecycle.
  • Continuous chat can remove friction from product adoption.
  • Complex products may become accessible through guided interactions.
  • Personalization can reach a true segment of one.

I talk about it as in the future, every buyer is gonna have their own concierges.

Kieran Flanagan · 12:00

I think we're gonna strip away the complexity of adoption of tools which is gonna be really interesting.

Kieran Flanagan · 12:00
#personalization#concierge#adoption#customer-experience
Hot Take16:00

AI Could Make Product-Led Growth Eat the Enterprise

The hosts expect low-cost and enterprise customer journeys to converge as AI makes automated service better and faster. Expensive customers may share most of the same journey as lower-value customers, with humans concentrated on negotiation, unusual setup, and other high-value exceptions.

  • Automated and enterprise experiences may become largely similar.
  • AI can accelerate onboarding for expensive products.
  • Human attention shifts toward the highest-value exceptions.
  • Better automation may extend product-led growth further upmarket.

I think that those two experiences are gonna come together, because the automated experience is just going to be better than the human experience most…

Kipp Bodnar · 16:30

I think PLG eats into...

Kieran Flanagan · 18:00
#plg#enterprise#onboarding#automation
Hot Take18:30

Virtual Avatars Could Transform Support Within 12 Months

The hosts foresee customers escalating from AI chat to calls with realistic virtual agents that can demonstrate products and inspect screens. They expect customer support to become predominantly AI-driven much sooner than high-end marketing writing.

  • AI chat may escalate seamlessly into avatar-led calls.
  • Virtual agents could handle phone support and sales.
  • Screen sharing can enable procedural guidance.
  • Support automation appears easier than elite creative writing.

You are going to be able to have a custom human avatar to do phone support.

Kipp Bodnar · 19:00

Customer support is completely different in 12 months' time. It is more AI than humans-

Kieran Flanagan · 19:00
#virtual-avatars#customer-support#sales#ai-agents
Hot Take21:00

Why Marketing May Absorb Parts of Sales and Customer Success

As AI automates support and outbound interactions, Kipp predicts that marketing will become the operational backbone for those motions. Automated support and traditional BDR or SDR outreach may therefore move into marketing organizations.

  • Marketing may own more AI automation infrastructure.
  • Automated support could shift organizational boundaries.
  • BDR and SDR outreach may become marketing-led.
  • Sales and customer-success use cases may be simpler than creative marketing.

I think a few bold predictions is that more of sales and customer success are going to live in marketing, because marketing's going to be,…

Kipp Bodnar · 21:30

I actually think the sales and customer success use cases of AI, in some ways are more straightforward than the marketing use cases.

Kipp Bodnar · 22:00
#marketing-operations#sales#customer-success#organization
Hot Take20:00

A Legacy Customer Experience Will Become a Trust Problem

The hosts warn that companies failing to modernize customer experience with AI will not merely seem inefficient; they will appear obsolete and untrustworthy. They believe early adopters can build a lead that becomes increasingly difficult for laggards to close.

  • Customer experience is the central opportunity, not merely support cost reduction.
  • AI-native competitors can leapfrog legacy journeys.
  • Poor digital service may undermine customer trust.
  • Early AI advantages may compound.

If you have not 10X'd your customer experience in the next year, you're fucked.

Kieran Flanagan · 20:00

if you do not adapt your customer experience with AI, it's gonna be like the equivalent of having a Geocities website, like, in 2010.

Kipp Bodnar · 20:30
#customer-experience#competition#trust#ai-adoption
Hot Take34:00

Generative Search May Punish Challenger Brands

Established brands are likely to appear naturally in AI-generated category recommendations, while challengers lose the old opportunity to attack incumbents through informational SEO. New entrants may have to build recognition through indirect media channels before search systems include them.

  • Known brands are more likely to appear in generated answers.
  • Category recognition becomes more valuable.
  • Informational SEO loses power as an entry strategy.
  • Challengers may need a longer brand-building campaign.

It's gonna go up if you are a known brand.

Kieran Flanagan · 34:00

It's bad for challenger brands.

Kieran Flanagan · 34:30
#brand#challenger-brands#seo#category-design
Hot Take38:00

AI Could Revive Video, In-Person Events, and Brand Advertising

Looking beyond writing, personalization, and search, the hosts expect AI to make video creation accessible to average marketers. At the same time, weaker online attribution and a desire for human connection may increase investment in in-person communities, events, and brand advertising.

  • AI can remove editing and post-production barriers from video.
  • In-person events offer human connection and clearer perceived ROI.
  • Brand advertising may grow as direct-response attribution weakens.
  • AdWords and Meta's AI-era advertising models remain major unknowns.

when they can actually just go from idea to like fully-fledged video, I think video becomes much more ubiquitous in all of the things that…

Kieran Flanagan · 38:00

So I think strangely AI is going to bring events back.

Kipp Bodnar · 39:00
#video#events#community#advertising

Explainer· 3

Explainer10:30

Why Knowledge-Base Chatbots Are Already Better Than Search

HubSpot's AI chatbot turns known product documentation into direct procedural answers. For straightforward questions, the hosts argue that this interaction can outperform both scrolling through long help pages and waiting for a human agent.

  • Ground the chatbot in known company information.
  • Direct questions produce the strongest current results.
  • Multi-step, highly constrained requests remain harder.
  • Conversational answers can replace knowledge-base searching.

And basically if you are going to a knowledge base, and so for folks who may not know what a knowledge base is that is,…

Kipp Bodnar · 10:30

I actually think this is probably the most, like, reality part of AI right now is that you have known information that you can feed…

Kipp Bodnar · 11:30
#chatbots#knowledge-base#customer-support#hubspot
Explainer27:30

Generative Search Turns Featured Snippets Into the Whole Page

The hosts describe generative search as an expanded featured snippet that occupies the most valuable screen space and pushes organic links downward. As users become accustomed to conversational answers, many informational searches may stop producing website visits.

  • Generative answers dominate the top of the results page.
  • Longer AI responses push ads and organic links downward.
  • Users are learning to retrieve information conversationally.
  • Informational search traffic faces a structural decline.

I think that this is like a giant version of the featured snippet, plus it's not just like

Kieran Flanagan · 29:00

You're changing user behavior. We are being trained that there is a new way to get information.

Kieran Flanagan · 30:00
#seo#generative-search#google#organic-traffic
Explainer31:30

The Click Era Is Giving Way to the Influence Era

From roughly 2005 to 2020, major platforms sent measurable traffic back to company websites. As social platforms, email privacy changes, and generative search reduce those clicks, marketers must learn to value influence occurring on YouTube, TikTok, search, and other channels even when direct attribution is weak.

  • Search is the last major scalable source of direct-response organic clicks.
  • Social platforms already reduced outbound traffic.
  • Traditional tracking has become less reliable.
  • Marketers need better influence measurement across indirect channels.

A year ago we said it is the rise of indirect traffic sources.

Kieran Flanagan · 31:30

we're moving into a new era of influence where it's gonna be much harder to send people on a click back to your website.

Kipp Bodnar · 33:30
#attribution#influence#traffic#marketing-strategy

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway35:30

Every Company Should Build a Product YouTube Channel

YouTube is expected to remain a meaningful search surface longer than traditional web search because many users still want visual tutorials. The hosts recommend publishing discoverable product demonstrations and use-case videos, with AI lowering production barriers.

  • YouTube search may erode more slowly than web search.
  • Product tutorials align with high-intent how-to queries.
  • Every company can publish use-case demonstrations.
  • AI video tools can reduce production effort.

my hot take is that every company should have a product YouTube channel, where it's just doing product use case demos so those can be…

Kipp Bodnar · 36:00

That is a no-brainer.

Kipp Bodnar · 36:00
#youtube#video-marketing#product-demos#seo